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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mildred Arkell, Volume II (of 3), by Mrs.
+Henry Wood
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Mildred Arkell, Volume II (of 3)
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Mrs. Henry Wood
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 5, 2012  [eBook #39377]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILDRED ARKELL, VOLUME II (OF 3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Paula Franzini, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/mildredarkellnov02woo
+
+
+
+
+
+MILDRED ARKELL.
+
+A Novel.
+
+by
+
+MRS. HENRY WOOD,
+
+Author of
+"East Lynne," "Lord Oakburn's Daughters," "Trevlyn Hold,"
+etc. etc.
+
+In Three Volumes.
+
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Tinsley Brothers, Catherine Street, Strand.
+1865.
+All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved.
+
+London:
+Savill and Edwards, Printers, Chandos-Street,
+Covent-Garden.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAP.                                            PAGE
+
+     I. THE SCHOOL-BOY'S LOVE                         1
+    II. THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE           20
+   III. A MEETING AT GRENOBLE                        37
+    IV. A MYSTERY                                    65
+     V. HOME IN DESPAIR                              87
+    VI. NEWS FOR WESTERBURY                         102
+   VII. ROBERT CARR'S VISIT                         118
+  VIII. GOING OVER TO SQUIRE CARR'S                 137
+    IX. A STARTLED LUNCHEON-TABLE                   153
+     X. A MISSIVE FOR SQUIRE CARR                   175
+    XI. THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR                     191
+   XII. MR. RICHARDS' MORNING CALL                  214
+  XIII. A DISLIKE THAT WAS TO BEAR ITS FRUITS       230
+   XIV. THE EXAMINATION                             251
+    XV. A NIGHT WITH THE GHOSTS                     272
+   XVI. PERPLEXITY                                  294
+  XVII. A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE                      315
+
+
+
+
+MILDRED ARKELL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SCHOOL-BOY'S LOVE.
+
+
+A brilliant evening in July. The sun had been blazing all day with
+intense force, glittering on the white pavement of the streets,
+scorching the dry and thirsty earth; and it was not until his beams
+shone from the very verge of the horizon that the gay butterflies of
+humanity ventured to come forth.
+
+Groups were wending their way to the Bishop's Garden: not the private
+garden of the respected prelate who reigned over the diocese of
+Westerbury, but a semi-public garden-promenade called by that name. In
+the years long gone by, a bishop of Westerbury caused a piece of waste
+land belonging to the grounds of his palace to be laid out as an
+ornamental garden. Broad sunny walks for the cold of winter, shady
+winding ones for the heat of summer, shrubberies and trees, flower-beds
+and grass-plots, miniature rocks and a fountain, were severally formed
+there; and then the bishop threw it open to the public, and it had ever
+since gone by the name of the Bishop's Garden. Not to the public
+indiscriminately--only to those of superior degree; the catering for the
+recreation of the public indiscriminately had not come into fashion
+then. It had always lain especially under the patronage of the residents
+of the grounds, and they took care--or the Cerberus of a gatekeeper did
+for them--that no inferior person should dare venture within yards of
+it: a tradesman might not so much as put his nose through the iron
+railings to take a peep in.
+
+The garden was getting full when a college boy--he might be known by his
+trencher--passed the gate with a slow step. A party had just gone in
+whose movements his eyes had eagerly followed, but he was not near
+enough to speak. As he looked after them wistfully, his eye caught
+something glittering on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up. It
+was a small locket of gold, bearing the initials "G. B."
+
+He knew to whom it belonged. He would have given half his remaining
+life, as it seemed, to go in and restore it to its owner. But that might
+not be; for the college boys, whether king's scholars or private pupils,
+were rigorously excluded by custom from the Bishop's Garden. And
+Williams, the gatekeeper, was stealing up then.
+
+He was tall of his age, looking about sixteen, though he was not quite
+so much; tall enough to lean over the iron railings, which he did with
+intense eagerness; and never did woman's face betray more beauty,
+whether of form or colouring, than did his.
+
+It was Henry Arkell. For the years have gone on, and the lovely boy of
+ten or eleven, has grown into this handsome youth. Other people and
+other things have grown with him.
+
+"Now then! What be you doing here? You just please to take yourself off,
+young gentleman."
+
+He quitted the railings in obedience; the college boys never thought of
+disputing the orders of the gatekeeper. Stepping backwards with a sort
+of spring, he stepped upon the foot of some one who was approaching the
+gate.
+
+"Take care, Arkell."
+
+He turned hastily and raised his trencher. The speaker was the
+good-natured Bishop of Westerbury; his widowed daughter on his arm.
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon."
+
+"Too intent to see me, eh! You were gazing into the garden as if you
+longed to be there."
+
+"I was looking for Miss Beauclerc, sir; I thought she might be coming
+near the gate. I have just picked up this, which she must have dropped
+going in."
+
+"How do you know it is Miss Beauclerc's?" cried the bishop, glancing at
+the gold locket.
+
+"I know it's hers, sir; and her initials are on it." But Henry turned
+his face out of sight, as he spoke. And lest any critic should set up a
+cavil at the bishop being addressed as "sir," it may be as well to
+mention that it was the custom with the college boys. Very few of them
+could bring their shy lips to utter any other title.
+
+"Go in and give it to Miss Beauclerc, if it is hers," cried the bishop.
+
+"The gatekeeper will not let me," said Henry, with a smile. "He tells us
+all that it is as much as his place is worth to admit a college boy."
+
+"They ain't fit for such a place as this, nohow, my lord," spoke up the
+keeper. "Once let 'em in, and they'd be for playing at hare and hounds
+over the flower-beds."
+
+"Nonsense!" said the bishop. "I don't see what harm there would be in
+admitting the seniors. You need not be so over-strict, Williams. Come in
+with me, Arkell, if you wish to find Miss Beauclerc; and come in
+whenever you like. Do you hear, Williams, I give this young gentleman
+the _entree_ of the garden."
+
+The bishop laid his hand on Henry's shoulder, and they walked in
+together, all three, his daughter on his other side. Many a surprised
+eye-glass was lifted; many an indignant eye regarded them.
+
+Never yet had a college boy--St. John always excepted--ventured within
+the pale of that guarded place. And if the bishop and his daughter had
+appeared accompanied by a fiery serpent, it could not have caused more
+inward commotion. But nobody dared betray it: the bishop was the bishop,
+and not to be interfered with.
+
+"There's Miss Beauclerc, my lad."
+
+And in a few minutes--Henry could not tell how, in his mind's tumultuous
+confusion--Georgina Beauclerc had turned into a side walk with him, and
+they were alone. Georgina was the same Georgina as ever--impulsive,
+wilful, and daringly independent. Everybody paid court to the dean's
+daughter.
+
+"Did you drop this in coming in, Miss Beauclerc?"
+
+"My locket! Of course I must have dropped it. Harry, I would not have
+lost it for the world."
+
+His sensitive cheek wore a crimson flush at the words. _He_ had given it
+to her on her last birthday, when she was eighteen. As she took it from
+him, their fingers touched. That touch thrilled through his veins, while
+hers were unconscious, or at best heedless of the contact.
+
+It was the not uncommon tale; the tale that has been enacted many times
+in life, and which Lord Byron has made familiar to us as being his own
+heart's history--
+
+    "The maid was on the eve of womanhood:
+    The boy had fewer summers; but his heart had far outgrown his years:
+    And to his sight there was but one fair face on earth,
+    And that was shining on him."
+
+It has been intimated that Georgina Beauclerc had inherited the dean's
+innate taste for what is called beauty, both human and statuesque. In
+the dean it was very marked. This, it may have been, that first drew
+forth her regard for Henry Arkell. Certain it was, she saw him
+frequently, and took no pains to disguise her admiration. He was a great
+favourite of the dean's--was often invited to the deanery. That he was
+no common boy, in nature, mind, or form, was apparent to the dean, as it
+was to many others, and Dr. Beauclerc evinced his regard openly.
+Georgina did the same. At first she had merely liked to patronize the
+young college boy; rather to domineer over him, looking upon him as a
+child in comparison with herself. But as they grew older, the difference
+in their years became less marked, and now they appeared nearly of the
+same age, for he looked older than he was, and Georgina younger. She was
+very pretty, with her large, rich blue eyes, and her small, fair
+features.
+
+He had grown to love her; to love her with that impassioned love, which,
+pure and refined though it is, can only bring unhappiness. What did he
+think could be the ending? Did he reflect that it was utter madness in
+_him_ to love the dean's daughter? It was nothing less than madness; and
+there were odd moments when the truth, that it was so, rose up in his
+mind, turning his whole soul to faintness.
+
+And she, Georgina Beauclerc? She liked Henry Arkell very much indeed;
+she took pleasure in being with him, in talking with him, in _flirting_
+with him; she was conscious of a degree of pride when the handsome boy
+walked, as now, by her side; she encouraged his too-evident admiration
+for her; _but she did not love him_. She loved another too deeply to
+have any love left for him.
+
+And she was so utterly careless of consequences. Had it been suggested
+to Miss Beauclerc that she was doing a wrong thing, bordering upon a
+wicked one, in thus trifling with that school-boy's heart, she would
+have laughed in very glee, and thought it fun. Though she must have
+known, if she ever took the trouble to glance forward, that in the years
+to come, did things continue as they were now, and Henry Arkell told his
+love to the ear, as well as to the eye and heart, the explosion must
+have place, and he would know how he had been deceived. What would her
+excuse be? that she liked him; that she liked his companionship; that
+she could not afford to reject his admiration? The gratification of the
+present moment was paramount with Georgina.
+
+But what was Mrs. Beauclerc about, to suffer this? Mrs. Beauclerc! Had
+her daughter flirted with the whole forty king's scholars on a string,
+and the head master's private pupils to boot, she would never have seen
+it; no, nor understood it if pointed out to her. Her daughter was Miss
+Beauclerc, a young lady of high degree, and the college boys were
+inferior young animals with whom it was utterly impossible Georgina
+could possess anything in common.
+
+"But how did you get in here, Harry?" began Miss Beauclerc, slipping the
+locket on her chain. "Has crusty old Williams gone to sleep this
+evening?"
+
+"The bishop brought me in. He has given Williams orders that I am to be
+admitted here."
+
+"Has he? What a glorious fellow! I'll give him ten kisses for that, as I
+used to do when I was a little girl. And now, pray, what became of you
+this afternoon? You said you should be in the cloisters."
+
+"I know. I could not get out. I was doing Greek with my father."
+
+"Doing Greek! It's always that. 'Doing Greek,' or 'doing Latin,' it's
+nothing else with you everlastingly. What a wretched pedant you'll be,
+Harry Arkell!"
+
+"Never, I hope. But you know I _must_ study; I have only my talents to
+depend upon for advancement in life; and my father, his heart is set on
+seeing me a bril--a good scholar."
+
+"You are a brilliant scholar already," grumbled Georgina, bringing out
+the word which his modesty had left unspoken. "There's no reason why you
+should be at your books morning, noon, and night. I always said Mr.
+Peter Arkell was a martinet from the first hour he came to drill
+literature into me. Which he couldn't accomplish."
+
+"The school meets in a week or two, you know, and----"
+
+"Tiresome young reptiles!" interjected Miss Beauclerc. "We are quieter
+without them."
+
+"And I must make the best use of my holidays for study," continued
+Henry. "They wish me to get to Oxford early."
+
+"Goodness me! you might go now, if that's what you mean; you know
+enough. Harry, I do hope when you are ordained you'll get some high
+preferment."
+
+"Such luck is not for me, Miss Beauclerc. I may never get beyond a
+curacy; or at most a minor canonry."
+
+"Nonsense, and double nonsense! With the influential friends you may
+count even now! You know that everybody makes much of you. I should like
+to see you dean of this cathedral."
+
+"And you----" Henry stopped in time. A tempting vision had mentally
+arisen, and for the moment led him out of himself. Did Georgina scent
+the treason, all but uttered? She resumed volubly, hastily--
+
+"I have a great mind to tell you something; I think I will. But don't
+you let it go farther, Henry, for it is a secret as yet. There's going
+to be a school examination."
+
+"No!" exclaimed Henry, some consternation in his tone.
+
+"Why! are you afraid of it?"
+
+"I am not. But I was thinking how very unfit the school is to stand it.
+What will Mr. Wilberforce say?"
+
+"There's the fun," cried Georgina in glee. "When I heard papa talking of
+this, I said it would drive the head master's senses upside down. The
+dean and chapter are going to introduce all sorts of improvements into
+the school."
+
+"What can have set them on to it!" exclaimed Henry, unable to recover
+his surprise and concern.
+
+"The spelling, I think," said Georgina, pursing up her pretty mouth.
+"Jocelyn--and he'll be the senior boy this next half, you know--wrote a
+letter to his aunt; she rents her house and land under old Meddler, and
+knows the Meddlers--visits them, in fact. What should she do but take
+the letter to old Meddler, and asked him whether it was not a disgrace
+to any civilized community. Old Meddler kept the letter and brought it
+here, when he came into residence last week, and showed it to papa.
+There were not ten words spelt right in it. Altogether, there's going to
+be something or other done. But I'm sure you need not look so concerned
+over it, Henry Arkell; you are safe."
+
+"I am safe. Yes, thanks to my father, I have enjoyed great advantages.
+But I am thinking of the others."
+
+"Serve them right! They are a lazy set. Papa said, 'I should think Henry
+Arkell does not write like this!' _I_ could have answered that, you
+know, had I chosen to bring out some of your letters."
+
+There was a pause of silence. The tone had been significant, and his
+poor heart was beating wildly. "What a lovely rose!" he exclaimed, when
+the silence had become painful. "I wish I dare pluck it!"
+
+"Dare! Nonsense! Pluck it if you wish."
+
+"I thought it was forbidden to touch the flowers here!"
+
+"So it is," said Georgina, snapping off the rose, one of the variegated
+species, and a great beauty. "But I do as I please. I would pluck all
+the flowers in the garden for two pins, just to see the old gardener's
+dismay."
+
+"What would the visitors say to you?"
+
+"Bow to me, and wish they dare perform such feats. Pshaw! I am the
+dean's daughter. Here, Harry, I will make you a present of it."
+
+She threw the rose into his hand as she spoke, and she saw what the gift
+was to him.
+
+"What shall you do with it, Harry?"
+
+"Had I plucked the rose myself, I should have given it to my mother. I
+shall keep it now--keep it for ever. I may not," he added, lowering his
+tone, and speaking, as it were, to himself, "part with your gifts."
+
+Georgina laughed lightly, an _encouraging_ laugh.
+
+Oh! it was wrong; wrong of her to act so. They reached the end of the
+shady walk and turned again.
+
+"How long are you going to remain in that precious choir?" resumed
+Georgina, "wasting your time for the public benefit."
+
+"Mr. St. John put the very same question to me this morning. He----"
+
+"Mr. St. John!" she interrupted, in startling, nay, wild impulse, and
+her face became one glow of excitement. "But what do you mean?" she
+added, subsiding into calmness as recollection returned to her. "He is
+not in Westerbury."
+
+The words, the emotion, told their own tale; and their true meaning
+flashed upon his brain. It was an era in the unhappy boy's life. How was
+it that he had been blind all these years?
+
+"You take a strange interest in him, Miss Beauclerc," and there seemed
+to be no life left in his pale face, as he turned to her with the
+question.
+
+"For another's sake," she evasively answered. "I told you some time ago
+Frederick St. John was in love with _her_."
+
+He knew to whom she alluded. "Do you think it _likely_ that he is, Miss
+Beauclerc?"
+
+"If he's not in love with herself, he is in love with her beauty," said
+Georgina, with a laugh. "But you know what the popular belief is--that
+the heir of the St. Johns, whatever he may do with his love, may only
+give his hand to his cousin, Lady Anne."
+
+"I hope it is so. She is the nicest girl, and he deserves a good wife. I
+used to sing duets with her when she was last at the Palmery."
+
+"Oh!" said Georgina, turning her pretty nose into the air, "and so you
+fell in love with her."
+
+"No," replied Henry; "my love was not mine to give."
+
+Another pause. Georgina snatched a second flower--a carnation this
+time--and began pulling it to pieces.
+
+"I suppose you heard from him this morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"In Spain. But he talks of coming home."
+
+He stole a glance at her; at the loving light that shone in her bright
+blue eyes; at the soft glow, red as the carnation she was despoiling, on
+her conscious cheek. _Why_ did he not read the signs in all their full
+meaning? Why did hope struggle with the conviction that would have
+arisen in his heart?
+
+"Have you his letter?"
+
+"Yes; you can read it if you like. There are no secrets. I have told him
+that Miss Beauclerc was fond of looking at his letters. He is
+enthusiastic, as usual, on the subject of pictures."
+
+She closed her hand upon the foreign-looking letter which he took from
+his jacket pocket to give to her. "I will take it home with me, and
+return it to you to-morrow; I can't read it now. And, Harry, I am going
+back to my party, or perhaps they'll be setting the crier to work. Mind
+you don't breathe a word of that school examination: it would not do.
+But I tell things to you that I'd not tell to anybody else in the
+world."
+
+She ran away up a side path, and Henry made his way to the more
+frequented part of the garden. It happened that he found himself again
+with the bishop; and the prelate laid his hand, as before, on the
+shoulder of the handsome boy, and kept him at his side.
+
+Mrs. Peter Arkell had not grown better with years; on the contrary, the
+weakness in the back was greater, and her health in other ways began to
+fail. A residence of some weeks at the sea-side was deemed essential for
+her; absolutely necessary, said her medical attendant, Mr. Lane: and
+indeed it was not much less necessary for Peter Arkell himself, who was
+always ill now. His state of health told heavily upon them. He had been
+obliged to give up a great portion of his teaching; and but for his
+ever-ready friend and relative, Mr. Arkell, whose hand was always open,
+and for certain five-pound notes that came sometimes in Mildred's
+letters, Peter had not the remotest idea how he should have got along.
+This going to the sea-side would have been quite out of the question,
+but that they had met with a fortunate chance of letting their house for
+two months, to a family desirous of coming to Westerbury. Lucy, of
+course, would go with them; but the question was--what was to be done
+with Henry? Travice Arkell, in his impulsive good nature, said he must
+stop with them, and Mr. Arkell confirmed it. Henry supposed he must, but
+he felt sure it would not be palatable to Mrs. Arkell.
+
+Travice Arkell was in partnership with his father now. At the time of
+his leaving school there had been a visible improvement in the prospects
+of the manufacturers, and Mr. Arkell yielded to his son's wish to join
+him, and hoped that the good times were coming back again. But the
+improvement had not lasted long; and Mr. Arkell was wont to say that
+Travice had cast in his lot with a sinking ship. The designation of the
+firm had never been altered; it was still "George Arkell and Son." Times
+fluctuated very much. Just now again there was a slight improvement; and
+altogether Mr. Arkell was still upon the balance, to give up business or
+not to give it up, as he had been for so many years.
+
+Henry walked home from the Bishop's Garden, with the strange emotion
+displayed by Georgina Beauclerc, at the mention of Mr. St. John, telling
+upon his memory and his heart. Lucy met him at the door, her sweet face
+radiant.
+
+"Oh, Henry! such news! News in two ways. I don't know which to tell you
+first. One part concerns you."
+
+"Tell me that first, then," said he, laughing.
+
+"You are not to be at Mr. Arkell's while we are away. You are to be
+at----guess where."
+
+"I can't guess at all. I don't know anybody who'd have me."
+
+"At the master's."
+
+His eye lightened as he looked up.
+
+"Am I? I am so glad! Is it true, Lucy?"
+
+"It is quite true. Mr. Wilberforce saw mamma at the window, and came in
+to ask her how she was, and when she went, and all that. Mamma said how
+puzzled she had been what to do with you, but it was decided now you
+were to go to Mr. Arkell's. So then the master said he thought you had
+better go to him, and he should be most happy to invite you there for
+the time, no matter how long we remained away; and when mamma attempted
+to say something about the great kindness, he interrupted her, saying
+you had always been so good a pupil, and given him so little trouble,
+and did him altogether so much credit, that he should consider the
+obligation was on his side. So it is quite decided, Harry, and you are
+to go there."
+
+"That's good news, then. And what's the other, Lucy?"
+
+"Ah! the other concerns me. It is good, too."
+
+"Are you going to be married?"
+
+The question was but spoken in jest, and Henry wondered to see his
+sister's face change; but she only shook her head and laughed.
+
+"Eva Prattleton is to accompany us to the sea-side."
+
+"Eva Prattleton!"
+
+"Mr. Prattleton came in just after the master left," resumed Lucy. "He
+said he had come with a petition: would mamma take charge of Eva to the
+sea-side, and let her go with us? He had intended--you know we heard of
+it, Harry--to take his two daughters to Switzerland this summer for a
+treat; but he begins to fear that Eva will not be equal to the
+travelling, for she's not strong, and a little thing fatigues her; and
+he thinks a month or two of quiet at the sea-side would do her more
+good. So _that's_ arranged as well as the other."
+
+"And what will Mary do?"
+
+"Oh, she goes to Switzerland with her papa. He has not given up his
+journey. The two boys are to stay at home, and George Prattleton's to
+take care of them."
+
+Henry laughed. The idea of Mr. George Prattleton's taking care of the
+boys struck him as being something ludicrous.
+
+"But what do you think mamma says?" added Lucy, dropping her voice. "The
+terms hinted at by Mr. Prattleton for Eva were so liberal, that mamma
+feels sure he is doing this as much to make our sojourn there more easy
+to us, as for Eva's benefit; though she is not well, of course, and
+never has been since her mother's death; the grief then seemed to take
+such a hold upon her. How kind to us the Prattletons have always been!"
+
+Henry mentally echoed the words--for they were true ones--all
+unconscious that a time was quickly approaching when he should have to
+repay this kindness with something very like ingratitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE TOUR OF DAVID DUNDYKE, ESQUIRE.
+
+
+Perhaps of all the changes time had wrought, in those connected with our
+history, not one was more remarkable than that in Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke,
+in regard to their position in the world. They had changed in themselves
+of course; we all change; and were now middle-aged people of some
+five-and-forty years: Mr. Dundyke being red and portly; his wife, thin
+and meek as ever.
+
+Little by little, step by step, had David Dundyke risen in the world.
+There had come a day when he was made a fourth partner in that famous
+tea-importing house, with which he had been so long connected. He was
+now the third partner, and his income was a large one. There had also
+come a day when he was elected a common councilman (I am not sure but
+this has been previously mentioned), and now the old longing, the height
+of his ambition, was really and truly dawning upon him. In the
+approaching autumn he was to be proposed for sheriff; and _that_, as we
+all know, leads in time to the civic chair.
+
+You will readily understand that it was not at all consistent for a
+partner in a wealthy tea house, and a common councilman rising into note
+and attending the civic feasts, to remain the tenant of two humble
+rooms. Mr. Dundyke had made a change long ago. He and his wife, clinging
+still to apartments, as being less trouble, and also less expense on the
+whole, had moved into handsome ones; and there they remained for some
+years. But the prospect of the shrievalty demanded something more; and
+latterly Mr. Dundyke had taken a handsome villa at Brixton, had
+furnished it well, and set himself up there with two maid servants and a
+footman. In some degree his old miserly habits were on him still, and he
+rarely spent where he could save, or launched into any extravagance
+unless he had an end in view in doing it; but he had never very much
+loved money for its own sake alone, only as means to an end.
+
+His great care, now that the glorious end was near, was to blazon forth
+his importance. He wanted the world (_his_ little world) to forget what
+he had been; to forget the pinching and saving, the poor way of living,
+the red-herring dinners, and the past in general. He did what he could
+to blot out the past in the present. He looked out for correspondents
+to address him as "esquire;" and he took to wear a ring with a crest
+upon it.
+
+In this very month of July, when you saw Henry Arkell and the dean's
+daughter walking in the Bishop's Garden--and a very hot July it was--Mr.
+Dundyke came to the decision of taking a tour. What first put it into
+his unfortunate head to do so, his wife never knew; though she asked
+herself the question afterwards many and many a time. He debated the
+point with himself, to go or not to go, some little while; balancing the
+advantages against the drawbacks. On the one hand, it would cost time
+and money; on the other, it would certainly be another stepping-stone in
+his advancing greatness, the more especially if he could get the _Post_
+or some other fashionable organ to announce the departure of "David
+Dundyke, Esquire, and Lady, on a Continental tour."
+
+One sultry afternoon, when Mrs. Dundyke was sewing in her own
+sitting-room, he returned home somewhat earlier than usual.
+
+"My mind is made up, Mrs. Dundyke," he said, before he had had time to
+look round, as he came in, wiping his hot brows. "I told you I thought I
+should go that tour; and I mean to start as soon as we have fixed upon
+our route. It must be somewhere foreign."
+
+Mr. Dundyke's intellectual improvement had not advanced in an equal
+ratio with his fortunes; he called tour tower, and route rout. Indeed,
+he spoke almost exactly as he used to speak.
+
+"Foreign!" echoed Mrs. Dundyke, somewhat aghast. Her geographical
+knowledge had always been imperfect and confused; the retired life she
+led, occupied solely in domestic affairs, had not tended to enlarge it;
+and the word "foreign" suggested to her mind extremely remote parts of
+the globe--the two poles and Cape Horn. "Foreign?"
+
+"One can't travel anywhere now that's not foreign, Betsey," returned Mr.
+Dundyke, testily. "One can't humdrum up and down England in a
+stage-coach, as one used to do."
+
+"True; but you said foreign. You don't mean America--or China--or any of
+those parts, do you, David?"
+
+"It's never of no use talking to you about anything, Mrs. D.," said the
+common-councilman, in wrath. "Chinar! Why, it would be a life-journey! I
+shall go to Geneva."
+
+"But, David, is not that very far?" she asked. "Where is it? Over in
+Greece, or Turkey, or some of those places."
+
+"It is in Switzerland, Mrs. D. The tip-top quality go to it, and I mean
+to go. It will cost a good deal, I know; but I can stand that."
+
+"And how shall we manage to talk Swiss?"
+
+"There is no Swiss," answered Mr. Dundyke. "The language spoke there is
+French; the guide-book says so."
+
+"It will be the same to us, David," she mildly said; "we cannot speak
+French."
+
+"I know that 'we' means 'yes,' and 'no' means 'no.' We shall rub on well
+enough with that. So get all my stockings and shirts seen to, Betsey,
+and your own things; for the day after to-morrow I shall be off."
+
+His wife looked up, not believing in the haste. But it proved true,
+nevertheless; for Mr. Dundyke had a motive in it. On the morning but one
+after, an excursion opposition steamer was advertised to start for
+Boulogne--fares, half-a-crown; return-tickets, four shillings. Of course
+David Dundyke could not let so favourable an opportunity slip; he still
+saved where he could.
+
+Accordingly, on the said morning, which was very squally, they found
+themselves on the crowded boat. Such a sight! such a motley freight!
+Half London, as it seemed, had been attracted by the cheapness; but it
+was by no means a fashionable assemblage, nor yet a refined one.
+
+"I hear somebody saying we shall have it rough, David," whispered Mrs.
+Dundyke, as they sat side by side, and the vessel passed Greenwich. "I
+hope we shall not be sea-sick."
+
+"Pooh! sea-sick! we shan't be sea-sick!" imperiously cried the sheriff
+in prospective, as he turned his ring, now assumed for good, to the
+front of all beholders. "I don't believe in sea-sickness for my part. We
+did not feel sick when we went to Gravesend; you remember that, don't
+you, Betsey? It is more brag than anything else with people, talking
+about sea-sickness, that's my belief; a genteel way of letting out that
+they can afford to be travellers."
+
+Excepting that one trip to Gravesend, of which he spoke, neither he nor
+his wife had ever been on the water in their lives. Neither of them had
+seen the sea. They had possessed really no inclination to stir from
+home; and _saving_ had been, the ruling motive in David Dundyke's life.
+
+The steamer went on. The river itself growing rough at Gravesend, the
+dead-lights were put in; and as they got nearer to the sea, the wind was
+freshening to a gale. Oh, the good steamer! will she ever live through
+it? The unbelieving common-councilman, to his horror and dismay, found
+sea-sickness was not a _brag_. He lay on the floor of the cabin,
+groaning, and moaning, and bewailing his ill fate in having come to sea.
+
+"Heaven forgive me for having thought of this foreign tour! Steward! He
+stops up with them outsiders on deck! Heavens! Steward! Call him,
+somebody! Tell him it's for a common-councilman!"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was in the ladies' cabin--very ill, but very quiet. A
+dandy-looking man, impervious to the miseries of the passage, who had
+nothing to do but gape and yawn, took a sudden look in, by way of
+gratifying his curiosity, and, having done so, withdrew again--not,
+however, before one of the lady passengers had marked him. She took him
+for the captain.
+
+"Capting! capting!" she called out; "if you please is that the capting?"
+
+"Which?--where?" asked the steward's boy, to whom the question was
+addressed, turning round with a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand,
+which he was presenting to another lady, groaning up aloft in a berth.
+
+"He came in at the door; he have got on tan kid gloves and shiny boots."
+
+"_That_ the captain!" cried the boy, gratified beyond everything at the
+lady's notion of a captain's rigging. "No, ma'am, he's up on deck."
+
+"Just call the captain here, will you?" resumed the lady; "I know we are
+going down. I'm never ill aboard these horrid boats; but I'm worse, I'm
+dreadful timid."
+
+"There ain't no danger, ma'am," said the boy.
+
+"I know there _is_ danger, and I know we are a going to be emerged to
+the bottom. If you'll call the capting down here, boy, I'll give you
+sixpence; and if you don't call him, I'll have you punished for
+insolence."
+
+"Call him directly, ma'am," said the boy, rushing off with alacrity.
+
+"I am the captain," exclaimed a rough voice, proceeding from a rough
+head, poking itself down the companion ladder; "what's wanted of me?"
+
+"Oh! capting, we are going to the fishes fast! and some of us is dead of
+fright already. The vessel'll be in pieces presently! see how she rolls
+and pitches! and there's the sea dashing over the decks and against them
+boards at the windows, such as I never heard it; and all that awful
+crashing and cording, what is it?"
+
+"There ain't no danger," shortly answered the commander, mentally vowing
+to punch the boy's head for calling him for nothing.
+
+"Can't you put back, and land us somewhere, or take us into smooth
+water?" implored the petitioner; "we'd subscribe for a reward for you,
+capting, sir."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," echoed a faint chorus of voices; "any reward."
+
+"There's no danger whatever, I tell ye, ladies," repeated the
+exasperated captain. "When we've got round this bit of headland, we
+shall have the wind at our starn, and go ahead as if the dickens druv
+us."
+
+With this consolatory information, the rough head turned round and
+vanished. The grinning boy came out of a corner where he had hid
+himself, and appealed to the lady for his promised sixpence.
+
+"I know we are going down!" she cried, as she fumbled in her bag for
+one. "That capting ought to lose his place for saying there's no danger;
+to me it's apparent to be seen. If he'd any humanity in him, he'd put
+back and land us somewhere, if 'twas only on the naked shore. Good
+mercy! what a lurch!--and now we're going to t'other side. No danger
+indeed! And all my valuable luggage aboard: my silk gownds, and my
+shawls, and my new lace mantle! Good gracious, ma'am, don't pitch out of
+your berth! you'll fall atop of me. Can't you hold on? What were hands
+made for?"
+
+Some hours more yet, and then the steward, who had been whisking and
+whirling like one possessed, now on deck, now in the cabins, and now in
+his own especial sanctum, amid his tin jugs and his broken crockery,
+came whirling in once more to the large cabin, and said they were at the
+mouth of Boulogne harbour. "Just one pitch more, ladies and
+gentlemen--there it is--and now we are in the port, safe and sound."
+
+"Don't talk to me about being in," cried poor Mr. Dundyke, from his
+place on the floor, not quite sure yet whether he was dead or alive, but
+rather believing he'd prefer to be the former. "Please don't step upon
+me, anybody. I couldn't stir yet."
+
+All minor disasters of the journey overcome, the travellers reached
+Paris in safety. So far, Mr. Dundyke had found no occasion to rub on
+with his "we" and "no," for he encountered very few people who were not
+able to speak, or at least understand, a little English. But when they
+quitted Paris--and they remained in it but two days--then their
+difficulties commenced; and many were the distresses, and furious the
+fits of anger, of the common-councilman. It pleased Mr. Dundyke to
+travel by diligence on cross-country roads, rather than take the rail to
+Lyons--of which rail, and of all rails, he had a sort of superstitious
+dread--but this he found easy to do, though it caused him to be somewhat
+longer on the road. Here his tongue was at fault. He wanted to know the
+names of the towns and villages they passed through, the meaning of any
+puzzling object of wonder he saw on his way, and he could not ask; or,
+rather, he did ask repeatedly, but the answers conveyed to his ears only
+an unmeaning sound. It vexed him excessively.
+
+"I don't think they understand you, David," Mrs. Dundyke said to him one
+day.
+
+"And how should they understand, speaking nothing but heathen
+gibberish?" he returned. "It's enough to make a saint swear."
+
+Another source of annoyance was the living. Those who have travelled by
+diligence in the more remote parts of France, and sat down to the
+tables-d'hote at the road-side inns where the diligence halted, and
+remember the scrambling haste observed, may imagine the distresses of
+Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke. In common with their countrymen in general, they
+partook strongly of the national horror of frog-eating, and also of the
+national conviction that that delicate animal furnished the component
+parts of at least every second dish served up in France: so that it was
+little short of martyrdom to be planted down to a dinner, where half the
+dishes, for all the information they gave to the eye, might be composed
+of frogs, or something equally obnoxious. There would be the bouilli
+first, but Mr. Dundyke, try as he would, could not swallow it, although
+he had once dined on red-herrings; and there would be a couple of skinny
+chickens, drying on a dish of watercress, but before _he_ could hope, in
+his English deliberation, to get at them, they were snapped up and
+devoured. Few men liked good living better than David Dundyke,--how
+else would he have been fit to become one of the renowned metropolitan
+body-corporate?--and when it was to be had at anybody else's cost, none
+enjoyed it more. At these tables-d'hote, eat or not eat, he had to pay,
+and bitter and frequent were the heartburnings at throwing away his good
+money, yet rising up with an empty stomach. Not a tenth part of the
+cravings of hunger did he and his wife ever satisfy at these miserable
+tables-d'hote. The very idea of but the minutest portion of a frog's leg
+going into their mouths, was more repulsive to their minds than that
+shuddering reminiscence of the steam-packet; and, what with this dread,
+and their inability to ask questions, Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke were nearly
+starved.
+
+One day in particular it was very sad. They had halted at an inn in a
+good-sized town, not very far distant from Lyons. While the soup and
+bouilli were being devoured, the two unfortunates ate a stray radish or
+two, when up bustled the waiter with a funny-looking dish, its contents
+wonderfully like what a roast-beef eater might suppose cooked frogs to
+be, and presented it to Mr. Dundyke.
+
+"What's this?" inquired Mr. Dundyke, delicately adventuring the tip of a
+fork towards the suspicious-looking compound, by way of indicating the
+nature of his question.
+
+"Plait-il, monsieur?"
+
+"This, _this_," rapping the edge of the dish with the fork; "what is it
+made of? what do you call it?"
+
+"Une fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille, monsieur," replied the
+discerning waiter.
+
+Poor Mr. Dundyke pushed the dish away from him with a groan. "Une
+fricassee de petits pigeons, a l'oseille" in French, might be "Stewed
+frogs" in English.
+
+"What was all that green mess in the dish?" asked his wife.
+
+"The saints know," groaned the common-councilman. "Perhaps it's the
+fashion here to cook frogs in their own rushes."
+
+Up came the waiter with another dish, that attentive functionary
+observing that the Monsieur Anglais ate nothing. A solid piece of meat,
+with little white ends sticking out of it, rising out of another bed of
+green. "Oseille" is much favoured in these parts of France.
+
+"Whatever's this?" ejaculated the common-councilman, eyeing the dish
+with wondering suspicion. "It's as much like a porkipine as anything I
+ever saw. What d'ye call it?" rapping the edge of the dish as before.
+
+"Foie-de-veau larde, a l'oseille, monsieur."
+
+The common-councilman was as wise as before, and sat staring at it.
+
+"It can't be frogs, David, this can't," suggested Mrs. Dundyke, "it is
+too large and solid; and I don't think it's any foreign animal. It looks
+to me like veal. Veal, waiter?" she asked, appealingly.
+
+"Oui, madame," was the answer, at a venture.
+
+"And the green stuff round it is spinach, of course. Veal and spinach,
+my dear."
+
+"That's good, that is, veal and spinach. I'll try it," said Mr. Dundyke.
+
+He helped himself plentifully, and, pushing the dish to his wife,
+voraciously took the first mouthful, for he was fearfully hungry.
+
+It was a rash proceeding. What in the world had he got hold of! Veal and
+spinach!--Heaven protect him from poison! It was some horrible, soft
+compound, sharp and sour; it turned him sick at once, and set his teeth
+on edge. He became very pale, and called faintly for the waiter.
+
+But the garcon had long ago whisked off to other parts of the room, and
+there was Mr. Dundyke obliged to sit with that nauseous mystery
+underneath his very nose.
+
+"Waiter!" he roared out at length, with all the outraged dignity of a
+common-councilman, "I say, waiter! For the love of goodness take this
+away: it's only fit for pigs. There's a dish there, with two little
+ducks upon it, and some carrots round 'em--French ducks I suppose they
+are: an Englishman might shut up shop if _he_ placed such on his table.
+Bring it here."
+
+"Plait-il, monsieur?"
+
+"Them ducks--there--at the top, by the pickled cowcumbers. I'll take
+one."
+
+The waiter ranged his perplexed eyes round and round the table. "Pardon,
+monsieur, plait-il?"
+
+"I think you are an idiot, I do!" roared out Mr. Dundyke, unable to keep
+both his hunger and his temper. "That dish of ducks, I said, and it is
+being seized upon! They are tearing them to pieces! they are gone! Good
+Heavens! are we to famish like this?"
+
+The waiter, in despair, laid hold of a slice of melon in one hand and
+the salt and pepper in the other, and presented them.
+
+"The man _is_ an idiot!" decided the exasperated Englishman. "What does
+he mean by offering me melon for dinner, and salt and pepper to season
+it?--that's like their putting sugar to their peas! I want something
+that I can eat," he cried, piteously.
+
+"Qu'est-ce que c'est que je peux vous offrir, monsieur?" asked the
+agonized garcon.
+
+"Don't you see we want something to eat," retorted the gentleman; "this
+lady and myself? We can't touch any of the trash on the table. Get us
+some mutton chops cooked."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur, plait-il?"
+
+"Some--mut--ton--chops," repeated the common-councilman, very
+deliberately, thinking that the slower he spoke, the better he should be
+understood. "And let 'em look sharp about it."
+
+The waiter sighed and shrugged, and, after pushing the bread and butter
+and young onions within reach, moved away, giving up the matter as a
+hopeless job.
+
+"Let's peg away at this till the chops come," cried Mr. Dundyke. And in
+the fallacious hope that the chops _were_ coming, did the unconscious
+couple "peg" away till the driver clacked his long whip, and summoned
+his passengers to resume their seats in the diligence.
+
+"I have had nothing to eat," screamed Mr. Dundyke. "They are doing me
+some mutton chops. I can't go yet."
+
+"Deux diners, quatre francs, une bouteille de vin, trente sous," said
+the waiter in Mr. Dundyke's ear. "Fait cinq francs, cinquante,
+monsieur."
+
+"Fetch my mutton chops," he implored; "we can't go without them: we can
+eat them in the diligence."
+
+"Allons! depechons-nous, messieurs et dames," interrupted the conductor,
+looking in, impatiently. "Prenez vos places. Nous sommes en retard."
+
+"They are swindlers, every soul of them, in this country," raved the
+common-councilman, passionately throwing down the money, when he could
+be made to comprehend its amount, and that there were no chops to come.
+"How dare you be so dishonest as charge for dinners we don't eat."
+
+"I am faint now for the want of something," bewailed poor Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"If ever I am caught out of Old England again," he sobbed, climbing to
+his place in the diligence, "I'll give 'em leave to make a Frenchman of
+me, that's all."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A MEETING AT GRENOBLE.
+
+
+They arrived at Lyons; but here Mr. Dundyke's total ignorance of the
+language led him into innumerable misapprehensions and mishaps, not the
+least of which was his going from Lyons to Grenoble, thinking all the
+time that he was on the shortest and most direct road to Switzerland.
+This was in consequence of his rubbing on with "we" and "no." They had
+arrived at Lyons late in the evening, and after a night's rest, Mr.
+Dundyke found his way to the coach-office, to take places on to
+Switzerland. There happened to be standing before the office door a huge
+diligence, with the word "Grenoble" painted on it.
+
+"I want to engage a place in a diligence; two places; direct for
+Switzerland," began Mr. Dundyke; "in a diligence like that," pointing to
+the great machine.
+
+"You spoke French, von littel, sare?" asked the clerk, who could himself
+speak a very little imperfect English.
+
+"We," cried Mr. Dundyke, eagerly, not choosing to betray his ignorance.
+
+Accordingly, the official proceeded to jabber on in French, and Mr.
+Dundyke answered at intervals of hazard "we" and "no."
+
+"Vous desirez aller a Grenoble, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?" remarked the
+clerk.
+
+"We," cried out Mr. Dundyke at random.
+
+"Combien de places, monsieur?"
+
+"We," repeated the gentleman again.
+
+"I do demande of the monsieur how few of place?" said the official,
+suspecting his French was not understood quite so well as it might be.
+
+"Two places for Switzerland," answered Mr. Dundyke. "I'm going on to
+Geneva, in a diligence like that."
+
+"C'est ca. The monsieur desire to go to Gren-haub; et encore jusqu'a
+Geneve--on to Geneva."
+
+"We," rapturously responded the common-councilman.
+
+"I do comprends. Two place in the Gren-haub diligence. Vill the monsieur
+go by dat von?" pointing to the one at the door. "She do go in de half
+hour."
+
+"Not that one," retorted Mr. Dundyke, impatient at the clerk's obscure
+English. "I said in one like that, later."
+
+"Yes, sare, I comprends now. You would partir by anoder von like her,
+the next one that parts. Vill you dat I retienne two place for
+Gren-haub?"
+
+"We, we," responded Mr. Dundyke. "Two places. My wife's with me, Mrs.
+D.: I'm a common-councilman, sir, at home. Two places for Gren-haub.
+Corner ones, mind: in the interior."
+
+"C'est bien, monsieur. She goes a six of de hours."
+
+"She! Who?"
+
+"The diligence, I do say."
+
+"Oh," said the common-councilman to himself, "they call coaches 'she's'
+in this country. I wonder what they call women. Six hours you say we
+shall take going."
+
+"Oui, monsieur," answered the clerk, without quite understanding the
+question, "il faut venir a six heures."
+
+"And when does it start?"
+
+"What you ask, sare?"
+
+"_She_--the diligence--at what o'clock does it start for Gren-haub?"
+
+"I do tell de sare at de six of de hours dis evening."
+
+"We'll be here a quarter afore it then: never was late for anything in
+my life. Gren-haub's a little place, I suppose, sir, as it's not in my
+guide-book?"
+
+"Comme ca," said the clerk, shrugging his shoulders. "She's not von
+Lyon."
+
+"Who's she?" exclaimed the bewildered Mr. Dundyke; "who's not a lion?"
+
+"Gren-haub, sare. I thought you did ask about her."
+
+"The asses that these French make of themselves when they attempt to
+converse in English!" ejaculated the common-councilman. "Who's to
+understand him?"
+
+He turned away, and went back to the hotel in glee, dreadfully
+unconscious that he had booked himself for Grenoble, and imagining that
+Gren-haub (as the word Grenoble in the Frenchman's mouth sounded to his
+English ears) must be the first town on the Swiss frontiers. "It's an
+awkward hour, though, to get in at," he deliberated: "six hours, that
+fellow said we should be, going: that will make it twelve at night when
+we get to the place. Things are absurdly managed in this country." This
+was another mistake of his: the anticipated six hours necessary, as he
+fancied, to convey him from Lyons to "Gren-haub," would prove at least
+sixteen.
+
+At the appointed hour Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke took their seats in the
+diligence, which began its journey and went merrily on; at least as
+merrily as a French diligence, of the average weight and size, can be
+expected to go. Mr. Dundyke was merry, too, for him; for he had
+fortified himself with a famous dinner before starting: none of your
+frogs and rushes and "oseille," but rosbif saignant, and pommes de terre
+au naturel, specially ordered. Both the travellers had done it ample
+justice, and seasoned it with some hot brandy-and-water; Mr. Dundyke
+taking two glasses and making his wife take one. Therefore it was not
+surprising that both should sink, about nine o'clock, into a sound
+sleep. They had that compartment of the coach, called the interieur, to
+themselves, and could recline almost at full length; and so comfortable
+were they, that all the various changing of horses and clackings of the
+whip failed to arouse them.
+
+Not until six o'clock in the morning did Mr. Dundyke open his eyes, and
+then only partially. He was in the midst of the most delicious
+dream--riding in that coveted coach, all gilt and gingerbread, on a
+certain 9th of November to come, moving in stately dignity through
+Cheapside, amidst the plaudits of little boys, the crowding of windows,
+and the arduous exertions of policemen to preserve order in the admiring
+mob; sitting with the mace and sword-bearer beside him, _his_ mace and
+sword-bearer! Mr. Dundyke had been pleased that his sleep, with such a
+dream, had lasted for ever, and he unwillingly aroused himself to
+reality.
