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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57814 ***
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+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes (Volume 2):
+ 1. Page scan source: Web Archive
+    https://archive.org/details/secretofseanovel02spei
+    (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+A Novel.
+
+
+By T. W. SPEIGHT,
+AUTHOR OF
+"IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT," "UNDER LOCK AND KEY," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON.
+1876.
+
+(_All Rights Reserved_.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
+CHAPTER
+      I. MIRIAM BYRNE.
+     II. FLOATING WITH THE STREAM.
+    III. A QUIET CUP OF TEA.
+     IV. FASCINATION.
+      V. EASTER HOLIDAYS.
+     VI. A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+    VII. POD'S REVELATION.
+   VIII. A GLASS OF BURGUNDY.
+     IX. THE STORY OF THE WRECK.
+      X. GERALD'S CONFESSION.
+     XI. KELVIN'S ILLNESS.
+    XII. RECOGNITION.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+MIRIAM BYRNE.
+
+
+It was nearly dusk on the eighth day after Peter Byrne and his
+daughter had got settled in their new rooms, when Gerald Warburton
+knocked at the door of Max Van Duren's house.
+
+"Is my father at home?" asked Gerald of the middle-aged woman who
+answered his summons.
+
+"If you are Mr. Byrne's son, I was told to send you upstairs when you
+called," answered the woman. "The first floor, please--door with the
+brass handle."
+
+It was at Byrne's request that Gerald agreed to pass as his son on the
+occasion of any visits which he might have to make to Van Duren's
+house. Gerald could see no reason for the assumption of such a
+relationship, but in the belief that Byrne might have some special
+motive in the matter, he acceded without difficulty.
+
+Up the stairs he now went, and knocked at the door indicated by the
+woman. "Come in," cried a voice, and in he went.
+
+He paused for a moment or two just inside the room, and shut the door
+slowly after him while his eyes took in the various features of the
+scene.
+
+The room in which Gerald found himself was of considerable size, and
+was lighted by three tall, narrow windows, curtained with heavy
+hangings of faded crimson velvet. The walls were painted a delicate
+green, and the floor was of polished wood. There was a large
+old-fashioned fire-place, and a heavy, overhanging marble
+chimney-piece, across the front of which was carved a wild procession
+of Baechic figures. A Turkey carpet covered the middle of the floor,
+but the sides of the room were left bare. Chairs, tables, and bureau
+were of dark oak, heavy, uncouth, uncompromising--and if not really
+antique, were very good Wardour Street imitations of the genuine
+article. On one side of the hearth, however, stood a capacious, modern
+easy-chair, for the special delectation of Mr. Peter Byrne, while in
+neighbourly proximity to it was the long-stemmed pipe with the china
+bowl. On the opposite side of the hearth stood another article, that
+seemed more out of keeping with the rest of the room, even, than the
+easy-chair. It was a couch or lounge of the most modern fashion, and
+upholstered with a gay flowery chintz. There could be no doubt as to
+the person for whose behoof this gay piece of furniture was intended.
+Stretched on the floor in front of it, and doing duty as a rug, was a
+magnificent tiger-skin. On this stood an embroidered footstool. At the
+back of the couch was a screen painted with Chinese figures and
+landscapes. Near it hung a guitar.
+
+Gerald advanced slowly into the room, and for a moment or two he
+altogether failed to recognize the man who rose out of the easy-chair
+to greet him. It was Byrne and yet it was not Byrne. "It must be his
+father, or an older brother," said Gerald to himself. Even when the
+man held out his hand and whispered: "Is there anybody outside the
+door?" he was still in doubt.
+
+"There is no one outside the door," said Gerald. "I came up the stairs
+alone."
+
+"That's all right, then, and I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Warburton,"
+said Byrne's familiar voice, after which there could no longer be any
+doubt. "Not a bad make up, eh?" he added, with a chuckle, as he noted
+Gerald's puzzled look.
+
+"I certainly did not know you at first," replied the latter. "In fact,
+I took you for your own father."
+
+"You could not pay me a higher compliment, sir," said Byrne, with a
+gleeful rubbing of the hands. "It is part of the scheme I have in
+view, that Van Duren should take me to be an old man, very feeble,
+very infirm, and nearly, if not quite, on my last legs."
+
+"You look at the very least twenty years older than when I last saw
+you," remarked Gerald.
+
+"And yet the transformation is a very simple matter," said Byrne. "It
+would not do to tell everybody how it's done, but from you I can have
+no secrets of that kind. In the first place, I had my own hair cropped
+as closely as it was possible for scissors to do it. Then I had this
+venerable wig made with its straggling silvery locks, and this black
+velvet skull cap. Two-thirds of my teeth being artificial ones, I have
+dispensed with that portion of them for the time being, and that of
+itself is sufficient to entirely alter the character of the lower part
+of my face. Then this dress--this gaberdine-like coat down to my
+knees, my collar of an antique fashion, my white, unstarched
+neckcloth, fastened with a little pearl brooch, this stoop of the
+shoulders, my enfeebled walk, and the stick that I am obliged to use
+to help me across the room: all simple matters, my dear sir, but, in
+the aggregate, decidedly effective."
+
+Mr. Byrne omitted to mention that, as a conscientious artist bent on
+looking the character he meant to play, he had for the time being
+abandoned the hare's foot and rouge-pot. Although his use of those,
+articles had always been marked by the most extreme discretion, his
+discarding of them entirely did not add to the youthfulness of his
+appearance.
+
+"And then you must please bear in mind that I am afflicted with
+deafness," added Byrne, with a smile, when Gerald had drawn a chair up
+to the fire. "It is not a very extreme form of deafness, but still it
+is necessary that I should be spoken to in a louder voice than
+ordinary; and it is sufficiently bad," he added, with a chuckle, "to
+prevent me, as I sit in my easy-chair by the fire, from overhearing
+any little private conversation that you and another person--my
+daughter, for instance--might choose to hold together as you sit by
+the sofa there, only a few yards away."
+
+"I certainly can't understand," said Gerald to himself, "how all this
+scheming, and all these disguises, can in any way further the object
+which Ambrose Murray has so profoundly at heart."
+
+Gerald felt mystified, and he probably looked it. As if in response to
+his unspoken thought, Byrne presently said: "All these things seem
+very strange to you, I do not doubt, Mr. Warburton; but you will
+believe me when I assure you that I have not for one moment lost sight
+of the particular end for which my services are retained. As soon as I
+begin to see my way a little more clearly--if I ever do--my plans and
+purposes shall all be told to you and Mr. Murray. I have built up a
+certain theory in my mind, and there seems only one way of
+ascertaining whether that theory has any foundation in fact. If it
+has, it may possibly lead us on to the clue we are in search of. If it
+has not--but I will not anticipate failure, however probable it may
+be. If I still possess the confidence of Mr. Murray and yourself, if
+you are still willing to let me have my own way in this thing for a
+little while longer, then I am perfectly satisfied."
+
+"We have every confidence in you, Mr. Byrne," said Gerald, earnestly,
+"and we are both satisfied that the case could not have been entrusted
+into more capable hands than yours."
+
+While Gerald was speaking, a door that led to an inner room was
+opened, and Miriam Byrne came in.
+
+Byrne rose, laid one hand on the region of his heart, and waved the
+other gracefully.
+
+"My daughter, Mr. Warburton--my only child," he said.
+
+"I am glad that you have called to see us, Mr. Warburton," said
+Miriam, frankly, in her rich, full voice. "My father has talked so
+much about you that my curiosity was quite piqued to see for myself
+what his rara avis was like."
+
+"You will find that I am a bird of very homely plumage," replied
+Gerald, with a smile. "Your father has been drawing on a too lively
+imagination. I am afraid that his rara avis will prove to be nothing
+more wonderful than our familiar friend--the goose."
+
+"What a superb creature!" was Gerald's thought, as he sat down
+opposite Miriam; and that was the right phrase to apply to her.
+
+Miss Byrne was at this time close upon her twenty-second birthday. Her
+beauty was of an altogether eastern type. Hardly anyone who met Miriam
+in the street took her to be an English girl; while to those who knew
+both her and her father, it was a constant source of wonder how "old
+Peter" could come to have for his daughter a girl so totally unlike
+him in every possible way. But Byrne's wife, who died when her
+daughter was quite an infant, had been a beautiful woman, and Miriam
+more than inherited her mother's good looks. People knowing the family
+averred that she was an exact counterpart of her grandmother: a lovely
+Roumanian Jewess, who had been brought over to England in the train of
+an Austrian lady of rank, and having found a husband here, had never
+gone back.
+
+Eyes and hair of the black-set had Miriam Byrne. Large, liquid eyes,
+shaded with long, black lashes, and arched with delicate, well-defined
+brows; hair that fell in a thick, heavy mass to her very waist. Tints
+of the damask rose glowed through the dusky clearness of her cheeks.
+Her forehead was low and broad as that of some antique Venus. Her
+mouth was ripe and full, and might have looked somewhat coarse, had
+it not been relieved by her finely-cut nose with its delicate
+nostrils. She had on, this evening, a long, trailing dress of violet
+velvet, which harmonized admirably with her dusky loveliness--a rich,
+heavy-looking dress by gaslight, but one which daylight would have
+shown to be faded and frayed in many places. It had, in fact, at one
+time been a stage-dress, and as such, had been worn by Miss Kesteven
+of the Royal Westminster Theatre, when playing the heroine of one of
+Sardou's clever dramas.
+
+The necklace of pearls, with earrings to match, which Miriam wore this
+evening, were also of stage parentage, but they looked so much like
+the real thing, that no one, save an expert, could have told without
+handling them that they were nothing better than clever shams. The one
+ring, too, which she wore--a hoop of diamonds--on her somewhat large,
+but well-shaped hand, was not more genuine than her pearl necklace. It
+had been bought for a few shillings in the Burlington Arcade; but it
+flashed famously in the gaslight; and as one cannot well take off a
+lady's ring in order to examine it, answered its purpose just as well
+as if it had cost a hundred guineas.
+
+But we must not be too hard on Miriam. No doubt she was as fond of a
+little finery as most of her sisters are at two-and-twenty, but, in
+the present case, all these sham trinkets had been assumed by her at
+her father's wish, and "for a certain purpose," as the old man said.
+At the same time one need not imagine that the wearing of them,
+although they were counterfeit, was in any way distasteful to Miriam.
+As she herself would have been one of the first to say, go long as
+other people accepted her jewellery as real, the end for which it was
+worn was thoroughly gained.
+
+"And how do you like your new home, Miss Byrne?" asked Gerald.
+
+"I would much rather it had been at the West End than in the City,"
+answered Miriam. "The rooms I like very much. They are large and
+old-fashioned, and have seen better days. To live in such rooms makes
+one feel as if one were somebody of importance--as if one had money in
+the Bank of England. But the look-out is dreadful. At the back, into
+that horrid churchyard; while in the front, there is nothing to be
+seen but a high, blank wall. I am always glad when it is time to draw
+the curtains and light the gas."
+
+"You must get out for a little change and amusement now and then,"
+said Gerald. "It will never do for you to get moped and melancholy
+through shutting yourself up in this gloomy old house. A visit once a
+week to a theatre, for instance, or----"
+
+"Don't speak of it," interrupted Miriam. "I hope I shall not see the
+inside of a theatre for a couple of years, at the very least."
+
+"Perhaps the opera would suit you better," suggested Gerald,
+altogether at a loss to know why the theatre should be so emphatically
+tabooed. "If you are fond of the opera, I think I can manage to get a
+couple of tickets for you now and then."
+
+"Oh, that will be delightful!" exclaimed Miriam, clasping her hands
+with Oriental fervour. "I have never been to the opera but twice in my
+life, and I should dearly love to go again."
+
+"Then you are fond of music?" asked Gerald.
+
+"Passionately. I love it anywhere and everywhere; but I love it best
+on the stage. That is the glorification of music. It is to honour
+music as it ought to be honoured. When I listen to an opera, I seem to
+be lifted quite out of my ordinary self. I feel as if I were so much
+better and cleverer than I really am. And then I always have a longing
+to rush on to the stage and join in the choruses, and make one more
+figure in the splendid processions."
+
+"I will send you tickets for Friday, if you will honour me by
+accepting them," said Gerald.
+
+"You are very kind, Mr. Warburton; and to such an offer I cannot find
+in my heart to say No," answered Miriam, with a "Oh, how I wish I were
+clever!" she cried next moment; "clever enough to be a great singer on
+the stage, or to paint a great picture, or to write a book that
+everybody talked about. Don't you think, Mr. Warburton, that it must
+be a glorious thing to be clever?"
+
+"Not being clever myself, I am hardly in a position to judge,"
+answered Gerald, amused at the girl's earnestness. "But if we
+commonplace people only knew it, I have no doubt that cleverness has
+its disadvantages, like every other exceptional quality. Besides, it
+would not do for us all to be clever; in that case, the world would
+soon become intolerable. I think a moderate quantity of brains, and a
+large amount of contentment, are the best stock-in-trade to get
+through life with."
+
+"Hear, hear!" cried Byrne, from his easy-chair. "My sentiments
+exactly."
+
+Miriam pouted a little.
+
+"Now you are making fun of me," she said.
+
+"No, indeed," returned Gerald, earnestly.
+
+"I don't know why the girl should always be raving about wanting to be
+clever," said Byrne, addressing himself, to Gerald. "She has plenty of
+good looks, and ought to be content. Five women out of six have
+neither brains nor good looks--though they will never believe that
+they haven't got the latter," added the old cynic, under his breath.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know that I'm good-looking," said Miriam, naively, but not
+without a touch of bitterness. "People have told me that ever since I
+can remember anything. Besides, I can see it for myself in the glass,"
+with an involuntary glance at the Venetian mirror hanging opposite.
+
+"Then why are you always dissatisfied--always flying in the face of
+Providence?" growled Byrne. "What are your good looks given you for,
+but that some man with plenty of money may fall in love with you, and
+make you his wife?"
+
+"Why not send me to the slave-market at Constantinople?" said Miriam,
+bitterly. "I dare say that I should fetch a tolerable price there."
+
+Gerald thought it time to change the conversation.
+
+"Do you come in contact at all with Van Duren?" he said to Byrne.
+
+"We have seen more of him to-day than we saw yesterday, and more of
+him yesterday than previously. He is gradually learning to overcome
+the native bashfulness of his disposition," added Byrne, with a sneer.
+
+"Then he has not shrouded himself altogether from view?" said Gerald.
+
+"Not a bit of it. What he would have done had I been living here with
+a wife instead of a daughter, I can't say. But the fact is, he seems
+inclined to admire Miriam."
+
+The old man sat staring at Gerald with a twinkle in his eye, as he
+finished speaking.
+
+Gerald was at a loss to know in what way it was expected that he
+should greet such an item of news. So he merely fell back on a safe,
+though unmeaning, "Oh, indeed!"
+
+Miriam, gazing into the fire, either had not heard, or did not heed,
+her father's words.
+
+"For the sort of ursa major that he is," resumed Byrne, "he doesn't
+conduct himself so much amiss. Has not been much used to ladies'
+society, I should say. Does not talk much, but likes to look and
+listen."
+
+"Then you have had him in here!" said Gerald, with surprise.
+
+"Yes, twice. There's the magnet"--pointing to Miriam. "It isn't me,
+bless you, not me," added the old man, with a chuckle, as he proceeded
+to poke the fire vigorously.
+
+To say that Gerald was mystified is to say no more than the truth.
+But it was evident that whatever Byrne might have to tell him with
+regard to his plans and purposes, he was not inclined to tell yet, and
+Gerald would not question him.
+
+"Does Mr. Van Duren keep up a large establishment?" he said.
+
+"No: a small one. Everything on a miserly scale. Every item of
+expenditure cut down to the lowest possible point."
+
+"Perhaps he is poor."
+
+"Poor! my dear sir. Tcha! When did you ever know a money-lender to be
+poor?"
+
+"But I did not know that Van Duren was a money-lender."
+
+"That's what he is: neither more nor less."
+
+"Then, in that case, he must be a man of capital?"
+
+"Certainly, to some extent. But you never know how the webs of such
+spiders as he interlace and cross each other. Perhaps he is only used
+as a decoy to catch foolish flies for bigger and older spiders than
+himself. But, in any case, you may be sure that he comes in for a good
+share of the plunder."
+
+"From what you have said, I presume that he is unmarried?"
+
+"There are no signs of a wife under this roof," said Byrne. "Besides
+himself, there is, in the office, first, his clerk, Pringle--a
+drunken, disreputable old vagabond enough, from what I have seen of
+him; and secondly, a youth of fifteen, to copy letters and run
+errands, and so on. Then, downstairs, in a dungeon below the level of
+the street, we have Bakewell and his wife, as custodians of the
+premises and personal attendants on Van Duren--a harmless, ignorant
+couple enough. These, with Miriam and myself, make up the sum total of
+the establishment. Pringle and the boy, I may add, do not sleep on the
+premises."
+
+"Are you acquainted with Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, suddenly
+lifting her eyes from the fire.
+
+"I have not that honour," said Gerald, drily.
+
+"There is a great deal of power about him," said Miriam, "and I like
+power in a man. He seems to me to be a man who would stand at nothing
+in working out his own ends either for good or evil. For women--weak
+women--such characters generally have a peculiar fascination."
+
+"That's because you never have a will of your own for an hour
+together," said Byrne. "Women always admire what they possess least of
+themselves."
+
+"Papa always runs the ladies down," said Miriam, smilingly, to Gerald.
+"But if only one-half that I have heard whispered be true, no one
+could be fonder of their society than he was, so long as he was young
+and good-looking."
+
+"And now that he is neither----?" said Byrne.
+
+"No one delights to run them down more than he. The old story, Mr.
+Warburton. Olives have no longer any flavour for him, therefore only
+fools eat olives."
+
+Gerald rose and made his adieux. It was arranged that he should call
+again on the following Tuesday or Wednesday.
+
+"You won't forget the tickets for the opera, will you, Mr. Warburton?"
+were Miriam's whispered words as they stood for a moment at the street
+door, she having gone down stairs to let him out.
+
+"Well, kitten, and what do you think of your new-found brother?" asked
+Byrne, as soon as Miriam got back into the room.
+
+"I like him. It would be impossible to help liking him," said Miriam.
+
+"Your reasons--if you have any?"
+
+"Ladies are not supposed to give reasons. I like him because I like
+him. For one thing, he is not commonplace. There is an air of
+cleverness about him. You would not feel a bit surprised if at any
+moment he were to tell you that he was the author of the last
+celebrated poem, or the painter of the last great picture, or that he
+had been down the crater of Vesuvius, or had invented a new balloon
+that would take you half-way to the moon. By the time you have been in
+Mr. Warburton's society ten minutes, you say to yourself: 'Here's a
+man who has brains.'"
+
+"Rather different from James Baron, Esq., eh?"
+
+"Now, papa!" said Miriam, in a hurt tone. Then she turned from him and
+went to the window, and drew aside the curtain, and peered out into
+the darkness. "I thought it was understood between us that on this
+point there was no longer to be any contention. I thought you
+thoroughly understood, papa, that nothing could alter my
+determination."
+
+"Oh, you have made me understand all that, plainly enough," said
+Byrne. "But when I think how mad and foolish you are--how determined
+you are to throw away your one great chance in life, I can't help----"
+
+"Pray spare me, papa! Why cover ground that you and I have trodden so
+often already?"
+
+"To think," said Byrne, indignantly, "of my daughter demeaning herself
+to marry a common, underpaid clerk!"
+
+"Yes, a clerk whose father is a dean; and who was educated at college,
+and----"
+
+"And who was expelled from college for----"
+
+"Papa, for shame! Is his one fault to stick to him through life?"
+
+"Even his own people discard him."
+
+"Let them do so. He will make his way in spite of them. He is a
+gentleman bred and born."
+
+"A gentleman, forsooth!"
+
+"Yes--a gentleman who has bound himself to marry a ballet girl--for
+that's what I am. Neither more nor less than a ballet girl!"
+
+"Had it not been for my misfortunes----"
+
+"We need not speak of them, papa. But was it a wise thing on your part
+to expose me to all the temptations of a theatre?"
+
+"I had every confidence in the strength of your principles."
+
+"Had you known one tithe of the temptations to which I was exposed,
+you might well have trembled for me. Why, the very last night I was at
+the Royal Westminster there was a note left for me at the stage door
+and a splendid bouquet, and inside the bouquet was this."
+
+As Miriam spoke, she extracted from her watch-pocket a ring set with
+five or six costly brilliants, and handed it to her father.
+
+"You are not going to wear this!" he said, looking up at her with
+sudden suspicion.
+
+"You ought to know me better, papa, than to ask such a question."
+
+"Do you know from whom it came?"
+
+"It would not be difficult to find out, I dare say."
+
+"Then why have you not sent the ring back?"
+
+"Because I mean the sender of it to pay for his folly. You remember my
+telling you how little Rose Montgomery broke her leg at the theatre
+the other week, through falling down a trap. She is little more than a
+child, and has not another friend than myself in all London. I am
+going to ask James to sell the ring for me. I shall give Rose the
+money. It will keep her when she comes out of the hospital till she is
+strong enough to begin dancing again."
+
+"James! James! How I hate to hear the name!" said Byrne, as he got up
+and left the room.
+
+"It is the name of the man I love--of the man whose wife I am going to
+be," replied Miriam.
+
+Then she sat down and began to cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+FLOATING WITH THE STREAM.
+
+
+Lady Dudgeon's morning-room in Harley Street. At her davenport near
+the window, pen in hand, sat her ladyship, where, indeed, she was to
+be found at eleven a.m. six mornings out of seven. On the ridge of her
+high nose was perched the double gold-rimmed eye-glass which she had
+taken to wearing of late in the privacy of the family circle, but the
+existence of which, outside that circle, was kept a profound secret.
+
+On a low chair close by, in a pretty morning-dress, sat Eleanor Lloyd.
+London life and London hours were beginning to tell upon her already.
+There was a look of weariness in her eyes, and her cheeks had lost a
+little of that fresh, delicate bloom which she had brought with her
+from the country, but which cannot exist long in the atmosphere of
+Belgravian ballrooms.
+
+At Lady Dudgeon's elbow stood Olive Deane, with her black dress, her
+snowy collar and cuffs, her colourless face, her black, lustreless
+hair, and her fathomless eyes--in every point precisely the same as at
+the time when first we met her. Her ladyship had just been issuing
+invitations for a grand ball to be given at Stammars, during the
+ensuing Easter recess, to Sir Thomas's chief supporters at the recent
+election.
+
+"There, thank goodness, that finishes the last batch of twenty!" said
+her ladyship, as she put down her pen with an air of relief. "I don't
+think that I have forgotten any one, or, for the matter of that,
+invited any one that we could have afforded to ignore. There are
+eighty of them altogether, leaving out of question the tribe of wives
+and daughters--quite as many as we can reasonably accommodate." Then,
+turning to Olive, she added, "Will you kindly see that the whole of
+the invitations are sent off by this afternoon's post?"
+
+"I will take care to post them myself. Has your ladyship any further
+commands?"
+
+"None whatever at present, thank you."
+
+Olive bowed, and left the room.
+
+"On such an occasion as the present one Miss Deane is really
+invaluable," said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor.
+
+"If you would only let me help you in these little matters, instead of
+Miss Deane, you would please me more than I can tell YOU."
+
+"My dear child, I could not think of such a thing," said her ladyship,
+with dignity. "I did not bring you to London to make a drudge of you;
+I brought you here that you might enjoy yourself."
+
+"I should enjoy myself far better if I had a little more to do
+sometimes. I might as well be a china figure under a glass shade in
+the drawing-room, for any use I seem to be in the world."
+
+"My dear, all pretty objects have their uses in the world, if it be
+only to please the eye and educate the taste of others. Be satisfied
+at present with trying to look as pretty as you can."
+
+"That seems to me a very empty sort of life indeed."
+
+"Ah, you young people never know what you would be at. You, for
+instance, my dear, have youth, good looks, and money, and yet you
+grumble! But about this ball. I mean it to be a great success. It will
+make Sir Thomas even more popular in the borough than he is now, and
+no one can stigmatize it as being either bribery or corruption. There
+is some talk of a general election next autumn, so that we must keep
+our supporters well in hand."
+
+"You are quite a tactician," laughed Eleanor.
+
+"In these days, my dear, it doesn't do to let one's wits grow rusty.
+You will derive great amusement at the ball from a study of the
+toilettes of some of the worthy tradespeople's wives and daughters who
+will honour us with their company. The originality of idea displayed
+by some of them is truly astounding. And the waistcoats of the
+gentlemen are hardly less wonderful."
+
+At this moment a footman brought a letter for her ladyship.
+
+"What a charming surprise, my dear!" she said, as she glanced over it.
+"Invitations for a private concert at Lady Camperdown's. Most
+exclusive. That sweet Lady Camperdown! There will be a carpet-dance
+afterwards. I must write off at once and order our dresses."
+
+"But surely, Lady Dudgeon, one of the ten or fifteen dresses that I
+have already would do for such an occasion."
+
+"My dear Eleanor! Go to Lady Camperdown's concert in a dress that you
+have ever worn before! Such a thing is not to be thought of. It would
+not be doing your duty in that state of life to which it has pleased
+Providence to call you." Here her ladyship looked at her watch. "My
+dear, I expect Captain Dayrell here about twelve, and I should like
+you to change your dress before he arrives. He told me last evening
+that he wanted to see me to-day, so I asked him to call early, as I am
+going shopping immediately after luncheon."
+
+"But Captain Dayrell is coming to see you, Lady Dudgeon. There is no
+occasion for him to see me."
+
+"He is coming to see me, it is true: but I rather suspect it is about
+a matter that intimately concerns you."
+
+"Indeed! But I really cannot see in what way Captain Dayrell's visit
+can concern me."
+
+"It may concern you very nearly. I have every reason to believe that
+Captain Dayrell is coming here this morning to ask my sanction to his
+making you a formal offer of marriage."
+
+"To make me an offer of marriage! You must be jesting."
+
+"I was never more serious in my life. You could not fail to see with
+what attention Captain Dayrell treated you at the ball the other
+evening. And on the two or three previous occasions when he has met
+you in society, there has been an empressement in his manner which has
+led me to suspect that he was only waiting to see a little more of you
+before making up his mind to ask you to become his wife."
+
+"Only waiting to see a little more of me! I am overwhelmed by Captain
+Dayrell's preference."
+
+"Don't try to be sarcastic, Eleanor. Sarcasm in young people is little
+less than odious."
+
+Eleanor rose. There was a heightened colour in her cheeks, an added
+brightness in her eyes. "Lady Dudgeon, should Captain Dayrell come
+here this morning on such an errand as the one you have mentioned, you
+can give him his congé as soon as you please. And I beg that you will
+not send for me, as I shall certainly decline to see him."
+
+"Tut tut, child! you don't know what you are talking about. A little
+maidenly shyness is all very nice and proper, especially when the
+offer is a first one. But prudery may be carried too far; and, in the
+case of Captain Dayrell, a pretended rejection might perhaps frighten
+him away altogether."
+
+"A pretended rejection, Lady Dudgeon! I fail to understand you."
+
+"It was very foolish on my part," said her ladyship, complacently,
+without noticing the interruption, "to mention the subject to you at
+all. I have only succeeded in startling you. I ought to have left
+Captain Dayrell to plead his own cause with you. Gentlemen, on such
+occasions, are generally very eloquent after they have made the first
+plunge."
+
+"I am sorry that you should so persistently misunderstand me," said
+Eleanor, not without a touch of impatience. "You compel me to speak
+plainly, and in a way that is most repugnant to my feelings. Under no
+circumstances could I agree to become the wife of Captain Dayrell. And
+I trust there will be no necessity for his name ever to be mentioned
+between us again."
+
+Lady Dudgeon turned slowly on her chair, and surveyed Eleanor through
+her eye-glass as though she could hardly believe the evidence of her
+ears.
+
+"You cannot marry Captain Dayrell, Eleanor Lloyd?" she said, with some
+severity of tone. "May I ask what there is to prevent your marrying
+him? I hope there is no prior engagement in the case, of which I have
+been kept in ignorance."
