initial commit of ebook 4450HEADmain

1 files changed, 3647 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/4450.txt b/4450.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab408a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4450.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3647 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Adventures of Harry Richmond, by Meredith, v7
+#56 in our series by George Meredith
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other
+Project Gutenberg file.
+
+We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your
+own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future
+readers.  Please do not remove this.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
+view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
+The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the
+information they need to understand what they may and may not
+do with the etext.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
+further information, is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+
+
+Title: The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v7
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4450]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 31, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext Adventures Harry Richmond, by Meredith, v7
+*********This file should be named 4450.txt or 4450.zip*********
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2001 as we release over 50 new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 4000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts.  We need
+funding, as well as continued efforts by volunteers, to maintain
+or increase our production and reach our goals.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of January, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware,
+Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
+Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma,
+Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,
+Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+All donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fundraising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fundraising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+BOOK 7.
+
+XLV.      WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE .
+XLVI.     AMONG GIPSY WOMEN
+XLVII.    MY FATHER ACTS THE CHARMER AGAIN
+XLVIII.   THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED
+XLIX.     WHICH FORESHADOWS A GENERAL GATHERING
+L.        WE ARE ALL IN MY FATHER'S NET
+LI.       AN ENCOUNTER SHOWING MY FATHER'S GENIUS IN A STRONG LIGHT
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE
+
+A single tent stood in a gully running from one of the gravel-pits of the
+heath, near an iron-red rillet, and a girl of Kiomi's tribe leaned over
+the lazy water at half length, striking it with her handkerchief.  At a
+distance of about twice a stone's-throw from the new carriage-road
+between Durstan and Bulsted, I fancied from old recollections she might
+be Kiomi herself.  This was not the time for her people to be camping on
+Durstan.  Besides, I feared it improbable that one would find her in any
+of the tracks of her people.  The noise of the wheels brought the girl's
+face round to me.  She was one of those who were babies in the tents when
+I was a boy.  We were too far apart for me to read her features.  I lay
+back in the carriage, thinking that it would have been better for my poor
+little wild friend if I had never crossed the shadow of her tents.  A
+life caught out of its natural circle is as much in danger of being lost
+as a limb given to a wheel in spinning machinery; so it occurred to me,
+until I reflected that Prince Ernest might make the same remark, and
+deplore the damage done to the superior machinery likewise.
+
+My movements appeared to interest the girl.  She was up on a mound of the
+fast-purpling heath, shading her eyes to watch me, when I called at
+Bulsted lodge-gates to ask for a bed under Julia's roof that night.  Her
+bare legs twinkled in a nimble pace on the way to Durstan Hall, as if she
+was determined to keep me in sight.  I waved my hand to her.  She
+stopped.  A gipsy's girl's figure is often as good an index to her mind
+as her face, and I perceived that she had not taken my greeting
+favourably; nor would she advance a step to my repeated beckonings; I
+tried hat, handkerchief, purse, in vain.  My driver observed that she was
+taken with a fit of the obstinacy of 'her lot.' He shouted, 'Silver,' and
+then 'Fortune.'  She stood looking.  The fellow discoursed on the nature
+of gipsies.  Foxes were kept for hunting, he said; there was reason in
+that.  Why we kept gipsies none could tell.  He once backed a gipsy
+prizefighter, who failed to keep his appointment.  'Heart sunk too low
+below his belt, sir.  You can't reckon on them for performances.  And
+that same man afterwards fought the gamest fight in the chronicles o' the
+Ring!  I knew he had it in him.  But they're like nothing better than the
+weather; you can't put money on 'em and feel safe.'  Consequently he saw
+no good in them.
+
+'She sticks to her post,' he said, as we turned into the Durstan grounds.
+The girl was like a flag-staff on the upper line of heathland.
+
+Heriot was strolling, cigar in mouth, down one of the diminutive alleys
+of young fir in this upstart estate.  He affected to be prepossessed by
+the case between me and Edbury, and would say nothing of his own affairs,
+save that he meant to try for service in one of the Continental armies;
+he whose susceptible love for his country was almost a malady.  But he
+had given himself to women it was Cissy this, Trichy that, and the wiles
+of a Florence, the spites of an Agatha, duperies, innocent-seemings,
+witcheries, reptile-tricks of the fairest of women, all through his
+conversation.  He had so saturated himself with the resources, evasions,
+and desperate cruising of these light creatures of wind, tide, and
+tempest, that, like one who has been gazing on the whirligoround, he saw
+the whole of women running or only waiting for a suitable partner to run
+the giddy ring to perdition and an atoning pathos.
+
+I cut short one of Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking
+bones of the dish was not to my taste.  He twitted me with turning
+parson.  I spoke of Kiomi.  Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little
+devil!'  with his usual contemplative relish of devilry.  We parted,
+feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which
+indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear
+the strain of friendship if it can.  Heriot had promised to walk half-way
+with me to Bulsted, in spite of Lady Maria's childish fears of some
+attack on him.  He was now satisfied with a good-bye at the hall-doors,
+and he talked ostentatiously of a method that he had to bring Edbury up
+to the mark.  I knew that same loud decreeing talk to be a method on his
+own behalf of concealing his sensitive resentment at the tone I had
+adopted: Lady Maria's carriage had gone to fetch her husband from a
+political dinner.  My portmanteau advised me to wait for its return.
+Durstan and Riversley were at feud, however, owing to some powerful rude
+English used toward the proprietor of the former place by the squire; so
+I thought it better to let one of the grooms shoulder my luggage, and
+follow him.
+
+The night was dark; he chose the roadway, and I crossed the heath,
+meeting an exhilarating high wind that made my blood race: Egoism is not
+peculiar to any period of life; it is only especially curious in a young
+man beginning to match himself against his elders, for in him it suffuses
+the imagination; he is not merely selfishly sentient, or selfishly
+scheming: his very conceptions are selfish.  I remember walking at my
+swiftest pace, blaming everybody I knew for insufficiency, for want of
+subordination to my interests, for poverty of nature, grossness,
+blindness to the fine lights shining in me; I blamed the Fates for
+harassing me, circumstances for not surrounding me with friends worthy of
+me.  The central 'I' resembled the sun of this universe, with the
+difference that it shrieked for nourishment, instead of dispensing it.
+
+My monstrous conceit of elevation will not suffer condensation into
+sentences.  What I can testify to is, that for making you bless the legs
+you stand on, a knockdown blow is a specific.  I had it before I knew
+that a hand was up.  I should have fancied that I had run athwart a tree,
+but for the recollection, as I was reeling to the ground, of a hulk of a
+fellow suddenly fronting me, and he did not hesitate with his fist.  I
+went over and over into a heathery hollow.  The wind sang shrill through
+the furzes; nothing was visible but black clumps, black cloud.
+Astonished though I was, and shaken, it flashed through me that this was
+not the attack of a highwayman.  He calls upon you to stand and deliver:
+it is a foe that hits without warning.  The blow took me on the forehead,
+and might have been worse.  Not seeing the enemy, curiosity was almost as
+strong in me as anger; but reflecting that I had injured no one I knew
+of, my nerves were quickly at the right pitch.  Brushing some spikes of
+furze off my hands, I prepared for it.  A cry rose.  My impression seemed
+to be all backward, travelling up to me a moment or two behind time.  I
+recognised a strange tongue in the cry, but too late that it was Romany
+to answer it.  Instantly a voice was audible above the noisy wind: 'I
+spot him.'  Then began some good and fair fighting.  I got my footing on
+grass, and liked the work.  The fellow facing me was unmistakably gipsy-
+build.  I, too, had length of arm, and a disposition to use it by hitting
+straight out, with footing firm, instead of dodging and capering, which
+told in my favour, and is decidedly the best display of the noble art on
+a dark night.
+
+My dancer went over as neatly as I had preceded him; and therewith I
+considered enough was done for vengeance.  The thrill of a salmon on the
+gut is known to give a savage satisfaction to our original nature; it is
+but an extension and attenuation of the hearty contentment springing from
+a thorough delivery of the fist upon the prominent features of an
+assailant that yields to it perforce.  Even when you receive such perfect
+blows you are half satisfied.  Feeling conqueror, my wrath was soothed; I
+bent to have a look at my ruffian, and ask him what cause of complaint
+gipsies camping on Durstan could find against Riversley.  A sharp stroke
+on the side of my neck sent me across his body.  He bit viciously.  In
+pain and desperation I flew at another of the tawny devils.  They
+multiplied.  I took to my heels; but this was the vainest of stratagems,
+they beat me in nimbleness.  Four of them were round me when I wheeled
+breathless to take my chance at fighting the odds.  Fiery men have not
+much notion of chivalry: gipsies the least of all.  They yelled disdain
+of my summons to them to come on one by one: 'Now they had caught me, now
+they would pay me, now they would pound me; and, standing at four
+corners, they commended me to think of becoming a jelly.  Four though
+they were, they kept their positions; they left it to me to rush in for a
+close; the hinder ones held out of arms' reach so long as I was
+disengaged.  I had perpetually to shift my front, thinking--Oh, for a
+stick!  any stout bit of timber!  My fists ached, and a repetition of
+nasty dull knocks on back and neck, slogging thumps dealt by men getting
+to make sure of me, shattered my breathing.
+
+I cried out for a pause, offered to take a couple of them at a time: I
+challenged three-the fourth to bide.  I was now the dancer: left, right,
+and roundabout I had to swing, half-stunned, half-strangled with gorge.
+Those terrible blows in the back did the mischief.  Sickness threatened
+to undermine me.  Boxers have breathing-time: I had none.  Stiff and
+sick, I tried to run; I tottered, I stood to be knocked down, I dropped
+like a log-careless of life.  But I smelt earth keenly, and the damp
+grass and the devil's play of their feet on my chin, chest, and thighs,
+revived a fit of wrath enough to set me staggering on my legs again.
+They permitted it, for the purpose of battering me further.  I passed
+from down to up mechanically, and enjoyed the chestful of air given me in
+the interval of rising: thought of Germany and my father, and Janet at
+her window, complacently; raised a child's voice in my throat for mercy,
+quite inaudible, and accepted my punishment.  One idea I had was, that I
+could not possibly fail as a speaker after this--I wanted but a minute's
+grace to fetch breath for an oration, beginning, 'You fools!' for I
+guessed that they had fallen upon the wrong man.  Not a second was
+allowed.  Soon the shrewd physical bracing, acting momentarily on my
+brain, relaxed; the fitful illumination ceased: all ideas faded out-clung
+about my beaten body-fled.  The body might have been tossed into its
+grave, for aught I knew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+AMONG GIPSY WOMEN
+
+I cannot say how long it was after my senses had gone when I began to
+grope for them on the warmest of heaving soft pillows, and lost the
+slight hold I had on them with the effort.  Then came a series of
+climbings and fallings, risings to the surface and sinkings fathoms
+below.  Any attempt to speculate pitched me back into darkness.  Gifted
+with a pair of enormous eyes, which threw surrounding objects to a
+distance of a mile away, I could not induce the diminutive things to
+approach; and shutting eyes led to such a rolling of mountains in my
+brain, that, terrified by the gigantic revolution, I lay determinedly
+staring; clothed, it seemed positive, in a tight-fitting suit of sheet-
+lead; but why?  I wondered why, and immediately received an extinguishing
+blow.  My pillow was heavenly; I was constantly being cooled on it, and
+grew used to hear a croon no more musical than the unstopped reed above
+my head; a sound as of a breeze about a cavern's mouth, more soothing
+than a melody.  Conjecture of my state, after hovering timidly in dread
+of relapses, settled and assured me I was lying baked, half-buried in an
+old river-bed; moss at my cheek, my body inextricable; water now and then
+feebly striving to float me out, with horrid pain, with infinite
+refreshingness.  A shady light, like the light through leafage, I could
+see; the water I felt.  Why did it keep trying to move me?  I questioned
+and sank to the depths again.
+
+The excruciated patient was having his wet bandages folded across his
+bruises, and could not bear a motion of the mind.
+
+The mind's total apathy was the sign of recovering health.  Kind nature
+put that district to sleep while she operated on the disquieted lower
+functions.  I looked on my later self as one observes the mossy bearded
+substances travelling blind along the undercurrent of the stream,
+clinging to this and that, twirling absurdly.
+
+Where was I?  Not in a house.  But for my condition of absolute calm,
+owing to skilful treatment, open air, and physical robustness, the scene
+would have been of a kind to scatter the busy little workmen setting up
+the fabric of my wits.  A lighted oil-cup stood on a tripod in the middle
+of a tent-roof, and over it the creased neck and chin of a tall old
+woman, splendid in age, reddened vividly; her black eyes and grey brows,
+and greyishblack hair fell away in a dusk of their own.  I thought her
+marvellous.  Something she held in her hands that sent a thin steam
+between her and the light.  Outside, in the A cutting of the tent's
+threshold, a heavy-coloured sunset hung upon dark land.  My pillow
+meantime lifted me gently at a regular measure, and it was with
+untroubled wonder that I came to the knowledge of a human heart beating
+within it.  So soft could only be feminine; so firm still young.  The
+bosom was Kiomi's.  A girl sidled at the opening of the tent, peeping in,
+and from a mufed rattle of subpectoral thunder discharged at her in quick
+heated snaps, I knew Kiomi's voice.  After an altercation of their
+monotonous gipsy undertones, the girl dropped and crouched outside.
+
+It was morning when I woke next, stronger, and aching worse.  I was lying
+in the air, and she who served for nurse, pillow, parasol, and bank of
+herbage, had her arms round beneath mine cherishingly, all the fingers
+outspread and flat on me, just as they had been when I went to sleep.
+
+'Kiomi!'
+
+'Now, you be quiet.'
+
+'Can I stand up a minute or two?'
+
+'No, and you won't talk.'
+
+I submitted.  This was our duel all day: she slipped from me only twice,
+and when she did the girl took her place.
+
+I began to think of Bulsted and Riversley.
+
+'Kiomi, how long have I been here?'
+
+'You 'll be twice as long as you've been.'
+
+'A couple of days?'
+
+'More like a dozen.'
+
+'Just tell me what happened.'
+
+'Ghm-m-m,' she growled admonishingly.
+
+Reflecting on it, I felt sure there must have been searching parties over
+the heath.
+
+'Kiomi, I say, how was it they missed me?'
+
+She struck at once on my thought.
+
+'They're fools.'
+
+'How did you cheat them?'
+
+'I didn't tie a handkercher across their eyes.'
+
+'You half smothered me once, in the combe.'
+
+'You go to sleep.'
+
+'Have you been doctor?'
+
+The growling tigerish 'Ghm-m-m' constrained me to take it for a lullaby.
+
+'Kiomi, why the deuce did your people attack me?' She repeated the sound
+resembling that which sometimes issues from the vent of a mine; but I
+insisted upon her answering.
+
+'I 'll put you down and be off,' she threatened.
+
+'Brute of a girl!  I hate you!'
+
+'Hate away.'
+
+'Tell me who found me.'
+
+'I shan't.  You shut your peepers.'
+
+The other and younger girl sung out: 'I found you.'
+
+Kiomi sent a volley at her.
+
+'I did,' said the girl; 'yes, and I nursed you first, I did; and mother
+doctored you.  Kiomi hasn't been here a day.'
+
+The old mother came out of the tent.  She felt my pulse, and forthwith
+squatted in front of me.  'You're hard to kill, and oily as a bean,' said
+she.  'You've only to lie quiet in the sun like a handsome gentleman; I'm
+sure you couldn't wish for more.  Air and water's the doctor for such as
+you.  You've got the bound in you to jump the ditch: don't you fret at
+it, or you'll lose your spring, my good gentleman.'
+
+'Leave off talking to me as a stranger,' I bawled.  'Out with it; why
+have you kept me here?  Why did your men pitch into me?'
+
+'OUR men, my good gentleman!' the old woman ejaculated.  There was
+innocence indeed!  sufficient to pass the whole tribe before a bench of
+magistrates.  She wheedled: 'What have they against a handsome gentleman
+like you?  They'd run for you fifty mile a day, and show you all their
+tricks and secrets for nothing.'
+
+My despot Kiomi fired invectives at her mother.  The old mother retorted;
+the girl joined in.  All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth,
+driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to
+one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of the
+fiddle.
+
+I sang out truce to them; they racked me with laughter; and such
+laughter!--the shaking of husks in a half-empty sack.
+
+Ultimately, on a sudden cessation of the storm of tongues, they agreed
+that I must have my broth.
+
+Sheer weariness, seasoned with some hope that the broth would give me
+strength to mount on my legs and walk, persuaded me to drink it.  Still
+the old mother declared that none of her men would ever have laid hands
+on me.  Why should they?  she asked.  What had I done to them?  Was it
+their way?
+
+Kiomi's arms tightened over my breast.  The involuntary pressure was like
+an illumination to me.
+
+No longer asking for the grounds of the attack on a mistaken person,
+and bowing to the fiction that none of the tribe had been among my
+assailants, I obtained information.  The girl Eveleen had spied me
+entering Durstan.  Quite by chance, she was concealed near Bulsted Park
+gates when the groom arrived and told the lodge-keeper that Mr. Harry
+Richmond was coming up over the heath, and might have lost his way.
+'Richmond!' the girl threw a world of meaning into the unexpected name.
+Kiomi clutched me to her bosom, but no one breathed the name we had in
+our thoughts.
+
+Eveleen and the old mother had searched for me upon the heath, and having
+haled me head and foot to their tent, despatched a message to bring Kiomi
+down from London to aid them in their desperate shift.  They knew Squire
+Beltham's temper.  He would have scattered the tribe to the shores of the
+kingdom at a rumour of foul play to his grandson.  Kiomi came in time to
+smuggle me through an inspection of the tent and cross-examination of its
+ostensible denizens by Captain Bulsted, who had no suspicions, though he
+was in a state of wonderment.  Hearing all this, I was the first to say
+it would be better I should get out of the neighbourhood as soon as my
+legs should support me.  The grin that goes for a laugh among gipsies
+followed my question of how Kiomi had managed to smuggle me.  Eveleen was
+my informant when the dreaded Kiomi happened to be off duty for a minute.
+By a hasty transformation, due to a nightcap on the bandages about the
+head, and an old petticoat over my feet, Captain William's insensible
+friend was introduced to him as the sore sick great-grandmother of the
+tribe, mother of Kiomi's mother, aged ninety-one.  The captain paid like
+a man for doctor and burial fees; he undertook also to send the old lady
+a pound of snuff to assist her to a last sneeze or two on the right side
+of the grave, and he kept his word; for, deeming it necessary to paint
+her in a characteristic, these prodigious serpents told him gravely that
+she delighted in snuff; it was almost the only thing that kept her alive,
+barring a sip of broth.  Captain William's comment on the interesting
+piece of longevity whose well-covered length and framework lay exposed to
+his respectful contemplation, was, that she must have been a devilish
+fine old lady in her day.  'Six foot' was given as her measurement.