+
+It was broad daylight; the sun was shining with all the glorious beauty
+of a summer morning, shining right into the diligence, and roasting the
+face of the common-councilman. He rubbed his eyes and wondered where he
+was. Recollection began to whisper that when he had gone to sleep the
+previous evening it was dusk, and that ere that dusk had well subsided
+into the darkness of midnight he had expected to be at his destination,
+"Gren-haub;" whereas--was he asleep still, and dreaming it?--or was it
+really morning, and he still in the diligence?--or had some unexampled
+phenomenon of nature caused the sun to shine out at midnight? WHAT was
+it? In the greatest perturbation he tore his watch from his pocket, and
+found it was five minutes past six; but he knew that he was rather
+slower than French time.
+
+A fine hubbub ensued. Mr. Dundyke startled his wife up in such a fright,
+that he nearly sent her into fits: he roared out to the coachman, he
+called for the conductor: he shook the doors, he knocked at the windows:
+he caused the utmost consternation amongst the quiet passengers in the
+rotonde and banquette, and woke up a deaf old gentleman in the coupe,
+who all thought he had gone suddenly mad. The diligence was stopped in
+haste, and out of the door rushed Mr. Dundyke.
+
+"Where were they taking him to? Why had they not left him at Gren-haub?
+Did they know he was a common-councilman of the great city of London, a
+brother of the Lord Mayor and aldermen? How dared they run away with him
+and his wife in that style? _Where_ were they carrying him to? Were they
+going to smuggle him off to Turkey or any of them heathen places to sell
+him for a slave? They must turn round forthwith, and drive him back to
+Gren-haub."
+
+All this, and a great deal more of it, delivered in the English tongue
+and interspersed with not a few English expletives, was as Greek to the
+astonished lookers-on; and when they had sufficiently exercised their
+curiosity and stared at the enraged speaker, standing there without his
+hat, stamping his feet in the dust, and gesticulating more like a
+Frenchman than a stout specimen of John Bull, they all let loose their
+tongues together, in a jargon equally incomprehensible to the distressed
+Englishman. In vain did Mr. Dundyke urge their return to "Gren-haub,"
+now with angry fury, now with tears, now with promises of reward; in
+vain the other side demanded to know what was the matter, and tried to
+coax him into the diligence. Not a word could one party understand of
+the other.
+
+"Montez, monsieur; montez, mon pauvre monsieur. Dieu! qu'est-ce qu'il a?
+Montez, donc!"
+
+Not a bit of it. Mr. Dundyke would not have mounted till now, save by
+main force. It took the conductor and three passengers to push and
+condole him in; and indeed they never would have accomplished it, but
+for the sudden dread that flashed over his mind of what would become of
+him if he were left there in the road, hatless, hopeless, and
+Frenchless, while his wife and his luggage and the diligence went on to
+unknown regions. Some of those passengers, if you could come across them
+now, would give you a dolorous history of the pauvre monsieur Anglais
+who went raving mad one summer's morning in the diligence.
+
+There was little haste or punctuality in those old days of French
+posting--driver, conductor, passengers, and horses all liking to take
+their own leisure; and it was not far off twelve o'clock at noon, six
+hours after the morning's incomprehensible scene, and eighteen from the
+time of departure from Lyons, that the lazy old diligence reached its
+destination, and Mr. Dundyke discovered that he was in Grenoble. How he
+would ever have found his way out of it, and on the road to Switzerland,
+must be a question, had not an Englishman, a young man, apparently in
+delicate health, who was sojourning in the town, fortunately chanced to
+be in the diligence yard, and heard Mr. Dundyke's fruitless exclamations
+and appeals, as he alighted.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" asked the stranger, stepping forward. "I
+perceive we are countrymen."
+
+Overjoyed at hearing once more his own language, the unhappy traveller
+seized the Englishman's hand with a rush of delight, and explained the
+prolonged torture he had gone through, and the doubt and dilemma he was
+still in--at least as well as he could explain what was to him still a
+mystery. "The savages cannot understand me," he concluded politely, "and
+of course I cannot be expected to understand them."
+
+Neither could the stranger understand just at first; but with the
+conductor's tale on one side and Mr. Dundyke's on the other, he made out
+the difficulty, and set things straight for him, and went with him to
+the diligence office. No coach started for Chambery, by which route they
+must now proceed, till the next morning at nine, so the stranger took
+two places for them in that.
+
+"I'm under eternal obligations to you, sir," exclaimed the relieved
+traveller, "and if ever I should have it in my power to repay you, be
+sure you count on me. It's a common-councilman, sir, that you have
+assisted; that's what I am at home, and I'm going on to be Lord Mayor.
+You shall have a card for my inauguration dinner, sir, if you are within
+fifty miles of me. You will tell me your name, and where you live?"
+
+"My name is Robert Carr," said the stranger. "I am a clergyman. I am
+from Holland."
+
+The name struck on a chord of Mrs. Dundyke's memory. It took her back to
+the time when she was Betsey Travice, and on a certain visit at
+Westerbury. Though not in the habit of putting herself forward when in
+her husband's company, she turned impulsively to the stranger now.
+
+"Have you relations at Westerbury, sir? Was your mother's name Hughes?"
+
+"Yes," he said, looking very much surprised. "Both my father and mother
+were from Westerbury. I have a grandfather, I believe, living there
+still. My mother is dead."
+
+"How very strange!" she exclaimed. "Can you come in this evening to us
+at the hotel for half-an-hour?"
+
+"I would, with pleasure, but I leave Grenoble this afternoon," was the
+young clergyman's answer. "Can I do anything for you in London?"
+
+"Nothing," said Mrs. Dundyke. "But my husband has given you our address;
+and if you will call and see us when we get home----"
+
+"And you'll meet with a hearty welcome, sir," interrupted the
+common-councilman, shaking his hand heartily. "I'm more indebted to you
+this day than I care to speak."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke watched him out of the yard. He might be about
+four-and-twenty; and was of middle height and slightly made, and he
+walked away coughing, with his hand upon his chest.
+
+"David," she said to her husband, "I do think he must be a relative of
+yours! The Hughes's of Westerbury were related in some way to your
+mother."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said David Dundyke. "I think I have heard her
+talk about them, but I am not sure. Any way I'm obliged to _him_; and
+mind, Betsey, if he does come to see us in London, I'll give him a right
+good dinner."
+
+Ah, how little! how little do we foresee even a week or two before us!
+Never in this world would those two meet again.
+
+And Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke proceeded under convoy to the Hotel des Trois
+Dauphins, and made themselves as comfortable for the night as
+circumstances and the stinging gnats permitted.
+
+Arriving at Geneva without further let or hindrance, David Dundyke,
+Esquire, and his wife, put up at the Hotel des Bergues. And on the
+morning afterwards, when Mrs. Dundyke had dressed herself and looked
+about her, she felt like a fish out of water. The size of the hotel, the
+style pervading it, the inmates she caught chance glimpses of in the
+corridors, were all so different from anything poor humble Betsey
+Dundyke had been brought into contact with, that she began to feel her
+inferiority. And yet she looked like a lady, in her good and neat dress,
+and her simple cap half covering her fair and still luxuriant hair. Her
+face was red, tanned with the journey; but it was a pleasing and a nice
+face yet to look upon.
+
+They descended to the great _salle_ a little before ten. Many groups
+were breakfasting there at the long tables; most of them English, as
+might be heard by their snatches of quiet conversation. Some of them
+possessed an air of distinction and refinement that bespoke their
+standing in society. An English servant came in once and accosted his
+master as "my lord;" and a plain little body in a black silk gown and
+white net cap, was once spoken to as "Lady Jane." Mr. Dundyke had never,
+to the best of his knowledge, been in a room with a lord before; had
+never but once set eyes on a Lady Jane; and that was King Henry the
+Eighth's wife in waxwork; and, alive to his own importance though the
+common-councilman was, he felt unpleasantly out of place amidst them. In
+spite of his ambition his nature was a modest one.
+
+Scarcely had he and his wife begun breakfast, when a lady and gentleman
+came in and took the seats next to him. The stranger was a tall, dark,
+rather handsome man; taller than Mr. Dundyke, who was by no means
+undersized, and approaching within three or four years to the same age.
+But while the common councilman was beginning to get rather round and
+puffy, just as an embryo alderman is expected to be, the stranger's form
+was remarkable for wiry strength and muscle: in a tussle for life or
+death, mark you, reader, the one would be a very child in the handling
+of the other.
+
+Mr. Dundyke moved his chair a little to give more room, as they sat
+down, and the gentleman acknowledged it with a slight bow of courtesy.
+He spoke soon after.
+
+"If you are not using that newspaper, sir," pointing to one that lay
+near Mr. Dundyke, "may I trouble you for it?"
+
+"No use to me, sir," said the common-councilman, passing the journal. "I
+understand French pretty well when it's spoke, but am scarcely scholar
+enough in the language to read it."
+
+"Ah, indeed," replied the stranger. "This, however, is German," he
+continued, as he opened the paper.
+
+"Oh--well--they look sufficiently alike in print," observed the
+common-councilman. "Slap-up hotel, this seems, sir."
+
+"Comfortable," returned the stranger, carelessly. "You are a recent
+arrival, I think."
+
+"Got here last night, sir, by the diligence. We are travelling on
+pleasure; taking a holiday."
+
+"There's nothing like an occasional holiday, a temporary relaxation from
+the cares of business," remarked the stranger, scanning covertly Mr.
+Dundyke. "As I often say."
+
+"I am delighted to hear you say it, sir," exclaimed the
+common-councilman, hastily assuming a fact, from the words, which
+probably the speaker never thought to convey. "I am in business myself,
+sir, and this is the first holiday from it I have ever took: I gather
+that you are the same. Nothing so respectable as commercial pursuits: a
+London merchant, sir, stands as a prince of the world."
+
+"Respectable and satisfactory both," joined in the stranger. "What
+branch of commerce--if you don't deem me impertinent--may you happen to
+pursue?"
+
+"I'm a partner in a wholesale tea-house, sir," cried Mr. Dundyke,
+flourishing his hand and his ring for the stranger's benefit. "Our
+establishment is one of the oldest and wealthiest in Fenchurch-street;
+known all over the world, sir, and across the seas from here to Chinar.
+And as respected as it is known."
+
+"Sir, allow me to shake hands with you," exclaimed the stranger, warmly.
+"To be a member of such a house does you honour."
+
+"And I am a common-councilman," continued Mr. Dundyke, his revelations
+increasing with his satisfaction, "rising on fast to be a alderman and
+Lord Mayor. No paltry dignity that, sir, to be chief magistrate of the
+city of London, and ride to court in a gold and scarlet dress, and
+broidered ruffles! I suspect we have got some lords round about us
+here," dropping his voice to a still lower key, "but I'm blest, sir, if
+I'd change my prospects with any of them. I'm to be put up for sheriff
+in October."
+
+"Ah," said the stranger, casting his deep black eyes around, "young
+scions with more debts than brains, long pedigrees and short purses,
+dealers in post obits and the like--_they_ can't be put in comparison
+with a Lord Mayor of London."
+
+"And what line are you in, sir?" resumed the gratified Lord Mayor in
+prospective. "From our great city, of course?"
+
+The stranger nodded, but, before he answered, he finished his second
+_cotelette_, poured out some wine--for his breakfast disdained the more
+effeminate luxuries of tea and coffee--popped a piece of ice in, and
+drank it. "Have you heard of the house of Hardcastle and Co.?" he asked,
+in a tone meant only for Mr. Dundyke's ear.
+
+"The East India merchants?" exclaimed the latter.
+
+The stranger nodded again.
+
+"Of course I have heard of them: who has not? A firm of incalculable
+influence, sir; could buy up half London. What of them?"
+
+"Do you know the partners personally?"
+
+"Never saw any of them in my life," replied Mr. Dundyke. "They are
+top-sawyers, they are; a move or two above us city tea-folks. Perhaps
+you have the honour of being a clerk in the house, sir?"
+
+"I am Mr. Hardcastle," observed the stranger, smiling.
+
+"Bless my soul, sir!" cried the startled Mr. Dundyke. "I'm sure I beg
+pardon for my familiarity. But stop--eh--I thought----"
+
+"Thought what?" asked the stranger, for Mr. Dundyke came to a pause.
+
+"That Mr. Hardcastle was an old man. In fact, the impression on my mind
+was, that he was something like seventy."
+
+"Pooh, my dear sir! your thoughts are running on my uncle. He has been
+virtually out of the firm these ten years, though his name is still
+retained as its head. He is just seventy. A hale, hearty man he is too,
+and trots about the grounds of his mansion at Kensington as briskly as
+one of his own gardeners. But not a word here of who I am," continued
+the gentleman, pointing slightly round the room: "I am travelling
+quietly, you understand--_incog._, if one may say so--travelling
+without form or expense, in search of a little peace and quietness. I
+have not a single attendant with me, nor has my wife her maid. Mrs.
+Hardcastle," he said, leaning back, the better to introduce his wife.
+
+The lady bowed graciously to Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke, and the former, in
+his flurry to acknowledge the condescension, managed to upset the
+coffee-pot. Mrs. Dundyke saw a stylish woman of thirty--at least, if a
+great deal of dress can constitute style. She had a handsome, but deadly
+pale face, with bold eyes, black as her husband's.
+
+"I feel really glad to make your acquaintance," resumed Mr. Hardcastle.
+"Standing aloof, as I have purposely done, from the persons of condition
+staying in the hotel, I had begun to find it slow."
+
+"Sir, I am sure I'm greatly flattered," said Mr. Dundyke. "Have you been
+long here, sir?"
+
+"About three weeks or a month," replied the gentleman, carelessly. "We
+shall soon be thinking of going."
+
+Mr. Dundyke did indeed feel flattered, and with reason, for the firm in
+question was of the very first consideration, and he was overwhelmed
+with the honour vouchsafed him. "A Lord Mayor might be proud to know
+him," he exclaimed to his wife, when they got upstairs from the
+breakfast. "I hope he'll give me his friendship when I am in the Chair."
+
+"I think they have the next room to ours," observed Mrs. Dundyke. "I saw
+the lady standing at the door there this morning, when I was peeping
+out, wondering which was the way down to breakfast. Is it not singular
+they should be travelling in this quiet way, without any signs of their
+wealth about them?"
+
+"Not at all singular," said the shrewd common-councilman. "They are so
+overdone with grandeur at home, these rich merchants, with their
+servants, and state, and ceremony, that it must be a positive relief to
+get rid of it altogether for a time, and live like ordinary people. I
+can understand the feeling very well."
+
+It was more than Mrs. Dundyke could; and though, from that morning, the
+great merchant and his lady took pains to cultivate the intimacy thus
+formed, she never took to them so cordially as her husband. He, if one
+may use the old saying in such a sense, fell over head and ears in love
+with both, but Mrs. Dundyke never could feel quite at home with either.
+No doubt the sense of her own inferiority of position partly caused
+this: _she_ felt, if her husband did not, that they were no society,
+even abroad, for the powerful Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle. And, in her
+inmost heart, she did not like the lady. Her attire was ten times as
+costly and abundant as Mrs. Dundyke's, and she would wear more jewellery
+at one time than the latter had ever seen in all her life; and that was
+perhaps as it should be; but Mrs. Dundyke was apt to take likings and
+dislikings, and she could not like this lady, try as she would. She was
+certainly not a gentlewoman; and Mrs. Dundyke, with all her previous
+life's disadvantages of position, was that at heart, and could
+appreciate one. She decidedly wore rouge on her cheeks in an evening;
+she was not choice in her expressions at all times; and she was fond of
+wine, and did not object to brandy.
+
+One morning Mrs. Dundyke happened to be in Mrs. Hardcastle's room, when
+the English waiter entered.
+
+"My master's compliments, madam," he said, "and he hopes Mr. Hardcastle
+has some news for him this morning."
+
+The lady's face went crimson, the first time Mrs. Dundyke had seen any
+natural colour on it, and she answered, in a haughty tone, that Mr.
+Hardcastle was not then in--when he was, the man could speak with him.
+
+"For it is now a fortnight, madam, since he has daily promised to----"
+
+"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Mrs. Hardcastle,
+imperiously motioning the waiter from the room; "you must address
+yourself to my husband."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke wondered what this little scene could mean. Had it been
+people of less known wealth than the Hardcastles, she might have thought
+it bore reference to the settlement--or non-settlement--of the bill. But
+that could scarcely happen with them.
+
+"What are you thinking of, Betsey?" Mr. Dundyke asked her that same day,
+she sat so deep in thought.
+
+"I was thinking of Mr. Hardcastle's eyes."
+
+"Of Mr. Hardcastle's eyes!" echoed the common-councilman.
+
+"Just then I was, David. The fact is, they puzzle me--they are always
+puzzling me. I feel quite certain I have seen them somewhere, or eyes
+exactly like them."
+
+"They are as handsome eyes as ever I saw," was the answer.
+
+"They may be handsome, but I don't like them. But that it is wrong to
+say it, I could almost say I hate them. They frighten me, David."
+
+"That's just one of your foolish fancies," cried Mr. Dundyke, in wrath.
+"You are always taking them up, you know."
+
+A day or two after this, Mr. Hardcastle came straight into the presence
+of Mr. Dundyke, some papers in his hand. "My dear sir," he said, "I want
+you to do me a favour."
+
+The common-councilman jumped up and placed a chair for the great man,
+delighted at the prospect of doing _him_ a favour.
+
+"I wrote home a few days ago for them to send me a letter of credit on
+the bankers here. It came this morning, and just see what they have
+done!"
+
+Mr. Hardcastle tossed, as he spoke, the letter of credit to Mr. Dundyke.
+Now the latter, shrewd man of business though he was amid his own chests
+of tea, knew very little of these foreign letters of credit, their
+forms, or their appearance. All he could make out of the present one
+was, that it was a sort of order to receive one hundred pounds.
+
+"Don't you see the error?" exclaimed Mr. Hardcastle. "They have made it
+payable to my uncle, Stephen Hardcastle, instead of to me. _My_ name's
+not Stephen, so it would be perfectly useless for me to present it. How
+the clerks came to make so foolish a mistake I cannot tell. Some one of
+them I suppose, in the pressure of business, managed to give
+unintelligible orders to the bankers, and so caused the error."
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Dundyke.
+
+"Now I want to know if you can let me have this sum. I shall write
+immediately to get the thing rectified, and if you can accommodate me
+for a few days, until the needful comes, I will then repay you with many
+thanks."
+
+"But, dear me, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Dundyke,--"not but what I should be
+proud to do anything for you that I could, in my poor way--you don't
+suppose I've got a hundred pound here? Nor the half! nor the quarter of
+it!"
+
+Mr. Hardcastle carelessly smiled, and played with his glittering cable
+watch-chain.
+
+"I should not like to offer you what I _have_ got, sir," continued the
+common-councilman, "but I am sure if you took it as no offence, and it
+would be of any temporary use to you----"
+
+"Oh, thank you! No, it's not that," interrupted the great merchant.
+"Less than the hundred pounds would not be worth the trouble of
+borrowing. You have nothing like that sum, you say?"
+
+Out came Mr. Dundyke's purse and pocket-book. He counted over his store,
+and found that, English and French money combined, he possessed
+twenty-two pounds, eleven shillings. The twenty pounds, notes and gold,
+he pushed towards Mr. Hardcastle, the odd money he returned to his
+pocket. "You are quite welcome, sir, for a few days, if you will
+condescend to make use of it."
+
+"I feel extremely obliged to you," said Mr. Hardcastle; "I am half
+inclined to avail myself of your politeness. The fact is, Dundyke," he
+continued, confidentially, "my wife has been spending money wholesale,
+this last week--falling in love with a lot of useless jewellery, when
+she has got a cartload of it at home. I let her have what money she
+wanted, counting on my speedy remittances, and, upon my word, I am
+nearly drained. I will write you an acknowledgment."
+
+"Oh no, no, sir, pray don't trouble to do that," cried the confiding
+common-councilman, "your word would be your bond all over the world."
+And Mr. Hardcastle laughed pleasantly, as he gathered up the money.
+
+"Can you let me have five francs, David," said Mrs. Dundyke, coming in
+soon afterwards, when her husband was alone.
+
+"Five francs! What for?"
+
+"To pay our washing bill. It comes to four francs something; so far as I
+can make out their French figures."
+
+"I don't know that you can have it, Mrs. D."
+
+"But why?" she inquired, meekly.
+
+"I have just lent most of my spare cash to Mr. Hardcastle. He received a
+hundred pound this morning from England, but there was a stupid error in
+the letter of credit, and he can't touch the money till the order has
+been back home to be rectified."
+
+The information set Mrs. Dundyke thinking. She had just returned from a
+walk, and it was in coming up the stairs that a chambermaid had met her
+and given her the washing-bill. Not being accustomed to French writing
+and accounts, she could not readily puzzle it out, and, bill in hand,
+had knocked at Mrs. Hardcastle's door, intending to crave that lady's
+assistance. Mr. Hardcastle opened it only a little way.
+
+"Is Mrs. Hardcastle at leisure, if you please, sir?" she asked.
+
+"No; she's not in. I'll send her to you when she comes," was his reply,
+as he re-closed the door. And yet Mrs. Dundyke was almost certain she
+saw the tip of Mrs. Hardcastle's gown, as if she were sitting in the
+room on the right, the door opening to the left. And she also saw
+distinctly the person who had been once pointed out to her as the
+landlord of the hotel. He was standing at the table, counting money--a
+note or two, it looked, and a little gold. There was food in this to
+employ Mrs. Dundyke's thoughts, now she knew, or supposed, that very
+money was her husband's. A sudden doubt whether all was right--she
+afterwards declared it many times--flashed across her mind. But it left
+her as soon as thought: left her ashamed of doubting such people as the
+Hardcastles, even for a moment. She remained thinking, though.
+
+"I know these foreign posts are uncertain," she observed, arousing
+herself, "and it will take, I suppose, eight or ten days before Mr.
+Hardcastle's remittance can reach him. Suppose it should not come when
+he expects, or that there should be another mistake in it?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why--as we cannot afford to remain on here an indefinite period,
+waiting; at least, I suppose you would not like to do so, David; I was
+thinking it might be better for you to write home for more money
+yourself, and make certain."
+
+"Just leave me to manage my own business, Betsey, will you: I am
+capable, I hope," was the common-councilman's ungracious answer.
+Nevertheless, he adopted his wife's suggestion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle continued all grace and smiles, pressing their
+champagne upon Mr. Dundyke and his wife at dinner, and hiring carriages,
+in which all the four drove out together. The common-councilman was
+rapidly overcoming his repugnance to a table-d'hote, but the sumptuous
+one served in the hotel was very different from those he had been
+frightened with on his journey, and in the third week of his stay his
+wife had to let out all his waistcoats. The little excursions in the
+country he cared less for. The lovely country about Geneva was driven
+over again and again: Ferney, Coppet, the houses of Madame de Stael and
+Voltaire, all were visited, not much, it is to be feared, to the
+edification of the common-councilman. Thus three weeks from the time of
+their first arrival, passed rapidly away, and Mr. Dundyke and his wife
+felt they could not afford the time to linger longer in Geneva. They now
+only waited for the repayment of the twenty pounds from Mr. Hardcastle,
+and, strange to say, that gentleman's money did not arrive. _He_ could
+not account for it, and gave vent to a few lordly explosions each
+morning that the post came in and brought him no advice of it.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is!" he suddenly observed one morning--"I'll lay
+a thousand pounds to a shilling they have misunderstood my instructions,
+and have sent the money on to Genoa, whither we are bound after leaving
+here!"
+
+"What a disaster!" uttered Mr. Dundyke. "Will the money be lost, sir?"
+
+"No fear of that: nobody can touch it but myself. But look at the
+inconvenience it is causing, keeping me here! And you also!"
+
+"I cannot remain longer," said Mr. Dundyke; "my time is up, and I may
+not exceed it. You can give me an order to receive the 20_l._ in London,
+sir: it will be all the same."
+
+"But, my good fellow, how will you provide for the expenses of your
+journey to London?"
+
+"I have managed that, sir," said the common-councilman. "I wrote home
+for thirty pounds."
+
+"And is it come?" asked Mr. Hardcastle, turning his eye full upon the
+common-councilman with the startling rapidity of a flash of lightning.
+Mrs. Dundyke noticed, with astonishment, the look and the eager gesture:
+neither ever faded from her recollection.
+
+"They came this morning," said the common-councilman. "I have them both
+safe here," touching the breast-pocket of his coat. "They were in them
+letters you saw me receive."
+
+On rising from breakfast, Mr. Dundyke strolled out of the hotel, and
+found himself on the borders of the lake. The day was fearfully hot, and
+he began to think a row might be pleasant. A boat and two men were at
+hand, waiting to be hired, and he proceeded to haggle about the price,
+for one of the boatmen spoke English.
+
+"I have spent a deal of money since I have been here, one way or
+another," he soliloquized, "and the bill I expect will be awful. But it
+won't be much addition, this row--as good be hung for a sheep as a
+lamb--so here goes."
+
+He stepped into the boat, anticipating an hour's enjoyment. A short
+while after this, Mrs. Hardcastle, accompanied by Mrs. Dundyke, came on
+to Rousseau's Island. Mr. Dundyke was not so far off then, but that his
+wife recognised him. Mr. Hardcastle was the next to come up.
+
+"What are you looking at? Why, who's that in a boat there? Surely not
+Dundyke! Give me the glass."
+
+"Yes, it is," said Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"Where in the name of wonder is he off to, this melting day? To drown
+himself?"
+
+The ladies laughed.
+
+"Ah! I see; he can't stand it. The men are bearing off to the
+side--going to land him there. They had better put back."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke sat down underneath the poplar trees, spreading a large
+umbrella over her head, and took out her work. Mrs. Hardcastle was never
+seen to do any work, but she seated herself under the shade of the
+umbrella; and the gentleman, leaving them to themselves, walked back
+again over the suspension bridge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A MYSTERY.
+
+
+Which of the three wore the deepest tint, the darkest blue--the skies,
+the hills, or the lake? Each was of a different shade, but all were blue
+and beautiful; and on all lay the aspect of complete repose. The two
+ladies, in that little garden near the Hotel des Bergues, Rousseau's
+Island, as it is called, and which you who have sojourned in Geneva
+remember well, looking out over the lake at the solitary boat bearing
+away towards the right, noticed that no other object broke the
+prospect's stillness. It was scarcely a day for a row on Geneva's lake.
+Not a breath of air arose to counteract the vivid heat of the August
+sun; hot and shadeless he poured forth his overpowering blaze; and,
+lovely as the lake is, favoured by nature and renowned in poetry, it was
+more lovely that day to look at than to glide upon.
+
+So thought the gentleman in that solitary boat, our friend Mr. David
+Dundyke--or, let us give him the title he had of late aspired to, David
+Dundyke, Esquire. He felt, to use his own words, "piping hot;" he sat on
+one side of the boat, and the sun burnt his back; he changed to the
+other, and it blistered his face; he tried the stern, and the sun seemed
+to be all round him. He looked up at the Jura, with a vain longing that
+they might be transported from their site to where they could screen him
+from his hot tormentor: he turned and gazed at the Alps, and wished he
+could see on them a shady place, and that he was in it; but, wherever he
+looked and turned, the sun seemed to blind and to scorch him. Some
+people, clayey mortals though the best of us are, might have found
+poetry, or food for it, in all that lay around; but David Dundyke had no
+poetry in his heart, still less in his head. He glanced, with listless,
+half-shut eyes, at the two men who were rowing him along; and began to
+wonder how any men could be induced to row, that burning day, even to
+obtain a portion of the world's idol--money. David Dundyke cared not,
+not he, for the scenery around; he never cared for anything in his life
+that was not substantial and tangible. What was the common scenery of
+nature to him, since it could not add to his wealth or enhance his
+importance?--and that was all the matter at _his_ heart. He had never
+looked at it all the way from London to Geneva; he did not look at that
+around him now. Geneva itself, its lovely surrounding villas, its
+picturesque lake, the glorious chain of mountains on either side, even
+Mont Blanc in the distance, were as nothing to him. For some days after
+his arrival at Geneva, the mountain had remained obstinately enshrouded
+in clouds; but one evening that he and his wife were walking outside the
+town with Mr. Hardcastle, it was pointed out to him, standing proudly
+forth in all its beauty; and he had stared at it with just as much
+interest as he would have done at the hill in Greenwich Park covered
+with snow. He had seen the lovely colour, the dark, brilliant blue of
+the Rhone's waters, as they escaped from the lake to mingle with those
+of the thick, turbulent Arve; and he did not care to notice the contrast
+in the streams. There were no associations in his mind connected with
+that fair azure lake, whence coursed the one; he had no curiosity as to
+the never-changing glaciers that were the source of the other.
+
+But, had Mr. Dundyke's soul been wholly given up to poetry and
+sentiment, it would have been lost that day in the overpowering heat. He
+bore it as long as he could, and then suddenly told the men to bear to
+the right and put him on shore. This movement had been observed by Mr.
+Hardcastle, from the little island, as you may remember. The men, not
+sorry perhaps to be off the lake themselves, inured though they were to
+Geneva's August sun, made speedily for a shady place, and landed him.
+
+"Ah! this is pleasant," exclaimed Mr. Dundyke, throwing himself at full
+length on the cool and shady grass. "It is quite Heaven, this is, after
+that horrid burning lake." The two boatmen laid on their oars and
+rested.
+
+"How thirsty it has made me!" he resumed, "I could drink the lake dry.
+What a luxury some iced wine would be now! And ice is so cheap and
+plentiful up at the hotel yonder. Suppose I send the boat back for Mr.
+Hardcastle, and the two women? And tell 'em it's Paradise, sitting here,
+in comparison with the hot hotel; and drop in a hint about the iced
+wine? He will be sure to take it, and be glad of the excuse. The women
+would find it rather of the ratherest for heat, coming across the lake,
+but charming when they got here. 'Tain't far, and their complexions are
+not of the spoiling sort. Mrs. D.'s ain't of no particular colour at all
+just now, except red; and t'other's is like chalk. Oh! let 'em risk it."
+
+Taking out his silver pencil-case (as the men deposed to subsequently)
+he tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled a few lines on it, and
+folding it, directed it to ---- Hardcastle, Esquire: and it had never
+occurred to Mr. Dundyke until that moment, and the fact struck him as a
+singular one, that he was ignorant of ---- Hardcastle, Esquire's
+Christian name. The men received the note and their orders, and then
+prepared to push off.
+
+"We com back when we have give dis; com back for de jontilmans?" asked
+the one who spoke English.
+
+"Come back! of course you are to come back," responded the
+common-councilman. "How am I to get home, else? But you are to bring the
+two ladies and the gentleman, and some ice and some wine; and to look
+sharp about it. Take care that the bottles don't get broke in the boat."
+
+The men rowed away, leaving Mr. Dundyke lying there. They made good
+speed to the Hotel des Bergues, according to orders, but were told that
+neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hardcastle was in. This caused a delay of two good
+hours. The boatmen lingered near the door of the hotel, waiting; and at
+last one of the waiters bethought himself that the ladies might be on
+Rousseau's Island. There they were found, and Mrs. Hardcastle read the
+note.
+
+"What do you say?" she asked, tossing it to Mrs. Dundyke. "Shall we go?"
+
+"But where is Mr. Hardcastle, ma'am?"
+
+"Who's to know? He may be gone round to meet your husband. He saw the
+probable spot the boat was making for. We may as well go. Perhaps they
+are both waiting for us. Waiter," continued Mrs. Hardcastle, in her
+customary imperious manner, "let some wine be placed in the boat, and
+plenty of ice."
+
+Under cover of umbrellas, the two ladies were rowed across the hot lake
+to the place where the men had left Mr. Dundyke. But no trace of that
+gentleman could now be seen; and they sat down in the shade to cool
+their heated faces, glad of the respite. Mrs. Hardcastle helped herself
+to some wine and ice, and Mrs. Dundyke presently took her work out of
+her pocket.
+
+"How industrious you are!" exclaimed the idle woman. "What do you say
+the embroidery is for? A shirt front?"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke displayed her work. It was for a shirt-front, and the
+embroidery was beautiful. She was doing two of them, she said. Her
+husband would require them during his shrievalty.
+
+"I'd not take such trouble for my husband, though he were made king
+to-morrow," exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle.
+
+After making that remark she took some more wine, and subsequently
+dropped asleep. Mrs. Dundyke, engaged in her labour of love, for she
+loved both the work itself and him who was to wear it, let the time slip
+on unconsciously. It was only when the afternoon shadows struck on her
+view as becoming long, when the sun had changed his place from one part
+of the heavens to another, that a vague feeling of alarm stole over her.
+
+"Where _can_ he be? What is the time?"
+
+She spoke aloud. Mrs. Hardcastle started at the words, and stared to see
+how the day had gone on. She, Mrs. Hardcastle, was the first to call out
+the name of Mr. Dundyke. She called it several times, and she had a
+loud, coarse, harsh voice; but only echo answered her. The boatmen woke
+up from their slumbers, and shouted in their patois, but there came no
+response from Mr. Dundyke. A sickening fear, whose very intensity made
+her heart cold, rushed over Mrs. Dundyke. Her hands shook; the red of
+her face turned to pallor.
+
+"Why, you never mean to say you are alarmed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hardcastle,
+looking at her in surprise.
+
+"No--no, ma'am, not exactly alarmed," returned poor Mrs. Dundyke, half
+ashamed to confess to the feeling. But her quivering lips gave the lie
+to her words. "I do think it strange he should go away, knowing he had
+sent for us. I was quite easy at first, thinking he had gone to sleep
+somewhere, overpowered with the heat. There is no danger, I suppose,
+that--that--anyone could fall into the water from this spot?"
+
+There was certainly no danger of that: and the boatmen laughed at the
+notion, for the bank and the water were at that place nearly on a level.
+
+"A man might walk in if he felt so inclined," observed Mrs. Hardcastle,
+jestingly, "but he could scarcely enter it in any other manner. And your
+husband is not one to cut short his life for pleasure."
+
+Not he, indeed! Never a man less likely to make his own quietus than
+plain practical David Dundyke, with his future aspirations and his
+harmless ambition. His wife knew that the Lord Mayor's chair, shining in
+the distant vista, would alone have kept him from plunging head foremost
+into the most tempting lake that ever bubbled in the sunlight.
+
+"There is no marvel about it," said Mrs. Hardcastle. "The boatmen were
+kept two hours at the hotel, remember, before we were found, and Mr.
+Dundyke naturally grew tired of waiting, and went away, thinking we
+should not come."
+
+"But where can he be?" cried Mrs. Dundyke. "What has he done with
+himself?"
+
+"He has gone back by land. There was no other course for him, if he
+thought--as he no doubt did think--that the boatman had misunderstood
+his orders and would not return."
+
+"But, ma'am, he does not know his way back."
+
+"Not know it! Instinct would tell it him. He has only to keep the lake
+on his right, and follow his nose; he would soon be in Geneva."
+
+It was so probable a solution of the mystery, that Mrs. Dundyke had been
+unreasonable not to adopt it; indeed she was glad to do it; and they got
+into the boat, and were rowed back again, expecting Mr. Dundyke would be
+at the hotel. But they did not find him there. And it was nearly five
+o'clock then.
+
+"That's nothing," said Mrs. Hardcastle. "The day is so hot he would take
+his time walking. My husband has not been in either, it seems. Rely upon
+it they have met and are together; they have turned into some cool
+cafe."
+
+The ladies went upstairs together, each into her respective chamber: it
+has been said that the rooms joined. But that undefined dread, amounting
+to a positive agony, weighed still on the spirits of Mrs. Dundyke. She
+could not rest. Mrs. Hardcastle was attiring herself for dinner; not so
+Mrs. Dundyke; she stood at the door peeping out, hoping to see her
+husband appear in the long corridor. While thus looking, there came,
+creeping up the stairs, Mr. Hardcastle, stealing along, as it seemed to
+Mrs. Dundyke, to shun observation, his boots white, as if he had walked
+much in the dusty roads, his face scratched, and one of his fingers
+sprained (as she learnt afterwards) and bound up with a handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, sir!" she cried, darting forward in high excitement, "where is he?
+where is Mr. Dundyke? What has happened to him?"
+
+Mr. Hardcastle stood for a moment transfixed, and, unless Mrs. Dundyke
+was strangely mistaken, his face changed colour. She associated no
+suspicion with that pallor _then_; she but thought of her own ill
+manners in accosting him so abruptly.
+
+"What of your husband?" he asked, rallying himself. "_I_ don't know
+anything of him. Is he not in?"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke explained. Mrs. Hardcastle, hearing their voices, came out
+of her room and helped her.
+
+"Is that all?" exclaimed Mr. Hardcastle, when he had listened, and his
+tone was one of indifference. "Oh, he will soon be back. If he is not
+in, in time for dinner, Mrs. Dundyke, you can go down with us. Don't
+alarm yourself."
+
+"But have you not seen him?--not been with him?" urged poor Mrs.
+Dundyke.
+
+"I have never seen him since breakfast."
+
+"We thought you might have walked round by the shore to join him, as you
+saw this morning where the boat was making for," remarked Mrs.
+Hardcastle.
+
+He turned savagely upon her, his eyes glaring like a tiger's.
+
+"No, madam," he said, with concentrated passion, "none save a fool would
+undertake such a walk to-day. I have been in the town, executing various
+commissions," he added, changing his tone, and addressing Mrs. Dundyke,
+"and a pretty accident I had nearly met with: in avoiding a restive
+horse on the dusty quays, I slipped down, with my face on some flint
+stones."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke would not go down to dinner, but Mrs. Hardcastle fetched
+her into her own room afterwards, and ordered tea brought up, and they
+were both very kind to her, buoying up her spirits, and laughing at her
+fears. Her husband had only lost his way, they urged, and would be home
+fast enough by morning--a rare joke they would have with him about
+running away, when he did come.
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Mrs. Dundyke wished them good night, and
+retired to her chamber, feeling like one more dead than alive. It is
+probable that few of us can form any adequate idea of her sensations.
+But for that horrible, mysterious dread, which seemed to have come upon
+her without sufficient cause, the mere absence of her husband ought not
+so very much to have alarmed her. She felt a conviction, sure and
+certain, that some dreadful fate had overtaken him; and, in that dread
+torture of suspense, she would have given her own life up the next
+moment, oh, how willingly, to see him return.
+
+She stood at the open window of her room, leaning far out of it, hoping
+to see him come round the corner of the street, (stay, not so much
+hoping as _wishing_,) foot-sore and travel-worn, having lost his way and
+found it again. She wondered whether anyone was still up, to let him in,
+if he did come; if not, she would steal downstairs herself, and work at
+the door fastenings until she undid them. It was with great difficulty,
+exercising the very utmost self-control, that she stopped where she was,
+that she did not go out into the streets, searching for him.
+
+While thus thinking, Mrs. Dundyke became aware that strange sounds were
+proceeding from the next room, though not at first had she heeded them.
+A fearful quarrel appeared to be taking place between Mr. and Mrs.
+Hardcastle, and Mrs. Dundyke drew back and closed her window in tremor.
+Its substance she could not hear, did not wish to hear; but wild sobs
+and reproaches seemed to come from the lady, and sharp words, not
+unmixed with oaths, from the gentleman. Twice Mrs. Dundyke heard her
+husband's name mentioned, or her own ("Dundyke"); and the quarrel seemed
+to have reference to him. One sentence of Mr. Hardcastle's came
+distinctly on her ear, apparently in answer to some threat or reproach;
+it was to the effect that Mrs. Hardcastle might leave him as soon as she
+pleased; might take her departure then, in the midnight hour. After
+awhile the anger appeared to subside, silence supervened, and Mrs.
+Dundyke watched through the live-long night. But her husband did not
+come.
+
+With the morning Mrs. Hardcastle came to her. She said they had received
+letters which must cause them to depart for Genoa, where they found
+their remitted money had really been sent.
+
+"But, ma'am," urged poor Mrs. Dundyke, "surely Mr. Hardcastle will not
+go and leave me alone in this dreadful uncertainty!"
+
+"He intends to stay until the evening; he will not leave you a moment
+earlier than he is obliged. Perhaps your husband will make his
+appearance this morning."
+
+In the course of the morning, Mr. Hardcastle went with the two boatmen
+to the place where they had landed Mr. Dundyke on the previous day, and
+a gentleman named by the proprietor of the hotel accompanied them; but
+not the slightest trace of him could be found, though some hours were
+spent in exploring. In the evening, by the six o'clock diligence, Mr.
+and Mrs. Hardcastle left Geneva, the former handing to Mrs. Dundyke an
+order upon the house in London, Hardcastle and Co., for the twenty
+pounds he had borrowed of her husband. He regretted, he said, his
+inability to furnish her, then, with any funds she might require, but he
+had barely sufficient to carry himself and wife to Genoa. If Mrs.
+Dundyke approved, he would, with the greatest pleasure, forward from
+that city any sum she chose to name; for, being known there, his credit
+was unlimited. Mrs. Dundyke declined his offer, with thanks: she
+reflected that, if her husband returned, he would have his money with
+him; and in the event of his mysterious absence being prolonged, she
+might as well write home for money as borrow it from Mr. Hardcastle at
+Genoa. She wondered, but did not presume to ask, how he had procured
+funds for his own journey, and to discharge his hotel bill, which he
+paid before starting.
+
+"Keep up your spirits, Mrs. Dundyke," he cheeringly said as he shook
+hands with her at parting. "Depend upon it, your husband will come home,
+and bring some good reason for his absence; and if it were not that I am
+compelled--compelled by business--to go on to Genoa, I would not leave
+you."
+
+She sat down as if some cold shiver had seized upon her heart. It was in
+her own room that this farewell was spoken; and in that one moment, as
+he released her hand, and his peculiar eyes rested on her in the
+parting, and then were lost sight of, it flashed into her mind where she
+had seen those eyes before. They were the eyes she had once so shrunk
+from at Westerbury; at least, they bore the same expression--Benjamin
+Carr's.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke's pulses quickened, and she clasped her hands. For one
+single moment a doubt arose to her whether Mr. Hardcastle could be Mr.
+Hardcastle--whether he was not an impostor, Benjamin Carr, or any other,
+travelling under a false name; and a whole host of trifling incidents,
+puzzles to her hitherto, arose to her mind as if in confirmation. But
+the doubt did not last. That he was really anybody but the great Mr.
+Hardcastle--head, under his uncle, of the great house of Hardcastle and
+Co.--she did not believe. As to the resemblance in the eyes to those of
+Benjamin Carr, she concluded it must be accidental; and of Benjamin
+Carr's features she retained no recollection. She opened the order he
+had given her to receive the twenty pounds, and found it was signed "B.
+Hardcastle:" no Christian name in full. Mrs. Dundyke dismissed all
+doubts from her memory, and continued to believe implicitly in Mr.
+Hardcastle.
+
+It was, perhaps, a somewhat curious coincidence--at least, you may deem
+it so, as events go on--that on this same evening an English clergyman
+should arrive at Geneva, and put up at the hotel. It was the Rev.
+Wheeler Prattleton, who was visiting Switzerland in pursuance of his
+intentions (as you once heard mention of), accompanied by his eldest
+daughter. The strange disappearance of Mr. Dundyke had caused some stir
+in the hotel, and the clergyman was told of it.
+
+"It is an uncommon name, papa--Dundyke," observed Miss Prattleton. "Do
+you think it can be the Dundykes who are relatives of Mrs. Arkell's?"
+
+"What Dundykes?" returned Mr. Prattleton, his memory on these points not
+so retentive as his daughter's. "Has Mrs. Arkell relatives of the name?"
+
+"Oh, papa, you forget. Mrs. Arkell's sister is a Mrs. Dundyke. I have
+often heard Travice Arkell speak of her; he calls her Aunt Betsey. They
+live in London."
+
+"We will ascertain, Mary," said Mr. Prattleton, his sympathies aroused.
+"If this lady should prove to be Mrs. Arkell's sister, we must do all we
+can for her."
+
+It was very soon ascertained, for the clergyman at once sent up his
+card, and requested an interview with Mrs. Dundyke. Mr. Prattleton threw
+himself completely into the affair, and became almost painfully
+interested in it. He believed, as did all others, that nothing serious
+had occurred, but that from some unaccountable cause Mr. Dundyke
+remained absent--perhaps from temporary illness or accident; and every
+hour, as the days went on, was his return looked for. Mary Prattleton
+had the room vacated by the Hardcastles, Mr. Prattleton had one on the
+same floor; and their presence was of the very greatest comfort to poor,
+lonely, bereaved Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"Mary, I cannot tell you how I like her!" Mr. Prattleton impulsively
+exclaimed to his daughter. "She is a true lady; but so unobtrusive, so
+simple, so humble--there are few like her."
+
+All the means they could think of were put in force to endeavour to
+obtain some clue to Mr. Dundyke, and to the circumstances of his
+disappearance. Mr. Prattleton took the conduct of the search upon
+himself. A Swiss peasant, or very small farmer, a man of known good
+character, and on whose word reliance might be placed, came forward and
+stated that on the day in question he had seen two gentlemen, whom he
+took to be English by their conversation, walking amicably together
+_away_ from the lake, and about a mile distant from the spot of Mr.
+Dundyke's landing. The description he gave of these tallied with the
+persons of the missing man and Mr. Hardcastle. The stouter of the two,
+he said, who wore a straw hat and a narrow green ribbon tied round it,
+carried a yellow silk handkerchief, and occasionally wiped his face,
+which looked very red and hot. The other--a tall, dark man--had a cane
+in his hand with a silver top, looking like a dog's head, which cane he
+whirled round and round as he walked, after the manner of a child's
+rattle. All this agreed exactly. Mr. Dundyke's hat was straw, its ribbon
+green and narrow, and the handkerchief, which Mrs. Dundyke had handed
+him clean that morning, was yellow, with white spots. And again, that
+action of whirling his cane round in the air, was a frequent habit of
+Mr. Hardcastle's. The country was scoured in the part where this peasant
+had seen them, and also in the direction that they appeared to be going,
+but nothing was discovered. Mr. Prattleton reminded Mrs. Dundyke that
+there were more yellow silk handkerchiefs in the world than one, that
+straw hats and green ribbons were common enough in Geneva, and that many
+a gentleman, even of those staying at the hotel, carried a silver-headed
+cane, and might twirl it in walking. "Besides," added the clergyman, "if
+Mr. Hardcastle had been that day with Mr. Dundyke, what possible motive
+could he have for denying it?"