+
+"Were I engaged to anyone, your ladyship would certainly not be kept
+in ignorance of the fact."
+
+"Instead of engagement, I ought, perhaps, to have used the word
+'attachment.'"
+
+"Applied to me, one word would be just as incorrect as the other."
+
+"Then may I ask what particular objection you can have to receive the
+addresses of Captain Dayrell?"
+
+"My particular objection is that I could never care sufficiently for
+Captain Dayrell to become his wife."
+
+"I certainly gave you credit for more common sense, Eleanor, than to
+think that you would allow any foolish sentiment to stand in the way
+of your proper settlement in life. My theory is this--and I daresay,
+when you shall have lived as long in the world as I have, you will
+agree that it is by no means a bad theory--that any girl who has been
+correctly brought up, and whose affections have not been tampered
+with, can school herself; without much difficulty, to look with
+affectionate eyes on whatever suitor her relations or friends may
+offer to her notice as eligible, in their estimation, to make her
+happy: and a really good girl will always find half her own happiness
+in the knowledge that she is making others happy at the same time."
+
+"In a matter involving consequences so serious, I should prefer to
+make my own choice."
+
+"No doubt you would," said her ladyship drily. "But if young ladies
+would only be guided by the choice of their best friends, rather than
+by their own headstrong wills, we should hear far less about unhappy
+marriages, and the evils they bring." To this Eleanor made no answer.
+"Most people would agree with me, my dear, that you ought to consider
+yourself a very lucky girl to have drawn such a prize as Captain
+Dayrell. A man still young--he can't be more than three or four and
+thirty--handsome, accomplished, of an excellent family--he is first
+cousin to Lord Coniston--tolerably rich, and of such an easy,
+good-natured disposition, that any woman of tact would soon learn to
+twine him round her finger: what more could any reasonable being wish
+for?"
+
+"Does affection count for nothing in your estimate of marriage, Lady
+Dudgeon?"
+
+"Oh, my dear, you may depend upon it that if there is no prior
+attachment you would soon learn to like him. Captain Dayrell is
+generally looked upon as a most fascinating man in society."
+
+"Captain Dayrell may be all that you say he is," replied Eleanor, "but
+for all that, he can never be anything more to me than he is at the
+present moment."
+
+"So be it. The likes and dislikes of young ladies are among the
+unaccountable things of this world. But I cannot help saying that your
+point-blank refusal even to see Captain Dayrell is a great
+disappointment to me."
+
+"Do not say that, dear Lady Dudgeon!" cried Eleanor, and with that she
+took the elder lady's hand in hers, pressed it to her lips, and then
+nestled down on the little footstool by her knees. "Believe me, I am
+not ungrateful, not insensible to the kindness which prompted you to
+take an obscure country girl by the hand, and treat her more as a
+daughter of your own than anything else. But I cannot tell you how
+sorry I am to find that you should so far have misunderstood me as to
+think that you were doing me a kindness in endeavouring to secure for
+me the attention of Captain Dayrell."
+
+"It is certainly a great disappointment to me," said Lady Dudgeon,
+with a sigh. "I had really set my heart on you and Captain Dayrell
+making a match of it."
+
+"But cannot you understand that I have no wish to get married, nor any
+intention of changing my name for a long time to come--if ever?"
+
+"Well, well, child; I only hope that what you say is right, and that
+there is indeed no prior attachment. But be careful that you do not
+fall into the hands of some swindling adventurer--of some romantic
+rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who, while
+persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in
+reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him. The world
+abounds with such men. Be warned, or you may have to repent when
+repentance will be of no avail."
+
+"Ah, Lady Dudgeon if I were not an heiress, what a happy girl I should
+be!"
+
+"Child, you talk like a lunatic."
+
+"It may be so, but this money weighs me down as though it
+were a millstone about my neck. And how sadly wise in the
+ways of the world I seem to have become in a few short months!
+Friendship--service--affection--I feel, nowadays, as if these
+treasures were offered me, not for myself, but simply because I am a
+little rich. In the old, happy days at home, before ever I dreamed of
+being an heiress, no such doubt ever crossed my mind. Friendship and
+love--my father's love--were mine: as freely and fully mine as the
+lilies that grew by the mill-pond brim, or the canary that woke me
+every morning with its song. But indeed, dear Lady Dudgeon, I am in no
+wise fitted for a life of fashionable pleasure. My tastes are too
+homely. Life seems to me far too real, far too earnest, to be
+frittered away in a perpetual round of balls and parties, of morning
+calls and drives in the Park. When I think of the poverty and
+wretchedness that I see on every side of me, every time I stir out of
+doors, and then of all those useless thousands that are said to be
+mine, I feel ashamed of myself, and think, with sorrow, how utterly I
+am living for myself alone. Oh, Lady Dudgeon! if you wish to make me
+happy, be my almoner; teach me how to employ, for the benefit of my
+poorer sisters and their little ones, that wealth which came to me so
+unexpectedly, and which I so little deserve. Teach me to do this, and
+you will make me happy indeed!"
+
+Lady Dudgeon took a sniff at her salts before she spoke. "My dear
+Eleanor," she said at last, "if all people of wealth and social
+standing held the same terrible notions that you do, we should have
+chaos back again in a very little while. Your mind has been badly
+trained, child, and we must endeavour to eradicate the noxious weeds
+one by one. Meanwhile, you will be all the better for this little
+outburst, and I am not in the least offended by what you have said.
+And now as regards your costume for Lady Camperdown's concert. I think
+the new shade of green would harmonise admirably with your style and
+complexion. As for myself, I shall wear--" But at this juncture the
+door opened, and in came Sir Thomas with a budget of news, so the
+all-important subject of dress was put aside for the time being, to be
+discussed with due solemnity at a more fitting opportunity.
+
+On the Friday following this scene Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon,
+accompanied by Miss Lloyd, went, by invitation, to spend a week at the
+house of an old family friend at Richmond. On Saturday morning certain
+important papers reached Gerald, who had been left in charge of
+matters in Harley Street, which necessitated an immediate consultation
+with Sir Thomas. Off by the next train hurried Gerald to Richmond,
+where he found Sir Thomas, in company with his friend Mr. Cromer,
+smoking a mild cheroot, in a garden-house that looked on to the river.
+Liking Gerald's manner and appearance, Mr. Cromer would insist upon
+his staying to dinner. Presently the ladies came sailing across the
+lawn--Mrs. Cromer and Lady Dudgeon; Miss Cromer, and Miss Lloyd; and
+then they all walked down to the edge of the river, where lay moored a
+pretty little boat, named _Cora_, in honour of Miss Cromer. The
+weather was warm and sunny for the time of year, and the river looked
+quite gay, so numerous were the tiny craft which the bright day had
+coaxed out after their long winter sleep.
+
+"How delightful it would be to go on the river this afternoon!" said
+Miss Cromer.
+
+"I should like it above all things," replied Miss Lloyd.
+
+"I wish Charley were here to take us for a row," alluding to her
+brother. "How coquettish my boat looks this afternoon! How she seems
+to woo us to take her out for a spin!"
+
+Gerald lifted his hat. "I believe that I can handle a pair of oars as
+awkwardly as most people," he said, with a smile. "If you will trust
+yourselves to my care, I will promise to bring you back--either alive
+or dead."
+
+The young ladies vowed that it would be delicious. The elder ladies
+disapproved faintly, on the ground that there would be a cold breeze
+on the river, but were overruled. Mr. Cromer waddled back to the house
+to get some shawls and wraps, and Gerald handed the young ladies into
+the boat.
+
+In the result, however, Miss Cromer had to be left behind. At the last
+moment she was seized with her old complaint, palpitation of the
+heart, and her mother would not let her go. Eleanor would have stayed
+with her, but both Mr. and Mrs. Cromer insisted upon her going. It did
+not require much persuasion to make Gerald take them at their word.
+Eleanor had hardly ceased protesting that she would much rather stay
+with Cora, when she found herself in the middle of the stream, and all
+conversation with those on shore at an end.
+
+"Now, Miss Lloyd, will you kindly take charge of the tiller ropes?"
+said Gerald, decisively. "I presume you know how to use them?"
+
+"I ought to know," said Eleanor. "I had a great deal of practice with
+them when poor papa and I used to go out boating together."
+
+It would not be high water for half an hour, and the tide was still
+running up strongly. Gerald put the boat's head up stream, and pulled
+gently along towards Twickenham. He blessed the happy fortune that,
+for one delicious hour, had given him Eleanor all to himself. But now
+that the opportunity was his, what should he talk to her about? He
+felt that he ought to be at once witty and tender; that now, if ever,
+he ought to rise above the commonplace level of everyday conversation.
+He felt all this, and yet he felt, at the same time, that he had
+nothing to say. If he might only have opened the floodgates of his
+heart, then, indeed, there would have been no lack of words--no
+necessity to hunt here and there in his brain for something to talk
+about. It is true that he might have begun about the weather, or some
+other equally simple topic; but, then, any nincompoop could have done
+that, and to-day he wanted so particularly to shine in the eyes of his
+goddess! But before long it became quite evident that he was not to
+shine to-day. He must rest contentedly on the level of the
+nincompoops, and trust to his good fortune that Miss Lloyd would not
+find out that he was a bigger donkey than the rest of the gentlemen
+who were in the habit of laying themselves out to fascinate her.
+
+But Miss Lloyd herself seemed to have very little to say this
+afternoon. It seemed pleasure enough just then to sit quietly in the
+sweet sunshine and dip her ungloved hand now and again in the cool
+ripples of the tide.
+
+"Have you ever been as far up the Thames as this before?" asked Gerald
+at last, in sheer desperation.
+
+"I was never on the Thames in a small boat before to-day," answered
+Eleanor.
+
+"There are some lovely nooks on it--so thoroughly English, you know:
+altogether unlike anything of the kind that you can see anywhere
+else."
+
+"I have been so little abroad lately that I am hardly competent to
+judge what kind of scenery is thoroughly English, or what is not."
+
+Another awkward silence. "What a goose he must think me! It seems so
+stupid not to be able to talk except in answer to a question," said
+Eleanor, to herself. "Why do I feel so different when I am with _him_
+from what I do when I'm with anyone else? I never felt like this when
+I was alone with Captain Dayrell. If Cora had come with us we should
+have been lively enough." And yet, in her heart, how glad she was that
+Cora had not come! "Whether this scenery is English or not, it is very
+beautiful," said Eleanor, at last, with a desperate resolve to break
+the spell that was weaving itself more strongly around them with every
+moment. "One can see where spring's delicate brush has been at work
+here and there among the trees, rubbing-in the first faint tints of
+green. How lovely it is!"
+
+"If this sunshine would only last, and the tide not tire of running
+up," said Gerald, "I feel that I could go on like this for a week and
+not feel weary."
+
+"You are an Englishman, Mr. Pomeroy, and I am afraid that you would
+soon begin to cry out for your dinner."
+
+"Would not the gods feed us and have a care of us? To-day we are their
+children. I feel that I have but to summon Hebe, and she would come
+and wait upon us."
+
+"For my part, Minerva is the only one of the divinities whom I should
+care to summon."
+
+"So much wisdom would surely overweight our little boat."
+
+"But are we not rather short of ballast just at present?" asked
+Eleanor, slily.
+
+"Possibly so; but Minerva would certainly swamp us. I should greatly
+prefer the company of a certain juvenile, called by Schiller _der
+lächelnde Knabe_: he would make the proper ballast for such a voyage
+as ours."
+
+"Where I was at school in Germany they never would let us read
+Schiller," said Eleanor, demurely. "How happy those swans look!" she
+added, a moment afterwards, as if to change the subject.
+
+"Yes," said Gerald, "they find their happiness as certain people
+one sometimes meets with find theirs--in groping about amongst the
+mud--seeking what they can devour."
+
+"And yet how graceful they are!"
+
+"They are graceful enough as long as they are in their proper
+element. Out of it, they are as ungraceful as a scullion-maid in a
+drawing-room. And yet, I daresay that if they can think at all, they
+think that they look far more graceful during their perambulations
+ashore than ever they do in the water. But, then, how many of us think
+in the same way!"
+
+"Why, you are quite a cynic, Mr. Pomeroy. But it is considered
+fashionable nowadays for young men to be cynical, and one must be in
+the fashion, you know."
+
+Gerald laughed a little dismally. "I tasted the bitters of life at so
+early an age that I suppose the flavour of them still clings to my
+palate."
+
+"Pardon me if I have hurt your feelings!" said Eleanor, earnestly. "I
+certainly did not intend to do so. But see, the tide is on the turn,
+and we must turn with it."
+
+"Have we not time to go a little further? The afternoon is still
+young."
+
+"Yes, you shall row me round yonder tiny island, that looks so pretty
+from here, and then we must really go back."
+
+When they had rounded the islet, said Eleanor: "I am sure you must be
+tired, Mr. Pomeroy. Suppose you ship your oars and let the tide float
+us gently down."
+
+"I am not in the least tired; but, being a good boy, I like to do as I
+am bidden."
+
+Cunning Gerald knew that by floating down with the stream he should
+have half an hour more of Eleanor's society than if he had used his
+oars ever so gently.
+
+"Going back is not nearly so nice as going up stream," he remarked.
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Because our voyage will so soon be at an end."
+
+"But, when you have landed me, there will be no objection to your
+having the boat out for as many hours as you like."
+
+"And make a water hermit of myself. I scarcely think that I am
+sufficiently fond of my own company to care for that. I like solitude,
+but I must have some one to share it with me. The sweetest solitude is
+that where two people, whose tastes and sympathies are in accord, shut
+themselves out from the rest of the world (as you and I are shut out
+on this silent highway) to find in the society of each other a truer
+and more complete satisfaction than in aught else this earth can
+afford."
+
+"Is not that a rather selfish view to take of life and its duties?"
+asked Eleanor.
+
+"Is it not possible to live in the world and yet be not of it?" he
+returned--"to do our daily tasks there, and yet have an inner
+sanctuary to flee to, of which no one but ourselves shall possess the
+key, and against whose walls the noise and turmoil of the world shall
+dash themselves in vain?"
+
+"You would have to be very particular in your choice of a companion to
+share such a solitude with you, otherwise the demon of Ennui would
+soon make a third in your company."
+
+"Ennui can never intrude itself between two people whose tastes and
+sympathies thoroughly agree. Four times out of six ennui means neither
+more nor less than vacuity of brain."
+
+Eleanor laughed. "Next time I am troubled with it I shall know how to
+call it by its proper name.--I declare if there isn't dear Lady
+Dudgeon looking out for us with a shawl over her head!"
+
+Her ladyship received them very graciously; but then Mr. Pomeroy was a
+special favourite with her. "I am glad you have had the good sense to
+get back early," she said. "The river-damps are said to be very
+dangerous after sunset."
+
+Not the slightest suspicion of any possible danger to her protégée
+ever entered her mind. Had anyone even hinted at such a thing, she
+would have replied indignantly that Miss Lloyd, who had refused the
+addresses of Captain Dayrell, was not at all likely to fall in love
+with Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary. She judged Eleanor, in fact, by
+what she herself had been at the same age. She had been brought up to
+believe that for any young lady to throw herself away simply for love
+was next door to a crime. As it was totally out of the question that
+she herself could have ever fallen in love with any man who was
+without wealth or position, or both, so would it have been utterly
+inconceivable to her that her darling Miss Lloyd could ever sink to a
+level which would render possible any such act of social degradation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A QUIET CUP OF TEA.
+
+
+Tickets for the opera reached Miriam Byrne, in due course, on the
+morning of the Friday following Gerald Warburton's first visit to the
+house of Max Van Duren in Spur Alley. Saturday was Miriam's birthday.
+Beyond an extra kiss from Mr. Byrne, and the expression of good wishes
+usual on such an occasion, the day brought little or no difference to
+either father or daughter. The weather was unpleasant, and neither of
+them stirred out of doors. But when tea time came, the best china was
+brought out of its retirement, and from some mysterious cupboard was
+produced a Madeira cake, with a little jar of honey, and some potted
+shrimps.
+
+"Now, papa, dear, draw up to the table," cried Miriam, gaily, as soon
+as everything had been arranged in order due.
+
+"I've put an extra spoonful of green into the pot in order to please
+you, and if you behave yourself nicely, you shall have an extra lump
+of sugar in your cup, for you are as fond of sweet things as any
+schoolgirl."
+
+"That's why I'm so fond of you, dear," said Mr. Byrne, drily, as he
+drew his chair up to the table.
+
+Just then came a knock at the door. Miriam opened it, and there stood
+Mr. Van Duren, with a pretty little rustic basket in his hands, full
+of freshly-cut flowers.
+
+"Good evening, Miss Byrne," he said, in a hesitating sort of way. "I
+happened to hear Mrs. Bakewell remark this morning, that to-day was
+your birthday. Such being the case, I have taken the liberty of
+bringing you these few flowers, of which I beg your acceptance,
+together with my very best wishes for your health and happiness."
+
+"It is very kind of you, Mr. Van Duren--very kind indeed," replied
+Miriam. "Many thanks for your flowers and good wishes. But pray come
+inside."
+
+He came a few steps into the room, and then Miriam took the basket and
+smelled at the flowers.
+
+"They are indeed lovely," she said. "Yours is the only present that I
+have had to-day, and nothing else that you could have offered me would
+have been half so acceptable."
+
+The moment he heard the knock, Peter Byrne collapsed, as it were, and
+became older by a score years in as many seconds. Deaf and senile, he
+now tottered across the room, his walking-stick in one hand, the other
+hand held to his ear.
+
+"What is it? what is it?" he quavered. "Flowers, eh? Vastly
+pretty--vastly pretty!"
+
+"Mr. Van Duren has brought me these lovely flowers as a birthday
+present, papa," said Miriam, speaking loudly in his ear.
+
+"Very kind of him--very kind indeed," nodding his head at Miriam. "But
+come in, Mr. Van Duren, come in, sir. Pussy and I were just about to
+have a quiet cup of tea. Come and join us, sir--come and join us. I
+like a quiet cup of tea; so does Pussy."
+
+"I should be most happy, if I thought--"
+
+"If you thought you were not intruding," said Miriam. "You are
+not doing that, I assure you. See, I will give your flowers
+the place of honour on my tea-table. But perhaps you are not a
+tea-drinker--perhaps----"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am. Only I never can bear to drink tea alone. I think it a
+great promoter of sociability, and I only indulge in it when I have
+some one to keep me company."
+
+"Then come and keep me company for once," said Miriam, with a smile,
+her magnificent eyes looking full into his face.
+
+He shrank a little before that full-orbed gaze. For a moment or two
+the colour left his lips. He smiled faintly, and rubbed his hands
+together, as though he were cold.
+
+"If I had the inclination to refuse--which, indeed, I have not," he
+said, "it would be impossible for me to do so after such an
+invitation. I can quite imagine that your life here is a little dull
+at times," he added, as he drew a chair up to the table.
+
+"It certainly cannot be called a very lively one," returned Miriam, as
+she began to pour out the tea. "Poor dear papa is both very old and
+very feeble, and then his deafness is a great drawback, and makes home
+duller than it would otherwise be."
+
+"But you have a brother, have you not?"
+
+"Yes, one brother."
+
+"In the city?"
+
+"No, not in the city. He is secretary to a gentleman at the west end."
+
+Peter Byrne, after sniffing once or twice at the flowers, toddled back
+to his easy-chair by the fire, and spreading his handkerchief over his
+knees, waited patiently for his tea. This Miriam now took to him;
+placing it on a little low table in front of him.
+
+"Good girl, good girl," he said. Then, turning suddenly on Van Duren,
+he added, "When I was a young spark, I always liked to have a flower
+in my button-hole. The girls used to beg them of me--bless their
+pretty eyes! I daresay the young hussies nowadays do the very same
+thing."
+
+Max Van Duren, at this time, was fifty years old. He was not very
+tall, but broad-set and strongly built. His coarse, short-cut, sandy
+hair showed as yet few traces of age. His face was closely shaven, so
+that whatever character there was in it could be clearly seen without
+the disguise of beard or moustache. A massive jaw; a close-shut mouth,
+with its straight line of thin lips; heavy, overhanging eyebrows, and
+small, deep-set eyes of a cold, steel gray: such were the prominent
+features of a face that was full of power, self-will, and obstinacy.
+His ears were pierced, but the small gold rings he had worn in them
+when a young man had been discarded years ago. Professional beggars
+are generally pretty good students of facial character, and no member
+of that fraternity had ever been known to solicit alms from Max Van
+Duren.
+
+He had not been used to female society, and he felt himself altogether
+out of his element as he sat at the tea-table and was waited upon by
+Miriam.
+
+Miss Byrne had not had her magnificent eyes given her for nothing.
+Very early in life she had learned how to make use of them. After that
+one full, unveiled look into Van Duren's eyes when she invited him to
+take tea with her, she kept her own eyes carefully under subjection.
+He could not keep his away from her, a fact of which Miriam was
+perfectly conscious; but now that she had got him there, seated
+opposite to her, she seemed to have become all at once shy, timid, and
+all but speechless. Now and then he caught a momentary, half-startled
+glance aimed at him from under the shadow of her long lashes, but that
+was all. She seemed to turn her eyes anywhere, rather than look him
+full in the face. He was quite at a loss what to say. What bond of
+sympathies, tastes, or ideas, as he asked himself, could there be in
+common between a man like him and that charming creature opposite?
+There were a great many subjects that he knew a great deal about, but
+he could not call to mind one that would be likely to have the
+faintest possible interest for Miss Byrne. Still, it was requisite
+that he should say something, or she would think him no better than a
+mummy.
+
+He looked round the room: there were a number of books scattered
+about. "Are you fond of reading, Miss Byrne?" he asked, suddenly: as
+good an opening, under the circumstances, as he could possibly have
+found.
+
+"Yes, very--when I can get the sort of book I like."
+
+"May I ask what sort of book it is that you do like?"
+
+"Oh, novels of course: a sort of literature for which, I daresay, you
+care nothing."
+
+"Well, I am certainly not a novel reader. But, were I a young lady, I
+daresay I should be. You like love-stories, of course?"
+
+"Yes; love-stories. Having had no experience in that line myself, it
+is only natural that I should like to read about it in others."
+
+"I thought that all young ladies nowadays could graduate and take
+honours in the Art of Love long before they were twenty."
+
+"A rule is proved by its exceptions. I am one of the exceptions."
+
+"How nice it must be to be able to write love-stories that you know
+will be read by some thousands of young ladies!"
+
+"But if an author in every case writes only from his own experience,
+what a fearful experience must his be!"
+
+"I apprehend that in such a case a writer is like a clever violinist.
+He may play to the public on one string as long as he likes, if only
+his variations are sufficiently amusing not to weary them."
+
+"Yes, I daresay there is really a very great sameness in such
+matters," said Miriam, with well-feigned simplicity.
+
+"And yet I suppose it hardly matters how poor a love-story may be; the
+vivid imagination of your sex supplies all deficiencies, and clothes
+it with whatever warmth and colour it may otherwise lack."
+
+"I am not so sure on that point. But I am afraid you are getting
+beyond my depth, Mr. Van Duren. For my own part, I have not much
+imagination. I am very, very matter-of-fact."
+
+"That ought to form a bond of sympathy between us, seeing that I am
+one of the most matter-of-fact people in the City of London."
+
+"I have been told that bonds of sympathy are very dangerous things.
+Papa's Three-per-cent. bonds would be a much safer investment."
+
+Van Duren laughed.
+
+"How would it be, Miss Byrne, if I were to go through a course of
+reading under your tuition?"
+
+"Do you mean the reading of love-stories?"
+
+"That, and nothing else, is what I mean.
+
+"How would it be possible for me to act as your tutor in such a course
+of reading when I don't know the alphabet of the language myself?"
+
+"How would it be if we were to try to learn the alphabet together?"
+
+"I am afraid that I am too old to learn a fresh language. Besides, if
+you are as ignorant as you say you are, we should not know the proper
+sounds to give to the different letters."
+
+"Nature would be our schoolmistress. With her to teach us, we should
+soon become apt scholars."
+
+"Very well. We will have our first lesson on Monday. But before we
+begin, you shall go and bowl your hoop a dozen times round the square
+at the bottom of the street, and I will sit on a doorstep, with a doll
+in my arms, and watch you."
+
+All at once Peter Byrne, who for the last ten minutes had been gazing
+intently into the fire, and neither stirring nor speaking, turned in
+his chair, and said to Miriam--
+
+"Go up to your room, Pussy, for a little while; I want to have a
+little private talk with Mr. Van Duren."
+
+Miriam rose.
+
+"Shall I not see you again?" asked Van Duren.
+
+"Yes," whispered Miriam.
+
+Then she crossed to the basket of flowers, plucked a spray, placed it
+in the bosom of her dress, smiled at Van Duren, and went.
+
+Van Duren's face lost its brightness as soon as Miriam left the room.
+He crossed to Byrne's chair, laid his coarse hand on the old man's
+shoulder, and said, not without a touch of sternness--
+
+"I am at your service, sir."
+
+He was obliged to speak in a louder tone of voice than usual, and that
+of itself annoyed him.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Van Duren--sit down close beside me. I have something
+to say to you. But are you sure that we are quite alone?"
+
+"We are quite alone, Mr. Byrne."
+
+"Good."
+
+He said no more for a minute or two, but fumbled nervously with his
+handkerchief, still keeping his eyes fixed intently on the fire. Then
+he had a little fit of coughing. When that was over, and he had
+recovered his breath, he laid his hand on Mr. Van Duren's wrist, and
+spoke.
+
+"We can't expect to live for ever, Mr. Van Duren--eh?"
+
+"I suppose not," said Mr. Van Duren, with a sneer; "and I for one
+would certainly not care to do so."
+
+"Are you one of those people who think that a man is likely to die any
+the sooner for having made his will?"
+
+"Certainly not. I am no believer in such foolish superstitions."
+
+"When a man has anything to leave--when he has any dispositions to
+make with regard to his property, it is best not to put off making
+them till the last moment--eh?"
+
+"It is very foolish to do so, Mr. Byrne. But it is what many people
+do, for all that."
+
+"Then you think that I should be doing a wise thing if I were to make
+my will--eh?"
+
+"Certainly--a very wise thing--if you have any property to dispose
+of."
+
+"If I have any property to dispose of! Ech! ech! ech! If I have any
+property to dispose of--he says!"
+
+He laughed till another fit of coughing nearly choked him, and after
+that was over he had to gather breath before he could speak again.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Van Duren," he gasped out, "I have a little property to
+leave behind me--just a little. And I want you, as a business man, to
+recommend to me some good sound lawyer, to whom I could give the
+requisite instructions for drawing up my last will and testament."
+
+"Oh, if that's all, I can recommend to you my own lawyer, Mr. Billing,
+who is a thorough business man, and would do you justice in every
+way."
+
+"That's kind of you--very kind. There will be nothing complicated
+about the affair, There's only two of 'em to leave it to--my boy and
+my girl. I shall divide it equally between them."
+
+Mr. Van Duren was beginning to feel interested. After all, it was
+quite possible that this pottering, deaf old fellow might be far
+better off than he--Van Duren--had any idea of.
+
+"House property, or land, chiefly, I suppose?" he said, in a casual,
+off-hand kind of way.
+
+"Not a bit of it," said the old man. "I don't own a single house, nor
+an acre of land. No, sir, my property is all in scrip and shares--in
+good sound investments, every penny of it. And the beauty of it
+is--ech! ech!--that not even my own boy has any idea what I'm
+worth--what he and his sister will drop in for when the old man's
+under the turf. I've always kept 'em both in the dark about my money
+matters--and the best way too. They might want me out of the way, they
+might wish me dead, if they knew everything. No, no! I've kept my own
+counsel. I've speculated and speculated, and nobody but my broker and
+myself has been a bit the wiser."
+
+Mr. Van Duren began to feel quite an affectionate regard for his
+lodger--leaving out of the question his lodger's daughter.
+
+"Then Miss Byrne is an heiress without knowing it?" he said.
+
+"Mum's the word," chuckled the old man, as he clutched Van Duren by
+the sleeve. "I'm telling you what I've always kept a secret from them;
+but there'll be thirty thousand between 'em when I go. Thirty
+thousand--not a single penny less!"