+
+One pound of snuff, a bottle of rum, and five sovereigns were the fruits
+of the captain's sensibility.  I shattered my ribs with laughter over the
+story.  Eveleen dwelt on the triumph, twinkling.  Kiomi despised laughter
+or triumph resulting from the natural exercise of craft in an emergency.
+'But my handsome gentleman he won't tell on us, will he, when we've
+nursed him and doctored him, and made him one of us, and as good a stick
+o' timber as grows in the forest?' whined the old mother.  I had to swear
+I would not.
+
+'He!' cried Kiomi.
+
+'He may forget us when he's gone,' the mother said.  She would have liked
+me to kiss a book to seal the oath.  Anxiety about the safety of their
+'homes,' that is, the assurance of an untroubled reception upon their
+customary camping-ground, is a peculiarity of the gipsies, distinguishing
+them, equally with their cleanliness and thriftiness, from mumpers and
+the common wanderers.
+
+It is their tribute to civilization, which generally keeps them within
+the laws.
+
+Who that does not know them will believe that under their domestic system
+I had the best broth and the best tea I have ever tasted!  They are very
+cunning brewers and sagacious buyers too; their maxims show them to
+direct all their acuteness upon obtaining quality for their money.  A
+compliment not backed by silver is hardly intelligible to the pretty
+ones: money is a really credible thing to them; and when they have it,
+they know how to use it.  Apparently because they know so well, so
+perfectly appreciating it, they have only vague ideas of a corresponding
+sentiment on the opposite side to the bargain, and imagine that they fool
+people much more often than they succeed in doing.  Once duped
+themselves, they are the wariest of the dog-burnt; the place is notched
+where it occurred, and for ever avoided.  On the other hand, they repose
+implicit faith in a reputation vouched for by their experience.  I was
+amused by the girl Eveleen's dotting of houses over the breadth of five
+counties, where for this and that article of apparel she designed to
+expend portions of a golden guinea, confident that she would get the very
+best, and a shilling besides.  The unwonted coin gave her the joy of
+supposing she cheated the Mint of that sum.  This guinea was a present to
+the girl (to whom I owed my thrashing, by the way) that excused itself
+under cover of being a bribe for sight of a mirror interdicted by the
+implacable Kiomi.  I wanted to have a look at my face.  Now that the
+familiar scenes were beginning to wear their original features to me, my
+dread of personal hideousness was distressing, though Eveleen declared
+the bad blood in my cheeks and eyes 'had been sucked by pounds of red
+meat.' I wondered, whether if I stood up and walked to either one of the
+three great halls lying in an obtuse triangle within view, I should
+easily be recognized.  When I did see myself, I groaned verily.  With the
+silence of profound resignation, I handed back to Eveleen the curious
+fragment of her boudoir, which would have grimaced at Helen of Troy.
+
+'You're feeling your nose--you've been looking at a glass!' Kiomi said,
+with supernatural swiftness of deduction on her return.
+
+She added for my comfort that nothing was broken, but confessed me to be
+still 'a sight'; and thereupon drove knotty language at Eveleen.  The
+girl retorted, and though these two would never acknowledge to me that
+any of their men had been in this neighbourhood recently, the fact was
+treated as a matter of course in their spiteful altercation, and each
+saddled the other with the mistake they had committed.  Eveleen snatched
+the last word.  What she said I did not comprehend, she must have hit
+hard.  Kiomi's eyes lightened, and her lips twitched; she coloured like
+the roofing smoke of the tent fire; twice she showed her teeth, as in a
+spasm, struck to the heart, unable to speak, breathing in and out of a
+bitterly disjoined mouth.  Eveleen ran.  I guessed at the ill-word
+spoken.  Kiomi sat eyeing the wood-ashes, a devouring gaze that shot
+straight and read but one thing.  They who have seen wild creatures die
+will have her before them, saving the fiery eyes.  She became an ashen-
+colour, I took her little hand.  Unconscious of me, her brown fingers
+clutching at mine, she flung up her nostrils, craving air.
+
+This was the picture of the woman who could not weep in her misery.
+
+'Kiomi, old friend!' I called to her.  I could have cursed that other
+friend, the son of mischief; for she, I could have sworn, had been
+fiercely and wantonly hunted.  Chastity of nature, intense personal
+pride, were as proper to her as the free winds are to the heaths: they
+were as visible to dull divination as the milky blue about the iris of
+her eyeballs.  She had actually no animal vileness, animal though she
+might be termed, and would have appeared if compared with Heriot's
+admirable Cissies and Gwennies, and other ladies of the Graces that run
+to fall, and spend their pains more in kindling the scent of the huntsman
+than in effectively flying.
+
+There was no consolation for her.
+
+The girl Eveleen came in sight, loitering and looking, kicking her idle
+heels.
+
+Kiomi turned sharp round to me.
+
+'I'm going.  Your father's here, up at Bulsted.  I'll see him.  He won't
+tell.  He'll come soon.  You'll be fit to walk in a day.  You're sound as
+a nail.  Goodbye--I shan't say good-bye twice,' she answered my attempt
+to keep her, and passed into the tent, out of which she brought a small
+bundle tied in a yellow handkerchief, and walked away, without nodding or
+speaking.
+
+'What was that you said to Kiomi?' I questioned Eveleen, who was quickly
+beside me.
+
+She replied, accurately or not: 'I told her our men'd give her as good as
+she gave me, let her wait and see.'
+
+Therewith she pouted; or, to sketch her with precision, 'snouted' would
+better convey the vivacity of her ugly flash of features.  It was an
+error in me to think her heartless.  She talked of her aunt Kiomi
+affectionately, for a gipsy girl, whose modulated tones are all addressed
+to the soft public.  Eveleen spoke with the pride of bated breath of the
+ferocious unforgivingness of their men.  Perhaps if she had known that I
+traced the good repute of the tribes for purity to the sweeter instincts
+of the women, she would have eulogized her sex to amuse me.  Gipsy girls,
+like other people, are fond of showing off; but it would have been a
+victory of education to have helped her to feel the distinction of the
+feminine sense of shame half as awfully and warmly as she did the
+inscrutable iron despotism of the males.  She hinted that the mistake of
+which I had been the victim would be rectified.
+
+'Tell your men I'll hunt them down like rats if I hear of it,' said I.
+
+While we were conversing my father arrived.  Eveleen, not knowing him,
+would have had me accept the friendly covering of a mat.
+
+'Here 's a big one!  he's a clergyman,' she muttered to herself, and ran
+to him and set up a gipsy whine, fronting me up to the last step while
+she advanced; she only yielded ground to my outcry.
+
+My father bent over me.  Kiomi had prepared him for what he saw.  I
+quieted his alarm by talking currently and easily.  Julia Bulsted had
+despatched a messenger to inform him of my mysterious disappearance; but
+he, as his way was, revelling in large conjectures, had half imagined me
+seized by a gust of passion, and bound for Germany.  'Without my
+luggage?' I laughed.
+
+'Ay, without your luggage, Richie,' he answered seriously.  His conceit
+of a better knowledge of me than others possessed, had buoyed him up.
+'For I knew,' he said, 'we two do nothing like the herd of men.
+I thought you were off to her, my boy.  Now!' he looked at me, and this
+look of dismay was a perfect mirror.  I was not a presentable object.
+
+He stretched his limbs on the heather and kept hold of my hand, looking
+and talking watchfully, doctor-like, doubting me to be as sound in body
+as I assured him I was, despite aches and pains.  Eveleen hung near.
+
+'These people have been kind to you?' he said.
+
+'No, the biggest brutes on the earth,' said I.
+
+'Oh!  you say that, when I spotted you out in the dark where you might
+have lied to be eaten, and carried you and washed your bloody face, and
+watched you, and never slept, I didn't, to mother you and wet your head!'
+cried the girl.
+
+My father beckoned to her and thanked her appreciably in the yellow
+tongue.
+
+'So these scoundrels of the high road fell upon you and robbed you,
+Richie?'
+
+I nodded.
+
+'You let him think they robbed you, and you had your purse to give me a
+gold guinea out of it!' Eveleen cried, and finding herself in the wrong
+track, volubly resumed: 'That they didn't, for they hadn't time, whether
+they meant to, and the night black as a coal, whoever they were.'
+
+The mystery of my not having sent word to Bulsted or to Riversley
+perplexed my father.
+
+'Comfortable here!' he echoed me, disconsolately, and glanced at the
+heath, the tent, the black circle of the broth-pot, and the wild girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+MY FATHER ACTS THE CHARMER AGAIN
+
+Kiomi's mother was seen in a turn of the gravel-cutting, bearing
+purchases from Durstan village.  She took the new circumstances in with a
+single cast up of her wary eyelids; and her, and her skill in surgery and
+art in medicine, I praised to lull her fears, which procured me the
+denomination of old friend, as well as handsome gentleman: she went so
+far as to add, in a fit of natural warmth, nice fellow; and it is the
+truth, that this term effected wonders in flattering me: it seemed to
+reveal to me how simple it was for Harry Richmond, one whom gipsies could
+think a nice fellow, to be the lord of Janet's affections--to be her
+husband.  My heart throbbed; yet she was within range of a mile and a
+half, and I did not wish to be taken to her.  I did wish to smell the
+piney air about the lake-palace; but the thought of Ottilia caused me no
+quick pulsations.
+
+My father remained an hour.  He could not perceive the drift of my
+objection to go either to Bulsted or to Riversley, and desire that my
+misadventure should be unknown at those places.  However, he obeyed me,
+as I could always trust him to do scrupulously, and told a tale at
+Bulsted.  In the afternoon he returned in a carriage to convey me to the
+seaside.  When I was raised I fainted, and saw the last of the camp on
+Durstan much as I had come to it first.  Sickness and swimming of the
+head continued for several days.  I was persecuted with the sensation of
+the carriage journey, and an iteration of my father's that ran: 'My son's
+inanimate body in my arms,' or 'Clasping the lifeless body of my sole
+son, Harry Richmond,' and other variations.  I said nothing about it.
+He told me aghast that I had spat blood.  A battery of eight fists,
+having it in the end all its own way, leaves a deeper indentation on its
+target than a pistol-shot that passes free of the vital chords.  My
+convalescence in Germany was a melody compared with this.  I ought to
+have stopped in the tent, according to the wise old mother's advice,
+given sincerely, for prudence counselled her to strike her canvas and be
+gone.  There I should have lain, interested in the progress of a bee, the
+course of a beetle or a cloud, a spider's business, and the shaking of
+the gorse and the heather, until good health had grown out of
+thoughtlessness.  The very sight of my father was as a hive of humming
+troubles.
+
+His intense anxiety about me reflected in my mind the endless worry I had
+concerning him.  It was the intellect which condemned him when he wore a
+joyful air, and the sensations when he waxed over-solicitous.  Whether or
+not the sentences were just, the judges should have sometimes shifted
+places.  I was unable to divine why he fevered me so much.  Must I say
+it?--He had ceased to entertain me.  Instead of a comic I found him a
+tragic spectacle; and his exuberant anticipations, his bursting hopes
+that fed their forcing-bed with the blight and decay of their
+predecessors, his transient fits of despair after a touch at my pulses,
+and exclamation of 'Oh, Richie, Richie, if only I had my boy up and
+well!'--assuming that nothing but my tardy recovery stood in the way of
+our contentment--were examples of downright unreason such as
+contemplation through the comic glass would have excused; the tragic
+could not.  I knew, nevertheless, that to the rest of the world he was a
+progressive comedy: and the knowledge made him seem more tragic still.
+He clearly could not learn from misfortune; he was not to be contained.
+Money I gave him freely, holding the money at my disposal his own; I
+chafed at his unteachable spirit, surely one of the most tragical things
+in life; and the proof of my love for him was that I thought it so,
+though I should have been kinder had he amused me, as in the old days.
+
+Conceive to yourself the keeping watch over a fountain choked in its
+spouting, incessantly labouring to spin a jet into the air; now for a
+moment glittering and towering in a column, and once more straining to
+mount.  My father appeared to me in that and other images.  He would have
+had me believe him shooting to his zenith, victorious at last.  I
+likewise was to reap a victory of the highest kind from the attack of the
+mysterious ruffians; so much; he said, he thought he could assure me of.
+He chattered of an intimidated Government, and Dettermain and Newson;
+duchesses, dukes, most friendly; innumerable invitations to country
+castles; and among other things one which really showed him to be capable
+of conceiving ideas and working from an initiative.  But this, too,
+though it accomplished a temporary service, he rendered illusory to me by
+his unhappy manner of regarding it as an instance of his now permanent
+social authority.  He had instituted what he called his JURY OF HONOUR
+COURT, composed of the select gentlemen of the realm, ostensibly to weigh
+the causes of disputes between members of their class, and decree the
+method of settlement: but actually, my father admitted, to put a stop to
+the affair between Edbury and me.
+
+'That was the origin of the notion, Richie.  I carried it on.  I dined
+some of the best men of our day.  I seized the opportunity when our
+choicest "emperor" was rolling on wheels to propound my system.  I
+mention the names of Bramham DeWitt, Colonel Hibbert Segrave, Lord Alonzo
+Carr, Admiral Loftus, the Earl of Luton, the Marquis of Hatchford, Jack
+Hippony, Monterez Williams,--I think you know him?--and little Dick
+Phillimore, son of a big-wig, a fellow of a capital wit and discretion;
+I mention them as present to convince you we are not triflers, dear boy.
+My argument ran, it is absurd to fight; also it is intolerable to be
+compelled to submit to insult.  As the case stands, we are under a
+summary edict of the citizens, to whom chivalry is unknown.  Well, well,
+I delivered a short speech.  Fighting, I said, resembled butting,--
+a performance proper to creatures that grow horns instead of brains .  .
+not to allude to a multitude of telling remarks; and the question "Is man
+a fighting animal?"  my answer being that he is not born with spurs on
+his heels or horns to his head and that those who insisted on fighting
+should be examined by competent anatomists, "ologists" of some sort, to
+decide whether they have the excrescences, and proclaim them .  .  .
+touching on these lighter parts of my theme with extreme delicacy.  But--
+and here I dwelt on my point: Man, if not a fighting animal in his
+glorious--I forgot what--is a sensitive one, and has the idea of honour.
+"Hear," from Colonel Segrave, and Sir Weeton Slaterhe was one of the
+party.  In fine, Richie, I found myself wafted into a breathing oration.
+I cannot, I confess it humbly, hear your "hear, hear," without going up
+and off, inflated like a balloon.  "Shall the arbitration of the
+magistracy, indemnifications in money awarded by the Law-courts, succeed
+in satisfying,"--but I declare to you, Richie, it was no platform speech.
+I know your term--"the chaincable sentence."  Nothing of the kind,
+I assure you.  Plain sense, as from gentlemen to gentlemen.  We require,
+I said, a protection that the polite world of Great Britain does not now
+afford us against the aggressions of the knave, the fool, and the brute.
+We establish a Court.  We do hereby--no, no, not the "hereby"; quite
+simply, Richie--pledge ourselves--I said some other word not "pledge" to
+use our utmost authority and influence to exclude from our circles
+persons refusing to make the reparation of an apology for wanton common
+insults: we renounce intercourse with men declining, when guilty of
+provoking the sentiment of hostility, to submit to the jurisdiction of
+our Court.  All I want you to see is the notion.  We raise the shield
+against the cowardly bully which the laws have raised against the bloody
+one.  "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my
+sober eye for a minute--'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal
+for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a
+millstone round the neck of their common-sense."  Credit me, Richie,
+the proposition kindled.  We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us,
+and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young
+nobleman.  And let me add, one that I, that we, must impose it upon an
+old son to accept.  He does!  Come, come.  And you shall see, Richie,
+society shall never repose an inert mass under my leadership.  I cure it;
+I shake it and cure it.'
+
+He promenaded the room, repeating: 'I do not say I am possessed of a
+panacea,' and bending to my chin as he passed; 'I maintain that I can and
+do fulfil the duties of my station, which is my element, attained in the
+teeth of considerable difficulties, as no other man could, be he prince
+or Prime Minister.  Not one,' he flourished, stepping onward.  'And mind
+you, Richie, this,' he swung round, conscious as ever of the critic in
+me, though witless to correct his pomp of style, 'this is not self-
+glorification.  I point you facts.  I have a thousand schemes--projects.
+I recognize the value of early misfortune.  The particular misfortune of
+princes born is that they know nothing of the world--babies!  I grant
+you, babies.  Now, I do.  I have it on my thumbnail.  I know its wants.
+And just as I succeeded in making you a member of our Parliament in
+assembly, and the husband of an hereditary princess--hear me--so will I
+make good my original determination to be in myself the fountain of our
+social laws, and leader.  I have never, I believe--to speak
+conscientiously--failed in a thing I have once determined on.'
+
+The single wish that I might be a boy again, to find pleasure in his
+talk, was all that remained to combat the distaste I had for such
+oppressive deliveries of a mind apparently as little capable of being
+seated as a bladder charged with gas.  I thanked him for getting rid of
+Edbury, and a touch of remorse pricked me, it is true, on his turning
+abruptly and saying: 'You see me in my nakedness, Richie.  To you and my
+valet, the heart, the body!'  He was too sympathetic not to have a keen
+apprehension of a state of hostility in one whom he loved.  If I had
+inclined to melt, however, his next remark would have been enough to
+harden me: 'I have fought as many battles, and gained as startling
+victories as Napoleon Buonaparte; he was an upstart.'  The word gave
+me a jerk.
+
+Sometimes he would indulge me transparently in a political controversy,
+confessing that my dialectical dexterity went far to make a Radical of
+him.  I had no other amusement, or I should have held my peace.  I tried
+every argument I could think of to prove to him that there was neither
+honour, nor dignity, nor profit in aiming at titular distinctions not
+forced upon us by the circumstances of our birth.  He kept his position
+with much sly fencing, approaching shrewdness; and, whatever I might say,
+I could not deny that a vile old knockknee'd world, tugging its forelock
+to the look of rank and chink of wealth, backed him, if he chose to be
+insensible to radical dignity.
+
+'In my time,' said he, 'all young gentlemen were born Tories.  The doctor
+no more expected to see a Radical come into the world from a good family
+than a radish.  But I discern you, my dear boy.  Our reigning Families
+must now be active; they require the discipline I have undergone; and I
+also dine at aldermen's tables, and lay a foundation-stone--as Jorian
+says--with the facility of a hen-mother: that should not suffice them.