+
+"True; most true," murmured the unhappy lady. She was still unsuspicious
+as a child.
+
+One of Mr. Prattleton's first cares had been to write to London, asking
+for the number of the notes, forwarded by the house in Fenchurch-street
+to Mr. Dundyke. It had of course been lost with him; as also anything
+else he might have had in the shape of letters and papers, for they were
+all in his pocket-book, and he had it about him. When the answer was
+received by Mr. Prattleton, he made inquiries at the different
+money-changers, and traced the notes, a twenty-pound and a ten-pound.
+They had been changed for French money at Geneva, on the day subsequent
+to Mr. Dundyke's disappearance: the halves were in the shop still, and
+were shown to the clergyman. The money-changer could not recollect who
+had changed them, except that it was an Englishman; he _thought_ a tall
+man: but so many English gentlemen came in to change money, he observed,
+that it was difficult to recollect them individually.
+
+The finding of these notes certainly darkened the case very much, and
+Mr. Prattleton went home with a slow step, thinking how he could break
+the news to Mrs. Dundyke. She was sitting in his daughter's room, and he
+disclosed the facts as gently as possible.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke did not weep; did not cry aloud: her quiet hands were
+pressed more convulsively together in her lap; and that was all.
+
+"If my husband were living, how could anyone else have the notes to
+change?" she said. "Oh, Mr. Prattleton, there is no hope! It is as I
+have thought from the first: he fell into the lake and was drowned."
+
+"Nay," said the clergyman, "had he been drowned the notes would have
+been drowned too. Indeed, I do not think there is even a chance that he
+was drowned: had he got into the lake accidentally, (which is next to
+impossible, unless he rolled in from the grass,) he could readily have
+got out again. But I find that more money was sent him than this thirty
+pounds, Mrs. Dundyke. The two halves of a fifty-pound note were sent as
+well. Do you know anything of it?"
+
+"Nothing," she answered. "I knew he wrote home for thirty pounds; I knew
+of no more."
+
+Mr. Prattleton gave her the letter, received that morning from
+Fenchurch-street, and she found it was as the clergyman said. Mr.
+Dundyke had written for fifty pounds, as well as the thirty; and it had
+been sent in two half notes, the whole of the notes in two separate
+letters: three half notes in one letter, and three in the other, and
+both letters had been dispatched by the same post. There could be no
+reasonable doubt therefore that all the money had been received by Mr.
+Dundyke.
+
+"But I cannot trace the fifty," observed Mr. Prattleton, "and I have
+been to every money-changer's, and to every other likely place in
+Geneva. I went to the bank; I asked here at the hotel, but I can't find
+it. What do you want, Mary?"
+
+Mary Prattleton had been for some few minutes trying to move a chest of
+drawers; the marble top made them heavy, and she desisted and looked at
+her father.
+
+"I wish you would help me push aside these drawers, papa. My needle-book
+has fallen behind."
+
+He advanced, and helped her to move the drawers from the wall. A chink,
+as of something falling, was heard, and a silver pencil-case rolled
+towards the feet of Mrs. Dundyke. She stooped mechanically to pick it
+up; and Miss Prattleton, who was stooping for her needle-book, was
+startled by a suppressed shriek of terror. It came from Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"It is my husband's pencil-case! it is my husband's pencil-case!"
+
+"Dear, dear Mrs. Dundyke!" cried the alarmed clergyman, "you should not
+let the sight of it agitate you like this."
+
+"You do not understand," she reiterated. "He had it with him on that
+fatal morning; he took it out with him. What should bring it back here,
+and without him? Where _is_ he?"
+
+Mr. Prattleton stood confounded; not able at first to take in quite the
+bearings of the case.
+
+"How do you know he had it? He may have left it in the hotel."
+
+"No, no, he did not. He went straight out from the breakfast-room, and,
+not a minute before, I saw him make a note with it on the back of a
+letter, and then return the pencil to the case in his pocket-book, where
+he always kept it, and put the pocket-book back into his pocket. How
+could he have written the note after the men landed him, telling us to
+join him there, without it?--he never carried but this one pencil. And
+now it is back in this room, and----oh, sir! the scales seem to fall
+from my eyes! If I am wrong, may Heaven forgive me for the thought!"
+
+Her hands were raised, her whole frame was trembling; her livid face was
+quite drawn with the intensity of fear, of horror. Mr. Prattleton stood
+aghast.
+
+"What do you say?" he asked, bending his ear, for the words on her lips
+had dropped to a low murmur. "WHAT?"
+
+"_He has surely been murdered by Mr. Hardcastle._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HOME, IN DESPAIR.
+
+
+The Reverend Mr. Prattleton literally recoiled at the words, and
+staggered back a few steps in his dismay. Not at first could he recover
+his amazement. The suggestion was so dreadful, so entirely, as he
+believed, uncalled for, that he began to doubt whether poor Mrs.
+Dundyke's trouble had not turned her brain.
+
+"It surely, surely is so!" she impressively repeated. "He has been
+murdered, and by Mr. Hardcastle."
+
+"Good heavens, my dear lady, you must not allow your imagination to run
+away with you in this manner!" cried the shocked clergyman. "A gentleman
+in Mr. Hardcastle's position of life----"
+
+"Oh, stop! stop!" she interrupted; "_is_ it his position of life? Is he
+indeed Mr. Hardcastle?"
+
+And she began, in her agitation, to pour out forthwith the whole tale:
+the various half doubts of the Hardcastles, suppressed until now. Her
+conviction that Mrs. Hardcastle was certainly not a lady, their
+embarrassments for money, and other little items. Then there had been
+the long absence of Mr. Hardcastle on the day of the disappearance; his
+sneaking upstairs quietly on his return, hurt and scratched, warm and
+dusty, as if he had walked far; his sudden change of colour when she
+asked after her husband, and the angry look turned upon his wife when
+she suggested that he had possibly been with Mr. Dundyke. There was the
+description given by the Swiss peasant of the two gentlemen he had seen
+walking together that day, and the furious quarrel she had heard at
+night, when her husband's name was mentioned. All was told to Mr.
+Prattleton, what she knew, what she thought; all with an exception: the
+one faint suspicion that had crossed her as to whether Mr. Hardcastle
+could be Benjamin Carr. She did not mention that. Perhaps it had faded
+from her memory; and Benjamin Carr, a gentleman born, would be no more
+likely to commit a murder than the real Mr. Hardcastle. However it may
+have been, she did not mention it, then, or at any other time.
+
+How _could_ the pencil have got back to the hotel, and into that room,
+unless brought by Mr. Hardcastle? The testimony of the Swiss peasant, of
+the two gentlemen he had seen walking together, was terribly significant
+now. Mr. Prattleton, who had never been brought into contact with
+anything like murder in his life, felt as if he were on the eve of some
+awful discovery.
+
+"It was so strange that people of the Hardcastles' position should be up
+here in one small room on the third floor of the hotel!" cried Mrs.
+Dundyke, mentioning the thought that had often struck her. "Mrs.
+Hardcastle said no other room was vacant when they came, and that may
+have been so; but would they not have changed afterwards?"
+
+Mr. Prattleton went downstairs. He sought an interview with the host,
+and gleaned what information he could, not imparting a hint of these new
+suspicions. Could the host inform him who Mr. Hardcastle was?
+
+The host supposed Mr. Hardcastle was--Mr. Hardcastle. Voila tout!
+Although he did think that the name given in to the hotel at first was
+not so long as Hardcastle, but he was not quite sure; it had not been
+written down, only the number of the room they occupied. Monsieur and
+Madame had very much resented being put up on the third floor. It was
+the only room then vacant in all the hotel, and at first Madame said she
+would not take it, she would go to another hotel; but she was tired, and
+stopped, and the luggage, too, had been all brought in. Afterwards, when
+Madame was settled in it, she did not care to change. In what name were
+Monsieur's letters addressed--Hardcastle? Ma foi, yes, for all he knew;
+but Monsieur's letters stopped at the post-office, as did those of three
+parts of the company in the hotel, and Monsieur went for them himself.
+Money? Well, Monsieur did seem short of money at times; but he had
+plenty at others, and he had paid up liberally at last. Other gentlemen
+sometimes ran short, when their remittances were delayed.
+
+There was not a word in this that could tell really against Mr.
+Hardcastle. The host evidently spoke in all good faith; and Mr.
+Prattleton began to look upon Mrs. Dundyke's suspicions as the morbid
+fancies of a woman in trouble. He put another question to the
+landlord--what was his private opinion of this singular disappearance of
+Mr. Dundyke?
+
+The landlord shook his head; he had had but one opinion upon the point
+for some days past. The poor gentleman, there was not the least doubt,
+had in some way got into the lake and been drowned. But the notes in his
+pocket-book? urged the clergyman--the money that had been changed at the
+money-changer's? Well, the fact must be, the host supposed, that his
+pocket-book was left upon the grass, or had floated on the water, and
+some thief had come across it and appropriated the contents.
+
+Mr. Prattleton, after due reflection, became convinced that this must
+have been the case; and for the pencil-case, he believed that Mrs.
+Dundyke was in error in supposing her husband took it out with him.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was not so easily satisfied. She urged the strange fact of
+Mr. Hardcastle's appearance when he returned that day: his scratched
+face, his dusty clothes, his altogether disordered look, his sneaking up
+the stairs as if he did not want to be seen. But upon inquiry it was
+found that a gentleman, whose appearance tallied with the person of Mr.
+Hardcastle, did so fall on the dusty flint stones, in trying to avoid a
+restive horse, and his face was scratched and his hand hurt in
+consequence; and, as Mr. Prattleton observed, he really might be trying
+to avoid observation in coming up the hotel stairs, not caring to be met
+in that untidy state. The pencil-case was next shown to the boatmen; but
+they could not say whether it was the one the gentleman had written the
+note with. They were tired with the row in the hot sun, and did not take
+particular notice. One of them was certain that, whatever pencil the
+gentleman had used, he took it from his pocket; and he saw him tear the
+leaf out of the pocket-book to write upon.
+
+Altogether it amounted to just this--that while Mr. Hardcastle _might_
+be guilty, he probably was innocent. Mr. Prattleton inclined to the
+latter belief; and as the days went on, Mrs. Dundyke inclined to it
+also. The points fraught with suspicion began to lose their dark hue,
+and when there arrived a stranger at the hotel, who happened to know
+that old Mr. Hardcastle's nephew was travelling on the continent, and
+was much inclined to spend money faster than he got it, though otherwise
+honourable, Mrs. Dundyke's suspicions faded, and she reproached herself
+for having entertained them.
+
+But nothing further could be heard of Mr. Dundyke; nothing further was
+heard, and it became useless to linger on in Geneva. That he was in
+Geneva's lake, she never doubted, and the place became hateful to her.
+
+She travelled towards home in company with Mr. Prattleton and his
+daughter. At Paris they parted; they remaining in it for a few days, she
+proceeding to London direct, which she reached in safety. Poor Mrs.
+Dundyke! As she sat alone in the dark cab which was to take her to her
+now solitary home at Brixton, she perhaps felt the loss, the dreadful
+circumstances of it altogether, more keenly than she had felt them yet.
+She sat with dry eyes, but a throbbing brain, feeling that life for her
+had ended; that she was left in a world whose happiness had died out.
+
+It was a very pretty white villa, with a lawn before it, and encircled
+by carriage drive, with double gates. As the man drove in at one, and
+stopped before the entrance, and the door was thrown open to the light
+of the hall, Mrs. Dundyke became aware that some gentleman was standing
+there, behind the servant.
+
+"Who is that, John?" she whispered.
+
+"It's a stranger, ma'am; a gentleman who has just called. He seemed so
+surprised when I said you had not returned yet; but you drove up at the
+moment. And master, ma'am?"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke did not answer. The servants knew that something was amiss;
+but she had not courage to explain then; in fact, she could scarcely
+suppress her emotion sufficiently to speak with composure. The stranger
+came forward to meet her, and she recognised the gentleman who had
+assisted them in Grenoble, and had given his name as Robert Carr.
+
+"You see I have availed myself of your invitation to call," he said. "It
+is curious I should happen to come to-night when you are only returning.
+I fancied you did not intend to remain away so long. But where is Mr.
+Dundyke?"
+
+She turned with him into one of the sitting-rooms--an elegant room of
+good proportions. The chandelier was lighted; a handsome china
+tea-service, interspersed with articles of silver, stood on the table;
+cold meats and other good things were ready; and altogether it was a
+complete picture of home comfort, of easy competency. The thought that
+_he_, who had been the many years partner of her life, would never come
+back to this again, combined with the home question of the Rev. Mr.
+Carr, struck out of her what little composure she had retained, and Mrs.
+Dundyke sank down in an easy chair, and burst into a storm of sobs.
+
+To say that the young clergyman stood in consternation, would be saying
+little. He was not used to scenes, did not like them; and he felt
+inwardly uncomfortable, not knowing what he ought to say or do.
+
+"Pray, forgive me," she murmured, when she had recovered sufficiently to
+speak. "You asked after my husband. He is lost--he is gone. He will
+never come home again."
+
+"Lost!" repeated Robert Carr.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke told her tale, and the young man listened in utter
+astonishment. He had never heard of such a thing in all his life; had
+never imagined anything so strange. It seemed that he could not be tired
+of asking questions--of hazarding conjectures. He _wished_ he had been
+there, he said; he was sure that the search _he_ would have instituted
+would have found him, dead or alive. And it was a somewhat remarkable
+fact that everybody, forthwith destined to hear the story, said the
+same. So prone are we to under-rate the exertions of other people, and
+over-rate our own.
+
+But simple, courteous Mrs. Dundyke, could not forget the duties of
+hospitality amid her great sorrow. She went upstairs for a minute to
+take off her travelling things, and then quietly made tea for Robert
+Carr, asking him questions about himself as he drank it.
+
+He had come straight to London from Grenoble, on business connected with
+an assistant ministry he expected to get in November, and then went to
+Holland. He had been back in London now about a week, but should soon be
+returning to Holland, as his wife was not in good health.
+
+"His wife!" Mrs. Dundyke repeated in surprise. She thought he looked too
+young to have a wife.
+
+Robert Carr laughed. He had a wife and two children, he said; he had
+married young.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke told him that she thought they were connected--in fact, she
+knew they were, for old Mrs. Dundyke used to say so. "I do not quite
+remember how she made it out," continued Mrs. Dundyke; "I think she was
+a cousin in the second degree to the Miss Hughes's of Westerbury. They
+were----"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke stopped short. None were more considerate than she of the
+feelings of others; and it suddenly struck her that the young clergyman
+before her, a gentleman himself, might not like to be reminded of these
+things.
+
+"They were dressmakers, if you speak of my mother's sisters," he quietly
+said; "I have heard her say so. She was a lady herself in mind and
+manners; but her family were quite inferior."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke did not feel her way altogether clear. She remembered
+hearing of the elopement; she remembered certain unpleasant subsequent
+rumours--that Martha Ann Hughes remained with Mr. Carr in Holland,
+although the ceremony of marriage had not passed between them. Always
+charitably judging, she supposed now that they must have been married at
+some subsequent period; and this, their eldest son, called himself
+Robert _Carr_. But it was not a topic that she felt comfortable in
+pursuing.
+
+"You say that your mother is dead?" she resumed.
+
+"She has been dead about five years. We are three of us: I; my brother
+Thomas, who was born two years after me; and my sister, Mary Augusta,
+who is several years younger. There were two other girls between my
+brother and Mary, but they died."
+
+"Mr. Carr is in business in Rotterdam?"
+
+"Yes; partner in a merchant's house there. He has saved money, and is
+well off."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke faintly smiled; she was glad for a moment to make a
+semblance of forgetting her own woes. "Those random young men often make
+the most sober ones when they settle down. Your father was wild in his
+young days."
+
+"Was he? I'm sure I don't know. You should see him now: a regular
+steady-going old Dutchman, fat and taciturn, who smokes his afternoons
+away in the summer-house. He has not been very well of late years; and I
+tell him he ought to spend his hours of recreation in taking exercise,
+not in sitting still and smoking."
+
+"Does he keep up any intercourse with his relatives in Westerbury?"
+asked Mrs. Dundyke, for she had heard through Mildred Arkell that
+Westerbury never heard anything of its renegade son, Robert Carr, and
+did not know or care whether he was dead or alive--in fact, had
+forgotten all remembrance of him.
+
+"Not any--not the least. I fancy my father and mother must have had some
+disagreement with their home friends, for they never spoke of them. I
+remember, when I was a little boy, my mother getting news of the death
+of a sister; but how it came to her I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"She had two sisters, and she had a brother," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I
+heard that Mary died. Are the other sister and the brother living?"
+
+"I really do not know. If we had possessed no relatives in the world, we
+could not have lived more completely isolated from them. I believe my
+grandfather is living, and in Westerbury--at least, I have not heard of
+his death."
+
+"Have you lived entirely in Rotterdam?" she asked, her interest very
+much awakened, she scarcely knew why, for this young man. Perhaps it
+took its rise in the faint, sad thought, which _would_ keep arising in
+spite of herself, that a terrible blow might be in future store for him,
+of whose possible existence he was evidently in utter ignorance.
+
+"Our home has been in Rotterdam, but I and my brother have been educated
+in England. We were with a clergyman for some years in London, and then
+went to Cambridge. It would not have done for me to preach with a
+foreign accent," he added, with a smile.
+
+"But you speak with a perfect accent," said Mrs. Dundyke; "as well as if
+you had never been out of England. Do you speak Dutch?"
+
+"As a native; in fact, I suppose it may be said that I _am_ a native.
+Dutch, English, German, and French--we speak them all well."
+
+Poor Mrs. Dundyke heaved a bitter sigh. The words brought to her
+remembrance what her husband had said about their rubbing on with "we"
+and "no;" but she would not let it go on again to emotion. She observed
+the same delicate look on this young man that had struck her at
+Grenoble; and he coughed rather frequently, always putting his hand to
+his chest at the time, as if the cough gave him pain.
+
+"Will you let me ask you if you are very strong?" she said. "I do not
+think you look so."
+
+"I was strong," he replied, "no one more so, until I met with a hurt. In
+riding one day at Cambridge, the horse threw me, and kicked me here,"
+touching his chest. "Since then, I have had a cough, more or less, and
+am sometimes in slight pain. My father despatched me on that tour, when
+I met you, with a view of making me strong."
+
+"Was the injury great at the time?"
+
+"No, I think not; the doctors said not. I believe some of the small
+arteries were ruptured. I spit blood for some time after it; and, do you
+know," he added, looking suddenly up at her, "the last day or two I have
+been spitting it a little again."
+
+"You must take care of yourself," said Mrs. Dundyke, after a pause.
+
+"So I do. I am going to a doctor to-morrow morning, for I want to get
+into duty again, and should be vexed if anything stopped it."
+
+"Have you ever done duty?"
+
+"Of course; for a twelvemonth. I had my title in the diocese of Ely. I
+am in full orders now, and hope to be at work in November."
+
+A doubt came over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked at his slender hands and
+his hollow cheek, whether he would ever work again. Robert Carr rose to
+bid her good-bye.
+
+"Can I be of any service to you in any way?" he said, in a low, earnest
+tone, as he held her hand in his. "You cannot tell what a strange
+impression this tale has made upon me; and I feel as if I should like to
+go to Geneva, and prosecute the search still."
+
+"You are very kind," she said; "but indeed there is nothing else that
+can be done. The environs of Geneva were scoured, especially on the side
+where, as I have told you, two gentlemen were seen who bore the
+resemblance to my husband and Mr. Hardcastle."
+
+"I don't like that Mr. Hardcastle," cried the young man; "no, I don't.
+He ought not to have gone away, and left you in the midst of your
+distress. It was an unfeeling thing to do."
+
+"He could not help it. He said he had urgent business at Genoa."
+
+"The business should have waited, had it been mine. Well, if I can do
+anything for you, Mrs. Dundyke, now or later, do let me. If what you
+say is correct--that we are related--I have a right to help you."
+
+"Thank you very much. And remember," she added, in a voice almost as low
+as a whisper, "that should you ever be in--in--trouble, or distress, or
+need a friend in any way, you have only to come to me."
+
+What was in Mrs. Dundyke's mind as she spoke? What made her say it? She
+was thinking of that shock which might be looming for him in the future,
+it was hard to say how near or how distant. And she felt that she could
+love this young man almost like a son.
+
+"I will see you again, Mrs. Dundyke, before I leave town," were his last
+words.
+
+But he did not. When he reached his lodgings that night, he found a
+telegraphic despatch awaiting him from Rotterdam, saying that his father
+was taken dangerously ill.
+
+And the Reverend Robert Carr hastened to Dover by the first train, en
+route for Holland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+NEWS FOR WESTERBURY.
+
+
+It cannot be denied that the present time, this first day after coming
+home, was one of peculiar pain to Mrs. Dundyke. She would have to go
+over the sad and strange story again and again, and there was no help
+for it. The chief partners in Fenchurch-street naturally required the
+particulars; the few friends she had, the household servants, wished to
+hear them, and there was only herself to tell the tale.
+
+By ten o'clock, on the morning after her arrival, the second partner of
+the house, who wore rings and a moustache, and had altogether been an
+object of envy to the unfortunate common-councilman, was sitting with
+Mrs. Dundyke. She had not put on widow's weeds; she would not yet; she
+had said to Mary Prattleton, with a burst of grief, that a widow's cap
+would take the last remnant of lingering hope out of her. She wore a
+rich black silk gown, trimmed with much crape, but the cap and bonnet of
+the widow she assumed not.
+
+Mr. Knowles, a kind-hearted man, who did not want for good sense, dandy
+though he was in dress, sat twirling his sandy moustache, the very
+gravest concern pervading his countenance. Mrs. Dundyke, who had never
+seen this gentleman more than once or twice, sat in humility, struggling
+with her grief. His social position was of a different standing from
+what poor Mr. Dundyke's had ever been.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Dundyke, one hardly knows how to act, or what to be at,"
+he remarked, after they had talked for some time, and she had related to
+him the details (always excepting any suspicion she might once have
+entertained of Mr. Hardcastle) as closely as she could. "Apart from the
+grief, the concern for your husband personally, it is altogether so
+awkward an affair, in a business point of view: we don't know whether we
+are to consider him as dead or alive."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"There is little hope that he is alive, sir."
+
+"Well, it would really seem like it. But what _can_ have become of him?"
+
+"There was the lake, you know."
+
+"Yes."
+
+A pause. Presently Mr. Knowles went on.
+
+"When the letter came from that clergyman--Prattleton, wasn't his
+name?--saying that Mr. Dundyke was missing, and asking for the
+particulars of the money we had forwarded to him, we could not
+understand it. '_Missing!_' cried old Mr. Knowles, who happened to have
+come to Fenchurch-street that day, 'one talks of a child being missing,
+but not of a man.' And when Mr. Prattleton's second letter came to us,
+giving some of the facts, I assure you we could with difficulty give
+credence to them."
+
+"There is one little point I did not know of, sir; the sending to you
+for a fifty-pound note. My husband told me he was sending for the thirty
+pounds, but he did not say anything of the other. I cannot think why he
+sent for it."
+
+Mr. Knowles took out his pocket-book.
+
+"I happen to have Mr. Dundyke's letter, which was preserved quite
+accidentally, not being a strictly business one. You see, he only asks
+for the fifty pounds in a postscript, as if it were an afterthought. In
+fact, he says as much:" and Mrs. Dundyke's eyes filled as she looked on
+the well-known characters.
+
+"P.S. Upon second thoughts, I doubt whether the 30_l._ will be enough
+for me. Be so good as to send me a 50_l._ note in addition to it; in
+halves as the other."
+
+"Which accordingly we did," resumed Mr. Knowles, as Mrs. Dundyke
+returned him the letter. "And that note, you say, has not been traced?"
+
+"No, sir, it has not."
+
+"Well, it is altogether most strange. Of course whoever found the
+pocket-book (if the supposition that it was picked up on the bank of the
+lake be correct) may be keeping the fifty-pound note by him, but the
+probability is that he would have got rid of it at once, as he did the
+others."
+
+"The most singular point to my mind throughout, sir, is the finding of
+the pencil-case in Mr. Hardcastle's room," said Mrs. Dundyke. "I can't
+get over that."
+
+"Can't you? It appears to me easily explainable. The supposition that
+Mr. Dundyke took it out with him that morning must be a mistake. Mr.
+Hardcastle probably borrowed it from him at breakfast."
+
+"I am quite sure, sir, he did not. I saw my husband put the pencil in
+its place in the pocket-book, and return the pocket-book to his pocket."
+
+"Then he must have taken it out again when outside the room, and perhaps
+dropped it. Mr. Hardcastle may have picked it up, and carried it up to
+the chamber and forgotten it. There are many ways of accounting for
+that; but it is a pity the pencil was not found before Mr. Hardcastle's
+departure."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke opened her lips to ask how then could her husband have
+written the pencilled note afterwards--that he never carried but that
+one; but she was weary with reiterating the same thing over and over
+again; and, after all, what Mr. Knowles said was possible. He might have
+dropped the pencil afterwards; Mr. Hardcastle might have picked it up
+and carried it to his room; and it certainly _might_ have happened, it
+was not impossible, that her husband, contrary to custom, had a second
+pencil in his pocket.
+
+"Shall we send the twenty-pound order to Hardcastle's house and get it
+cashed for you?" Mr. Knowles asked, when he was leaving. "I fancy that
+young Hardcastle is not very steady. He is a great deal on the
+continent, and I have heard he gambles."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke thanked him and handed him the order. "Perhaps you would
+let the clerk inquire for Mr. Hardcastle's address at the same time,
+sir?" she said; "and whether he is still at Genoa. I should like to
+write and ask how he did find the pencil."
+
+But when the order on Hardcastle and Co. was presented--as it was that
+same day--the house in Leadenhall-street declined to pay it, disclaiming
+all knowledge of the drawer. Upon the clerk's saying that it had been
+given by the nephew of Mr. Hardcastle, senior, to Mrs. Dundyke, in
+liquidation of money borrowed at Geneva, the firm shrugged their
+shoulders, and recommended the clerk to apply personally to that
+gentleman, at his residence at Kensington. This information was conveyed
+to Mrs. Dundyke, and she at once said she should like to go herself.
+
+She went up to Mr. Hardcastle's the next day, and the old gentleman
+received her very courteously. He was a venerable man with white hair,
+and was walking up and down the room, which opened to a conservatory.
+Mrs. Dundyke did not state any particulars at first; she merely said
+that she had an order on the house in Leadenhall-street for twenty
+pounds, money borrowed by his nephew; that the house had declined to pay
+it, and had referred it to him.
+
+"Borrowed money?" he repeated, in a sharp tone, as if the words visibly
+annoyed him.
+
+"Yes, sir," he borrowed it of my husband; "his remittances did not
+arrive from England."
+
+Mr. Hardcastle put on his spectacles, and she noticed that his hands
+trembled, she thought with agitation. "I have a nephew," he said, "who
+lives principally upon the continent; a thankless scapegrace he is, and
+has caused me a world of trouble. He has not been in England for
+eighteen months now, and I hope he will not come to it in a hurry; but
+he is always threatening it."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was surprised. "He told us, sir, that he had come from
+London recently; in fact, he said--he certainly implied--that he took a
+principal and active part in your house in Leadenhall-street."
+
+"All boast, madam, all boast. He has not anything to do with it, and we
+would not let him have. I wonder he should say that, too! He is
+tolerably truthful, making a confession of his shortcomings, rather than
+hiding them."
+
+"Is he at Genoa still, sir?"
+
+"At where?" asked Mr. Hardcastle, looking at Mrs. Dundyke through his
+spectacles, which he had been all the time adjusting.
+
+"He went on to Genoa, sir, from Geneva. I asked whether he was there
+still."
+
+"He has not been at Geneva or at Genoa," said Mr. Hardcastle; "latterly,
+at any rate."
+
+"Yes he has, sir; he was at Geneva when we got to it in July, and he
+stayed some time. He then went on to Genoa."
+
+"Then he has deceived me," said Mr. Hardcastle, in a vexed tone. "I
+don't know why he should; it does not matter to me what place he is in.
+What is this, madam--the order? This is not his handwriting," hastily
+continued Mr. Hardcastle, at the first glance, as he unfolded the
+paper.
+
+"I saw him write it, sir," said Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"Madam, it is no more like his writing than it is like yours or mine,"
+was the testy answer. "And--what is this signature, _B._ Hardcastle? My
+nephew's name is Thomas."
+
+There was a momentary silence. Mr. Hardcastle sat looking at the written
+order, knitting his brow in reflection.
+
+"Madam, I do not think he could have been at Geneva when this was
+dated," he resumed; "I had a letter from him just about this time,
+written from Brussels. Stay, I will get it."
+
+He opened a desk in the room and produced the letter. Singular to say,
+it bore date the 10th of August, the very day that the order was dated.
+The post-marks, both in Brussels and London, agreed with the date.
+
+"It is impossible that it could have been he who wrote this order,
+madam, as you must perceive. Being in Brussels, he could not have been
+in Geneva. That this letter is in my nephew's handwriting, I assure you
+on my honour. You may read it; it is about family affairs, but that does
+not matter."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke read the letter: it was not a long one. And then she looked
+in a dreamy sort of way at Mr. Hardcastle.
+
+"Madam, I fear you must have been imposed upon."
+
+"Have you two nephews, sir?"
+
+"I never had but this one in my life, ma'am; and I have found him one
+too many."
+
+"His wife is a showy woman, very pale, with handsome features,"
+persisted Mrs. Dundyke, in a tone as dreamy as her gaze. Not that she
+disbelieved that venerable old man, but it all seemed so great a
+mystery.
+
+"His wife! my nephew has no wife: I don't know who'd marry him. I tell
+you, ma'am, you have been taken in by some swindler who must have
+assumed his name. Though egad! my nephew's little better than a swindler
+himself, for he gets into debt with everybody who will let him."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke sat silent a few moments, and she then told her tale--told
+everything that had occurred in connexion with her husband's mysterious
+fate. But when she came to hint her suspicions of Mr. Hardcastle's
+having been his destroyer, the old gentleman was visibly shocked and
+agitated.
+
+"Good heavens! no! Spendthrift though he is, he is not capable of that
+awful crime. Madam, how do you suppose your husband lost his life? In a
+struggle? Did they quarrel?"
+
+"I know nothing," answered poor Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"A quarrel and struggle it may have been. Mr. Hardcastle was a powerful
+man."
+
+"A what? A powerful man, did you say, this Mr. Hardcastle?"
+
+"Very powerful, sir; tall and strong. Standing nearly six feet high, and
+as dark as a gipsy."
+
+"Thank Heaven for that relief!" murmured Mr. Hardcastle. "My nephew is
+one of the smallest men you ever saw, ma'am, short and slight, with fair
+curls: in fact, an effeminate dandy. There's his picture," added the old
+gentleman, throwing open the door of an inner room, "and when he next
+comes to England, and he is threatening it now, as you read in that
+letter, you shall see him. But, meanwhile, I will refer you to fifty
+persons, if you like, who will bear testimony that he is, in person, as
+I describe. There is no possible identity between them. Once more, thank
+Heaven!"
+
+Mrs. Dundyke returned to her home. The affair seemed to wear a darker
+appearance than it had yet worn. And again her suspicions reverted to
+the man who had called himself Mr. Hardcastle.
+
+We must now turn to Westerbury. That generally supine city was awakened
+out of its lethargy one morning, by hearing that Death had claimed
+Marmaduke Carr. On the very night that his grandson was at Mrs.
+Dundyke's, he was dying: and in the morning, Westerbury heard that he
+was dead.
+
+On the same day, the instant the news was conveyed to them, Squire Carr
+and his son and heir came over with all the speed that the train could
+bring them, and went bustling to the house of the dead man. There they
+found Mr. Fauntleroy, the solicitor to the just deceased Mr. Carr. He
+was a tall, large man, this lawyer; a clever practitioner, a fast-living
+man, and, by the way, the same scapegrace who had done that injury, in
+the shape of money, to Peter Arkell. But Mr. Fauntleroy had settled down
+since then, and had made an enormous deal of money; and he held some
+sway in Westerbury.
+
+"Here's a pretty go!" cried Mr. Fauntleroy, in his loud, blustering
+tones. "To think that he should die off like this, and nobody know of
+it!"
+
+"I never knew he was ill," said the squire. "I should, of course, have
+come over if I had."
+
+"Oh, he has been ill--that is to say, ailing--a good month now,"
+returned the lawyer. "And when these aged healthy men begin to droop,
+their life is not worth much."
+
+"Well, what's to be done now?" cried Squire Carr.
+
+"Nothing of consequence until we hear from the son. I sent down to the
+carpenter this morning about the shell, but I shall do nothing more
+until we hear from Mr. Carr in Holland. I wrote a line to him the moment
+I heard what had happened, and was in time to get it off by the day
+mail. He will come over, there's no doubt."
+
+"You knew his address, then?" cried Valentine. It was the first word he
+had spoken, and he had stood, with his little mean figure, rather behind
+his father, and his little mean light eyes furtively scanning the
+lawyer's countenance.
+
+"I believe I know it," replied Mr. Fauntleroy. "There has been an
+address in our books as long as I have had anything to do with the
+office, 'Robert Carr, Messrs. something (I forget the name), Rotterdam.'
+I once asked Mr. Carr if it was his son's correct address, and he said
+it was, for all he knew. That is the address I have written to."
+
+"Are you sure that the old man did not make a will?" asked the squire,
+alluding to his relative, Marmaduke.
+
+"I am sure that I never made one for him," returned Mr. Fauntleroy.
+"Will? no, not he! The very mention of the subject used to anger him?
+Where was the use of his making a will, he said. His son would inherit
+just as well without a will as with one: he was heir-at-law."
+
+Squire Carr's covetous heart gave vent to a resentful sigh. They were
+the very self-same words that Mr. Carr had used to him so many years
+ago, on the same topic. That old Marmaduke had _not_ made a will, he
+felt as certain as that he should go to his own bed that night, but he
+could not help harping upon the contrary hope. As to Valentine, he could
+almost have found in his heart to forge one, had such doings not been
+unfashionable.
+
+"Well, I must say Marmaduke might have remembered that he had other
+relatives besides that runagate son," grumbled the squire. "Had he been
+mine, I'd have cut him off with a shilling."
+
+"Not a bit on't, Carr," laughed the lawyer, in his coarse way. "You'll
+not leave your chattels away from your own progeny; not even from the
+roving sheep, Ben."
+
+Now it was a singular coincidence, amid the many small coincidences of
+this history, that Marmaduke Carr's son Robert should die at the same
+time as his father. But so it was. The exile of many, many years died
+without ever having seen his father, or sought for a word of
+reconciliation with him: he had died suddenly in a fit, _before_ his
+father, but not above an hour or two; and without seeing one of his
+three children, for all were away from home when it occurred.
+
+In reply to Mr. Fauntleroy's letter there arrived a short note, written
+by a lady who signed herself "Emma Carr, nee D'Estival." The language
+was English, and good English, too; but the handwriting was unmistakably
+French. In acknowledging the receipt of Mr. Fauntleroy's letter, it
+stated that "her husband" was from home; and it gave the information
+that Mr. Carr was dead--had died after a few hours' illness.
+
+Nothing could exceed the commotion that this news excited at Squire
+Carr's. Robert Carr dead! then they were the heirs-at-law. They beset
+the office of Mr. Fauntleroy; they took the conduct of affairs into
+their own hands; they ordered the funeral, and they fixed the day of
+interment. Not by any means a remote day; scarcely decently so,
+according to English notions of keeping the dead. It was hot weather,
+Valentine remarked; and that was true: but Westerbury said they wanted
+to get the poor old man under ground that they might ransack the house,
+and see what valuables were in it. Mr. Fauntleroy was rather taken aback
+at these proceedings; at the summary wrestling of affairs out of _his_
+hands; and he had promised himself some nice little pickings out of all
+this, the funeral and the acting for Robert Carr, and one thing or
+another; but he did not see his way clear to hinder it. If Robert Carr
+was dead, and the old man had left no will, Squire Carr was undoubtedly
+the heir-at-law.
+
+It was not, however, to be quite smooth sailing. On their return home
+from the funeral--and the only stranger invited to it was Mr. Arkell, he
+and Mr. Fauntleroy, with the two Carrs forming the mourners--Mr.
+Fauntleroy produced from his pocket a letter which he had received that
+morning. It was from the Reverend Robert Carr, the son of the deceased
+gentleman in Holland, requesting Mr. Fauntleroy to take all necessary
+arrangements upon himself for the interment of old Mr. Carr, his
+grandfather, and regretting that he was prevented journeying to attend
+it, in consequence of the melancholy circumstances already known to Mr.
+Fauntleroy. It desired that the style of the funeral should be handsome,
+in accordance with the fortune and position of the deceased. It was
+signed Robert Carr.
+
+"Robert _Carr_!" contemptuously ejaculated the squire. "What a fool he
+must be to write in that strain to us!"
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy chuckled over the letter; especially over that part of it
+ordering a suitable funeral. In his opinion, and in the opinion of
+Westerbury generally, the funeral of Mr. Carr had _not_ been suitable.
+There were no mutes, no pall-bearers, no superfluous plumes, no
+anything: none but a mean-minded man would have ordered such a one.
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy wrote back to the Reverend Robert Carr. He gave him a
+statement of the case in a dry, lawyery sort of way, and told him that
+Squire Carr being, under the apparent circumstances, heir-at-law, had
+taken possession of the affairs and property. This elicited a most
+indignant reply from Robert Carr. There could not be the slightest doubt
+that his father and mother were married, he said, and he should be in
+Westerbury as speedily as he could to maintain his own rights.
+
+"Does he think he can impose upon us, this young fellow of a parson?"
+cried Squire Carr, when the letter was shown him. "He will be for making
+out next that his mother, that Hughes girl, was my cousin's wife. Let
+him prove it. Old birds are not caught with chaff."
+
+And Squire Carr took out letters of administration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ROBERT CARR'S VISIT.
+
+
+Mrs. Arkell sat in her drawing-room with a visitor. She was listening to
+what struck her as being the very strangest tale she had ever heard or
+dreamt of. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton, who had reached home the
+previous night, had come this afternoon to tell her of the disappearance
+of Mr. Dundyke.
+
+"Your sister wished me to give you the particulars as soon as I got
+home," he observed. "There was little, if any, acquaintance between you
+and Mr. Dundyke," he said, "but she felt sure you would feel concern for
+him, now he was dead, and would like to hear the details. It is a sad
+thing; I may say an awful thing."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Mrs. Arkell, forgetting her
+contempt for the Dundykes in the moment's interest. "It appears
+incredible that such a thing could happen. Do you really think he was
+murdered, Mr. Prattleton?"
+
+"No, no; I don't think that," said the minor canon. "Of course there is
+the possibility; but I incline to the belief that he must have fallen
+into the lake, leaving his pocket-book on the shore. Indeed, I feel
+convinced of it, and I think Mrs. Dundyke felt so at last. In the first
+uncertainty and suspense, I hardly know what horrible things she did not
+fancy."
+
+"But surely all proper search was made for him!"
+
+"Of course it was. I am not sure that the police took so much interest
+in it, all of us being foreigners, and temporary sojourners in the town,
+as they would have done if a native had been missing. It was with
+difficulty they were persuaded to take a serious view of the case. The
+gentleman had only gone off somewhere else, they thought, without
+telling his wife. However, they did their best to find traces of him;
+but it proved useless."
+
+"What could have taken them to Geneva?" exclaimed Mrs. Arkell.
+
+"A desire for change and recreation, I suppose. The same that took
+me--that takes us all."
+
+"But----those common working-people don't require change," had been on
+Mrs. Arkell's tongue; but she altered the words. Mrs. Dundyke _was_ her
+sister, and unfortunately she could not deny it. "But----Geneva was very
+far to go."
+
+"Not very, in these days of travelling. It is twenty years, Mrs.
+Arkell, since I was on the continent, and one seems to get about there
+ten times as quick as formerly. It's true I took the rail this time as
+much as I could; the Dundykes, on the contrary, preferred the old
+diligences, wherever they were to be had."
+
+"Did you see Mr. Dundyke?"
+
+"No," said the minor canon. "He had disappeared--is it not a strangely
+sounding word?--before we reached Geneva."
+
+"What a mercy that it was not after it!" thought Mrs. Arkell,
+remembering the graces of manner of the ill-fated common-councilman.
+"Mrs. Dundyke has returned home, you say?"
+
+"Oh, yes. When all hope was gone, we left Geneva. She went on home
+direct, but we stayed in Paris. I very much wished to call upon her as
+we came through London, but we had remained beyond our time, and I could
+not. I assure you, Mrs. Arkell, I do not know when I have met with
+anyone that so won on my regard and on Mary's, as your sister."
+
+Mrs. Arkell raised her eyes in pure surprise. _Her_ sister, humble
+Betsey Dundyke, win upon anybody's regard! It struck her that the
+clergyman must be saying it out of some notion of politeness; he could
+surely never mean it. The fact was, Mrs. Arkell had so long been
+accustomed to regard her sister in a disparaging point of view, that
+she could not look upon her in any other light.
+
+"She was always a poor, weak sort of girl, between ourselves, Mr.
+Prattleton. Otherwise you know she never could have made such a
+marriage. The man was most inferior; dreadfully inferior."
+
+"Indeed! Then I think he must have got on well," said Mr. Prattleton.
+"He was to have been one of the sheriffs, I believe, next year."
+
+Mrs. Arkell superciliously drew down her still pretty lips. "A great
+many of those civic London people are quite inferior tradesmen," she
+said; "at least I have heard so. I only hope poor Betsey has enough left
+to keep her from want. When these business people die, it often happens
+that all they have dies with them, and--oh, William, Mr. Prattleton has
+brought us the strangest news! Mr. Dundyke--Betsey's husband, you
+know--is either murdered or drowned."
+
+She had broken off thus on the entrance of her husband. Mr. Arkell,
+as he shook hands with the clergyman, listened in amazement little
+less great than his wife's, and asked question upon question,
+greatly interested. You see there was sufficient--what shall I
+say?--uncertainty, about the matter still, to make them look upon it
+more as an uncleared-up mystery, than a certain tragedy, and perhaps
+the chief feeling excited in all minds when they first heard it, was
+that of marvel. In the midst of Mr. Prattleton's explanations, the
+college clock struck three, and the bell rang out for afternoon
+service. It was the minor canon's signal.
+
+"I must go," he said, as he rose; "it is my week for chanting. Mr.
+Wilberforce took the duty for me the two first days. I did intend to get
+home on Saturday last, but somehow the time slipped on."
+
+Mr. Arkell was going into the town, and he walked with Mr. Prattleton as
+far as the large cathedral gates; for the minor canon went round to the
+front way that afternoon, as it lay in the road for Mr. Arkell. Lounging
+about in an idle mood, now against the contiguous railings, now against
+a post of the great doorway, in a manner not often seen at cathedral
+doors, and not altogether appropriate to them, was a rather tall,
+bilious-looking young man, with fair hair. He did not see them; his head
+was turned the other way.
+
+"Can't you find anything better to do, George?"
+
+The words came from the clergyman, and the young man turned with a
+start. It was George Prattleton, the half-brother of the minor canon,
+but very, very much younger. Mr. George held a good civil appointment in
+India, but he was now home on sick leave, and his days were eaten up
+with _ennui_. He made the Rev. Mr. Prattleton's his home, who
+good-naturedly allowed him to do it; but he was inclined to be what the
+world calls fast, and, except at the intervals (somewhat rare ones) when
+he had plenty of money in his pocket, he felt that the world was a
+wearisome sort of place, of no good to anybody. A good-natured,
+inoffensive young fellow on the whole; free from actual vice; but
+extravagant, incorrigibly lazy, and easily imposed upon. He generally
+called his brother "Mr. Prattleton." The difference in their ages
+justified it, and they had not been brought up together.
+
+"I was deliberating whether I should go in to service this afternoon,"
+said George--a sort of excuse for lounging against the door-post, as he
+shook hands with Mr. Arkell.
+
+"By way of passing away the time!" cried the clergyman, some covert
+reproof in his tone.
+
+"Well--yes," returned George, who was by no means unwilling to confess
+to his shortcomings. "It _is_ a bore, having nothing to do."
+
+"When you first came home you brought a cartload of books with you,
+red-hot upon studying Hindustanee. I wonder how many times you have
+opened them!"
+
+Mr. Prattleton passed into the cathedral as he spoke. It was time he
+did, for the bell had been going twelve minutes. George pulled a rueful
+face as he thought of his Hindustanee.
+
+"I tried it for six whole days after I came home, Mr. Arkell--I give you
+my word I did; but I couldn't get on at all by myself, and there is not
+a master to be had in the town. I shall set to it in right earnest
+before I go out again."
+
+Mr. Arkell laughed. He rather liked the good-natured young man, and
+Travice he knew was fond of him.
+
+"But, George, you should remember one thing," he said: "idleness does
+not get a man on in the world. You have a fine career before you out
+yonder, if you only take the trouble to secure it."