+
+Van Duren's colour came and went. Miriam, then, would have a fortune
+of fifteen thousand pounds, respecting which, at present, she knew
+nothing! Would not the wisest thing he could do be to propose to her
+and win her consent to become his wife before she became aware of the
+golden future in store for her? Afterwards it might be too late--she
+might regard him with altogether different eyes when she knew that her
+dowry would be fifteen thousand pounds.
+
+"A noble legacy, my dear sir--a truly noble legacy!" said Van Duren,
+warmly. "And were I in your place, I should not lose an unnecessary
+hour in making my testamentary arrangements. You may depend on it that
+your mind will feel more settled and easy when you have made
+everything secure, and put your wishes beyond the possibility of
+dispute."
+
+"Egad! I'll take your advice; and if you'll send that lawyer of yours
+on Tuesday, I'll have the job got out of hand at once. I don't suppose
+I shall live a day less for having made my will--eh?"
+
+"Not you, my dear sir--not you. There are many pleasant days in store
+for you yet. You are as tough as a bit of seasoned oak."
+
+"Aye, aye. It's not always the youngest ones that are the strongest.
+Why shouldn't I live to be a hundred?"
+
+"What a noble girl is that daughter of yours, Mr. Byrne!"
+
+"A good girl, sir--a very good girl, though it is I who say it."
+
+"I have never met any one in my life whom I have learnt to admire so
+much in so short a time."
+
+"Ah! poor Pussy will feel it when her old father goes. It preys on my
+mind sometimes when I think of it. What is to become of her, with her
+money and her inexperience; and no one to look after her but a brother
+almost as young and inexperienced as herself?"
+
+"Miss Byrne's fate will probably be that of most other young
+ladies--she will marry."
+
+"I wish with all my heart that she would: that is, if she would marry
+the sort of man I should like her to have. But to see her married to
+some empty-headed, extravagant fop of a fellow, who would squander her
+money and not make her happy--I could never rest quiet in my grave if
+that were to happen."
+
+What Van Duren's answer would have been is not upon record, for just
+at this moment there came a knock at the door, and presently
+Bakewell's head was intruded into the room.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir," he said, carrying a finger to his forehead, "but
+there's a gentleman downstairs as wants to see you immediately on
+important business."
+
+"Confound the gentleman, whoever he may be!" said Van Duren, with
+hearty goodwill. "Tell him I'll be down presently." Then, turning to
+Byrne, he added: "We business men can never really call an hour our
+own. I must ask you to make my excuses to Miss Byrne: I am sorry that
+I cannot say good-night to her in person."
+
+"It will be your own fault if you don't see her again before long.
+Come and take a quiet cup of tea with us as often as you like. We are
+very quiet and very homely, but we shall always be glad to see you.
+You won't forget the lawyer, will you?"
+
+When Miriam came downstairs a quarter of an hour later, she found her
+father sitting with his legs perched against the chimney-piece, and
+smoking his china pipe. He had flung his wig and skull-cap aside, he
+had relieved himself of his false hump, and he had taken his
+artificial teeth out of the bureau in which he kept them, and had
+fitted them carefully into his month.
+
+"Miriam," he said, "before you are a week older Max Van Duren will
+propose marriage to you. I will tell you to-morrow what you are to say
+when he makes the offer. To-night I am tired. And now mix me a tumbler
+of grog: the sort of tumbler that you know so well how to mix, dear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+FASCINATION.
+
+
+A few days after the private interview between Mr. Van Duren and his
+lodger, Mr. Billing, the lawyer, called on Mr. Byrne by appointment,
+and took down that gentleman's instructions with respect to the
+disposition of his property. Three days later, Mr. Billing called with
+the all-important document, and found waiting to receive him in Mr.
+Byrne's parlour, the testator himself, Mr. Van Duren, who had most
+kindly consented to act as one of the executors, and a certain Mr.
+Dexter, an old personal friend of Mr. Byrne, who was to act as
+executor number two.
+
+Then, at the testator's request, the will was read aloud by Mr.
+Billing. By its provisions Mr. Byrne bequeathed, equally between his
+son Gerald and his daughter Miriam, the whole of his property,
+amounting in the aggregate to thirty thousand pounds, the same being
+partly invested in government three per cents., and partly in the
+shares of certain railways and other public companies. When the
+reading was over, Mr. Byrne put his signature to the will in a hand
+that was remarkably firm and clear for his age. The two executors then
+appended their signatures. Mr. Billing took charge of the document,
+and the ceremony was at an end. After that, a couple of bottles of old
+port were produced, the testator's health was drunk, and there was a
+little hand-shaking and the expression of many good wishes, and after
+that the three gentlemen went away, and Mr. Byrne was left to solitude
+and the company of his own thoughts.
+
+His own thoughts, such as they might be, seemed of an eminently
+satisfactory nature. Miriam was out--had been sent out purposely
+during the process of will-signing. Thus it fell out that Mr. Byrne
+now found himself temporarily deprived of the services of his
+daughter. But that did not trouble him in the least. He liked to be
+waited upon--as most men do--but he was not above looking after his
+own comforts when there was no one else to do it for him. All through
+life he had been in the habit of celebrating any pleasant little
+event, or successful stroke of business, by taking something "on the
+strength of it," as he termed it; and it was hardly likely that he
+should pretermit such an excellent observance on the present occasion.
+Accordingly, he no sooner found himself alone than he proceeded to
+charge and light the inevitable pipe, and to mix for himself the
+inevitable tumbler of grog. With his chair tilted back on its hind
+legs, his feet on the table, his wig awry, his pipe in his mouth, and
+his steaming glass before him, Mr. Byrne was quietly meditating over
+the day's proceedings, when, without any preliminary knock, the door
+that gave egress on to the landing was softly opened, and the head of
+Pringle, Mr. Van Duren's clerk, was thrust into the room. His glassy
+eyes fixed themselves on Byrne, but without any apparent sign of
+intelligence lighting up their dull depths. For a few seconds the two
+men stared at each other without speaking. Byrne was, in fact, too
+much taken aback to utter a word. "Beg pardon. I thought the governor
+was here," said Pringle at last. "See he isn't. Sorry to intrude."
+With that he withdrew his head and shut the door as softly as he had
+opened it.
+
+"That drunken fool has seen enough to spoil everything!" cried Byrne,
+as he started to his feet. "What an ass I must have been not to lock
+the door! My only chance is that he may have had so much to drink as
+to have forgotten all about what he saw by to-morrow morning."
+
+Pringle, having shut the door of Mr. Byrne's room, stood still on the
+mat, while he indulged in one of his noiseless, malicious laughs. "I
+thought the old boy was after some private little game of his own," he
+said; "and I thought I shouldn't be long before I spotted him. A
+disguise--eh? And no more deaf, I'll swear, than I am! Haven't I
+listened at the keyhole, and heard him and the girl talking quite
+natural and easy like? And then Van Duren's sweet on the girl, but the
+girl looks too wide awake to be sweet on him, without she thinks him
+rich, and wants a husband. I can't make out just yet what it all
+means, but, anyhow, I don't think it means much good to Van Duren, and
+so long as it don't mean any good to him I sha'n't interfere. I'll
+watch and say nothing, and if I only find that the pair of them are
+weaving a net round Van Duren, won't I give them a helping hand! That
+is," he added, as if suddenly correcting himself, "that is, provided
+it don't interfere with my own little game."
+
+He went slowly downstairs to the office on the ground-floor. The gas
+was lighted, but there was no one in the room. "Van Duren and Billing
+have gone out together. If Van thinks I'm going to wait for him, he's
+mistaken. I'll just shut up shop, and go to tea. Now, what could Van
+and the other one want in the old boy's room upstairs? That's a
+puzzler. Is there some little game on that they are all mixed up in?
+Or are Van and the other trying to best the old 'un? Or is the old 'un
+trying to best Van and the other one?" Shaking his head, as though the
+questions he had put to himself were beyond his powers of solution, he
+took a ledger under each arm, and carried them slowly downstairs--all
+Pringle's movements were slow--into the fireproof room in the
+basement of the house, where Van Duren's books and papers were
+habitually kept.
+
+This fireproof room was on the same floor as the rooms inhabited by
+Bakewell and his wife, who had charge of the whole premises, but was
+separated from them by a brick passage of some length. Opposite the
+foot of the stairs was a door that opened into this passage, in which
+a tiny jet of gas was kept burning through the day. At the end of
+the passage was a strong iron door, which opened into the fireproof
+room. There was only one key to this door, and that was kept by Van
+Duren himself. But it was part of Bakewell's duties to go up to his
+master's bedroom every morning, obtain the key in question, open the
+door--which was allowed to stand open all day--lock it again at ten
+o'clock at night, and take back the key to his master's bedroom. When
+Van Duren went out of town, which he did frequently, the key was given
+in charge of Pringle. The key of the safe itself never left Van
+Duren's possession for more than a few minutes at a time. A small,
+square apartment with a brick roof, and fitted up with shelves and
+book-racks, with sundry boxes in one corner, and in the other a large
+patent safe: such was Mr. Van Duren's fireproof room. Like the passage
+that led to it, it was entirely shut out from daylight, and the gas
+was kept burning in it all day long.
+
+When Pringle had deposited the ledgers in their proper places, he
+turned the gas a little higher, and then stood for a few moments
+listening intently. Not a sound broke the silence. "If one was buried
+six feet deep in the earth, one couldn't be quieter than one is here,"
+said Pringle, with a shudder. "It's just like a vault, particularly
+when one knows that there's nothing but dead men's bones all round. No
+fear of an interruption," he added. "Bakewell's out, and his wife
+ain't over-fond of this part of the house."
+
+His next proceeding was a very singular one. From an inner pocket of
+his waistcoat he extracted a key, which key be proceeded to insert
+into the lock of the patent safe in the corner. "Not quite the thing
+yet," he muttered, as he tried the key. "Wants another touch of the
+file here and there. Grainger's three thousand will fall due in about
+a month's time. I must have everything ready by then. It's sure not to
+be all in bills. There will be a few hundreds in gold. Then there will
+be Van's private stock, and other things. Altogether, a pretty little
+haul."
+
+He withdrew the key from the lock and put it back into his secret
+pocket. "If he had not treated me like a dog, if he had treated me as
+one man ought to treat another, I should never have thought of this
+thing. He thinks that he has me in his power, and that I dare not
+turn; but he will find himself mistaken. I'm not quite a worm, though
+he tramples on me as if I were. He will find that I can turn, and
+sting too, when the proper time comes."
+
+He went back upstairs, turned down the gas in the office, and taking
+his hat and his faded gingham umbrella, he left the house.
+
+Jonas Pringle was from fifty to fifty-five years old. He was bald,
+except for a straggling fringe of hair round the back of his head, and
+had weak, watery eyes, that gave him the appearance, to strangers, of
+being habitually in tears. He always dressed in black, and always wore
+an old-fashioned dress coat. But his black clothes were never
+otherwise than very shabby and threadbare, and shiny with old age at
+the elbows and knees. He wore a thick black silk neckcloth, above
+which peered the frayed edge of a dirty collar. Among Pringle's
+intimates at the Pig and Whistle (his favourite evening haunt) there
+was a story current that he had not had a new hat for twenty years.
+
+This evening he went mooning slowly along the streets, muttering under
+his breath, as was his habit, and glancing up with a queer, sudden
+stare into the face of every woman that passed him. Years before, he
+had lost his daughter, an only child: lost her, that is, in the sense
+of her being stolen from him by a villain. It was a fixed article of
+Pringle's belief that he should one day find his daughter again, and
+he had got into the habit, when walking along the streets, of looking
+into the face of each woman that he met, ever hoping that among them
+he might some time see again the face of his lost Jessie.
+
+It was quite impossible for Pringle to get as far as his lodgings
+without making one or two calls for refreshment by the way. There were
+certain houses where his face was well known as that of a regular
+frequenter, and where they knew, without his having to be at the
+trouble of asking for it, the particular article (twopennyworth of
+gin, neat) with which to supply him.
+
+"He's been at it again," remarked Pringle, parenthetically, to the
+landlord of one of the dirty little taverns which he favoured with his
+patronage. "He was raving about all morning like a bear with a sore
+head. Nothing pleased him, nothing one could do was right."
+
+"Ay, ay. I shouldn't stand it if I was you," answered the publican.
+
+"I sha'n't stand it much longer; you may take your oath of that," said
+Pringle. "There'll be a day of reckoning before long: mark my words,
+if there ain't."
+
+About the very time that Jonas Pringle was giving utterance to this
+mysterious threat, the man to whom he referred was sitting alone,
+thinking deeply--thinking of Miriam Byrne, of her manifold charms of
+fortune and person, and trying to screw up his courage to the point of
+asking her to become his wife. He had fully made up his mind that he
+would so ask her, but he wished with all his heart that the task were
+well over. In all business transactions he was one of the most prompt
+and decisive of men, and, it may be added, one of the hardest; but the
+thought of having to tell this dark-eyed beauty of twenty that he
+loved her and would fain marry her, fluttered his nerves strangely.
+That it must be done, and done soon, he had quite made up his mind;
+but none the less did the thought of having it to do trouble him. To
+old Byrne he had thrown out one or two hints already, and had not been
+repulsed. In fact, the old man seemed desirous of seeing his daughter
+comfortably settled in life, and would perhaps be more likely to
+encourage the addresses of a man like Van Duren, who knew the world
+and the value of money, rather than those of some empty-headed
+popinjay of Miriam's own age, who would, in all probability, first
+spend her fortune and then neglect her. Ah! if he could only win her
+for himself--win her and her fortune too--what a happy stroke of luck
+that would be! He admired the girl for her beauty, admired her more
+than any woman he had ever met before, and even if she had not been
+worth a penny, he might in some moment of rashness have flung all
+other considerations to the winds, and have asked her to marry him.
+But knowing what he knew about her, would he not be an idiot to let
+such a golden opportunity slip through his fingers without trying to
+grasp it and claim it for his own? "If I can find a chance of doing
+so, I'll propose to her to-morrow," he said to himself, emphatically,
+as he rose from the table. "I cannot afford to lose another day."
+
+At seven o'clock next evening Mr. Van Duren knocked at the door of his
+lodgers' sitting-room. His summons was answered by Miriam in person.
+He started with surprise as his eyes fell on her. He had never seen
+her dressed as she was to-night. Anyone might have thought that she
+knew he was going to call upon her, that she suspected what he had
+made up his mind to say. Had she deliberately laid herself out to
+fascinate him, to enthral his senses, to make him forget reason and
+prudence, and all the cautious rules with which his life had
+heretofore been hedged round, she could not, with all her thought,
+have done more towards effecting that end than the caprice of a moment
+was likely to do for her without thought at all. And it was but the
+whim of a moment that had induced her to attire herself after the
+fashion in which she presented herself to the eyes of Van Duren
+to-night.
+
+She wore a long, trailing robe of amber silk, which fitted her very
+loosely, and was fastened round her waist with a gay Persian scarf of
+many colours. The sleeves of this dress were cut very short, and
+Miriam's bare arms were decorated with bracelets of tiny, tinted
+shells and small coins intermixed. A fringe of coins was bound round
+her forehead, and fastened at the back with a gilt arrow. Her hair
+fell to her waist in two long plaits, with which more coins and shells
+were intermixed. As she walked across the room, and as she reclined on
+the sofa, the tips of two Turkish slippers, embroidered with gold
+thread and silks of various colours, could be seen peeping from under
+the edge of her robe. In her ears hung two tiny bells, that looked
+like gold, but were only gilt, which tinkled faintly when she moved
+her head; round her throat was clasped a double string of large amber
+beads.
+
+"Good evening, Miss Byrne," said Van Duren, as soon as he had
+recovered his presence of mind. "I have had a small consignment of
+fruit from France, and I have ventured to hope that you would do me
+the favour of accepting a box of it."
+
+"You are kindness itself," said Miriam. "But don't stand there,
+please." Then, when she had shut the door behind him, she added: "How
+you have so quickly found out two of my pet weaknesses--flowers and
+candied fruits--is more than I can understand." Then she took the box
+from his hand. "Many, many thanks. Why, the casket itself is quite a
+work of art!"
+
+Van Duren crossed to where Mr. Byrne was sitting in his easy-chair by
+the fire. He had neither spoken nor stirred from the moment of hearing
+the knock at the door. Van Duren laid his hand on the old man's
+shoulder. "How are you this evening, Mr. Byrne?" he said, speaking
+close to the other one's ear.
+
+"Oh, hearty, hearty: never better," answered Byrne, in a querulous
+voice. "If it wasn't for this nasty cough, and this pain in my side,
+and one or two other trifles, I should be as right as a trivet."
+
+"We shall soon have the warm weather here now, and that will help you
+along."
+
+"Of course it will. In another month's time I shall be out and about
+again, as strong and active as the best of you."
+
+"Poor papa never will allow that he is worse," said Miriam, in a low
+voice. "He has certainly been weaker and feebler for the last day or
+two, but he will persist in saying that he is quite the opposite."
+
+"The old boy can't last long," thought Van Duren to himself: "another
+reason why I ought not to delay."
+
+Next minute, without exactly knowing how it happened, he found himself
+sitting opposite Miriam, who had resumed he favourite position--a
+half-sitting, half-reclining one--on the sofa, and was eating daintily
+a sugared apricot. How round and white her arms looked, contrasted
+against the deep amber of her robe, from under which the tiny Turkish
+slippers peeped tantalizingly! She was certainly very lovely, but
+about her loveliness to-night there was something wild and weird that
+at once attracted to itself a certain element of savagery that lay
+latent in the character of her admirer, but which the quiet, humdrum
+life he had led of late years had all but buried out of sight. An
+Englishman of the timid conventional type would either have been
+repelled or frightened had he seen the lady of his love decked out
+after Miriam's strange fashion, but it only served to draw Van Duren
+more closely to her. It seemed to him that, could he but have had his
+own way in the matter, he would never have let her dress otherwise
+than as he saw her to-night. As he gazed at her, all the pulses of his
+being seemed to throb with newer life. His eyes brightened, the lines
+of his hard mouth softened, and for once, as Miriam avowed afterwards
+to her father, the man looked almost handsome.
+
+Miriam's guitar was resting against the sofa, within reach of her
+hand. Said Van Duren--
+
+"You were singing and playing the other evening, Miss Byrne, as I went
+upstairs to my own room, but I have never had the pleasure of hearing
+you when in your company."
+
+"Then you ought to consider yourself very fortunate," replied Miriam,
+"for I am really not worth listening to."
+
+"Will you afford me an opportunity of judging for myself?"
+
+"If you put it as a definite request, of course I cannot refuse you. I
+have accepted your bribe beforehand," she added, with a smile,
+pointing to the box of fruit.
+
+"I should really like to hear you."
+
+"Then you shall hear me. After that you will be satisfied. You will
+never want to hear me again."
+
+"That's as it may be," said Van Duren, as he drew his chair several
+inches nearer the sofa.
+
+"What shall I murder for you?" asked Miriam, as she took up the
+guitar.
+
+The phrase was an ugly one, and was spoken without thought. Van Duren
+started as if some one had smitten him suddenly from behind. He shot a
+look full of suspicion and terror at Miriam; but her eyes were bent on
+the guitar, one or two strings of which seemed to want screwing up.
+
+"What shall I sing for you?" she said, amending her phraseology this
+time.
+
+Van Duren recovered himself with an effort.
+
+"The guitar has always been associated in my mind," he said, "with
+love-songs and serenades, with moonlight and romance."
+
+"Then here's a little serenade for you. I, who sing, am supposed to be
+a cavalier. If your imagination will carry you so far, you can fancy
+yourself to be the lady thus lovingly addressed."
+
+She struck a chord or two on the guitar, and began as follows:--
+
+
+   "What throbs through the song of the nightingale?
+   What makes the red heart of the rose turn pale?
+                   Love, burning love.
+   What makes me grow drowsy 'neath midsummer skies?
+   What makes me a slave to my lady's dark eyes?
+                   Love, burning love."
+
+
+One verse will be quite enough for the reader. Miriam's voice was a
+rich, clear contralto, which she managed with considerable skill. Now
+and again as she sang, she shot a glance out of her dangerous black
+eyes at the rapt listener sitting opposite to her. Her father, in his
+easy-chair by the fire, gave no further sign of existence than by the
+troublesome cough which seized him every few minutes, and shook him
+like a leaf.
+
+As the last line thrilled from Miriam's lips, Van Duren sank down on
+one knee before her, and tried to seize her hand. With a little
+involuntary shudder, she drew it away from him. Then he grasped a fold
+of her dress, and pressed it passionately to his lips.
+
+"Miriam Miriam! do not repulse me, but listen to me!" he cried. "You,
+who can give such passionate expression to the words of a mere
+love-song, must have felt and known that I loved you from the first
+moment that I saw you. I cannot ask or expect that you should give
+me back such a love as I now offer you. But try to like me a
+little--consent to be my wife--and I will do all that lies in the
+power of mortal man to make you happy!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Van Duren, you do indeed surprise me!" was all Miriam said.
+But she was not surprised in the least.
+
+"I am richer than the world gives me credit for being," pursued Van
+Duren. "I have led a quiet, saving life for years; but all that shall
+be changed if you will only become mine. I can afford to let my wife
+live as a lady ought to live; I can afford to----"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Van Duren, you must not talk in that way."
+
+"I am quite aware," he pleaded, "that there is a very wide difference
+between your age and mine, but----"
+
+"That would make no difference in my feelings towards any one for whom
+I really cared."
+
+"If you would only try to care a little for me!"
+
+"It all seems so strange, Mr. Van Duren."
+
+"What is it that seems so strange, dearest?"
+
+"Why, that a man like you, who have seen so much of the world, who
+must have seen and known so many ladies, both in England and abroad,
+should really profess to care about a foolish, frivolous girl like
+me."
+
+"You are neither foolish nor frivolous. Besides which, you are
+different from any one whom I ever met before. More than all, you are
+my fate."
+
+"Your fate, Mr. Van Duren!"
+
+"Yes, the one woman out of all the wide world whom, uncounted ages
+ago, it was fated, or fore-ordained, that I should love."
+
+"Now you are going further than I can follow you," said Miriam, with a
+smile. "Perhaps, at the same time, it was fore-ordained that I should
+reject your suit."
+
+"You do not know how terribly in earnest I am, or you would not laugh
+at me."
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Van Duren, I am not laughing at you. But pray resume your
+seat."
+
+"Not till you have told me the best or the worst. Not till you have
+given me some word of hope, or told me that I must never hope again."
+
+"Mr. Van Duren," said Miriam, with more earnestness than she had yet
+used, "your offer has come upon me so suddenly that I know not what to
+say. I think you can hardly expect me to give you an answer to so
+serious a question without giving me time to consider what that answer
+must be. Not now, not to-night--can I answer you either one way or the
+other. Two or three days at the least I must claim, to think over all
+that you have said to me, and to discover, if it be possible for me to
+do so, what my feelings are in a matter that concerns my future
+welfare so closely."
+
+"I can but bow to your decision," said Van Duren. "I hope I may accept
+it as a good augury that you have not rejected my suit at once and
+entirely; that you have deemed it worthy of being taken into
+consideration."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Van Duren, I am afraid that you are not such a novice as you
+would wish to make out: I am afraid that you understand more of our
+sex and their ways than you would care to have known."
+
+Then, as if to change the subject, she took up her guitar and began to
+play. A little while later Van Duren took his leave.
+
+"Very well managed, my dear," said Mr. Byrne, approvingly, wheeling
+round his chair as soon as the door was closed upon their visitor;
+"only neither of you seemed to think much about me in the matter."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Van Duren thinks that if he can obtain my consent,
+yours will follow as a matter of course."
+
+"He is welcome to think what he likes, so long as you succeed in
+getting out of him the particular information that I want. So far,
+all has gone off well. In three days' time you will accept him
+provisionally--accept him on trial, that is, for a month or six weeks,
+before finally binding yourself to anything. In the course of that
+month you ought to be able to worm out of him the all-important
+secret, without which all that we have done up to the present time
+will be of no avail whatever."
+
+"I understand perfectly what you want, papa, but I cannot tell you how
+utterly distasteful to me is the whole wretched business."
+
+"Tut, tut, girl, you mustn't talk in that way! Think of the two
+hundred pounds that will be yours--absolutely your own--if we
+succeed."
+
+"I do think of it, papa. But even that can hardly reconcile me at
+times to go through with what I have promised. You don't know the
+feeling of repulsion, of absolute loathing, that came over me to-night
+when that man tried to take my hand. Think what it is to be made love
+to by a murderer; think of this, and pity me!"
+
+"Of course I pity you, and feel for you," said the old man,
+soothingly. "But our needs are great, and the money will be very
+useful--you can't but admit that."
+
+"Oh yes, I admit that. But I was never afraid of poverty."
+
+"I am not afraid of it--but I certainly don't like it. But what do you
+intend doing with your two hundred pounds, Miriam? Better let me
+invest it for you."
+
+"If I succeed in getting the two hundred pounds---which at present is
+by no means certain--I shall----"
+
+"Yes: what?"
+
+"I shall furnish a couple of rooms--furnish them very nicely, mind
+you--and marry James."
+
+"You will!" gasped the old man.
+
+"I shall, most certainly. It is the thought of that and nothing else
+that strengthens me to go through with this dreadful business. No
+meaner prize would tempt me."
+
+She stooped and kissed her father lightly on the forehead, and then
+went quickly out of the room, as if afraid that what she had said
+might provoke a discussion that would have been unpleasant to both of
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+EASTER HOLIDAYS.
+
+
+The Easter holidays were here, and Sir Thomas Dudgeon and family had
+gone down to Stammars for a fortnight. The baronet was like a boy
+released for awhile from the tyranny of school. He had always loved
+the country; but never had it seemed so sweet and pleasant to him as
+it did now, after he had been penned up for a couple of months in the
+great wilderness of London. He spent hours with Cozzard every day, and
+together the two men visited every nook and corner of the property,
+and renewed acquaintance with every horse, dog, and cow on the estate.
+Sir Thomas's speech on the Sugar Duties, being a maiden effort, had
+been listened to with kindly attention by the House, and had been
+commented on in favourable terms by one or two of the morning papers.
+Amplified and embellished with tropes and similes not found; in the
+original, it had been printed, in extenso, in the _Pembridge Gazette_,
+and had formed the basis of a ponderous leader in the editor's best
+style. Sir Thomas began to feel as if he were a power in the realm.
+Really, as he sometimes whispered to himself, his wife's estimate of
+his abilities might not be such an exaggerated one, after all. He had
+been complimented so often about his speech, that, insensibly to
+himself, he began to regard it as being altogether his own
+composition, and to forget or ignore Pomeroy's share in the
+transaction.
+
+The ball at Stammars came off in due course, and was very successful.
+It added greatly to the popularity of Sir Thomas among his
+constituents. Husbands and fathers in Pembridge were as amenable to
+feminine influences as they are supposed to be elsewhere, and Lady
+Dudgeon judged rightly that all the ladies would work for her after
+she had hinted that a similar gathering would probably be held at
+Stammars every year during Sir Thomas's parliamentary career.
+
+Lady Dudgeon's correspondence had got greatly into arrear during her
+two months in London. As soon as the ball was over she devoted a week
+to letter-writing. She had many things to write about, and she did not
+spare any of her numerous correspondents. She had much to say
+respecting the fashions and foibles of society in town, the drier
+details being plentifully garnished with gossip and anecdotes
+respecting mutual friends, or such notabilities of the day as her
+ladyship might have been brought into casual contact with in the
+course of a ten minutes' crush on an aristocratic staircase. But the
+ball and its eccentricities were not forgotten; and could certain of
+the Pembridge ladies have seen how mercilessly their "dear Lady
+Dudgeon" ridiculed them in her letters to her fine friends--their
+manners, their conversation, and their toilettes--they would never
+have forgiven her to the last day of their lives.