+'Tis not sufficient for me.  I lay my stone, eat my dinner, make my
+complimentary speech--and that is all that is expected of us; but I am
+fully aware we should do more.  We must lead, or we are lost.  Ay, and--
+to quote you a Lord Mayor's barge is a pretty piece of gilt for the
+festive and luxurious to run up the river Thames in and mark their swans.
+I am convinced there is something deep in that.  But what am I to do?
+Would you have me frown upon the people?  Richie, it is prudent--
+I maintain it righteous, nay, it is, I affirm positively, sovereign
+wisdom--to cultivate every flower in the British bosom.  Riposte me--have
+you too many?  Say yes, and you pass my guard.  You cannot.  I fence you
+there.  This British loyalty is, in my estimation, absolutely beautiful.
+We grow to a head in our old England.  The people have an eye!  I need no
+introduction to them.  We reciprocate a highly cordial feeling when they
+line the streets and roads with respectful salutations, and I acknowledge
+their demonstrative goodwill.  These things make us a nation.  By heaven,
+Richie, you are, on this occasion, if your dad may tell you so, wrong.
+I ask pardon for my bluntness; but I put it to you, could we, not
+travelling as personages in our well-beloved country, count on civility
+to greet us everywhere?  Assuredly not.  My position is, that by
+consenting to their honest enthusiasm, we the identical effect you are
+perpetually crying out for--we civilize them, we civilize them.
+Goodness!--a Great Britain without Royalty!'
+
+He launched on a series of desolate images.  In the end, he at least
+persuaded himself that he had an idea in his anxiety to cultivate the
+primary British sentiment.
+
+We moved from town to town along the South coast; but it was vain to hope
+we might be taken for simple people.  Nor was he altogether to blame,
+except in allowing the national instinct for 'worship and reverence' to
+air itself unrebuked.  I fled to the island.  Temple ran down to meet me
+there, and I heard that Janet had written to him for news of me.  He
+entered our hotel a private person; when he passed out, hats flew off
+before him.  The modest little fellow went along a double line of
+attentive observers on the pier, and came back, asking me in astonishment
+who he was supposed to be.
+
+'I petitioned for privacy here!' exclaimed my father.  It accounted for
+the mystery.
+
+Temple knew my feelings, and did but glance at me.
+
+Close upon Temple's arrival we had a strange couple of visitors.
+'Mistress Dolly Disher and her husband,' my father introduced them.  She
+called him by one of his Christian names inadvertently at times.  The
+husband was a confectioner, a satisfied shade of a man who reserved the
+exercise of his will for his business, we learnt; she, a bustling, fresh-
+faced woman of forty-five, with still expressive dark eyes, and, I
+guessed, the ideal remainder of a passion in her bosom.  The guess was no
+great hazard.  She was soon sitting beside me, telling me of the 'years'
+she had known my father, and of the most affectionate friend and perfect
+gentleman he was of the ladies who had been in love with him; 'no
+wonder': and of his sorrows and struggles, and his beautiful voice, and
+hearts that bled for him; and of one at least who prayed and trusted he
+would be successful at last.
+
+Temple and the pallid confectioner spent the day on board a yacht with my
+father.  Mrs. Dolly stayed to nurse me and persuade me to swallow
+medicine.  She talked of her youth, when, as a fashionable bootmaker's
+daughter, she permitted no bills to be sent in to Mr. Richmond, alleging,
+as a sufficient reason for it to her father, that their family came from
+Richmond in Yorkshire.  Eventually, the bills were always paid.  She had
+not been able to manage her husband so well; and the consequence was,
+that (she breathed low) an execution was out; 'though I tell him,'
+she said tremulously, 'he 's sure to be paid in the long run, if only
+he'll wait.  But no; he is you cannot think how obstinate in his
+business.  And my girl Augusta waiting for Mr. Roy Richmond, the wish of
+our hearts!  to assist at her wedding; and can we ask it, and have an
+execution hanging over him?  And for all my husband's a guest here, he's
+as likely as not to set the officers at work, do what I will, to-morrow
+or any day.  Your father invited us, Mr. Harry.  I forced my husband to
+come, hoping against hope; for your papa gave the orders, relying on me,
+as he believed he might, and my husband undertook them, all through me.
+There it stops; he hears reports, and he takes fright: in goes the bill:
+then it's law, and last Oh!  I'm ashamed.'
+
+Mr. Disher's bill was for supplying suppers to the Balls.  He received my
+cheque for the amount in full, observing that he had been confident his
+wife was correct when she said it would be paid, but a tradesman's
+business was to hasten the day of payment; and, for a penance, he himself
+would pacify the lawyers.
+
+On hearing of the settlement of Mr. Disher's claim, my father ahem'd,
+speechless, which was a sign of his swallowing vexation.  He remarked
+that I had, no doubt with the best intentions, encroached on his liberty.
+'I do not like to have my debts disturbed.'  He put it to me, whether a
+man, carrying out a life-long plan, would not be disconcerted by the
+friendliest intervention.  This payment to Disher he pronounced fatal in
+policy.  'You have struck a heavy blow to my credit, Richie.  Good little
+Mistress Dolly brought the man down here--no select addition to our
+society--and we were doing our utmost to endure him, as the ladies say,
+for the very purpose .  .  .  but the error stands committed!  For the
+future, friend Disher will infallibly expect payments within the year.
+Credit for suppers is the guarantee of unlimited entertainments.  And I
+was inspiring him with absolute confidence for next year's campaign.
+Money, you are aware, is no longer a question to terrify me.  I hold
+proofs that I have conclusively frightened Government, and you know it.
+But this regards the manipulation of the man Disher.  He will now dictate
+to me.  A refresher of a few hundreds would have been impolitic to this
+kind of man; but the entire sum! and to a creditor in arms!  You reverse
+the proper situations of gentleman and tradesman.  My supperman, in
+particular, should be taught to understand that he is bound up in my
+success.  Something frightened him; he proceeded at law; and now we have
+shown him that he has frightened us.  An execution?  My dear boy, I have
+danced an execution five years running, and ordered, consecutively, at
+the same house.  Like other matters, an execution depends upon how you
+treat it.  The odds are that we have mortally offended Mistress Dolly.'
+He apologized for dwelling on the subject, with the plea that it was an
+essential part of his machinery of action, and the usual comparison of
+'the sagacious General' whose forethought omitted no minutiae.  I had to
+listen.
+
+The lady professed to be hurt.  The payment, however, put an end to the
+visit of this couple.  Politic or not, it was a large sum to disburse,
+and once more my attention became fixed on the probable display of
+figures in my bankers' book.  Bonds and bills were falling due: the
+current expenses were exhausting.  I tried to face the evil, and take a
+line of conduct, staggering, as I did on my feet.  Had I been well
+enough, I believe I should have gone to my grandfather, to throw myself
+on his good-nature; such was the brain's wise counsel: but I was all
+nerves and alarms, insomuch that I interdicted Temple's writing to Janet,
+lest it should bring on me letters from my aunt Dorothy, full of advice
+that could no longer be followed, well-meant cautions that might as well
+be addressed to the mile-posts behind me.  Moreover, Janet would be
+flying on the wind to me, and I had a craving for soft arms and the look
+of her eyebrows, that warned me to keep her off if I intended to act as
+became a man of good faith.
+
+Fair weather, sunny green sea-water speckled with yachts shooting and
+bounding, and sending me the sharp sense of life there is in dashed-up
+fountains of silvery salt-spray, would have quickened my blood sooner but
+for this hot-bed of fruitless adventure, tricksy precepts, and wisdom
+turned imp, in which my father had again planted me.  To pity him seemed
+a childish affectation.  His praise of my good looks pleased me, for on
+that point he was fitted to be a judge, and I was still fancying I had
+lost them on the heath.  Troops of the satellites of his grand parade
+surrounded him.  I saw him walk down the pier like one breaking up a
+levee.  At times he appeared to me a commanding phantasm in the midst of
+phantasm figures of great ladies and their lords, whose names he told off
+on his return like a drover counting his herd; but within range of his
+eye and voice the reality of him grew overpowering.  It seduced me, and,
+despite reason, I began to feel warm under his compliments.  He was like
+wine.  Gaiety sprang under his feet.  Sitting at my window, I thirsted to
+see him when he was out of sight, and had touches of the passion of my
+boyhood.
+
+I listened credulously, too, as in the old days, when he repeated, 'You
+will find I am a magician, and very soon, Richie, mark me.'  His manner
+hinted that there was a surprise in store.  'You have not been on the
+brink of the grave for nothing.'  He resembled wine in the other
+conditions attached to its rare qualities.  Oh for the choice of having
+only a little of him, instead of having him on my heart!  The unfilial
+wish attacked me frequently: he could be, and was, so ravishing to
+strangers and light acquaintances.  Did by chance a likeness exist
+between us?  My sick fancy rushed to the Belthams for a denial.  There
+did, of some sort, I knew; and the thought partitioned my dreamy ideas,
+of which the noblest, taking advantage of my physical weakness, compelled
+me to confess that it was a vain delusion for one such as I to hope for
+Ottilia.  This looking at the roots of yourself, if you are possessed of
+a nobler half that will do it, is a sound corrective of an excessive
+ambition.  Unfortunately it would seem that young men can do it only in
+sickness.  With the use of my legs, and open-air breathing, I became
+compact, and as hungry and zealous on behalf of my individuality, as
+proud of it as I had ever been: prouder and hungrier.
+
+My first day of outing, when, looking at every face, I could reflect on
+the miraculous issue of mine almost clear from its pummelling, and above
+all, that my nose was safe--not stamped with the pugilist's brand--
+inspired a lyrical ebullition of gratitude.  Who so intoxicated as the
+convalescent catching at health?
+
+I met Charles Etherell on the pier, and heard that my Parliamentary seat
+was considered in peril, together with a deal of gossip about my
+disappearance.
+
+My father, who was growing markedly restless, on the watch for letters
+and new arrivals, started to pay Chippenden a flying visit.  He begged me
+urgently to remain for another few days, while he gathered information,
+saying my presence at his chief quarters did him infinite service, and I
+always thought that possible.  I should find he was a magician, he
+repeated, with a sort of hesitating fervour.
+
+I had just waved my hand to him as the boat was bearing him away from the
+pier-head, when a feminine voice murmured in my ear, 'Is not this our
+third meeting, Mr. Harry Richmond?--Venice, Elbestadt, and the Isle of
+Wight?'  She ran on, allowing me time to recognize Clara Goodwin.  'What
+was your last adventure?  You have been ill.  Very ill?  Has it been
+serious?'
+
+I made light of it.  'No: a tumble.'
+
+'You look pale,' she said quickly.
+
+'That's from grieving at the loss of my beauty, Miss Goodwin.'
+
+'Have you really not been seriously ill?' she asked with an astonishing
+eagerness.
+
+I told her mock-loftily that I did not believe in serious illnesses
+coming to godlike youth, and plied her in turn with inquiries.
+
+'You have not been laid up in bed?' she persisted.
+
+'No, on my honour, not in bed.'
+
+'Then,' said she, 'I would give much to be able to stop that boat.'
+
+She amazed me.  'Why?'
+
+'Because it's going on a bad errand,' she replied.
+
+'Miss Goodwin, you perplex me.  My father has started in that boat.'
+
+'Yes, I saw him.' She glanced hastily at the foam in a way to show
+indifference.  'What I am saying concerns others .  .  .  who have heard
+you were dangerously ill.  I have sent for them to hasten across.'
+
+'My aunt and Miss Ilchester?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Who are they?  Miss Goodwin, I'll answer any question.  I've been
+queerish, that's true.  Now let me hear who they are, when you arrived,
+when you expect them.  Where are they now?'
+
+'As to me,' she responded with what stretched on my ears like an
+insufferable drawl, 'I came over last night to hire a furnished house or
+lodgings.  Papa has an appointment attached to the fortifications yonder.
+We'll leave the pier, if you please.  You draw too much attention on
+ladies who venture to claim acquaintance with so important a gentleman.'
+
+We walked the whole length of the pier, chatting of our former meetings.
+
+'Not here,' she said, as soon as I began to question.
+
+I was led farther on, half expecting that the accessories of time and
+place would have to do with the revelation.
+
+The bitter creature drew me at her heels into a linendraper's shop.
+There she took a seat, pitched her voice to the key of a lady's at a
+dinner-table, when speaking to her cavalier of the history or attire of
+some one present, and said, 'You are sure the illness was not at all
+feigned?'
+
+She had me as completely at her mercy in this detestable shop as if I had
+been in a witness-box.
+
+'Feigned!' I exclaimed.
+
+'That is no answer.  And pray remember where you are.'
+
+'No, the illness was not feigned.'
+
+'And you have not made the most of it?'
+
+'What an extraordinary thing to say!'
+
+'That is no answer.  And please do not imagine yourself under the
+necessity of acting every sentiment of your heart before these people.'
+
+She favoured a shopman with half-a-dozen directions.
+
+'My answer is, then, that I have not made the most of it,' I said.
+
+'Not even by proxy?'
+
+'Once more I'm adrift.'
+
+'You are certainly energetic.  I must address you as a brother, or it
+will be supposed we are quarrelling.  Harry, do you like that pattern?'
+
+'Yes.  What's the meaning of proxy?'
+
+'With the accent you give it, heaven only knows what it means.  I would
+rather you did not talk here like a Frenchman relating his last love-
+affair in company.
+
+Must your voice escape control exactly at the indicatory words?  Do you
+think your father made the most of it?'
+
+'Of my illness?  Oh! yes; the utmost.  I should undoubtedly think so.
+That's his way.'
+
+'Why did you permit it?'
+
+'I was what they call "wandering" half the time.  Besides, who could keep
+him in check?  I rarely know what he is doing.'
+
+'You don't know what he wrote?'
+
+'Wrote?'
+
+'That you were dying.'
+
+'Of me?  To whom?'
+
+She scrutinized me, and rose from her chair.  'I must try some other
+shop.  How is it, that if these English people cannot make a "berthe" fit
+to wear, they do not conceive the idea of importing such things from
+Paris?  I will take your arm, Harry.'
+
+'You have bought nothing,' I remarked.
+
+'I have as much as I went for,' she replied, and gravely thanked the
+assistant leaning on his thumbs across the counter; after which, dropping
+the graceless play of an enigma, she inquired whether I had forgotten the
+Frau von Dittmarsch.
+
+I had, utterly; but not her maiden name of Sibley.
+
+'Miss Goodwin, is she one of those who are coming to the island?'
+
+'Frau von Dittmarsch?  Yes.  She takes an interest in you.  She and I
+have been in correspondence ever since my visit to Sarkeld.  It reminds
+me, you may vary my maiden name with the Christian, if you like.  Harry,
+I believe you are truthful as ever, in spite--'
+
+'Don't be unjust,' said I.
+
+'I wish I could think I was!' she rejoined.  'Frau von Dittmarsch was at
+Sarkeld, and received terrible news of you.  She called on me, at my
+father's residence over the water yonder, yesterday afternoon, desiring
+greatly to know--she is as cautious as one with a jewel in her custody--
+how it fared with you, whether you were actually in a dying state.  I
+came here to learn; I have friends here: you were not alone, or I should
+have called on you.  The rumour was that you were very ill; so I hired a
+furnished place for Frau von Dittmarsch at once.  But when I saw you and
+him together, and the parting between you, I began to have fears;
+I should have countermanded the despatch I sent by the boat, had it been
+possible.'
+
+'It has gone!  And tell me the name of the other.'
+
+'Frau von Dittmarsch has a husband.'
+
+'Not with her now.  Oh!  cruel!  speak: her name?'
+
+'Her name, Harry?' Her title is Countess von Delzenburg.'
+
+'Not princess?'
+
+'Not in England.'
+
+Then Ottilia was here!
+
+My father was indeed a magician!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED
+
+'Not princess in England,' could betoken but one thing--an incredible act
+of devotion, so great that it stunned my senses, and I thought of it, and
+of all it involved, before the vision of Ottilia crossing seas took
+possession of me.
+
+'The Princess Ottilia, Miss Goodwin?'
+
+'The Countess of Delzenburg, Harry.'
+
+'To see me?  She has come!'
+
+'Harry, you talk like the boy you were when we met before you knew her.
+Yes and yes to everything you have to say, but I think you should spare
+her name.'
+
+'She comes thinking me ill?'
+
+'Dying.'
+
+'I'm as strong as ever I was.'
+
+'I should imagine you are, only rather pale.'
+
+'Have you, tell me, Clara, seen her yourself?  Is she well?'
+
+'Pale: not unwell: anxious.'
+
+'About me?'
+
+'It may be about the political affairs of the Continent; they are
+disturbed.'
+
+'She spoke of me?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'She is coming by the next boat?'
+
+'It's my fear that she is.'
+
+'Why do you fear?'
+
+'Shall I answer you, Harry?  It is useless now.  Well, because she has
+been deceived.  That is why.  You will soon find it out.'
+
+'Prince Ernest is at Sarkeld?'
+
+'In Paris, I hear.'
+
+'How will your despatch reach these ladies in time for them to come over
+by the next boat?'
+
+'I have sent my father's servant.  The General--he is promoted at last,
+Harry--attends the ladies in person, and is now waiting for the boat's
+arrival over there, to follow my directions.'
+
+'You won't leave me?'
+
+Miss Goodwin had promised to meet the foreign ladies on the pier.  We
+quarrelled and made it up a dozen times like girl and boy, I calling her
+aunt Clara, as in the old days, and she calling me occasionally son
+Richie: an imitation of my father's manner of speech to me when we formed
+acquaintance first in Venice.  But I was very little aware of what I was
+saying or doing.  The forces of my life were yoked to the heart, and
+tumbled as confusedly as the world under Phaethon charioteer.  We walked
+on the heights above the town.  I looked over the water to the white line
+of shore and batteries where this wonder stood, who was what poets dream
+of, deep-hearted men hope for, none quite believe in.  Hardly could I;
+and though my relenting spinster friend at my elbow kept assuring me it
+was true that she was there, my sceptical sight fixed on the stale
+prominences visible in the same features which they had worn day after
+empty day of late.  This deed of hers was an act of devotion great as
+death.  I knew it from experience consonant to Ottilia's character; but
+could a princess, hereditary, and bound in the league of governing
+princes, dare so to brave her condition?  Complex of mind, simplest in
+character, the uncontrollable nobility of her spirit was no sooner
+recognized by me than I was shocked throughout by a sudden light,
+contrasting me appallingly with this supreme of women, who swept the
+earth aside for truth.  I had never before received a distinct intimation
+of my littleness of nature, and my first impulse was to fly from thought,
+and then, as if to prove myself justly accused, I caught myself
+regretting--no, not regretting, gazing, as it were, on a picture of
+regrets--that Ottilia was not a romantic little lady of semi-celestial
+rank, exquisitely rash, wilful, desperately enamoured, bearing as many
+flying hues and peeps of fancy as a love-ballad, and not more roughly
+brushing the root-emotions.