+
+"I know that, Mr. Arkell; and I assure you not a fellow in all the three
+presidencies is steadier than I am, or works harder than I do, when I am
+there. It is only here, where I have no work before me, that I get into
+this dawdling way."
+
+Mr. Arkell left him, passed out of the cathedral inclosure, and
+continued his way up the town. George Prattleton remained where he was,
+wondering what on earth he could do with himself. It was too late to go
+in to service, for the bell had ceased, the organ was pealing out, and
+he caught a glimpse, across the great body of the cathedral, of the
+white surplices of the dean and two of the chapter, as they whisked in
+at the cloister door. George Prattleton believed time must be given to
+mortals as a punishment for their sins. He had not a sixpence in his
+pocket; he owed so much at the billiard-rooms that he did not like to
+show his face there; he was in debt to all the tobacconists of the
+place; he had borrowed money from private friends; and altogether he
+rather wished for an earthquake, or something of that light nature, by
+way of a diversion to the general stagnation of the sultry afternoon.
+
+Mr. Arkell meanwhile reached the house of lawyer Fauntleroy, for that
+was the place he was bound for. Mr. Fauntleroy was not his solicitor,
+but he had a question to ask him on a matter unconnected with
+professional business. As he was turning out of the office again, he
+nearly ran against a stranger in deep mourning, who was looking up, as
+though he wanted to find the number of the house. He was a slight,
+delicate-looking young man; and it instantly struck Mr. Arkell that he
+had seen his face before, or one like it.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the stranger, taking his hat more completely
+off than an Englishman generally does to one of his own sex, "can you
+tell me whether this is Mr. Fauntleroy's?"
+
+"It is Mr. Fauntleroy's. I think--I think you are the son of Robert
+Carr!" impulsively cried Mr. Arkell, as the resemblance to the exiled
+and now dead friend of his boyhood flashed across his memory.
+
+It was no other. The Reverend Robert Carr had hastened to Westerbury as
+soon as family arrangements and his own health permitted him. A few
+moments of conversation, and Mr. Arkell turned back with him to
+introduce him to Lawyer Fauntleroy, thinking at the same time that he
+had rarely seen anyone look so thin, so pale, so shadowy as Robert Carr.
+
+It was a handsome house, this of Lawyer Fauntleroy's--and if you object
+to the term "Lawyer Fauntleroy," as old-fashioned, you must not blame me
+for using it. Westerbury rarely called him anything else; does not call
+him anything else now, if it has occasion to recal him or his doings.
+The offices were on either side of the door, as you entered; Mr.
+Fauntleroy's private room, a large, well fitted-up apartment, being on
+the right; a small ante-room led to it, generally the sanctum of the
+managing clerk.
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy was at leisure, and the whole affair in all its details,
+past and present, was related to Robert Carr. Mr. Arkell remained also.
+It was not a pleasant office to have to seek to convince this young man
+of his own illegitimacy, never a doubt of which had arisen in his mind.
+
+"My mother not married!" he repeated, a streak of suspicious
+crimson--suspicious when taken in conjunction with that hacking cough,
+those shadowy hands--"indeed you would not entertain such a thought had
+you known her. She was, I believe, of inferior family, but in herself
+she was a lady, and her children had cause to love and bless her. Not
+married! Why, are you aware, Mr. Fauntleroy, that my father was a
+partner in one of the first merchant's houses in Rotterdam, and that my
+mother held her own, and was visited, and respected as few are, so long
+as she lived?"
+
+Lawyer Fauntleroy shook his head. He was a man who took practical views
+of most things, utterly scorning theoretical ones.
+
+"I don't doubt your word, Mr. Carr, that your mother was a most
+estimable lady; I remember her myself, an uncommon pretty girl; but that
+does not prove that she was married."
+
+Mr. Carr's eyes flashed. "Not prove it! Do you think, being what I tell
+you she was, a good, religious woman, that she would have lived with my
+father unless they had been married?"
+
+"I have known such cases," cried the lawyer, with his dry practicalness,
+if there is such a word. "One of the first men in this city--if you
+except the clergy and that set--Haughton was his name, and plenty of
+money he had, and lived in style, as Mr. Arkell here can tell you, his
+sons sticking themselves above everybody, his wife and daughters
+setting the fashions--well, Mr. Carr, when he died, it was discovered
+that his wife was not his wife; that his children were nothing in the
+eyes of the law. Westerbury was electrified, I can tell you, and bestows
+hard names upon old Haughton to this day, for having so imposed upon
+them."
+
+"You should not put such a case on a parallel with ours," said the young
+clergyman, in pained reproof.
+
+"But, my good sir, it _is_ on a parallel; so far, at all events. I tell
+you this family were looked upon as superior, as everything that was
+moral; not a word could be urged against the wife (as we'll call her for
+the argument's sake); she was respected and visited; and not until old
+Haughton died, and his will came to be read, did the secret ooze out. He
+left his money to them, but he could not leave it in the usual
+straightforward way. By the way," added the lawyer briskly, as a thought
+struck him; "in what manner was your father's will worded? How was your
+mother styled in it?"
+
+"You forget that my mother has been dead for some time. The will was
+made only two years ago. It was a perfectly legally-drawn-up will,
+according to the Dutch laws; there can be no doubt of that."
+
+"Do you remember how you are described in it, and your brothers and
+sisters?" persisted Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+"I have but one brother and one sister; we are described in what I
+suppose is the usual manner, by our Christian names, Robert, Thomas, and
+Mary Augusta, the sons and daughter of Robert Carr. It is something to
+that effect; I did not take particular notice of the wording."
+
+"I wonder what the law is, over there, with regard to legitimacy?" mused
+Mr. Fauntleroy, his eyes seeing an imaginary Holland in the distance.
+"But, Mr. Carr, this is waste of time," he added, rousing himself; "the
+plain case round which the question will revolve, is not so much whether
+your father and mother were married, as whether it can be _proved_ that
+they were. The law, in a case like this, requires proof actual--and very
+right that it should."
+
+"I suppose there will not be the slightest difficulty in proving it,"
+said Robert Carr, resenting the very suggestion.
+
+"Can _you_ prove it? Do you know where it took place?"
+
+The young man shook his head. "I never heard where. It can be readily
+found out."
+
+"Did you ever question your father upon the point?"
+
+"No; it was not likely I should, seeing that my attention was never
+drawn to any doubt of the sort."
+
+"Well, Westerbury has never entertained any doubt the other way," said
+the lawyer. "It is not agreeable to say these things to your face, Mr.
+Carr; but there's no help for it; and the sooner the question is set at
+rest for you, one way or the other, the better. I should not think
+there's a single person living still in Westerbury, who recollects the
+circumstances as they took place, that would believe your father married
+Miss Hughes after she went away with him."
+
+"It is probable they were married before they did go away," spoke Robert
+Carr, hating more than he liked to show the being compelled to this
+discussion.
+
+"That, I can answer for, they were not. When they left here she was
+Martha Ann Hughes."
+
+"Mr. Fauntleroy is right so far," interposed Mr. Arkell. "They were not
+married when they left Westerbury: on that point there can be no
+mistake. The question that remains is, were they married subsequent to
+it?"
+
+"They must have been," said Robert Carr.
+
+"But there is no must in the case," dissented the lawyer. "The
+probabilities are that they were not: the belief is such."
+
+"I do not see why you should persistently seek to cast this opprobrium
+on my father and mother, Mr. Fauntleroy!" exclaimed Robert Carr, his
+hollow face lighting up with reproach.
+
+"Bless you, my good sir, I don't seek to cast it," said the lawyer,
+good-humouredly. "Facts are facts. If you can prove that Robert Carr
+married Miss Hughes, and your own legal birth with it, you will take the
+property; but if you can't prove it, Squire Carr must keep possession,
+and things will remain as they are. Where's the use of shutting our eyes
+to the truth?"
+
+"There can be no doubt whatever of the marriage. I am sure of it; I
+would stake all my hopes upon it here and--I was going to
+say--hereafter."
+
+"But you so speak only according to your belief, sir? You have no shadow
+of proof."
+
+"True; but----"
+
+"Just so," interrupted Mr. Fauntleroy, in his decisive and rather
+overbearing manner. "All the proofs lie on the other side--negative
+proofs, at any rate. They went away together without being married; that
+is certain--and, by the way, they hoaxed my friend here, William Arkell,
+into helping them off; and I believe his father never forgave him for
+it. Neither were there wanting subsequent proofs--negative ones,
+perhaps, as I say--that they remained unmarried; at any rate, for some
+years. Rely upon one thing, Mr. Robert Carr: that old Marmaduke, just
+dead, would have left his money away from his son unless he had been
+thoroughly certain that no marriage took place. He had sworn to
+disinherit his son if he married Miss Hughes, and he was a man to keep
+his word."
+
+"Excuse me," said Robert Carr: "you do not perceive that this very fact
+may have been the motive that induced my father to keep his marriage a
+secret."
+
+"I perceive it very well. But it is a great deal more probable that
+there never was a marriage. Weigh all the circumstances well, Mr. Carr;
+without prejudice: though, of course, it is difficult for you to do so.
+Over and over again your father was heard to say that he had no
+intention of marrying the girl----"
+
+"You forget that you are speaking to me of my mother," interrupted
+Robert Carr.
+
+"Well, yes, I did," acknowledged the lawyer. "It is difficult to speak
+to a son upon these things; but I think, Mr. Carr, you had better hear
+them. Mr. Arkell there, who was your father's intimate acquaintance, can
+testify how positively he disclaimed, even to him, any intention of
+marriage. Next came the----"
+
+"Allow me," interposed the clergyman, his haughty tone bespeaking how
+painful all this was to him. "I presume no suspicion was cast upon my
+mother's name while she was in Westerbury?"
+
+"Not a breath of it. Blame was cast, though, on her and her sisters for
+allowing the visits of Robert Carr: as is usual in all cases where there
+is much disparity in the social standing of the parties. Next came the
+elopement, I was about to say. They went direct to London, where they
+stayed together----"
+
+"The marriage must have taken place there," again interrupted Robert
+Carr.
+
+"I believe not," said Mr. Fauntleroy, dryly. "Marmaduke Carr took care
+to acquaint himself with particulars, and it was ascertained that they
+did not remain in London long enough to allow of it. The law, more
+particular then than it is now, required a residence of three weeks in a
+place, before a marriage could be solemnized, and they left for Holland
+ere the expiration of a fortnight. It was our house--my father then
+being its head--which sought out these particulars for old Marmaduke.
+No; rely upon it there was no marriage in London."
+
+His tone plainly said, "Rely upon it there was no marriage, there or
+elsewhere." Mr. Carr was about to speak, but the lawyer raised his hand
+and continued.
+
+"Some little time after they had settled in Rotterdam, John Carr--Squire
+Carr now--went over and saw them. There's no doubt his visit was a
+fishing one, hoping to find out that a marriage _had_ taken place; for
+in that case, Marmaduke Carr would have wanted another heir than his
+son. I am sure that John, close-fisted as he was known to be, would have
+given a hundred pounds out of his pocket to be able to come back and
+report that they were married; but he could not. He was obliged to
+confess not only that his cousin and Miss Hughes were not married, but
+that Robert had told him he never should marry her. And, indeed, it was
+hardly to be supposed that he would then."
+
+"But----"
+
+"A moment yet, if you please, Mr. Carr. Some considerable time after
+this, and when I think there was one child born--which must have been
+you, sir--Mr. Carr got to see a letter written by Martha Ann Hughes to
+her sister Mary. I think he got the sight of it through you, Mr.
+Arkell?"
+
+"Through my father. Mary Hughes was at work at our house, and Tring, our
+maid, brought the letter on the sly to my mother. My father, I remember,
+said he should like to show it to Marmaduke Carr; and he did so."
+
+"Ay. Well, Mr. Carr, nothing could have been plainer than that letter.
+Mary Ann Hughes acknowledged that she had no hope of Robert's marrying
+her; but he was kind to her, she said, and she was as happy as anyone
+well could be under her unfortunate circumstances. Indeed, I fear you
+have no room for hope."
+
+"Where is that letter?" asked the clergyman.
+
+"It's impossible to say. Destroyed most likely long ago. None of your
+mother's family are remaining in Westerbury."
+
+"Are they all dead?"
+
+"Dead or dispersed. The brother went off to America or somewhere; and
+the second sister, Mary, died: it was said she grieved a great deal
+about her sister, your mother. The eldest sister married a young man of
+the name of Pycroft, and they also emigrated. Nothing has been heard of
+any of them for years."
+
+"You must permit me to maintain my own opinion, Mr. Fauntleroy," pursued
+Robert Carr; "and I shall certainly not allow anyone to interfere with
+my grandfather's property. If the other branch of the family--Squire
+Carr and his sons--wish to put forth any pretensions to it, they must
+first prove their right."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy laughed. He was amused at the clergyman's idea of law.
+
+"The proof lies with you, Mr. Carr," he said; "and not with them. They
+cannot prove a negative, you know; and they say that no marriage took
+place. It is for you to prove that it did. Failing that proof, the
+property will be theirs."
+
+"And meanwhile? While we are searching for the proof?" questioned Robert
+Carr, after a pause.
+
+"Meanwhile they retain possession. I understand that Mrs. Lewis has
+already come over and taken up her abode in the house."
+
+"Who is Mrs. Lewis?" asked the clergyman.
+
+"Squire Carr's widowed daughter. She has been living at home since her
+husband died. I was told this morning that she had come to the house
+with the intention of remaining."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy's information was correct. Mrs. Lewis _had_ come to
+Marmaduke Carr's house, and was fully resolved to stop in it, fate and
+the squire permitting. Mr. Lewis had died about a year before, and left
+her not so well off as she could have wished. She had a competency; but
+she had not riches. She broke up her household in the Grounds, and went
+on a long visit to her father's, to save housekeeping temporarily;
+leaving her two boys, who were on the foundation of the college school,
+as boarders at the house of Mr. Wilberforce.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GOING OVER TO SQUIRE CARR'S.
+
+
+Mr. Arkell put his arm within Robert Carr's, as they walked away
+together. It would be difficult to express how very much he felt for
+this young man. His father's fault was not his, and Mr. Arkell, at
+least, would not be one to visit it upon him. For a few yards their
+steps were taken in silence; but the clergyman spoke at last, his eye
+dilating, his voice vehement.
+
+"If they had only known my mother as I knew her, they would see how
+improbable is this tale that they are telling! I do not care what their
+suspicions are, what their want of proof; I _know_ that my mother was my
+father's wife."
+
+"Indeed I hope it will prove so," said Mr. Arkell, rather at a loss what
+else to say.
+
+"She was modest, gentle, good, refined; she was respected as few are
+respected. There never was a trace of shame upon her brow. Could her
+children have been trained as she trained hers, if--if--I can hardly
+trust myself to speak of this. It is a cruel calumny."
+
+Perhaps so. But, looking at it in its best light; allowing that they
+were really married; the calumny was alone the fault of this young man's
+father. If he could have removed the stigma, he should have done it. Did
+this poor young man begin to think so? Did unwilling doubts arise, even
+to him? Scarcely, yet. But the lines grew hard in his face as they
+walked along, and his troubled eyes looked out straight before him into
+space, seeing nothing.
+
+"I wish you would give me the whole history of the past yourself, Mr.
+Arkell, now that I can listen quietly. I was hardly in a state to pay
+attention just now; somehow I distrusted that old lawyer."
+
+"You need not have done that. He was your grandfather's man of business;
+and, though a little rough, he is sufficiently honest."
+
+"Is he not acting for Squire Carr?"
+
+"I think not. I am sure not."
+
+"Will you give me the history of the past, quietly? as correctly as you
+can remember it."
+
+Mr. Arkell did so; telling, with a half laugh, the ruse Robert Carr had
+exercised in getting his father's carriage to take them away, and the
+hot water he, William, got into in consequence. He told the whole
+affair from its earliest beginning to its ending, concealing nothing; he
+mentioned how Mary Hughes had happened to be at work at his mother's
+house that day; and the dreadful distress she experienced, as soon as
+the matter was made known to her; he even told how severe in its
+judgment on the fugitives was Westerbury.
+
+"And were _you_ severe upon them also?" asked Robert Carr.
+
+"Just at first. That is, I believed the worst. But afterwards my opinion
+changed, and I thought it most likely that Robert married her in London.
+I thought that for some time. In fact, until I saw the letter that you
+heard Mr. Fauntleroy speak of, as having been written by your mother to
+her sister Mary."
+
+"You saw that letter yourself, then?"
+
+"Yes, my father showed it to me. Not in any gossiping spirit, but as a
+convincing proof that the opinion I had held was wrong, and his was
+right. He had been very greatly vexed at the whole affair, and would
+never listen to me when I said I hoped and thought they were married. It
+was, as Mr. Fauntleroy observed, a plain, convincing letter; and from
+the moment I saw it, I felt sure that there had been no marriage, and
+would be none. I am so grieved to tell you this, my dear young friend;
+but I might not be doing my duty if I were to suppress it."
+
+Robert Carr's face turned a shade paler.
+
+"I see exactly how it is," he said: "that it is next to impossible for
+you, or anyone else, to believe there was a marriage; all the
+circumstances telling against it. Nevertheless, I declare to you, Mr.
+Arkell, on my sacred word as a clergyman, that I am as certain a
+marriage did take place, as that there is a heaven above us."
+
+Mr. Arkell did not think so, and there ensued a pause.
+
+"Your father died rather suddenly, I believe," he said to Robert Carr.
+
+"Very suddenly. He was taken with a sort of fit; I really cannot tell
+you its exact nature, for the medical men differed, but I suppose it was
+apoplexy. They agreed in one thing, that there was no hope from the
+first; and he never recovered consciousness. I was in London when they
+telegraphed to me, but when I got home he had been for some hours dead."
+
+"I will send to the hotel for your portmanteau," said Mr. Arkell; "you
+must be our guest while you stay. My son will be delighted. He is about
+your own age."
+
+"Thank you, no; you are very kind, but I would rather be alone just
+now," was Robert Carr's answer. "This is not a pleasant visit for me,
+and I am in poor health, besides. I shall not stay here long; I must
+enter upon a search for the register of the marriage. But I should like
+to pay a visit to the Carr's before I leave, and I am too fatigued to go
+back to-day."
+
+"To pay a visit to the Carr's?" Mr. Arkell echoed.
+
+"Yes. Why should I not? They are my relatives, and I do not see that
+there need be ill blood between us. As to the property, they have no
+real right to it whatever, and I hope I shall speedily produce proof
+that it is mine, and so put an end to any heartburning. I suppose," he
+added, reverting to the one subject, "that you are quite sure the
+marriage did not take place before they left Westerbury?"
+
+"You may put that idea entirely aside," replied Mr. Arkell. "There's no
+doubt that their going away was in consequence of a bitter quarrel
+Robert had with his father; that it was unpremeditated until the night
+previous to their departure. In Westerbury they were not married, could
+not have been; but perhaps they were in London. It is true, I believe,
+they did not stay there anything like three weeks--and you heard what
+Mr. Fauntleroy said; but I suppose it is possible to evade the law,
+which exacts a residence of that length of time in a place, before the
+ceremony can be performed."
+
+"Yes, there's no doubt they were married in London," concluded Robert
+Carr. "I must ascertain what parish they stayed in there; and the rest
+will be easy."
+
+Not another word was said. Robert Carr walked on in silence, and Mr.
+Arkell did not interrupt it. Mr. Arkell took him into his house. In the
+dining-room, the old familiar room you have so often seen, sat a lady,
+languidly looking over a parcel of books just come in. By her side,
+leaning over her chair, grasping the books more eagerly than she, the
+stranger saw a young man of about his own age--tall, slender,
+gentlemanly--with a face of peculiar refinement, and a sweet smile.
+
+"Now, I wonder what they mean by their negligence? The two books I
+ordered are not here. I wish _they_ knew what it was to have these fine
+starry nights, and be without a book of reference; they----"
+
+"Travice," interrupted Mr. Arkell, "I have brought you a visitor, the
+son of a once close friend of mine. My wife, Mrs. Arkell. Charlotte,
+this is Mr. Robert Carr, Mr. Carr's grandson."
+
+Mrs. Arkell turned and received him with a curtsey and a dubious look.
+Always inclined to judge on the uncharitable side, she had had nothing
+but indifferent scorn to cast to the rumour that Robert Carr's children
+were going to lay claim to the property, just as she had scorned Robert
+Carr himself in the old days. She knew that this must be one of the
+children.
+
+Travice went up at once and shook him warmly by the hand, his pleasant
+face smiling its own welcome. "I have often heard my father speak of
+yours," he said; "I am so pleased to see you."
+
+Very little was said in the presence of Mrs. Arkell, touching the
+business that had brought Robert Carr to Westerbury; but one subject led
+to another, and Robert Carr told, as one of the strange occurrences of
+the world, that which had made so strong an impression on himself--the
+story of the disappearance of Mr. Dundyke. He told it as to strangers;
+and not, until he had related his own meeting with them at Grenoble, and
+his visit to Mrs. Dundyke on the night of her return to London, did he
+find that Mrs. Arkell was her sister. It was Travice Arkell's
+impetuosity that brought it out then; Mrs. Arkell had been better
+pleased that it should remain a secret.
+
+"We have heard it all," said Travice; "and Mrs. Dundyke is my aunt and
+my godmother. She and my mother are sisters."
+
+"I was not aware of it," said Robert Carr. "Is it not a strange tale?"
+
+"Strange!" repeated Travice, "I never heard of anything half so strange.
+I have been waylaying Mr. Prattleton as he came out of college, wanting
+to hear more than my mother could tell me. I wish I had been at Geneva!"
+
+"So do I," said Robert Carr.
+
+Robert Carr remained to dinner. He still expressed a wish to make
+himself known to his relatives, the Carrs; and Mr. Arkell offered to
+drive him to Eckford on the following morning. A railway now went near
+the place; but the seven miles' drive was pleasanter than the ten of
+rail, and Squire Carr's house was a good mile and a half from the
+Eckford station. So it was arranged.
+
+"Travice," said Mr. Arkell, as Robert Carr took his departure, "I was
+glad to see your reception of this gentleman. Be to him a _friend_ in
+any way that you can. It may be, that he will not find too many of them
+in Westerbury."
+
+Mrs. Arkell tossed her head. "I am rather surprised that you should
+bring him here, and introduce him on this familiar footing. The past
+history of the father is not a passport for the son. I should not have
+cared so much had Charlotte and Sophy been away."
+
+"Charlotte and Sophy! He'll not poison them. What are you thinking of,
+Charlotte? He has been reared a gentleman; he is a clergyman of the
+Church of England. Whatever may have been the truth of the past, _he_ is
+not to blame for it."
+
+Travice Arkell was full of sympathy. "How ill he looks!" he exclaimed;
+"though he seems to think nothing of it, and says it is the result of a
+hurt. Is it not curious that he should have met with Mrs. Dundyke? He
+says his mother was in some way related to the Dundykes."
+
+"There, that will do, Travice," interposed Mrs. Arkell. "I shall dream
+of that Geneva lake to-night, and of seeing dead men in it. But,
+William," she added in a lower tone to her husband, "what a misfortune
+it will be for Betsey, should she have nothing left to live upon! She
+would have to go out as a housekeeper, or something of that sort."
+
+Squire Carr's residence was a low, rambling, red-brick building, with a
+quantity of outhouses lying around it, and an avenue of oaks leading
+almost up to the low-porched entrance door. Pacing before this porch, a
+clay pipe in his mouth, and his dark hair uncovered to the September
+sun, was Benjamin Carr. He seemed in a moody study, from which the sound
+of wheels aroused him, and he saw Mr. Arkell driving up in his open
+carriage, a stranger sitting with him, and the groom in the back seat.
+Benjamin Carr wore a short velveteen shooting-coat--it set off his tall
+form to advantage; and Robert Carr thought what a fine man he was.
+
+"Why, Benjamin, I did not know you were at home."
+
+"I got here a day or two ago," returned Benjamin, putting aside his
+pipe, and shaking hands with Mr. Arkell. "The squire's slice of luck
+brought me. One of the girls wrote me word of it; so I've come to see
+whether I can't drop in for a few of the pickings."
+
+It was an awkward answer, considering that Robert Carr was listening;
+perhaps he did not understand it. Mr. Arkell made rather a bustle of
+getting out, and of standing aside for Robert, telling his groom to take
+the horse round to the stables. "Is your father in, Benjamin?" he asked.
+
+"For all I know. I have seen none of them since breakfast. Valentine's
+gone over to Eckford, I believe; but--here's the squire."
+
+The squire, attracted by the sounds of the arrival, was peeping forth
+from the house door. He wore a shabby old coat, and his poor shrunken
+clothes looked altogether too small even for his miserable little
+figure. Robert Carr was struck with the contrast to his fine son.
+
+A word or two of explanation from Mr. Arkell, delivered in a low tone, a
+prolonged, astonished stare from Benjamin, and the squire, in a
+bewilderment of surprise, was shaking hands with Robert Carr.
+
+"It is the first visit I have made to my father's native place, and
+though unpleasant circumstances have brought me, I do not see that they
+need be any reason for my shunning my relatives; I daresay we only wish,
+on both sides, all that is fair and right," began Robert Carr. "I
+expressed a wish to come and see you, sir, and Mr. Arkell kindly offered
+to drive me over."
+
+Had the squire followed his first impulse, he might possibly have
+ordered Mr. Robert Carr off his premises again; for he could only look
+upon him as a secret enemy, who had very nearly wrested from him a brave
+inheritance. But his policy throughout life had been to conciliate, no
+matter at what expense of hypocrisy. It was the safest course, he held;
+and he pursued it now. Besides, if there was one man that the squire did
+not care to stand altogether a sneak before, it was William Arkell with
+his well-known uprightness.
+
+The squire led the way to his study, turning over in his mind what
+secret end Robert Carr could hope to answer by coming over and spying
+into the enemy's quarters. That he had come as a spy, or in some
+character as base, it was out of the squire's nature to do other than
+believe. Benjamin followed, in a state of wonder. As they went along the
+stone passage, Robert Carr caught sight of some pretty girls peeping
+here and there like scared pheasants; but the squire raised his finger
+meaningly, and they scuttered away.
+
+The visit was not a pleasant one, after all; and perhaps it was a
+mistake to have made it. The restraint was too visibly evident. Robert
+himself spoke of the inheritance--spoke openly, as one honourable, or we
+may as well say, indifferent, man would discuss it with another. There
+could be no possible doubt that his father and mother were married, he
+said; and he hoped the property of all sorts would be allowed to rest in
+abeyance until the fact was ascertained, which might be done in a week's
+time.
+
+The squire was rather taken aback, especially at the easy, confident
+tone; not a boasting tone--one of quiet, calm surety. "Why, how do you
+think to ascertain it?" he asked.
+
+"I shall search the registers of the London churches."
+
+The squire burst into a laugh. Had Robert Carr told him he was going to
+search the moon, it could not have struck upon his ear as a more absurd
+proceeding. Squire Carr was as sure that there had been no marriage as
+that the sun was then shining on his visitor's head; he had been sure of
+it, to his cost, all these long years.
+
+"Well," said he, "you'll do as you like, of course, but don't go to much
+expense over it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you will _never_ find what you are looking for, and it's a sin
+to throw away good money. I asked your father myself whether he had been
+married to the girl in London, and he told me he had not, that he had
+never been inside a church in London in his life; he told me also that
+he never should marry her. He spoke on his honour, and therefore I know
+he spoke the truth."
+
+There was an unpleasant silence. Robert Carr began to feel that the
+topic could not be pursued.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Carr," resumed the squire, in his piping voice: "you, as
+a university man, must be in a degree a man of the world, and must know
+that what's fair for the goose is fair for the gander. Had Marmaduke
+Carr's son lived and come over here to take possession, he would have
+taken it, uninterfered with by us; it would have been his own, and we
+should have wished him joy. But he did not live, he died; he died, in
+the eyes of the law, childless, and I am the inheritor. As good tell me
+you lay claim to this house of mine here, as to the property I have just
+come into of my uncle Marmaduke's."
+
+"You will not allow it to lie in abeyance for a while?"
+
+"Most certainly not. Nobody else would: and you must be a very young man
+to ask it. I have the law on my side: you cannot in England act contrary
+to the law, Mr. Carr."
+
+"Well, I daresay you _think_ you are right," said Robert Carr in a
+tolerant spirit. "Let us drop the subject. I did not, I assure you, come
+here to enter upon it; I came to make acquaintance with you, my
+relatives, and to say, but in no spirit of anger or contention, that I
+intend to establish and maintain my rights. We need not be enemies, or
+speak as such."
+
+"Very well," said the squire, "I'll ask you one thing, and then we'll
+drop it, as you say; and it was not I who began it, mind. How came you
+to think of advancing your claim to my uncle Marmaduke's property? What
+put it in your head?"
+
+"I believe it to be my property--that I have succeeded to it, with my
+brother and sister, in consequence of the death of my father. You must
+understand, Squire Carr, it is only now, since this question arose, that
+I have heard there was any doubt cast upon our birth."
+
+"I see. Robert kept it from you. He was a simpleton for his pains; and
+you must not mind my being plain enough to say it. Next to the wrong
+itself, the worst wrong that parents can inflict is the keeping it a
+secret from their children. And now let us go to luncheon. I told them
+to lay it. Never mind about its being early: you shall not go back
+without first taking something to eat."
+
+"If you go away without partaking of our bread and salt, we shall think
+you bear us malice," said Benjamin, courteously, as he walked on to the
+dining-room with the clergyman.
+
+Mr. Arkell was following, but the squire laid his finger on his arm to
+detain him. "Don't let him do it," he whispered.
+
+"Do what?" asked Mr. Arkell.
+
+"All this searching of registers and stuff that he talks of. Mind! I am
+not speaking in a selfish spirit, as I might if I were afraid of
+it,"--and for once the squire's earnest tones, and eyes, raised full in
+Mr. Arkell's face, proved that he was really speaking truth. "I am sorry
+for the young man; he is evidently a gentleman, and he looks sickly; and
+his father has done an ill part by him in letting this come upon him as
+a blow. There's not the smallest probability that they were married; I
+know what Robert said to me, and I would stake my life that they were
+not. If he searches every register in the three kingdoms, he'll never
+find its record; and it is a pity he should spend his money, and his
+time, and his hopes over it. Don't let him do it."
+
+"That he will do it, I am quite certain," was the reply of Mr. Arkell.
+"He seems perfectly to reverence the memory of his mother; and it is as
+much to vindicate her fame that he will make the search, as for the sake
+of the inheritance. Robert Carr was grievously to blame to let it come
+to this. He ought to have set the question at rest, one way or the
+other, before his death."
+
+"The fact is, Robert overreached himself," said Squire Carr. "I can see
+it plainly. He did not marry the girl, because it would have been the
+means of forfeiting his father's property--for old Marmaduke would have
+kept his word. He wanted to come into that property, and then to have
+made a will and left it to these children, relying on their foreign
+birth and residence to keep always the fact of their illegitimacy from
+them. But he died suddenly, you see, before he had come into it, and
+therefore the property goes from them. Robert overreached himself."
+
+Mr. Arkell nodded his head. His opinion coincided with Squire Carr's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A STARTLED LUNCHEON-TABLE.
+
+
+The luncheon was laid in a low room, with a beam running across the
+ceiling; the walls, once bright with red flock paper and much gilding,
+were soiled and dull now, after the manner of a great many of our
+dining-rooms. Squire Carr took the head of the table. He apologised for
+the fare: cold veal, ham (which Benjamin, who sat at the foot of the
+table, carved), and salad. The squire's daughters did not appear at it.
+There were too many of them, he said to Robert; but Mrs. Lewis, who had
+just come over from Westerbury by the train, did. She was a big woman,
+with little eyes like the squire's, and a large face--the latter very
+red just now, through her mile-and-a-half walk in the sun from Eckford.
+She turned her back on the young clergyman when he said grace, as though
+he had no business there. Benjamin had whispered to her who he was, and
+the search of the marriage register books that was in prospect; and
+Mrs. Lewis resented it visibly. She had no mind to give up that bijou of
+a house just entered upon. She believed she should have trouble enough
+with her father to keep it, without another opponent coming into the
+field.
+
+"What brings you over to-day, Emma?" asked the squire of Mrs. Lewis, as
+the meal proceeded. "Anything turned up?"
+
+A rather ambiguous question, the latter one, to uninitiated ears; but
+the squire had been burning to put it, and Mrs. Lewis understood. He
+looked covertly at her for a moment with his blinking eyes, and then
+dropped them again.
+
+"I only came over to see Ben, papa," she answered. "The news reached me
+this morning that he had come home. I have not had time to do anything
+yet."
+
+Now, the fact was, Squire Carr had placed his daughter, knowing her
+admirable ferreting propensities, in Marmaduke Carr's house for one sole
+purpose--that of visiting its every hole and corner. "There _may_ be a
+will," the squire had said to himself, in his caution, several times
+since the death. "I don't think there is; I could stake a great deal
+that there is not, for Marmaduke was not likely to make one; but it's as
+well to be on the safe side, and such things have been heard of as
+wills hid away in houses." And when the squire saw Mrs. Lewis, whom he
+had not expected that day, he began to fear that something of the sort
+had "turned up." The relief was great.
+
+"Oh, to see Ben. You'll see enough of him, I expect, before he's off
+again."
+
+"Are you going to make a long stay here, this time, Ben?" asked Mr.
+Arkell.
+
+"Yes, I think I shall. Will you take some more ham, Emma?"
+
+"Your name is the same as my wife's," observed the young clergyman, with
+a smile, as he passed Mrs. Lewis's plate for more ham: for it was Squire
+Carr's pleasure that servants did not wait at luncheon.
+
+"Is it? It is a very ugly one," roughly replied Mrs. Lewis, who could
+not recover her equanimity in the presence of this gentleman. "I can't
+think how they came to give it me, for my part. I have a prejudice
+against the name 'Emma.' The woman bore it whom, of all the women I have
+known in the world, I most disliked."
+
+"It was your mother's name, my dear," said the squire.
+
+"And _I_ think a charming name," said Robert Carr. "I am not sure but it
+was Emma D'Estival's name that first attracted me to her."
+
+The squire looked up with a sort of start. He remembered the letter
+written by "Emma Carr, _nee_ D'Estival." Of course! she was this young
+man's wife.
+
+"You look young to have a wife," was all the squire said.
+
+"You look, to me, as if you had no business with one at all," added Mrs.
+Lewis with blunt plainness. "Sickly men should be cautious how they
+marry, lest they leave their wives widows. I have been so left. I threw
+aside my widow's cap only last week."
+
+Robert Carr explained to them what his hurt had been, and how his chest
+had suffered at times since. He was aware he looked unusually ill just
+now, he said; but he had looked just as much so about a year and a half
+before--had coughed also. He should get well now, he supposed, like he
+did then. For one thing, speaking of his present looks, this matter was
+harassing him a good deal, and there had been his father's sudden death.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Mr. Arkell, let me ask you something," exclaimed Mrs.
+Lewis suddenly. "I have heard the strangest thing. That a gentleman, a
+Mr. Dundas, or some such name, had been drowned or murdered, or
+something, at Geneva; a relative of your wife's. What _is_ the truth of
+it?"
+
+"That is the truth, as far as we can learn it," replied Mr. Arkell. "It
+was Mr. Dundyke, the husband of Mrs. Arkell's sister. You saw her once,
+I know, at my mother's house, a great many years ago; she was Miss
+Betsey Travice then----"
+
+"But about the murder?" interrupted Mrs. Lewis. "_Was_ he murdered?
+Roland ran home from Mr. Wilberforce's for a minute last night, and I
+heard it from him. I think he said the young Prattletons told him. I
+know he was quite up in arms about it. What is it?"
+
+Mr. Arkell pointed to Robert Carr. "That gentleman can tell you better
+than I can," he said. "He heard the particulars from Mrs. Dundyke
+herself. I only heard them from Mr. Prattleton secondhand."
+
+"I suppose you want me to tell the story, instead of yourself," said
+Robert Carr, with a glance and a smile at Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton
+was on the spot, and instituted the search, so _his_ information cannot
+be secondhand."
+
+They began it between them, but Mr. Arkell gradually ceased, and left it
+to Robert Carr. It appeared to take a singular hold on the squire's
+interest. He had just asked his son for more ham, but was too absorbed
+to send his plate for it. Ben held the slice between his knife and fork,
+and had to let it drop at last.
+
+"Then he was not murdered!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "It was only a case of
+drowning, after all!"
+
+"Of drowning," assented Robert Carr. "At least that is the most probable
+supposition."
+
+"It may rather be called at present a case of mysterious disappearance,
+as the sensational weekly papers would phrase it," interposed Mr.
+Arkell, speaking again. "Mrs. Dundyke at one time felt convinced that a
+murder had been committed, as Mr. Prattleton tells me, and afterwards
+modified her opinion. Now she feels her doubts renewed again."
+
+"What a shocking thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Lewis. "And who does she think
+murdered him--if he was murdered?"
+
+"The Mr. Hardcastle of whom mention has been made. Mrs. Dundyke has
+discovered that he was an impostor."
+
+"Has she!" exclaimed Robert Carr.
+
+"Mr. Prattleton heard from her by last evening's post, and he came in
+late, and showed me her letters," said Mr. Arkell. "This man,
+Hardcastle, had passed himself off as being a partner of the great
+Hardcastle house in Leadenhall-street--a nephew of its head and
+chief--whereas he turns out to be entirely unknown to them."
+
+"And she thinks he did the murder?" quickly cried Mrs. Lewis, who was
+possessed of all a woman's curiosity on such subjects.
+
+"She thinks the suspicions look very dark against him," said Mr.
+Arkell. "I confess I think the same."
+
+"But I thought Mr. Carr, here, said she had completely exonerated this
+Mr. Hardcastle!" cried the squire. "Be quiet, Emma; you would let nobody
+speak but yourself, if you had your way."
+
+"So I believe she did exonerate him," returned Mr. Arkell; "but in all
+cases the same facts wear so different an aspect, according to their
+attendant surroundings. When Mr. Hardcastle was supposed to _be_ Mr.
+Hardcastle, one of the chief partners of the great East India house, the
+nephew of its many-years' chief, it was almost impossible to suppose
+that he _could_ have committed the murder, however little trifling
+circumstances might seem to give point to the suspicion. But when we
+know that this man was not Mr. Hardcastle, but an impostor--probably a
+_chevalier d'industrie_, travelling about to see what prey he could
+bring down--those same trifling circumstances change into alarming
+facts, every one of which bears its own significance."
+
+"I don't clearly understand what the facts were," said the squire. "He
+borrowed money, didn't he?"
+
+"He borrowed money--twenty pounds; he would have borrowed a hundred, but
+Mr. Dundyke had it not with him. He, poor Mr. Dundyke, was utterly taken
+in by them from the first--never had a shadow of suspicion that
+anything was wrong; Mrs. Dundyke, on the contrary, tells Mr. Prattleton
+that she had. She feels quite sure that their running account at the
+hotel, for which she knows they were pressed, was paid with that twenty
+pounds, or part of it; and she says they----"
+
+"In saying 'they,' of whom do you speak besides Mr. Hardcastle?" asked
+the squire.
+
+"Of his wife. And Mrs. Dundyke did not like _her_. But let us come to
+the day of the disappearance. On that morning, as they sat at breakfast,
+Mr. Dundyke told Mr. Hardcastle that he was about to leave; and that
+some money he had written for, notes for thirty pounds, had come that
+morning--were inclosed in two letters which Mr. Hardcastle saw him
+receive and put in his pocket. Mrs. Dundyke says that she shall never
+forget the strangely eager glance--something like a wolf's when it
+scents prey--that he cast on Mr. Dundyke at mention of the thirty
+pounds. Mr. Dundyke went out alone, and hired a boat, as you have heard;
+and they afterwards saw him on the lake bearing away to the spot where
+he landed; Mr. Hardcastle saw him, and then walked away. Nothing more
+was seen of either of them until dinner-time, six o'clock, when Mr.
+Hardcastle returned; he came creeping into the house as if he wished to
+shun observation, travel-soiled, dusty, his face scratched, his hand
+hurt--just as if he had been taking part in some severe struggle; and
+Mrs. Dundyke is positive that his face turned white when she rushed up
+and asked where her husband was."
+
+"Did she suspect him then?"
+
+"Oh dear no; not with the faintest suspicion. That same night she heard
+a fearful quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle; weepings, lamentings,
+reproaches from Mrs. Hardcastle, ill-language from him; and twice she
+heard her husband's name mentioned. She told Mr. Prattleton subsequently
+that it was just as though the fact of the murder had been then
+disclosed to Mrs. Hardcastle, and she, the wife, had received it with a
+storm of horror and reproach. But the most suspicious circumstance was
+the pencil-case."
+
+"What was that?" came the eager question from the squire and his
+daughter, for this had not yet been named.
+
+"Well, what Mr. Prattleton tells me is this," said Mr. Arkell. "When Mr.
+Dundyke went out in the boat he had his pencil-case with him; Mrs.
+Dundyke saw him return it to his pocket-book the last thing before
+leaving the breakfast-room, and put the book in his pocket. It was the
+same pocket-book in which he had just placed the letters containing the
+bank-notes. The pencil-case was silver; it had been given to Mr. Dundyke
+by my cousin Mildred, and had his initials upon it; Mrs. Dundyke says
+he never carried any other--had not, she feels convinced, any other with
+him that morning. After he had landed on the opposite side of the lake,
+he must have made use of this pencil to write the note, which note he
+sent back to the hotel by the boatmen. So that it appears to be a pretty
+certain fact that, whatever evil overtook Mr. Dundyke, this pencil must
+have been about him. Do you follow me?"
+
+"Yes, yes," answered the squire, testily. He did not like the narrative
+to be interrupted by so much as a thread.
+
+"Good. But this same pencil-case was subsequently found in Mr. and Mrs.
+Hardcastle's room at the hotel."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Benjamin Carr, looking up as if startled to sudden
+interest.
+
+"The droll question is, how did it come there?" continued Mr. Arkell.
+"It was found in the room the Hardcastles had occupied at the hotel.
+They had left there some days; had gone on, they said, to Genoa. Mr.
+Prattleton's daughter was put in this room after their departure, and
+the silver pencil-case was picked up from behind the drawers. Mr.
+Prattleton and Mrs. Dundyke were in the chamber at the time, and the
+latter was dreadfully agitated; she quite startled him, he says, by
+saying that Mr. Hardcastle must have murdered her husband."
+
+"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Squire Carr. "I see. The pencil-case which
+was lost with Mr. Dundyke reappeared in their room! How very strange! I
+should have had the man apprehended."
+
+"The hypothesis of course is, that Mr. Hardcastle had in some manner
+possessed himself of the things the missing man had about his person,"
+pursued Mr. Arkell. "Mr. Prattleton thought at the time that this could
+perhaps have been explained away. I mean the finding of the
+pencil-case--that Mr. Dundyke might have dropped it on going out from
+breakfast, and the other have picked it up; but since the arrival of
+Mrs. Dundyke's letter yesterday, he says he does not like the look of it
+at all."
+
+"And the bank-notes that Mr. Dundyke had undoubtedly about his person
+were found to have been changed the subsequent day in Geneva," spoke up
+Robert Carr. "The money-changer thought they had been changed by a man
+whose appearance agreed with that of Mr. Hardcastle. And then there was
+the testimony of the Swiss peasant."
+
+"What was the testimony?" asked the squire.
+
+"A peasant, or small farmer, testified that he saw two gentlemen
+together walking away from the direction of the lake on the day of the
+disappearance; and in describing them, he exactly described the persons
+and dress of Mr. Hardcastle and Mr. Dundyke. I told Mrs. Dundyke," added
+the clergyman, "that I did not like her account of this Mr. Hardcastle;
+and she had expressed to me no suspicion of him then."
+
+"And why did they not cause him to be apprehended?" asked the squire.
+"There could not well be a clearer case. I have committed many a man
+upon half the evidence. What sort of a man was he in person, this
+Hardcastle?"
+
+"A tall, strong man, very dark; a fine man, Mrs. Dundyke says. I should
+think," added the clergyman, ranging his eyes around, lest haply he
+might find anyone in the present company to illustrate his meaning by
+ever so slight a likeness, as we are all apt to do in trying to describe
+a stranger--"I should think----"
+
+Robert Carr stopped; his eyes were resting on the white face of Benjamin
+Carr. Those sallow, dark faces when they turn white are not pleasant to
+look upon.
+
+"I should think," he continued, "that he must have been some such a man
+as your son here, sir. Yes, just such another; tall, strong, dark----"
+
+"How dare you?" shouted Benjamin Carr, with a desperate oath. "How dare
+you point at me as the--the--as Mr. Hardcastle?"
+
+The whole table bounded to their feet as if electrified. Benjamin had
+risen to his full height; his eyes glared on the clergyman; his fist was
+lifted menacingly to his face. Had he gone out of his senses? Some of
+them truly thought so. That he had momentarily allowed himself to lose
+his presence of mind, there could be no question.
+
+"What on earth has taken you, Ben?"
+
+The words came from Mrs. Lewis. Her brother's demeanour had been
+puzzling her. He had sat, with that one slight interruption mentioned,
+with his head down, looking sullen, as if he took no interest in the
+narrative; and she had seen his face grow whiter and whiter. She
+supposed it to be caused by the story; and said to herself, that she
+should not have thought Ben was chicken-hearted.
+
+The squire followed suit. "Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?
+What's the matter with you? _What_ is it, I say?"
+
+"Your visitor offended me, sir," replied Benjamin Carr, slowly sitting
+down in his chair again, and beginning to recollect himself. "How dare
+he say that I bear a resemblance to this Hardcastle?"