+
+Captain Dayrell came down for the ball, and stayed the remainder of
+the week at Stammars. Neither he nor Lady Dudgeon had given up the
+campaign as hopeless. It was part of the Captain's creed that young
+ladies, especially in matters matrimonial, did not know their own
+minds for a week at a time. Because he had been refused in March, that
+was no reason why he should not be accepted in April or May. He had
+felt considerably annoyed when Lady Dudgeon had told him the result of
+her conversation with Miss Lloyd. He hinted to her pretty plainly that
+she had committed an egregious blunder in broaching the subject to
+Eleanor at all, instead of leaving him to fight his own battle with
+that somewhat obstinate young person. "A meddlesome old cat" was the
+term he applied to her in his own thoughts. To do her justice,
+however, her ladyship was laudably anxious to atone for her error;
+therefore was Captain Dayrell invited down to Stammars, where he would
+have the field entirely to himself: even Mr. Pomeroy would be out of
+the way, Sir Thomas having given that gentleman a week's release from
+his not very onerous duties.
+
+"You will have to do your spiriting very gently, Captain Dayrell,"
+said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd's refusal was a very decisive one."
+
+"So long as there is no prior attachment--and you assure me that there
+is not--I will not permit myself to despair," said Dayrell. "I tell
+your ladyship this in confidence. But if it could in any way be hinted
+to Miss Lloyd that I have accepted her decision as final, and, while
+deeply hurt by her rejection of me, have no intention of troubling her
+further, I think my cause might be somewhat benefited thereby."
+
+"Pardon me, but I hardly see the force of your suggestion."
+
+"My dear Lady Dudgeon, it is one of the characteristics of your sex to
+regard a rejected suitor with a certain amount of tendresse. They say
+to themselves, 'Here is something that might be mine if I would only
+hold out my hand to take it.' So long as it is there for the having,
+they don't care to accept it; but when they have reason to think that
+they are about to lose it, they will sometimes make a snatch at it
+rather than let it go altogether--or, perhaps I ought to say, rather
+than let it fall into the hands of another."
+
+In this matter Captain Dayrell judged Eleanor by himself. He was twice
+as anxious to win her, now that she had declined his attentions, as he
+had been before. Not that he would ever have dreamed of asking Miss
+Lloyd to become his wife had she been other than the heiress she was.
+He knew too well what was due both to himself and to society.
+
+The suggested hint was duly given to Eleanor. It made her intercourse
+with Captain Dayrell, during his stay at Stammars, more easy and
+pleasant than it might otherwise have been, but beyond that it had no
+effect whatever. When the captain went back to town he was not quite
+so sanguine of success as he had been a week previously; but being of
+a persevering disposition, and having no belief in the immutability of
+a woman's _No_, he was still very far from considering his case as
+hopeless.
+
+Olive Deane had three days' leave of absence from her duties at
+Easter. She went by invitation to spend the time with her aunt and
+cousin at Pembridge. She had seen neither of them during the two
+months she had been at Lady Dudgeon's. Matthew Kelvin had once or
+twice sent his chief clerk to transact business with the baronet, but
+had never put in an appearance himself. Could it be that he dreaded
+the possibility of meeting Miss Lloyd? was the question Olive
+sometimes asked herself; but it was a question to which there was no
+likelihood of her ever obtaining an answer.
+
+Olive's heart fluttered strangely as she knocked at the familiar door.
+Absence had in no wise weakened her love for her cousin. Watered with
+her secret tears, its roots seemed only to grow stronger and to cling
+more tightly round her heart. "Why should my life be made miserable
+for the love of this man?" she sometimes asked herself. "He cares
+nothing for me--he never will care anything for me." But in other
+moods she would say: "He will learn to love me yet. Such a love as
+mine must have a magnetism in it strong enough to draw to itself the
+object of its desires."
+
+But how was it possible that her cousin could grow to love her when
+she was separated from him by weeks and months of absence? She must
+devise some scheme that would bring her under the same roof with him
+again; that was her only chance. Once let Miss Lloyd become engaged
+either to Mr. Pomeroy or Captain Dayrell--once let Matthew Kelvin
+realize the fact that, safe in the love of another man, Eleanor was
+for ever beyond his reach, and she--Olive--would not stop another day
+at Stammars. Some excuse she would find, some reason she would invent,
+which would make her once more an inmate of her cousin's house. Now,
+to-day, when she took her aunt's hand and kissed her, she peered
+anxiously into her face to read whatever signs might be written there.
+Was her health much worse than usual? Was there any prospect that
+before long this poor ailing creature might need her services as
+nurse? Surely--surely, she could not linger on in this way for ever!
+She wished no harm to her aunt; but one cannot always help one's
+thoughts. To-day, however, Mrs. Kelvin looked pretty much as she had
+looked for the last three or four years--neither better nor worse.
+
+She received her niece very kindly. Matthew was out on business, so
+there was time for an hour's confidential talk before he came back.
+One of Mrs. Kelvin's first questions had reference to Mr. Pomeroy; was
+he comfortable, and did he suit Sir Thomas? Then she was interested in
+hearing Olive's account of the gay doings in London, and genuinely
+pleased to find that Lady Dudgeon and her niece agreed so well
+together.
+
+After that the old lady began to talk about her son. There had been a
+change in him of late, and it troubled her. He was not bodily ill, she
+thought; but he seemed to have something on his mind. He was restless
+and irritable, and seemed to crave for company and excitement more
+than he had ever done before. When he was talking about one thing he
+always seemed to be thinking about another.
+
+"He has not read a line to me for I don't know how long," sighed the
+old lady. "I can see that his heart is not in it, and so I don't care
+to ask him."
+
+Mr. Kelvin came in while they were still talking about him. His face
+brightened the moment he saw Olive, and her heart whispered to her,
+"He is glad to see me!" He shook hands with her, and patted her cheek
+as he might have done that of a child.
+
+"Your roses were always white ones, Nolly," he said, "and London smoke
+has certainly done nothing to turn them into red ones."
+
+Olive's anxious eyes were not long in verifying what Mrs. Kelvin had
+said about her son. He certainly looked more worn and anxious than she
+had ever seen him look before. He seemed to have grown five years
+older in a few weeks.
+
+"Will he tell me, I wonder, what has gone amiss with him?" whispered
+Olive to herself. "Can his anxiety have anything to do with Eleanor
+Lloyd? or is it common business cares that are troubling his mind?"
+
+From whatever cause Mr. Kelvin's anxiety might spring, he made an
+effort this evening to put it behind him, and partly succeeded in
+so doing. He assumed a cheerfulness, if he felt it not, and his
+mother was only too ready to believe that it was genuine. It struck
+Olive, however, that she had never seen her cousin drink so much
+brandy-and-water as he did this evening, and then he would finish up
+with champagne, toasting Olive in one bumper and his mother in
+another. After that he went out for a stroll and a whiff in the quiet
+streets, and had not come back when the ladies retired for the night.
+
+"Your coming, dear, seems to have done Matthew good," said Mrs. Kelvin
+to Olive, as she kissed her at her bedroom door. "I have not seen him
+so bright and cheerful for weeks as he has been to-night. But I dare
+say my company is a little dull for him at times, and the house would
+be all the brighter for him if you could be here always."
+
+If she could be there always! How the words rang in Olive's ears when
+shut up in the solitude of her own room! She could not go to bed till
+she heard Matthew come in, so she put out the candle and drew up the
+blind, and sat gazing out at the chilly stars till she heard her
+cousin's footsteps on the stairs.
+
+Mrs. Kelvin never came down to breakfast, a fact of which Olive was
+aware. She judged that if her cousin had anything particular to say to
+her, he would say it when his mother was out of the way; so she took
+care to be down to breakfast betimes next morning.
+
+Kelvin was moody and distrait. After a little commonplace
+conversation, he lapsed into a silence that seemed deeper than common,
+and one which Olive did not care to break.
+
+"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd?" he said at last, with a suddenness
+that was almost startling.
+
+"I see her nearly every day--generally at luncheon," said Olive, quite
+calmly. She had expected some such question.
+
+"Is she well and happy?"
+
+"Quite well, and, as far as one person may judge of another, quite
+happy."
+
+Silence again for a minute or two. When Kelvin next spoke, it was with
+his eyes turned away from Olive.
+
+"She is young, handsome, and presumably rich, consequently not short
+of suitors--eh?"
+
+"I see so little of Miss Lloyd, except at breakfast or luncheon, that
+I am hardly in a position to answer your question. There is, however,
+one gentleman who visits at the house, and who seems to be looked upon
+with favourable eyes both by Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd."
+
+"Ah! And who may he be?"
+
+"His name is Captain Dayrell. He is said to be cousin to Lord
+Rookborough."
+
+"Good-looking, of course?"
+
+"Not bad-looking, certainly." Silence again.
+
+Olive Deane knew quite well that in speaking thus of Captain Dayrell
+to her cousin she was not confining herself to the narrow limits of
+the truth. She knew quite well--for she was not blind, like Lady
+Dudgeon--that if the attentions of one man were more pleasant to Miss
+Lloyd than those of another, that man was John Pomeroy. But instinct
+warned her that it would not be wise on her part to mention Pomeroy's
+name in any such relation. That Miss Lloyd should receive the
+attentions of a man like Captain Dayrell would seem to her cousin no
+more than natural under the circumstances; but that Miss Lloyd should
+encourage the suit of a penniless adventurer like Jack Pomeroy would
+have seemed an altogether different affair. Matthew Kelvin's pride
+would have revolted at the thought of Pomeroy winning that which he
+himself had failed to gain. He was just the man to have warned Sir
+Thomas, and have got Pomeroy discharged, so that the affair might be
+broken off; but in the case of Captain Dayrell no such mode of
+procedure was possible. However distasteful such a state of affairs
+might be to him, he could only submit to it with such grace as there
+might be in him.
+
+It was characteristic of Olive Deane's crooked method of reasoning,
+that she fully believed that should her plot result in a marriage
+between Eleanor and Pomeroy, her cousin would, in time to come, be far
+better pleased than if no such scheme had been hatched by her busy
+brain. Would not Matthew Kelvin's revenge be far sweeter to him if the
+woman who had rejected him so contemptuously should marry an
+adventurer like Pomeroy, who could have no other object than her
+supposed wealth in trying to win her for his wife, than if she should
+become the promised bride of Captain Dayrell, who, though he should be
+told Miss Lloyd's real history at the last moment, might still be
+chivalrous enough to make her his wife? In any case, thus it was that
+Olive reasoned with herself, and for this reason it was that John
+Pomeroy's name was never mentioned by her in connection with Miss
+Lloyd.
+
+"That was a devilish scheme of revenge that you suggested to me one
+morning in my office! I have had no peace of mind since I agreed to
+it."
+
+"You talk as a woman might talk. I certainly gave you credit for more
+strength of purpose," said Olive, with the slightest possible touch of
+contempt in her voice.
+
+"Strength of purpose has nothing to do with the point in question," he
+said, harshly. "For the first time in my life, I have wilfully
+tarnished my professional honour, and that is what annoys me so
+greatly."
+
+"A few weeks more, and the necessity for concealment will be at an
+end. Captain Dayrell will propose to Miss Lloyd--will win her consent
+to become his wife. After that you can strike your blow as soon as you
+like."
+
+Kelvin did not answer, but sat staring moodily into the fire. Olive
+regarded him furtively for a little while, without speaking.
+
+"I certainly thought that I should have seen you at Stammars on the
+evening of the ball," she said, after a time.
+
+"I had an invitation, but I did not choose to go. Too much of a
+tag-rag-and-bob-tail affair for me."
+
+"Your absence was commented upon both by Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon
+at breakfast next morning."
+
+"What does that matter to me?"
+
+"Shall I tell you something else?"
+
+"Just as you please."
+
+"After Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon had left the room, I rose from the
+table and went and sat down for a few minutes in one of the deep
+window recesses. Miss Lloyd and Captain Dayrell rose too, and went
+towards the fire-place. I suppose from what followed that Miss Lloyd
+had forgotten that I was in the room. Said the Captain to her: 'Who is
+this Mr. Kelvin, whose absence from the ball Sir Thomas seemed to
+regret so much?'--'Oh, a mere nobody--a provincial attorney,' answered
+Miss Lloyd."
+
+"She said that, did she!" muttered Kelvin.
+
+"'Oh, by-the-by,' continued the Captain, 'I want to consult a lawyer
+on a point of business while I'm down here, and I daresay this fellow
+of Sir Thomas's would do as well as anybody else.'--'Yes, I should
+rather like you to see him, Frank,' said Miss Lloyd.--'Why him in
+particular?' asked the Captain.--'Because this very man--this country
+attorney--actually had the audacity, no very long time ago, to ask me
+to become his wife!'--'Confound his impudence!' said the Captain, and
+then they both laughed, and left the room."
+
+A deep flush mounted to the face of Matthew Kelvin. He got up from the
+table, and went and rested his two elbows on the chimney-piece, and
+stood gazing into the fire without speaking. The lie just told by
+Olive, but which he had accepted as truth, had evidently touched him
+to the quick. Olive, playing with her tea-spoon, watched him narrowly.
+
+"Do you think of telling Miss Lloyd before long that she is not Miss
+Lloyd?" Olive ventured at last to remark.
+
+"No, not yet--not yet!" answered Kelvin. "Now that I have kept the
+secret so long, it shall not be told till the eve of her marriage with
+this man. I leave it for you to let me know when the proper time has
+come. Let her suffer--as she has made me suffer."
+
+With that he left the room. Nor, during Olive's visit, was the subject
+again alluded to between them.
+
+All too soon, to Olive's thinking, did her visit come to an end.
+
+"You must steal another holiday before long," said her aunt to her as
+she was putting on her bonnet on the morning of her return to
+Stammars. "Matthew has brightened up wonderfully while you have been
+here, and I can't tell you how thankful I am for it." Matthew himself
+kissed her as he handed her into the fly that was to take her back. He
+had not kissed her since that never-to-be-forgotten day at Redcar, now
+long years ago. How strangely her heart thrilled to the touch of his
+lips! "Oh! that I could be with him altogether, never to leave him
+more!" she murmured. She lay back in the fly and cried all the way to
+Stammars; but already in that crooked brain of hers the embryo of a
+strange, dark scheme was beginning to take shape and consistency,
+although as yet she herself was hardly aware of its existence.
+
+Gerald, too, had his holiday at Easter. Not that he wanted it, or even
+asked for it. To know that he was under the same roof with Eleanor,
+even though his chances of seeing her might have been few and far
+between, would have been holiday enough for him. But Sir Thomas's
+offer was made in such a way that he could not refuse to accept it. He
+had no suspicion that the prime mover in the affair was Lady Dudgeon,
+who thought that, by isolating Eleanor as much as possible, she was
+materially increasing Captain Dayrell's chances of success.
+
+The demon of Jealousy was tugging at Gerald's heart-strings as he left
+Stammars for London, and all by reason of this same Captain Dayrell.
+He knew perfectly well that that gentleman, and he alone, had been
+specially invited to Stammars. He had met the captain once or twice at
+luncheon, and had seen enough of him to know that he might prove a
+most formidable rival. Before leaving Stammars he would fain have seen
+Eleanor, would fain have given her some hint more pointed than any he
+had yet given as to the state of his feelings, and have tried to win
+from her some sort of promise in return. But, either through accident
+or design, he found himself unable to see her even for five minutes;
+and he was compelled to go away without one word of farewell, but with
+the bitter knowledge--and bitter indeed it was to him--that his rival
+was expected to reach Stammars that very day in time for dinner.
+
+"What may not such a man accomplish in ten days!" muttered poor Gerald
+to himself, as he was being borne Londonwards in the train. "On the
+one hand, a good-looking, polished man of the world--a roué,
+doubtless, but how is Eleanor to know that?--full of bright talk and
+ready wit, and with an adaptability about him that makes him seem at
+home anywhere; on the other hand, an ardent, impressionable girl, bred
+in the country, lacking in knowledge of the world and its ways, with a
+sort of high-flown sentiment about her which Dayrell would know at
+once how to twist to his own advantage. In an encounter such as this,
+which of the two is likely to come off victor?"
+
+Of a truth, poor Gerald was very miserable. He did not know, as we
+know, that he had himself supplied Eleanor with a suit of invisible
+armour, welded by Love's deft fingers, which would have rendered her
+proof against the assaults of a hundred Captain Dayrells. He blamed
+himself in that he had not yet told her of his love--told her by word
+of mouth--not dreaming that he had already told it in divers other
+ways, with a silent eloquence which is often more persuasive and
+powerful than any words.
+
+Gerald spent three days in London with Miss Bellamy and Ambrose
+Murray. Then he ran over to Paris with a view of seeking a little
+distraction among his old acquaintances in that gay city. But nothing
+could distract him for long at a time from his own jaundiced thoughts.
+The image of Captain Dayrell was a nightmare to him during the hours
+of darkness, and as a black shadow that never ceased to haunt his
+footsteps by day. His light-hearted Parisian friends told him that he
+was one of them no longer, that English fog had so permeated his
+system, that there was no longer any esprit left in him: he was triste
+and distrait; and, in a much shorter time than he had intended, he
+returned to England.
+
+Gerald's first question to the servant who opened the door to
+him was--
+
+"Is Captain Dayrell still here?"
+
+"No, sir, he went back to town two days ago: and master and missis and
+the young ladies are gone to a juvenile party, and won't be back till
+late."
+
+"Miss Lloyd and Miss Deane, are they both at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Miss Deane came back four days since. Miss Lloyd was to
+have gone with her ladyship to the party, but had a headache."
+
+After eating a little dinner hurriedly, Gerald went in search of
+Eleanor. Unless her headache had compelled her to remain upstairs, he
+thought that he should probably find her in the back drawing-room. And
+there, in fact, he did find her. Her headache was better, and she had
+been playing a capriccio by Schubert. When Gerald opened the door she
+was still at the piano, sitting with downcast eyes and a finger
+pressed to her lips--thinking. The noise of the opening door broke her
+reverie. There was a start of surprise and a sudden blush when she saw
+who it was that came into the room. She rose from her chair, advanced
+a step or two, held out both her hands, and said--
+
+"I am so glad you are come back again!"
+
+As Gerald took her hands for a moment in his, he saw that there was a
+tear trembling in each corner of her eyes, blue as the skies on an
+April morn. He saw, too, or thought he saw, behind those tears, Love,
+that, suddenly surprised, had not had time to hide himself. All her
+being seemed suffused with an indescribable tenderness. The black
+thoughts that had coiled themselves round Gerald's heart from the hour
+of his leaving Stammars till the time of his return, his jealousy of
+Dayrell, his doubts as to whether Eleanor really cared for him--all
+vanished in this moment of supreme joy, like mists before the rising
+sun. It was impossible that he should doubt any longer. An impulse
+that was uncontrollable, that swept away the floodgates of thought and
+reason, came over him. He was still holding her hands and gazing into
+her eyes. He drew her to him--close to him. He wrapped his arms round
+her, and pressed her to his bosom, her face upturned to his. He bent
+his head, and touched with his lips the blossom of hers.
+
+"Oh, my darling! if I could but tell you how much I love you!" he
+murmured in her ear. "If I could but tell you how happy it makes me to
+see you again!"
+
+Her face was rosy red, but the moment he had kissed her, the violet of
+her eyes seemed to darken, and a strange, fathomless look came into
+them, such as he had never seen before. Then the tears fell, and for
+one brief, happy moment--while the secondhand of a clock might have
+marked six--she let her head rest where he had put it. Suddenly the
+great hall bell clanged loudly. The family had come back. Eleanor
+started, as the fawn starts from the covert when it hears the hunter's
+horn. For a single instant her eyes met Gerald's. An instant later he
+was in the room alone.
+
+He stood for a little while like a man suddenly roused from sleep, who
+hardly knows where he is, or what has befallen him. "Was it my darling
+herself that rested in my arms, and whose lips I kissed just now?" he
+said. "Or have I suddenly lost my wits and only imagined it all? No!
+It must be true--it shall be true At last she is mine--mine for ever!"
+Then, like one who feels himself to be still half asleep, he walked
+out of the room and shut the door behind him.
+
+Hardly had the door closed, when Olive Deane stepped from her
+hiding-place behind the curtains of one of the windows, from which
+spot she had been an unseen witness of the foregoing scene. Her pupils
+were away, and she had nothing to do. She had gone into the back
+drawing-room at dusk, before the lamps were lighted, and had sat
+down on the cushioned seat, that ran round the inner side of the large
+bow window. Presently a servant came in to light the lamps, but went
+away again without perceiving Olive. Sitting there, behind the
+partially-drawn curtains, she was, as it were, in a tiny room of her
+own; and there she might probably have remained the whole evening
+without being discovered, had she chosen to do so. In fact, when
+Eleanor came in a little later, and sat down at the piano and began to
+play, Olive neither spoke nor stirred, but sat watching her rival with
+jealous, hungry eyes, and made no sign. Thus it fell out that she
+became an uninvited witness of the scene between Eleanor and Gerald.
+
+There was a look of triumph on Olive's pale face as she stepped out of
+her hiding-place. In her black eyes there was an unwonted sparkle.
+"Checkmate at last!" she said. "Before long, I shall be able to tell
+Matthew that the hour of his vengeance has come. What will he say when
+he knows that the accepted lover of dainty Miss Lloyd is no gentleman,
+such as Captain Dayrell, but a beggarly adventurer, without money
+enough to pay for the clothes he wears? Surely his revenge will be
+twice as sweet as it would otherwise have been. As for her--one short
+hour will strip her of name, wealth, position, and of the man to whom
+she has given her hand--for Pomeroy is not the man I take him to be if
+he does not cast her off the moment her real story is told him. Fine
+feathers make fine birds, Miss Eleanor Lloyd. We shall see how you
+will look when you are stripped of yours. Before three months are
+over, you will be grateful to anyone who will obtain for you a
+situation at forty pounds a year."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+Mr. Byrne had been in the habit of writing a line to Ambrose Murray
+every few days, in order to satisfy the latter as to how matters were
+progressing at the house in Spur Alley. In one of his brief notes he
+mentioned that Van Duren had left home on business for a couple of
+days. Gerald Warburton happened to be at Miss Bellamy's when this note
+came to hand, and Murray at once proposed that he and Gerald should
+visit Byrne and his daughter in Spur Alley, while Van Duren was out of
+town. Gerald assented, and at six o'clock that evening they found
+themselves at Van Duren's door. Mrs. Bakewell, as she ushered them
+upstairs, informed them that Miss Byrne had gone out about an hour
+previously, but that the old gentleman would no doubt be very glad to
+see them.
+
+There was no answer to the woman's knock at Mr. Byrne's door. "Poor
+old gentleman, he gets weaker and deafer every day," she said. "He's
+not long for this world, I'm afraid." Then she opened the door, and
+went into the room. Mr. Byrne was sitting, as he seemed ever to sit,
+in his great easy-chair in front of the fire. Mrs. Bakewell touched
+him on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear: "Two gentlemen to see
+you, sir."
+
+"Ech, ech! two gentlemen to see me? Tell 'em to come in: tell 'em to
+come in. And shut that door as soon as you can. That draught's enough
+to cut one in two." And with that he turned feebly round and
+confronted his visitors. And then his cough began to trouble him, and
+he could not find a word to say till Mrs. Bakewell had gone out and
+shut the door behind her.
+
+A moment later he was on his feet and grasping his visitors warmly by
+the hand. "Welcome to Spur Alley, gentlemen!" he said. "You could not
+have come at a more opportune time, except in one respect--that my
+daughter is not here to receive you as well as I. But the kettle is on
+the hob, and I've a bottle of prime Kinahan in the cupboard, together
+with a few choice Henry Clays, that were sent me by a friend the other
+day. An it please you, we will make ourselves as comfortable as
+present circumstances will admit of."
+
+After a little conversation of no particular moment, said Byrne: "I am
+glad that you have come to see me, Mr. Murray. Had you not come here,
+I should have made a point of calling upon you in the course of a few
+days."
+
+"Have you anything of importance to communicate?"
+
+"No, it is not exactly that; but I think the time has come for me to
+tell you what I have done already, and what I hope to accomplish
+before I am many days older; together with my reasons for going about
+this matter in the way I have gone about it."
+
+"I shall be very glad to hear anything you may have to say, Mr. Byrne;
+but if you would rather defer your revelation for a little while
+longer, pray do so. As I have told you already, I have every
+confidence in your management of the affair, and shall continue to
+have, whether you choose to-day to tell me anything or nothing."
+
+"You are very kind, Mr. Murray, but I think that I shall feel more
+comfortable if I tell you everything. I want either your approval or
+your disapproval of what I am doing: I want to feel the ground firm
+under my feet."
+
+"In that case I have nothing more to say. You know what an intense
+interest this matter has for me in all its bearings, great or small."
+
+"Before beginning what I have to tell you," said Byrne, "it may be
+just as well to lock the door. It was only the other day that Pringle,
+Van Duren's clerk, opened the door suddenly and put his head into the
+room. I felt sure at the time that he had either seen or suspected
+something, and would tell his master. I suppose I was mistaken, but
+for all that I don't care to run the same risk again."
+
+Having locked the door, Mr. Byrne proceeded to light a cigar, and then
+to brew himself a tumbler of grog with all the care and deliberation
+to which so important a proceeding was entitled at his hands. Gerald
+joined him over a cigar. Murray never smoked.
+
+"When you first came to me, Mr. Warburton, and spoke to me about this
+business," began Byrne after a few preliminary puffs, "I was more
+surprised than I cared to let you see. And when you told me what it
+was that you wanted me to do, I was still more surprised. And well I
+might be, as you will hear presently. You came to me, Mr. Warburton,
+in the first place, because you thought that there might be a faint
+possibility of my being able to assist you to discover the whereabouts
+of Max Jacoby. I was able to assist you in a way that you little
+dreamt of. My brother, who is two years older than I am, was
+originally a sergeant in the detective police. He retired some years
+ago, and he now keeps a little country tavern in the neighbourhood of
+Dorking. I told my brother what I wanted; he gave me a note to a
+particular friend of his who is still in the force, and it was through
+the kindness of this latter gentleman that I was enabled to inform you
+that our friend Mr. Max lived here, under this very roof, in Spur
+Alley. Having obtained that information for you, I naturally concluded
+that my task was at an end; but when you told me what further you
+wanted from me, that opened up an entirely fresh phase of the
+question."
+
+Here Mr. Byrne paused to stir his grog and refresh himself with a
+hearty drink.
+
+"The point urged by both of you," resumed Byrne, "was your belief that
+Max Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stilling; and the question you put
+before me was: By what means is it possible to bring his guilt home to
+him? Gentlemen, what method of procedure I might have adopted under
+different circumstances in order to find an answer to your question I
+cannot, of course, say, but the one which I did adopt had its origin
+in a very peculiar occurrence, which I will presently explain to you.
+My plan was this: to take lodgings in this house--my daughter and I.
+To make the acquaintance of Van Duren. To invite him to tea or supper,
+in order that he might have an opportunity of associating with Miriam,
+who, on her part, was to do her best to fascinate him--to make him
+fall in love with her, and, if possible, to propose to her. Of this
+scheme Miriam was the hinge. Everything depended upon her--upon her
+good looks and powers of fascination. But knowing the sort of man I
+had to deal with, I determined to smooth for him still further the
+road I wanted him to travel. With this end in view, I led Van Duren on
+to believe that I was rich, and I caused to be drawn up in due form a
+fictitious will, in which I bequeathed fifteen thousand pounds to my
+daughter, and of which I made Van Duren himself one of the executors.
+The bait took, as I expected it would take. Van Duren, smitten already
+by my daughter's good looks, was conquered entirely when he found that
+she was also an heiress. A few evenings ago he fell on his knees
+before her and implored her to marry him. Miriam, by my instructions,
+accepted him conditionally: he is to be a month on probation, and if
+at the end of that time she finds that she can like him sufficiently
+well, she is to accept him as her future husband. But before the month
+of probation shall have come to an end, the particular object which
+has necessitated all this scheming and preparation will, I trust, have
+been fully accomplished."
+
+Mr. Byrne had allowed his cigar to go out while talking. He now
+proceeded to relight it. This done, he again paid his respects to the
+grog.
+
+Both Ambrose Murray and Gerald were utterly puzzled. That Byrne should
+have allowed, and, by his own confession, encouraged, Van Duren to
+make love and propose to his daughter, was to them an altogether
+incomprehensible proceeding. They awaited his further revelations with
+impatience.