+
+If she had but been such an one, what sprightly colours, delicious
+sadness, magical transformations, tenderest intermixture of earth and
+heaven; what tears and sunbeams, divinest pathos: what descents from
+radiance to consolatory twilight, would have surrounded me for poetry and
+pride to dwell on!  What captivating melody in the minor key would have
+been mine, though I lost her--the legacy of it all for ever!  Say a
+petulant princess, a star of beauty, mad for me, and the whisper of our
+passion and sorrows traversing the flushed world!  Was she coming?  Not
+she, but a touchstone, a relentless mirror, a piercing eye, a mind severe
+as the Goddess of the God's head: a princess indeed, but essentially a
+princess above women: a remorseless intellect, an actual soul visible in
+the flesh.  She was truth.  Was I true?  Not so very false, yet how far
+from truth!  The stains on me (a modern man writing his history is
+fugitive and crepuscular in alluding to them, as a woman kneeling at the
+ear-guichet) burnt like the blood-spots on the criminal compelled to
+touch his victim by savage ordinance, which knew the savage and how to
+search him.  And these were faults of weakness rather than the sins of
+strength.  I might as fairly hope for absolution of them from Ottilia as
+from offended laws of my natural being, gentle though she was, and
+charitable.
+
+Was I not guilty of letting her come on to me hoodwinked at this moment?
+I had a faint memory of Miss Goodwin's saying that she had been deceived,
+and I suggested a plan of holding aloof until she had warned the princess
+of my perfect recovery, to leave it at her option to see me.
+
+'Yes,' Miss Goodwin assented: 'if you like, Harry.'
+
+Her compassion for me only tentatively encouraged the idea.  'It would,
+perhaps, be right.  You are the judge.  If you can do it.  You are acting
+bravely.' She must have laughed at me in her heart.
+
+The hours wore on.  My curse of introspection left me, and descending
+through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and bonnet-
+strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching.  There was in advance
+one of the famous swift island wherries.  Something went wrong with it,
+for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first.  I jumped on board,
+much bawled at.  Out of a crowd of unknown visages, Janet appeared: my
+aunt Dorothy was near her.  The pair began chattering of my paleness, and
+wickedness in keeping my illness unknown to them.  They had seen Temple
+on an excursion to London; he had betrayed me, as he would have betrayed
+an archangel to Janet.
+
+'Will you not look at us, Harry?' they both said.
+
+The passengers were quitting the boat, strangers every one.
+
+'Harry, have we really offended you in coming?' said Janet.
+
+My aunt Dorothy took the blame on herself.
+
+I scarcely noticed them, beyond leading them on to the pier-steps and
+leaving them under charge of Miss Goodwin, who had, in matters of luggage
+and porterage, the practical mind and aplomb of an Englishwoman that has
+passed much of her time on the Continent.  I fancied myself vilely duped
+by this lady.  The boat was empty of its passengers; a grumbling pier-
+man, wounded in his dignity, notified to me that there were fines for
+disregard of the Company's rules and regulations.  His tone altered; he
+touched his hat: 'Didn't know who you was, my lord.' Janet overheard him,
+and her face was humorous.
+
+'We may break the rules, you see,' I said to her.
+
+'We saw him landing on the other side of the water,' she replied; so
+spontaneously did the circumstance turn her thoughts on my father.
+
+'Did you speak to him?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'You avoided him?'
+
+'Aunty and I thought it best.  He landed .  .  .  there was a crowd.'
+
+Miss Goodwin interposed: 'You go to Harry's hotel?'
+
+'Grandada is coming down to-morrow or next day,' Janet prompted my aunt
+Dorothy.
+
+'If we could seek for a furnished house; Uberly would watch the luggage,'
+Dorothy murmured in distress.
+
+'Furnished houses, even rooms at hotels, are doubtful in the height of
+the season,' Miss Goodwin remarked.  'Last night I engaged the only
+decent set of rooms I could get, for friends of Harry's who are coming.'
+
+'No wonder he was disappointed at seeing us--he was expecting them!' said
+Janet, smiling a little.
+
+'They are sure to come,' said Miss Goodwin.
+
+Near us a couple of yachtsmen were conversing.
+
+'Oh, he'll be back in a day or two,' one said.  'When you 've once tasted
+that old boy, you can't do without him.  I remember when I was a
+youngster--it was in Lady Betty Bolton's day; she married old Edbury, you
+know, first wife--the Magnificent was then in his prime.  He spent his
+money in a week: so he hired an eighty-ton schooner; he laid violent
+hands on a Jew, bagged him, lugged him on board, and sailed away.'
+
+'What the deuce did he want with a Jew?' cried the other.
+
+'Oh, the Jew supplied cheques for a three months' cruise in the
+Mediterranean, and came home, I heard, very good friends with his pirate.
+That's only one of dozens.'
+
+The unconscious slaughterers laughed.
+
+'On another occasion'--I heard it said by the first speaker, as they
+swung round to parade the pier, and passed on narrating.
+
+'Not an hotel, if it is possible to avoid it,' my aunt Dorothy, with
+heightened colour, urged Miss Goodwin.  They talked together.
+
+'Grandada is coming to you, Harry,' Janet said.  'He has business in
+London, or he would have been here now.  Our horses and carriages follow
+us: everything you would like.  He does love you!  he is very anxious.
+I'm afraid his health is worse than he thinks.  Temple did not say your
+father was here, but grandada must have suspected it when he consented to
+our coming, and said he would follow us.  So that looks well perhaps.
+He has been much quieter since your money was paid back to you.  If they
+should meet .  .  .  no, I hope they will not: grandada hates noise.
+And, Harry, let me tell you: it may be nothing: if he questions you, do
+not take fire; just answer plainly: I'm sure you understand.  One in a
+temper at a time I'm sure 's enough: you have only to be patient with
+him.  He has been going to London, to the City, seeing lawyers, bankers,
+brokers, and coming back muttering.  Ah!  dear old man.  And when he
+ought to have peace!  Harry, the poor will regret him in a thousand
+places.  I write a great deal for him now, and I know how they will.
+What are you looking at?'
+
+I was looking at a man of huge stature, of the stiffest build, whose
+shoulders showed me their full breadth while he stood displaying
+frontwards the open of his hand in a salute.
+
+'Schwartz!' I called.  Janet started, imagining some fierce interjection.
+The giant did not stir.
+
+But others had heard.  A lady stepped forward.  'Dear Mr. Harry Richmond!
+Then you are better?  We had most alarming news of you.'
+
+I bowed to the Frau von Dittmarsch, anciently Miss Sibley.
+
+'The princess?'
+
+'She is here.'
+
+Frau von Dittmarsch clasped Miss Goodwin's hand.  I was touching
+Ottilia's.  A veil partly swathed her face.  She trembled: the breeze
+robbed me of her voice.
+
+Our walk down the pier was almost in silence.  Miss Goodwin assumed the
+guardianship of the foreign ladies.  I had to break from them and provide
+for my aunt Dorothy and Janet.
+
+'They went over in a little boat, they were so impatient.  Who is she?'
+Dorothy Beltham asked.
+
+'The Princess Ottilia,' said Janet.
+
+'Are you certain?  Is it really, Harry?'
+
+I confirmed it, and my aunt said, 'I should have guessed it could be no
+other; she has a foreign grace.'
+
+'General Goodwin was with them when the boat came in from the island,'
+said Janet.  'He walked up to Harry's father, and you noticed, aunty,
+that the ladies stood away, as if they wished to be unobserved, as we
+did, and pulled down their veils.  They would not wait for our boat.  We
+passed them crossing.  People joked about the big servant over-weighing
+the wherry.'
+
+Dorothy Beltham thought the water too rough for little boats.
+
+'She knows what a sea is,' I said.
+
+Janet gazed steadily after the retreating figures, and then commended me
+to the search for rooms.  The end of it was that I abandoned my father's
+suite to them.  An accommodating linen-draper possessed of a sea-view,
+and rooms which hurled the tenant to the windows in desire for it, gave
+me harbourage.
+
+Till dusk I scoured the town to find Miss Goodwin, without whom there was
+no clue to the habitation I was seeking, and I must have passed her
+blindly again and again.  My aunt Dorothy and Janet thanked me for my
+consideration in sitting down to dine with them; they excused my haste to
+retire.  I heard no reproaches except on account of my not sending them
+word of my illness.  Janet was not warm.  She changed in colour and voice
+when I related what I had heard from Miss Goodwin, namely, that 'some
+one' had informed the princess I was in a dying state.  I was obliged to
+offer up my father as a shield for Ottilia, lest false ideas should
+tarnish the image of her in their minds.  Janet did not speak of him.
+The thought stood in her eyes; and there lies the evil of a sore subject
+among persons of one household: they have not to speak to exhibit their
+minds.
+
+After a night of suspense I fell upon old Schwartz and Aennchen out in
+the earliest dawn, according to their German habits, to have a gaze at
+sea, and strange country and people.  Aennchen was all wonder at the
+solitary place, Schwartz at the big ships.  But when they tried to direct
+me to the habitation of their mistress, it was discovered by them that
+they had lost their bearings.  Aennchen told me the margravine had been
+summoned to Rippau just before they left Sarkeld.  Her mistress had
+informed Baroness Turckems of her intention to visit England.  Prince
+Ernest was travelling in France.
+
+The hour which brought me to Ottilia was noon.  The arrangements of the
+ladies could only grant me thirty minutes, for Janet was to drive the
+princess out into the country to view the island.  She and my aunt
+Dorothy had been already introduced.  Miss Goodwin, after presenting
+them, insisted upon ceremoniously accompanying me to the house.  Quite
+taking the vulgar view of a proceeding such as the princess had been
+guilty of, and perhaps fearing summary audacity and interestedness in the
+son of a father like mine, she ventured on lecturing me, as though it lay
+with me to restrain the fair romantic head, forbear from calling up my
+special advantages, advise, and stand to the wisdom of this world, and be
+the man of honour.  The princess had said: 'Not see him when I have come
+to him?'  I reassured my undiscerning friend partly, not wholly.
+
+'Would it be commonly sensible or civil, to refuse to see me, having
+come?'
+
+Miss Goodwin doubted.
+
+I could indicate forcibly, because I felt, the clear-judging brain and
+tempered self-command whereby Ottilia had gained her decision.
+
+Miss Goodwin nodded and gave me the still-born affirmative of politeness.
+Her English mind expressed itself willing to have exonerated the rash
+great lady for visiting a dying lover, but he was not the same person now
+that he was on his feet, consequently her expedition wore a different
+aspect:--my not dying condemned her.  She entreated me to keep the fact
+of the princess's arrival unknown to my father, on which point we were
+one.  Intensely enthusiastic for the men of her race, she would have me,
+above all things, by a form of adjuration designed to be a masterpiece of
+persuasive rhetoric, 'prove myself an Englishman.'  I was to show that
+'the honour, interests, reputation and position of any lady (demented or
+not,' she added) 'were as precious to me as to the owner': that 'no woman
+was ever in peril of a shadow of loss in the hands of an English
+gentleman,' and so forth, rather surprisingly to me, remembering her off-
+hand manner of the foregoing day.  But the sense of responsibility thrown
+upon her ideas of our superior national dignity had awakened her fervider
+naturalness--made her a different person, as we say when accounting, in
+our fashion, for what a little added heat may do.
+
+The half hour allotted to me fled.  I went from the room and the house,
+feeling that I had seen and heard her who was barely of the world of
+humankind for me, so strongly did imagination fly with her.  I kissed her
+fingers, I gazed in her eyes, I heard the beloved voice.  All passed too
+swift for happiness.  Recollections set me throbbing, but recollection
+brought longing.  She said, 'Now I have come I must see you, Harry.'
+Did it signify that to see me was a piece of kindness at war with her
+judgement?  She rejoiced at my perfect recovery, though it robbed her of
+the plea in extenuation of this step she had taken.  She praised me for
+abstaining to write to her, when I was stammering a set of hastily-
+impressed reasons to excuse myself for the omission.  She praised my step
+into Parliament.  It did not seem to involve a nearer approach to her.
+She said, 'You have not wasted your time in England.'  It was for my
+solitary interests that she cared, then.
+
+I brooded desperately.  I could conceive an overlooking height that made
+her utterance simple and consecutive: I could not reach it.  Topics which
+to me were palpitating, had no terror for her.  She said, 'I have
+offended my father; I have written to him; he will take me away.'
+In speaking of the letter which had caused her to offend, she did not
+blame the writer.  I was suffered to run my eyes over it, and was
+ashamed.  It read to me too palpably as an outcry to delude and draw her
+hither:--pathos and pathos: the father holding his dying son in his arms,
+his sole son, Harry Richmond; the son set upon by enemies in the night:
+the lover never daring to beg for a sight of his beloved ere he passed
+away:--not an ill-worded letter; read uncritically, it may have been
+touching: it must have been, though it was the reverse for me.
+I frowned, broke down in regrets, under sharp humiliation.
+
+She said, 'You knew nothing of it.  A little transgression is the real
+offender.  When we are once out of the way traced for us, we are in
+danger of offending at every step; we are as lawless as the outcasts.'
+That meant, 'My turning aside to you originally was the blameable thing.'
+It might mean, 'My love of you sets my ideas of duty at variance with my
+father's.'
+
+She smiled; nothing was uttered in a tone of despondency.  Her high
+courage and breeding gave her even in this pitfall the smoothness which
+most women keep for society.  Why she had not sent me any message or
+tidings of herself to Riversley was not a matter that she could imagine
+to perplex me: she could not imagine my losing faith in her.  The least
+we could do, I construed it, the religious bond between us was a faith in
+one another that should sanctify to our souls the external injuries it
+caused us to commit.  But she talked in no such strain.  Her delight in
+treading English ground was her happy theme.  She said, 'It is as young
+as when we met in the forest'; namely, the feeling revived for England.
+How far off we were from the green Devonshire coast, was one of her
+questions, suggestive of our old yacht-voyage lying among her dreams.
+Excepting an extreme and terrorizing paleness, there was little to fever
+me with the thought that she suffered mortally.  Of reproach, not a word;
+nor of regret.  At the first touch of hands, when we stood together,
+alone, she said, 'Would hearing of your recovery have given me peace?'
+My privileges were the touch of hands, the touch of her fingers to my
+lips, a painless hearing and seeing, and passionate recollection.  She
+said, 'Impatience is not for us, Harry': I was not to see her again
+before the evening.  These were the last words she said, and seemed the
+lightest until my hot brain made a harvest of them transcending thrice-
+told vows of love.  Did they not mean, 'We two wait': therefore, 'The
+years are bondmen to our stedfastness.' Could sweeter have been said?
+They might mean nothing!
+
+She was veiled when Janet drove her out; Janet sitting upright in
+her masterly way, smoothing her pet ponies with the curl of her whip,
+chatting and smiling; the princess slightly leaning back.  I strode up
+to the country roads, proud of our land's beauty under a complacent sky.
+By happy chance, which in a generous mood I ascribed to Janet's good
+nature, I came across them at a seven miles' distance.  They were talking
+spiritedly: what was wonderful, they gave not much heed to me: they
+seemed on edge for one another's conversation: each face was turned to
+the other's, and after nodding an adieu, they resumed the animated
+discourse.  I had been rather in alarm lest Ottilia should think little
+of Janet.  They passed out of sight without recurring to a thought of me
+behind them.
+
+In the evening I was one among a group of ladies.  I had the opportunity
+of hearing the running interchange between Ottilia and Janet, which
+appeared to be upon equal terms; indeed, Janet led.  The subjects were
+not very deep.  Plain wits, candour, and an unpretending tongue, it
+seemed, could make common subjects attractive, as fair weather does our
+English woods and fields.  The princess was attracted by something in
+Janet.  I myself felt the sway of something, while observing Ottilia's
+rapt pleasure in her talk and her laughter, with those funny familiar
+frowns and current dimples twisting and melting away like a play of
+shadows on the eddies of the brook.
+
+'I 'm glad to be with her,' Janet said of Ottilia.
+
+It was just in that manner she spoke in Ottilia's presence.  Why it
+should sound elsewhere unsatisfactorily blunt, and there possess a
+finished charm, I could not understand.
+
+I mentioned to Janet that I feared my father would be returning.
+
+She contained herself with a bridled 'Oh!'
+
+We were of one mind as to the necessity for keeping him absent, if
+possible.
+
+'Harry, you'll pardon me; I can't talk of him,' said she.
+
+I proposed half-earnestly to foil his return by going to London at once.
+
+'That's manly; that's nice of you,' Janet said.
+
+This was on our walk from the house at night.  My aunt Dorothy listened,
+pressing my arm.  The next morning Janet urged me to go at once.  'Keep
+him away, bring down grandada, Harry.  She cannot quit the island,
+because she has given Prince Ernest immediate rendezvous here.  You must
+not delay to go.  Yes, the Countess of Delzenburg shall have your
+excuses.  And no, I promise you I will run nobody down.  Besides, if I
+do, aunty will be at hand to plead for the defence, and she can!  She has
+a way that binds one to accept everything she says, and Temple ought to
+study with her for a year or two before he wears his gown.  Bring him
+back with you and grandada.  He is esteemed here at his true worth.  I
+love him for making her in love with English boys.  I leave the men for
+those who know them, but English boys are unrivalled, I declare.
+Honesty, bravery, modesty, and nice looks!  They are so nice in their
+style and their way of talking.  I tell her, our men may be shy and
+sneering,--awkward, I daresay; but our boys beat the world.  Do bring
+down Temple.  I should so like her to see a cricket-match between two
+good elevens of our boys, Harry, while she is in England!  We could have
+arranged for one at Riversley.'