+
+"He never did say it," angrily returned the squire. "If you cause such a
+startling interruption at my table again, I shall request you to think
+twice before you sit down to it."
+
+Mrs. Lewis was staring at her brother with a sort of wondering stare.
+Mr. Arkell could not make him out; and the young clergyman stood
+perfectly confounded. Altogether, Benjamin Carr was under a sea of keen
+eyes; and he knew it.
+
+"I'm sure I beg your pardon if my words offended you," began Robert
+Carr. "I meant no offence. I only wished to convey an impression of what
+this Mr. Hardcastle was like--a tall, fine, dark man, as described to
+me. I never saw him. The same description would apply to thousands of
+men."
+
+"I thought you did intend offence," said Benjamin Carr in a distinct
+tone. "Your words and manner implied it, at any rate."
+
+"Don't show yourself a fool, Benjamin," cried out the squire. "I shall
+begin to think you are one. The clergyman no more meant to liken you to
+the man, than he meant to liken me; he was only trying to describe the
+sort of person. What has taken you? You must have grown desperately
+thin-skinned all on a sudden."
+
+"Can't you let it drop?" said Benjamin, angrily. The squire sent up his
+plate as he spoke, for the ham that had been waiting all this while;
+perhaps by way of creating a divertissement; and Ben lifted the slice
+with a jerk, and then jerked the knife and fork down again. Mrs. Lewis,
+who had never come out of the prolonged stare, apparently arrived now at
+the solution of the problem.
+
+"I know what it is, Ben," she quietly said. "This Hardcastle must be an
+acquaintance of yours. You know you do pick up all sorts of----"
+
+"It is a lie," interrupted Ben, regardless of his good manners.
+
+"Papa"--turning to the squire--"rely upon it I am right. Ben no doubt
+fell in with this Hardcastle on his travels, grew intimate with him, and
+now does not like to hear him aspersed."
+
+"Be quiet, Emma," cried Ben, but his voice was lowered now, as if with
+concentrated passion, or policy. "You talk like a fool."
+
+"Well, perhaps I do," retorted Mrs. Lewis, "but I think it is as I say
+for all that. You would not put yourself out like this for nothing. I
+dare say you did know the man; it was just the time that you were at
+Geneva."
+
+"I was not at Geneva."
+
+"You _were_ at Geneva," she persisted. "You know you wrote home from
+thence."
+
+"Why yes, of course you did, Ben," added the squire. "Valentine showed
+us the letter: you said you were hard up in it. But that's nothing new."
+
+"I swear that I never saw this Hardcastle in my life," said Ben Carr,
+his white face turning to a dusky red. "What time did this affair
+happen?" he continued, suddenly addressing Mr. Arkell. "If I had been
+in Geneva at the time, I must have heard of it."
+
+"I can tell you," said Robert Carr. "Mr. and Mrs. Dundyke went to Geneva
+the middle of July, and this must have happened about the second week in
+August."
+
+Benjamin Carr poured himself out a glass of wine as he listened. He was
+growing cool and collected again.
+
+"Ah, I thought I could not have been there. I went to Geneva the latter
+part of June. I and a fellow were taking a walking tour together. We
+stayed there a few days, and left it for Savoy the first week in July. I
+think I did write to Valentine while I was there. All these people, that
+you speak of, must have arrived afterwards."
+
+"Then did you not see this Mr. Hardcastle, Ben?" asked his sister.
+
+"I tell you, no! I never saw or heard of him in my life."
+
+"Then why need you have flown out so?"
+
+"Well, one does not like to be compared to a--murderer. Some of you had
+been calling him one."
+
+No more was said. But the hilarity (if there had been any) of the
+meeting was taken away, and Robert Carr rose to leave. He had a little
+business to do in Westerbury yet, he said, and must go back that night
+to London. The squire was the only one who showed courtesy in the
+farewell. Benjamin was sullenly resentful still; Mrs. Lewis haughty and
+indifferent.
+
+"Is he quite in his right mind?" Robert Carr asked of Mr. Arkell, as
+they drove out of the avenue.
+
+"Who?--Benjamin Carr? Oh yes, he is right enough. He is as sharp as a
+needle."
+
+"Then what could have caused him to break out in the manner he did? I
+never was so taken to in my life."
+
+"I don't know," said Mr. Arkell; "it is puzzling me still. But for his
+very emphatic denial, I should assume it to be as Mrs. Lewis
+suggested--that he must have got acquainted with this Hardcastle, and
+did not like to hear any ill of him."
+
+"Is he a married man?"
+
+"No. Not any of the squire's children have married, except Mrs. Lewis.
+And she's a widow, as you heard her say."
+
+"I suppose she is the daughter that has entered into possession of my
+grandfather's house?"
+
+"She is. Hoping, no doubt, to stay there."
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Arkell," resumed Robert Carr after a pause, for he could
+not forget the recent occurrence, "did _you_ see anything offensive in
+my allusion?"
+
+"Certainly not. Neither would anyone else. I say I cannot make out
+Benjamin Carr."
+
+Before starting for London that night, Robert Carr paid a visit to Mr.
+Fauntleroy. It was after office hours, but that gentleman received him
+in his drawing-room. One of Mr. Fauntleroy's daughters, a buxom damsel
+on the same large scale as her father, was thumping through some loud
+piece on the piano. She satisfied her curiosity by a good look at the
+intruder, as all Westerbury would like to have done, for his name had
+been in men's mouths that day, and then retired with a good-humoured
+smile and nod, carrying her piece of music.
+
+"Bab!" called out the lawyer.
+
+Miss Fauntleroy came back. "Did you speak, pa?"
+
+"Don't go strumming that in the next room. This gentleman has perhaps
+called to talk on matters of business."
+
+She threw down the music with a laugh: gave another good-natured nod to
+Robert, and finally quitted the room.
+
+"Mr. Fauntleroy, I have come--but I ought first to apologize for calling
+at this hour, but I am going off at once to London--I have come to ask
+if you will act for me as my legal adviser?"
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy made a momentary pause. "Do you mean generally, or in any
+particular cause?"
+
+"I mean in this, my cause. I require some solicitor to take it up at
+once, and serve a notice of ejectment on Squire Carr, from the
+possession of the property he has assumed. I suppose that would be the
+first legal step; but you will know what to do better than I. As the
+many years solicitor to my grandfather, I thought you might perhaps have
+no objection to become mine."
+
+"I have no objection in the world," said Mr. Fauntleroy. "But, my good
+sir--and this, mind you, is disinterested advice--I would recommend you
+to pause before you enter on any such contest. There's not a shadow of
+chance that the property can be wrested from Squire Carr, so long as
+your father's marriage remains a doubt. It is his by law."
+
+"I do not think there is a shadow of doubt that the proofs of the
+marriage will be found, and speedily. I go up to London to search.
+Meanwhile you will be so kind as act just as you would act were the
+proofs in your hand. I will not allow Squire Carr to retain, by ever so
+short a time, the property unmolested, or to fancy he retains it,"
+continued the young man, in some emotion. "Every hour that he does so is
+a reflection on my mother's name."
+
+"But--yes, that's all very well, very dutiful--but where's the use of
+entering on a contest certain to be lost?"
+
+"It is certain to be gained; I know the proofs will be forthcoming."
+
+"The most prudent plan will be to wait until they are," returned the
+lawyer. He was not usually so considerate for his clients; but this, as
+he looked upon it, was a hopeless case, one that nobody, many degrees
+removed from a fool, would venture upon.
+
+"No," said Robert Carr, "I will not wait a day. Be so kind as take
+proper steps at once, Mr. Fauntleroy."
+
+"Very well; if you insist upon it. It will cost money, you know."
+
+"That shall be placed in your hands as soon as I can send the necessary
+instructions to Rotterdam. What sum shall you require?"
+
+"Oh, suppose you let me have fifty pounds at first. Before that's
+expended, perhaps--perhaps some decision may have been come to."
+
+Had Mr. Fauntleroy spoken the words on his tongue, they would have run,
+"perhaps you will have come to your senses."
+
+"I will spare no expense on this cause; any money you want, you shall
+have, only my right must be maintained against the other branch of the
+family. Do you understand me, Mr. Fauntleroy?"
+
+"I do; and I must ask you to understand me, and to remember later that
+I did not advise this. If the proofs of the marriage shall come to
+light, why, then of course the tables will be turned."
+
+"By the way," said Robert Carr, "I have never asked what amount of money
+my grandfather has left?"
+
+"Not much less than the value of twenty thousand pounds, taking it in
+the aggregate. He did not live up to his income, and it accumulated.
+There are several houses; the one he resided in is a beautiful little
+place. You have not been inside it?"
+
+"No; I met Mrs. Lewis to-day, at the squire's, and I thought she might
+have invited me to see it," added Robert Carr. "But she did not."
+
+"No danger; they'll keep you at arm's length, if they can. Well, Mr.
+Carr, you will not forget what I say, that I do not advise you to enter
+on this contest. And should you, after a day or two's reflection, think
+better of it, there's no harm done. Just drop me a line to say so,
+that's all. I won't charge you for my advice."
+
+"You must think I am of a changeable nature," returned the young
+clergyman, half resentfully.
+
+"I should think you a sensible man."
+
+Robert could not smile, he was too serious. "And if you receive the
+money from me, instead of the letter you suggest, you will immediately
+commence this action; is that an understood thing between us, Mr.
+Fauntleroy?"
+
+"It is," said Mr. Fauntleroy; "it will cost a mint of money, mind you,
+if it goes on to trial."
+
+Robert Carr said no more; he was satisfied. As he went down
+the richly-carpeted stairs, two large female heads, and two
+coarsely-handsome, good-natured faces were propelled over the
+balustrades, to gaze after him: the heads and the faces of the Miss
+Fauntleroys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A MISSIVE FOR SQUIRE CARR.
+
+
+Domestic relations did not progress very pleasantly at Squire Carr's. It
+was the old story; the old grievance; the one that had disturbed the
+internal economy of the home ever since Benjamin became a grown man:
+Benjamin required money, and the squire protested he had it not to give.
+Ben, he said, wanted to ruin him.
+
+This time Ben had come home particularly out at elbows, metaphorically
+speaking; literally, he was, in regard to clothes, rather better off
+than usual. Ben had quitted his home the previous April, with a very
+fair sum of money in his pocket, drawn from the squire; where he had
+spent the time since was not very clear, unless he had been, as the
+squire expressed it, dodging about the continent; two or three letters
+having been received from him at long intervals, dated from different
+parts of it. Ben was not accustomed to be particularly communicative on
+the subject of his own wanderings; and all he said now was, that he had
+made a "pedestrian tour." One other thing was a vast deal more
+clear--that he had brought back empty pockets.
+
+He was now worrying the squire to advance him funds for a visit to
+Australia, where he should be sure to make his fortune. Three or four
+fellows, whom he knew, were going, he said; they had a fine prospect
+before them, and he had the opportunity offered him of joining them. The
+worrying had begun on the very evening subsequent to the visit of Mr.
+Arkell and Robert Carr; a week or more had gone on since; and Ben
+systematically continued his importunities. The squire turned a
+stone-deaf ear. Ben had once before got money from him to make his
+fortune in Australia; and had come home after a two years' absence
+without a shirt to his back: Squire Carr must live to be an older man
+than he was now, before he forgot that. Valentine Carr put in _his_
+voice against it; he had for a long while been angrily resentful at
+these sums of money being advanced to Ben, far larger ones, he
+suspected, than the reigning powers allowed to come to his knowledge;
+and he was now raising his voice in opposition. He was the heir; and the
+estate, he said, was already impoverished too much.
+
+One cloudy Saturday morning, close, hot, and unhealthy, Valentine Carr
+was mounting his horse to go to Westerbury. They had breakfasted early;
+breakfast was always taken early at the squire's, but especially so on
+Saturdays, the market day at Westerbury. Squire Carr was standing by his
+son, giving him various directions.
+
+"You'll see how prices run to-day, Valentine; but mark you, I'll not
+sell a sheaf of the old corn if the market's flat. And the new you need
+not think of soliciting offers for, for I shall not sell yet awhile. The
+barley market ought to be brisk to-day; some of the maltsters, I hear,
+are already preparing to steep; and you may, perhaps, get rid of some
+loads. Have you the samples?"
+
+Valentine Carr dived with one hand into his capacious pocket, by way of
+answer, and just showed some three or four little bags tied round with
+tape.
+
+"You'll get first prices, mind, or you won't sell. Not a farmer in all
+the county can show better barley this year than ours. Do you hear?"
+
+"I know," ungraciously returned Valentine. "I believe you think I'm a
+child still. I can't ride off to market without you, but you go on at me
+in this fashion: and it's nigh upon thirty years now since I went
+first."
+
+"I know my own business better than anybody, and I can't afford to let
+things go below their value," rejoined the squire. "A halfpenny a
+bushel would make a difference to me now, and I should feel it. I'm
+shorter of money than I ought to be."
+
+"Money goes in many ways that it ought not to go in," said Valentine,
+gathering up his bridle with a sniff. And the squire knew that it was a
+side-thrust at Ben. "Anything more?"
+
+"You had better call on Emma, and ask whether she has made a list of the
+plate and pictures. If she has not, you may tell her that I shall come
+over next week and go over the things for myself. She might have sent it
+to me days ago. I'll not have so much as a plated spoon omitted, and so
+I told her. That's all."
+
+Valentine Carr touched his horse and rode at a quick trot down the
+avenue. When the squire looked round, he found Benjamin--who had just
+got down to breakfast--at his side.
+
+"We shall have a nasty, hot, muggy day, Ben!"
+
+"Yes," said Ben, "we get these days sometimes in September. Father, if
+you won't let me have the two hundred, will you let me have one? I don't
+want to lose this chance, and my friends will have sailed. They are
+putting in three hundred each, but----"
+
+"How many times are you going to tell me that?" interrupted the squire.
+"I don't believe it; no, I don't believe you have any friends who are
+possessed of three hundred to put. It is of no use your bothering, Ben;
+I haven't got the money to spare."
+
+"Not got it to spare, when you have just come in to twenty thousand
+pounds!" returned Ben, not, however, venturing to speak in any tone but
+a conciliating one. "I only wish I had come in to a tithe of it! It was
+a slice of good luck that you never expected, squire, and you might be
+generous enough to help me once again."
+
+In truth, the good luck had been so entirely unlooked for, that Squire
+Carr could not find in his heart to snub Ben for saying so, quite as
+fiercely as he might otherwise have done. "It was just a chance, Ben,
+Robert Carr's dying as he did."
+
+"A very good chance for us. Look here, father: I can't stop on here,
+nagged at by Valentine, out of purse, out of _your_ favour----"
+
+"Whose fault is it that you are out of my favour?" interrupted the
+squire, taking off his old drab wide-awake to straighten a dent in the
+brim.
+
+"Well, I suppose it's mine," acknowledged Ben. "What is a hundred pounds
+to the twenty thousand you have come into? A drop of water in the
+ocean."
+
+"And if you got the hundred pounds and started with it, you'd be
+writing home in three months for another hundred! It has always been the
+case, Ben."
+
+The words seemed to imply symptoms of so great a concession, compared to
+the positive refusal hitherto accorded him, that Ben Carr's hopes went
+up like a sky-rocket. He saw the hundred pounds in his possession and
+himself ploughing the deep waters, as vividly as though the picture had
+been presented to him in a magic mirror.
+
+"It is a chance that I have never had, squire. These men are steady,
+industrious, practical fellows, who will keep me to my work, whether I
+will or not. They go out to make money, and I shall make some. Who knows
+but I may return home with a fortune to match this, just come to you?"
+
+"Ben, you harp upon this money of Marmaduke's; but let me tell you that
+I don't know what I should have done without it. I have had nothing but
+drains upon me for years: you've been one of them."
+
+"The old hypocrite!" thought Ben, "he's rolling in money, besides this
+new windfall. Well, sir," he said aloud, "I shall write----"
+
+"Who's this?" interrupted the squire, who did not see so well as he once
+did.
+
+It was the postman. Letters were not frequent at the squire's, as they
+are at many houses. The man was coming up the avenue, in the distance
+as yet. Squire Carr walked towards him and stretched out his hand for
+the letters.
+
+The postman gave him two. One was a large, blue, formidable-looking
+packet, addressed to himself; the other was a perfumed, mignonne,
+three-cornered sort of missive, for Benjamin Carr, Esq.
+
+"Here, Ben, I don't know who your correspondent may be," said the
+squire, tossing him the note. "She's an idiot, that's certain; nobody,
+above one, would think of sending a doll's thing like that through the
+post. It's a wonder it wasn't lost."
+
+Benjamin Carr glanced at the handwriting and slipped the note into the
+pocket of his shooting coat. Sauntering to a little distance, while the
+squire was busy with his own letter, he there took it out, opened, and
+began to read it: a closely-written epistle, on thin foreign paper.
+
+He was startled by something very like the bellow of a bull. Turning
+round, he saw the squire in a fine commotion, and the noise had come
+from him.
+
+"Why, what is the matter?" exclaimed Ben, advancing.
+
+"Matter!" ejaculated Squire Carr--"_matter!_ They are mad; or else I am
+dreaming."
+
+He held the formidable document before his eyes. He turned it, he gazed
+at it, he shook it, he pinched himself to see whether he _was_ dreaming.
+If any man ever believed that his eyes played him false, Squire Carr
+believed his did then.
+
+"What is it?" repeated the astonished Ben.
+
+It was a notice from Mr. Fauntleroy that an action was entered upon--to
+eject him from the possession of that bijou of a house; to wrest from
+him the fortune; to give Marmaduke's money to Robert Carr; to forbid him
+to touch or remove so much (his own words just before to his son) as a
+plated spoon of the effects; to reduce him, in short, to a poor wretched
+non-inheriting beggar again. Not that all this, or the half of it, was
+stated; it was implied, and that was enough for the squire's vivid
+imagination.
+
+"Ben, my boy, what does it mean?" he gasped.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Ben, considerably crestfallen.
+
+"I'm not dreaming, am I?" asked the squire. "Mercy be good to us! What
+can they have found? Perhaps old Marmaduke made a will after all! They'd
+never enter an action without being justified. Get the horse into the
+dog-cart and drive me to the station, Ben. I must go over to see
+Fauntleroy. Hang him! the sly old villain! I should like to twist his
+neck."
+
+"But you will promise me the hundred pounds, father?"
+
+"Hundred pounds be shot!" shrieked the squire in a fury. "I've just got
+notice that I'm ruined, and he asks me for a hundred pounds! No, sir!
+nor a hundred pence. How can I afford money, now this inheritance is
+threatened?"
+
+Benjamin Carr had a great mind to tell his father, that even if it were
+threatened and taken, he was as well off now as he had been a short
+while before. But it was not a time to press matters, and he drove the
+squire to the station in silence.
+
+On that busy Saturday morning--and Saturdays were always busy days at
+the office of Mr. Fauntleroy--the clerks were amazed by the disturbed
+entrance of Squire Carr, pushing, agitated, restless; far more amazed
+than was perhaps their master, Mr. Fauntleroy. He had half expected it.
+
+There ensued a hasty explanation; but the squire scarcely allowed
+himself to listen to it. Of all the blows that could have come upon him,
+this was the worst.
+
+"And what do you think of yourself, pray, to be taking up a cause
+against the Carr family, when you have stuck by it for half a century,
+or it by you?"
+
+"By old Marmaduke; by no others of it," returned Mr. Fauntleroy, who was
+secretly enjoying the squire's perplexity beyond everything.
+
+"Why do you turn round against him now? I did not expect it of you,
+Fauntleroy."
+
+"I don't understand you, squire."
+
+"You are turning against the money he left, which is the same thing,
+wanting to make ducks and drakes of it."
+
+"Marmaduke Curr's grandson came here and asked me if I would act for him
+as his solicitor, and I assented," said Mr. Fauntleroy. "In entering
+this action against you, I am but obeying his instructions."
+
+"Marmaduke Carr's grandson!" scoffed the squire. "Who is he, the
+ill-born cur"--not but that the squire's words were somewhat
+plainer--"that he should presume to set himself up in his false
+pretences?"
+
+"Ill-born or well-born, my clients are the same to me, provided their
+cause is good, and they pay me," coolly rejoined Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+"Well, is it a hoax?" asked the squire, coming nearer to the point, for
+Mr. Fauntleroy was taking a stealthy glance at his watch.
+
+"If you mean is the action a hoax, most certainly it is not. Robert Carr
+looks upon it that he has the best right to his grandfather's money,
+and----"
+
+"Why do you call him Robert _Carr_?" interposed the squire, in a flash
+of anger.
+
+"What else can I call him? I wish you'd be a little cooler, and let me
+finish. And he has given me instructions to spare no pains, no expense,
+in maintaining this action against you."
+
+"Is he a fool?" asked the squire. "It's one of two things: either he is
+a fool--for he must know that such an action can't be sustained under
+present circumstances, and so must you--or else he has got some secret
+information that I am in ignorance of. _Has_ he got it? Is there a will
+of Marmaduke's found?"
+
+"Of course there's not," said Mr. Fauntleroy, taken by surprise; "I
+should have heard of it, if there had been. As to any other information,
+I can't say; I don't know of any."
+
+"Look here, Fauntleroy: if there is to be an action--not that I should
+think the fellow will be mad enough to go on with it--will you act for
+me?"
+
+"I can't," said Mr. Fauntleroy; "I am acting for him."
+
+"Turn him over. Who's he? I'd rather have you myself. And I must say you
+might have been neighbourly enough not to take this up against me."
+
+"What does that signify? If I had not taken it up, somebody else would.
+And you have your own solicitors, you know, squire."
+
+The squire growled. His solicitors were Mynn and Mynn, of
+Eckford--quiet, steady-going practitioners; but in so desperate a cause
+as this, the squire would have felt himself safer with a keen and not
+over-scrupulous man, such as Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+"You will not act for me, then?"
+
+"I can't, squire."
+
+"And you mean to carry it on to action?"
+
+"I must do it. They are my positive instructions."
+
+Squire Carr turned off in desperation, nearly upsetting Mr. Kenneth as
+he stamped through the outer office. As fast as he could, he stamped up
+to the railway station, and took the first train to Eckford, arriving at
+the office of Mynn and Mynn in a white heat.
+
+Mynn and Mynn themselves were nearly myths, so far as their clients
+could get hold of them. Old Mynn had the gout perpetually; and the
+younger brother, George Mynn, had a chronic sort of asthma, and could
+not speak to people half his time. What business was absolutely
+necessary for a principal to do, George Mynn mostly did it. He made the
+journeys to London, he attended the sessions and assizes at Westerbury;
+but it very often happened that, when a client called at the office,
+neither would be there.
+
+As it was, on this day. A young man of the name of Richards was head of
+the office just now, for the managing clerk had died, and Mynn and Mynn
+were looking out for another. A sharp, clever, unscrupulous man was this
+Richards, who, if he proved as clever when he got into practice for
+himself, would stand a fair chance of getting out of it again. He was
+alone when Squire Carr entered, and leaned over his desk to shake hands
+with him. He was a great friend of Valentine Carr's, and sometimes dined
+at the squire's on Sundays--a thin, weaselly sort of man, not unlike
+Valentine himself, with a cast in one eye.
+
+"Mr. George Mynn here to-day?"
+
+"He is here to-day, squire; but he is not in just now. He's gone to
+Westerbury."
+
+"I want to see him; I must see him," cried the squire, wiping his hot
+brows. "The most infamous thing has happened, Richards, that you ever
+heard of. They are going to try and wrest my Uncle Marmaduke's property
+from me."
+
+"Who is?" asked Richards, in wonder.
+
+"The son of that Robert Carr who went off with Martha Ann Hughes. It was
+before your time; but perhaps you have heard of it. There are children;
+and one of them has been down here, and has given Fauntleroy
+instructions to proceed against me and force me to give up the
+property."
+
+"But I thought there was no marriage?" cried Richards. "Mr. Mynn was
+talking about it the other day."
+
+"Neither was there."
+
+Richards paused a moment, and then burst into a fit of laughter. To make
+pretensions of claiming property in such a case, amused him
+excessively.
+
+"Well, they are doing it," said Squire Carr. "But I am astonished at
+Fauntleroy taking up such a cause. It's infamous, you know. They can do
+it only to annoy me; for they must be aware it's an action that will not
+lie."
+
+"I say, squire, you must take care of one thing," said Richards, with
+the familiarity that characterised him, and which to some minds was
+exceedingly offensive--"mind they don't get up a false marriage."
+
+"A false marriage! Why, the parties are dead."
+
+"Oh, I mean proofs--false proofs. I've known such things done. When a
+fortune's at stake, you know, any means seem right ones."
+
+"And I dare say they'd be capable of it," assented the squire. "Well, it
+must be seen to immediately. Here's what I had sent from Fauntleroy."
+
+He drew out of his pocket the large letter, and Richards ran his eyes
+over it.
+
+"They mean mischief," was his laconic remark.
+
+"When _can_ I see Mr. George Mynn?" asked the squire, the usual
+difficulties of getting at that gentleman striking upon his mind,
+especially after the last sentence, as a personal wrong. "Why doesn't he
+get a confidential clerk to do the outdoor work, so as to be in to see
+clients himself?"
+
+"They are about engaging one, I believe," said Mr. Richards, alluding to
+the confidential clerk; "but he won't enter before December or January."
+
+"Not before December or January!" retorted Squire Carr, as if that were
+another personal wrong.
+
+"I heard George Mynn say we could do without one until then. So we can.
+The assize business is over, and there won't be much press for the next
+month or two. For my part, I wish they'd do without one for good. _I_
+could manage all they want done, if they'd let me."
+
+"Well, look you here, Richards. I shall go on to the 'Bell' and get a
+bit of dinner at the ordinary, and then I shall come back here and wait
+till he comes in."
+
+"He mayn't come in at all again to-day--sure not to, if he doesn't get
+back from Westerbury till late," was the satisfactory rejoinder of
+Richards; and Squire Carr felt that he should like to strike somebody in
+the dilemma, if he only knew whom.
+
+"Then you will have to take my instructions," he said, sharply; "I shall
+be back in an hour."
+
+"Very good," said Mr. Richards. "And we can talk this business over
+to-morrow, squire, as much as you like; for I am coming to your place
+for the day. I've promised Valentine, and I want to make the
+acquaintance of your second son."
+
+For this Mr. Richards was but a clerk of some months standing at Mynn
+and Mynn's; to which situation he had come from a distance, and,
+therefore, had not yet enjoyed the honour of an introduction to Mr.
+Benjamin Carr.
+
+Thus the great cause, "Carr _versus_ Carr," was inaugurated. Those
+connected with it little dreamt of the strange excitement it was to
+create, ere the termination came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE LAST OF ROBERT CARR.
+
+
+By a bright fire in her handsome and most comfortable drawing-room, in
+her widow's cap--assumed, now that all hope had died out--sat Mrs.
+Dundyke. The October wind was whistling without, the October rain was
+falling on the window panes; and there was a look of anxiety on her
+otherwise calm face, still so fair and attractive, as she listened to
+the storm. The summer and autumn, up to the close of September, had been
+remarkably warm and fine; but when October came in, it brought bad
+weather with it.
+
+A gust and a patter, worse than any that had gone before, aroused Mrs.
+Dundyke from her seat. She laid her work--a woollen comforter, that she
+was knitting--on the small and beautiful table at her side, inlaid with
+mother-of-pearl, and walked to the window.
+
+"I wonder whether he is out in it?" she said, as she watched the trees
+bending in the storm. "This anxiety is killing him. The very work is
+killing him. Abroad in all weathers; out of one damp church into
+another; getting heated with his weak state and the ardour of the
+pursuit, and then becoming chilled in some sudden storm such as this! He
+may find the record, perhaps, but he will never live to reap the
+benefit."
+
+Need you be told that Mrs. Dundyke's soliloquy applied to Robert Carr?
+He was staying with her. When he went back to London from Westerbury,
+and sought Mrs. Dundyke, to deliver certain messages of the kindest
+nature sent by him from Mr. Arkell and Travice, she had insisted upon
+his making her house his home while he remained in London to pursue his
+search.
+
+And he did so; and began his toilsome search of the London church
+marriage registers. What a wearying task it was, let those testify who
+may have been obliged to enter upon such. By dint of a great deal of
+trouble, and of correspondence with Mr. Fauntleroy, and recalled
+recollections from middle-aged people in Westerbury, who had been young
+men once and friends of the elder Robert Carr, he, the present Robert
+Carr, succeeded in ascertaining the place where his father and mother
+had sojourned that fortnight in London. It was in one of the quiet
+streets of the Strand, in the parish of St. Clement Danes. But when St.
+Clement Danes' register was examined, no entry of any such marriage
+could be found there; and for the first time since the blow fell, Robert
+Carr felt his heart sink with a vague fear that he dared not dwell upon.
+
+It had seemed to him so easy! He had felt as sure a trust in his
+mother's marriage as he felt in Heaven. It was only to find out where
+they had stayed that fortnight in London, and search the parish church
+register; for there, and only there, Robert Carr argued, the marriage
+had taken place. But there, it was now evident, that it had _not_ taken
+place, and he was all at sea.
+
+He began with the other churches; he knew not what else to do. In
+Holland they could not have been married, from the want of legal papers,
+and other matters, necessary to foreigners united abroad. He searched
+the churches nearest to St. Clement Danes first, and then went on to
+others, and others, and others. He would go up after breakfast from his
+kind friend, who was nursing him like a mother, and begin his daily
+task; out of one church into another, as she had phrased it, in all
+weathers--rain, hail, storm--and go back at night again utterly wearied
+out.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke stood at the window watching the rain. She fancied it was
+beginning to grow dusk; but it was not time just yet, and the afternoon
+was a dark one. He would not be home yet awhile, she was thinking. He
+stopped in those cold churches as long as there was a ray of light to
+see by. Mrs. Dundyke was turning from the window, when she saw an
+omnibus stop, and Robert Carr get out of it. He seemed worse than usual;
+weaker in strength, more tottering in frame; and as he looked up at her
+with a faint, sad smile, a conviction came over her that she should not
+be able to save the life of this poor young man; that all her care, all
+her comforts, all her ample income would not benefit him. And how very
+ample her income would for the future be, she had not known until that
+day. She was a rich lady for this world; she might ride in her carriage,
+if she chose, and be grand for all time.
+
+"Oh! Robert!" she exclaimed, meeting him on the stairs--and she had
+taken to call him by the familiar name, as she might a son--"I fear you
+have got very wet! I am so glad you came home early!"
+
+He walked unsteadily to the easy chair by the fire, and sunk in it. Mrs.
+Dundyke, with him daily, saw not the change that every hour was surely
+making in him; but she did notice how wan and ill he looked this
+evening.
+
+"Have you not been well to-day, Robert?"
+
+"Not very. I have been spitting so much of that blood again. And I felt
+so weary too; so sick of it all."
+
+"There's no success, then, again!"
+
+"None. Altogether, I thought I'd leave it for the day, and come back and
+take a rest."
+
+He sighed as he spoke, but the sigh broke off with a moaning sound. Mrs.
+Dundyke glanced at him. She had resumed her knitting--which was a chest
+protector for himself--until the wine that she had rung for should be
+brought.
+
+"Robert, are you losing heart?"
+
+"No, I can never lose that. There _was_ a marriage, if we could only
+find out where. You would be as sure of it as I am, dear Mrs. Dundyke,
+had you known my mother."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke made no rejoinder. For herself, she had never fully
+believed in the marriage at all, but she was not cruel enough to say so.
+She sat watching him over her knitting: now bending forward with his
+thin hands spread out to the warmth of the fire; now suddenly bringing
+his hands to his chest as he coughed, choked; now lying back in the
+chair, panting, his thin nostrils working, his breath coming in great
+gasps; and there came in that moment over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked, a
+conviction--she knew not whence or why--that a very, very short period
+would bring the end.
+
+She felt her face grow moist with a cold moisture. How was it that she
+had been so blind to the obvious truth? She knitted two whole rows of
+knitting before she spoke, and then she told him, with a calm voice,
+that she should write for his wife.
+
+"How kind you are!" he murmured. "I shall never repay you."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke laughed cheerfully.
+
+"I don't want repayment. There is nothing to repay."
+
+"Nothing to repay! No kindly friendship, no trouble, no cost! I wonder
+how much I cost you in wine alone?"
+
+"Robert," she said, in a low, earnest tone--though she wondered whether
+he might not be jesting--"do you know what they tell me my future income
+will be? Mr. Littelby was here to-day, giving me an account of things,
+for I put my poor husband's affairs into his hands on my return. It will
+not be much less than two thousand a year."
+
+The amount of the sum quite startled him.
+
+"Two thousand a year!"
+
+"It will indeed, as they tell me. By the articles of partnership I am
+allowed a handsome income from the house in Fenchurch-street; but the
+chief of the money comes from speculations my husband has been engaged
+in for many years, in connexion with a firm on the Stock Exchange. Safe
+speculations, and profitable; not hazardous ones. This money is
+realized, and put out in the Funds, in what they call the
+Five-per-Cents.; and I shall have nearly two thousand a year. I had no
+idea of it; and the puzzle to me now is, how I shall spend it. Don't you
+think I require a few kind visitors to help me?"
+
+Before he could answer, there came on a violent fit of coughing, worse
+than any she had yet seen, and quite a little stream of blood trickled
+from his mouth. It was nothing particularly new, but that night Mrs.
+Carr was written for in haste.
+
+"Tell her to bring the desk with her," said Robert; and Mrs. Dundyke
+wrote down the words just as he spoke them.
+
+But he rallied again, and in a day or two was actually out as before,
+prosecuting his search amidst those hopeless churches. He confided what
+he called a secret to Mrs. Dundyke--namely, that he had not confessed to
+his wife that any suspicion was cast upon his birth. The honest truth
+was, Robert Carr shrunk from it; for he knew it would so alarm and
+grieve her. She was well connected; had fallen in love with the young
+Cambridge student during a visit she was paying in England; and when the
+time came that marriage was spoken of, her friends raised some objection
+because Robert Carr's father was not of gentle blood, but was in
+business as a merchant. What she would say when she came to know that he
+was suspected of not being even that merchant's legitimate son, Robert
+scarcely cared to speculate.
+
+She arrived in an afternoon at Mrs. Dundyke's, having come direct to
+London Bridge by the steamer from Rotterdam. Robert was out in London,
+as usual; but Mrs. Dundyke was not alone: Mildred Arkell was with her.
+Perhaps of all people, next to his wife, Mildred had been most shocked
+at the fate of Mr. Dundyke. This was the first time she had seen his
+widow, for she had been away in the country with Lady Dewsbury.
+
+A young, pretty woman, looking little more than a girl, with violet-blue
+eyes, dark hair, and a flush upon her cheeks. Mrs. Dundyke marvelled at
+her youth--that she should be a wife since three years, and the mother
+of two children.
+
+"I wrote to you to be sure to bring the children," said Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+"I know: it was very kind. But I thought, as Robert was ill, they might
+disturb him with their noise. They are but babies; and I left them
+behind."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was considering how she could best impart the news of the
+suspected birth to this poor, unconscious young lady. "If you could give
+her a hint of it yourself, should she arrive during my absence!" Robert
+Carr had said to Mrs. Dundyke that very morning, with the hectic
+deepening on his hollow cheeks. And Mrs. Dundyke began her task.
+
+And a sad shock it proved to be. Mrs. Carr, accustomed to the legal
+formalities that attend a marriage in the country of her birth, and
+without which formalities the ceremony cannot be performed, could not
+for some time be led to understand how, if there was a marriage, it
+could have been kept a secret. There were many points difficult to make
+her, a foreigner, understand; but when she had mastered them, she grew
+strangely interested in the recital of the past, and Mildred Arkell, as
+a resident in Westerbury at the time, was called upon to repeat every
+little detail connected with the departure of her husband's father and
+mother from their native place. In listening, Mrs. Carr's cheek grew
+hectic as her husband's.
+
+But she had her secret also, which she had been keeping from her
+husband. She told it now to Mrs. Dundyke. Something was wrong with
+affairs at Rotterdam. The surviving partners of the house, three
+covetous old Dutchmen, disputed their late partner's right (or rather
+that of his children) to draw out certain monies from the house; at the
+death of Robert Carr it lapsed to the house, they said. This was the
+account Mrs. Carr gave, but it was not a very clear one, neither did she
+seem to understand the case. The Carrs had in the house other money,
+about which there was no dispute, but even this the firm refused to pay
+out until the other matter was settled. The effect was, that the Carrs
+had no money to go on with; and there would probably be litigation.
+
+"I did not tell Robert, because I was in hopes it would be comfortably
+decided without him," said Mrs. Carr. "By the way, you wrote me word
+that Robert said I was to bring over the desk. Which desk did he mean?
+his own or his father's?"
+
+"I really don't know," replied Mrs. Dundyke; "he was very ill when he
+spoke, and I wrote the words down just as he spoke them."
+
+"Well, I have brought both; I know he examined Mr. Carr's desk after his
+death, and he locked it up again, and has the key with him. His own desk
+also was at home; so, not knowing which was meant, I brought the two."
+
+When Robert Carr came home that evening he looked awfully ill. The
+expression is not too strong a one; there was something in his
+attenuated face, its sunken eyes, its ghastly colour, and its working
+nostrils, that struck the beholder with awe. Mrs. Dundyke was alone in
+the dining parlour when he came in, and was shocked to see him. Whether
+it was the long day's work on his decreasing strength--for he had
+remained later than usual--she could not tell, but he had never looked
+so near death as this.
+
+"Oh, Robert!" was her involuntary exclamation; "I had better go up and
+prepare your wife before she sees you."
+
+He suffered her to put him in the great invalid chair she had
+surreptitiously had brought in a day or two before; he drank the
+restoring cordial she tendered him; he was passive in her hands as a
+child, in his great weakness. "I'm afraid I must have a week's rest," he
+said to her, as she busied herself taking off his gloves, and smoothing
+his poor damp hair. "My strength seems to be failing unaccountably; I
+don't know how I have got through the day."
+
+"Oh yes, yes," she eagerly assented; "a little rest; that is what you
+want. You shall lie in bed all to-morrow."
+
+"Has Emma brought the children?"
+
+"No. They are quite well," she says; "I am going to send her down to
+you. And, Robert, she knows all, and says she'll help to search the
+registers herself."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke spoke in a light-hearted tone, but before she went upstairs
+she sent an urgent message for the doctor.
+
+And when the surgeon came, he said there was no further hope whatever,
+as, indeed, there had not been for some time now, and that a day or two
+would "decide."
+
+Decide what? But that he did not say.
+
+In one sense of the word, it may be said that death had come suddenly
+upon Robert Carr. Had he been less absorbed in that one point of worldly
+interest, he might have seen its approach more clearly. Not until the
+morning succeeding his wife's arrival, did he look it fully in the face;
+and then he found that it was upon the very threshold, was entering in
+at the opened door.
+
+All the bustle, the anxiety as to temporal interests, the plans and
+provisions for the future for those to be left behind, ensued. Mrs.
+Dundyke hastily summoned a legal gentleman, Mr. Littelby. He was a
+solicitor of many years' standing, not in practice for himself, but
+conducting the business of an eminent legal firm. He was an old friend
+of the Dundykes, and Robert Carr had seen him several times; indeed his
+advice and assistance had been of much service in the search of the
+church registers. Mr. Littelby was about leaving his present situation,
+and was in negotiation with a firm in the country for another. Mrs.
+Dundyke sent up a hasty summons for him.
+
+A handsome bedchamber, in which was every comfort, a bright fire in the
+hearth, a bed, on which lay a shadowy form, a pale shadowy face, a
+young weeping girl standing near, soon to be a widow, and you have
+almost the last scene in the short life of Robert Carr.
+
+He was dying, poor fellow, with that secret, which he had no doubt
+shortened his life in endeavouring to trace, still unsolved; and he was
+dying with the conviction, that the proofs did exist somewhere, as fully
+upon him as it ever had been.
+
+"Emma!"
+
+She dried her eyes, and tried to hide that they had been wet, as she
+heard the call. The day was getting on.
+
+"Is Littelby not come yet?"
+
+"Yes, I think he is. Some one came a few minutes ago, and is downstairs
+with Mrs. Dundyke. I think I hear them coming up."
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was coming into the room with a gentleman, a middle-aged
+man with a sharp nose and pleasant dark eyes. It was Mr. Littelby. They
+were left alone together--the lawyer and the dying man. But it was a
+very short and simple task, this will-making. Over almost as soon as
+begun.
+
+"He asked me to tie you up with trustees, Emma," said the dying man;
+"but I have left all to you--children, and money, and all else. You will
+love them, won't you, when I am gone?"
+
+"Oh, Robert, yes!" she said, with a burst of sorrow. "I wish I and they
+could go with you."
+
+"And, Emma, mind that you prosecute this search. I have asked Littelby
+to help you, and he will. He says he expects to leave London at the end
+of the year, for he is in negotiation with another firm; but I dare say
+it will be found before then. Let that search be your first and greatest
+task."
+
+She said it should be--she would have promised anything in that parting
+hour. She lay, with her pretty hair on the counterpane, and her wet eyes
+turned to him, devouring his last looks, listening to his last words.
+Almost literally the last in this world, for, before the close of the
+afternoon, Robert Carr fell into a lethargy, from which he did not awake
+alive.
+
+And those two lone women were together in the house of the dead--widows
+indeed. The one deprived of her young husband almost on the threshold of
+life; the other bereft, she knew not how, of her many years' partner.
+Poor Mrs. Dundyke had hardly wanted more sorrow in her desolate home.
+
+So far as ease in the future went, _she_ was well off. The large income
+mentioned by her to Robert Carr would indeed be hers. It was chiefly the
+result of that first thousand pounds Mr. Dundyke had risked on the Stock
+Exchange. Fortune had favoured him in an unusual degree. You remember
+the nails in the horse-shoe, how they doubled and doubled: so it had
+seemed to be with the thousand pounds of Mr. Dundyke. But poor Mrs.
+Carr's future fortune was all uncertain. Whether she would have
+sufficient to keep her children in easy competency, or whether she would
+find herself, like so many more gentlewomen, obliged to do something for
+her bread in this world of changes, she did not know.
+
+Even in this week that succeeded her husband's death, she was applied to
+for money, which she could not find. The application came from Mr.
+Fauntleroy. Lawyers have a peculiar facility for getting rid of money,
+as some of us have been obliged to know to our cost; and Mr. Fauntleroy
+had already disposed of the first fifty pounds advanced to him, and
+wanted more if he was to go on with the case.
+
+Mrs. Carr had it not. Until affairs should be settled in Rotterdam, she
+had no such sum at her command. She could have procured it indeed from
+many friends, but she was sorely puzzled what to do for the best. On the
+one hand, there was the dying promise to her husband to pursue this
+cause; on the other, there was the extreme doubt whether there was any
+real cause to pursue. If there was no cause, why, then, how worse than
+foolish it would be to spend money over a chimera. Many and many were
+the anxious consultations she had with Mrs. Dundyke, even while her
+husband lay dead in the house.
+
+On the day after the funeral--and there had been no mourner found to
+follow that poor young man to his last home, but one who had been fellow
+curate with him, and who was now in London--Mrs. Dundyke and her visitor
+were alone when a gentleman was shown in. A fine man yet, of middle age,
+but with a slight bend in the shoulders, as if from care, and grey
+threads mingling with his dark hair. It was not a time for Mrs. Carr to
+see strangers, and she rose to quit the drawing-room, after hurriedly
+replacing some papers in a desk she was examining. But there was
+something so noble, so pleasing, so refined, in the countenance of the
+man standing there, his hands held out to Mrs. Dundyke, and a sweet
+smile upon his lips, that she stopped involuntarily.
+
+"Have you forgotten me, Betsey?"
+
+For the moment she really had, for he was much changed; but the voice
+and the smile recalled her memory, and with a glad cry of recognition
+Mrs. Dundyke sprang forward, and received on her lips a sisterly kiss.
+
+"Emma, don't go. This is your husband's friend, and my brother-in-law,
+William Arkell."
+
+Mrs. Carr gladly held out her hand; her pretty face raised in its
+widow's cap. A shade came over William Arkell's at seeing that badge on
+one so young.
+
+He had a little business in London, he explained, connected with the
+transfer of some of his property, and came up, instead of writing; came
+up--there was no doubt of it, though he did not say so--that he might
+have the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Dundyke.
+
+Mrs. Carr left the room, and Mr. Arkell drew his chair nearer to his
+sister-in-law.
+
+"You have heard nothing further, Betsey, of--of of your lost husband?"
+
+She shook her head; she should never hear that again.
+
+It was only natural that she should relate the circumstances to him, now
+that they met, although he had heard them so fully from Mr. Prattleton.
+Where much mystery exists, especially pertaining to undiscovered crime,
+it seems that we can never be tired of attempting to solve it. Human
+nature is the same all the world over, and these things do possess an
+irrepressible attraction for the human heart--very human it is, now and
+then. Mr. Arkell sat with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his
+chin resting on his hand; he was looking dreamily into the fire as they
+talked.
+
+"I should strongly suspect that Mr. Hardcastle, Betsey; should you know
+him if you saw him again?"
+
+"Know him! know that same Mr. Hardcastle!" she repeated, wondering at
+what seemed so superfluous a question. "I should know him to the very
+end of my life. I should know him by his eyes, if by nothing else. They
+seem to be always before mine."
+
+"Were they peculiar eyes, then?"
+
+"Very. The first time I saw him, that morning at breakfast, his eyes
+seemed to strike upon my memory with a sort of repulsion. I felt sure I
+had seen eyes like them somewhere; and that the _other_ eyes had caused
+me repulse likewise. All the time we were together at Geneva, his eyes
+kept puzzling me; it was like a word we have on the tip of the tongue,
+every moment thinking we must recollect it, but it keeps baffling us. So
+was it with Mr. Hardcastle's eyes; and it was only in the moment he was
+leaving for Genoa that I recollected whose they were like."