+
+"You have certainly succeeded in exciting our curiosity, Mr. Byrne,"
+said Gerald, "and I hope you won't send us away till you have
+thoroughly satisfied it."
+
+"Never fear, sir. You shall have the whole history before you leave
+the room. With your permission, we will retrace our steps a little. I
+have already told you that I have a brother who was formerly a
+sergeant in the detective force. He held this position at the same
+time that I was confidential clerk to Mr. Frodsham. As both of you are
+aware, I happened to be in court on the very day that you, Mr. Murray,
+were tried for the murder of Paul Stilling. One of the chief witnesses
+at the trial was our friend, Mr. Max Jacoby. After my return to
+London, I called one evening to smoke a pipe with my brother, and in
+the course of conversation the Tewkesbury murder case cropped up. I
+told Dick, who likes to hear of such matters, all about the trial.
+Jacoby's name was mentioned, and I remember remarking to my brother
+that he had far more the look of a murderer than the man in the
+dock--meaning you, sir. Well, gentlemen, some three or four months,
+passed away, when, one day, I met my brother casually in the street.
+Says he to me, 'Peter, when next you come up to my crib, I can show
+you a bit of paper that may perhaps interest you a little--a bit of
+paper with some writing on it, I mean.'--'Is the writing by anybody
+that I know?' said I. 'It's a letter,' said he, 'and the signature to
+it is "Max Jacoby"--the name of the fellow, isn't it, who was a
+witness in the Tewkesbury murder case?' 'That's the name, sure
+enough,' replied I. 'But how did a letter signed by him come into your
+possession?' 'Oh, the fellow to whom it was addressed got into a
+little difficulty. I had to search his rooms, and I found this letter
+among a lot of other papers. I took a copy of it before handing over
+the original, as I thought it might interest you.' Well, gentlemen, I
+thought very little more of the matter, as, indeed, why should I?
+Dick, however, did not forget, and the next time I called on him he
+produced the letter. I read the letter, and looked upon the affair as
+one of those curious coincidences which so frequently happen in real
+life; but I speedily forgot all about it, and the chances are that I
+should never have thought about it again had not your visit to me
+brought all the old circumstances back to my mind. After that visit I
+made it my first business to go down to Dorking and see my brother.
+The question was, had he, after all these years, got the copy of Max
+Jacoby's letter still by him? Fortunately for us, Dick is one of those
+cautious souls who hardly ever destroy anything, and who have an
+almost superstitious reverence for any scrap of paper with writing on
+it. In short, gentlemen, the letter was still in existence. Dick gave
+it up to me without difficulty, and it is in my writing-desk at the
+present moment. Before reading the letter to you, I may just add that,
+having regard to my brother's great experience, I have taken the
+liberty of consulting him at each step of this affair. It is some
+pleasure to me to be able to say that he takes the same view of the
+contents of the letter that I take, and that he agrees with all that I
+have done up to the present time."
+
+"You were quite right in consulting your brother, Mr. Byrne," said
+Murray. "It only proves still more clearly how thoroughly you have
+identified yourself with the case."
+
+Byrne crossed the room, unlocked his writing-desk, and came back with
+the letter in his hand.
+
+"The letter bears no date," said he, "but as it was found by my
+brother in the lodgings of the man to whom it was addressed only some
+three or four months after the murder--subsequent to which occurrence
+it was, in my opinion, written--the exact date is a matter of very
+minor consequence. The address given is simply, 'My old lodgings,'
+and as it was found without an envelope, there is no clue to the
+post-mark. But that, too, is a matter of little consequence. And now
+you shall hear what the letter says."
+
+Mr. Byrne threw the end of his cigar into the fire, cleared his
+throat, and opening the yellow, time-worn paper, read as under:--
+
+
+"My dear Legros,
+
+"You will be surprised to hear from me so quickly after our last
+farewell, and to see the place from which this letter is written. Yes,
+I am back once more in the old spot--penniless--a beggar! I have met
+with a most terrible misfortune. I have been shipwrecked, and
+everything I had in the world has gone to the bottom. When I say
+_everything_, you know what I mean. I mean that which cost me so
+dear--that which I ran so terrible a risk for--that for which one
+man's life, and another man's happiness, were sacrificed. But the
+curse of blood rested on it, and it has gone. You remember that when
+you parted from me on board ship, I had every prospect of a fair
+voyage, but during the night the wind began to rise, and by daylight
+next morning a terrific gale was blowing. We were still in sight of
+land, and having sprung a leak, we put back towards a little harbour
+with which our captain was acquainted. But before we could reach it,
+the ship began to founder, and then it was every man for himself. We
+saved our bare lives, and that was all. I tried all I could to bribe
+the men to take my box with them in the boat, but it was of no avail.
+'Life's sweeter than all the gold in the world,' they said. 'Your box
+may go to the devil, and we'll send you after it if we have any of
+your nonsense.' There was no use in my going abroad when I had lost
+the only inducement which would have taken me there. So here I am once
+more, the world all before me. I have just enough money left to buy me
+to-morrow's dinner. After that----? But I need not say more. I trust
+to you, my dear Legros, to send me a five-pound note by return. In
+fact, I must have it. I know too much of you, and you know too much of
+me, for either of us to decline these sweet little offices of
+friendship for the other.
+
+     "Thine,
+
+       "Max Jacoby."
+
+
+The three men looked at each other in silence as Byrne slowly refolded
+the letter.
+
+"Your familiarity with the contents of this letter," said Gerald at
+last, "has enabled you to arrive at certain conclusions in your own
+mind such as we, to whom the letter comes as an utter surprise, can no
+more than barely guess at. Do you mind telling us what those
+conclusions are?"
+
+"The conclusions I have come to are very few and very simple," said
+Byrne; "simple, inasmuch as, to my mind, knowing what I know, they are
+plainly discoverable through the thin veil of obscurity in which the
+contents of the letter are purposely involved. My conclusions are
+these: That this letter was written within a very short time after the
+murder and subsequent trial. That the property whose loss Jacoby
+bewails in such bitter terms was neither more nor less than the
+proceeds of the murder, with which he was going abroad. That when the
+ship went to the bottom, Jacoby's ill-gotten gains went with her, and
+that Jacoby himself, having no longer the means of going abroad, came
+back to London in a state of utter destitution, as is evidenced by his
+begging the loan of a five-pound note from his quondam friend."
+
+"Yes," said Gerald, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I quite
+agree with you that the construction which you have put upon the
+contents of this letter is a most feasible one, and I am inclined to
+think that it is also the true one. But even granting that such be the
+case, I confess I am still at a loss to understand in what way a
+proposal of marriage from Jacoby to your daughter can forward by one
+single step the special end we have in view--to bring home the crime
+to the real murderer."
+
+"That, too, is where I am puzzled," said Murray; "for, singular as
+this letter is, and confirmatory as it is of the belief I have all
+along maintained, that Jacoby is the guilty man, I altogether fail to
+see in what way Mr. Byrne's late proceedings tend to fix the guilt
+upon him."
+
+Byrne, looking from one to the other, rubbed his hands and chuckled.
+"I thought that part of the business would prove a stumbling-block,"
+he said. "But if you will allow me, I can lift you over it very
+easily. You will have observed that Jacoby's letter enters into no
+particulars. It gives neither the name of the ship, the date of
+sailing, nor the port he sailed from. We cannot advance a step beyond
+the letter till we make ourselves masters of that information. It is
+quite evident that there is only one source from which we can obtain
+it, and that is from Jacoby himself. How are we to get out of him any
+information respecting this, the great secret of his life? Were you or
+I to question him, we should merely arouse his suspicions and shut his
+lips for ever. Gentlemen, no one can worm the secret out of this man
+but a woman--and only a woman that he loves. Gentlemen, Max Jacoby
+loves my daughter, and has asked her to become his wife. On my
+daughter, therefore, devolves the duty of making this man reveal what
+he has probably never told yet to any living soul. And now you
+understand the point at which we have arrived."
+
+"Clearly," said Gerald; "and upon my word, I am doubtful whether the
+same result could have been arrived at by means other than those which
+you have seen fit to make use of."
+
+Ambrose Murray did not speak, but he put out his arm, and grasped
+Byrne by the hand in a fashion far more eloquent than words.
+
+"If Mr. Byrne will allow me, I will proceed just one step further in
+the matter," said Gerald. "Assuming for a moment that we have
+succeeded in getting out of Jacoby all the information we want from
+him; that we know when and from where he sailed, and the name of the
+ship--what then? The only evidence on which it would be possible to
+convict him will still be at the bottom of the sea."
+
+Before Byrne could say a word in reply, there came a sudden knocking
+at the door, and the voice of Bakewell was heard outside: "A letter
+for Mr. Byrne."
+
+Murray, his mind impressed with what had gone before, said solemnly:
+"Yes, it will still be, what it must remain for ever--a Secret of the
+Sea!"
+
+Byrne held up a warning finger. In one minute he seemed to become
+twenty years older. He hobbled feebly towards the door, coughing
+meanwhile in a way that was pitiful to hear. "All right, Bakewell, I'm
+coming--I'm coming," he cried, querulously. Then, as he opened the
+door, Miriam's voice was heard carolling gaily as she ran quickly
+upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+POD'S REVELATION.
+
+
+Miss Lloyd pleaded a violent headache as an excuse for her
+non-attendance at the breakfast-table the morning after the scene
+between herself and Gerald in the back drawing-room. She felt as if
+she could not face any one for a little while; but, more than all, the
+possibility of meeting Gerald frightened her. To have gone in to
+breakfast, and have found him there, would have set her heart
+fluttering and have brought the tell-tale colour to her cheeks, and
+would almost infallibly have betrayed her secret to every one. No; she
+felt as if she could not meet any one just yet--that she did not want
+to meet anyone. She asked for no greater happiness at present than to
+sit alone by her dressing-room fire, and live over again in memory
+last night's wondrous scene. She had only to shut her eyes, and every
+word, and look, and tone, came back to her with the most realistic
+force. What a change three short minutes had wrought in her life! She
+seemed to have lived a hundred years since yesterday morning; or,
+rather, the Eleanor Lloyd of yesterday was dead and buried--dead and
+buried because the poor creature had not known what it was to love!
+
+It was, indeed, like the beginning of a new life to her. "To think
+that I have been loving him all along, and did not know it!" she said
+to herself, with a little laugh. "I wonder how long it is since he
+first found out that he loved me. I will make him tell me all about it
+after awhile."
+
+Then her cheeks flushed, and her heart beat faster at the thought of
+all that such a sweet possibility implied.
+
+"How glad I am that he is poor and I am rich," she said. "All that I
+have shall be his. My money will lend wings to his ambition." Then
+came the thought, "When shall I see him again, and what will he say
+when I do see him?"
+
+She felt that she dreaded and yet longed for the time to come when
+they should meet again. It would be trying enough to have to meet him
+in the company of others, but the thought of encountering him alone,
+while sending a delicious thrill through her, made her quake with
+fear.
+
+On one point she was quite determined--she would shun a private
+interview with him as long as possible. She was quite aware that such
+an interview must take place sooner or later, but it should be
+altogether of his seeking, not of hers. She knew her own weakness. She
+knew that whenever Mr. Pomeroy should say to her, "Eleanor, I love
+you, and I want you to become my wife," all power of resistance would
+be taken from her, and that she should have no alternative but to
+yield. At present she had not yielded, and she would try to keep out
+of his way for a little while longer. When next he should encounter
+her, the spear of his love would smite her, and she must needs become
+his bondswoman for ever.
+
+Lady Dudgeon sent some breakfast upstairs, and, by-and-by, she made
+her appearance in person. She wanted to satisfy herself that there was
+nothing seriously the matter with Miss Lloyd. It was but a simple
+headache, Eleanor informed her.
+
+"But you are slightly feverish, child," persisted her ladyship; "and
+you look as if you had not had enough sleep."
+
+Which statement was true enough. Some sensible young ladies there are
+whose healthy slumbers not even the imprint of Love's first kiss upon
+their lips has the slightest power to disturb; but not one of such
+strong-minded maidens was our foolish Eleanor.
+
+"I will look up again about eleven," said her ladyship, "and if you
+are not better by that time I shall make you up a little mixture of my
+own."
+
+Eleanor promised herself that she would be better by that time, as her
+ladyship's mixtures--she prided herself on being able to physic all
+her household without calling in the doctor--had the invariable
+property of being excessively nauseous.
+
+She hugged herself with a little shiver of delight when she was left
+alone again to think her own thoughts. What a surprise it would be to
+Lady Dudgeon--and, indeed, to everybody! Of course, she would be told
+that Mr. Pomeroy had only made love to her because she was rich; but
+in her own heart she knew so much better than that!
+
+All at once it struck her that there were one or two notes she ought
+to write this morning; so she went to her davenport, and took pen and
+paper. But, somehow, her thoughts would go wool-gathering, and the
+notes refused to get themselves written. Then she began to scribble on
+the sheet before her. She wrote her own name several times over, and
+then, without knowing it, she found that she had written "John
+Pomeroy." Really, it looked very nice. Then the question put itself to
+her--"How should I have to address him in case he were to ask me to
+write to him?" Then she wrote, "Dear Mr. Pomeroy;" but that would be
+too formal as between engaged people. Then she tried, "My dear John,"
+and "My darling John"--decided improvements both. Then, with the tip
+of the pen between her lips, and her head a little on one side, she
+studied the general effect of what she had written. Not satisfied with
+that, and being quite sure that she was all alone, she tried the
+effect of speaking the magic words aloud--though, indeed, it was
+little more than a timid whisper. Every syllable spoken thus was full
+of hidden music. Then she took up the pen again, and, hardly conscious
+of what she was doing, she wrote, "My own dear husband." But this was
+too much. With a little cry, and a sudden blush, she crumpled up the
+paper, ran across the room, and dropped it into the fire. Next moment
+she thought she heard the sound of voices. She went to the door,
+opened it softly, and listened.
+
+It was as she had thought, Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were talking
+together on the floor below. She could not make out what they were
+talking about--she did not want to do that--all that she wanted was
+just to hear the sound of Pomeroy's voice. How strangely it thrilled
+her this morning to hear that voice again, which she could already
+have singled out from ten thousand others, and to hear which was, for
+her, to hear a sweeter music than could have been distilled from all
+the other sounds in the universe!
+
+The last time she had heard that voice was when it spoke to her. What
+were the words? "If I could only tell you how much I love you!" It was
+to her those words were spoken--to her, Eleanor Lloyd! But surely it
+was not yesterday, but long, long years ago that she had heard them!
+She felt already as if she had loved him all her life.
+
+And then his lips had pressed hers, once--twice--thrice! That, indeed,
+was something fresh--the revelation of a new life! And then his arms
+had twined round her--strong, comforting--and had pressed her to his
+bosom as if she were a little child. And in that one timid glance
+which she had shot up into his eyes, had she not seen there depths of
+tenderness and devotion that were to be hers--hers alone--through all
+the days of her life yet to come? What a happy, happy girl she was
+this morning!
+
+She was quite startled to hear the clock strike eleven. How quickly
+the morning had flown! Lady Dudgeon came up to see how she was, but
+with her came Eleanor's particular friend, Miss Lorrimore, who
+announced, in the impetuous way usual with her, that she had come to
+fetch Eleanor away for a couple of days. Eleanor was by no means loth
+to go. It was as if a door of escape had suddenly opened for her. In
+half an hour she was ready, Lady Dudgeon's mild opposition being
+overruled by the two girls without compunction.
+
+Miss Lorrimore's ponies had been waiting all this time. As Eleanor was
+being driven through the avenue, her quick eyes saw Sir Thomas and Mr.
+Pomeroy walking together in one of the side paths a little distance
+away.
+
+"I should like to stop and speak to Sir Thomas," said Miss Lorrimore.
+
+"No, no; don't stop!" said Eleanor; "but drive on faster, if you love
+me."
+
+The gentlemen raised their hats, Eleanor fluttered her handkerchief
+for a moment, and that was the last that she and Gerald saw of each
+other for some time to come.
+
+In the first place, Eleanor's visit to Miss Lorrimore, instead of
+being for two days only, extended over five. In the second place, when
+she did get back to Stammars, she found that Gerald was away in London
+on business for Sir Thomas. This was a little disappointment to her,
+for by this time she was growing impatient to see him again. She did
+not like to ask how soon he was expected back, and no one volunteered
+to tell her.
+
+How bitterly she blamed herself now for running away from him! What a
+strange, flighty girl he must take her to be! Perhaps, as she had so
+deliberately run away from him, he would not think her worthy of
+further notice, and would regard all that had happened between them as
+nothing more than a foolish dream. This thought was almost unbearable,
+and now was Eleanor as wretched as she had been happy before. But to
+be frequently wretched and miserable is part of the penalty incurred
+by all who are so weak-minded as to fall in love. Such people are not
+to be pitied.
+
+Gerald, on his side, being smitten with the same disorder, was subject
+to the same exaltations and depressions, had his hours of fever and
+his hours of chill. At one time he felt sure that Eleanor loved him a
+little in return. Had he not seen, or fancied that he saw, a world of
+love and trust in her eyes during those few brief seconds when she had
+let him press her to his heart? At another time he felt sure that his
+roughness and impetuosity had frightened her: that she was staying
+away from Stammars on purpose to avoid him; that he had offended her
+past recovery. It was almost a relief to be sent up to London on
+business by Sir Thomas, who, being about this time confined to his
+room with a severe cold, was obliged to make use of Gerald in various
+ways. Gerald hoped that by the time he got back from town Eleanor
+would have returned to Stammars, in which case he had quite made up
+his mind that he would lose no time in deciding his fate once for all.
+
+In his more hopeful moments, it was very pleasant to him to think that
+Eleanor had learned, or was learning, to love him for himself alone.
+As a poor man he had wooed her, and as a poor man he should win her.
+He often speculated as to what would be the effect upon her of the
+news which he must of necessity tell her before he could make her his
+wife. In the first place, he could not marry her under a false name.
+He must necessarily tell her that her name was not Eleanor Lloyd, but
+Eleanor Murray. Then would follow, as a matter of course, her father's
+story, which would, in its turn, elicit the fact that, as Jacob Lloyd
+had died without a will, Eleanor had no right to a single sixpence of
+the property he had left behind him. Next would have to come the
+telling of everything to Ambrose Murray. Last but not least, would
+come the revelation to Eleanor that the man she was going to marry was
+not John Pomeroy, but Gerald Warburton. One fact he would, if it were
+possible to do so, keep from her till after their marriage--he would
+not let her know that he was the heir to Jacob Lloyd's property--to
+the wealth which she had all along believed to be hers. It was his
+fancy that she should marry him in the belief that he was a poor man.
+All the greater would be her after-surprise.
+
+It so fell out that a couple of days after Eleanor's return from her
+visit to Miss Lorrimore, and while Gerald was still absent from
+Stammars, Mr. Pod Piper, whom it is hoped the reader has not quite
+forgotten, was sent there with certain papers that required Sir
+Thomas's signature. Having taken the papers into the library, Pod was
+told to go and amuse himself for half an hour, by which time the
+documents would be ready for him to take back to Mr. Kelvin.
+
+Pod was one of those people who never find much difficulty in amusing
+themselves. His first proceeding was to make his way to the kitchen
+and ask whether they had got any cold sirloin and strong ale with
+which to refresh a weary wayfarer. Pod was not unknown at Stammars,
+and his needs were duly attended to. After that he strolled into the
+garden, and ensconcing himself behind a large laurel, where he could
+not be seen from any of the windows, he proceeded to light and smoke
+the remaining half of a cigar which he happened to have by him. Cigars
+being a luxury that he could not often indulge in, Pod generally
+contrived to make one last him for two occasions.
+
+When the cigar was smoked down to the last half-inch, Pod thought that
+he would take a turn round the conservatory, and as he felt sure that
+the crusty-looking old gardener had never seen him before, it struck
+him that there would be no harm in trying to impress the old fellow
+with the belief that he was being honoured by the presence of some
+guest of distinction--"some young swell of the upper ten," as Pod put
+it to himself. Accordingly, before opening the glass door of the
+conservatory, Mr. Piper produced from his pocket a pair of rather
+dingy lavender kid gloves, one of which he put on, leaving the other
+to be carried in an easy, dégagé style, such as would seem natural to
+a young fellow whose uncle was a marquis at the very least. The fact,
+however, was, that the gloves were odd ones, and as they were both
+intended for the right hand, Pod could not conveniently wear more than
+one of them at a time.
+
+Pod's next proceeding was to give his hat a careful polish with the
+sleeve of his coat, and then to cock it a little more on one side of
+his head than he usually wore it. Then one end of his white
+handkerchief was allowed to hang negligently out of his pocket. Then,
+from some mysterious receptacle Pod produced an eye-glass. Many weary
+hours had he spent in his attempts to master the nice art of wearing
+an eye-glass easily and without conscious effort. But as yet his
+labours could hardly be said to be crowned with success, seeing that
+the glass would persist in dropping from his eye at awkward moments,
+when, by all the laws that regulate such matters, it ought to have
+been most firmly fixed in its orbit.
+
+As soon as Pod's little arrangements were completed, he opened the
+door, and marched boldly into the conservatory. The old gardener
+glared sulkily at him, as gardeners have a habit of doing when any one
+invades what they look upon as their private domains. But Pod, caring
+nothing for sulky looks, swaggered up and down the flowery aisles,
+making believe, glass in eye, to read the different Latin labels, as
+though he thoroughly understood them. Presently, he caught sight of a
+little group of people crossing one of the garden-paths outside.
+Looking more closely, he saw that one of them was Olive Deane; the
+others, judging from their appearance, were her two pupils and some
+friends of theirs.
+
+The sight of Miss Deane seemed to surprise Mr. Piper into temporary
+forgetfulness both of his eye-glass and the Latin labels. He sat down
+in a brown study, and was still sitting, deep in thought, when,
+hearing one of the doors clash, he looked up and saw Miss Lloyd coming
+slowly towards him. "Why, here she is--her very self! And isn't she a
+beauty!" he muttered. "No time like the present. I'll tell her now."
+And with that his eye-glass and his lavender gloves were next moment
+smuggled safely out of sight.
+
+Although Pod had at once recognized Eleanor, it is doubtful whether
+she would have recollected him had he not spoken to her.
+
+"Beg pardon, but are you not Miss Lloyd?" he said, as she reached the
+spot where he was standing.
+
+"Yes, I am Miss Lloyd," she said, with a smile, for Pod, much to his
+own shame and disgust, was blushing violently. "Have you anything to
+say to me?"
+
+"Yes, miss, something that I should have told you long ago if you had
+not been away in London. You don't recollect me, but I shall never
+forget you. My name is Podley Piper, and I'm in Mr. Kelvin's office at
+Pembridge."
+
+Had Pod been an articled clerk, instead of being the office youth he
+was, he could not have mentioned this fact with an air of greater
+dignity.
+
+"It was you, miss, who were so kind to my mother last spring, when she
+was ill. You sent her wine, and jelly, and coals, and you weren't
+above going and seeing her yourself. She would never have come round
+as soon as she did if it had not been for your kindness--and I thank
+you for it with all my heart!"
+
+"It is very little that you have to thank me for," replied Eleanor. "I
+hope your mother has had no return of her old complaint?"
+
+"She is well and hearty, thank you, miss, and she often says that if
+all rich people were like you, the world would be a pleasanter place
+to live in than it is."
+
+"I am glad to have seen you, and to have news of your mother," said
+Eleanor. "But I think you said you had something to tell me."
+
+"Yes, miss, I have. Do you know my governor, Mr. Kelvin?"
+
+"I have known Mr. Kelvin for several years. But why do you ask?"
+
+"Then perhaps you know a friend of Mr. Kelvin--Mr. Pomeroy?"
+
+"I certainly am acquainted with a gentleman of that name. But I did
+not know that Mr. Pomeroy was a friend of Mr. Kelvin."
+
+"Oh, yes, but he is. It was through Mr. Kelvin that he was made
+secretary to Sir Thomas."
+
+"Indeed!" said Eleanor, coldly. "But that is hardly the news you have
+to tell me?" Despite herself, she began to tremble a little. What was
+this strange-looking boy about to tell her?
+
+"I'm coming to the news presently," said Pod. "May I ask whether Miss
+Olive Deane is still at Stammars?"
+
+"Miss Deane is still here."
+
+"Of course you know that she is Mr. Kelvin's cousin?"
+
+"I believe I have been told so."
+
+"Well, Miss Lloyd, one day I happened to overhear a conversation in
+Mr. Kelvin's office between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy, in which your
+name was rather frequently mentioned."
+
+"My name mentioned in a conversation between Miss Deane and Mr.
+Pomeroy! What could they have to say about me?"
+
+She was trembling more than ever now, and to hide it was obliged to
+sit down on the chair recently vacated by Pod.
+
+"You know, miss," said Pod, with an air of self-justification, "I am
+not in the habit of listening to conversations that it is not intended
+I should hear, and it was only the mention of your name, and a certain
+remark that was made about you, that made me do so in this case."
+
+"But they could have nothing to say about me--nothing, that is, of any
+consequence either to you or me."
+
+"Well, I can only say this, that neither Miss Deane nor Mr. Pomeroy
+mean any good to you, and I want to put you on your guard against
+them."
+
+Eleanor could not speak for a moment or two. What terrible abyss was
+this which seemed opening at her feet?
+
+"But what do you mean by putting me on my guard against Miss Deane and
+Mr. Pomeroy?"
+
+"What I say is this: beware of both of them. Both of them are snakes
+in the grass."
+
+"You are a very strange young man, and cannot surely know what you are
+saying," urged poor Eleanor. "I am quite sure that there must be a
+great mistake somewhere."
+
+"No mistake whatever, miss. If I leave my situation to-morrow, I'll
+tell you. Mr. Pomeroy had been away from England for some time, and
+when he first came to my master, about four months ago, he hadn't a
+penny in the world."
+
+"Possibly not," said Eleanor, coldly. "But poverty is no disgrace."
+
+"He came to Mr. Kelvin, who had known him years before, and Kelvin
+lent him fifty pounds."
+
+"Friends should always help each other. But how came you to know all
+this?"
+
+"Through the conversation that I overheard between Miss Deane and Mr.
+Pomeroy.
+
+"Really," said Eleanor, as she rose, "I fail to see in what way these
+details concern me. I must wish you good morning, Mr. Piper, and----"
+
+"One moment, if you please," said Pod, earnestly. "You don't know why
+Mr. Pomeroy was male secretary to Sir Thomas, do you?"
+
+"That is a point about which I have never troubled myself to think: it
+does not concern me."
+
+"He was sent to Stammars that he might have a chance of marrying an
+heiress."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"And that heiress was to be you, miss."
+
+"Me!" Eleanor sank down in the chair again.
+
+"Miss Deane said you were worth twenty thousand pounds, and as Mr.
+Pomeroy was so poor, why shouldn't he pretend to fall in love with you
+and marry you?"
+
+There was a dead pause. The plashing of a tiny fountain hidden
+somewhere among the foliage was the only sound that broke the silence:
+it was a sound that will dwell in Eleanor's memory as long as she
+lives.
+
+"Are you quite sure that you did not dream all this?" she said,
+speaking very faintly.
+
+"Every word I tell you is as true as gospel. I took down the
+conversation in shorthand, and I've got my notes at home now. The
+grand point was this: Mr. Pomeroy was to have the place of secretary
+to Sir Thomas, so that he might be near you and have an opportunity of
+making love to you. You are not offended with me, miss?"
+
+"Offended! oh, no; but I am sure you have made some dreadful mistake."
+
+"I thought it only right to put you on your guard against those
+two--Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy. And there's my governor, too, he's as
+thick in the plot as the others. It was he who found the other one the
+money to buy clothes with to come here, so that he might look like a
+gentleman. It's your money, miss, that's the temptation," concluded
+Pod, philosophically. "Rich people never know who are their real
+friends."