+
+I went, and I repressed the idea, on my way, that Janet had manoeuvred by
+sending me off to get rid of me, but I felt myself a living testimony to
+her heartlessness: for no girl of any heart, acting the part of friend,
+would have allowed me to go without a leave-taking of her I loved few
+would have been so cruel as to declare it a duty to go at all, especially
+when the chances were that I might return to find the princess wafted
+away.  Ottilia's condescension had done her no good.  'Turn to the right,
+that's your path; on.'  She seemed to speak in this style, much as she
+made her touch of the reins understood by her ponies.  'I 'll take every
+care of the princess,' she said.  Her conceit was unbounded.  I revelled
+in contemptuous laughter at her assumption of the post of leader with
+Ottilia.  However, it was as well that I should go: there was no trusting
+my father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+WHICH FORESHADOWS A GENERAL GATHERING
+
+At our Riversley station I observed the squire, in company with Captain
+Bulsted, jump into a neighbouring carriage.  I joined them, and was
+called upon to answer various inquiries.  The squire gave me one of his
+short tight grasps of the hand, in which there was warmth and shyness,
+our English mixture.  The captain whispered in my ear: 'He oughtn't to be
+alone.'
+
+'How's the great-grandmother of the tribe?' said I.
+
+Captain Bulsted nodded, as if he understood, but was at sea until I
+mentioned the bottle of rum and the remarkable length of that old lady's
+measurement.
+
+'Ay, to be sure!  a grand old soul,' he said.  'You know that scum of
+old, Harry.'
+
+I laughed, and so did he, at which I laughed the louder.
+
+'He laughs, I suppose, because his party's got a majority in the House,'
+said the squire.
+
+'We gave you a handsome surplus this year, sir.'
+
+'Sweated out of the country's skin and bone, ay!'
+
+'You were complimented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.!
+
+'Yes, that fellow's compliments are like a cabman's, and cry fool:--he
+never thanks you but when he's overpaid.'
+
+Captain Bulsted applauded the sarcasm.
+
+'Why did you keep out of knowledge all this time, Hal?' my grandfather
+asked.
+
+I referred him to the captain.
+
+'Hang it,' cried Captain Bulsted, 'do you think I'd have been doing duty
+for you if I'd known where to lay hold of you.'
+
+'Well, if you didn't shake hands with me, you touched my toes,' said I,
+and thanked him with all my heart for his kindness to an old woman on the
+point of the grave.  I had some fun to flavour melancholy with.
+
+My grandfather resumed his complaint: 'You might have gone clean off, and
+we none the wiser.'
+
+'Are we quite sure that his head's clean on?' said the mystified captain.
+
+'Of course we should run to him, wherever he was, if he was down on his
+back,' the squire muttered.
+
+'Ay, ay, sir; of course,' quoth Captain William, frowning to me to
+reciprocate this relenting mood.  'But, Harry, where did you turn off
+that night?  We sat up expecting you.  My poor Julia was in a terrible
+fright, my lad.  Eh?  speak up.'
+
+I raised the little finger.
+
+'Oh, oh,' went he, happily reassured; but, reflecting, added: 'A bout of
+it?'
+
+I dropped him a penitent nod.
+
+'That's bad, though,' said he.
+
+'Then why did you tip me a bottle of rum, Captain William?'
+
+'By George, Harry, you've had a crack o' the sconce,' he exclaimed, more
+sagaciously than he was aware of.
+
+My grandfather wanted to keep me by his side in London until we two
+should start for the island next day; but his business was in the city,
+mine toward the West.  We appointed to meet two hours after reaching the
+terminus.
+
+He turned to me while giving directions to his man.
+
+'You 've got him down there, I suppose?'
+
+'My father's in town, sir.  He shall keep away,' I said.
+
+'Humph!  I mayn't object to see him.'
+
+This set me thinking.
+
+Captain Bulsted--previously asking me in a very earnest manner whether I
+was really all right and sound--favoured me with a hint:
+
+'The squire has plunged into speculations of his own, or else he is
+peeping at somebody else's.  No danger of the dad being mixed up with
+Companies?  Let's hope not.  Julia pledged her word to Janet that I would
+look after the old squire.  I suppose I can go home this evening?  My
+girl hates to be alone.'
+
+'By all means,' said I; and the captain proposed to leave the squire at
+his hotel, in the event of my failing to join him in the city.
+
+'But don't fail, if you can help it,' he urged me; 'for things somehow,
+my dear Harry, appear to me to look like the compass when the needle
+gives signs of atmospheric disturbance.  My only reason for saying so is
+common observation.  You can judge for yourself that he is glad to have
+you with him.'
+
+I told the captain I was equally glad; for, in fact, my grandfather's
+quietness and apparently friendly disposition tempted me to petition for
+a dower for the princess at once, so that I might be in the position to
+offer Prince Ernest on his arrival a distinct alternative; supposing--
+it was still but a supposition--Ottilia should empower me.  Incessant
+dialogues of perpetually shifting tendencies passed between Ottilia and
+me in my brain--now dark, now mildly fair, now very wild, on one side at
+least.  Never, except by downright force of will, could I draw from the
+phantom of her one purely irrational outcry, so deeply-rooted was the
+knowledge of her nature and mind; and when I did force it, I was no
+gainer: a puppet stood in her place--the vision of Ottilia melted out in
+threads of vapour.
+
+'And yet she has come to me; she has braved everything to come.'  I might
+say that, to liken her to the women who break rules and read duties by
+their own light, but I could not cheat my knowledge of her.  Mrs. Waddy
+met me in the hall of my father's house, as usual, pressing, I regretted
+to see, one hand to her side.  'Her heart,' she said, 'was easily set
+pitty-pat now.' She had been, by her master's orders, examined by two of
+the chief physicians of the kingdom, 'baronets both.' They advised total
+rest.  As far as I could apprehend, their baronetcies and doings in high
+regions had been of more comfort than their prescriptions.
+
+'What I am I must be,' she said, meekly; 'and I cannot quit his service
+till he's abroad again, or I drop.  He has promised me a monument.  I
+don't want it; but it shows his kindness.'
+
+A letter from Heriot informed me that the affair between Edbury and me
+was settled: he could not comprehend how.
+
+'What is this new Jury of Honour?  Who are the jurymen?' he asked, and
+affected wit.
+
+I thanked him for a thrashing in a curt reply.
+
+My father had left the house early in the morning.  Mrs. Waddy believed
+that he meant to dine that evening at the season's farewell dinner of the
+Trump-Trick Club: 'Leastways, Tollingby has orders to lay out his
+gentlemen's-dinners' evening-suit.  Yesterday afternoon he flew down to
+Chippenden, and was home late.  To-day he's in the City, or one of the
+squares.  Lady Edbury's--ah! detained in town with the jaundice or
+toothache.  He said he was sending to France for a dentist: or was it
+Germany, for some lady's eyes?  I am sure I don't know.  Well or ill, so
+long as you're anything to him, he will abound.  Pocket and purse!  You
+know him by this time, Mr. Harry.  Oh, my heart!'
+
+A loud knock at the door had brought on the poor creature's palpitations.
+
+This visitor was no other than Prince Ernest.  The name on his card was
+Graf von Delzenburg, and it set my heart leaping to as swift a measure as
+Mrs. Waddy's.
+
+Hearing that I was in the house, he desired to see me.
+
+We met, with a formal bow.
+
+'I congratulate you right heartily upon being out of the list of the
+nekron,' he said, civilly.  'I am on my way to one of your watering-
+places, whither my family should have preceded me.  Do you publish the
+names and addresses of visitors daily, as it is the custom with us?'
+
+I relieved his apprehensions on that head: 'Here and there, rarely; and
+only at the hotels, I believe.'  The excuse was furnished for offering
+the princess's address.
+
+'Possibly, in a year or two, we may have the pleasure of welcoming you at
+Sarkeld,' said the prince, extending his hand.  'Then, you have seen the
+Countess of Delzenburg?'
+
+'On the day of her arrival, your Highness.  Ladies of my family are
+staying on the island.'
+
+'Ah?'
+
+He paused, and invited me to bow to him.  We bowed thus in the room, in
+the hall, and at the street-door.
+
+For what purpose could he have called on my father?  To hear the worst at
+once?  That seemed likely, supposing him to have lost his peculiar
+confidence in the princess, of which the courtly paces he had put me
+through precluded me from judging.
+
+But I guessed acutely that it was not his intention to permit of my
+meeting Ottilia a second time.  The blow was hard: I felt it as if it had
+been struck already, and thought I had gained resignation, until, like a
+man reprieved on his road to execution, the narrowed circle of my heart
+opened out to the breadth of the world in a minute.  Returning from the
+city, I hurried to my father's house, late in the afternoon, and heard
+that he had started to overtake the prince, leaving word that the prince
+was to be found at his address in the island.  No doubt could exist
+regarding the course I was bound to take.  I drove to my grandfather,
+stated my case to him, and by sheer vehemence took the wind out of his
+sails; so that when I said, 'I am the only one alive who can control my
+father,' he answered mildly, 'Seems t' other way,' and chose a small
+snort for the indulgence of his private opinion.
+
+'What! this princess came over alone, and is down driving out with my
+girl under an alias?' he said, showing sour aversion at the prospect of a
+collision with the foreign species, as expressive as the ridge of a cat's
+back.
+
+Temple came to dine with us, so I did not leave him quite to himself, and
+Temple promised to accompany him down to the island.
+
+'Oh, go, if you like,' the fretted old man dismissed me:
+
+'I've got enough to think over.  Hold him fast to stand up to me within
+forty-eight hours, present time; you know who I mean; I've got a question
+or two for him.  How he treats his foreign princes and princesses don't
+concern me.  I'd say, like the Prevention-Cruelty-Animal's man to the
+keeper of the menagerie, "Lecture 'em, wound their dignity, hurt their
+feelings, only don't wop 'em."  I don't wish any harm to them, but what
+the deuce they do here nosing after my grandson! .  .  . There, go; we
+shall be having it out ha' done with to-morrow or next day.  I've run the
+badger to earth, else I'm not fit to follow a scent.'
+
+He grumbled at having to consume other than his Riversley bread, butter,
+beef, and ale for probably another fortnight.  One of the boasts of
+Riversley was, that while the rest of the world ate and drank poison,
+the Grange lived on its own solid substance, defying malefactory Radical
+tricksters.
+
+Temple was left to hear the rest.  He had the sweetest of modest wishes
+for a re-introduction to Ottilia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+WE ARE ALL IN MY FATHER'S NET
+
+Journeying down by the mail-train in the face of a great sunken sunset
+broken with cloud, I chanced to ask myself what it was that I seriously
+desired to have.  My purpose to curb my father was sincere and good; but
+concerning my heart's desires, whitherward did they point?  I thought of
+Janet--she made me gasp for air; of Ottilia, and she made me long for
+earth.  Sharp, as I write it, the distinction smote me.  I might have
+been divided by an electrical shot into two halves, with such an equal
+force was I drawn this way and that, pointing nowhither.  To strangle the
+thought of either one of them was like the pang of death; yet it did not
+strike me that I loved the two: they were apart in my mind, actually as
+if I had been divided.  I passed the Riversley station under sombre
+sunset fires, saddened by the fancy that my old home and vivacious Janet
+were ashes, past hope.  I came on the smell of salt air, and had that
+other spirit of woman around me, of whom the controlled seadeeps were an
+image, who spoke to my soul like starlight.  Much wise counsel, and
+impatience of the wisdom, went on within me.  I walked like a man with a
+yawning wound, and had to whip the sense of passion for a drug.  Toward
+which one it strove I know not; it was blind and stormy as the night.
+
+Not a boatman would take me across.  The lights of the island lay like a
+crown on the water.  I paced the ramparts, eyeing them, breathing the
+keen salt of thundering waves, until they were robbed of their magic by
+the coloured Fast.
+
+It is, I have learnt, out of the conflict of sensations such as I then
+underwent that a young man's brain and morality, supposing him not to
+lean overmuch to sickly sentiment, becomes gradually enriched and
+strengthened, and himself shaped for capable manhood.  I was partly
+conscious of a better condition in the morning; and a sober morning it
+was to me after my long sentinel's step to and fro.  I found myself
+possessed of one key--whether the right one or not--wherewith to read the
+princess, which was never possible to me when I was under stress of
+passion, or of hope or despair; my perplexities over what she said, how
+she looked, ceased to trouble me.  I read her by this strange light: that
+she was a woman who could only love intelligently--love, that is, in the
+sense of giving herself.  She had the power of passion, and it could be
+stirred; but he who kindled it wrecked his chance if he could not stand
+clear in her intellect's unsparing gaze.  Twice already she must have
+felt herself disillusioned by me.  This third time, possibly, she blamed
+her own fatally credulous tenderness, not me; but it was her third
+awakening, and could affection and warmth of heart combat it?  Her
+child's enthusiasm for my country had prepared her for the impression
+which the waxen mind of the dreamy invalid received deeply; and so, aided
+by the emotional blood of youth, she gave me place in her imagination,
+probing me still curiously, as I remembered, at a season when her sedate
+mind was attaining to joint deliberations with the impulsive overgenerous
+heart.
+
+Then ensued for her the successive shocks of discernment.  She knew the
+to have some of the vices, many follies, all the intemperateness of men
+who carve a way for themselves in the common roads, if barely they do
+that.  And resembling common men (men, in a judgement elective as hers,
+common, however able), I was not assuredly to be separated by her from my
+associations; from the thought of my father, for example.  Her look at
+him in the lake-palace library, and her manner in unfolding and folding
+his recent letter to her, and in one or two necessitated allusions,
+embraced a kind of grave, pitiful humour, beyond smiles or any outward
+expression, as if the acknowledgement that it was so quite obliterated
+the wonder that it should be so--that one such as he could exercise
+influence upon her destiny.  Or she may have made her reckoning
+generally, not personally, upon our human destinies: it is the more
+likely, if, as I divine, the calm oval of her lifted eyelids contemplated
+him in the fulness of the recognition that this world, of which we hope
+unuttered things, can be shifted and swayed by an ignis-fatuus.  The
+father of one now seen through, could hardly fail of being transfixed
+himself.  It was horrible to think of.  I would rather have added a vice
+to my faults than that she should have penetrated him.
+
+Nearing the island, I was reminded of the early morning when I landed on
+the Flemish flats.  I did not expect a similar surprise, but before my
+rowers had pulled in, the tall beaconhead of old Schwartz notified that
+his mistress might be abroad.  Janet walked with her.  I ran up the steps
+to salute them, and had Ottilia's hand in mine.
+
+'Prince Ernest has arrived?'
+
+'My father came yesterday evening.'
+
+'Do you leave to-day?'
+
+'I cannot tell; he will decide.'
+
+It seemed a good omen, until I scanned Janet's sombre face.
+
+'You will not see us out for the rest of the day, Harry,' said she.
+
+'That is your arrangement?'
+
+'It is.'
+
+'Your own?'
+
+'Mine, if you like.'
+
+There was something hard in her way of speaking, as though she blamed me,
+and the princess were under her protection against me.  She vouchsafed no
+friendly significance of look and tone.
+
+In spite of my readiness to criticize her (which in our language means
+condemn) for always assuming leadership with whomsoever she might be, I
+was impressed by the air of high-bred friendliness existing between her
+and the princess.  Their interchange was pleasant to hear.  Ottilia had
+caught the spirit of her frank manner of speech; and she, though in a
+less degree, the princess's fine ease and sweetness.  They conversed,
+apparently, like equal minds.  On material points, Janet unhesitatingly
+led.  It was she who brought the walk to a close.
+
+'Now, Harry, you had better go and have a little sleep.  I should like to
+speak to you early.'
+
+Ottilia immediately put her hand out to me.
+
+I begged permission to see her to her door.
+
+Janet replied for her, indicating old Schwartz: 'We have a protector, you
+see, six feet and a half.'
+
+An hour later, Schwartz was following her to the steps of her hotel.  She
+saw me, and waited.  For a wonder, she displayed reluctance in
+disburdening herself of what she had to say.  'Harry, you know that he
+has come?  He and Prince Ernest came together.  Get him to leave the
+island at once: he can return to-morrow.  Grandada writes of wishing to
+see him.  Get him away to-day.'
+
+'Is the prince going to stay here?' I asked.
+
+'No.  I daresay I am only guessing; I hope so.  He has threatened the
+prince.'
+
+'What with?'
+
+'Oh!  Harry, can't you understand?  I'm no reader of etiquette, but even
+I can see that the story of a young princess travelling over to England
+alone to visit .  .  .  and you .  .  ., and her father fetching her
+away!  The prince is almost at his mercy, unless you make the man behave
+like a gentleman.  This is exactly the thing Miss Goodwin feared!'
+
+'But who's to hear of the story?' said I.
+
+Janet gave an impatient sigh.
+
+'Do you mean that my father has threatened to publish it, Janet?'
+
+'I won't say he has.  He has made the prince afraid to move: that I think
+is true.'
+
+'Did the princess herself mention it to you?'
+
+'She understands her situation, I am sure.'
+
+'Did she speak of "the man," as you call him?'
+
+'Yes: not as I do.  You must try by-and-by to forgive me.  Whether he set
+a trap or not, he has decoyed her--don't frown at words--and it remains
+for you to act as I don't doubt you will; but lose no time.  Determine.
+Oh!  if I were a man!'
+
+'You would muzzle us?'
+
+'Muzzle, or anything you please; I would make any one related to me
+behave honourably.  I would give him the alternative .  .  .'
+
+'You foolish girl!  suppose he took it?'
+
+'I would make him feel my will.  He should not take it.  Keep to the
+circumstances, Harry.  If you have no control over him--I should think I
+was not fit to live, in such a position!  No control over him at a moment
+like this?  and the princess in danger of having her reputation hurt!
+Surely, Harry!  But why should I speak to you as if you were undecided!'
+
+'Where is he?'
+
+'At the house where you sleep.  He surrendered his rooms here very
+kindly.'
+
+'Aunty has seen him?'
+
+Janet blushed: I thought I knew why.  It was for subtler reasons than I
+should have credited her with conceiving.
+
+'She sent for him, at my request, late last night.  She believed her
+influence would be decisive.  So do I.  She could not even make the man
+perceive that he was acting--to use her poor dear old-fashioned word--
+reprehensibly in frightening the prince to further your interests.  From
+what I gathered he went off in a song about them.  She said he talked so
+well!  And aunty Dorothy, too!  I should nearly as soon have expected
+grandada to come in for his turn of the delusion.  How I wish he was
+here!  Uberly goes by the first boat to bring him down.  I feel with Miss
+Goodwin that it will be a disgrace for all of us--the country's disgrace.
+As for our family!  .  .  .  Harry, and your name!  Good-bye.  Do your
+best.'
+
+I was in the mood to ask, 'On behalf of the country?'  She had, however,
+a glow and a ringing articulation in her excitement that forbade
+trifling; a minute's reflection set me weighing my power of will against
+my father's.  I nodded to her.
+
+'Come to us when you are at liberty,' she called.
+
+I have said that I weighed my power of will against my father's.