+
+"And whose were they like?"
+
+"A gentleman's I never saw but twice; once at your house, at your own
+wedding breakfast, and once in the week subsequent to it at Mrs. Daniel
+Arkell's: Benjamin Carr."
+
+"Who?" exclaimed Mr. Arkell.
+
+"Benjamin Carr, the present squire's son."
+
+He sat with sudden uprightness in his chair, staring at her. The
+strange scene, when Robert Carr had likened Benjamin to the suspected
+murderer, was flashing into his mind. What did it _mean_, that agitation
+of Benjamin's? What did this likeness, now spoken of, mean? A wild doubt
+of horror came creeping over Mr. Arkell.
+
+He opened his lips to speak, but recollected himself before the hasty
+impulse was put in force. Mrs. Dundyke noticed nothing unusual; her eyes
+and her thoughts were alike absorbed in the past.
+
+"Will you describe this Mr. Hardcastle to me?" he asked presently,
+breaking the pause of silence: "as accurately and minutely as you can."
+
+He noted every point that she gave in answer, every little detail. And
+he came to the conclusion that if Benjamin Carr was not Mr. Hardcastle,
+he might certainly have sat for his portrait.
+
+"Unfortunately," said Mr. Arkell, speaking more to himself than to her,
+"were this man apprehended and punished, it could not bring poor Mr.
+Dundyke back to life."
+
+"Alas no, it could not. I would almost rather let things remain as they
+are. If the man is guilty, his daily life must be one perpetual,
+ever-present punishment."
+
+"Ay, indeed," murmured Mr. Arkell; "better leave him to it."
+
+And he rather persistently, had her suspicions been awakened, led the
+conversation into other channels.
+
+"Let me say to you what I chiefly came to say, Betsey," he whispered to
+Mrs. Dundyke in parting. "This has been a sudden and unexpected blow for
+you. I do not know how you may be left in regard to means; but if you
+have need of help, temporary or otherwise, you will let me know it. I
+have a right to give it, you know: you are Charlotte's sister."
+
+The tears fell from her eyes on his hands as she pressed them gratefully
+in hers. She did not say how well she was left off, for her heart was
+full; she only thanked him, and intimated that she had enough.
+
+Mr. Arkell went away in a sort of perplexed dream. _Could_ that
+suspicion of Benjamin Carr be a true one? _He_ would be silent; but it
+was nearly certain to come out in some other way: murder generally does.
+From Mrs. Dundyke's he went straight up to Lady Dewsbury's, and found
+that she and Miss Arkell had again gone out of town. It was a
+disappointment; he had not seen Mildred for years and years.
+
+Mrs. Carr came back to the room, and resumed her occupation after he had
+gone--that of searching amid the papers in the desk of the late Robert
+Carr the elder. It had proved to be his own desk that her husband had
+wanted her to bring over--but that is of no consequence. She was
+searching for a very simple thing--merely a receipt for a small sum of
+money which she had herself paid for Mr. Carr just before he died, and
+had returned the receipt to him; but it is often upon the merest trifles
+that the great events of life turn. The claim for this small sum she
+heard was sent in again, and she thought perhaps she might find the
+receipt in the desk, where Mr. Carr had sometimes used to place such
+papers. She did not find that, but she found something else.
+
+Mrs. Dundyke was sitting by, between the other side of the table and the
+fire. She was talking about the Arkells--the kindly generosity of
+William, the selfishness and persistent ill-will of Charlotte.
+
+"And the children?" asked Mrs. Carr, as she stood, opening paper after
+paper. "Do they follow their father or mother in their treatment of
+you?"
+
+"Of the daughters I know little; I may say nothing. They have never
+noticed me, even by a message. But the son--ah! you should know Travice
+Arkell! I cannot tell you how I love him. Will you believe that
+Charlotte----What is the matter?"
+
+Emma Carr had come upon a sealed letter in an old blotting-book. The
+superscription was in the handwriting of her father-in-law, and ran as
+follows:--"To my son Robert. Not to be opened until after the death of
+my father, Marmaduke Carr."
+
+She uttered the exclamation which had attracted the attention of Mrs.
+Dundyke, and sat down on her chair. With a prevision that this letter
+had something to do with the question of the marriage, she tore the
+letter open and sat gazing on it spellbound.
+
+"Have you found the receipt, my dear?"
+
+Not the receipt. With her cheeks flushing, her pulses quickening, her
+hands trembling, she laid the letter open before Mrs. Dundyke. "Robert
+was right; Robert was right! Oh! if he had but lived to read this! How
+could he have overlooked this, when he examined the desk after his
+father's death? It must have slipped between the leaves of the
+blotting-book, and been hidden there."
+
+  "MY DEAR SON ROBERT,--There may arise a question of your legitimacy
+  when the time shall arrive for you to take possession of your
+  grandfather's property. On the day I left Westerbury for ever, I
+  married your mother, Martha Ann Hughes--she would not else have
+  come with me. We were married in her parish church at Westerbury,
+  St. James the Less, and you will find it duly entered in the
+  register. This will be sufficient to prove your rights, so that
+  there may be no litigation.
+
+                               "Your affectionate father,
+                                                    "RT. CARR."
+
+And, scarcely knowing whether she was awake or dreaming, while Mrs.
+Dundyke, in vain attempted to recover her astonishment, Mrs. Carr wrote
+a line of explanation inside an envelope, and despatched the
+all-important document to Westerbury to Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MR. RICHARDS' MORNING CALL.
+
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy was seated at breakfast, when this missive reached him.
+His two strapping daughters were with him: buxom, vulgar damsels,
+attired this morning in Magenta skirts and straw-coloured jackets. Mrs.
+Fauntleroy had been some years dead, and they ruled the house, and
+nearly ruled the lawyer. Strong-willed man though he was, carrying
+things out of doors with an iron hand, and sometimes a coarse one, he
+would yield to domestic tyranny; as many another has to do, if it were
+but known. It was fond tyranny, however, here; for whatever may have
+been the faults of the Miss Fauntleroys, they loved their father with a
+tender love. They were the only children of the lawyer--his
+co-heiresses--and to him they were as the apple of his eye.
+
+The room they sat in faced the garden--a large fine garden at the back
+of the house. The leaves were red with the glowing tints of autumn, and
+as Mr. Fauntleroy looked up from his well-covered breakfast-table at
+the October sky, he made some remark upon the famous run the hounds
+would make; and a half sigh escaped his lips that his own hunting days
+were gone for ever.
+
+"Would you be afraid to ride now, pa?"
+
+"Look at my weight, Lizzy."
+
+"I think some who ride are as heavy as you," was Miss Elizabeth's
+answer.
+
+"Ah! but they are used to it; they have kept the practice up. Never a
+better follower than I in my younger days--always in at the death--but
+that's a long while ago now. I gave up hunting when I settled down. What
+d'ye call that, Bab?"
+
+He was pointing with his fork to a dish apart. Miss Barbara looked at it
+critically, and did not recognise it. "I dare say it's some dish the new
+cook has sent up. It looks nice, pa."
+
+"Hand some of it over, then," said Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+She helped him plentifully. The lawyer and his daughters were all fond
+of nice dishes, and liked good servings of them; as perhaps their large
+frames and their high colours testified. Miss Lizzy pushed up her plate.
+
+"I'll take some, too, Bab."
+
+"About that pic-nic, pa? Are we----"
+
+"Oh! I don't know," interrupted the lawyer, with his mouth full. "You
+girls are always bothering for something of the sort. Get it up if you
+like, only don't expect me to go."
+
+"The Arkells will join us, pa; Bab has asked them."
+
+"Of course," said the lawyer with a loud laugh. "She'd not fail to ask
+_them_. How was Mr. Travice, Bab?"
+
+"I shan't tell you, pa," answered Miss Bab, tossing her head in
+demonstrative indignation, though her whole face beamed with a gratified
+smile. "The idea! How should I know anything about Mr. Travice Arkell!"
+
+"A good-looking young fellow," said the lawyer, significantly. "Perhaps
+others may be finding him so as well as you, Bab."
+
+"Pa, then, you are a stupid! And I want to know who it is that's coming
+to dinner to-day?"
+
+"Coming to dinner to-day, Bab? Nobody that I know of."
+
+"You said last night you had invited somebody, but you went to sleep
+when I asked who."
+
+"Oh! I remember. I met him yesterday, and he said he was going to call
+to-day. I told him to come in and dine, if he liked. It's Ben Carr."
+
+"Oh!" said Miss Bab, with a depreciating sniff. "Only Ben Carr!"
+
+"He's over here for a few days, stopping with Mrs. Lewis. He wants to be
+off to Australia or some place, but the squire turns crusty about
+advancing the funds. Ben and he came to an explosion over it, and Ben
+has made himself scarce at home in consequence. What's the time, Bab?"
+
+Barbara Fauntleroy glanced over her father's head at the French clock
+behind him. "It's twenty-five minutes after nine, pa."
+
+"Eh!" cried the lawyer, starting up. "Why, what a time I have been at
+breakfast! You girls should not keep me with your chatter."
+
+He gathered up his letters, which lay in a stack beside him, and
+hastened into his office. The head clerk, Kenneth, was in the outer
+room, with one of the other clerks, a young man named Omer. Mr.
+Fauntleroy went in to ask a question.
+
+"Have those deeds come in yet from the engrosser's, Kenneth?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Not come! Why they promised them for nine o'clock this morning, and now
+it's half-past. Go for them yourself, Kenneth, at once, and give them a
+word of a sort. It's not the first time by many that they've been
+behindhand."
+
+Mr. Kenneth took his hat and went out; and his master shut himself in
+his private room and began to open his letters. Sometimes he opened his
+letters at breakfast time, at others he carried them, as now, into the
+office.
+
+Amidst these letters was the envelope despatched by Mrs. Carr,
+containing the important letter found in the desk. To describe Mr.
+Fauntleroy's astonishment when he read it, would be beyond mortal pen.
+To think that they should have been looking half over the world for this
+marriage record, when it was lying quietly under their very nose!
+
+"By George!" exclaimed Mr. Fauntleroy. "A clever trick, though, of
+Robert Carr's--if he _did_ so marry her. The secret was well kept. He
+would be sure we should suspect any place rather than Westerbury."
+"Omer!" he called out aloud.
+
+The clerk came in, in answer, and stood before the table of Mr.
+Fauntleroy.
+
+"Go down to St. James the Less, and look through the register. See if
+there's a marriage entered between Robert Carr and--what was the girl's
+Christian name?--Martha Ann Hughes. Stop a minute, I'll give you the
+date of the year. And--Omer--keep a silent tongue in your head."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy nodded significantly, and his clerk went out, knowing
+what that mandate meant, and that it might not be disobeyed. He came
+back after a while and went in to Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+"Well?" said the latter, looking up eagerly.
+
+"It is there, sir."
+
+"By George!" repeated the lawyer. "Only to think of that! That's all,
+Omer," he added, after a pause. "Mr. Kenneth wants you. And mind what I
+charged you as to a silent tongue."
+
+"No fear, sir," said Omer, as he retired. And to give him his due there
+was no fear. One clerk had been discharged from Mr. Fauntleroy's office
+six months before, some tattling having been traced back to him; but
+Omer was of a silent nature, and cautious besides.
+
+"I shall never be surprised at anything again," soliloquized Mr.
+Fauntleroy. "A week longer, and I should have thrown up the cause,
+unless the Holland Carrs had come forward with money. Won't I go on with
+it now! But--I suppose--" he continued more slowly, and in due
+deliberation, "the cause will be at an end now. Old Carr can't hold out
+in the face of this. Shall _I_ tell of it? If I don't--and they don't
+else come to know of it--and the cause goes on, there'll be a pretty
+picking for both sides; and old Carr can afford it, for it's his pocket
+that will have to stand costs now. I'm not obliged to tell them; and I
+_won't_," concluded Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+But this little cunning plan of secresy on the part of Mr. Fauntleroy
+was destined to be defeated. Mynn and Mynn, the solicitors of Eckford,
+were in negotiation with a gentleman in London to take the head of their
+office, and act as its chief during their own frequent absence. This
+gentleman, by one of those coincidences that arise in this world, to
+help our projects or baffle them, as the case may be, happened to be Mr.
+Littelby. The negotiation had been opened for some little time, and was
+only waiting for a personal interview for completion; Mr. Littelby
+himself being rather anxious for it, as it held out greater advantages
+than he enjoyed in his present post, one of which was a possible
+partnership. Mr. George Mynn made a journey to London to see him; and
+while he was gone, it chanced that the clerk, Richards, had occasion to
+see Mr. Fauntleroy.
+
+He, Richards, arrived in Westerbury betimes on this same morning, and
+was told by Kenneth that he might go in to Mr. Fauntleroy. Richards
+found, however, that the room was empty; Mr. Fauntleroy having quitted
+it for an instant, leaving the inner door ajar.
+
+The morning's letters, open, lay in a stack on the table, one upon
+another, faces upwards. Mr. Richards, a prying man, with a curiosity as
+sharp as his nose, and both were sharp as a needle, saw these letters,
+and took the liberty of bending his body forward from the spot where he
+stood, to bring his eyes within range of their contents. He read the
+first, which did him no good whatever; and then gently lifted it an inch
+slant-wise with his thumb and finger, and so came to the second. That
+likewise afforded him scant gratification; for it did not concern him at
+all, or any business with which he could possibly be connected, and he
+lifted it gingerly and came to the third. The third was the
+all-important letter of the deceased Robert Carr; and Mr. Richards read
+it with devouring eyes.
+
+He did not care to go on now to the other letters. _This_ was enough;
+and he regaled himself with a second perusal. A faint foot-fall in the
+passage warned him, and Mr. Richards stole away from danger.
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy entered, coming bustling in by the door he had left ajar.
+Surprised perhaps to see the room tenanted which he had left empty, he
+glanced at his letters. Thought is quick. They were lying in the stack
+just as he had placed them, certainly undisturbed for any sign they
+gave; and the visitor was sitting yards off, in a remote chair behind
+the other door, his legs crossed and his hat held on his knees.
+
+"Ah, Richards! you are here early this morning!"
+
+"I was obliged to come early, sir, to get back in time," said Richards
+as he rose. "Mr. Mynn is ill, as usual, and Mr. George went to London
+yesterday afternoon; so the office is left to me."
+
+"Gone to engage his new clerk, isn't he?" asked Mr. Fauntleroy, who had
+no more objection than Richards to hear somewhat of his neighbours'
+business.
+
+"I believe so; gone to see him, at all events," replied Richards,
+speaking with scant ceremony; but it was in his nature so to do. "They
+want him to come next month, I hear."
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Littelton, or Littelby, or some such name. I heard them talking of him
+in their room. We are going to have a busy winter of it, Mr.
+Fauntleroy," continued the candid Richards, brushing a speck off his
+hat; "so the governors want the new man to come to us next month, or in
+December at latest. We have three causes already on hand for the spring
+assizes."
+
+"That's pretty well for your quiet folks," returned Mr. Fauntleroy, as
+he sat down and placed a large weight on the stack of letters. "Whose
+are they?"
+
+"Well, there's that old-standing cause of the Whitcombs, the remanet
+from last assizes; and there's a new one that I suppose I must not talk
+about: it's a breach of trust affair, and our side want it kept close,
+meaning to have a try at going in for a compromise, which they'll never
+get: and then there's your cause, Carr _versus_ Carr. But, Mr.
+Fauntleroy, surely you'll never bring that into court! you _can't_ win,
+you know."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy's eyes rested lovingly for a moment on the stack of
+letters. "If clients are sanguine without reasonable cause, we can't
+help it you know, Richards."
+
+"Well, how those Holland Carrs _can_ be sanguine bangs me hollow!" was
+the retort of Mr. Richards. "They've never had the ghost of a case from
+the first. I was dining at the old squire's on Sunday again, and we got
+talking of it. The old man was saying he thought the Carrs over in
+Holland must be mad, to persist risking their money in this way; and so
+they must be. There never could have been any marriage, Mr. Fauntleroy:
+I dare say you feel as sure of it as everybody else does."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy shrugged his huge shoulders. "The clergyman is dead; and
+the rest may not be so sanguine as he was. I confess I did think him a
+little mad. And now to your business, Richards. I suppose you have come
+about that tithe affair. Will Kenneth do for you? I am busy this
+morning."
+
+"Kenneth won't do until I have had a word with yourself, and shown you a
+paper," replied Richards, taking out his letter-case. "Just look at
+that, Mr. Fauntleroy."
+
+Mr. Fauntleroy unfolded the paper handed to him. It had nothing to do
+with our history; but he apparently found it so interesting or
+important, that Richards was not dismissed for nearly an hour. And at
+his departure, to make up for lost time, Mr. Fauntleroy set to work with
+a will: one of his first tasks being to drop a line to Mrs. Carr,
+acknowledging the receipt of the important letter, and cautioning her to
+keep the discovery a strict secret. All unconscious, as he was, that one
+had seen it in his own office.
+
+Mr. Richards was scuttering along the street to the railway station,
+when he encountered Benjamin Carr. He could hardly stop to speak, for
+his own office really wanted him. In the past few weeks, since their
+first introduction, he and Benjamin Carr had been a great deal together,
+and the latter placed himself right in his path.
+
+"I can't stay a minute, Ben,"--they had grown familiar, as you
+perceive,--"I shall lose the train."
+
+Benjamin Carr turned, and stepped out alongside him, with a pace as
+quick. He began telling him, as they walked, of an outbreak he had had
+with the "old man," as he was pleased to call his father. "It was all
+about this money," exclaimed Ben. "He refuses to give me any until this
+affair is settled; persists in saying he may lose the inheritance:
+altogether we got in a passion, both of us. As if he _could_ lose it!"
+
+"I suppose it is within the range of possibility," said Richards.
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Benjamin Carr. "You'll say there was a marriage
+next."
+
+"There might have been."
+
+"Pigs might fly."
+
+"Suppose there _was_ a marriage--and that it can be proved? What then?"
+
+"Suppose there wasn't," wrathfully returned Ben Carr. "I'm not in a mood
+for joking, Richards."
+
+They stepped on to the platform. The train was not in yet; was scarcely
+due: one of the porters remarked that "that there mid-day train didn't
+keep her time as well as some on 'em did." Richards familiarly passed
+his arm within Benjamin Carr's, and drew him beyond the platform. They
+turned sideways and halted before a dwarf wall, looking over it at the
+town, which lay beneath.
+
+"You say you are not in a mood for joking, Ben: neither am I; and what I
+said to you I said with a meaning," began Richards in a low tone. "It
+has come to my knowledge--and you needn't ask me how or when or where,
+for I shan't tell you--that old Marmaduke's money, so far as you Eckford
+Carrs go, _is_ imperilled. If the thing goes on to trial, you'll lose
+it: but I should think it won't go on to trial, for you'd never let it
+when you come to know what I know. The other side has got hold of a
+piece of evidence that would swamp you."
+
+Benjamin Carr's great dark eyes turned themselves fiercely upon his
+companion: he saw that he was, in truth, not jesting. "It's not the
+record of the marriage, is it?" he asked, after a pause.
+
+"Something like it."
+
+Not a word was spoken for a couple of minutes. A little tinkling bell
+was heard in the station. Benjamin Carr broke the silence.
+
+"Real, or forged?"
+
+"Ah, I don't know. Real, I suppose. The man's dead you see, that young
+clergyman-fellow who came down, so he'd be hardly likely to get it up. I
+don't see how it could be done, either, in the present case. It's easier
+to suppress evidence of a marriage than it is to invent it. Still it
+_may_ be on the cross."
+
+"Can't you speak plain English, Richards."
+
+"I hardly dare. But I suppose you could be silent, if I were to."
+
+"I suppose I could. I have had secrets to carry in my lifetime weightier
+than this, whatever it may be."
+
+Benjamin Carr lifted his hat, and wiped his brow with his handkerchief,
+as if the secrets were there and felt heavy still. Richards looked at
+him.
+
+"You may speak out, Richards. You can't believe," he added, his tone
+changed to one of passionate pain, "that it is not safe with me."
+
+"It must be kept safe for your own sake, for your family's sake. If any
+evidence _has_ turned up, there's no cause to let the world know it
+before you are compelled. It would be damaging your cause irreparably."
+
+Ben Carr nodded assent. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I think they have found out where the marriage was solemnized. I
+_think_ so, mind; I am not positive. That is, I am not positive of the
+fact; only that they think it so."
+
+"How did you hear it?"
+
+"Now, Ben, you'll not get me to let out that. I've said so. Perhaps I
+dreamt it; perhaps a little bird told me: never mind. I mean to go over
+to your place to see Valentine to-night, and drop him a hint of the
+state of affairs. Shall you be at home?"
+
+"I didn't mean to be at home for some days to come; but I'll meet you
+there. Take care of one thing: that you say nothing to the squire."
+
+Mr. Richards gave a knowing nod sideways, as if to intimate that he knew
+just as well what to do and what not to do as Benjamin Carr. Just then
+the noise of a train was heard puffing up.
+
+"Here it comes, Richards."
+
+"Here it doesn't," was the reply. "It's coming the wrong way. This is
+the London train coming in."
+
+The train came in, and stopped on the other side of the platform, while
+it discharged its passengers and any luggage pertaining to them. It then
+went puffing on, and the passengers crossed the line to this side, as
+they had to do before they could leave the station. Benjamin Carr and
+his friend stood still to look at them, and the former recognised in one
+of them Mr. Arkell.
+
+"How d'ye do, Mr. Arkell," said Ben, holding out his hand. "Been out
+anywhere?"
+
+But Mr. Arkell did not see the hand. What with the jostling crowd, what
+with a small portmanteau he was carrying, what with wondering who the
+stranger might be, hanging lovingly on Ben's arm, for Mr. Arkell had not
+the honour of knowing Mr. Richards by sight, he certainly did not appear
+to see the held-out hand. "Where have you been?" inquired Ben,
+inquisitively.
+
+"I have been to London, Mr. Benjamin, as you wish to know. A short
+visit, though."
+
+"Oh," said Ben, meaning to be jocular. "Seen any of my friends there?"
+
+"I saw Mrs. Carr, the clergyman's young widow: I don't know whether you
+count her as one of your friends. And I saw Mrs. Dundyke."
+
+There was a look in Mr. Arkell's face, not usual on it: a peculiar,
+solemn, penetrating look. Somehow Mr. Ben Carr's jocularity and his
+courage went out of him together.
+
+"Mrs. Dundyke?" he repeated, vaguely, staring over the heads of the
+passing passengers. "Oh, ah, I remember, that connexion of yours. I
+don't know her."
+
+"I got her to give me a description of the man, calling himself
+Hardcastle, who lies under the suspicion of knowing rather too clearly
+what became of Mr. Dundyke. Poor Robert Carr, just dead, attempted the
+description of him, you may remember, at your father's table."
+
+"Ah; yes," said Ben, striving to be more vague than before: and his dark
+face perceptibly changed its hue.
+
+"And I may tell you that this description of Mrs. Dundyke's has made a
+singular impression upon me, and a very disagreeable one. It is not my
+affair," he added, slowly and distinctly; "and for the present I shall
+not make it mine: but----"
+
+"Here's your train, Richards. Got a return ticket?"
+
+The two walked forward to meet it, Richards evidently pulled along by
+his companion. The train came dashing in too far, and had to be backed:
+porters ran about, departing passengers hustled each other. And
+altogether, in the general confusion, there was no more to be seen of
+Mr. Benjamin Carr.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A DISLIKE THAT WAS TO BEAR ITS FRUITS.
+
+
+The information, hinted at by Miss Beauclerc to Henry Arkell, had proved
+to be correct--the dean and chapter purposed to hold an examination of
+the college school.
+
+To describe the consternation this caused would be difficult. It fell,
+not only upon the boys, but on the masters, like a clap of thunder:
+indeed the former cared for it the least. That the school was not in a
+state, in regard to its proficiency of study, to bear an examination,
+was a fact known to nearly everybody; and the head master, had it been
+possible, would have resisted the fiat of the dean.
+
+In point of fact, the school had become notorious for its inefficiency.
+The old days of confining the boys' studies exclusively to Latin and
+Greek were over; but the additional branches inaugurated could scarcely
+be said to have begun. The masters, wedded to the old system, did not
+take to them kindly; the boys did not, of their own will, take to them
+at all. They could not spell; they knew nothing of English grammar,
+except what they could pick up of it through their acquaintance with the
+Latin; they hardly knew a single event in English, French, or modern
+history; and of geography they were intensively ignorant. What could be
+expected? For years and years, for many hours a day, had these boys been
+kept to work, always at the old routine work, Latin and Greek. Examine
+them in these classics, and Mr. Wilberforce would have no reason to
+complain of his pupils; but in all else a charity boy could beat them.
+Had one of those college boys been required to write a letter in
+English, every other word in it would have been spelled incorrectly. I
+am giving you a true account of the state of the school at that period:
+and I fear that you will scarcely believe it. A few of the boys, a very
+few, only some three or four, had been generally well educated; but
+these owed it to the care, the forethought, perhaps the _means_ of their
+parents: home tutors were expensive.
+
+As Miss Beauclerc had said, it was in consequence of a letter, written
+by one of the senior boys, that this trouble had come about. It was a
+disgraceful letter--speaking in reference to its spelling and
+composition--neither more nor less. The letter had been brought under
+the astonished eyes of one of the chapter, and he showed it to the
+dean. They awoke from their supineness, and much indignation at the
+young scholar was privately expressed. What _did_ they expect? Did they
+think spelling came to the boys intuitively, as pecking at grain does to
+birds? It may be said that the boys ought to have been able to spell
+correctly before entering the school, and to have possessed some other
+general learning; that the parents ought to have taken care of that. But
+"ought" does not go for much in this world. Many of the boys were
+indulged children who had never been brought on at all, except in
+reading, and that was essential, or they could not be admitted; and, at
+that time, they entered young--nine years old. As they went in, little
+ignoramuses, so they remained, except in the classics. Many a boy has
+gone from that school to the university not educated at all, save in the
+dead languages.
+
+Of course, when the innovation (as the masters regarded it) came in, a
+little stir was caused. A pretence was made of teaching the school
+foreign branches, such as spelling and geography; but whether it might
+be owing to the innate prejudice of their masters, or to their own
+stupidity, little, if any, progress was made. The boys remained
+lamentably deficient; and they thought it no shame to be so. Rather the
+contrary, in fact; for a feeling grew up in the school that these
+common branches of learning were not essential to them as gentlemen;
+that it was derogatory altogether to a foundation school to have them
+introduced. The masters had winked at this state of things, and they
+perhaps did not know how intensely ignorant some of their best classical
+scholars were.
+
+It may be imagined, therefore, what the consternation was when the
+dean's announcement was received early in August. There was to be an
+examination held; but not until November; so the boys and the masters
+had three months to prepare. It's true you cannot convert ignorant boys
+into finished scholars in three months, however humble may be the
+attainments required; but you may do something towards it by means of
+drilling. So the boys, to their intense disgust, were drilled late and
+early--and that disgust did not render their apprehensions the quicker.
+
+Amidst the very few who need not fear that, or any other examination,
+was Henry Arkell. He was not yet a senior boy (speaking of the four
+seniors), but he was by far the best scholar in the school. He owed this
+chiefly to his father. Mr. Peter Arkell was so finished a scholar
+himself, it had been strange indeed if he had not sought to render his
+son one; and Henry's abilities were of a most superior order.
+Indeed--but that a sort of prejudice exists against these clever lads,
+I could say a great deal more of his abilities, his attainments, than I
+mean to say--for this is no fictitious history. Intellectual, clever,
+good, refined, sensitive, Henry Arkell seemed to be one of those
+superior spirits not meant for this world. The event too often proves
+that they were not meant for it.
+
+He was not a favourite in the school, except with a few. By the majority
+he was intensely disliked. The dislike arose from envy, and his own
+gifts excited it. His unusual beauty, his sensitive temperament, his
+refinement of manner, his ever-pervading sense of religion, his
+honourable nature, as seen in even the smallest action,--all and each of
+them were objectionable to the rough schoolboys. Most of these qualities
+he had inherited from his mother, and for any one of them, the school,
+as a whole, would have ridiculed and despised him. They would have been
+quite enough without his superior advancement; which put _them_ to the
+shame, and called forth now and again some stinging comparison from the
+lips of the head master. When he first entered the school, he had
+unintentionally excited the ill-will of the two sons of Mrs. Lewis, and
+of their chosen companions, the two Aultanes. These boys longed above
+everything to thrash him every day of their lives; but he had been
+taken under the protection of Mr. St. John and Travice Arkell, and they
+dared not, and it did not increase their love for him.
+
+But there was to arise a worse cause of enmity than any of these, as
+Henry grew older, and _that_ was the favour shown him by the dean's
+daughter. To see him under the especial favour of the dean was
+aggravation enough; but that was as nothing compared to the intimacy
+accorded him by the dean's daughter. You know what these things are with
+schoolboys. Half the school believed themselves in love with this
+attractive girl, who condescended to freedom with them; the other half
+_were_ in love with her. After their fashion, you know. It was not that
+serious love that makes or mars the heart for all time, though the boys
+might think it so. Lewis senior--his name was Roland, and he was one of
+the four senior boys--was especially envious of this favour of Miss
+Beauclerc's. He was very fond of her, and would have given all he
+possessed in the world for it to be accorded to him. _He_ could only
+love and admire her at a distance; while Arkell might tell it to her
+face if he pleased--and Lewis felt sure he _did_. He hated Henry with a
+passionate hatred. He saw, with that intuition natural to these things,
+that Henry loved Georgina Beauclerc, and with no passing school-boy's
+love. He wished that the earth contained only their three selves, that
+he might set upon the fragile boy and kill him, and keep the young lady
+to himself ever afterwards--Adam and Eve in a second Paradise. Indeed,
+Mr. Lewis had got into a habit of indulging this train of thought rather
+more than was wholesome for him, and would have shot Henry Arkell in a
+duel with all the non-compunction in the world.
+
+Not being able to do this--for the human race could not be exterminated
+so easily, and duels are not in fashion--he made up for the
+disappointment by rendering Henry Arkell's life as miserable as it is
+well possible for one boy to render another's. He excited the school
+against him; he openly derided the position and known poverty of his
+father, Peter Arkell; and he positively affected to rebel--he would have
+rebelled had he dared--when Henry came to reside temporarily in the head
+master's house. The scholars in that house had hitherto been gentlemen,
+he said, loudly. Indeed, but for one fortunate circumstance, Henry's
+life at the master's might have been rendered nearly unbearable; and
+this was, that he was in favour with the senior boy--an idle,
+gentlemanly fellow of the name of Jocelyn. So long as Jocelyn remained
+in the school, there could be no very undue open oppression put upon
+Henry Arkell. It was not that the head boy held Henry in any especial
+favour; but he was of too just a nature, too much the gentleman in ideas
+and habits, to permit cruelty or unfairness of any sort. But you have
+now heard enough to gather that Henry Arkell was not in favour with the
+majority of the college boys, his fellows; and you hear its causes.
+
+The cramming that the boys were now subjected to, did not improve their
+temper. Unfortunately, the dean had not specified--perhaps
+purposely--what would be the branches chosen for examination. Mr.
+Wilberforce and the under masters presumed that it would chiefly lie in
+the classics, and, so far, were tolerably easy; but the result of this
+was, that the Latin and Greek lessons were increased, leaving less time
+for what they were pleased to consider inferior studies.
+
+"Suppose," suggested the second master, one day, "it should be in those
+other studies that the dean purposes to examine them?"
+
+Mr. Wilberforce turned purple.
+
+"In _those_!--to the exclusion of the higher! Nonsense! It is not
+likely. The boys will cut a pretty figure if he should."
+
+"The fact is, they are such a dull lot."
+
+"Most of them: yes. I think, Mr. Roberts, you had better hold some
+dictation classes; and we'll get in a few conspicuous maps."
+
+But all the studies that came in addition, whether dictation classes or
+the staring at maps, the boys resented wofully; and though they were
+obliged to submit, it did not, I say, improve their temper. One
+afternoon in October, when everything seemed to have gone wrong, and the
+school rather wished, on the whole, that they had never been born, or
+that books had not been invented, or that they were private pupils of
+the head master's (for _they_ were not to be included in the
+examination, only the forty foundation boys, the king's scholars), the
+school was waiting impatiently to hear half-past four strike, for then
+only another half-hour must elapse before they would be released from
+school. The choristers had come in at four o'clock from service with the
+head master, whose week it was for chanting, and had settled down to
+their respective desks. Henry Arkell, who was at the first desk now, but
+nothing like its head, for promotion in the school was not attained by
+proficiency, but by priority of entrance, had come in with the rest; he
+was senior chorister now, and was seated bending over a book, his head
+half buried between his raised hands, and his elbows on the desk.
+
+"What are you conning there so attentively, Mr. Arkell?"
+
+The authoritative words came from Lewis. He was monitor that week, and
+therefore head of all the school, under the senior boy: his present
+position on the rolls was that of fourth senior.
+
+"I'm reading Greek," replied Henry, without removing his hands or
+looking up. "I've done my lessons."
+
+"Take your hands and elbows down. I should like to see."
+
+Down went the hands and elbows, but he did not look up.
+
+"I thought it might be an English comedy instead of a Greek tragedy,"
+observed Lewis, satirically; "but it _is_ Greek, I see. Boys, he's
+reading Greek! He's thinking to take the shine out of us at the
+examination. Preparing! Oh!"
+
+"Not at all," said Henry, quietly. "I should have been as well prepared
+for the examination at a day's notice, as I am after nearly three
+months'. So might you have been if you'd chosen."
+
+"You insolent young beggar! Do you mean to say I am not prepared?"
+
+"I said nothing of the sort, Lewis."
+
+"You implied it, though. _You_ needn't think to get the prize--if it's
+true that the dean gives one."
+
+"I don't think to get it. I wish you'd let me go on with my book."
+
+"Oh yes, you do. You think to creep up the dean's sleeve, at second
+hand, through somebody that's a friend of yours; or that you are
+presumptuous enough to fancy is."
+
+He understood the allusion, and suddenly raised his hands again, for the
+delicate hue of his transparent cheek changed to crimson. Lewis noted
+the movement.
+
+"Now, by Jove, I'll put you up for punishment. I order your elbows off
+the desk, and you fling them on again in defiance. Wilberforce has
+flogged for less."
+
+"Be quiet, Lewis," interposed Jocelyn. "Arkell's doing nothing that you
+need trouble him for. Just turn your attention to that second desk, and
+see what's going on there. They'll get Mr. Wilberforce's eyes upon them
+directly."
+
+Lewis could have found in his heart to hang the senior boy. He was
+always interfering with him in this manner whenever he was monitor, to
+the detriment of his dignity as such. Lewis immediately struck up a
+wordy war, until the master's attention was excited and he commanded
+silence.
+
+Oh, if this dislike of Henry Arkell had but died out at first! half this
+history would not then have been written. It might have done so under
+different circumstances; it might, perhaps, have done so but for the
+dean's daughter. From the very first hour that she knew him, Georgina
+Beauclerc made no secret of her liking. When she met the college boys,
+child though she was then, she would single him out from the rest, and
+stop talking to him. Her governess used to look defiance, but that made
+not the least impression on Miss Beauclerc. She invited him to the
+deanery; _they_ never were allowed to put their noses inside it, except
+at those odd moments when they went to solicit the dean to allow them
+holiday from the cathedral; she would pass them sometimes without the
+slightest notice in the world, but she never so passed _him_.
+
+If he had but been a dull, stupid, clumsy boy! Strange though it may
+seem, the rest hated him because he did his lessons. _Their_ tasks were
+hurried over, imperfectly learnt at the best, if at all, and were
+generally concluded with a caning. His were always perfectly and
+efficiently done. They called him hard names for this; prig, snob,
+sneak; but, in point of fact, the boy was never allowed the opportunity
+of _not_ doing them, for his father on that score was a martinet, and
+drilled him at home just as much as Mr. Wilberforce did at school. And,
+greatest of all advantages, his early education had been so
+comprehensive and sound. The horribly hard lessons, that were as death
+to the rest, seemed but play to him; and the natural consequence was,
+that the envy boiled over. Circumstances, in this point of view, were
+not favourable to him.
+
+The long afternoon came to an end, five o'clock struck, and the boys
+clattered down the broad schoolroom steps, making the grounds and the
+old cloisters echo with their noise. There had been little time for play
+latterly; since the announcement of the forthcoming examination, the
+head and other masters had been awfully exacting on the subject of
+lessons, not to be trifled with. Henry Arkell, from the state of
+preparation in which he always was, had nearly as much time on his hands
+as usual, and had not ceased to take his lessons on the organ, or to
+practise on it twice a week, as was his custom. He learnt of the
+cathedral organist, Mr. Paul; for Mrs. Peter Arkell had deemed it well
+that Henry's great taste for music should continue to be cultivated.
+Another of the boys, named Robbins, a private pupil of the head
+master's, also learnt. The organist would not allow them to touch the
+noted cathedral instrument, save in his presence; and they were
+permitted by Mr. Wilberforce to practise in the church of St. James the
+Less, of which, as you may remember, he was the incumbent. One of the
+minor canons invariably held this living, for it was in the gift of the
+Dean and Chapter.
+
+Henry was going there to practise this evening. He was at the house of
+the head master yet; his friends being still absent from Westerbury, for
+the family who had taken their house wished to remain in it until
+Christmas. The sea-side was doing Mrs. Peter Arkell a vast deal of good;
+her husband had obtained some teaching there, and Mr. Wilberforce had
+kindly intimated that Henry was welcome to remain with him a
+twelvemonth, if it suited their plans that he should; but the boy was
+beginning to long for them back with an intense longing.
+
+He walked across the grounds to the master's house; put down his books,
+got his music, and went on towards the church of St. James the Less. It
+was a large, ancient church, with thick walls and little windows, and it
+stood all solitary by itself, in the midst of its churchyard, beyond the
+town on that side, but not many minutes' walk from the cathedral. The
+only house near it was the clerk's, and that not close to it: a poor,
+low, damp, aguish building, surrounded by grass as long as that in the
+neighbouring graveyard. The clerk was a bent, withered old man, always
+complaining of rheumatism; he had been clerk of that church now for many
+years.
+
+Once beyond the grounds, Henry Arkell set off at his utmost speed. The
+evenings were growing dusk early, and Mr. Wilberforce allowed no light
+in the church, so he had to make the most of the daylight. He was flying
+past the palmery, when in making a dexterous spring to avoid a truck of
+apples standing there, he let his roll of music fly out of his hand; and
+it was in turning to pick up this that his eyes caught sight of a tall
+form at the palmery door; a distinguished, noble-looking young man,
+whose deep blue eyes were gazing at him in doubt. One moment's
+hesitation, on Henry's part, and he made but a step towards him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. St. John! I did not know you were back."
+
+"I thought it was certainly you, Harry, but your height puzzled me. How
+you have grown!"
+
+Henry laughed. "They say I bid fair to be as tall as my cousin Travice.
+I hope I shan't be as tall as papa! When did you come home, Mr. St.
+John?"
+
+"Now: an hour ago. I am going to look in at the deanery. Will you come
+with me, lest I should have forgotten the way?"
+
+It was not often that Henry Arkell put aside duty for pleasure; he had
+been too well trained for that; but this temptation was irresistible.
+What would he not have put aside for the sake of seeing Georgina
+Beauclerc; and, it may be, that that wild suspicion of where Georgina's
+love was given, made him wish to witness the meeting.
+
+A couple of minutes brought them to the deanery. St. John's joke of not
+finding the way might have some point in it, for he had been absent at
+least two years. In the room where you first saw her, gliding softly
+over the carpet with a waltzing step, was Georgina Beauclerc; and close
+to the window, listlessly looking out, sat a young lady of delicate
+beauty, one of the fairest girls it was ever Mr. St. John's lot to look
+upon. But this was not the first time he had seen her. It was the dean's
+niece, Sarah Beauclerc.
+
+Henry was in the room first; St. John pushed him on, and followed him;
+he was in time therefore to see the momentary suspense, the start of
+surprise, the deep glow of crimson, of love, that rushed over the face
+of Georgina. Was it at himself, or at _him_? But never yet, so far as
+Henry saw, had that crimson hue dyed her face at his own approach.
+
+One moment, and she had recovered herself. She went up to Mr. St. John
+with an outstretched hand, bantering words on her tongue.
+
+"So you really are alive! We thought you had been buried in the Red
+Sea."
+
+He made some laughing answer, and passed on to Sarah Beauclerc. He
+clasped both her hands in his; he bent over her with only a word or two
+of greeting, his low voice subdued to tenderness. What did it mean?
+Georgina's lips turned white as ashes, but she could not see her
+cousin's face.
+
+"How is Mrs. Beauclerc?" asked St. John, turning, and beginning to talk
+generally; "Harry tells me that the dean is well, to the consternation
+of the college school, which has to prepare itself for an examination."
+
+"Oh, that examination!" laughed Georgina; "it is turning some of their
+senses upside down. But now," she added, standing in front of Mr. St.
+John, "what am I to call you? Frederick?--Or am I to be formal, and say
+'Mr. St. John?'"
+
+"You used to call me Fred."
+
+"But I was not a grown-up young lady then," making him a mock curtsey;
+"after all, I suppose I must call you Fred still, for I should be sure
+to lapse into it. Where have you been all this while? We have heard of
+you everywhere; in Paris, in Madrid, in Vienna, in Rome, in Antwerp,
+in----oh, all over the world."
+
+"I think I have been nearly all over Europe," said Mr. St. John.
+
+"Which of us has the most changed?" she abruptly asked, a curl of the
+finger indicating that she meant to speak of her cousin.
+
+"Sarah has not changed," he answered, turning to Sarah Beauclerc, and an
+involuntary tenderness was again perceptible in his tone. "You have not
+changed either, Georgie, in manner," he added, with a laugh.
+
+Georgina pouted. "You are not to call me 'Georgie' any longer, Mr. St.
+John."
+
+"Very well, Miss Beauclerc, our careless times have gone for ever, I
+suppose; old age is creeping upon us."
+
+"Don't be stupid," said Georgina. "Have you seen Lady Anne since your
+return?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You _have_!" she exclaimed, not expecting the answer.
+
+"I saw her in London, as I came through it."
+
+"Ah--yes--of course, I might have guessed that," was Georgina's
+rejoinder, spoken mysteriously. "Shall we have a battle royal?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mr. St. John.
+
+"Between Lady Anne and another; you can't cut yourself in two, you know.
+Sarah, what's the matter with your face?"
+
+It was a very conscious face just then, and a very haughty one. St. John
+knitted his brows, as if he divined Georgina's meaning, and was angered
+at it; and he began speaking hastily.
+
+"Mine has been one of the pleasantest of tours. The galleries of
+paintings alone would have been worth----"
+
+"Now, Fred, if you begin upon that everlasting painting theme, you'll
+never leave off," unceremoniously interrupted Georgiana. "Mrs. St. John
+says paintings will be your ruin."
+
+"Does she?"
+
+"Your purse has a hole at both ends, she says, where pictures are
+concerned, and she wishes you had only a tithe of the prudence of Mr.
+Isaac St. John."
+
+Another slight knit of the brows. Sarah Beauclerc went to a side table
+and opened a book of views, taken in Spain, artistic sketches,
+exquisitely done. She turned her fair face to Mr. St. John.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me if these are correct, Mr. St. John? That is, if
+you are personally acquainted with the spots."
+
+He needed no second invitation. He did know the spots, and they bent
+over the views together, St. John growing eloquent. Henry Arkell,
+tolerably at home at the deanery, had drawn away from the group and was
+touching the keys of the piano; some sweet, extemporized melody, played
+so softly that it could scarcely be heard. Suddenly he found Georgina at
+his side.
+
+"What did I tell you?" she abruptly said.
+
+"What did you tell me?" he replied. "I'm sure I don't know what you
+mean, Miss Beauclerc."
+
+"Go on with your playing; why do you stop? I don't care to be heard by
+the chairs and tables. Did I not tell you that he was in love either
+with her or with her beauty? You see, and hear."
+
+"Are you sure he is not in love with somebody else?" asked Henry, his
+heart beating with that wild tumult that it mostly did when in the
+presence of Miss Beauclerc.
+
+She understood his meaning, however it might please her to affect not to
+do so. He did not raise his eyes to look at her; and he continued the
+soft sweet playing, as she desired.
+
+"Somebody else! Do you mean Lady Anne?"
+
+"Oh, Miss Beauclerc! I was not thinking of Lady Anne."
+
+"Perhaps you mean me, you stupid boy; perhaps you would like to
+insinuate that I am in love with him. You _are_ stupid, Henry. Play a
+little louder. How I wish I played with half your taste. I should not
+get so much of old Paul's frownings and mamma's reproachings. Do you
+think I'd have Fred St. John? No, not though he were worth his weight in
+gold. We should never get along together; you might as well try to mix
+oil and water."
+
+Oh, false words! But how many such are uttered daily, in the natural
+reticence of the shy heart, loving for the first time! Henry Arkell
+believed her at the moment, and his heart bounded on in its wild love,
+in spite of that ever present conviction that had taken up an abode
+within it. The strain changed to a popular love melody; but the playing
+was soft and sweet as before. Few have the charmed gift of playing as
+he played.
+
+"I have been making something for you. I can't give it you now with
+those two pairs of eyes in the room. Lovers though they may be, I dare
+say they are watching; and Sarah's blue ones are very sharp. She might
+get telling mamma that I flirt with the college boys. And I won't give
+it you at all if you are stupid. What's Fred St. John to me, do you
+suppose? It's nothing really worth having, you know; but your vanity
+likes to be humoured, and----"
+
+"Henry! how exquisitely you play!"