+
+Eleanor did not answer. She no longer seemed to see him, or even to be
+aware of his presence. There was a dumb, despairing, far-away look on
+her white face that filled him with awe. He felt that he dare
+not say another word. Leaving her there, sitting on the chair, one
+hand tightly interlocked in the other, staring into vacancy with
+wide-open eyes that seemed to see nothing, he stole away on tip-toe,
+and presently, with a great sense of relief, found himself in the
+fresh air outside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+A GLASS OF BURGUNDY.
+
+
+The cold caught by Sir Thomas Dudgeon a few days after the ball at
+Stammars culminated in an attack of low fever, which confined him to
+the house for some weeks, and delayed the return of the family to
+Harley Street at the date first fixed upon.
+
+While the baronet was thus shut up within doors, a certain estate was
+advertised for sale, of which he thought he should like to become the
+purchaser. Being unable to attend to the matter in person, he put it
+into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who, in the course of the business,
+found himself, much against his will, under the necessity of going to
+Stammars, from which place he had kept himself carefully aloof for
+several months.
+
+The day before going there, Kelvin mentioned his intended visit to his
+mother, mentioned it casually in conversation, and as a matter of no
+consequence, for the old lady knew of no disinclination on his part to
+go to Stammars, and had not the remotest suspicion that he had ever
+been in love with Miss Lloyd.
+
+As soon as Matthew had left the room, Mrs. Kelvin sat down and penned
+a short note to Miss Deane, informing her that her cousin would be at
+Stammars on the morrow, and asking her to see him and write back her
+opinion as to how he seemed in health, whether better or worse than
+when Olive saw him at Easter.
+
+The note reached Olive by the evening post while she was correcting
+her pupils' exercises. She read it through once and then put it
+quietly into her pocket: but she went up to her room earlier than
+usual, and it was long past midnight before she went to bed. She put
+out her candle--she always used to say that she could think better in
+the dark--and drew up her blinds, and paced her room for hours in the
+dim starlight. This visit of her cousin to Stammars might mean so much
+to her!
+
+The main reason which, in the first instance, had induced her to come
+to Stammars no longer existed. Her scheme for bringing Pomeroy and
+Miss Lloyd together, that they might have an opportunity of falling in
+love with each other, had succeeded almost beyond her expectations.
+She had partly seen, and partly overheard, what had passed between
+them that evening in the back drawing-room. Her belief, as regarded
+Pomeroy, was that he was merely playing a part in order to win an
+heiress for his wife; but that Eleanor was really in love with
+Pomeroy, she felt equally sure. So sure, indeed, was she on this
+point, that all fear of Matthew Kelvin ever inducing Miss Lloyd to
+change her mind and look upon him with kindly eyes had vanished from
+Olive's mind for ever. Let her cousin marry whomsoever he might, there
+was one person in the world who would never become his wife, and that
+person was Eleanor Lloyd--on that point there could be no possible
+mistake. So far, she had cut her way clearly and boldly towards the
+end she had had in view from the first. But much remained for her
+still to do. In the first place, she must satisfy her cousin that all
+chance of his ever winning Miss Lloyd was utterly at an end. This
+there would not be much difficulty in effecting; but something much
+harder would remain to be achieved before she could hope to benefit in
+the least by all that had gone before. There was no hope of her ever
+being able to win her cousin's affections, no hope that he would ever
+ask her to become his wife, unless the opportunity were given her of
+seeing him and being with him daily--unless, in fact, he and she were
+living under the same roof. But how was such an end to be
+accomplished? True it was that she might, on some easily-invented
+pretext, throw up her position at Stammars, and go and live with her
+aunt for a week or two while looking out for another situation. But
+that was not what she wanted. Her next situation might take her a
+couple of hundred miles away, and so separate her from her cousin for
+years--for ever. It were better to remain at Stammars than run such a
+risk as that. True it was that she had lived under her cousin's roof
+for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all
+appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view.
+But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether
+due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say
+to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss
+Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent
+disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed,
+the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye,
+for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his
+thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin
+was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world
+because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his
+mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a
+fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably
+given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength
+of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school
+himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an
+episode.
+
+Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come
+the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail
+herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of
+which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be
+there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had
+set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the
+night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is
+it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so
+that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?"
+
+Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep
+across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which
+she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered
+her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last
+clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!"
+she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn.
+"Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place
+by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no
+one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?"
+
+She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks,
+and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still
+the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind,
+"Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a
+question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered
+in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it
+seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her
+hand.
+
+Matthew Kelvin reached Stammars about noon. Olive had asked one of the
+servants to let her know when he arrived. Then she wrote a little note
+and sent it to him in the library, where he was closeted with Sir
+Thomas. "Come and have luncheon with me in my room as soon as your
+business is over." Then she put on another dress, and laid out her
+bonnet, mantle, and gloves, so that they would be ready at a moment's
+notice. She had quite made up her mind that she should go back to
+Pembridge with her cousin.
+
+Half an hour later, Mr. Kelvin was ushered into her sitting-room,
+where a comfortable little luncheon was already laid.
+
+"I suppose you would have gone away without coming near me," said
+Olive, as she held out her hand, "if I had not sent you that note?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Kelvin, pleasantly. "Why should you think such
+hard things of me? Rather a comfortable little place, this of yours,"
+he added, as he looked round; "but I daresay you feel rather lonely
+and mopy here at times."
+
+"Very seldom. You know that I am not one who cares for much society,
+and so long as I have plenty of books, I content myself tolerably
+well."
+
+"When do you go back to Harley Street?"
+
+"That all depends on the state of Sir Thomas's health. And that
+reminds me that I have not yet asked after my aunt."
+
+"Oh, my mother is pretty much as usual, I think. Of course, like all
+of us, she does not grow younger. I believe she would be better if she
+didn't fidget herself so unnecessarily about me."
+
+"My aunt does not fidget herself without cause, Matthew. You don't
+look at all well--hardly as well as when I saw you at Easter."
+
+"There, there! you women are all alike," he said, a little
+impatiently. "Never mind my looks, but give me something to eat. I
+believe my drive through the crisp spring air has given me an
+appetite, and that's more than I've had for ever so long a time. You
+don't look over bright yourself, Olive," he added, as he sat down at
+table. "A little bit worried, perhaps--eh?"
+
+"No; I don't know that I have anything particular to worry me."
+
+"How do you and the dowager get on together?"
+
+"Oh, pretty well. She does not interfere a great deal with me, and I
+keep out of her way as much as possible."
+
+"That's sensible on both sides."
+
+He certainly looked older and more careworn, as he sat there, than she
+had ever seen him look before. It made her heart ache to look at him.
+If she could but have comforted him! if she could but have laid his
+head against her bosom, and have kissed back the pleasant light into
+his eyes, and the sunny smile to his lips, as she remembered them in
+the days before the shadow of Eleanor Lloyd had ever crossed his path!
+But that might not be.
+
+"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd nowadays?" asked Kelvin, presently,
+in as indifferent a tone as he could assume.
+
+"I generally see her at breakfast and luncheon when she is at home.
+Not often besides."
+
+"She is quite well, I suppose?"
+
+"Quite well, so far as I know. Why should she not be?"
+
+"Anything come of that affair between her and Captain--Captain, what
+do you call him?"
+
+"Captain Dayrell, you mean. No; I believe the affair is broken off
+entirely. I have reason to believe that when it came to the point,
+Miss Lloyd would have nothing more to do with him."
+
+"Ah! what a little coquette she is! If a man like this Captain Dayrell
+is not good enough for her, what on earth does she expect? I'll take a
+glass of wine, if you please, Olive."
+
+He had brightened up all in a moment. He looked quite a different
+individual from the gloomy, careworn man who had entered the room only
+ten minutes before. "In his heart he loves her still," said Olive to
+herself, and her own heart overflowed with bitterness at the thought.
+From that moment any scrap of compunction that might hitherto have
+clung to her was flung to the winds.
+
+She poured him out a glass of Burgundy with a hand that betrayed not
+the slightest tremor before she spoke.
+
+"Is it not possible, Matthew," she said, in that icy tone which she
+knew so well how to assume when it suited her to do so, "is it not
+possible that Miss Lloyd's refusal to entertain the proposition of
+Captain Dayrell might arise from some other motive than mere
+coquetry?"
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked, quickly and suspiciously. "When you ask
+an ambiguous question like that, Miss Deane, you have generally got
+the answer to it ready at your tongue's end."
+
+"Thank you, Matthew," said Olive, quietly. "When Miss Lloyd turned her
+back on Captain Dayrell, is it not possible that she might be
+influenced in doing so by her liking for some one else?"
+
+Mr. Kelvin's face grew a shade paler, and he did not answer at once.
+
+"If you know so much, you can doubtless tell me the rest," he said, at
+last. "Let us have no more beating about the bush. You can, if you
+choose to do so, tell me the name of the person for whom you believe
+Miss Lloyd to have a preference. Who is the man?" His last question
+might have been a cry wrung from him by his own agony, so sharp and
+bitter was its tone.
+
+"What will you say if I tell you that it is your friend, Mr. Pomeroy?"
+
+"Pomeroy! Eleanor Lloyd in love with Pomeroy!" he cried, as he started
+to his feet. "No; I will never believe it. It is a lie!"
+
+"A lie, Matthew? Thank you again. It is but a few evenings ago since I
+saw--myself unseen--the head of Eleanor Lloyd laid on the shoulder of
+John Pomeroy: since I saw the lips of John Pomeroy pressed without
+reproof to those of Eleanor Lloyd. Such is my evidence. Set on it what
+value you please."
+
+He seized a knife suddenly, as though he would have liked to stab her
+to the heart. But her eyes met his unflinchingly, as she stood
+opposite to him, and presently he sank back into his chair, and let
+his arm fall on to the table, and so sat with bowed head for a time,
+without speaking.
+
+"This is your doing and my mother's!" he said at last, speaking slowly
+and bitterly. "It was through you that this vagabond had the
+opportunity given him of doing what he has done!"
+
+"How was either I or your mother to know that what has happened would
+happen?" asked Olive. She felt that the time had not yet come when it
+would be safe for her to tell her cousin that Pomeroy had been brought
+to Stammars for the express purpose of falling in love with Miss
+Lloyd.
+
+"To think of Eleanor Lloyd so far forgetting herself as to fall in
+love with an adventurer like Pomeroy! It seems impossible."
+
+"You seem to forget that Pomeroy passes here as a gentleman. A poor
+one, it may be, but still a gentleman. And if you know anything at all
+of Miss Lloyd, you must know this, that the fact of Mr. Pomeroy being
+without a shilling in the world would not influence her estimate of
+him in the slightest possible degree."
+
+"We will soon strip his fine feathers off him," exclaimed Kelvin, "and
+expose him for what he really is--an adventurer and a vagabond. I'll
+go to Sir Thomas this very day, and tell him everything."
+
+Olive had quite expected that her cousin would be angry when he heard
+her news, and would threaten to expose everything to Sir Thomas; but
+she had kept an arrow in store for such an occasion, which she now
+proceeded to let fly.
+
+"How inconsistent you are, cousin Matthew!" she exclaimed. "Why has
+certain news been kept back from Eleanor Lloyd for so long a time?
+That question you can answer as well as I can. Cannot you, therefore,
+comprehend how much more complete will be your revenge on this woman
+who rejected you with contempt and scorn, if, through your agency, she
+is hoodwinked into marrying a penniless adventurer like Pomeroy,
+rather than a gentleman and a man of honour like Captain Dayrell?
+Cannot you, I say, comprehend all this?"
+
+"The question did not strike me in that light," said Kelvin, in the
+quick way habitual with him when any fresh idea was put before him.
+"If I have wished once, I have wished a thousand times," he said,
+"that I had never hidden from Eleanor that which it was my duty to
+have told her the moment the knowledge came into my possession. But
+such regrets are useless."
+
+"They are worse than useless," said Olive, in her cold, measured
+tones, as she looked fixedly at him. There was something either in her
+words or her look that stung him.
+
+"You think me weak," he said; "but how is it possible for you to
+understand the thoughts and feelings of a man placed as I am."
+
+"You will not go to Sir Thomas to-day, as you said you would," was all
+she answered.
+
+"No, I will not go to Sir Thomas. She rejected me and she has accepted
+Pomeroy. Let her abide by her choice. Having kept the secret so long,
+I will keep it a little while longer. Let her find out, when no remedy
+can avail, that this man sought her for her money alone--that money
+which belongs to another. Had she been the beggar's daughter of
+Bethnal Green, I would have made her my wife."
+
+He had spoken passionately, and he now got up and walked to the
+window, and stood I gazing out of it, as if to hide his emotion.
+
+He had half emptied his glass of Burgundy when he first sat down.
+Olive now filled it up, while he stood thus with his back towards her,
+and then, quickly and deftly, from a little phial which she extracted
+from the bosom of her dress, she let fall into the wine three drops of
+some thick, dark tincture. Very white, but very determined, was the
+face that was turned next moment on Mr. Kelvin.
+
+"You have scarcely tasted anything. Are you not going to finish your
+cutlet?"
+
+"No," he said, as he turned from the window. "My appetite has gone. I
+can't eat."
+
+"You will, at least, drink this glass of wine. If you cannot eat, you
+must drink."
+
+She took up the glass of Burgundy as she spoke, and handed it to him
+with a hand that was as steady as his own. He took it without a word,
+and drank it slowly to the last drop. Then he gave her back the glass,
+making a slight grimace as he did so.
+
+"Either my palate is out of order," he said, "or else Sir Thomas's
+wine merchant is a vendor of rubbish." Then he added, "I promised that
+I would give Sir Thomas another look in before I went back, but I'll
+go first and have a weed in the shrubbery. A quarter of an hour in the
+fresh air will bring me down to my ordinary business level."
+
+"I shall want to see you again before you go," said Olive. "I have a
+tiny parcel for you to take to my aunt."
+
+Her heart was fluttering so fast, that she was obliged to press one
+hand over it in an effort to still its wild beating.
+
+"All right. I'll look in again for a minute before starting," said Mr.
+Kelvin, as he took up his hat.
+
+He was just about to open the door, when Olive, whose eyes had been
+anxiously following him, saw him stagger slightly, and lift his hand
+to his head. She was by his side in a moment.
+
+"What is it, Matthew? Are you not well?"
+
+"It was nothing. Only a sudden giddiness. I shall be better when I get
+into the fresh air."
+
+Then he opened the door and went out.
+
+Olive went to the window, from which place the side-door could be seen
+by which her cousin would gain access to the grounds Even her lips
+seemed to have lost their colour this afternoon. She stood there,
+rubbing one thin white hand against the other, with a slow, restless
+motion, as though that were the only outlet she could find for the
+intense life burning within her.
+
+"It begins to take effect already!" she whispered, as though she were
+breathing her secret in some one's ear. "He shall take me back with
+him to Pembridge this very day. When he gets over this foolish
+passion, as he must do when Eleanor Lloyd is another man's wife, then
+his heart will turn to me--the heart that once was mine, and that
+shall be mine again! With me for his wife, all his old, ambitious
+dreams would spring up again with renewed vigour. He should not live
+and die a mere country lawyer, as, with Eleanor Lloyd for his wife, he
+surely would do. Raby House is his already--so his mother told me. He
+is far richer than the world believes him to be. In a little while he
+will be in Parliament--and then! What wild, ambitious dreams are
+these! But they are dreams that shall one day become realities, if a
+woman's will can make them so. There he is in the Laurel Walk! He sits
+down and presses his hand to his forehead. It wrings my heart to see
+him suffer; but what can I do? How gladly would I suffer instead of
+him, if thereby I could charm him to my side and make him my own for
+ever! It is time to go and get ready for my journey."
+
+Lady Dudgeon had just hunted up Sir Thomas in the library (he had
+ventured downstairs for an hour this afternoon), in order to point out
+to him a flagrant error of two shillings in the casting of the
+butcher's monthly account, when there came a tap at the door, and next
+moment Miss Deane entered.
+
+"I hope, Lady Dudgeon, you will pardon my intrusion," she said, "but
+my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, has been suddenly taken ill, and----"
+
+"Kelvin ill!" burst out Sir Thomas. "What is the matter with him?
+Where is he?"
+
+"He is in the conservatory, Sir Thomas. A sudden
+attack--giddiness--nausea. I have ordered the fly to be brought round
+in which he drove over from Pembridge."
+
+"It's nothing contagious, I hope," said her ladyship. "My two darling
+pets--where are they?"
+
+"Safe in the schoolroom. But your ladyship need fear nothing on the
+score of contagion."
+
+"I am sorry I can't go and look after him myself," said the baronet.
+"Is he well enough to be sent home alone?"
+
+"I was about to ask her ladyship to allow me to go home with him,"
+said Olive, "although, in such a case, I could not promise to get back
+before to-morrow morning."
+
+"It is very thoughtful on your part, Miss Deane," said her ladyship.
+"You must go with Mr. Kelvin, by all means."
+
+"Your ladyship is very kind."
+
+"Yes, go, by all means," said Sir Thomas. "A most invaluable, man,
+Kelvin--so clear-headed, and all that--never seems in a muddle, you
+know--never messes his fingers with the ink when he's writing."
+
+Matthew Kelvin was indeed very ill--worse, perhaps, than Olive Deane
+had thought he would be. But, on the other hand, had he not been very
+ill, no valid necessity would have existed for Olive to accompany him
+home. He was grateful to her for offering to go with him. It was much
+nicer to have Olive by his side than one of the Stammars footmen. He
+had no strength to talk; but they had hardly got out of the park, and
+well on to the high road that led to Pembridge, when he took one of
+Olive's cool hands in both his, and let his head droop on to her
+shoulder.
+
+"Are you in great pain, dear?" she whispered.
+
+She had never called him _dear_ before.
+
+"It is rather hard to bear," said he, squeezing her hand tightly.
+
+Presently he became aware that she was crying.
+
+"Don't cry, Olive," he said.
+
+But she could not help it. It made her cry to see him suffer so much;
+but none the more on that account did she waver for a single moment in
+her determination to carry out the scheme on which her mind was so
+firmly bent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE STORY OF THE WRECK.
+
+
+Max Van Duren was accepted on probation as a suitor for the hand of
+Miss Byrne.
+
+Everything now depended on Miriam's ability to carry out the programme
+laid down for her by her father. The task thus set before her was
+repugnant to her feelings in many ways, and yet there was a strange
+sort of fascination in the thought that she alone had power enough
+over this man to draw from him a secret that he would reveal to no
+living soul else. But it was requisite that even she should go to work
+very carefully in the matter. It was requisite that not the slightest
+suspicion as to her motives should be aroused in Van Duren's naturally
+suspicious mind. Time and patience were essentially necessary. To have
+seemed anxious, or in a hurry, would have defeated everything.
+
+Thus it fell out that, nearly every evening when he was in town, Max
+Van Duren was admitted for an hour to the society of the woman to
+whose love-spells he had fallen so easy a victim. It could have been
+no greater surprise to any one than it was to himself to find such
+toils woven so strongly about him--to find himself, at fifty years of
+age, and with all his hard worldly experience, as weak as any school
+boy before the foolish witchery of a pretty face.
+
+Every day his infatuation, for it was nothing less, seemed to grow
+stronger. While coquetting with him, and leading him on to believe
+that she really did care a little for him in her heart, she was
+careful to restrain all lover-like familiarities within the smallest
+possible limits. She could not prevent his pressing her hand now and
+then, and she even schooled herself into letting him once and again,
+and as an immense favour, touch the tips of her fingers with his lips.
+But that was all. Never once was his arm allowed to insinuate itself
+round her waist. Never once would she sit alone in the room with him
+for even five minutes. Her father, infirm and deaf as he was, or
+appeared to be, was always there--a power to be appealed to should the
+necessity for such an appeal ever arise.
+
+Van Duren growled a little occasionally at being so persistently
+forced to keep his distance; but Miriam was as obdurate as a flint.
+
+"I don't believe you have a heart!" he said to her, rather savagely,
+one night, after she had refused to let him kiss even the tips of her
+fingers.
+
+"I thought you told me only ten minutes ago that I was the happy
+possessor of yours," she said, demurely.
+
+"Pshaw! You know well enough what I mean. In any case, you can't be
+possessed of much feeling."
+
+"I pricked my finger this morning, and it seemed to me that my
+feelings were very acute indeed. But doubtless you know best."
+
+"I wonder whether you have anything beyond the very vaguest idea of
+what it is to love."
+
+"Are you not doing your best to teach me? And do you not find me an
+apt pupil?"
+
+"On the contrary, you are uncommonly dull."
+
+"My natural stupidity, doubtless. But then, you know, some people set
+up for being teachers who have no right to the name."
+
+"In the present case the teacher's lessons are treated with contempt."
+
+"The teacher expects his pupil to read before she has properly learned
+to spell; expects, too, to be paid for his services before he has
+earned his first quarter's salary."
+
+Miriam's tongue had a readiness about it that Van Duren could not
+match, and in such encounters he was invariably worsted. He liked
+Miriam all the better in that she was ready of speech and quick of
+tongue. This bright, clever girl would be his own property before
+long, and it could not but redound to his credit that his wife should
+not only have the good looks which go so often without brains, but
+that she should be keen-witted into the bargain--a woman whom he could
+introduce to his friends with pride, and with the knowledge that they
+would envy him his new-found treasure.
+
+Presently Mr. Van Duren's birthday came round, and nothing would
+satisfy him on this occasion but that he should drive Miriam and her
+father down to Greenwich, and that they should all dine together at
+the "Ship." As he wished, so it was agreed.
+
+"It will be a good chance, Miriam dear, for getting out of him what we
+want to know," said the old man to his daughter when they were alone.
+"A good dinner, and a glass or two of champagne, will help to loosen
+his tongue and to keep his suspicions fast asleep. There could not be
+a better opportunity."
+
+They drove to Greenwich in a close carriage, out of consideration for
+the delicate state of Mr. Byrne's health. But the old man freshened up
+wonderfully at the dinner-table, and proposed Mr. Van Duren's health
+in an eulogistic but somewhat rambling speech, he being evidently of
+opinion, once or twice, that quite a roomful of guests were listening
+to him. Miriam at last was obliged to force him gently down into his
+chair, and tempt him into silence with some grapes. When coffee was
+brought in he looked vacantly around.
+
+"I feel just a little bit sleepy," he said "and if none of the company
+objects, I'll have forty winks in that pleasant-looking chair in the
+corner. But mind, if there's going to be any harmony, I'm your man,
+and 'Tom Bowling' 's the song that I'll sing."
+
+Three minutes later he was snoring gently, with his bandana thrown
+over his head, although as yet there were no flies to trouble him.
+
+"Is it too cool to sit out on the balcony?" asked Van Duren.
+
+"I am afraid it is," answered Miriam; "but not perhaps too cold to sit
+by the open window." She did not want to get out of earshot of her
+father.
+
+This evening she felt more nervous than she had ever felt before. It
+was the consciousness of what she was expected to do that affected her
+thus. She looked a little paler than ordinary, and, by consequence, a
+little more refined; and as she sat there in her black silk dress,
+with a little ruffle made of tulle and pink ribbon round her throat,
+Van Duren vowed to himself that he had never seen her look more
+thoroughly charming.
+
+"I shall not feel satisfied unless you smoke," she said, as they sat
+down near the open window. "I have heard you say that you always like
+to smoke a couple of cigars after dinner."
+
+"But that is a bachelor's vile habit, and one which I am going to
+learn to give up."
+
+"It will be time enough to give it up when you are no longer a
+bachelor. Confess, now: did you not smuggle two or three cigars into
+your pocket before you left home?"
+
+Van Duren laughed. "You must be a witch," he said, as he pulled a
+cigar-case out of his pocket.
+
+"I am no witch," said Miriam. "I have only found out one of your
+little weaknesses."
+
+"I wish you could discover my virtues as readily."
+
+"A man's virtues--when he has any--don't require much discovery; he is
+generally quite ready to proclaim their existence himself. We women
+know what your sex like. We maintain our empire over you not by
+flattering you about your virtues, but by studying your weaknesses.
+But now, smoke."
+
+Miriam struck a fusee, and Van Duren bit the end off a cigar and
+lighted it. A little table was between them, on which stood a bottle
+of sparkling hock and two glasses. The evening was closing in, but
+the sun had not yet set, and the broad bosom of the river lay
+fair and clear before them, with its steamers, and lighters, and
+pleasure-boats, and incoming or outgoing ships, passing to and fro
+unceasingly--a never-ending panorama, abounding with life, colour, and
+variety.
+
+"I wonder whether you will always be as indulgent to me as you are
+to-day," said Van Duren, as he exhaled a long curl of fragrant smoke.
+
+"That would depend upon whether you were always as good as you have
+been to-day."
+
+"I want you, this afternoon," he said, "to tell me where you would
+like us to spend our honeymoon."
+
+"As we have not yet agreed that there is to be a honeymoon, the
+question where we shall spend it seems to me slightly premature."
+
+"Let us be like children for once, and make believe. Let us make
+believe that you and I are going to be married in a month from now,
+and that I have asked you where you would like to spend the
+honeymoon."
+
+Miriam did not answer for a few moments, but sat with one finger
+pressed to her lips, a pretty embodiment of perplexity. "Really, I
+don't know," she said--"I don't know where I should like to go. So
+long as I got away to some strange place, I don't think I should care
+much where it was."
+
+"How would Paris suit you?"
+
+"Yes--yes!" cried Miriam, clapping her hands. "I should like to go to
+Paris above all places in the world. To see the shops, and the
+toilettes, and the gay crowds, and--and the hundreds of other
+attractions: that would suit me exactly."
+
+"Many ladies, at such times, prefer some quiet nook either in the
+country or at the seaside."
+
+"Yes, prefer to bury themselves alive, in fact. But that would not
+suit me, however much I might like my husband. In such a case, I am
+quite certain that by the end of the first week I should begin to
+think him a great stupid, and I am equally sure that he would already
+have discovered with what a shallow-pated individual he had mated
+himself for life. The experiment would be far too dangerous a one for
+me."
+
+"A very neatly-framed excuse for preferring Paris to Bognor or
+Bowness," said Van Duren, with a smile.
+
+"How cleverly you unravel my motives! But I think I told you before
+that I was shallow. Be warned in time!"
+
+"I have never heeded warnings all my life. I have always preferred
+keeping my own headstrong course."
+
+"In other words, you are obstinate."
+
+"Some of my friends call me pig-headed--but that is sheer malice."
+
+"How beautiful the river looks this afternoon!" said Miriam, a moment
+or two later. "I never look on an outward-bound ship without feeling a
+sort of vague longing to be on board her, sailing away into that
+strange world of which I know so little."
+
+"The chances are that before you had been on board a dozen
+hours you would wish with all your heart that you were on shore
+again--especially if there happened to be a capful of wind."
+
+"Oh, I quite believe that. Being a woman, it only stands to reason
+that I should be both ill and frightened. Men are never either one or
+the other." Then, in a little while, she added: "Still, nonsense
+apart, I believe that I should very much like to go a long voyage."
+
+"Unless you chanced to have very pleasant companions, you would soon
+grow weary of the everlasting monotony of sea and sky: sky and sea."
+
+"I'm not quite so sure on that point. I cannot conceive that either
+the sky or the sea is ever really monotonous. And yet you, who have
+travelled so much, ought to know far better than I," she added, a
+minute later, as if correcting herself. "You have travelled much in
+the course of your life, Mr. Van Duren, have you not?"
+
+"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine. Still, I have seen something of
+the world."
+
+"And yet you never talk to me about your travels! You have never told
+me a single one of your adventures."
+
+"I am not aware that I have any adventures to tell you about," said
+Van Duren, with an amused expression. "How can a man meet with
+adventures in these days of railroads and steamboats?"
+
+"Still, you must have encountered something, or seen something, that
+would be worth telling about."
+
+"Really, my life has been a most prosaic one."
+
+"Have you never shot a lion or a tiger?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Perhaps you have hunted a wild boar?"
+
+"I have never even seen such an animal."
+
+"Have you ever quarrelled with a man, and then fought a duel with
+him?"
+
+"I have quarrelled with many men, but have never fought a duel."
+
+"Have you ever been up in a balloon or down a coal-mine?"
+
+"Neither one nor the other."
+
+"Have you ever been pursued by Red Indians, or by wolves, or had a
+fight with a bear?"