+Contemplation of the state of the scales did not send me striding to meet
+him.  Let it be remembered--I had it strongly in memory that he
+habitually deluded himself under the supposition that the turn of all
+events having an aspect of good fortune had been planned by him of old,
+and were offered to him as the legitimately-won fruits of a politic life.
+While others deemed him mad, or merely reckless, wild, a creature living
+for the day, he enjoyed the conceit of being a profound schemer, in which
+he was fortified by a really extraordinary adroitness to take advantage
+of occurrences: and because he was prompt in an emergency, and quick to
+profit of a crisis, he was deluded to imagine that he had created it.
+Such a man would be with difficulty brought to surrender his prize.
+
+Again, there was his love for me.  'Pater est, Pamphile;--difficile est.'
+How was this vast conceit of a not unreal paternal love to be
+encountered?  The sense of honour and of decency might appeal to him
+personally; would either of them get a hearing if he fancied them to be
+standing in opposition to my dearest interests?  I, unhappily, as the
+case would be sure to present itself to him, appeared the living example
+of his eminently politic career.  After establishing me the heir of one
+of the wealthiest of English commoners, would he be likely to forego any
+desperate chance of ennobling me by the brilliant marriage?  His dreadful
+devotion to me extinguished the hope that he would, unless I should
+happen to be particularly masterful in dealing with him.  I heard his
+nimble and overwhelming volubility like a flood advancing.  That could be
+withstood, and his arguments and persuasions.  But by what steps could I
+restrain the man himself?  I said 'the man,' as Janet did.  He figured in
+my apprehensive imagination as an engine more than as an individual.
+Lassitude oppressed me.  I felt that I required every access of strength
+possible, physical besides moral, in anticipation of our encounter, and
+took a swim in sea-water, which displaced my drowsy fit, and some
+alarming intimations of cowardice menacing a paralysis of the will: I had
+not altogether recovered from my gipsy drubbing.  And now I wanted to
+have the contest over instantly.  It seemed presumable that my father had
+slept at my lodgings.  There, however, the report of him was, that he had
+inspected the rooms, highly complimented the owner of them, and vanished.
+
+Returning to the pier, I learnt that he had set sail in his hired yacht
+for the sister town on the Solent, at an early hour:--for what purpose?
+I knew of it too late to intercept it.  One of the squire's horses
+trotted me over; I came upon Colonel Hibbert Segrave near the Club-house,
+and heard that my father was off again:
+
+'But your German prince and papa-in-law shall be free of the Club for the
+next fortnight,' said he, and cordially asked to have the date of the
+marriage.  My face astonished him.  He excused himself for speaking of
+this happy event so abruptly.  A sting of downright anger drove me back
+at a rapid canter.  It flashed on me that this Prince Ernest, whose suave
+fashion of depressing me, and philosophical skill in managing his
+daughter, had induced me to regard him as a pattern of astuteness, was
+really both credulous and feeble, or else supremely unsuspecting: and I
+was confirmed in the latter idea on hearing that he had sailed to visit
+the opposite harbour and docks on board my father's yacht.  Janet shared
+my secret opinion.
+
+'The prince is a gentleman,' she said.
+
+Her wrath and disgust were unspeakable.  My aunt Dorothy blamed her for
+overdue severity.  'The prince, I suppose, goes of his own free will
+where he pleases.'
+
+Janet burst out, 'Oh! can't you see through it, aunty?  The prince goes
+about without at all knowing that the person who takes him--Harry sees
+it--is making him compromise himself: and by-and-by the prince will
+discover that he has no will of his own, whatever he may wish to resolve
+upon doing.'
+
+'Is he quite against Harry?' asked my aunt Dorothy.
+
+'Dear aunty, he 's a prince, and a proud man.  He will never in his
+lifetime consent to .  .  .  to what you mean, without being hounded
+into it.  I haven't the slightest idea whether anything will force him.
+I know that the princess would have too much pride to submit, even to
+save her name.  But it 's her name that 's in danger.  Think of the
+scandal to a sovereign princess!  I know the signification of that now; I
+used to laugh at Harry's "sovereign princess."  She is one, and thorough!
+there is no one like her.  Don't you understand, aunty, that the
+intrigue, plot--I don't choose to be nice upon terms--may be perfectly
+successful, and do good to nobody.  The prince may be tricked; the
+princess, I am sure, will not.'
+
+Janet's affectation of an intimate and peculiar knowledge of the princess
+was a show of her character that I was accustomed to: still, it was
+evident they had conversed much, and perhaps intimately.  I led her to
+tell me that the princess had expressed no views upon my father.  'He
+does not come within her scope, Harry.' 'Scope' was one of Janet's new
+words, wherewith she would now and then fall to seasoning a serviceable
+but savourless outworn vocabulary of the common table.  In spite of that
+and other offences, rendered prominent to me by the lifting of her lip
+and her frown when she had to speak of my father, I was on her side, not
+on his.  Her estimation of the princess was soundly based.  She discerned
+exactly the nature of Ottilia's entanglement, and her peril.
+
+She and my aunt Dorothy passed the afternoon with Ottilia, while I
+crossed the head of the street, looking down at the one house, where the
+princess was virtually imprisoned, either by her father's express
+injunction or her own discretion.  And it was as well that she should not
+be out.  The yachting season had brought many London men to the island.
+I met several who had not forgotten the newspaper-paragraph assertions
+and contradictions.  Lord Alton, Admiral Loftus, and others were on the
+pier and in the outfitters' shops, eager for gossip, as the languid
+stretch of indolence inclines men to be.  The Admiral asked me for the
+whereabout of Prince Ernest's territory.  He too said that the prince
+would be free of the Club during his residence, adding:
+
+'Where is he?'--not a question demanding an answer.  The men might have
+let the princess go by, but there would have been questions urgently
+demanding answers had she been seen by their women.
+
+Late in the evening my father's yacht was sighted from the pier.  Just as
+he reached his moorings, and his boat was hauled round, the last steamer
+came in.  Sharp-eyed Janet saw the squire on board among a crowd, and
+Temple next to him, supporting his arm.
+
+'Has grandada been ill?' she exclaimed.
+
+My chief concern was to see my father's head rising in the midst of the
+crowd, uncovering repeatedly.  Prince Ernest and General Goodwin were
+behind him, stepping off the lower pier-platform.  The General did not
+look pleased.  My grandfather, with Janet holding his arm, in the place
+of Temple, stood waiting to see that his man had done his duty by the
+luggage.
+
+My father, advancing, perceived me, and almost taking the squire into his
+affectionate salutation, said:
+
+'Nothing could be more opportune than your arrival, Mr. Beltham.'
+
+The squire rejoined: 'I wanted to see you, Mr. Richmond; and not in
+public.'
+
+'I grant the private interview, sir, at your convenience.'
+
+Janet went up to General Goodwin.  My father talked to me, and lost a
+moment in shaking Temple's hand and saying kind things.
+
+'Name any hour you please, Mr. Beltham,' he resumed; 'meantime, I shall
+be glad to effect the introduction between Harry's grandfather and his
+Highness Prince Ernest of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld.'
+
+He turned.  General Goodwin was hurrying the prince up the steps, the
+squire at the same time retreating hastily.  I witnessed the spectacle of
+both parties to the projected introduction swinging round to make their
+escape.  My father glanced to right and left.  He covered in the airiest
+fashion what would have been confusion to another by carrying on a jocose
+remark that he had left half spoken to Temple, and involved Janet in it,
+and soon--through sheer amiable volubility and his taking manner--the
+squire himself for a minute or so.
+
+'Harry, I have to tell you she is not unhappy,' Janet whispered rapidly.
+'She is reading of one of our great men alive now.  She is glad to be on
+our ground.' Janet named a famous admiral, kindling as a fiery beacon to
+our blood.  She would have said more: she looked the remainder; but she
+could have said nothing better fitted to spur me to the work she wanted
+done.  Mournfulness dropped on me like a cloud in thinking of the bright
+little princess of my boyhood, and the Ottilia of to-day, faithful to her
+early passion for our sea-heroes and my country, though it had grievously
+entrapped her.  And into what hands!  Not into hands which could cast one
+ray of honour on a devoted head.  The contrast between the sane service--
+giving men she admired, and the hopping skipping social meteor, weaver of
+webs, thrower of nets, who offered her his history for a nuptial
+acquisition, was ghastly, most discomforting.  He seemed to have
+entangled us all.
+
+He said that he had.  He treated me now confessedly as a cipher.  The
+prince, the princess, my grandfather, and me--he had gathered us
+together, he said.  I heard from him that the prince, assisted by him in
+the part of an adviser, saw no way of cutting the knot but by a marriage.
+All were at hand for a settlement of the terms:--Providence and destiny
+were dragged in.
+
+'Let's have no theatrical talk,' I interposed.
+
+'Certainly, Richie; the plainest English,' he assented.
+
+This was on the pier, while he bowed and greeted passing figures.  I
+dared not unlink my arm, for fear of further mischief.  I got him to my
+rooms, and insisted on his dining there.
+
+'Dry bread will do,' he said.
+
+My anticipations of the nature of our wrestle were correct.  But I had
+not expected him to venture on the assertion that the prince was for the
+marriage.  He met me at every turn with this downright iteration.  'The
+prince consents: he knows his only chance is to yield.  I have him fast.'
+
+'How?' I inquired.
+
+'How, Richie?  Where is your perspicuity?  I have him here.  I loosen a
+thousand tongues on him.  I--'
+
+'No, not on him; on the princess, you mean.'
+
+'On him.  The princess is the willing party; she and you are one.  On
+him, I say.  'Tis but a threat: I hold it in terrorem.  And by heaven,
+son Richie, it assures me I have not lived and fought for nothing.  "Now
+is the day and now is the hour."  On your first birthday, my boy, I swore
+to marry you to one of the highest ladies upon earth: she was, as it
+turns out, then unborn.  No matter: I keep my oath.  Abandon it?  pooh!
+you are--forgive me--silly.  Pardon me for remarking it, you have not
+that dashing courage--never mind.  The point is, I have my prince in his
+trap.  We are perfectly polite, but I have him, and he acknowledges it;
+he shrugs: love has beaten him.  Very well.  And observe: I permit no
+squire-of-low-degree insinuations; none of that.  The lady--all earthly
+blessings on her!--does not stoop to Harry Richmond.  I have the
+announcement in the newspapers.  I maintain it the fruit of a life of
+long and earnest endeavour, legitimately won, by heaven it is!  and with
+the constituted authorities of my native land against me.  Your grandad
+proposes formally for the princess to-morrow morning.'
+
+He maddened me.  Merely to keep him silent I burst out in a flux of
+reproaches as torrent-like as his own could be; and all the time I was
+wondering whether it was true that a man who talked as he did, in his
+strain of florid flimsy, had actually done a practical thing.
+
+The effect of my vehemence was to brace him and make him sedately
+emphatic.  He declared himself to have gained entire possession of the
+prince's mind.  He repeated his positive intention to employ his power
+for my benefit.  Never did power of earth or of hell seem darker to me
+than he at that moment, when solemnly declaiming that he was prepared to
+forfeit my respect and love, die sooner than 'yield his prince.'  He wore
+a new aspect, spoke briefly and pointedly, using the phrases of a
+determined man, and in voice and gesture signified that he had us all in
+a grasp of iron.  The charge of his having plotted to bring it about he
+accepted with exultation.
+
+'I admit,' he said, 'I did not arrange to have Germany present for a
+witness besides England, but since he is here, I take advantage of the
+fact, and to-morrow you will see young Eckart down.'
+
+I cried out, as much enraged at my feebleness to resist him, as in
+disgust of his unscrupulous tricks.
+
+'Ay, you have not known me, Richie,' said he.  'I pilot you into harbour,
+and all you can do is just the creaking of the vessel to me.  You are in
+my hands.  I pilot you.  I have you the husband of the princess within
+the month.  No other course is open to her.  And I have the assurance
+that she loses nothing by it.  She is yours, my son.'
+
+'She will not be.  You have wrecked my last chance.  You cover me with
+dishonour.'
+
+'You are a youngster, Richie.  'Tis the wish of her heart.  Probably
+while you and I are talking it over, the prince is confessing that he has
+no escape.  He has not a loophole!  She came to you; you take her.  I am
+far from withholding my admiration of her behaviour; but there it is--she
+came.  Not consent?  She is a ruined woman if she refuses!'
+
+'Through you, through you!--through my father!'
+
+'Have you both gone mad?'
+
+'Try to see this,' I implored him.  'She will not be subjected by any
+threats.  The very whisper of one will make her turn from me .  .  .'
+
+He interrupted.  'Totally the contrary.  The prince acknowledges that you
+are master of her affections.'
+
+'Consistently with her sense of honour and respect for us.'
+
+'Tell me of her reputation, Richie.'
+
+'You pretend that you can damage it!'
+
+'Pretend?  I pretend in the teeth of all concerned to establish her
+happiness and yours, and nothing human shall stop me.  I have you
+grateful to me before your old dad lays his head on his last pillow.
+And that reminds me: I surrender my town house and furniture to you.
+Waddy has received the word.  By the way, should you hear of a good
+doctor for heart-disease, tell me: I have my fears for the poor soul.'
+
+He stood up, saying, 'Richie, I am not like Jorian, to whom a lodging-
+house dinner is no dinner, and an irreparable loss, but I must have air.
+I go forth on a stroll.'
+
+It was impossible for me to allow it.  I stopped him.
+
+We were in the midst of a debate as to his right of personal freedom,
+upon the singularity of which he commented with sundry ejaculations, when
+Temple arrived and General Goodwin sent up his card.  Temple and I left
+the general closeted with my father, and stood at the street-door.  He
+had seen the princess, having at her request been taken to present his
+respects to her by Janet.  How she looked, what she said, he was dull in
+describing; he thought her lively, though she was pale.  She had
+mentioned my name, 'kindly,' he observed.  And he knew, or suspected, the
+General to be an emissary from the prince.  But he could not understand
+the exact nature of the complication, and plagued me with a mixture of
+blunt inquiries and the delicate reserve proper to him so much that I had
+to look elsewhere for counsel and sympathy.  Janet had told him
+everything; still he was plunged in wonder, tempting me to think the
+lawyer's mind of necessity bourgeois, for the value of a sentiment seemed
+to have no weight in his estimation of the case.  Nor did he appear
+disinclined to excuse my father.  Some of his remarks partly swayed me,
+in spite of my seeing that they were based on the supposition of an 'all
+for love' adventure of a mad princess.  They whispered a little hope,
+when I was adoring her passionately for being the reverse of whatever
+might have given hope a breath.
+
+General Goodwin, followed by my father, came down and led me aside after
+I had warned Temple not to let my father elude him.  The General was
+greatly ruffled.  'Clara tells me she can rely on you,' he said.  'I am
+at the end of my arguments with that man, short of sending him to the
+lock-up.  You will pardon me, Mr. Harry; I foresaw the scrapes in store
+for you, and advised you.'
+
+'You did, General,' I confessed.  'Will you tell me what it is Prince
+Ernest is in dread of?'
+
+'A pitiable scandal, sir; and if he took my recommendation, he would find
+instant means of punishing the man who dares to threaten him.  You know
+it.'
+
+I explained that I was aware of the threat, not of the degree of the
+prince's susceptibility; and asked him if he had seen the princess.
+
+'I have had the honour,' he replied, stiffly.  'You gain nothing with her
+by this infamous proceeding.'
+
+I swallowed my anger, and said, 'Do you accuse me, General?'
+
+'I do not accuse you,' he returned, unbendingly.  'You chose your path
+some ten or twelve years ago, and you must take the consequences.
+I foresaw it; but this I will say, I did not credit the man with his
+infernal cleverness.  If I speak to you at all, I must speak my mind.
+I thought him a mere buffoon and spendthrift, flying his bar-sinister
+story for the sake of distinction.  He has schemed up to this point
+successfully: he has the prince in his toils.  I would cut through them,
+as I have informed Prince Ernest.  I daresay different positions lead to
+different reasonings; the fellow appears to have a fascination over him.
+Your father, Mr. Harry, is guilty now--he is guilty, I reiterate, now of
+a piece of iniquity that makes me ashamed to own him for a countryman.'
+
+The General shook himself erect.  'Are you unable to keep him in?' he
+asked.
+
+My nerves were pricking and stinging with the insults I had to listen to,
+and conscience's justification of them.
+
+He repeated the question.
+
+'I will do what I can,' I said, unsatisfactorily to myself and to him,
+for he transposed our situations, telling me the things he would say and
+do in my place; things not dissimilar to those I had already said and
+done, only more toweringly enunciated; and for that reason they struck me
+as all the more hopelessly ineffectual, and made me despair.
+
+My dumbness excited his ire.  'Come,' said he; 'the lady is a spoilt
+child.  She behaved foolishly; but from your point of view you should
+feel bound to protect her on that very account.  Do your duty, young
+gentleman.  He is, I believe, fond of you, and if so, you have him by a
+chain.  I tell you frankly, I hold you responsible.'
+
+His way of speaking of the princess opened an idea of the world's, in the
+event of her name falling into its clutches.
+
+I said again, 'I will do what I can,' and sang out for Temple.
+
+He was alone.  My father had slipped from him to leave a card at the
+squire's hotel.  General Goodwin touched Temple on the shoulder kindly,
+in marked contrast to his treatment of me, and wished us good-night.
+Nothing had been heard of my father by Janet, but while I was sitting
+with her, at a late hour, his card was brought up, and a pencilled
+entreaty for an interview the next morning.
+
+'That will suit grandada,' Janet said.  'He commissioned me before going
+to bed to write the same for him.'
+
+She related that the prince was in a state of undisguised distraction.
+From what I could comprehend--it appeared incredible--he regarded his
+daughter's marriage as the solution of the difficulty, the sole way out
+of the meshes.
+
+'Is not that her wish?' said Temple; perhaps with a wish of his own.
+
+'Oh, if you think a lady like the Princess Ottilia is led by her wishes,'
+said Janet.  Her radiant perception of an ideal in her sex (the first she
+ever had) made her utterly contemptuous toward the less enlightened.
+
+We appointed the next morning at half-past eleven for my father's visit.
+
+'Not a minute later,' Janet said in my ear, urgently.  'Don't--don't let
+him move out of your sight, Harry!  The princess is convinced you are
+not to blame.'
+
+I asked her whether she had any knowledge of the squire's designs.