+
+Mr. St. John was coming towards them with the remark, and the spell was
+broken. Henry rose from the piano, laughing carelessly in answer; and
+Frederick St. John wondered at the bright light in his eye, the flush of
+emotion on his cheek. But he did not read the signs correctly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE EXAMINATION.
+
+
+November came in. The nineteenth approached, and the travelling
+carriages of the different prebendaries bowled into Westerbury, as was
+customary at that season, bringing their owners to their residences in
+the Grounds. A great day in cathedral life was the nineteenth of
+November. It was the grand chapter day; the day when every member
+attached to the cathedral had to attend in the chapter-house after
+morning prayers, and answer to their names, as called over from the roll
+by the chapter clerk. The dean, the canons, the minor canons, the king's
+scholars, the organist, the lay-clerks, the sextons, the vergers, the
+bedesmen, and the two men-cooks officiating for the audit dinners at the
+deanery; all had to be there, health permitting. It was also the grand
+audit day; and the first day of the series of dinners held at the
+deanery; the dinner on this day being confined to the members of the
+cathedral: that is, the clergy, the choristers, and the lay-clerks. The
+rest of the boys, those who were only king's scholars, were not
+included, and very savage they were; but things were done in accordance
+with ancient custom. When the dean, at the conclusion of the ceremonies
+in the chapter-house, proffered an invitation to the "gentlemen
+choristers" to dine with him that evening at the deanery, and the
+gentlemen choristers bowed a gracious or a confused acquiescence,
+according to their state of nerves, the thirty king's scholars turned
+rampant with envy; and always wished either the choristers or the dean
+might come to some grief before the night arrived.
+
+The great day came; an unusually great day, this, for the school, the
+examination having been fixed to take place on it by the dean. The
+morning service in the cathedral was at ten o'clock, the usual daily
+hour; and at eleven began the business in the chapter-house. Next came
+the examination. There had been some consultation between the dean and
+canons as to whether the examination should take place in the college
+hall, as the schoolroom was called, or the chapter-house; but they
+decided in favour of the college hall. As the boys were passing through
+the cloisters from the chapter-house on their way to it, walking orderly
+two and two in their surplices and trenchers, Georgina Beauclerc met
+them, her blue eyes smiling, the blue strings of her bonnet flying. The
+undaunted girl stopped to have a word, although the clergy, with the
+dean at their head, were actually coming out of the chapter-house,
+within view.
+
+"There _is_ to be a prize, boys," she whispered. "Good luck to whoever
+gets it. Will it be you, Jocelyn?"
+
+"That it will not, Miss Beauclerc," was the reply of the senior boy.
+None knew better than he his own deficiencies, and that they chiefly
+arose through his own idleness.
+
+"Whose will it be, then?"
+
+"Well, if it turns upon general scholarship it ought to be Arkell's no
+doubt, Miss Beauclerc, only you see he is not a senior. If we are
+examined in Greek and Latin only, the merit may lie between him and
+Lewis senior."
+
+Lewis senior, a great big hulky fellow, with hair as black as his uncle
+Ben's, sly eyes, and an ugly face, was standing close to Jocelyn. Taking
+the classics only, he was the best scholar in the school, Henry Arkell
+excepted; but he was more than a year older than Henry. Miss Beauclerc
+saw his countenance light up with triumph, and she threw back her pretty
+head. She detested Lewis, though perfectly conscious that he entertained
+more than a liking for her.
+
+"_You_ won't have much chance, Lewis, by the side of Arkell. Don't
+deceive yourself; don't faint with the disappointment."
+
+She turned round and flew off, for the dean and clergy were close at
+hand. The boys continued their way to the college hall, Lewis's
+amiability not improved by the taunt. The general opinion in the school
+was, that if a prize was given, Lewis would gain it. He was a clever
+boy, though not popular; more clever than any one of the other seniors.
+Seniority went for everything in the college school, and for the dean to
+be guilty of the heterodoxy of awarding the prize to any except one of
+the four seniors had not occurred to the boys as being within the range
+of serious possibility.
+
+The boys took their station in the school, and the dean proceeded to the
+examination. Two of the canons were with him, and the masters of the
+school, one of whom was the Rev. Mr. Prattleton; but he attended only
+twice a week for an especial branch of study. The clergy and boys all
+wore their surplices, and the dean and prebendaries retained their caps
+on their heads.
+
+The examination proceeded smoothly enough, for the complaisant dean
+confined himself chiefly to the classics. He questioned the boys in the
+books and at the places put into his hands by the masters, and he winked
+metaphorically at the low promptings administered when the classes came
+to a full stop or a stammer. The masters recovered confidence, and were
+congratulating themselves inwardly at the dreaded event being well over,
+when, to their unspeakable dismay, the dean disbanded the classes, and,
+desiring the forty boys to stand indiscriminately before him, began to
+question them.
+
+This was the real examination: some of the questions were simple, some
+difficult, embracing various subjects. But, simple or difficult, it was
+all one, for, taken by surprise, ill-educated, ill-grounded, the boys
+could not answer. One of them alone proved himself equal to the
+emergency. You need not be told that it was Henry Arkell. Not at a
+single question did he hesitate, till at length the dean told him, with
+a smile, _not_ to answer, until the questions had gone the round of the
+school. Of all branches of education, save their rote of Latin and
+Greek, the boys were entirely ignorant, though some of the dean's
+questions were ludicrously simple.
+
+"Can you make the square of a cube?"
+
+Nobody answered, save by a prodigious deal of coughing, and Henry Arkell
+had once more to be appealed to.
+
+"What is the difference between a right angle and an acute one?"
+
+More coughing, and then a dead silence. The dean happened to be looking
+hard at one particular boy, or the boy fancied so, and his ears became
+as red as the head master's. "If you please, Mr. Dean, our desk is not
+in algebra."
+
+"Who was Caligula?" continued the dean.
+
+"King of France in the ninth century," was the prompt answer from one
+who thought he was in luck.
+
+It was now the dean's turn to cough, as he replaced the question by
+another: "Can you tell me anything about Charles the Second?"
+
+"He invented black lap-dogs with long ears."
+
+The dean nearly choked.
+
+"And was beheaded," added a timid voice.
+
+"Was he?" retorted the dean. "Can you say anything about Charles the
+First, and the events of his reign?"
+
+"Yes, sir. He found out the Gunpowder Plot, and was succeeded by Oliver
+Cromwell."
+
+"Where are the Bahama Isles," asked the dean, in despair.
+
+"In the Mediterranean," cried a tall boy.--"And they are very fertile,"
+added another.
+
+The dean paused a hopeless pause. "Can you spell 'Dutch?'"
+
+"D-u-c-h." "D-u-t-s-h." "D-u-s-h-t," escaped from various tongues,
+drowning other novel phases of the word.
+
+"Spell 'Cane,'" frowned the dean, though he was laughing inwardly.
+
+"K-a-n-e," was the eager reply.
+
+"Perhaps you can spell 'birch,'" roared Dr. Ferraday, an irascible
+prebendary.
+
+They could: "B-u-r-c-h."
+
+"What was the social condition of the Ancient Britons when their country
+was invaded by Julius Caesar?" the dean asked, rubbing his face.
+
+"They always went about naked, and never shaved, and their clothes were
+made of the skins of beasts."
+
+"This is frightful," interrupted Dr. Ferraday. "The school reflects the
+greatest discredit upon--somebody," glaring through his spectacles at
+the purple and scarlet faces of the masters. "There's only one boy who
+is not a living monument of ignorance. He--what's your name, boy?"
+
+"Arkell, sir."
+
+"True; Arkell," assented Dr. Ferraday. He knew who he was perfectly
+well, but he was the proudest man of all the canons, and would not
+condescend to show that he remembered. "Sir, for your age you are a
+brilliant scholar."
+
+"How is it?" puzzled Mr. Meddler, another of the prebendaries: "has
+Arkell superior abilities, and have all the rest none? Answer for
+yourself, Arkell."
+
+The boy hesitated. Both in mind and manners he was so different from the
+general run of schoolboys; and he could not bear to be thus held out as
+a sort of pattern for the rest.
+
+"It is not my fault, sir--or theirs. My father has always kept me to my
+studies so closely out of school hours, and attended to them himself,
+that I could not help getting on in advance of the school."
+
+"Wilberforce," roughly spoke up Dr. Ferraday, in his overbearing manner,
+"how is it that this boy is not senior?"
+
+"That post is attained by priority of entrance, sir," replied the
+master. "Arkell can only become senior boy when those above him leave."
+
+"He ought to be senior now."
+
+"We cannot act against the customs of the school, Dr. Ferraday,"
+repeated the master. "Arkell is at the first desk, but he cannot be
+senior of the school out of his turn."
+
+"Can you tell me whence England chiefly procures her supplies of
+cotton?" asked Mr. Meddler, mildly, of a mild-looking boy belonging to
+the third desk. "You, sir; Van Brummel, I think your name is."
+
+Mr. Van Brummel, considerably taken-to at being addressed individually,
+lost his head completely. "From the signing of Magna Charta by King
+John."
+
+"Why, what a stupid owl you must be!" snapped Dr. Ferraday, before Canon
+Meddler could speak. Mr. Van Brummel's face turned red; he was a timid
+boy, and he wondered whether they would order him to be flogged.
+
+"Please, sir, I know that's the answer in the book," he earnestly said:
+"I learnt them over again this morning."
+
+"It may be an answer to something, but not to my question," said Mr.
+Meddler, as he stepped apart to confer with his colleagues. "What is to
+be done, Mr. Dean? This state of things cannot be allowed to go on."
+
+They talked for a few moments together, and then the dean turned to the
+boys.
+
+"Stand forward, Arkell."
+
+Henry Arkell advanced, a hot flush on his sensitive face; and the Dean
+threw round his neck a broad blue ribbon, suspending a medal of gold. "I
+have much pleasure in bestowing this upon you; never was reward more
+justly merited; and," he concluded, raising his voice high as he swept
+the room with his eyes, "I feel bound to declare publicly, that Henry
+Cheveley Arkell is an honour to Westerbury collegiate school."
+
+"As all the rest of you are a disgrace to it," stormed Dr. Ferraday on
+the discomfited lot behind.
+
+"You must let me have it back again to-morrow morning, that I may get
+your name inscribed on it," said the dean to Henry, in a low tone.
+"Wear it for to-day."
+
+The boys were dismissed. They took off their surplices in the cloisters,
+not presuming to unrobe in the presence of the cathedral dignitaries,
+who prolonged their stay in the college hall: "to blow off at
+Wilberforce and the rest," one of the seniors irreverently surmised
+aloud. Some swung the surplices across their arms; some crammed them
+into bags; and an unusual silence pervaded the group. Lewis was bitterly
+disappointed. He was as good a classical scholar as Arkell, and thought
+he ought to have had the medal.
+
+Miss Beauclerc was waiting at the deanery door. "Well, boys, and who has
+got it?" was her salutation before any of them were up.
+
+"A sneaking young beggar," called out Lewis, thinking he might as well
+make the best of things to her, and answer first.
+
+"Then you have not got it, Lewis; I told you you wouldn't," laughed the
+young lady; "though I heard that you made certain sure of it, and had
+ordered a glass case to keep it in."
+
+Lewis nearly boiled over with rage.
+
+"Arkell has gained it, Miss Beauclerc," said the senior boy.
+
+"Of course; I knew he would. I was sure from the first that none of you
+could contend against him, provided there was a fair field and no
+favour."
+
+"No favour!" scornfully echoed Lewis. "A bright eye and a girl's face,
+these are what we should covet now, to curry favour with the Dean and
+Chapter."
+
+"Lewis, you forget yourself," reproved Miss Beauclerc; "and I'll inform
+against you if you talk treason of the dean," she laughingly continued.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Beauclerc," was the sullen apology of Lewis,
+delivered in a most ungracious tone.
+
+"Arkell's merits alone have gained the prize, Lewis, and you know it,"
+proceeded the young lady; "they must have gained it had he been as ugly
+as you."
+
+"I am much obliged to you, Miss Beauclerc," foamed Lewis, with as much
+resentment as he dared show to the dean's daughter.
+
+"Well, you are right about his merits, Miss Beauclerc," interrupted
+Jocelyn; "no question came amiss to him. By Jove! old Ferraday was not
+wrong in calling him a brilliant scholar; I had no idea he knew half as
+much. The dean said he was an honour to the school."
+
+"_That_ he has been a long while," she said, quietly. "You boys may
+sneer--you are sneering now, Aultane, but----"
+
+"No, indeed, Miss Beauclerc," interrupted Aultane, "I would not do such
+a thing as sneer in your presence. Of course it couldn't be expected
+that he'd be anything but a good scholar, when his father's a
+schoolmaster."
+
+"And teaches boys at half-a-crown an hour," put in Lewis junior. "He
+acknowledged to the dean, it was all through his father's cramming him."
+
+Henry Arkell was coming up; Miss Beauclerc moved forwards and shook him
+by the hand.
+
+"I congratulate you," she said, in a half whisper. "Why it looks like
+the ribbon of the Garter. You may win that some time, if you live; who
+knows? I knew you would get it, if you were only true to yourself;
+Frederick St. John said so too. Mind you write to-day to tell him."
+
+She had taken the medal in her hand, and was looking at it. The rest
+pressed round as closely as they dared. Lewis only stood aside, a bitter
+expression on his ugly lips.
+
+A little fellow ran up, all in a fright. "Oh! if you please, if you
+please, Miss Beauclerc, here comes the dean."
+
+"What if he does?" retorted Miss Beauclerc; "he won't eat you. There,
+you may go, boys. Henry Arkell, you know you are expected at the deanery
+to-night."
+
+"Yes, thank you, Miss Beauclerc," he replied, some hesitation, or
+surprise, visible in his tone.
+
+"Ah, but I mean to _us_, after the dinner. Mamma has what she calls one
+of her quiet soirees. You'll be sure to come."
+
+One glance from his brilliant eyes, beneath which her blue ones fell,
+and he drew away. The rest were already off. Georgina walked forward to
+meet the dean, and she put her arm within his in her loving manner.
+
+"Oh, papa, the boys are so envious of the medal. I stopped them and made
+them show it me. That ugly Lewis is ready to cut his throat."
+
+"Random-spoken as usual, my darling. Who's throat?"
+
+"Henry Arkell's of course, papa. But I knew no one else would gain it.
+They are not fit to tie his shoes."
+
+"In learning, they certainly are not. You can't imagine what a ludicrous
+display we have had! And some of them go soon to the university!"
+
+"It's not the fault of the boys, papa. If they are never taught anything
+but Greek and Latin, how can they be expected to know anything else?"
+
+"Very true, Georgie," mused Dr. Beauclerc. "Some of these old systems
+are stupid things."
+
+The audit dinner in the evening went off as those dinners generally did.
+The boys dined at a table by themselves, and Henry, as their senior,
+had to exert firm authority over some, for the supply of wine was
+unlimited. Later in the evening, he passed through the gallery to the
+drawing-room, as invited by Miss Beauclerc. A few ladies were assembled:
+the canons' wives and daughters, Mrs. Wilberforce, and two or three
+other inhabitants of the Grounds; all very quiet, and what in these
+later days might have been called "slow:" Mrs. Beauclerc's parties
+mostly were so. They were talking of Frederick St. John when Henry went
+in, who was again absent from Westerbury, visiting somewhere with his
+mother and Lady Anne.
+
+Henry wore his medal; the broad blue ribbon conspicuous. Some time was
+taken up examining that, and then he was asked to sing. It was a treat
+to hear him; and his voice as yet gave forth no token of losing its
+power and sweetness, though he was close upon sixteen.
+
+He sang song after song--for they pressed for it--accompanying himself.
+One song that he was especially asked for, he could not remember without
+the music. Mrs. Wilberforce suggested that he should fetch it from home,
+but Georgina said she could play it for him, and sat down. It was that
+fine song called "The Treasures of the Deep," by Mrs. Hemans. It was
+found, however, that she could not play it; and after two or three
+attempts, she began a waltz instead; and the ladies, in the distance
+round the fire, forgot at length that they had wanted it.
+
+Georgina wore an evening dress of white spotted muslin, a broad blue
+sash round her waist, and a bit of narrow blue velvet suspending a cross
+on her neck. She had taken off her bracelets to play, and her pretty
+white arms were bare. Her eyes were blue as the ribbon, and altogether
+she looked very attractive, very _young_, and she was that night in one
+of her wild and inexplicable humours.
+
+What she really said, how he responded, will never be wholly known:
+certain it is, that she led him on, on, until he resigned himself wholly
+to the fascination and "told his love;" although he might have known
+that to do so was little less than madness. She affected to ridicule
+him; she intimated that her love was not for a college boy; but all the
+while her looks gave the lie to her words; her blue eyes spoke of
+admiration still; her flushed face of triumphant, gratified vanity.
+_They_ were engaged round the fire, round the tables, anywhere; and
+Georgina had it all to herself, and played bars of music now and then,
+as if she were essaying different pieces.
+
+"Let us put aside this nonsense," she suddenly said. "It _is_ nonsense,
+and you know it, Harry. Here's a song," snatching the first that came
+to hand--"sing this; I'll play it for you."
+
+"Do you think I can _sing_?--now? with your cold words blighting me. Oh,
+tell me the worst!" he added, his tone one of strange pain. "Tell
+me----"
+
+"Goodness, Henry Arkell. If you look and talk in that serious manner, I
+shall think you have become crazy. Come; begin."
+
+"I seem to be in a sort of dream," he murmured, putting his hands to his
+temples. "Surely all the past, all our pleasant intercourse, is not to
+be forgotten! You will not throw me away like this?"
+
+"Where's the use of my playing this symphony, if you don't begin?"
+
+"Georgina!--let me call you so for the first, perhaps for the last
+time--dear Georgina, you cannot forget the past! You cannot mean what
+you have just said."
+
+"How unpleasant you are making things to-night!" she said, with a laugh.
+"I shall begin to think you have followed the example of those wretched
+little juniors, and taken plentifully of wine."
+
+"Perhaps I have; perhaps it is owing to that that I have courage freely
+to talk to you now. Georgina, you _know_ how I have loved you; you know
+that for years and years my life has been as one long blissful dream,
+filled with the image of you."
+
+She stole a glance at him from her blue eyes; a smile hovered on her
+parted lips. He bent his head until his brown wavy curls mingled with
+her lighter hair.
+
+"Georgina, you know--you know that you can be life or death to me."
+
+He could not speak with consecutive smoothness; his heart was beating as
+if it would burst its bounds, his whole frame thrilled, his fingers were
+trembling.
+
+"Tell me that it is not all to be forgotten!"
+
+"Indeed, if you have been cultivating a wrong impression--I can only
+advise you to forget it. I have liked you;" her voice sank to the lowest
+whisper--"very much; I have been so stupid as to let you see it; but I
+never meant you to--to--presume upon it in this uncomfortable manner."
+
+"One question!" he urged. "Only one. Is it that you have played with me,
+loving another?"
+
+Her right hand was on the keys of the piano, striking chords
+continually; a false note grating now and then on the ear. Her left hand
+lay passive on her lap, as she sat, slightly turned to him.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense! No, I have not. You will have them overhear you,
+Harry."
+
+"Do not equivocate--dearest Georgina--let me hear the truth. It may be
+better for me; I can bear anything rather than deceit. Let me know the
+truth; I beseech it of you by all the hours we have passed together."
+
+"Harry, you are decidedly beside yourself to-night. Don't suffer the
+world behind to get a notion of it."
+
+"You are playing with me now," he said, quite a wail in his low voice.
+"Let me, one way or the other, be at rest. I never shall bear this
+suspense, and live. Give me an answer, Georgina; one that shall abide
+for ever."
+
+"An answer to what?"
+
+"Have you all this while loved another?"
+
+She took her hand off the keys, and began picking out the treble notes
+of a song with her forefinger, bending her head slightly.
+
+"The answer might not be palatable."
+
+"No, it may not. Nevertheless, I pray you give it me. You are killing
+me, Georgina."
+
+She looked up hastily; she saw that the bright, transparent complexion
+of the face had turned to a deadly whiteness; and, perhaps, in that one
+moment, Georgina Beauclerc's heart smote her with a slight reproach of
+cruelty. But she may have deemed it well to put an end to the suspense,
+and she bent her head again as she spoke.
+
+"Even though I had loved another, what of that? I don't admit that I
+have; and I say that it is a question you have no right to ask me.
+Harry! be reasonable; though I had loved _you_, it could not come to
+anything; you know it could not; so what does it signify?"
+
+"But you have _not_ loved me?"
+
+"Well--no. Not in that way. Here's the dean coming in; and here's
+pompous old Ferraday. You must sing a song; papa's sure to ask for one."
+
+She hastened from the piano, as if glad to escape. The dean did ask for
+a song. But when they came to look for him who was to sing it, he was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+"Bless me!" cried the dean, "I thought Henry Arkell was here. Where is
+he?"
+
+"I dare say he has gone home for the 'Treasures of the Deep,' papa,"
+readily replied Georgina. "Somebody asked him to fetch it just now."
+
+He had not gone for the "Treasures of the Deep;" and, as she guessed
+pretty accurately, he had no intention of returning. He was walking
+slowly towards the master's house, his temporary home; his head was
+aching, his brain was burning, and he felt as if all life had gone out
+of him for ever. That she had been befooling him; that she loved
+Frederick St. John with an impassioned lasting love, appeared to him as
+clear as the stars in a frosty sky.
+
+But there were no stars then, and no frost; the fineness of the night
+had gone, and a drizzling rain was falling. He did not heed it; it
+might wet him if it would, might soak even that gay blue badge on his
+breast. Two people within view seemed to heed it as little; they were
+pacing together, arm-in-arm, in a dark part of the grounds, talking in
+an undertone. So absorbed were they, that both started when Henry came
+up; they were near a gaslight then, and he recognised George Prattleton.
+The other face, on which the light shone brightly, he did not know.
+
+"How d'ye do?" said Henry. "Do you know whether Prattleton junior has
+got home yet?" Prattleton junior, the younger of the Reverend Mr.
+Prattleton's sons, was in the choir under Henry; and the senior
+chorister had had some trouble with that gentleman at the dinner-table
+on this, the audit-night.
+
+"I don't know anything about Prattleton junior," returned George
+Prattleton in a testy tone, as if the question itself, or the being
+spoken to, had annoyed him.
+
+Henry walked on, and round the corner came upon the gentleman in
+question, Prattleton junior, with another of the choristers, Mr.
+Wilberforce's son Edwin, each having taken as much as was good for him,
+both to eat and to drink.
+
+"Who's that with George?" asked Henry--for it was somewhat unusual to
+see a stranger in the grounds at night.
+
+"Oh, it's a Mr. Rolls," replied young Prattleton: "I heard my brother
+ask George. He meets him in the billiard rooms."
+
+"Well, you be off home, now; you'll get wet. Wilberforce, I'm going in.
+You can come with me."
+
+Young Mr. Prattleton appeared disposed to resist the mandate. He liked
+being in the rain, he persisted. But the arrival of his father at that
+moment from the deanery settled the matter.
+
+And Henry Arkell, having happened to look back, saw George Prattleton
+draw the stranger into the shade, and remain in ambush while the minor
+canon passed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A NIGHT WITH THE GHOSTS.
+
+
+The succeeding day to this was fine again, a charming day for the middle
+of November; and when the college school rushed down the steps at four
+o'clock, the upper boys were tempted to commence one of their noisy
+games. Nearly the only two who declined were the senior boy and Arkell.
+The senior of the school, whoever he might be for the time being,
+rarely, if ever, played, and the present one, Jocelyn, was also too
+idle. Both went quietly on to the master's, walking arm-in-arm. The
+school closed at four in the dead of winter. Henry came out again
+immediately, his music in his hand, and was running past the boys.
+
+"I say, Arkell, we are going to cast lots for the stag. Where are you
+bolting to?"
+
+"I can't join this evening--I'm off to practise. To-morrow is my lesson
+day, and I have not touched the organ this week."
+
+"Cram! What's the good? It'll be night directly, and that mouldy old
+organ loft as dark as pitch."
+
+"Oh, I shall see for ever so long to come--the sun has not set yet,"
+returned Henry, without stopping. "Thank you, Lewis," he added, as a
+sharp stone struck his trencher. "That was from you, I saw. I shall not
+pay you back in kind."
+
+There was a sting in the retort, from the very manner of giving it, so
+pointedly gentleman-like, for Henry Arkell had stopped a moment, and
+raised his trencher, as he might have done to the dean. Lewis saw that
+the boys were laughing at him, and he suddenly set upon seven juniors,
+and made the whole lot cry.
+
+Active and swift, Henry soon gained the precincts of the church, St.
+James the Less. He pushed open the outer door of the clerk's house, and
+took the key of the church from its niche in the passage, close to the
+kitchen door. This he also opened, and looked in. It was a square room,
+the floor of red brick, and a bed, with a curtain drawn before it, was
+on one side against the wall. The old man, Hunt, sat smoking in the
+chimney corner.
+
+"I am going in to play, Hunt. I have the key."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+"How's the missis?" he stopped to ask.
+
+"She be bad in all her bones, sir, she be. I telled her to lie down for
+half an hour: it's that nasty ague she have got upon her again. This be
+a damp spot to live in, so many low trees about," he continued, with a
+shrug of his shoulders.
+
+Henry could not remember when the "missis" was not "bad in all her
+bones;" her ague seemed to be chronic. He proceeded on his way, passed
+the iron gates, walked up the churchyard, and unlocked the church door.
+Once in, he took the key from the outer lock, and placing it upon the
+bench inside, pushed the door to, but did not shut it. The taking out
+the key in this manner was by Mr. Wilberforce's orders: if they left it
+in the lock outside, some mischievous person might come and remove it,
+he had told the boys. Then he ascended to the organ-loft and commenced
+his practising. No blower was required, as certain pedals, touched with
+the feet, acted instead, something after the manner of a modern
+harmonium. His heart was in his task, in spite of the heavy care at it,
+for he loved music; and when it grew too dusk to see, he continued
+playing from memory.
+
+The shades of evening were gathering outside, as well as in; and under
+cover of them a boy might have been seen stealing through the
+churchyard. It was Henry's rival, Lewis, whose mind had just been
+hatching a nice little revengeful plot. To say that Lewis had been half
+mad since the preceding day, would not be saying too much: he could have
+borne anything better than taunts from Miss Beauclerc; and for those
+taunts he would be revenged, the fates permitting, upon Henry Arkell. He
+did not quite see how, yet; but, as a little prologue, he intended to
+lock him in the church for the night, the idea of _that_ having flashed
+into his mind after Henry had thanked him for throwing the stone.
+
+Lewis gently pulled open the church door, looked for the key, saw it,
+and snatched it, locked the church door upon the unconscious boy, who
+was playing, and stole back again, key in hand. Beyond the gates of the
+churchyard he stopped to laugh, as though he had accomplished a great
+feat.
+
+"Won't his crowing be cooled by morning! He'll be seeing ghosts all
+night, and calling out blue murder; but nobody can hear him, and there
+he must stop with them. What a jolly sell!"
+
+He hid the key in his jacket pocket until he reached old Hunt's house.
+Lewis knew it was kept there, but did not know there was a niche or a
+nail for it in the passage. He did not care to be seen, and therefore
+must get the key in, in the best way he could.
+
+The clerk and his ailing wife were sitting by their fire now, taking
+tea. A china saucer, containing some milk, had just been put down on the
+brick floor for the cat, a snarling, enormous yellow animal, but a
+particularly cherished one by both master and mistress. The cat had got
+her nose in it, and the old woman was lovingly regarding her, when the
+door opened about an inch, and the church key came flying in, propelled
+on to the cat's head and the saucer. The cat started away with a howl,
+the saucer flew in pieces, and the milk was scattered. In the midst of
+this the door closed again, and footsteps were heard scampering off.
+
+"Mercy on us!" shrieked the old dame, startled out of her seven senses.
+"What be that?"
+
+The clerk, recovering his consternation, rose and regarded the damage;
+the broken saucer, the wasted milk, and the scared cat--the genial
+animal standing with her back up in the farthest corner.
+
+"That's the way they do it, is it?" he wrathfully cried, as he stooped
+to pick up the key, a difficult process, from his rheumatic loins. "My
+gentleman can't bring in the key and hang it up decently, but must shy
+it in, and do this mischief! I wonder the master lets 'em have the run
+of the organ! I wouldn't."
+
+"It were that Robbins, I know," said the dame, shaking still.
+
+"It were just the t'other, then--Arkell. Poor pussy! poor tit, tit,
+tit!"
+
+"Arkell! Why he be always so quiet and perlite!"
+
+"It's a perlite thing to fling the key in upon us after this fashion,
+ain't it?" growled the clerk.
+
+"Come along then, titsey! Don't put its back up! Come to its missis!"
+
+But the outraged cat wholly refused to be soothed. It snarled, and spit,
+and snarled again; making a spring finally into a pantry, and thence
+away through an open casement window.
+
+The tea hour at the head master's was half-past five; and the boys sat
+down to it this evening as usual. They were accustomed to take that meal
+alone, and the absence of one or other of the boys at it had become, in
+consequence, rather general; therefore, Arkell's not appearing went
+really without notice. Lewis appeared to be in a flow of delight, and
+devoured Arkell's share of bread-and-butter as well as his own. There
+were in all, at this time, about ten boarders residing at the master's,
+some of them being his private pupils. The two Lewises were there still;
+but Mrs. Lewis had given notice of their removal at Christmas, as she
+intended to receive them into the house she had taken possession of--the
+late Marmaduke Carr's.
+
+Now it happened, by good or by ill luck, as the reader may decide, that
+the master and Mrs. Wilberforce were abroad that evening. In his absence
+the senior boy had full authority, and the rest dared not disobey him.
+This might not have been well with some seniors; but Jocelyn was one in
+whom confidence could be placed. At supper--eight o'clock--Arkell was
+still absent, and Jocelyn now observed it. One of the others remarked
+that he was most likely at the deanery. This was Vaughan; a rather
+stupid boy, who had been nicknamed in consequence Bright Vaughan.
+
+At nine o'clock, the man-servant brought in the book for prayers, read
+by the senior boy when the master himself was not there. Absence from
+prayers was never excused, unless under the especial permission of Mr.
+Wilberforce; and he would have severely punished any boy guilty of it.
+Another thing that he exacted was, that prayers should be read precisely
+to the hour. So Jocelyn read them, and the servant carried away the
+book.
+
+"I say, though, where can Arkell be?" wondered the boys. "He's never out
+like this, unless he has leave."
+
+"Perhaps he means to make a night of it?" suggested Lewis junior,
+opportunely enough, if he had but known it.
+
+"Hold your tongue, Lewis junior," said Jocelyn. "He may have got leave
+from the master for the evening, and we not know it."
+
+"I don't think he has, though," dissented young Wilberforce.
+
+"We won't split upon him," eagerly spoke up Lewis--not the junior. "He
+has been a horrid sneak, especially in getting himself in with the
+dean's daughter; but it won't do to begin splitting one upon another."
+
+"I should like to hear any of you attempting it," authoritatively spoke
+the senior boy. "I'd split you."
+
+"We don't mean to. Don't be so sharp, Jocelyn."
+
+"There's not the least doubt that he is at the deanery," decided
+Jocelyn. "I heard something said the other day about the master's having
+given him general leave to stop there, when asked, without coming home
+to say it."
+
+"Who told you that, Jocelyn?" questioned Lewis, his ears turning red.
+
+"I heard it, and that's enough. The master can depend upon Arkell, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, can he though!" cried Lewis, ironically. "I'd lay a crown he's not
+at the deanery."
+
+"Up to bed, boys," commanded Jocelyn.
+
+The Lewises, senior and junior, and Henry Arkell slept in one room; the
+rest of the boys were divided into two others. The rooms in the quaint
+old house were not large. All had separate beds. Arkell's was in the
+corner behind the door. Marmaduke Lewis, the younger, was in bed
+immediately, schoolboy fashion, the process occupying about
+half-a-minute; but the elder did not seem inclined to be so quick
+to-night. He dawdled about the room, brushed his hair, held his mouth
+open to admire his teeth in the glass, tried how many different faces he
+could make, stuck pins in the candle, and, in short, seemed in anything
+but a bed humour. In the midst of this delay, he heard the voice of Mr.
+Wilberforce, speaking to one of the servants, as he ascended the stairs.
+
+What Lewis did, in his consternation, he hardly knew. The first thing
+was to turn the candle upside down in the candlestick, and jam it well
+in; the next was to fling some of his brother's clothes on to his own
+chair; and the third to bolt into bed with his own clothes on, and draw
+the counterpane over his head. Mr. Wilberforce opened the door.
+
+"Are you in bed, boys?"
+
+Lewis put part of his face out.
+
+"Yes, sir. Good night, sir."
+
+"Good night," repeated Mr. Wilberforce, and closed the door upon the
+room.
+
+Lewis breathed a blessing upon all propitious stars, that he had not
+looked behind the door at the vacant bed. Then his going to let out
+Arkell was impossible, now Mr. Wilberforce was in: which had been the
+indecisive project agitating his brain.
+
+And now we must return to Henry Arkell. The church of St. James the Less
+struck a quarter past five when Henry took his fingers from the keys of
+the organ. "Only a quarter past five," he soliloquized; "how the
+evenings draw in! Last week was moonlight, and I did not notice it so
+much. I don't see how I shall get my practising here these winter
+months, unless I snatch an hour between morning and afternoon school."
+
+He felt for his music, for it was too dark to see, rolled it up, and
+then felt his way down the narrow and nearly perpendicular staircase,
+dark even in daylight. When he reached the bench at the entrance, he
+placed his hand on the spot where he had put the key. He could not feel
+it: he only supposed he had missed the spot by an inch or two, and
+groped about with his hands. He turned to the door to pull it open, and
+let in the light.
+
+The door was closed, was fast; and Henry Arkell felt his face grow hot
+as the truth burst upon him, that he was fastened up in the church. He
+concluded that the old clerk had done it in mistake. "I must ring the
+bell," thought he, "and let them know somebody's in the church."
+
+But he was doomed to fresh disappointment, for, on groping his way to
+the belfry, he found it fastened: cords, bells, and all were locked up.
+Sometimes this door was locked, sometimes it was left open, just as the
+clerk remembered, or not, to fasten it.
+
+"I can't stop here all night!" exclaimed he, his face growing more and
+more heated. "What in the world am I to do?"
+
+What indeed? What would you have done, reader? Set on and shouted? But
+there was nobody to hear: the church was solitary, and its walls were
+thick. Thump at the door? But if you had nothing but your hands to thump
+with, little hope that any result would be obtained.
+
+It was a novel and a disagreeable situation for the boy to be placed
+in--locked alone in the gloomy old church; gloomy in more than one sense
+of the word, and smelling of the dead. The small, confined windows were
+high up in the walls, and entirely inaccessible, and there was no other
+outlet. The vestry was only lighted by two panes of thick glass inserted
+into its roof; and, in short, the case was hopeless.
+
+And the boy grew so. He shouted, and called, and thumped, just as you or
+I might have done, without any regard to its manifest inutility. He was
+a brave-spirited boy, owning a clear conscience; and he was a singularly
+religious boy, far more so than it is usual for those of his age to be,
+possessing an ever-present trust in God's good care and protection.
+Still, disagreeable thoughts would intrude: his lonely situation stood
+out in exaggerated force, and recollections of a certain ghostly tale,
+connected with that church, rose up before him. It was a tale which had
+gone the round of Westerbury the previous year, and the ghostly-inclined
+put firm faith in it. The old clerk was an obstinate believer in it, for
+he had seen it with his own eyes; the sexton had seen it with his, and
+two gravediggers had seen it with theirs. A citizen had died, and been
+buried in the middle aisle, not many yards from where Henry Arkell now
+stood. After his burial, suspicion arose that he had not come fairly to
+his end, and the coroner had issued his mandate for the disinterment of
+the body, and the sexton and two gravediggers proceeded to their task.
+They chose night to do it in, "not to be bothered with starers at 'em,"
+they said; and the clerk chose to bear them company. At three o'clock in
+the morning the whole four rushed out of the church panic-stricken, made
+their way to the nearest street, and rose it with their frantic cries.
+Windows were thrown up in alarm, and nightcaps stretched out--what on
+earth was the matter? The buried man's ghost had appeared to them in a
+sea of blue flame, was the trembling tale they told, and which went
+forth to Westerbury. The blue flame was accounted for; the ghost, never.
+They had a basin full of gin with them, and, in lighting a pipe, they
+had managed to set light to the gin, which immediately ascended in a
+ghastly stream. The men, it was found, had a little gin on board
+themselves, as well as in the basin; and to that, no doubt, in
+conjunction with the blue flames, the ghost owed its origin.
+
+Now a ghost in broad daylight, with all the bustle and reality of
+mid-day life about us, and a ghost fastened up with oneself in a church
+at night-time, bear two widely different aspects. Henry Arkell had
+heartily laughed at the story, had made merry over the consternation of
+the half-drunken men, but he did not altogether enjoy being so near the
+ghostly spot now; for though reason tried to be heard, imagination had
+got fast hold of the reins. He lifted his eyes, with a desperate effort,
+and looked round the church: he began to calculate which was the very
+spot, in the gloom of the middle aisle: he grasped the door of a pew
+near where he stood, and bent his face down upon it in an agony of
+terror.
+
+"And I must be here until morning," his conviction whispered. "O God!
+keep this terror from me! Send thine Holy Spirit to come near and
+strengthen me! Oh, yes, yes," he resumed, after a pause; "I shall be
+all right if I do but trust in God. He is everywhere; He is with me now.
+I will go up to the organ again."
+
+He groped his way up, sat down, and began to play as well as he could in
+the perfect darkness. He played some of the cathedral chants, and sang
+to them; it was a curious sound, echoing there in the dark and lonely
+night; and it was a positive fact that, in so doing, his superstitious
+alarm passed, from his mind.
+
+But oh, how long the hours were! how long the quarters, as the slow
+clock gave them out! He still kept on playing, dreading to leave off
+lest the terror should come back again. When it struck nine, he could
+have thought it four in the morning, judging by the dreary time that
+seemed to have elapsed. "The boys will be going up to bed directly," he
+said, thinking of the master's; "oh, why don't they send out to look for
+me? But they'd never think of looking here!"
+
+He kept on playing. About ten o'clock he knelt down to say his prayers,
+as if preparing to retire for the night, and then ensconced himself as
+comfortably as he could on the seat of the singers, which was well
+cushioned. "If I could but go to sleep, and sleep till daylight,"
+thought he, "there would be no chance of that foolish terror coming back
+again. Foolish indeed! How very absurd I am!"
+
+He fell into a train of thought; not happy thought: schoolboys have
+trouble as well as grown people: and Henry Arkell had plenty just then,
+as you know. The superstitious feeling did not come back, and at length
+he sank into sleep.
+
+He did not know what roused him: something did. The first thing he heard
+distinctly was a scuffling noise, followed by a "hush-sh-sh!" breathed
+from a human voice. He felt a cramped sensation all over, but that arose
+from his inconvenient couch, and he could not for the life of him
+remember where he was.
+
+He stretched out his hand, and it came in contact with the front of the
+gallery; it was close to him, for the singers' seat was very narrow: he
+raised himself to look over, still not remembering what had passed. He
+seemed to be in a church, for one of two male figures, walking up the
+aisle, carried a lighted taper, which threw its glimmering upon the
+pews, though the man shaded it with his hand. Whether Henry Arkell had
+been dreaming of robbers, certain it is, he judged these men to be such:
+they turned off to the vestry, which was on the side of the church,
+nearly at the top; and he rubbed his eyes, and full recollection
+returned to him.
+
+"What has put robbers in my head?" he debated. "They are not robbers:
+they must be come to look for me. But they stole up as if they were
+robbers!" he added after a pause. "And why did they not call out to me?"
+
+An impulse took him down from the gallery and up the church; he moved as
+silently as the men had done. The vestry door was open, and he stood
+outside on the matting and peeped in, secure of not being seen in the
+darkness. To his surprise, he recognised faces he knew--gentlemen's
+faces, not robbers'. One of them was George Prattleton; and the other
+was the stranger he had seen with him the previous night. What were they
+doing in the vestry at that hour?
+
+"Now make haste about it, Rolls," George Prattleton was saying, as Henry
+gazed in. "I don't half like the work, and if I had not been more hard
+up than any poor devil ever was yet, you would never have got me on to
+it. There's the register."
+
+George Prattleton had unlocked a safe and taken a book from it, which he
+put on the table. "Mind, Rolls, you are not to copy anything; that was
+the agreement."
+
+"I don't want to copy anything: I gave you my word, didn't I?" was the
+reply of Mr. Rolls, who had seized upon the book. "I only want to see
+whether a certain entry is here, or whether it is not, and I give you
+20_l._ for getting me the sight: and a deuced easy way it is of earning
+20_l._, Prattleton."
+
+Rolls had drawn a chair to the table, and was poring over the register,
+as he spoke, turning the leaves one by one. Prattleton stood by, and
+held the candle, not very steadily.
+
+"I can't see, if you whiffle it like that, Prat," cried Mr. Rolls,
+taking the candlestick from his hand and setting it on the table.
+
+"How long shall you be?"
+
+"Why, I have hardly begun. Don't be impatient. Sit down on that other
+chair and take a nap, if you are tired."
+
+Prattleton continued to stand at the table, but his impatience was
+evidently great. His back was to Henry Arkell, but the boy had full view
+of the countenance and movements of the other: his interest, in what was
+passing, was not less than his astonishment.
+
+"You say you know the date, so where's the use of being so dilatory?"
+cried Mr. Prattleton. "You turn over the leaves as slow as if you were
+going to execution. Ah, you have it now, I think."
+
+"No, I have not." And Rolls turned another leaf over as he spoke, and
+went on studying; but he stealthily placed his thumb to mark the page he
+left. Prattleton yawned, whistled, and yawned again, and finally turned
+away and began to look in the safe; anything to cover his impatience.
+Upon which, Henry Arkell distinctly saw Rolls turn back to the page
+where his thumb was, examine it intently, and then silently blow out the
+light.
+
+"Halloa!" roared Prattleton, finding himself in darkness.
+
+"What a beast of a candle!" indignantly uttered Mr. Rolls. "It's gone
+out!"
+
+"What put it out?"
+
+"How can I tell? The damp, I suppose: everything smells mouldy. Give us
+the matches, Prat."
+
+"I have not got the matches. You took them."
+
+"Did I? Then I'm blest if I have not left them on the bench at the door.
+Go for them, Prat, will you: if I lose my place in the book I shall have
+to begin all over again, and that will keep us longer than you'd like."
+
+Mr. Prattleton--with a few expletives not often heard in churches--felt
+his way through the vestry door. Henry had not time to retreat, so he
+drew himself closely up against the wall, and Prattleton passed him.
+But, to Henry Arkell's surprise, a light almost immediately reappeared
+inside the vestry. He naturally looked in again.
+
+Rolls had relighted the candle, and was inserting what looked like a
+thin board, behind one of the leaves of the register: he then drew a
+sharp penknife down it, close to the binding, and out came the leaf,
+leaving no trace. He folded the leaf, put it in his pocket with the
+board and the knife, and then blew out the light again. All was
+accomplished with speed, but with perfect coolness. "Nothing risk,
+nothing win," cried he, audibly: "I thought I could do him."
+
+Prattleton soon came up the church with the box of matches, igniting
+some as he walked, by way of lighting his steps. Henry drew away against
+the wall, and crouched down beneath a dark mahogany pew.
+
+"There go the three-quarters past one, Rolls; we have been in here
+five-and-twenty minutes. Don't let the light go out again."
+
+"I shall soon have done. I am getting near the place where the entry
+ought to be--if it is in at all; but I told you there was a doubt. So
+much the better for us if it's not."
+
+Prattleton sat down and drummed on the table. Rolls came to the end of
+the register.
+
+"It's not in, Prattleton. Hurrah! It will be thousands of pounds in our
+pocket. When the other side brought forth the lame tale that there was
+such a thing, we thought it was a bag of moonshine. Here's your
+register. Put it up."
+
+Henry stole silently towards the church door, hoping to get out: he
+dared not show himself to those two swindlers. He was fortunate: though
+the door was locked, the key was in, and he passed out, leaving it
+open. What he was to do with himself till morning, he knew not: he might
+sit down on the gravestones; but he had had enough of graves; he
+supposed he must pace the town.
+
+The gentlemen set things straight in the vestry, and also came, in due
+course, to the door. They had left it locked, and now it was open! Each
+looked at the other in amazement.
+
+"What possessed you to do that?" demanded Rolls, in a fiercer tone than
+was consistent with politeness.
+
+"I do it! that's good," retorted Prattleton. "It was you locked it, or
+pretended to."
+
+"I did lock it. You must have opened it when you came down for the
+matches."
+
+"I wish we may be dropped upon if I did! I should be an idiot to open
+the door and give nightbirds a chance of scenting what we were up to."
+
+"Psha!" impatiently uttered Rolls, "a locked door could not open of
+itself. But there's no harm done; so blow out the light, and let's get
+off."
+
+Thus disputing--for in truth the open door had struck something like
+terror on the heart of both--George Prattleton and his friend quitted
+the church, leaving all secure. Mr. George had to carry the key home
+with him; he could not fling it into the clerk's house, as Lewis had
+done, for the house was fastened up; most houses are at two in the
+morning. He had successfully executed a little _ruse_ to get the key,
+unsuspected by the clerk: watching his opportunity, he had arrived at
+the clerk's house when that official had gone out for his supper-beer,
+ostensibly to put a question in regard to the time that a funeral was to
+take place on the morrow; and while talking to the old dame, he managed
+to abstract the key, hanging one that outwardly resembled it in its
+place. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton often took the duty at St. James the
+Less for the head master; and George was tolerably familiar with its
+ways and places.