+
+"I have never been so fortunate. I wish, for your sake, that I had."
+
+"Have you ever been shipwrecked?" Van Duren gave a little start, but
+did not immediately answer.
+
+He slowly exhaled the smoke, in a long, thin curl, from between his
+lips before he spoke. "Yes--I have been shipwrecked," he said, at
+last.
+
+Miriam's merry laugh rang out, and she clapped her hands for glee.
+"Every man knows some adventure worth telling," she said. "Yours is a
+shipwreck. I knew that I should find out what it was at last.--And now
+you will tell me all about it, won't you?" She looked at him with a
+pretty air of entreaty, and moved her chair a little closer to his.
+
+"There was really nothing about the affair that is worth telling," he
+said. He was intent, just now, on choosing another cigar out of his
+case, smelling at and nipping first one and then another. "It was a
+very trifling piece of business, I assure you."
+
+"Still, it was a shipwreck, and you were in it," urged Miriam. "Of
+course, if you do not choose to tell me anything about it, I have
+nothing further to say in the matter."
+
+"You are a little too hasty," said Van Duren, deprecatingly. "If I
+really thought it would interest you----" and then he stopped.
+
+"I suppose I ought not to feel interested in such trifles--but I do,"
+said Miriam, with a pout. "After all, it is not so many years since I
+was a child, and I daresay I have not yet got rid of all my childish
+tastes. I always did love to read and hear about shipwrecks."
+
+"Then you shall hear about mine," said Van Duren, with more heartiness
+of tone than he had yet used. He was flattered by her evident interest
+in himself and his fortunes. There could be no possible harm in
+telling her the story of the shipwreck: it was only that the telling
+of it would rouse into morbid activity a snake's nest of terrible
+recollections, that he would fain have let sleep for ever.
+
+The cloud that had begun to lower over Miriam's face vanished in a
+moment. "That is really very nice of you," she said. And then she
+struck another fusee and held it while he lighted his cigar. Van Duren
+did not speak till he had swallowed a couple of glasses of hock, one
+immediately after the other.
+
+"As I said before, this shipwreck-story of mine is hardly worth
+telling. It is true that it seemed serious enough to me at the time,
+but it is associated with no thrilling adventures or hair-breadth
+escapes. Altogether, it was a very commonplace affair."
+
+"Still, it was a shipwreck, and there never was a shipwreck yet that
+wasn't worth hearing about. So now begin, please, and remember that
+you must tell me all the details, and make a nice, long story of it."
+
+Poor old Byrne, with his handkerchief thrown over his head, and his
+hands crossed comfortably over his stomach, was still in the middle of
+his forty winks, and happily oblivious of all terrestrial troubles.
+
+"What I am about to tell you happened many years ago," said Van Duren.
+
+"How many?--a dozen? I like people to be precise in their dates."
+
+"Oh, more than a dozen. Nearly two dozen."
+
+"Shall we put it down, then, that it was about twenty years ago?"
+
+"Yes, that is near enough." There was a perceptible shade of annoyance
+in his tone as he spoke.
+
+"Now, if you are going to be petulant, I won't speak to you again all
+the evening. If you knew more about young ladies, and their whims and
+ways, you would feel flattered by the interest I am taking in your
+narrative."
+
+"I do feel flattered by your interest," said Van Duren. "But I did not
+know that you would care for such minute details."
+
+"Little things always interest our sex--our lives are made up of petty
+details. And now, if you will make a fresh start, I will try not to
+interrupt you again."
+
+"Well, then, about twenty years ago, more or less, I made up my mind
+that I would leave England for ever and try my fortune in the New
+World. A legacy had come to me from an unexpected quarter, and it
+seemed to me that I could invest my money better in America than in
+England, and that my chances of making a fortune were greater there
+than here. I went down to Liverpool with the view of selecting a
+ship in which to sail. Whilst staying at the hotel there, I fell in
+with a countryman of my own, whom I had known some years previously,
+and to whom I had once done some small service. He was now in the
+shipping-trade, and when he found that I was going to America he
+offered me a free passage in a vessel, of which he was part owner,
+that was to sail in a few days for Halifax, Nova Scotia. The offer was
+too good a one to be refused, and on a certain Saturday morning I
+found myself, and all my belongings, on board the _Albatross_,
+dropping gently down with the tide. We had hardly got beyond the mouth
+of the Mersey, when it began to blow heavily, and by midnight we were
+in the midst of a terrific gale. The _Albatross_ was laden with a
+general cargo, and I was the only passenger on board. I shall never
+forget the magnificent sight that met my gaze when I went on deck next
+morning. Such a scene I never saw before, and I never want to behold
+again. The wind was still very high, but the sun shone brightly, and
+the atmosphere was so clear that the Welsh hills, although, in
+reality, several miles away, appeared quite close at hand. Presently
+the captain came up, looking very serious. 'I am sorry to tell you
+that we sprang a leak in the night,' he said, 'and I am afraid we
+shall have to put back to Liverpool, in order to have it stopped. An
+hour later he came to me again. The water is gaining on us so fast,'
+he said, 'that I shall have to make for Marhyddoc Bay, which is the
+nearest place I know of. I am afraid she would founder before I could
+get her back to Liverpool.' He then gave orders for the ship's head to
+be put about, and we made at once for the Welsh coast."
+
+"What a dreadful disappointment for you!" said Miriam. "How annoyed I
+should have been, had I been in your place."
+
+"My feelings were very bitter ones, I assure you," said Van Duren.
+"But there was no room for anger: in fact, it was becoming a question
+whether we should even succeed in saving our lives. Near to the coast
+as we were, it was doubtful whether the ship would not go down before
+we could reach it, and the sea was such that it would have been next
+to impossible for any boat to have lived in it."
+
+"How very dreadful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a shudder.
+
+"Those were moments of intense anxiety for all of us. One of the boats
+had been stove in during the night; the two remaining ones were got
+ready for lowering at a moment's notice. The water in the hold kept
+rising steadily, and at last the men refused to work at the pumps any
+longer. We laboured slowly on towards the land, but with every minute
+the ship seemed to become more unmanageable, and to be sinking deeper
+in the trough of the sea. We had weathered the corner of a promontory,
+and were within a quarter of a mile of shore, and in somewhat smoother
+water, when the captain gave the order to lower the boats. The ship's
+last moment was evidently at hand, and if we did not want to go down
+with her, we must hurry into the boats as quickly as possible. 'With
+close packing they will hold us,' said the captain; 'but it's a
+precious good job that, we haven't far to go.'"
+
+"I was not overburdened with personal luggage, but one article
+I had that I was particularly desirous of saving. It was a small
+silver-clamped box, and was full of the most valuable property. In
+fact, I may tell you that inside that box were my whole worldly
+possessions. I had brought it up from my cabin and placed it on deck
+ready to be lowered into the boat. 'You can't take that thing with
+you,' said the mate, sternly, 'and if you don't look sharp, you'll be
+left behind yourself.' 'But I must take it,' I said; 'it holds
+everything I have in the world.' 'Can't help that. I tell you, it
+can't go. Boys, over with him.' And before I knew what had happened, I
+found myself dropped over the ship's side into the boat, and the
+remainder of the crew scrambling after me one by one. The captain and
+the rest of the crew were in the other boat, and had already cast
+themselves loose from the ship. 'Two hundred--five hundred pounds,' I
+cried, 'to any one who will bring that box safely ashore!' 'Hold your
+tongue, you fool!' cried the mate, 'or else we'll send you to fish for
+your confounded box at the bottom of the sea;' and with that he pushed
+away from the sinking ship. I said no more, but sat in dumb despair,
+hardly caring whether I reached the shore or not. The boat was laden
+to the water's edge, and I could hardly wonder at the mate's refusal
+to take my box. 'There she goes!' cried one of the men a few moments
+later. 'Farewell to the dear old _Albatross!_' cried a second. I
+lifted up my eyes. Ship and box had disappeared for ever. A quarter of
+an hour later I landed at Marhyddoc--a ruined man."
+
+"Gracious me! what a dreadful misfortune!" cried Miriam. "So you did
+not go to America, after all?"
+
+"I did not. It seemed to me that as I had to begin the world afresh,
+it would be better to do so among friends and acquaintances than among
+strangers. I did begin it afresh, and the result has proved far more
+satisfactory than I should have dared to hope."
+
+"Your narrative has interested me very much, Mr. Van Duren," said
+Miriam. "It will be something for me to think about when I am sitting
+alone at my work. I shall think of you far oftener than I should have
+done had you never told me the story of the _Albatross_."
+
+"Then I am indeed repaid," said Van Duren, with fervour. "To live in
+your thoughts is my highest ambition."
+
+"How papa is sleeping," cried Miriam, suddenly. "He will be awake half
+the night if I don't rouse him."
+
+The waiter came in with lights, and Miriam shook her father by the
+shoulder.
+
+He awoke querulous and shivering with cold: so, after a hurried cup of
+tea, they started at once for home, Van Duren sat for a great part of
+the way with one of Miriam's hands pressed tightly in his. Miriam's
+soul shrank within her at his touch, but she was obliged to submit.
+She consoled herself with the thought that only for a very short time
+longer would the necessity for submitting to his hateful attentions
+exist. She had wormed out of him the great secret that he had hidden
+so carefully for twenty long years. The next question was whether any
+practical use could be made of the knowledge.
+
+"Did you hear what passed this afternoon?" asked Miriam of her father
+as soon as they were alone together in their own room.
+
+"Every syllable of it, my dear, and very cleverly you managed it."
+
+"And now that you have got all this information, what step do you
+intend to take next?"
+
+"The next step I intend to take is to advertise in the second column
+of the _Times_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+GERALD'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+Gerald was away from Stammars for several days, and it was during his
+absence that Mr. Pod Piper's interview with Eleanor took place.
+Gerald, metaphorically speaking, flew back on the wings of love. It
+seemed months ago since he spoke those few memorable words to Eleanor,
+and he was burning to see her again: burning to speak of the love that
+filled his heart, firm in his determination, when once he should see
+her again, not to leave her till he had won from her a promise to
+become his wife.
+
+He got back to Stammers on a certain day in time for luncheon, and
+found Sir Thomas somewhat better in health. Lady Dudgeon and Miss
+Lloyd were out visiting, and were not expected home much before
+dinner-time. Gerald was in a restless and anxious mood, and could not
+settle down to anything. To wait quietly indoors was intolerable. For
+more than an hour he wandered aimlessly up and down the grounds, but
+was at last driven by a shower to take shelter in the conservatory.
+There he found Sanderson, the old gardener, plodding away as usual. He
+was rather a favourite with the old fellow, simply because he never
+took the liberty of plucking a flower without first asking Sanderson's
+permission to do so.
+
+"Eh, sir! but I heard some queer news about you t'other day," he said,
+as he hobbled up to Gerald.
+
+"News about me, Sanderson! I should very much like to know what it
+was."
+
+"I'm no so certain that I ought to tell ye. And yet, seeing that
+there's a leddy in the case, it's perhaps only right that you should
+know."
+
+"A lady in the case! You must tell me now, or I shall die of
+curiosity."
+
+"I suppose I must tell ye, or else you'll no be satisfied," he said.
+"But let us sit down while we talk. Sitting's as cheap as standing,
+and I'm no so young as I have been, Mr. Pummery. It was that bit imp
+of a lawyer laddie," resumed Sanderson, as soon as he and Gerald were
+comfortably seated, "young Brazen-face, I call him, from Mr. Kelvin's.
+He was here t'other day, here in this very spot, and Miss Lloyd
+happened to come in quite accidental at the time. I'd been hard at
+work all the morning, and was just resting a bit behind the bushes,
+when all at once I heard young Brazen-face mention your name, and that
+made me listen to hear more."
+
+"And what had the young vagabond to say about me, Sanderson?"
+
+"Why, he said that you were as poor as a church mouse, and that his
+master lent you fifty pounds to buy your clothes with."
+
+"There's nothing very bad in that."
+
+"But he said the reason why you came to Stammers was that you might
+fall in love with Miss Lloyd and marry her, because she was worth
+twenty thousand pounds."
+
+"The young scoundrel! And he told that to Miss Lloyd?"
+
+"That's just what he did! And he said that Miss Deane knew all about
+it, and that it was all a planned thing between you and her."
+
+Gerald was dumbfounded. He could not find a word to say for a little
+while. What must Eleanor think of him! It would not be a very
+difficult matter to set himself right with her if he chose to do so,
+but a climax was being forced upon him which he would gladly have
+delayed for a little while longer.
+
+"But what was Miss Lloyd's answer to all this?" he said at last.
+
+"She didn't seem to say much; but she may have thought all the more,"
+answered Sanderson.
+
+"It was enough to make her think. I am really very much obliged to you
+for telling me."
+
+"I dare say you wouldn't care to have it talked about, Mr. Pummery?"
+
+"Well, no, Sanderson, I think not. Even if this foolish accusation
+were true, it would be as well, for Miss Lloyd's sake, not to let it
+go any further. There's a sovereign for you to buy snuff with. A still
+tongue, you know, is a sign of a wise head."
+
+"How did that young scamp get to know all that he told Eleanor?" was
+Gerald's first thought as he walked slowly back into the house. But
+that was a question which it was impossible for him to answer. How
+different was the spirit with which he entered the house from that
+which had possessed him when he left it but one short hour before! The
+summer sunshine of his love had suddenly been clouded over: the
+landscape had darkened: a storm was at hand.
+
+How fortunate it was, he said to himself, that he had not met Eleanor
+before encountering Sanderson! He did not want to see her now; it was
+requisite that he should decide upon some particular line of action
+before meeting her again. He sat down in his easy-chair and shut his
+eyes, and bent himself to the task of thinking--no very easy task just
+now, so strangely was he fluttered by the news which had been told
+him. Two or three different courses were open to him: which one of
+them should he choose?
+
+He sat without moving till the dinner-bell rang; then, all at once, he
+made up his mind as to the line of action he would adopt. Having
+excused himself on the plea of fatigue from going downstairs, he
+lighted his lamp and seated himself at his writing-table. Then he took
+pen and paper, and wrote as under:--
+
+
+"Sir,--
+
+"From certain private information which has reached me, I have reason
+to believe that a great proportion, if not the whole, of the property
+which my uncle, the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd, of Bridgeley Wells, died
+possessed of, should devolve on me as being his legal representative.
+As I am given to understand that you had the management of my late
+uncle's affairs, will you kindly inform me, at your earliest
+convenience, whether it is within your knowledge that the facts of the
+case are as stated by me, and if so, what steps it will be requisite
+for me to take in order to prove the validity of my claim?
+
+     "I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+          "Gerald Warburton."
+
+
+This letter, addressed to Matthew Kelvin, was sent under cover by
+Gerald to a friend in London, from whose house it was professedly
+written, with a request that it might be posted.
+
+Four days later, through the hands of his London friend, Gerald
+received the following answer:--
+
+
+"Sir,--
+
+"In reply to your favour of the 25th inst., I regret to inform you
+that the state of Mr. Kelvin's health at the present time is such as
+to entirely preclude him from giving any attention to matters of
+business. He hopes, however, to be sufficiently recovered in the
+course of a few days to be able to reply fully to the questions
+contained in your letter.
+
+"I am, sir, respectfully yours,
+
+     "John Bowood."
+
+
+Gerald's letter to Kelvin had been marked "Private." All letters not
+so marked were opened by Mr. Bray, the chief clerk. The private
+letters were picked out and sent upstairs. Kelvin, at this time, was
+so ill that Olive was deputed to open these letters, and read them
+aloud to him, and pencil down his remarks respecting such of them as
+required answering. Thus it fell out that Gerald's letter reached her
+among a number of others one morning. She always opened the letters
+and read them over herself before submitting them to her cousin, by
+which means she could often give him the pith of a letter without
+troubling him with unnecessary details.
+
+Gerald's letter startled her not a little. It was requisite that she
+should have time to think it over, and to consider in what way it
+might or might not interfere with her own special plans; so she
+slipped it quietly into her pocket, and said nothing to Kelvin that
+morning about it.
+
+Locked up in her own room she read the letter over and over again.
+After all, it was, perhaps, quite as well that this Mr. Warburton had
+discovered something as to the real facts of the case. Her cousin
+Matthew was so thin-skinned that, although he had agreed to the
+temporary concealment of certain facts, he evidently shrank from
+inflicting on Eleanor Lloyd the blow which ought to follow such
+concealment as a logical sequence. But should this Mr. Warburton come
+forward, the blow struck would be just the same, but her cousin would
+be spared its infliction. Eleanor Lloyd would still be deprived of
+name, wealth, and position, while a final sting should reach her from
+the hands of Olive herself, in the care she would take that, if not in
+one way then in another, Miss Lloyd should be duly enlightened as to
+the character and antecedents of the man to whom she had given her
+heart and promised her hand. Still it might be as well to temporise a
+little, to delay the climax for a week or two, if it were only that
+the bond of love which bound Miss Lloyd to Pomeroy might grow stronger
+with the lapse of time; for the more she learnt to love Pomeroy, the
+deeper would be the wound that a knowledge of his treachery could not
+fail to inflict.
+
+When Olive had once adopted this line of argument, it was easy for her
+to persuade herself that the wisest thing she could do would be to
+keep her own counsel for a little while as to Mr. Warburton's letter.
+In her cousin's present state of health such a communication would
+only serve to worry him, and could answer no practical end. Meanwhile,
+she would take upon herself to have the letter replied to, but in such
+a way that it would be impossible for her cousin to be offended with
+her when the time should come for him to be told all that she had
+done. Not being a person who was in the habit of acting on rash
+impulses, she kept the letter over-night, with the view of
+ascertaining whether the resolve which she had come to to-day would
+bear next morning's cold confirmation. Next morning changed nothing;
+and as soon as breakfast was over she went downstairs to her cousin's
+private office, and sent for Mr. Bowood, one of the clerks, and
+dictated to him that letter which we have already seen in the hands of
+Gerald. All that Olive wanted just now was a little delay, and this
+she succeeded in securing.
+
+But what was Gerald to do next? After what that meddlesome imp of a
+Pod Piper had told Eleanor, it was quite evident to him that all
+prospect of her listening favourably to his suit was at an end, unless
+he could offer a frank and full explanation of the facts. He had
+relied upon his letter to Kelvin bringing matters to a crisis without
+any further impulse on his part, but that hope was now at an end,
+unless he could afford to wait for Kelvin's recovery at some
+indefinite future time. But he could not afford to wait. He had shut
+himself up in his own rooms, on the plea of indisposition, while
+awaiting the lawyer's answer, in order that he might run no risk of
+meeting Miss Lloyd till he knew what that answer was. But this could
+not go on any longer. A meeting with Eleanor was inevitable, but on
+what terms could they meet, unless he were prepared with some sort of
+an explanation beforehand?
+
+His most straightforward course would certainly have been to explain
+frankly to Eleanor who and what he was, and to tell her all his
+reasons for seeking to win her affections under a fictitious name. But
+he still shrank, with a repugnance which he seemed quite unable to
+overcome, from being the first to tell her that strange story which
+she must one day be told, but which, it seemed to him, his lips ought
+to be the last in the world to reveal. That story would deprive her of
+name, wealth, position--of everything, in fact, that her life had
+taught her to hold most dear. Not even to set himself right in her
+eyes, not even to free himself in her thoughts from a vile imputation,
+could he consent that from his hands the blow should come. That the
+blow must fall some day he knew quite well, but Kelvin was the man
+from whom it ought to emanate; and now, after what had happened, no
+matter how soon it came.
+
+To this conclusion had he come before writing to Kelvin, but the
+lawyer's answer left him exactly where he was before. Something he
+must do himself, or else shun Eleanor altogether: but what must that
+something be?
+
+Was there no middle course open to him? he asked himself; was no
+scheme of compromise possible by means of which, while setting himself
+right with Eleanor, he might be spared the necessity of becoming the
+mouthpiece of a revelation which, if told by him, might perchance
+shatter his dearest hopes for ever?
+
+After a restless and miserable night, which seemed as if it would
+never come to an end, he fell into an hour's sound sleep, and when he
+woke he seemed to see a glimpse of daylight through the midst of his
+perplexities. Again he took pen in hand, and here is what he wrote on
+that occasion:--
+
+
+"Mr. Pomeroy presents his compliments to Miss Lloyd, and having
+something of a special nature which he is desirous of communicating to
+her, he would esteem it a great favour if Miss Lloyd would allow him
+the privilege of a few minutes' private conversation at any time and
+at any place that may be most convenient to her."
+
+
+An hour later, he received the following line in answer:--
+
+
+"Miss Lloyd will be in the library at three o'clock this afternoon."
+
+
+Poor Eleanor! What a miserable time was that which she had passed
+since that afternoon when Pod Piper spoke to her in the conservatory!
+An hour before, she would have staked her existence on Pomeroy's truth
+and sincerity; and now, proof had been given her that he was nothing
+better than a common adventurer, who had sought to win her because she
+was rich! Truth and sincerity seemed to have vanished from the world.
+Nowhere could she feel sure that she had a friend who cared for her
+for herself alone, who would be the same to her to-morrow as to-day,
+if, by the touch of some wizard's wand, her money were suddenly turned
+to dross. How she wished that her father had left his riches
+elsewhere! How she wished that necessity had driven her to earn her
+living by her fingers or her brain! Then, if friendship or love had
+chanced to come to her, she would have known that they were genuine,
+because she would have had nothing but their like to give in return.
+The poorest shop-girl, who walked the streets on her sweetheart's arm,
+was richer than she in all that makes life sweet and beautiful.
+
+Sometimes Eleanor recalled certain words of warning which Lady Dudgeon
+had on one occasion addressed to her. "Beware lest you fall into the
+hands of some swindling adventurer," her ladyship had said, "of some
+romantic rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who,
+while persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in
+reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him."
+
+Had not her ladyship's warning borne fruit already?
+
+But ten minutes later she would reproach herself for thinking so
+hardly of Pomeroy. No; notwithstanding all that she had heard, she
+would not believe that he was an adventurer. There was a mistake
+somewhere, she felt sure.
+
+How much of the unhappiness of life is due to misunderstandings and
+mistakes which a few frank words of explanation would often serve to
+put right!
+
+But supposing Mr. Pomeroy offered her no explanation? Supposing he
+persisted in his suit, and went on making love to her on the
+assumption that after what had passed between them he would not be
+repulsed? Then, indeed, painful as such a course might be, she would
+feel compelled to tell him all that young Piper had told her, leaving
+him to deny it or explain it away as he might best be able.
+
+There were some other words of Lady Dudgeon's which she could not
+quite forget, and which seemed to have a more apposite force at the
+present moment than when they were uttered. "If you become the wife of
+Captain Dayrell, you will have the consolation of knowing that you
+have not been sought for your money alone. Dayrell is rich enough to
+marry a woman without a penny, if he chose to do so." She did not like
+Captain Dayrell, and she would never become his wife, but for all that
+Lady Dudgeon's words would keep ringing in her ears.
+
+When she heard Sir Thomas mention one day at dinner that Mr. Pomeroy
+was back again at Stammars, she felt strangely moved. However great
+his offences might be, his image still dwelt in her heart, and there
+was something delicious in the thought that he was once again under
+the same roof with her. She longed and yet dreaded to see him; but as
+day passed after day without giving him to her aching eyes, her
+longing deepened into an intense anxiety. She heard from those around
+her that he was not very well, and that beyond seeing Sir Thomas, on
+business matters, for an hour every morning, he kept to his own rooms.
+But if he were well enough to see Sir Thomas, he was surely well
+enough to see her--to see the woman whose lips he had kissed, and into
+whose ears he had whispered words that could never be forgotten! But
+perhaps he held himself aloof on purpose that they might not meet.
+Perhaps he was desirous of shunning her--wishful that she should
+understand that what had passed between them had better be forgotten,
+and that in time to come they must be as strangers, or, at the most,
+as mere acquaintances, to each other. If he could forget, she could do
+the same: her pride was quite a match for his. It was a time of bitter
+perplexity and trouble.
+
+When Eleanor walked into the library to meet Pomeroy, she had his note
+hidden in the bosom of her dress. She looked very cold and very proud.
+Her coldness and her pride notwithstanding, she had kissed his letter
+and cried over it; but of that Gerald was to know nothing. He bowed
+gravely to her as she entered the room, but he did not speak, and that
+of itself was enough to send a chill to her heart. Then he placed a
+chair for her, and she sat down, but during the interview that
+followed, Gerald stood with his elbow resting on the chimney-piece.
+
+"Miss Lloyd," he began, when Eleanor was seated, "I have taken the
+liberty of asking you to meet me privately, being desirous of saying
+something to you which I could not well communicate by letter, and
+which, perhaps, I ought to have told you long before now." His tone
+was very measured and grave. Was it possible, Eleanor asked herself,
+that she could be listening to the same man who had pressed her to his
+heart in a rapture of love only two short weeks ago?
+
+"You asked me to meet you, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "and I am here to
+listen to whatever you may have to say to me."
+
+Evidently he hardly knew how to begin what he wanted to say.
+
+"I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd," he said at last, "to make a very
+painful confession, and I must ask your forgiveness if, in the course
+of it, I am compelled to speak more plainly than under other
+circumstances I should venture to do. Some three months ago I entered
+the service of Sir Thomas Dudgeon as his secretary. At that time I was
+doing nothing, or next to nothing: I was a poor man; the situation was
+thrown in my way, and I accepted it. But I accepted it, Miss Lloyd,
+not for the sake of the salary or emoluments attached to the position,
+but simply in order that by its means I might be brought near to you,
+and have an opportunity of making your acquaintance. It had been
+hinted to me that the only mode by which I could recoup my fortunes
+was by marrying an heiress. I was told that you were an heiress, and
+that there was just a faint possibility that I might succeed in
+winning your hand."
+
+"Your confession, sir, has at least the merit of frankness," said
+Eleanor, with a quivering lip.
+
+"Its frankness is the only merit it can lay claim to. I came to
+Stammars, Miss Lloyd, and I made your acquaintance. From that moment I
+was a changed man. Whatever mercenary motives, whatever ignoble ends,
+may have held possession of me before, they all vanished, utterly and
+for ever, in that first hour of our meeting. I felt and knew only that
+I loved you. In that love--so different from anything I had ever felt
+before--lay a subtle alchemy, that had the power of transfusing into
+something finer and purer everything base that it touched. It has
+refined and purified me: it has given to my hopes and inspirations a
+different aim: it has taught me to look at life and its duties with
+altogether different eyes."
+
+He paused for a moment. Eleanor sat without speaking. What, indeed,
+could she say? But she had never loved him better than at that moment.
+
+"A fortnight ago," resumed Gerald, "carried away by the impulse of the
+moment, and my own long-suppressed feelings, I said certain words to
+you which I ought not to have said--at least, not till after I had
+told you what I am telling you to-day, and not till I knew that I was
+forgiven. I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd, to crave your pardon for
+having given utterance to those words, and to ask you to look upon
+them as if they had never been said."
+
+"Why need he do that?" whispered Eleanor in her heart.
+
+"After the confession which I have just made as to the motives which
+first led me to become an inmate of this house, I dare hardly hope
+ever to attain again to that position in your regards which I
+flattered myself--wrongly enough, perhaps--was mine but a little while
+ago. How greatly I regret having forfeited that position I should fail
+to tell you in any words. But I may, perhaps, hope that my candour
+will meet with sufficient recognition at your hands to induce you to
+overlook all that has gone before, and to treat me in time to come,
+not as an utter stranger, but as one who----"
+
+He paused, at a loss for words.
+
+"No, not as an utter stranger, Mr. Pomeroy," said Eleanor, gently.
+"Your confession, as you term it, has been nearly as painful to me as
+it must have been to you. I almost forget what the words were to which
+you have made allusion: something foolish, I do not doubt. In any
+case, we will both try to forget that they were ever uttered.
+Good-bye."
+
+She held out her hand as she spoke. Gerald took it, and pressed it
+respectfully to his lips. Then her eyes met his, while a faint smile,
+that was more akin to tears than laughter, played round her mouth for
+a moment: for a moment only--the next, he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+KELVIN'S ILLNESS.