+
+'I have not, on my honour,' she answered.  'But I hope .  .  .  It is so
+miserable to think of this disgraceful thing!  She is too firm to give
+way.  She does not blame you.  I am sure I do not; only, Harry, one
+always feels that if one were in another's place, in a case like this,
+I could and would command him.  I would have him obey me.  One is not
+born to accept disgrace even from a father.  I should say, "You shall not
+stir, if you mean to act dishonourably."  One is justified, I am sure, in
+breaking a tie of relationship that involves you in dishonour.  Grandada
+has not spoken a word to me on the subject.  I catch at straws.  This
+thing burns me!  Oh, good-night, Harry.  I can't sleep.'
+
+'Good-night,' she called softly to Temple on the stairs below.  I heard
+the poor fellow murmuring good-night to himself in the street, and
+thought him happier than I.  He slept at a room close to the hotel.
+
+A note from Clara Goodwin adjured me, by her memory of the sweet, brave,
+gracious fellow she loved in other days, to be worthy of what I had been.
+The General had unnerved her reliance on me.
+
+I sat up for my father until long past midnight.  When he came his
+appearance reminded me of the time of his altercation with Baroness
+Turckems under the light of the blazing curtains: he had supped and drunk
+deeply, and he very soon proclaimed that I should find him invincible,
+which, as far as insensibility to the strongest appeals to him went, he
+was.
+
+'Deny you love her, deny she loves you, deny you are one--I knot you
+fast!'
+
+He had again seen Prince Ernest; so he said, declaring that the Prince
+positively desired the marriage; would have it.  'And I,' he dramatized
+their relative situations, 'consented.'
+
+After my experience of that night, I forgive men who are unmoved by
+displays of humour.  Commonly we think it should be irresistible.  His
+description of the thin-skinned sensitive prince striving to run and
+dodge for shelter from him, like a fever-patient pursued by a North-
+easter, accompanied by dozens of quaint similes full of his mental
+laughter, made my loathing all the more acute.  But I had not been an
+equal match for him previous to his taking wine; it was waste of breath
+and heart to contend with him.  I folded my arms tight, sitting rigidly
+silent, and he dropped on the sofa luxuriously.
+
+'Bed, Richie!' he waved to me.  'You drink no wine, you cannot stand
+dissipation as I do.  Bed, my dear boy!  I am a God, sir, inaccessible to
+mortal ailments!  Seriously, dear boy, I have never known an illness in
+my life.  I have killed my hundreds of poor devils who were for imitating
+me.  This I boast--I boast constitution.  And I fear, Richie, you have
+none of my superhuman strength.  Added to that, I know I am watched over.
+I ask--I have: I scheme the tricks are in my hand!  It may be the doing
+of my mother in heaven; there is the fact for you to reflect on.  "Stand
+not in my way, nor follow me too far," would serve me for a motto
+admirably, and you can put it in Latin, Richie.  Bed!  You shall turn
+your scholarship to account as I do my genius in your interest.  On my
+soul, that motto in Latin will requite me.  Now to bed.'
+
+'No,' said I.  'You have got away from me once.  I shall keep you in
+sight and hearing, if I have to lie at your door for it.  You will go
+with me to London to-morrow.  I shall treat you as a man I have to guard,
+and I shall not let you loose before I am quite sure of you.'
+
+'Loose!' he exclaimed, throwing up an arm and a leg.
+
+'I mean, sir, that you shall be in my presence wherever you are, and I
+will take care you don't go far and wide.  It's useless to pretend
+astonishment.  I don't argue and I don't beseech any further: I just sit
+on guard, as I would over a powder-cask.'
+
+My father raised himself on an elbow.  'The explosion,' he said,
+examining his watch, 'occurred at about five minutes to eleven--we are
+advancing into the morning--last night.  I received on your behalf the
+congratulations of friends Loftus, Alton, Segrave, and the rest, at that
+hour.  So, my dear Richie, you are sitting on guard over the empty
+magazine.'
+
+I listened with a throbbing forehead, and controlled the choking in my
+throat, to ask him whether he had touched the newspapers.
+
+'Ay, dear lad, I have sprung my mine in them,' he replied.
+
+'You have sent word--?'
+
+'I have despatched a paragraph to the effect, that the prince and
+princess have arrived to ratify the nuptial preliminaries.'
+
+'You expect it to appear this day?'
+
+'Or else my name and influence are curiously at variance with the
+confidence I repose in them, Richie.'
+
+'Then I leave you to yourself,' I said.  'Prince Ernest knows he has to
+expect this statement in the papers?'
+
+'We trumped him with that identical court-card, Richie.'
+
+'Very well.  To-morrow, after we have been to my grandfather, you and I
+part company for good, sir.  It costs me too much.'
+
+'Dear old Richie,' he laughed, gently.  'And now to bye-bye!  My blessing
+on you now and always.'
+
+He shut his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+AN ENCOUNTER SHOWING MY FATHER'S GENIUS IN A STRONG LIGHT
+
+The morning was sultry with the first rising of the sun. I knew that
+Ottilia and Janet would be out.  For myself, I dared not leave the house.
+I sat in my room, harried by the most penetrating snore which can ever
+have afflicted wakeful ears.  It proclaimed so deep-seated a peacefulness
+in the bosom of the disturber, and was so arrogant, so ludicrous, and
+inaccessible to remonstrance, that it sounded like a renewal of our
+midnight altercation on the sleeper's part.  Prolonged now and then
+beyond all bounds, it ended in the crashing blare whereof utter
+wakefulness cannot imagine honest sleep to be capable, but a playful
+melody twirled back to the regular note. He was fast asleep on the
+sitting-room sofa, while I walked fretting and panting.  To this twinship
+I seemed condemned.  In my heart nevertheless there was a reserve of
+wonderment at his apparent astuteness and resolution, and my old love for
+him whispered disbelief in his having disgraced me.  Perhaps it was
+wilful self-deception.  It helped me to meet him with a better face.
+
+We both avoided the subject of our difference for some time: he would
+evidently have done so altogether, and used his best and sweetest manner
+to divert me: but when I struck on it, asking him if he had indeed told
+me the truth last night, his features clouded as though with an effort of
+patience.  To my consternation, he suddenly broke away, with his arms up,
+puffing and stammering, stamping his feet.  He would have a truce--he
+insisted on a truce, I understood him to exclaim, and that I was like a
+woman, who would and would not, and wanted a master.  He raved of the
+gallant down-rightedness of the young bloods of his day, and how
+splendidly this one and that had compassed their ends by winning great
+ladies, lawfully, or otherwise.  For several minutes he was in a state of
+frenzy, appealing to his pattern youths of a bygone generation, as to
+moral principles--stuttering, and of a dark red hue from the neck to the
+temples.  I refrained from a scuffle of tongues.  Nor did he excuse
+himself after he had cooled.  His hand touched instinctively for his
+pulse, and, with a glance at the ceiling, he exclaimed, 'Good Lord!' and
+brought me to his side.  'These wigwam houses check my circulation,' said
+he.  'Let us go out-let us breakfast on board.'
+
+The open air restored him, and he told me that he had been merely
+oppressed by the architect of the inferior classes, whose ceiling sat on
+his head.  My nerves, he remarked to me, were very exciteable.  'You
+should take your wine, Richie,--you require it.  Your dear mother had a
+low-toned nervous system.'  I was silent, and followed him, at once a
+captive and a keeper.
+
+This day of slackened sails and a bright sleeping water kept the
+yachtsmen on land; there was a crowd to meet the morning boat.  Foremost
+among those who stepped out of it was the yellow-haired Eckart, little
+suspecting what the sight of him signalled to me.  I could scarcely greet
+him at all, for in him I perceived that my father had fully committed
+himself to his plot, and left me nothing to hope.  Eckart said something
+of Prince Hermann.  As we were walking off the pier, I saw Janet
+conversing with Prince Ernest, and the next minute Hermann himself was
+one of the group.  I turned to Eckart for an explanation.
+
+'Didn't I tell you he called at your house in London and travelled down
+with me this morning!' said Eckart.
+
+My father looked in the direction of the princes, but his face was for
+the moment no index.  They bowed to Janet, and began talking hurriedly in
+the triangle of road between her hotel, the pier, and the way to the
+villas: passing on, and coming to a full halt, like men who are not
+reserving their minds.  My father stept out toward them.  He was met by
+Prince Ernest.  Hermann turned his back.
+
+It being the hour of the appointment, I delivered Eckart over to Temple's
+safe-keeping, and went up to Janet.  'Don't be late, Harry,' she said.
+
+I asked her if she knew the object of the meeting appointed by my
+grandfather.
+
+She answered impatiently, 'Do get him away from the prince.'  And then:
+'I ought to tell you the princess is well, and so on--pardon me just now:
+Grandada is kept waiting, and I don't like it.'
+
+Her actual dislike was to see Prince Ernest in dialogue with my father,
+it seemed to me; and the manner of both, which was, one would have said,
+intimate, anything but the manner of adversaries.  Prince Ernest appeared
+to affect a pleasant humour; he twice, after shaking my father's hand,
+stepped back to him, as if to renew some impression.  Their attitude
+declared them to be on the best of terms.  Janet withdrew her attentive
+eyes from observing them, and threw a world of meaning into her
+abstracted gaze at me.  My father's advance put her to flight.
+
+Yet she gave him the welcome of a high-bred young woman when he entered
+the drawing-room of my grandfather's hotel-suite.  She was alone, and she
+obliged herself to accept conversation graciously.  He recommended her to
+try the German Baths for the squire's gout, and evidently amused her with
+his specific probations for English persons designing to travel in
+company, that they should previously live together in a house with a
+collection of undisciplined chambermaids, a musical footman, and a mad
+cook: to learn to accommodate their tempers.  'I would add a touch of
+earthquake, Miss Ilchester, just to make sure that all the party know one
+another's edges before starting.'  This was too far a shot of nonsense
+for Janet, whose native disposition was to refer to lunacy or stupidity,
+or trickery, whatsoever was novel to her understanding.  'I, for my
+part,' said he, 'stipulate to have for comrade no man who fancies himself
+a born and stamped chieftain, no inveterate student of maps, and no dog
+with a turn for feeling himself pulled by the collar.  And that reminds
+me you are amateur of dogs.  Have you a Pomeranian boar-hound?'
+
+'No,' said Janet; 'I have never even seen one'
+
+'That high.' My father raised his hand flat.
+
+'Bigger than our Newfoundlands!'
+
+'Without exaggeration, big as a pony.  You will permit me to send you
+one, warranted to have passed his distemper, which can rarely be done for
+our human species, though here and there I venture to guarantee my man as
+well as my dog.'
+
+Janet interposed her thanks, declining to take the dog, but he dwelt on
+the dog's charms, his youth, stature, appearance, fitness, and grandeur,
+earnestly.  I had to relieve her apprehensions by questioning where the
+dog was.
+
+'In Germany,' he said.
+
+It was not improbable, nor less so that the dog was in Pomerania
+likewise.
+
+The entry of my aunt Dorothy, followed by my grandfather, was silent.
+
+'Be seated,' the old man addressed us in a body, to cut short particular
+salutations.
+
+My father overshadowed him with drooping shoulders.
+
+Janet wished to know whether she was to remain.
+
+'I like you by me always,' he answered, bluff and sharp.
+
+'We have some shopping to do,' my aunt Dorothy murmured, showing she was
+there against her will.
+
+'Do you shop out of London?' said my father; and for some time he
+succeeded in making us sit for the delusive picture of a comfortable
+family meeting.
+
+My grandfather sat quite still, Janet next to him.  'When you've
+finished, Mr. Richmond,' he remarked.
+
+'Mr. Beltham, I was telling Miss Beltham that I join in the abuse of
+London exactly because I love it.  A paradox!  she says.  But we seem to
+be effecting a kind of insurance on the life of the things we love best
+by crying them down violently.  You have observed it?  Denounce them--
+they endure for ever!  So I join any soul on earth in decrying our dear
+London.  The naughty old City can bear it.'
+
+There was a clearing of throats.  My aunt Dorothy's foot tapped the
+floor.
+
+'But I presume you have done me the honour to invite me to this
+conference on a point of business, Mr. Beltham?' said my father,
+admonished by the hint.
+
+'I have, sir,' the squire replied.
+
+'And I also have a point.  And, in fact, it is urgent, and with your
+permission, Mr. Beltham, I will lead the way.'
+
+'No, sir, if you please.
+
+I'm a short speaker, and go to it at once, and I won't detain you a
+second after you've answered me.'
+
+My father nodded to this, with the conciliatory comment that it was
+business-like.
+
+The old man drew out his pocket-book.
+
+'You paid a debt,' he said deliberately, 'amounting to twenty-one
+thousand pounds to my grandson's account.'
+
+'Oh!  a debt!  I did, sir.  Between father and boy, dad and lad; debts!
+.  .  .  but use your own terms, I pray you.'
+
+' I don't ask you where that money is now.  I ask you to tell me where
+you got it from.'
+
+'You speak bluntly, my dear sir.'
+
+'You won't answer, then?'
+
+'You ask the question as a family matter?  I reply with alacrity, to the
+best of my ability: and with my hand on my heart, Mr. Beltham, let me
+assure you, I very heartily desire the information to be furnished to me.
+Or rather--why should I conceal it?  The sources are irregular, but a
+child could toddle its way to them--you take my indication.  Say that I
+obtained it from my friends.  My friends, Mr. Beltham, are of the kind
+requiring squeezing.  Government, as my chum and good comrade, Jorian
+DeWitt, is fond of saying, is a sponge--a thing that when you dive deep
+enough to catch it gives liberal supplies, but will assuredly otherwise
+reverse the process by acting the part of an absorbent.  I get what I get
+by force of arms, or I might have perished long since.'
+
+'Then you don't know where you got it from, sir?'
+
+'Technically, you are correct, sir.'
+
+'A bird didn't bring it, and you didn't find it in the belly of a fish.'
+
+'Neither of these prodigies.  They have occurred in books I am bound to
+believe; they did not happen to me.'
+
+'You swear to me you don't know the man, woman, or committee, who gave
+you that sum?'
+
+'I do not know, Mr. Beltham.  In an extraordinary history, extraordinary
+circumstances!  I have experienced so many that I am surprised at
+nothing.'
+
+'You suppose you got it from some fool?'
+
+'Oh!  if you choose to indict Government collectively?'
+
+'You pretend you got it from Government?'
+
+'I am termed a Pretender by some, Mr. Beltham.  The facts are these: I
+promised to refund the money, and I fulfilled the promise.  There you
+have the only answer I can make to you.  Now to my own affair.  I come to
+request you to demand the hand of the Princess of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld on
+behalf of my son Harry, your grandson; and I possess the assurance of the
+prince, her father, that it will be granted.  Doubtless you, sir, are of
+as old a blood as the prince himself.  You will acknowledge that the
+honour brought to the family by an hereditary princess is considerable:
+it is something.  I am prepared to accompany you to his Highness, or not,
+as you please.  It is but a question of dotation, and a selection from
+one or two monosyllables.'
+
+Janet shook her dress.
+
+The squire replied: 'We 'll take that up presently.  I haven't quite
+done.  Will you tell me what agent paid you the sum of money?'
+
+'The usual agent--a solicitor, Mr. Beltham; a gentleman whose business
+lay amongst the aristocracy; he is defunct; and a very worthy old
+gentleman he was, with a remarkable store of anecdotes of his patrons,
+very discreetly told: for you never heard a name from him.'
+
+'You took him for an agent of Government, did you?  why?'
+
+'To condense a long story, sir, the kernel of the matter is, that almost
+from the hour I began to stir for the purpose of claiming my rights--
+which are transparent enough this old gentleman--certainly from no
+sinister motive, I may presume--commenced the payment of an annuity; not
+sufficient for my necessities, possibly, but warrant of an agreeable sort
+for encouraging my expectations; although oddly, this excellent old Mr.
+Bannerbridge invariably served up the dish in a sauce that did not agree
+with it, by advising me of the wish of the donator that I should abandon
+my Case.  I consequently, in common with my friends, performed a little
+early lesson in arithmetic, and we came to the one conclusion open to
+reflective minds--namely, that I was feared.'
+
+My aunt Dorothy looked up for the first time.
+
+'Janet and I have some purchases to make,' she said.
+
+The squire signified sharply that she must remain where she was.
+
+'I think aunty wants fresh air; she had a headache last night,' said
+Janet.
+
+I suggested that, as my presence did not seem to be required, I could
+take her on my arm for a walk to the pier-head.
+
+Her face was burning; she would gladly have gone out, but the squire
+refused to permit it, and she nodded over her crossed hands, saying that
+she was in no hurry.
+
+'Ha! I am,' quoth he.
+
+'Dear Miss Beltham !' my father ejaculated solicitously.  'Here, sir,
+oblige me by attending to me,' cried the squire, fuming and blinking.
+'I sent for you on a piece of business.  You got this money through a
+gentleman, a solicitor, named Bannerbridge, did you?'
+
+'His name was Bannerbridge, Mr. Beltham.'
+
+'Dorothy, you knew a Mr. Bannerbridge?'
+
+She faltered: 'I knew him ....  Harry was lost in the streets of London
+when he was a little fellow, and the Mr. Bannerbridge I knew found him
+and took him to his house, and was very kind to him.'
+
+'What was his Christian name?'
+
+I gave them: 'Charles Adolphus.'
+
+'The identical person!' exclaimed my father.
+
+'Oh!  you admit it,' said the squire.  'Ever seen him since the time
+Harry was lost, Dorothy?'
+
+'Yes,' she answered.  'I have heard he is dead:
+
+'Did you see him shortly before his death?'
+
+'I happened to see him a short time before.!
+
+'He was your man of business, was he?'
+
+'For such little business as I had to do.'
+
+'You were sure you could trust him, eh?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+My aunt Dorothy breathed deeply.
+
+'By God, ma'am, you're a truthful woman!'
+
+The old man gave her a glare of admiration.
+
+It was now my turn to undergo examination, and summoned by his apostrophe
+to meet his eyes, I could appreciate the hardness of the head I had to
+deal with.
+
+'Harry, I beg your pardon beforehand; I want to get at facts; I must ask
+you what you know about where the money came from?'
+
+I spoke of my attempts to discover the whence and wherefore of it.
+
+'Government?  eh?' he sneered.
+
+'I really can't judge whether it came from that quarter,' said I.
+
+'What do you think?--think it likely?'
+
+I thought it unlikely, and yet likelier than that it should have come
+from an individual.
+
+'Then you don't suspect any particular person of having sent it in the
+nick of time, Harry Richmond?'
+
+I replied: 'No, sir; unless you force me to suspect you.'
+
+He jumped in his chair, astounded and wrathful, confounded me for
+insinuating that he was a Bedlamite, and demanded the impudent reason of
+my suspecting him to have been guilty of the infernal folly.