+
+They went along with stealthy steps, their eyes peering fitfully into
+dark corners, lest any should be abroad and see them. Once in the more
+frequented streets it did not so much matter; they might be going home
+from some late entertainment, as Mr. George and his latch-key were not
+infrequently in the habit of doing. Rolls was in a glow of delight; and
+even an odd fear of detection now and then could not check it.
+
+"I was as sure there was no entry there as sure can be. Our side was
+sure of it also; only it was well to look and see. I'm more glad than if
+anybody had put a hundred pounds in my hand."
+
+"Who _is_ your side?" asked George Prattleton. "You have not told me
+anything, you know, Rolls."
+
+"Well, it would not be very interesting to you. It's an old dispute
+about a tithe cause; the name's Whiffam."
+
+Not a very lucid explanation; but George Prattleton was tired and cross,
+and not really overcurious. At the corner of a street he and Rolls
+parted, and Mr. George went home and let himself in with his latch-key,
+deeming nobody the wiser for the night's exploit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+PERPLEXITY.
+
+
+Henry Arkell had ample leisure that night for reflection. He got into a
+newly-built house, whose doors were not yet in, glad of even that
+shelter. The precise object of what he had seen he did not presume to
+guess; but, that some bad deed had been transacted, there could be no
+doubt. And what ought to be his course in it?--it was _that_ that was
+puzzling him. He could not go to Mr. Wilberforce, the incumbent of the
+church, and denounce George Prattleton--as he would have done had this
+stranger, Rolls, been the sole offender. Of all the people in
+Westerbury, that it should have been George Prattleton!--the brother of
+that kind man from whom his family had received so many obligations.
+Gratitude towards Mr. Prattleton seemed to demand his silence as to
+George; and Henry Arkell had an almost ultra sense of the sin of
+ingratitude.
+
+There was no one of whom he could take counsel; his father was still
+absent, and he did not like to betray what he had seen to others. Once,
+the thought crossed him to ask Travice Arkell; but he knew how vexed
+George Prattleton would be; and he came to the final resolution of
+speaking to George himself. The mystery of locking him in seemed to be
+clear now. He supposed George had done it to get possession of the key,
+not knowing he was in the church.
+
+With the first glimmering dawn of morning--not very early, you know, in
+November--Henry was hovering about the precincts of the clerk's house.
+He had no particular business there; but he was restless, and thought he
+might, by good luck, see or find out something, and he could not hope
+yet to get in at the master's. Hunt came out to fasten back his
+shutters.
+
+"What's it you, sir?" exclaimed the old man, in surprise. "You be abroad
+betimes."
+
+"Ay. How's the rheumatism?"
+
+"Be you going to pay for that chaney saucer you broke?" asked Hunt,
+allowing the rheumatism to drop into abeyance.
+
+"What saucer?"
+
+"Why that chaney saucer. It was on the floor with the cat's milk, when
+you flung the key in last night and broke it. The missis is as vexed as
+can be--she have had it for years; and if it were cracked a bit, it did
+for our cat."
+
+"I never broke it," returned Henry. "At least," he added, recollecting
+himself, and afraid of making some admission that might excite
+inquiries, "I did not know that I did."
+
+"No, you weren't perlite enough to stop and see what damage you'd done;
+you made off as fast as your legs would take you. Here's the pieces on
+the dresser," added the clerk; "you can come and look at the smash
+you've made. The missis began a talking of getting 'em jined. 'Jine
+seven pieces,' says I; 'it would cost more nor a new one of the best
+chaney; and run out then.'"
+
+He hobbled indoors as fast as he could for his lameness, and Henry
+followed him. The church key hung on its nail in the niche. Henry stared
+at it with open eyes; he did not expect to see it there. Had George
+Prattleton returned it to the clerk in the middle of the night? and was
+the old man an accomplice? But, as he gazed, his keen eye detected
+something not familiar in its aspect, and he raised his hand and turned
+the wards into the light. It was _not_ the church key, though it closely
+resembled it.
+
+He went into the kitchen: the old man was putting the broken pieces in a
+row. "There they be, sir; you can count 'em for yourself; and they
+ought to be replaced with a new one. A common delf would be better than
+none, for we be short of saucers, and the missis don't like a animal to
+drink out of the same as us Christians."
+
+"You shall have a saucer," said Henry, somewhat dreamily. "Who threw in
+the key?"
+
+"Who threw it in?" echoed the clerk.
+
+"I meant to ask what time it was thrown in."
+
+"Why, about five, or a little after: we was at tea. Didn't you know what
+time it was, yourself, with the clock going the quarters and the halves
+in your ears while you was at the organ? The missis----Who's that!"
+
+The "who's that!" referred to a thumping at the house door, which Henry
+Arkell had closed when he came in. The clerk went and opened it. It was
+Lewis. Henry recognised his voice, and drew back out of sight.
+
+Now, however uncomfortably Henry Arkell had passed the night, the author
+of his misfortune had passed it more so. Conscience, especially at the
+midnight hours, does indeed make cowards of us all, and it had made a
+miserable one of the senior Lewis. Not that he repented of what he had
+done, for the ill in itself, or from a better feeling towards his
+schoolfellow; but he feared the consequences. Suppose Henry Arkell,
+locked up with the dead, should die of fright, or turn mad? Lewis
+remembered to have heard of such things. Suppose he should, by a
+superhuman effort, reach one of the high and narrow windows, and,
+impelled by terror, propel himself through it and be killed? Why he,
+Lewis, would be hung; or, at the very least, transported for life. These
+flights of imagination, conveniently suppressing themselves during the
+evening, worked him into a state of indescribable dread and agitation,
+when alone at night. How he lay through it he could not tell, and as
+soon as the master's servants were astir, he got up and sneaked out of
+the house, with the intention of looking after Arkell, and what the
+night might have brought forth for him, administering first of all a
+preliminary beating to his brother as an instalment of what he would
+get, if he opened his mouth to tell of Arkell's absence.
+
+"Why, what do you want?" uttered the clerk, when he saw Lewis. "We shall
+have the whole rookery of you college gents here presently."
+
+Lewis paid no attention to what the words might imply; indeed, it may be
+questioned if he heard them, so great was his state of suspense and
+agitation. "Old fellow," said he, "I want the key of the church. Do lend
+it me: I'll bring it back to you directly."
+
+"The key of the church!" returned the clerk; "you'll come and ask me
+for my house next. No, no, young master; I have not got the rector's
+orders to trust it to any but the two what practises. What do you want
+in the church?"
+
+"Only to look after something that's left there. It's all right. I won't
+keep it five minutes."
+
+"No, that you won't, sir, for you won't get it. If the master says you
+may have it, well and good; but you must get his orders first."
+
+Lewis was desperate. He saw the key hanging in its place, rushed
+forward, took it from the hook, and made off with it in defiance.
+
+"I won't have this," uttered the discomfited old man. "One a breaking
+our cat's saucer, and t'other a thieving off the key in my very face!
+I'll complain to Mr. Wilberforce. Sir, what do that senior Lewis want in
+the church? He looked as resolute as a lion, and his breath was a
+panting. What's he after?"
+
+"It is beyond my comprehension," replied Henry, who was preparing to
+depart, more mystified than before. "If Lewis can get out, I can get
+in," he thought to himself, "and by dint of some great good luck, they
+may not have missed me."
+
+Calling out a good morning to Hunt, he hastened away in the direction of
+the master's, wondering much what Lewis wanted in the church, but not
+believing it could have reference to his own incarceration.
+
+The next actor on the scene was George Prattleton. He softly entered the
+clerk's passage, and stretched his hand up to the niche. But there he
+halted as if dumbfounded, and a key which he held he dropped back into
+his pocket again.
+
+"What the mischief has been at work now?" muttered he. "How can the old
+man's eyes have been so quick? I must face the matter boldly, and
+persuade him his eyes are wrong. Hunt," cried he, aloud, pushing open
+the kitchen door, "where's the key of the church?"
+
+"Where indeed, sir!" grumbled Hunt. "One of them senior college rebels
+have just been in and clawed it. But I promise him he won't do it twice:
+Mr. Wilberforce shall know the tricks they play me, now I'm old. Did you
+want it, sir?"
+
+"No," returned George Prattleton, carelessly. "I saw it was not on its
+nail, that's all. I came to know the hour fixed for the funeral. Mr.
+Prattleton desired me to ascertain, and I looked in last evening, but
+you were out."
+
+"The missis told me you had been, sir, but I had only just stepped out
+for our supper beer. Three o'clock to-day is the hour, sir: I thought
+the missis told you."
+
+At this juncture, in came Lewis, very pale. "Hunt, this is not the key;
+it won't undo it; and----"
+
+Lewis stopped in consternation, for his eyes had fallen on Mr. George
+Prattleton. The latter took the key from his unresisting hand.
+
+"If Hunt is to let you college boys have the key at will, and you get
+tampering with the lock, no wonder it will not undo it. I had better
+keep it for him," he added, slipping it into his own pocket. "What did
+you want with the key, Lewis?"
+
+Lewis did not answer.
+
+"Here, Hunt, I'll give you up possession," continued Mr. Prattleton,
+putting the key on the hook; "but you know if any damage is done to the
+church, through your allowing indiscriminate entrance to these college
+gentlemen, you will be held responsible."
+
+"_I_ allow 'em!" returned the indignant clerk. "But Mr. Wilberforce
+shall settle it."
+
+"That's not the church key," said Lewis, staring at the one just hung
+up.
+
+Mr. Prattleton heard the assertion with equanimity, and began whistling
+a popular air as he left the house. Hunt just glanced upwards, and saw
+it was the veritable church key. "It is the key," he said. "What do you
+mean?"
+
+"It must have been my shaking hand then," debated Lewis. "Old Hunt must
+know the key, and George Prattleton too. Hunt," he added, aloud, "you
+will lend me the key again for five minutes."
+
+"No, sir," raved out the old clerk, "and I hope you'll be flogged for
+having took it in defiance, though you be a senior, and a'most six foot
+high."
+
+He pushed Lewis out at the door as he spoke, fearing another act of
+defiance, and closed it.
+
+Lewis stood in irresolution; his terror for the fate of Henry Arkell was
+strong upon him. He flew after George Prattleton.
+
+"Will you do me a favour?" he panted, completely out of breath in his
+haste and agitation. "I want to get into the church, and Hunt has turned
+obstinate about the key. Will you get it from him for me?"
+
+Mr. Prattleton stopped and gazed at him. "You cannot want anything in
+the church, Lewis. What are you up to?"
+
+"Do get the key for me," he entreated, unable to help betraying his
+emotion. "I must go in; I _must_, Mr. Prattleton. It may be a matter of
+life or death."
+
+"You are ill, Lewis; you are agitated. What is all this?"
+
+"I am not ill. I only want to get into the church."
+
+"For what purpose?"
+
+"It's a little private matter of my own."
+
+"You can tell me what it is."
+
+"No, I cannot do that."
+
+"Then I cannot help you."
+
+Lewis was pushed to his wits' end. George Prattleton was walking on, but
+turned again and waited. He was not free from some inward wonder and
+agitation himself, remembering his own adventure of the past night.
+
+"If I trust a secret to you, will you promise, on your honour, not to
+tell it again?" asked Lewis. "It's nothing much; only a lark, concerning
+one of us college boys."
+
+"Oh, I'll promise," readily answered George Prattleton, who was rarely
+troubled with scruples of any sort, and used to be fond of "larks"
+himself; rather too much so.
+
+"Well, then, I locked Harry Arkell in the church last night, and I want
+to go and see after him, for fear he should be dead of fright, or
+something of that, you know."
+
+"In there all night? in the church all night?" stammered George
+Prattleton, as if he could not take in the meaning of the words.
+
+"He went in to practise after school yesterday evening, and I turned the
+key upon him, and took it back to old Hunt's, and he has been in there
+ever since, fastened up with the ghosts. I did it only for a lark, you
+know."
+
+George Prattleton's arms dropped powerless by his side, and his face
+turned of some livid colour between white and green. Would the previous
+night's exploit--_his_ exploit--come out to the world through this
+miserable fellow's ill-timed "joke?" But all they could do now was to
+see after Henry Arkell.
+
+They went back to the clerk's, and George Prattleton took the key from
+the hook.
+
+"Something has been dropped in the church, Hunt," he carelessly said;
+"I'll go myself with Lewis, and see that he meddles with nothing."
+
+"Something dropped in the church?" repeated the old man; "then, I
+suppose, that was what the other college gent has been after; though he
+didn't say nothing of it. He was here afore I had opened our shutters."
+
+"Which of them was that?" asked George Prattleton, pausing, with the key
+in his hand.
+
+"It were Mr. Arkell, sir; him what goes in to practise on the organ. He
+were in yesterday practising, and he flung the key back when he'd done,
+and broke our cat's chaney saucer, and then made off. I've been a
+showing him the mischief he went and done."
+
+"Was that Mr. Arkell, do you say? Has Arkell been here this morning?"
+
+"Why, it ain't two minutes since, sir. He cut up that way as if he was
+going straight home."
+
+And as the man spoke, there flashed into George Prattleton's mind the
+little episode that had so startled him and his friend Rolls in the
+night--the finding of the church door open, when they had surely locked
+it. It must have been then that Henry Arkell got out of the church. How
+much had he witnessed of the scene in the vestry? had he recognised him,
+George Prattleton?
+
+George Prattleton exchanged a look with Lewis, and hung the key up
+again, making some vague remark to the clerk, that Mr. Arkell had
+probably found what they were about to look for, if he had been to
+practise so recently as yesterday evening. Shutting the door behind him,
+he walked away with Lewis, whose senses were in a state of hopeless
+perplexity.
+
+"He has got out, you hear, Lewis."
+
+"But how could he get out?" returned Lewis. "He's not a fairy, to get
+through the keyhole, and he couldn't have got down from the windows!
+It's an impossibility."
+
+"These apparent 'impossibilities' turn out sometimes to have been the
+most straightforward trifles in the world," observed George Prattleton,
+carelessly. "How do we know but old Hunt may have gone into the church
+himself last evening, to dust it, or what not? It is----"
+
+"But then, Arkell would have come home," debated the perplexed Lewis,
+who truly thought some incomprehensible magic must have been at work.
+
+"Well, Lewis, I don't think it much signifies how he got out, provided
+he is out; and were I you, I should not inquire too closely into
+particulars. You had better keep as quiet as you can in the matter;
+that's my advice to you; Mr. Wilberforce might not be disposed to treat
+your exploit as a 'joke,' should it come to his ears."
+
+"But nobody knows it was me," said Lewis, eagerly.
+
+"Just so: therefore your policy should be to keep still. As you please,
+though, of course."
+
+"You won't tell of me, Mr. Prattleton?"
+
+"Not I, faith! It's no affair of mine; but I'd not recommend you to
+attempt it again, Lewis. Good morning; I'm going into the town."
+
+So early had they been abroad, and all this taken place, that it was not
+yet very much past seven, and when Henry Arkell reached the master's
+house, some of the boys were only going out of it for morning school.
+The hour for assembling was seven, but in the winter season some
+irregularity in arriving was winked at, for the best of all possible
+reasons, that the masters were late themselves; and it was often half
+past before the senior boy called over the roll. Henry went upstairs to
+give his face a wash; the man-servant saw him going up, but supposed he
+had only returned for something he might have forgotten. Neither of the
+Lewises was in the room, and he found his own bed tumbled as if he had
+slept in it. This of course had been Lewis's care; but Henry wondered at
+it. If Lewis had done it out of good nature, that his absence should not
+be observed, he must have changed greatly. It must be remembered that he
+knew nothing of Lewis's having locked him in the church; he supposed
+that must have been George Prattleton; but what he had seen tied his
+tongue from inquiring.
+
+Jocelyn had done calling the roll when Henry got to the college hall. It
+was so unusual a thing for him to be marked late, that Jocelyn heaved
+his eyebrows in a sort of lazy surprise. Presently Jocelyn asked him in
+an undertone where he had been the previous evening.
+
+"You missed me, then?" said Henry.
+
+"Missed you!--we couldn't help missing you; you had not got back at
+bed-time. I suppose you were at the deanery--and got home at eleven?
+It's fine to be you! How's Miss Beauclerc?"
+
+"As well as usual," replied Henry, with a nod and a laugh, to keep up
+the deception. Jocelyn's assumed idea was the most convenient one that
+could have been taken up.
+
+Henry threw his eyes round the school in search of the Lewises. Surely
+_they_ must know of his night's absence. The elder one he could not see;
+but the younger was at his desk with a red and sullen face, the effects
+of the private beating. He sat down to his lessons, with what courage he
+had, after his vigil; and presently, happening to look up, he saw Lewis
+senior.
+
+Lewis senior was stealthily regarding him over the corner of a desk,
+with as much inward curiosity as though he had risen from the dead.
+Lewis was in a perplexed state of mystification yet. There Arkell was,
+sure enough; alive, and apparently well. He had not become an idiot;
+that, Lewis could see; he had not parted with his arms and legs. How
+_had_ he got out? But the relief, to find him thus, was so great to
+Lewis's mind, that his spirits rose to a reckless height; and he was
+insolent to Jocelyn when the latter spoke to him about coming in after
+the roll was called.
+
+At breakfast time Henry went in search of George Prattleton, but could
+not see him; the probability was that Mr. George had gone to bed again,
+and was taking out his night's rest by daylight. He sought him again at
+dinner-time, and then he had gone out; the two Prattleton boys thought
+to the billiard rooms. In the afternoon, however, as Henry was passing
+through the cloisters to the school, after service in the cathedral, he
+met him.
+
+George Prattleton listened with an air of apparent incredulity to the
+tale; Henry had got locked up in the church, and seen him and a stranger
+go into the church at midnight, or thereabouts!--_him_, George
+Prattleton! Mr. George denied it _in toto_; and expressed his belief
+that Henry must have been dreaming.
+
+"It's of no use talking like that, George Prattleton," said Henry, in a
+vexed tone. "You know quite well you were there. I saw the same man with
+you in the Grounds, the previous night, when I was going home after the
+audit-dinner."
+
+"You must have seen double, then! I don't know whom you are talking of.
+Had you been drinking?"
+
+"It won't do, George Prattleton. I was in full possession of both my
+sight and senses. You know whom I mean. His name's Rolls."
+
+"Did he tell you his name?"
+
+"No; but you did. I heard you call him by his name two or three times in
+the church last night. I want to know what I am to do about it."
+
+"I don't know any Rolls; and I was not in the church last night; and my
+full persuasion is--if you really were locked in, as you say--that you
+fell asleep and dreamt this story."
+
+"Now look you here, George Prattleton; if you persist in this line of
+denial, I shall be obliged to tell Mr. Wilberforce. I don't like to do
+it; your family and mine are intimate, and we have received many
+kindnesses from them, and I assure you I'd almost rather cut my tongue
+out than speak. But I can't let things go on at this uncertainty. Do you
+know what that Rolls did?"
+
+"What did he do?" was the mocking rejoinder.
+
+"He cut a leaf out of the register book."
+
+"No?" shouted George Prattleton, the words scaring him to seriousness.
+
+"I declare he did. When the candle went out, you thought it went out of
+itself, didn't you; well, he blew it out. I saw him blow it, and he
+called out, 'What a beast of a candle,' and said it was the damp put it
+out, and he got you to go for the matches. Was it not so?"
+
+"Well?" said George Prattleton, too much alarmed to heed the half
+admission.
+
+"Well, you had no sooner gone than he somehow got the candle alight
+again; I didn't see how, I suppose he had matches; and he took out a
+penknife, and put what looked like a thin board behind the leaf he was
+looking at, and cut it out. I say I'm not sure! but it's transportation
+for life to rob a church register."
+
+George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face,
+heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have
+countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All
+denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to
+future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.
+
+"You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help
+me when I got back with the matches?"
+
+"Because I was bewildered--frightened, if you will; and it all passed so
+quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but
+one can't do always the right thing at the right time."
+
+"He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I----"
+
+"Do you know what it related to?" interrupted Henry.
+
+"Yes; to some old tithe cause--a dispute in a family he knows; people of
+the name of Whiffam," answered George Prattleton. "Some trifling cause,
+he said."
+
+"Well, it's an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so
+trifling a cause," observed Henry. "Who is this Rolls? Do you know him
+well?"
+
+"Three days back I did not know him from Adam," was the candid
+admission. "We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick
+directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me
+on this very thing--whether I could not get him a sight of the
+register."
+
+"What's to be done about it?" asked Henry.
+
+"_I_ don't know," returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.
+
+"It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!"
+
+"Be still, for heaven's sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your
+promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part."
+
+"I don't wish to betray it; I'd do anything rather than bring trouble
+upon you. But it _ought_ to be told."
+
+"Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever
+hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and
+get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in
+the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise."
+
+Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back,
+and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of
+needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He put his hand into
+George's.
+
+"You have my promise," he said; "but on one condition. I will never
+speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing
+for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you
+to release me from my promise; and if you decline, _I_ shall consider
+myself no longer bound by it."
+
+"Very well; a bargain," said George Prattleton, after a pause. "And now
+I'm after that scoundrel Rolls. I'll tell _you_ a secret before I
+go--tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?"
+
+"I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there."
+
+"Not I. It was Lewis."
+
+"Lewis!"
+
+"Lewis senior. For a lark, he said, but I expect he owed you some
+grudge. By the way, though, I promised him I'd not speak of this; he
+told it me in confidence. I forgot that."
+
+"I'll not speak of it. I can't, if I am to keep the other a secret. It
+was only the difficulty of accounting for my getting out of the church,
+that kept me from asking Hunt how I got locked in."
+
+They parted. Mr. George Prattleton went in search of his friend Rolls,
+and Henry tore along the cloisters with all his might, anticipating he
+knew not what of reprimand from the head master for lingering on his
+way from college. It was close upon four o'clock, and his desk had some
+Greek to do yet; but the afternoon lessons were less regularly performed
+in winter than in summer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.
+
+
+On the second of December, Peter Arkell and his family came home,
+looking blooming. Eva Prattleton, who had stayed with them all the time,
+was blooming; as was Lucy; as was, for her, Mrs. Arkell. Even Peter
+himself looked quite a different man from the one who had gone away in
+July. Ah, my friends, there's nothing like running away from home to
+restore health and looks, _if you can only leave care behind_.
+
+Quite a small crowd had assembled to meet them at the station. Nearly
+all the Prattleton family, including Mr. George, who was dreadfully in
+want just now of some distraction for his long hours. The two young
+Prattletons and Henry Arkell had rushed up, books in hand, just as they
+came out of school; and Travice Arkell, he was there. Handsome Travice!
+the best-looking young man in Westerbury when Frederick St. John was out
+of it.
+
+"How have _you_ been, Lucy?" he whispered, quietly coming near her,
+when he had done greeting the rest.
+
+She shyly looked up at him as he took her hand. Scarcely a word was
+spoken. His head was bent for a moment over her blushing cheeks, and
+Travice looked as if he would very much have liked to take a kiss from
+the red ripe lips. It was impossible there; perhaps impossible
+elsewhere. Peter came up.
+
+"Travice, I wish you'd see to the luggage, and that; and put my wife in
+a fly. There's enough of you here without me. I shall walk quietly on."
+
+Just the same shy, awkward, incapable Peter Arkell as of yore. In
+usefulness his daughter Lucy was worth ten of him. He slipped out of the
+station by the least-frequented way, and walked on towards home. As he
+was going along, he met Kenneth, Mr. Fauntleroy's confidential clerk;
+and the latter stopped.
+
+"I'm glad I met you," said Kenneth; "it will save me a journey to your
+house to-day, for we heard you'd be at home. How is it you have never
+sent us any money, Mr. Arkell?"
+
+"Because I couldn't send it," returned Peter. "I wrote to Mr.
+Fauntleroy, telling him how impossible it was. I suppose he has managed
+it. He could if he liked, you know; it all lies in his hands."
+
+"Ah, but he couldn't," answered Kenneth. "He had been too easy in one or
+two matters (I don't allude to your affairs), and had got involved in a
+good deal of expense through it; and the consequence is, he has been
+obliged to adopt a stricter policy in general."
+
+"Mr. Fauntleroy knows how I was situated. In a strange place, you have
+to pay for everything as it comes in. I got a little teaching down
+there, and that helped; but it was not much."
+
+"Well, Mr. Fauntleroy thought you ought to have sent him some money,"
+persisted Kenneth. "And I'm not sure but he would have enforced it, had
+he not got it elsewhere."
+
+"Got it elsewhere! On my account? What do you mean, Kenneth?"
+
+"Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds."
+
+"Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds!" almost shouted Peter. "How did that
+come about? Who said anything to Mr. Arkell?"
+
+"I believe Mr. Fauntleroy happened to mention it accidentally. Or
+whether it was that he asked him for your exact address at the place,
+and said he was going to worry you for money, I'm not sure. I know Mr.
+Arkell said, better let you be quiet while you were there, and advanced
+the ten pounds."
+
+"Mr. Fauntleroy had no right to speak to my cousin about it at all, Mr.
+Kenneth. I regard it as a breach of good faith. I wrote and asked Mr.
+Fauntleroy to wait, and he might have done so. As to the address, he
+knew that, for I gave it him."
+
+"I'm in a hurry," said Mr. Kenneth. "I thought I'd speak to you, because
+I know Mr. Fauntleroy intended to send to you as soon as you came home.
+Here's another instalment due, now December's come in."
+
+He went on his way. Peter Arkell looked after him for a minute, and then
+went on his. "Home to care! home to care!" he murmured with a sigh of
+pain.
+
+Over and over again had Peter Arkell--not cursed, he was too good a man
+for that--but repented the day that placed him in the power of Mr.
+Fauntleroy. Some years previous to this, in a moment of great
+embarrassment, Peter Arkell had gone to Mr. Fauntleroy with his tale of
+woes. "Won't you help me?" he asked; "I once helped you." And Mr.
+Fauntleroy, entirely indifferent to his fellow-creature's woes though he
+was at heart, had not the face to refuse, with the recollection of that
+past obligation upon him. He helped him in this way. He advanced Peter
+Arkell two or three hundred pounds at a heavy rate of interest. It was
+not his own money, he said--he really had none to spare--it was the
+money of a client who had left it in his hands to make some profitable
+use of. Of course Peter Arkell understood it: at least he believed he
+did--that the money was Mr. Fauntleroy's own, and the plea of the client
+only put forth that the interest might be exacted--and his simple,
+honourable nature blushed for Mr. Fauntleroy. But he accepted it--he was
+too much in need of the assistance not to do it--and as the months and
+years went on he found himself unable to pay the interest. Things went
+on with some discomfort for a long time, and then Mr. Fauntleroy
+insisted on what he called some final arrangement being come to--that
+is, he said his client insisted upon it. The result was that Peter
+Arkell undertook to pay ten pounds every three months off the debt,
+interest, and costs, without the smallest notion how he could accomplish
+it. He had some learned book coming out, and if that turned up a trump
+card, he might be able to do it and more. But, when the book did come
+out it did not turn out a trump. The first ten pounds was due on the
+first of June last, and Peter had managed to pay it. The second ten was
+due on the first of September, and he wrote to Mr. Fauntleroy for grace.
+He now heard it had been paid by his cousin William Arkell. The third
+ten had been due the previous day, for this was the second of December.
+He would be able to pay this, for he had some money coming to him yet
+from the people who had rented his house, and, so far, _that_ would be
+got rid of.
+
+Peter might have paid it in another way. The first thing he saw on
+entering his home was a letter from his sister Mildred, and on opening
+it he found it contained a ten-pound note. These windfalls would come
+from Mildred now and then; and without them Peter had not an idea how he
+should have got along.
+
+But not to his necessities did he appropriate this. The most prominent
+feeling swaying him then, was vexation that William Arkell should have
+been troubled about the matter--William, who had ever been so good to
+him--who had helped him out of more difficulties than the world knew of.
+In the impulse of the moment, without stopping to sit down, he went out
+again, carrying the note. He could not remember the day when he had been
+able to pay anything to his cousin, but at least he could do this.
+
+Things were not prospering with the city, or with William Arkell. That
+the trade was going gradually down to ruin, to all but total
+extermination, he felt sure of now; and he bitterly regretted that
+Travice had cast in his lot with it. He had designed to send Travice to
+Oxford, to cause him to embrace one of the learned professions; but
+Travice had elected to follow his father, and Mr. Arkell had
+yielded--all just as it had been with himself in his own youth. None,
+save William Arkell himself, knew the care that was upon him, or how his
+property was dwindling down. Ever and anon there would come flashing a
+gleam of improvement in the trade, and rather large orders would come
+in, whispering hope for the future; but the orders and the hope soon
+faded again.
+
+Peter entered the iron gates, and was turning to the left to the
+manufactory, when he saw Mr. Arkell at the dining-room window; so he
+went across to the house.
+
+"No need to look for me abroad to-day, Peter," said his cousin, opening
+the dining-room door and meeting him in the hall. "I am not well enough
+to go out."
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Peter.
+
+"I don't know; I have had shivering fits all the morning--can do nothing
+but sit over this hot fire. Charlotte thinks it must be some sort of
+illness coming on; but I suppose it's only a cold. So you have got back
+at last?"
+
+"Now, just," answered Peter, sitting down on the other side of the fire;
+"Travice said nothing about your illness; he was at the station."
+
+"Was he? I did not know he had gone out. Oh, he thinks it's nothing, I
+dare say; I hope it will be nothing. What's this?"
+
+Peter had handed him the ten-pound note. "It is what you paid to Mr.
+Fauntleroy while I was away; and bitterly vexed I am, to think he should
+have applied to you. I met Kenneth in leaving the station, and heard of
+it from him. But, William, I want to know why you paid it. Did
+Fauntleroy hold out any threats to you?"
+
+"Something to that effect. He spoke of putting an execution into your
+house: it would not have done at all, you know, while strangers were in
+it. I never knew that he had got judgment."
+
+"Oh yes, he did," said Peter, bitterly; "he took care of that. I am at
+his mercy any day, both in goods and person. He forgets, William, the
+service I rendered him, and my having to pay it: it is nothing but that
+that has kept me down in life. Put an execution in my house! I wonder
+where he expects to go to? Not to heaven, I should think?"
+
+"He said his client pressed for the money--would not, in fact, wait."
+
+"I dare say he did; it's just like him to say it. His client is
+himself."
+
+"No?" exclaimed William Arkell, lifting his head.
+
+"I firmly believe it to be so. He is pressing for another ten pounds
+now; it was due yesterday."
+
+"Have you got it for him? If not, why do you give me this?"
+
+"I have got it," said Peter; "I have to receive money to-day. Thank you
+a thousand times, William, for this and all else. How is business?"
+
+"Don't ask. I feel too ill to fret over it just now. I'd give it up
+to-morrow but for Travice."
+
+Certain words all but escaped Peter Arkell's lips, but they were
+suppressed again. He wondered--he had wondered long--_why_ William
+Arkell continued to live at an expensive rate. That it was his wife's
+doings, not his, Peter knew; but he could not help thinking that, had he
+been a firm, clever man, as William was, he should not have yielded to
+her.
+
+He met her in the hall as he went out. She wore a rich, trailing silk,
+and bracelets of gold. Peter stopped to shake hands with her; but she
+was never too civil to him, or to his daughter Lucy. In point of fact,
+Lucy had for some time haunted Mrs. Arkell's dreams in a very unpleasant
+manner, entailing a frequent nightmare, hideous to contemplate.
+
+"What did Peter Arkell want here?" she asked of her husband, before she
+was well in the room; and her tone was by no means a gracious one.
+
+"Not much," carelessly answered Mr. Arkell, who had drawn over the fire
+in another fit of shivering.
+
+She took her seat in the chair Peter had vacated, and slightly lifted
+her rich dress, lest the scorching fire should mar its beauty.
+
+"I suppose he came to borrow money," she said, no pleasant look upon her
+countenance.
+
+"On the contrary, he came to pay me some."
+
+"To pay you some! What for?"
+
+"To repay me some, I should have said. I paid something for him during
+his absence--ten pounds--and he has now returned it."
+
+For one single moment she felt inclined to doubt the words, and to say
+so. The next, she remembered how simply truthful was her husband.
+
+"I want Travice," she said, presently. "I sent to the manufactory for
+him, but he was out. Will he be long, do you know?"
+
+"I dare say not. Peter told me he was at the railway station. He went, I
+suppose, to meet them."
+
+Mrs. Arkell lifted her head with a sort of start.
+
+"Did you know he had gone?" she asked, sharply.
+
+"I knew nothing at all of it. What are you so cross about?"
+
+Mrs. Arkell bit her lips--her habit when put out.
+
+"I have always objected to Travice's excessive intimacy with the Peter
+Arkells," she slowly said. "You know I have. But I might just as well
+have objected to the wind's blowing, for all the effect it has had. I
+hope it will not prove that I had cause."
+
+"Cause! What cause? What do you mean, Charlotte?"
+
+"Well, I think they are a mean, deceitful set. I think they are scheming
+to entrap Travice into an engagement with Lucy Arkell."
+
+Ill as Mr. Arkell felt, he yet burst into a laugh. The notion of Peter's
+scheming to entrap anyone, or anything, was so ludicrous: simple,
+single-minded Peter, who had probably never given a thought to Lucy's
+marrying at all since she was in existence! and his wife was utterly
+above meanness of any sort--the very soul of openness and honour.
+
+"Where did you pick up that notion?" he asked, when his laugh was over.
+
+"I picked it up from observation and common sense," answered Mrs.
+Arkell, resentful of the laugh. "Travice used always to be there; and
+now that they are back, I suppose he will be again. He has lost no time
+in beginning, it seems."
+
+"And if he is there, it does not follow that he goes for the sake of
+Lucy."
+
+"It looks wonderfully like it, though."
+
+"Nonsense, Charlotte! In the old days, when I was a young man, as
+Travice is, and Mildred was a girl like Lucy, quite as attractive----"
+
+"Quite as what?" shrieked Mrs. Arkell. "I hope your taste does not put
+forward Lucy Arkell as attractive--or as Mildred's having been so before
+her. They are as like as two peas. A couple of uneducated,
+old-fashioned, old-maidish things, possessing not a single attraction."
+
+"Opinions differ," said Mr. Arkell, quietly. "But if it be as you
+intimate, there's the less danger for Travice. What I was about to say
+was this--that in the old days I was in the habit of going to that house
+more than Travice goes to it now, and busy people, even my own mother,
+never believed but that I went for the sake of Mildred. I did not;
+neither did I marry her."
+
+"The cases are different. You had no companion at home; Travice has his
+sisters. And it might have ended in your marrying Mildred, had I not
+come down on that long visit here, and saved you."
+
+"Yes, it might." He was looking dreamily into the fire, his thoughts
+buried in the past; utterly oblivious to the present, and to the effect
+his remark might make. Mrs. Arkell felt particularly savage when she
+heard it.
+
+"And a nice wife you'd have had! She is only fit for what she is--a
+lady's maid. Lucy will follow her example, perhaps, when old Peter's
+poverty has sent him into the grave. I always hated Lucy Arkell--it may
+be a strong term to use--but it's the truth. From the time that she was
+only as high as the elbow of that chair, and her mother, with the fine
+Cheveley notions, used to deck her out as a little court doll, I hated
+her!"
+
+"And I have always thought her one of the sweetest and most loveable of
+children," quietly returned Mr. Arkell. "Opinions differ, I say,
+Charlotte. But why should you have hated her?"
+
+"Because--I think it must have been" (and Mrs. Arkell looked into the
+fire also in reflection, and for once spoke her true sentiments)--"I
+think it must have been because you and Travice made so much of her. I
+only know it has been."
+
+"I'd not cherish it, Charlotte."
+
+"_You_ would not, I know. Tell me," she added, with quite a gust of
+passion in voice and eye, "would you like to see your fine, attractive,
+noble son, thrown away upon Lucy Arkell?"
+
+"My head is as bad as it can be, Charlotte; I wish you'd not worry me. I
+think I must be going to have some fever."
+
+"He might marry half Westerbury. With his good looks, his education, his
+fine prospects----"
+
+"Yes, do put in _them_," interrupted Mr. Arkell. "Very fine they are, in
+the present aspect of affairs."
+
+"Affairs will get good again. I don't believe the half that's said
+about the badness of trade. _You_ have made a good thing of it," she
+added significantly.
+
+"Pretty well; I and my father before me. But those times have gone by
+for ever."
+
+"I don't believe it; I believe the trade will revive again and be as
+lucrative as before; and Travice will be able to maintain a home such as
+we have maintained. It _is_ a fine prospect, I don't care how you may
+deny it in your gloom; and I say that Travice, enjoying it, might marry
+half the desirable girls in Westerbury."
+
+"He'd be taken up for bigamy if he did."
+
+"Can't you be serious?" she angrily asked. "Whereas, if he got
+enthralled by that bane, Lucy Arkell, and----Good patience, here she
+is!" broke off Mrs. Arkell, as her eyes fell on the courtyard. "The
+impudence of that! Not half an hour in the town, and to come here!"
+
+Lucy, in her grey travelling cloak, and fresh straw bonnet, came
+staggering in under a load: a flower-pot, with a great plant in bloom.
+She looked well. In moments of excitement, there was something of her
+mother's loveliness in her face; in the lustre of the soft and sweet
+dark eyes, in the rose bloom of the delicate cheeks, and at those times
+she was less like Mildred. Lucy put her load on the table, and turned to
+offer her hand to Mrs. Arkell. Mrs. Arkell touched the tips of the
+fingers, but Mr. Arkell took her in his arms and kissed her twice; and
+then recollected himself and fell into proper repentance.
+
+"I ought not to have done it, Lucy; I forgot myself. But, my dear, in
+the joy of seeing you, and seeing you so pretty, I quite lost sight of
+precaution. I am shivering with cold and illness, Lucy, and may be going
+to have I don't know what."
+
+Lucy laughed. She was not afraid, and said so.
+
+"Mamma made me bring this down at once for your conservatory," she said,
+addressing Mrs. Arkell. "It is a wax plant, and a very beautiful one.
+The last time we were here, you were regretting you had not a nice one,
+and when mamma saw this, she thought of you. She sends her very kind
+regards, Mrs. Arkell, and hopes you will accept it. And now that's my
+message, and there's my load, and I have delivered both," concluded
+Lucy, merrily.
+
+In the face of the present--and it was really a beautiful one of its
+nature--Mrs. Arkell could not maintain her utter ungraciousness. She
+unbent a very little: unwillingly thanked Lucy for the plant, and
+inquired how Mrs. Peter Arkell was.
+
+"I think we had better send our girls to the sea-side, if they could
+come back improved as Lucy has," remarked Mr. Arkell; and the remark
+aggravated his wife. "Are those roses on your cheeks real, Lucy, or have
+you learnt the use of that fashionable cosmetic, rose-powder?"
+
+"They are quite real," answered Lucy, the cheeks blushing their own
+testimony to the answer. "It has done us all so much good! Mr.
+Prattleton said he should not have known mamma, had he met her in a
+strange place, she is looking so different. But I am warm just now. It
+was coming through the streets with that: everybody stared at me."
+
+"Could not Travice have brought it?" asked Mr. Arkell.
+
+"He did offer; but mamma said I should bring it more carefully than he,
+and she sent me off with it at once. She had been taking care of it
+herself all the way."
+
+"Where is Travice?" inquired Mrs. Arkell, the sharp tone perceptible in
+her voice again, more especially to Mr. Arkell's ears.
+
+"He was helping mamma indoors when I came. Papa had gone somewhere: he
+left us at the station."
+
+Mr. Arkell did not say that he had been there. He was looking very
+poorly just then, and his hands, quite trembling with cold, were blue as
+he stretched them out to the fire. Lucy, an admirable sick nurse from
+her training, the being with her ailing mother, threw back her grey
+cloak, knelt down, and took them into her own warm hands to chafe them.
+
+It was what one of Mr. Arkell's own daughters would not, or could not,
+have done. He looked down on the pretty upturned face, every line of
+which spoke of a sweet goodness. She was more lovely, more attractive
+than Mildred had been--or was it that his eyes had then had a film
+before them?--and he felt that--were he in Travice's place----
+
+"I wonder you liked to stay so long away, leaving Henry to himself!"
+interrupted Mrs. Arkell.
+
+"He was at Mr. Wilberforce's, you know," replied Lucy. "He was very well
+there; very happy."
+
+"I suppose he comes home to-day."
+
+"No, not until the college school breaks up for Christmas. Mr.
+Wilberforce thinks he had better not disturb himself before. Have you
+heard of the gold medal? But of course you have. I hope I shall not grow
+too proud of my brother. But oh, Mrs. Arkell! pray tell me! What do you
+think of that dreadful thing, the loss of Mr. Dundyke? Will he ever come
+back again?"
+
+"Ever come back again!" repeated Mrs. Arkell, believing that Lucy was
+putting on an affectation of childishness. "How can a murdered man come
+back?"
+
+"Was he murdered? I thought they supposed he was drowned, but were not
+certain what it was. Was he murdered?" she repeated, looking at Mr.
+Arkell, for Mrs. Arkell did not appear inclined to answer her.
+
+"I fear he was, Lucy."
+
+"Oh, what a dreadful thing! Mrs. Arkell, what will Mrs. Dundyke do?"
+
+"Oh, she has enough to live upon, I believe."
+
+"I did not quite mean it in that light," said Lucy, gently, as Mrs.
+Arkell's remark jarred upon her ear. "And old Marmaduke Carr has died,"
+she resumed, "and there's going to be a law-suit about the property.
+What a great many things seem to have happened since we went away! Mr.
+Arkell, which side do you think has the most right to gain the
+law-suit?"
+
+"The most right? Well, there's a great deal to be said on both sides,
+Lucy. If there was no marriage, of course the property does belong to
+the Carrs of Eckford; if there was a marriage, they have no right to it
+whatever. In any case, the blame lies with Robert Carr; and his
+descendants suffer."
+
+"Do you think there was a marriage?" continued Lucy.
+
+Mr. Arkell shook his head.
+
+"I don't, my dear, now. Had there been one, some traces of it would have
+been found ere this."
+
+"Then young Mrs. Carr will lose the law-suit!"
+
+"Undoubtedly. It appears very strange to me that Fauntleroy should go on
+with it."
+
+The hands were warm now, and Lucy rose.
+
+"You have done me good, Lucy," said Mr. Arkell, as she was putting on
+her gloves to leave; "good in all ways. A bright face and a cheering
+manner! my dear, in sickness, they are worth their weight in gold."
+
+Making the best of her way home, she found Travice alone. Henry was
+upstairs with his mother, uncording boxes.
+
+"What a time you have been, Lucy!" was the salutation; for it had seemed
+very long to him.
+
+"Have I? I did not once sit down. Mr. Arkell says I look well after my
+sojourn, but I told him he should see mamma."
+
+"So he should. But I must be going, Lucy. _Do_ you look well?"
+
+He took both her hands in his, and stood before her, his face a little
+bent, regarding her intently. Lucy blushed violently under the gaze.
+Suddenly, without any warning, his lips were on hers; and he took the
+first kiss that he had taken from Lucy since her childhood.
+
+"Don't be angry with me, Lucy! Think it a cousin's kiss, if you will."
+
+As he went out, the large shadow of a large, gaily-dressed woman,
+passing between him and the setting sun, was cast upon Travice Arkell.
+The shadow of Barbara Fauntleroy. If he could but have foreseen the type
+it was of the terrible shadow that was to fall upon him in the future!
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+In general every effort has been made to replicate the original text as
+faithfully as possible, including some instances of no longer standard
+spelling and punctuation. However, obvious punctuation errors have been
+corrected. In particular, there were several occurences of words split at
+the end of a line where the space for the hyphen was evident but the
+hyphen itself was not visible; these words have been rejoined as if the
+hyphen was present. Hyphenation has been made consistent. The following
+changes were made to correct apparent errors, generally of typographical
+nature:
+
+  p. 31 "the two unfortunates eat" eat changed to ate
+  p. 32 "Monsieur Anglais eat nothing" eat changed to ate
+  p. 40 "merrily as [a] French diligence" a inserted
+  p. 63 "wont be much addition" wont changed to won't
+  p. 69 "christian name. The men" christian changed to Christian
+  p. 93 "a encircled by carriage drive" a changed to and
+  p. 104 "Be so good as [to] send" to inserted
+  p. 109 "could have been at Genoa" Genoa changed to Geneva
+  p. 118 "and Mr. Dundyke," she said" she changed to he
+  p. 139 "distresss she experienced" distresss changed to distress
+  p. 155 "enough of him, I    ect, before" '   ect' changed to expect
+  p. 169 "I should asume it to be" asume changed to assume
+  p. 173 "I wont charge you for" wont changed to won't
+  p. 187 "thin, weaseny sort of man" weaseny changed to weaselly
+  p. 216 "The Arkells will joins us" joins changed to join
+  p. 218 "christian name?--Martha Ann" christian changed to Christian
+  p. 226 "there cord of the marriage" there cord changed to the record
+  p. 227-8 "on the other side [of] the platform" of inserted
+  p. 264 "the canon's wives and daughters" canon's changed to canons'
+  p. 274 "boy might have been seen tealing" tealing changed to stealing
+  p. 287 "and a deuced easy wayit is" wayit changed to way it
+  p. 328 "I don't cear how you may" cear changed to care
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILDRED ARKELL, VOLUME II (OF 3)***
+
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