+
+I had but the reason to instance that he was rich and kind at heart.
+
+'Rich!  kind!' he bellowed.  'Just excuse me--I must ask for the purpose
+of my inquiry;--there, tell me, how much do you believe you 've got of
+that money remaining?  None o' that Peterborough style of counting in the
+back of your pate.  Say!'
+
+There was a dreadful silence.
+
+My father leaned persuasively forward.
+
+'Mr. Beltham, I crave permission to take up the word.  Allow me to remind
+you of the prize Harry has won.  The prince awaits you to bestow on him
+the hand of his daughter--'
+
+'Out with it, Harry,' shouted the squire.
+
+'Not to mention Harry's seat in Parliament,' my father resumed, 'he has a
+princess to wife, indubitably one of the most enviable positions in the
+country!  It is unnecessary to count on future honours; they may be
+alluded to.  In truth, sir, we make him the first man in the country.
+Not necessarily Premier: you take my meaning: he possesses the
+combination of social influence and standing with political achievements,
+and rank and riches in addition--'
+
+'I 'm speaking to my grandson, sir,' the squire rejoined, shaking himself
+like a man rained on.  'I 'm waiting for a plain answer, and no lie.
+You've already confessed as much as that the money you told me on your
+honour you put out to interest; psh!--for my grandson was smoke.  Now
+let's hear him.'
+
+My father called out: 'I claim a hearing!  The money you speak of was put
+out to the very highest interest.  You have your grandson in Parliament,
+largely acquainted with the principal members of society, husband of an
+hereditary princess!  You have only at this moment to propose for her
+hand.  I guarantee it to you.  With that money I have won him everything.
+Not that I would intimate to you that princesses are purchaseable.  The
+point is, I knew how to employ it.'
+
+'In two months' time, the money in the Funds in the boy's name--you told
+me that.'
+
+'You had it in the Funds in Harry Richmond's name, sir.'
+
+'Well, sir, I'm asking him whether it's in the Funds now.'
+
+'Oh!  Mr. Beltham.'
+
+'What answer's that?'
+
+The squire was really confused by my father's interruption, and lost
+sight of me.
+
+'I ask where it came from: I ask whether it's squandered?' he continued.
+
+'Mr. Beltham, I reply that you have only to ask for it to have it; do so
+immediately.'
+
+'What 's he saying?' cried the baffled old man.
+
+'I give you a thousand times the equivalent of the money, Mr. Beltham.'
+
+'Is the money there?'
+
+'The lady is here.'
+
+'I said money, sir.'
+
+'A priceless honour and treasure, I say emphatically.'  My grandfather's
+brows and mouth were gathering for storm.  Janet touched his knee.
+
+'Where the devil your understanding truckles, if you have any, I don't
+know,' he muttered.  'What the deuce--lady got to do with money!'
+
+'Oh!' my father laughed lightly, 'customarily the alliance is, they say,
+as close as matrimony.  Pardon me.  To speak with becoming seriousness,
+Mr. Beltham, it was duly imperative that our son should be known in
+society, should be, you will apprehend me, advanced in station, which I
+had to do through the ordinary political channel.  There could not but be
+a considerable expenditure for such a purpose.'
+
+'In Balls, and dinners!'
+
+'In everything that builds a young gentleman's repute.'
+
+'You swear to me you gave your Balls and dinners, and the lot, for Harry
+Richmond's sake?'
+
+'On my veracity, I did, sir!'
+
+'Please don't talk like a mountebank.  I don't want any of your
+roundabout words for truth; we're not writing a Bible essay.  I try my
+best to be civil.'
+
+My father beamed on him.
+
+'I guarantee you succeed, sir.  Nothing on earth can a man be so
+absolutely sure of as to succeed in civility, if he honestly tries at it.
+Jorian DeWitt,--by the way, you may not know him--an esteemed old friend
+of mine, says--that is, he said once--to a tolerably impudent fellow whom
+he had disconcerted with a capital retort, "You may try to be a
+gentleman, and blunder at it, but if you will only try to be his humble
+servant, we are certain to establish a common footing."  Jorian, let me
+tell you, is a wit worthy of our glorious old days.'
+
+My grandfather eased his heart with a plunging breath.
+
+'Well, sir, I didn't ask you here for your opinion or your friend's, and
+I don't care for modern wit.'
+
+'Nor I, Mr. Beltham, nor I!  It has the reek of stable straw.  We are of
+one mind on that subject.  The thing slouches, it sprawls.  It--to quote
+Jorian once more--is like a dirty, idle, little stupid boy who cannot
+learn his lesson and plays the fool with the alphabet.  You smile, Miss
+Ilchester: you would appreciate Jorian.  Modern wit is emphatically
+degenerate.  It has no scintillation, neither thrust nor parry.  I
+compare it to boxing, as opposed to the more beautiful science of
+fencing.'
+
+'Well, sir, I don't want to hear your comparisons,' growled the squire,
+much oppressed.  'Stop a minute .  .  .'
+
+'Half a minute to me, sir,' said my father, with a glowing reminiscence
+of Jorian DeWitt, which was almost too much for the combustible old man,
+even under Janet's admonition.
+
+My aunt Dorothy moved her head slightly toward my father, looking on the
+floor, and he at once drew in.
+
+'Mr. Beltham, I attend to you submissively.'
+
+'You do?  Then tell me what brought this princess to England?'
+
+'The conviction that Harry had accomplished his oath to mount to an
+eminence in his country, and had made the step she is about to take less,
+I will say, precipitous: though I personally decline to admit a pointed
+inferiority.'
+
+'You wrote her a letter.'
+
+'That, containing the news of the attack on him and his desperate
+illness, was the finishing touch to the noble lady's passion.'
+
+'Attack?  I know nothing about an attack.  You wrote her a letter and
+wrote her a lie.  You said he was dying.'
+
+'I had the boy inanimate on my breast when I despatched the epistle.'
+
+'You said he had only a few days to live.'
+
+'So in my affliction I feared.'
+
+'Will you swear you didn't write that letter with the intention of
+drawing her over here to have her in your power, so that you might
+threaten you'd blow on her reputation if she or her father held out
+against you and all didn't go as you fished for it?'
+
+My father raised his head proudly.
+
+'I divide your query into two parts.  I wrote, sir, to bring her to his
+side.  I did not write with any intention to threaten.'
+
+'You've done it, though.'
+
+'I have done this,' said my father, toweringly: 'I have used the power
+placed in my hands by Providence to overcome the hesitations of a
+gentleman whose illustrious rank predisposes him to sacrifice his
+daughter's happiness to his pride of birth and station.  Can any one
+confute me when I assert that the princess loves Harry Richmond?'
+
+I walked abruptly to one of the windows, hearing a pitiable wrangling on
+the theme.  My grandfather vowed she had grown wiser, my father protested
+that she was willing and anxious; Janet was appealed to.  In a strangely-
+sounding underbreath, she said, 'The princess does not wish it.'
+
+'You hear that, Mr. Richmond?' cried the squire.
+
+He returned: 'Can Miss Ilchester say that the Princess Ottilia does not
+passionately love my son Harry Richmond?  The circumstances warrant me in
+beseeching a direct answer.'
+
+She uttered: 'No.'
+
+I looked at her; she at me.
+
+'You can conduct a case, Richmond,' the squire remarked.
+
+My father rose to his feet.  'I can conduct my son to happiness and
+greatness, my dear sir; but to some extent I require your grandfatherly
+assistance; and I urge you now to present your respects to the prince and
+princess, and judge yourself of his Highness's disposition for the match.
+I assure you in advance that he welcomes the proposal.'
+
+'I do not believe it,' said Janet, rising.
+
+My aunt Dorothy followed her example, saying: 'In justice to Harry the
+proposal should be made.  At least it will settle this dispute.'
+
+Janet stared at her, and the squire threw his head back with an amazed
+interjection.
+
+'What!  You're for it now?  Why, at breakfast you were all t' other way!
+You didn't want this meeting because you pooh-poohed the match.'
+
+'I do think you should go,' she answered.  'You have given Harry your
+promise, and if he empowers you, it is right to make the proposal, and
+immediately, I think.'
+
+She spoke feverishly, with an unsweet expression of face, that seemed to
+me to indicate vexedness at the squire's treatment of my father.
+
+'Harry,' she asked me in a very earnest fashion, 'is it your desire?
+Tell your grandfather that it is, and that you want to know your fate.
+Why should there be any dispute on a fact that can be ascertained by
+crossing a street?  Surely it is trifling.'
+
+Janet stooped to whisper in the squire's ear.
+
+He caught the shock of unexpected intelligence apparently; faced about,
+gazed up, and cried: 'You too!  But I haven't done here.  I 've got to
+cross-examine .  .  .  Pretend, do you mean?  Pretend I'm ready to go?
+I can release this prince just as well here as there.'
+
+Janet laughed faintly.
+
+'I should advise your going, grandada.'
+
+'You a weathercock woman!' he reproached her, quite mystified, and fell
+to rubbing his head.  'Suppose I go to be snubbed?'
+
+'The prince is a gentleman, grandada.  Come with me.  We will go alone.
+You can relieve the prince, and protect him.'
+
+My father nodded: 'I approve.'
+
+'And grandada--but it will not so much matter if we are alone, though,'
+Janet said.
+
+'Speak out.'
+
+'See the princess as well; she must be present.'
+
+'I leave it to you,' he said, crestfallen.
+
+Janet pressed my aunt Dorothy's hand.
+
+'Aunty, you were right, you are always right.  This state of suspense is
+bad all round, and it is infinitely worse for the prince and princess.'
+
+My aunt Dorothy accepted the eulogy with a singular trembling wrinkle of
+the forehead.
+
+She evidently understood that Janet had seen her wish to get released.
+
+For my part, I shared my grandfather's stupefaction at their
+unaccountable changes.  It appeared almost as if my father had won them
+over to baffle him.  The old man tried to insist on their sitting down
+again, but Janet perseveringly smiled and smiled until he stood up.  She
+spoke to him softly.  He was one black frown; displeased with her;
+obedient, however.
+
+Too soon after, I had the key to the enigmatical scene.  At the moment I
+was contemptuous of riddles, and heard with idle ears Janet's promptings
+to him and his replies.  'It would be so much better to settle it here,'
+he said.  She urged that it could not be settled here without the whole
+burden and responsibility falling upon him.
+
+'Exactly,' interposed my father, triumphing.
+
+Dorothy Beltham came to my side, and said, as if speaking to herself,
+while she gazed out of window, 'If a refusal, it should come from the
+prince.' She dropped her voice: 'The money has not been spent?  Has it?
+Has any part of it been spent?  Are you sure you have more than three
+parts of it?'
+
+Now, that she should be possessed by the spirit of parsimony on my behalf
+at such a time as this, was to my conception insanely comical, and her
+manner of expressing it was too much for me.  I kept my laughter under to
+hear her continue: 'What numbers are flocking on the pier!  and there is
+no music yet.  Tell me, Harry, that the money is all safe; nearly all; it
+is important to know; you promised economy.'
+
+'Music did you speak of, Miss Beltham?' My father bowed to her gallantly.
+'I chanced to overhear you.  My private band performs to the public at
+midday.'
+
+She was obliged to smile to excuse his interruption.
+
+'What's that?  whose band?' said the squire, bursting out of Janet's
+hand.  'A private band?'
+
+Janet had a difficulty in resuming her command of him.  The mention of
+the private band made him very restive.
+
+'I 'm not acting on my own judgement at all in going to these foreign
+people,' he said to Janet.  'Why go?  I can have it out here and an end
+to it, without bothering them and their interpreters.'
+
+He sang out to me: 'Harry, do you want me to go through this form for
+you?--mn'd unpleasant!'
+
+My aunt Dorothy whispered in my ear: 'Yes! yes!'
+
+'I feel tricked!' he muttered, and did not wait for me to reply before he
+was again questioning my aunt Dorothy concerning Mr. Bannerbridge, and my
+father as to 'that sum of money.' But his method of interrogation was
+confused and pointless.  The drift of it was totally obscure.
+
+'I'm off my head to-day,' he said to Janet, with a sideshot of his eye at
+my father.
+
+'You waste time and trouble, grandada,' said she.
+
+He vowed that he was being bewildered, bothered by us all; and I thought
+I had never seen him so far below his level of energy; but I had not seen
+him condescend to put himself upon a moderately fair footing with my
+father.  The truth was, that Janet had rigorously schooled him to bridle
+his temper, and he was no match for the voluble easy man without the
+freest play of his tongue.
+
+'This prince!' he kept ejaculating.
+
+'Won't you understand, grandada, that you relieve him, and make things
+clear by going?' Janet said.
+
+He begged her fretfully not to be impatient, and hinted that she and he
+might be acting the part of dupes, and was for pursuing his inauspicious
+cross-examination in spite of his blundering, and the 'Where am I now?'
+which pulled him up.  My father, either talking to my aunt Dorothy, to
+Janet, or to me, on ephemeral topics, scarcely noticed him, except when
+he was questioned, and looked secure of success in the highest degree
+consistent with perfect calmness.
+
+'So you say you tell me to go, do you?' the squire called to me.  'Be
+good enough to stay here and wait.  I don't see that anything's gained by
+my going: it's damned hard on me, having to go to a man whose language I
+don't know, and he don't know mine, on a business we're all of us in a
+muddle about.  I'll do it if it's right.  You're sure?'
+
+He glanced at Janet.  She nodded.
+
+I was looking for this quaint and, to me, incomprehensible interlude to
+commence with the departure of the squire and Janet, when a card was
+handed in by one of the hotel-waiters.
+
+'Another prince!' cried the squire.  'These Germans seem to grow princes
+like potatoes--dozens to a root!  Who's the card for?  Ask him to walk
+up.  Show him into a quiet room.  Does he speak English?'
+
+'Does Prince Hermann of--I can't pronounce the name of the place--speak
+English, Harry?' Janet asked me.
+
+'As well as you or I,' said I, losing my inattention all at once with a
+mad leap of the heart.
+
+Hermann's presence gave light, fire, and colour to the scene in which my
+destiny had been wavering from hand to hand without much more than
+amusedly interesting me, for I was sure that I had lost Ottilia; I knew
+that too well, and worse could not happen.  I had besides lost other
+things that used to sustain me, and being reckless, I was contemptuous,
+and listened to the talk about money with sublime indifference to the
+subject: with an attitude, too, I daresay.  But Hermann's name revived my
+torment.  Why had he come? to persuade the squire to control my father?
+Nothing but that would suffer itself to be suggested, though conjectures
+lying in shadow underneath pressed ominously on my mind.
+
+My father had no doubts.
+
+'A word to you, Mr. Beltham, before you go to Prince Hermann.  He is an
+emissary, we treat him with courtesy, and if he comes to diplomatize we,
+of course, give a patient hearing.  I have only to observe in the most
+emphatic manner possible that I do not retract one step.  I will have
+this marriage: I have spoken!  It rests with Prince Ernest.'
+
+The squire threw a hasty glare of his eyes back as he was hobbling on
+Janet's arm.  She stopped short, and replied for him.
+
+'Mr. Beltham will speak for himself, in his own name.  We are not
+concerned in any unworthy treatment of Prince Ernest.  We protest against
+it.'
+
+'Dear young lady!' said my father, graciously.  'I meet you frankly.
+Now tell me.  I know you a gallant horsewoman: if you had lassoed the
+noble horse of the desert would you let him run loose because of his
+remonstrating?  Side with me, I entreat you!  My son is my first thought.
+The pride of princes and wild horses you will find wonderfully similar,
+especially in the way they take their taming when once they feel they are
+positively caught.  We show him we have him fast--he falls into our paces
+on the spot!  For Harry's sake--for the princess's, I beg you exert your
+universally--deservedly acknowledged influence.  Even now--and you frown
+on me!--I cannot find it in my heart to wish you the sweet and admirable
+woman of the world you are destined to be, though you would comprehend me
+and applaud me, for I could not--no, not to win your favourable opinion!
+--consent that you should be robbed of a single ray of your fresh
+maidenly youth.  If you must misjudge me, I submit.  It is the price I
+pay for seeing you young and lovely.  Prince Ernest is, credit me, not
+unworthily treated by me, if life is a battle, and the prize of it to the
+General's head.  I implore you'--he lured her with the dimple of a
+lurking smile--'do not seriously blame your afflicted senior, if we are
+to differ.  I am vastly your elder: you instil the doubt whether I am by
+as much the wiser of the two; but the father of Harry Richmond claims to
+know best what will ensure his boy's felicity.  Is he rash?  Pronounce me
+guilty of an excessive anxiety for my son's welfare; say that I am too
+old to read the world with the accuracy of a youthful intelligence: call
+me indiscreet: stigmatize me unlucky; the severest sentence a judge'--he
+bowed to her deferentially--'can utter; only do not cast a gaze of rebuke
+on me because my labour is for my son--my utmost devotion.  And we know,
+Miss Ilchester, that the princess honours him with her love.  I protest
+in all candour, I treat love as love; not as a weight in the scale; it is
+the heavenly power which dispenses with weighing!  its ascendancy . . .'
+
+The squire could endure no more, and happily so, for my father was losing
+his remarkably moderated tone, and threatening polysyllables.  He had
+followed Janet, step for step, at a measured distance, drooping toward
+her with his winningest air, while the old man pulled at her arm to get
+her out of hearing of the obnoxious flatterer.  She kept her long head
+in profile, trying creditably not to appear discourteous to one who
+addressed her by showing an open ear, until the final bolt made by the
+frenzied old man dragged her through the doorway.  His neck was shortened
+behind his collar as though he shrugged from the blast of a bad wind.
+I believe that, on the whole, Janet was pleased.  I will wager that, left
+to herself, she would have been drawn into an answer, if not an argument.
+Nothing would have made her resolution swerve, I admit.
+
+They had not been out of the room three seconds when my aunt Dorothy was
+called to join them.  She had found time to say that she hoped the money
+was intact.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+All passed too swift for happiness
+He clearly could not learn from misfortune
+Intimations of cowardice menacing a paralysis of the will
+Like a woman, who would and would not, and wanted a master
+One in a temper at a time I'm sure 's enough
+Simple affection must bear the strain of friendship if it can
+Stand not in my way, nor follow me too far
+Tension of the old links keeping us together
+The thought stood in her eyes
+They have not to speak to exhibit their minds
+Tight grasps of the hand, in which there was warmth and shyness
+To the rest of the world he was a progressive comedy
+Was I true?  Not so very false, yet how far from truth!
+Who so intoxicated as the convalescent catching at health?
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Adventures of Harry Richmond, v7
+by George Meredith
+