+
+
+Matthew Kelvin found himself considerably better the morning of the
+day following that on which he had been taken ill at Stammars, but in
+the course of the afternoon he had a sharp return of the previous
+symptoms. Then it was that his mother insisted upon sending for Dr.
+Druce, the family practitioner, and Olive seconded the plea. Up to
+this time Kelvin had strenuously refused to let any one be called in,
+but he now yielded reluctantly to his mother's wishes. He had never
+been ill enough to need the services of a doctor since those far-off
+juvenile days of measles and scarlatina, and he was loth to believe
+that there was any necessity for such services now.
+
+However, in the course of the day, Dr. Druce looked in. He felt his
+patient's pulse, looked at his tongue, and asked the usual questions.
+Then he took off his spectacles, pursed up his mouth, shook his head
+at Kelvin as though he were an offending schoolboy, and delivered
+himself oracularly. "Disordered state of stomach. Nothing serious. Put
+you right in a day or two. Must diet yourself more carefully in
+future. What really charming weather we are having."
+
+Everybody agreed that Dr. Druce was seventy years old; many averred
+that he was nearly eighty. The latter people it probably was who
+asserted that the doctor was purblind, that his memory was half gone,
+that it was hardly safe for him to practise, and that he ought to
+retire and make room for a younger man. The doctor, however, still
+considered himself to be in the prime of his powers, and as he had
+attended Mrs. Kelvin herself for a long series of years, and was,
+besides, an old personal friend of that lady, it was not likely that
+she would think of calling in any other assistance to her son.
+
+As soon as Dr. Druce's visit had relieved in some measure his mother's
+anxiety, Kelvin began to express his desire that Olive should get back
+to Stammers without delay. "I shall be all right in a day or two," he
+said, "and my mother, or one or other of the servants, will see
+meanwhile that I want for nothing."
+
+"I shall wait till to-morrow, and see how you are then, before I think
+of going back," said Olive. "You know that my aunt can do nothing in
+the way of waiting upon you, and as for the servants, they are all
+very well in their places, but they would be quite out of their
+element in a sick-room."
+
+"A sick-room, indeed! You talk as if I were going to be laid up for a
+month," said Kelvin, impatiently.
+
+"I talk simple common sense, Matthew," said Olive. "Besides, Lady
+Dudgeon promised me a holiday a month ago, and I don't see why I
+should not take it now. In fact, I may tell you that I have already
+written to her ladyship telling her not to expect me back for three or
+four days."
+
+"Cool, I must say. Not but what you are welcome to stay here as long
+as you like: cela va sans dire; and I am greatly obliged to you for
+what you have done for me already. But as for spending your holiday in
+waiting on me--that's pure nonsense. A week at the seaside, now, is
+what you ought to have."
+
+"Which to me would mean a week in a strange place among people whom I
+never saw before and should never see again. I would sooner hear Sophy
+and Carry their lessons from year's end to year's end than indulge in
+such a holiday as that."
+
+"I shall be better to-morrow, you mark my words if I'm not, and then
+we'll have a little further talk about your holiday."
+
+But he was by no means better next morning; rather worse, indeed, if
+anything. It was nothing, Dr. Druce said. The medicine sent by him
+had, perhaps, had the effect of increasing the sickness, but the
+patient himself was no worse than on the preceding day. A little time
+and a little patience were needed. It was not to be expected that an
+evil which had been growing for months, perhaps even for year, could
+be put right in a day or two.
+
+Kelvin said nothing to Olive that day about going back to Stammars. He
+was very ill indeed, and he could not help admitting to himself that
+it was a great comfort to have Olive to wait upon him. His mother, at
+the best of times, would not have been of much use in a sick-room,
+seeing that it was a matter of difficulty for her to walk across the
+floor, and the very fact of Matthew being so ill only tended to make
+her worse than usual. As for a hired nurse, Kelvin shuddered at the
+thought. But such a nurse as Olive made all the difference. "You might
+have been born to this sort of thing, from the way you go, about it,"
+he said to her.
+
+"You forget that for many years my father kept a chemist's shop in a
+poor neighbourhood," she replied, "and that I seem to have been
+familiar with sickness and disease since I can remember anything."
+
+"You are a clever girl, Olive, and I believe you could doctor me a
+deuced sight better than old Druce. I remember when I was a lad
+hearing your father say that you knew almost as much about his drugs
+and messes as he did himself."
+
+Olive's back was towards him as he spoke, and she did not answer for a
+moment or two. "That is a long time ago," she said, in a low voice;
+"and such knowledge as that is easily forgotten. Then, again, you
+remember how poor papa always would exaggerate a little."
+
+How deft and noiseless were all her movements in the sick man's room!
+How soft, and white, and cool were her hands! Her dress never rustled,
+her shoes never creaked, her voice itself was attuned to the place and
+the occasion. She was never hurried; nothing seemed to put her out.
+She would either read to her cousin, or talk to him, or sit for hours
+by his side doing some noiseless stitching that would not have
+disturbed the slumbers of a mouse. When he was more than ordinarily
+restless she would bathe his head with eau-de-Cologne or aromatic
+vinegar, or sometimes, leaving his door ajar, she would go into the
+other room and play some of his favourite airs softly on the piano,
+and so, little by little, charm him out of his restless mood and
+soothe him off into a refreshing sleep.
+
+It was on the evening of the second day that Mrs. Kelvin called Olive
+on one side. "You will not leave me to-morrow, unless my dear boy is
+better?" said the old lady, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"I will not leave you to-morrow, or next week, or next month, unless
+my cousin is better," said Olive. "You may take my word for that."
+
+"Heaven bless you, dear!" said Mrs. Kelvin, fervently; and she made as
+though she would kiss Olive, but the latter started back.
+
+"I think Matthew is calling me," she said, and she hurried into the
+other room.
+
+One day passed after another, and still Dr. Druce's patient did not
+improve.
+
+"These cases are sometimes very obstinate, indeed," said the old
+gentleman, pleasantly, as he peered into his snuff-box in search of a
+last pinch. "And then they not unfrequently affect the liver. Now, I
+don't know a more obstinate noun substantive in the whole of the
+English language than your disordered liver. As for the increasing
+weakness that you complain about--why, I don't care much about that,
+because it tends to keep down any febrile symptoms. Of course, if you
+can't eat you can't keep up your strength; but when you once take a
+turn, you know, you'll have the appetite of a wolf--I may say, the
+appetite of a wolf in winter."
+
+"What a comfort it is, dear," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, "to think
+that we are in the hands of such a nice clever man as Dr. Druce. He
+has had so much experience that I believe he can tell at a glance what
+is the matter with a patient. Experience, in the medical profession,
+is everything."
+
+Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon drove over to see Mr. Kelvin a couple of
+days before their return to London. They were greatly concerned at his
+illness. As regarded Miss Deane, permission was given her to stay with
+her cousin as long as it might be necessary for her to do so. The
+young ladies, her pupils, were gone to pay a long-deferred visit to an
+aunt of theirs, and it was quite uncertain when they would return.
+
+One of Olive's difficulties was thus smoothed away for her without any
+trouble on her part.
+
+A few hours after Sir Thomas's visit, Mr. Kelvin suddenly opened his
+hollow eyes. "Olive, where is my mother?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"She was tired, and she has gone to lie down for half an hour."
+
+"Then you and I can have a little talk together."
+
+Olive guessed instinctively what was coming. "If what you were about
+to say to me is not very important, I would leave it unsaid to-day, if
+I were you," she answered. "You have done more talking already than is
+good for you."
+
+As if to verify her words, he was suddenly taken with a severe fit of
+sickness which lasted several minutes and left him thoroughly
+exhausted.
+
+Laying his wasted fingers on Olive's arm, and drawing her towards him,
+"What I was about to say was this," he whispered. "Since I have been
+lying here, I have had time to think of many things. But the thing
+that has weighed heaviest on my mind, the thing that I have regretted
+most, is my treatment of Eleanor Lloyd. It was you, Olive, who
+persuaded me to hide the truth from her, to let her live on in
+ignorance of her real history; to--to--you understand what I mean."
+
+"You know what my motives in the matter were, Matthew," said Olive, in
+a low voice.
+
+"Yes, I know quite well what they were, and very mean and despicable
+they seem to me now. Mind, I am not going to reproach you. The fault
+was mine in allowing myself to be persuaded by you. In any case, the
+past is the past, and nothing can alter it; but, so sure as I now lie
+here, the very first day that I can crawl downstairs, I will send for
+Miss Lloyd, tell her everything, and ask her forgiveness for the wrong
+I have done her!"
+
+He said no more, but shut his eyes and seemed as if he were going to
+sleep.
+
+Olive at this time had got Gerald Warburton's letter upstairs, and
+had, in fact, already answered it in the way that we have seen. For a
+moment she was tempted to show the letter to her cousin, but before
+she could make up her mind to do so, Kelvin was asleep or seemed to
+be. So telling herself that she did not care to disturb him, she let
+the opportunity go by, and as Kelvin, when he awoke, did not again
+recur to the subject, there seemed to be no reason why she should do
+so. Not much longer could the climax be delayed, not much longer could
+Eleanor Lloyd be kept in ignorance; of that Olive was quite aware; but
+she would, if possible, delay the revelation for a little while; delay
+it till Mr. Kelvin should have thoroughly recovered from his illness,
+and having got rid of all his foolish sick-bed fancies, should be
+prepared to carry out the scheme in all its features as originally
+proposed by her and agreed to by him.
+
+But when would Mr. Kelvin have recovered from his illness? That was a
+question which, as yet, Olive was not prepared to answer. Sometimes it
+seemed to her that her plot was slowly working itself round to the
+fulfilment for which she so ardently longed; sometimes it seemed as if
+no such fulfilment were possible to her. That her cousin liked to have
+her by his side, liked to have her wait upon him, she saw clearly
+enough, and she fancied that with each day she became more
+indispensable to him. But was his heart touched by her devotion; was
+he slowly but surely learning to love her? That was a problem which at
+present she could in nowise solve. Time and patience might work
+wonders for her, and with them as her allies she saw no reason, when
+in her more sanguine moods, to despair of ultimate success. Having
+gone so far, having ventured so much, it was not likely, as she said
+to herself, that she should go back, that she should let herself be
+overcome by any childish timidity or nonsensical scruples, when, for
+aught she knew to the contrary, she might at that very moment be on
+the brink of success. She never knew what a day, what an hour, might
+bring forth. At some moment when least expected her cousin might put
+forth his hand and say to her, "Olive, my heart has come round to you
+again. I love you. Be my wife." If such a prize were not to be won
+without risk, she was prepared to run that risk, whatever it might
+involve.
+
+There were times when Kelvin's mysterious malady caused him to suffer
+acutely. At such moments Olive was always by his side, "a ministering
+angel," as her cousin himself called her one day; soothing him with
+the gentlest attentions, anticipating each want intuitively, making
+herself, in fact, so indispensable to him that after a while he could
+hardly bear to let her go out of his sight, and if, when he woke up,
+she were not by his side, he would cry, fretfully, "Where's Olive? Why
+isn't she here?" and toss and turn restlessly till he felt her soft
+cold hand laid on his brow.
+
+But even Olive's nerves of steel gave way sometimes. When, at
+midnight, or later than that, she would steal out of her cousin's room
+in the hope of getting an hour or two's sleep, sleep would not come to
+her. All tired as she was, she would fling herself on her bed, and,
+burying her face in her pillow, cry for an hour at a time as if her
+heart would break. To see the man she loved so passionately suffer as
+he suffered; to know that she had but to hold up her little finger, as
+it were, for his sufferings to cease, but that if she were to let her
+compassion so master her he would be lost to her for ever; to know
+that her only chance of winning him was to win him through those
+sufferings which she alone could soothe: to feel and know all this was
+at times, especially in the midnight darkness of her own room, torture
+unspeakable. But when, at cockcrow, the ebony gates of the realm of
+shadows and midnight fancies were silently shut, and when another day
+looked in at the windows with its clear cold eyes, the purpose of
+Olive Deane faltered no longer: her strong will re-asserted itself,
+and tears and compunction alike were for the time being thrust
+mercilessly out of sight.
+
+"Oh, doctor, doctor, when are you going to get me downstairs again?"
+the sick man would sometimes wearily ask. "I am so terribly tired of
+lying here."
+
+To which the old gentleman, tapping his snuff-box, would blandly
+reply: "That Mr. Liver is a deuce of a fellow to get right again
+when once he's really put out. So obstinate, you know, and all
+that. Wants a deal of coaxing. But we shall bring him to his senses
+by-and-by--yes, yes, by-and-by, never fear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+RECOGNITION.
+
+Three days after Mr. Van Duren's little birthday dinner at Greenwich,
+the following advertisement appeared in the second column of the
+_Times_:--
+
+
+"_Albatross_.--Should this meet the eye of any person or persons who
+happened to be on board the schooner _Albatross_ when she foundered
+off Marhyddoc Bay on the 18th Oct., 18--, they may hear of something
+to their advantage, by applying to Messrs. Reed and Reed, Solicitors,
+Bedford Row, London."
+
+
+This advertisement was repeated every other day for three weeks. At
+the end of that time there came a response.
+
+As it happened, Van Duren never saw the advertisement, and there was
+no one to show it to him; no one who knew what a terrible fascination
+such an announcement would have had for him. His newspaper reading was
+generally confined to the money article, the City intelligence, and
+the latest telegrams. For miscellaneous news and leading articles he
+cared little Or nothing.
+
+Now that everything had been got out of Max Van Duren that could be
+got out of him, the motive that had induced Miriam Byrne to play the
+part she had played existed no longer; and although it was needful
+that appearances should still be kept up, there was no longer the same
+strain upon her. While keeping Van Duren at arm's length, and
+permitting no lover-like familiarities, on the ground that as yet he
+was only accepted on probation, it would not have been wise, having an
+eye to future eventualities, to repel him too rigidly, or to have run
+the risk of frightening him away. He must be so kept in hand that a
+little coaxing--a smile, a look, a whispered word--could always lure
+him to her side. He would fain have been twice as loving, twice as
+assiduous in his attentions, as Miriam would allow him to be. "Wait,"
+she would say, "wait till I have made up my mind, and then----!" a
+look would finish the sentence, a look which seemed to say, "You know
+very well that I shall end by accepting you, and then I won't object
+to your kissing me, or perhaps to kissing you in return." That, at
+least, was Van Duren's interpretation of it.
+
+During the time that the advertisement was appearing every other day,
+Byrne seized the opportunity for obtaining a little rest and change.
+He and Miriam went back for a week to their old lodgings in Battersea,
+which they had not yet given up. Van Duren believed that they were
+going to the seaside, but could not discover the particular place for
+which they were bound. Miriam put the case to him playfully.
+
+"No, I shall not tell you where we are going," she said, with a smile,
+"because that would be merely offering you a premium to run down and
+spend the end of week with us. I am going to leave you for seven long
+days. You will not know where I am, and I shall not write to you. I am
+going to test you--I am going to see whether you will like me as well
+when I come back as you do now."
+
+"You should try me for seven years instead of seven days," said Van
+Duren, fervently.
+
+"Suppose I take you at your word, and stay away for seven years," said
+Miriam, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.
+
+"Like a knight of old, I should start in quest of you long before that
+time was at an end; I should search for you till I found you in your
+hidden bower, and then I should seize you, and carry you away with me,
+whether you liked it or no."
+
+"Yes, and while you were riding off with me as fast as you could go, I
+should be slily searching for a joint in your armour, and when I had
+found it, I should stab you to the heart with my silver bodkin. What a
+romance it would be!"
+
+"Especially for the poor fellow who was stabbed."
+
+"He would live in song and story ever after, and that would be far
+more fame than he would deserve."
+
+At the end of a week Miriam and her father found themselves back in
+Spur Alley, and three days later there came a response to the
+advertisement. Messrs. Reed and Reed were called upon by two men who
+professed to have been on board the _Albatross_ at the time she
+foundered. One of these men was Paul Morrell, the mate of the
+ill-fated schooner; the other one was Carl Momsen, an ordinary seaman.
+An appointment was made for the following day, when Mr. Byrne came in
+person to examine them. A private room was set apart for the
+interview, and one of Messrs. Reed's shorthand clerks was there to
+take notes. The men were examined separately, and out of each other's
+hearing, but the evidence elicited from one was almost an exact
+counterpart of the evidence elicited from the other. The evidence of
+both of them may be summarized as follows:--
+
+The _Albatross_ sailed from Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the
+17th October, 18--. She was not in the habit of carrying passengers,
+but on this particular occasion there was one passenger on board her
+who was said to be a friend of the owner. He was a foreigner, but
+spoke very good English. He had sandy-coloured hair, and wore small
+gold rings in his ears. Neither of the men knew his name. The
+_Albatross_ was caught in a gale off the mouth of the Mersey. Next
+morning she sprung a leak, and a little while after the schooner's
+head was put about for Marhyddoc Bay. Outside the bay the vessel
+foundered, and the crew had barely time to take to the boats before
+she went down. At the last moment the man with the earrings brought up
+out of his cabin what looked like a small portmanteau, it being
+covered with leather, but which he called a box. This box he wanted to
+take with him in the boat, but as the men had orders to take off and
+leave behind them all superfluous clothing, and as it was the merest
+chance whether even then the boat would not be swamped, it was quite
+evident that the box must be left behind. The man entreated and
+stormed, and offered a reward of five hundred pounds to any one who
+would take his box ashore. But life is sweeter than five hundred
+pounds, and the box had to be left behind. The man raved like a maniac
+about the loss, but an hour or two after reaching shore he
+disappeared, and neither Morrell nor Momsen either saw or heard
+anything of him from that day forward.
+
+After the examination was over, Morrell, as being the more intelligent
+of the two men, was asked whether he thought it possible that if he
+were to see the passenger of the Albatross he could recognise him
+again.
+
+After so long a time it seemed very doubtful to him whether he could
+do so, he said, but he would be happy to try.
+
+Accordingly, next day, while Van Duren was dining at his usual tavern,
+Morrell was instructed to walk into the room and call for some dinner,
+and see whether he could pick his man out of the assembled company.
+
+About an hour later he rejoined Byrne in a private room of another
+tavern close at hand.
+
+"I picked him out in a moment, sir," said the ex-mate. "Yes, the very
+moment I set eyes on him I knew him again. He's stouter and older
+looking, of course, and he's close-shaved now, and wears no earrings;
+but, for all that, he's the same man."
+
+"I think you told me the other day," said Byrne, "that you had nothing
+very particular to do just now?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I did. I only got back from China a few weeks since, and,
+as I am getting on in life, it's just a toss up with me whether I
+shall go to sea again or settle down ashore for the rest of my days."
+
+"Then you will have no objection to enter my service for a little
+while?"
+
+"None whatever, sir."
+
+"On Wednesday morning next I shall want you to go down from Euston
+Station to Marhyddoc, and there make certain inquiries for me."
+
+"Nothing could please me better, sir. I've had plenty of travelling by
+water: a little travelling by land will make a pleasant change."
+
+"Then meet me here on Tuesday evening at seven, and I will give you
+your instructions."
+
+Before proceeding further, Byrne thought that he had better put
+Ambrose Murray in possession of what he had done since their last
+meeting, and seek his sanction to the steps he proposed taking next.
+Byrne accordingly sought Murray out at his lodgings, and the two men
+had a long consultation. Gerald, unfortunately, was at Stammars just
+then, and could not be present.
+
+"Everything now hinges upon the result of Morrell's inquiries at
+Marhyddoc," said Byrne. "Should the report he will bring back with him
+prove a favourable one, then we may consider ourselves fortunate
+indeed--then we may take it that the best or worst will soon be known
+to us. But should the result of his inquiries prove unfavourable to
+our hopes, then all that we have done--all my toiling and scheming,
+all the expense you have been put to--will have been next to useless.
+Van Duren's guilt as the murderer of Paul Stilling may have been
+morally proved to the satisfaction of you and me and one or two
+others, but that would be of no avail whatever in proving your
+innocence and in bringing home the crime to him. Unless we can wrest
+from the sea the terrible secret which it has hidden so carefully all
+these years, the guilt of Van Duren will remain unproved for ever.
+Beyond the point now reached by us it is impossible to advance a
+single step till we shall have made that secret our own."
+
+"The sea has only been keeping its secret all these years that it
+might yield it up when the time should be ripe for me to ask for it.
+That time has now come. I ask for it, and I shall have it. Have no
+fear, my good friend, no fear whatever. Guided by an unseen hand, we
+have threaded a labyrinth from which at first there seemed no possible
+outlet; and now that we have reached the gate, and are bidden to look
+for the key, can you doubt that it is there for the searching--can you
+doubt that we shall find it?"
+
+"Cracked, to a certainty," muttered Byrne to himself, as he left the
+house. "And no wonder either, poor fellow, when one remembers all that
+he has had to go through."
+
+Morrell went down to Wales in due course, and in due course he
+returned. His report to Byrne was of such a nature that the latter
+could not conceal his exultation. "We shall have him yet!" he
+exclaimed, much to the ex-mate's astonishment. "He has escaped for
+twenty long years, but the hangman's fingers shall unbutton his collar
+before he is six months older."
+
+Then he went and saw Murray again, and it was arranged that they two,
+together with Gerald, if possible, should go down to Marhyddoc as soon
+as certain necessary preparations which would have to be made in
+London should be completed. Morrell, too, was to form one of the
+party.
+
+When Byrne and Miriam got back to their rooms in Spur Alley, Van Duren
+could not conceal his exultation at seeing them under his roof again.
+His time of probation would soon be at an end now: Miriam would soon
+have to make up her mind to the utterance of a definite "Yes," or
+"No." Now that she had come back, she seemed more kind and gracious to
+him than before, from which fact he did not fail to draw an augury
+that was favourable to his own wishes.
+
+Ambrose Murray had his little portmanteau packed ready for the journey
+to Wales several days before the other preparations could possibly be
+completed. Miss Bellamy had never seen him so elated before. He went
+about the house singing to himself in an under-tone, or whistling
+snatches of old tunes that had been popular when he was a boy. That
+cloud of quiet melancholy, which would sometimes oppress him for days
+together, without a break in its dulness, had all but vanished,
+leaving but a shadow of its former self behind. Miss Bellamy had asked
+him several times to go and have his portrait taken, but up to the
+present he had always declined to do so. One fine day, however, after
+the journey to Wales had been decided on, he astonished her by telling
+her that if she would go and be photographed he would follow her
+example.
+
+"First of all, Maria, you shall be photographed by yourself," he said,
+"and then I'll be photographed by myself; and after that, what do you
+say to our being photographed together, eh? Such old friends as you
+and I are ought to be photographed together. But, above all things,
+Maria, don't forget to be taken with your locket."
+
+This latter remark was a sly hit at the large, old-fashioned locket
+which Miss Bellamy wore round her neck on high days and holidays--at
+such times, in fact, as she wore her silver grey dress and her company
+cap, but at no other. Ambrose Murray could remember Miss Bellamy
+wearing this locket when she was a girl of nineteen, and she wore it
+still. He often joked her about it, and would offer to wager anything
+that if she would only let him have a peep inside it he should find
+there the portrait of a certain handsome cornet of dragoons, with
+whom, according to his account, she had at one time a desperate
+flirtation. But he never had seen inside the locket, and Miss Bellamy
+was quite sure that he never would do so with her consent; for within
+that old-fashioned piece of jewellery was shut up the cherished secret
+of Miss Bellamy's life. Ambrose Murray's laughing assertion that in it
+was hidden the portrait of a man was so far true, but the likeness was
+not that of any young cornet of dragoons, but that of Ambrose Murray
+himself--of Ambrose Murray at two-and-twenty, with brown hair, and
+laughing eyes, and no care in the world beyond that of making up his
+mind which one out of a bevy of pretty girls he was most in love with.
+He fell in love, not with Miss Bellamy, but with her friend, and Miss
+Bellamy's secret remained buried for ever in her own heart. With the
+portrait were shut up two locks of hair: one lock was of a light
+golden brown colour, the other was white.
+
+"There is room for another portrait," said Miss Bellamy to herself,
+with a sigh, when Ambrose Murray proposed going to the photographer's,
+"and then it will be full." She had left orders in her will that the
+locket should be buried with her. How her heart fluttered, how the
+unwonted colour rushed to her face, when Ambrose proposed that they
+should be photographed together! Years had no power to weaken or alter
+her love, but she would have died rather than let Murray suspect for a
+moment the existence of any such feeling on her part. He knew it not,
+but it was a fact that, with the exception of a few trifling legacies,
+all her little property was bequeathed to him, or, in event of his
+prior demise, to Eleanor. In her secret heart she could not help
+dreading a little the coming of that time when father and daughter
+should learn to know and love each other. She must then, of necessity,
+fall into the background; she must then, of necessity, sink into
+little more than a mere cypher in the sum of Ambrose Murray's
+existence. Had Eleanor been a daughter of her own she could hardly
+have loved her better, and she told herself, times without number,
+that to see the girl and her father happy in each other's love ought
+to be sufficient reward for any one who thought of others more than
+herself. And ought she not to study the happiness of these two, both
+of whom were so dear to her, rather than her own selfish feelings?
+
+However sharp the pang might be, whatever the cost to herself might
+be, she would so study it--she would do her best to bring them
+together.
+
+That time when Ambrose Murray was, as it were, living under the same
+roof with her, was a very happy time for Miss Bellamy. Murray himself
+did not seem to know, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that
+he never thought how greatly he was indebted to her. Beyond a flying
+visit now and then from Gerald, he had no society save that of Miss
+Bellamy, and of the children of the two houses in which he and she had
+apartments. He almost invariably took tea and supper with Miss
+Bellamy, and spent his evenings with her, and made, besides, almost as
+free a use of her sitting-room as of his own. He looked upon her, in
+fact, as he would have looked upon a sister to whom he was much
+attached, and that she regarded him in the light of a brother he was
+fully convinced.
+
+An agreement had long ago been come to between Gerald and Miss Bellamy
+by which it was arranged that Ambrose Murray should be relieved from
+all pecuniary cares and liabilities. No one ever presented him with a
+bill for the rent of his apartments. The servant would ask him what he
+would have for breakfast or dinner, and whatever he might order was
+there for him ready to the minute, but no butcher or baker ever vexed
+his soul with unpaid accounts. Now and then he would find a sovereign
+in some odd place or other--in his razor-case, inside one of his
+gloves, or in the folds of his Sunday cravat. He would pick up the
+coin, look at it curiously for a moment or two, wondering how he could
+possibly have been so absent-minded as to leave money there, and then
+put it quietly into his pocket and think no more about it.
+
+A brief telegram from Byrne reached Ambrose Murray one afternoon:--
+
+
+"Preparations completed. Shall be ready to start from Euston Square at
+nine o'clock on Saturday morning. Shall expect to find you on
+platform, unless I hear from you in course of to-day."
+
+
+He was so fluttered by the receipt of this telegram that he could not
+eat any dinner. He at once sat down and wrote a note to Gerald,
+enclosing the telegram, and begging of him, if he could possibly do
+so, to join him in Wales early in the ensuing week. Then he said to
+himself, "I must write to Mary before I go. I feel sure that she is
+expecting a letter from me. But first the boat must be finished."
+
+In a back room he had fixed up a lathe, and a small joiner's bench, at
+which he occasionally amused himself. There were various kinds of
+useless knick-knacks that he could manufacture with some degree of
+skill, and the toys of half the children in the neighbourhood were
+mended at his bench. As soon as he had sent off his letter to Gerald,
+he shut himself up in his little workshop, and set to work busily to
+finish a little toy boat, which was half done already. It was a very
+small affair--a child's boat, in fact, cut out of a block of wood, and
+not more than a couple of feet in length. He worked at it till late
+that evening, and by noon next day it was finished to his
+satisfaction. Then he slept for an hour, and then he sat down to write
+his letter. This is what he wrote:--
+
+
+"My Darling Mary,
+
+"I had a very strange dream the other night. I dreamt that I had
+written you a letter, and that when I had sealed it up I put it in a
+little boat, and let the boat and the letter float down the river with
+the tide. And in my dream I seemed to watch the boat till it got far
+out to sea, beyond the sight of any land. Then all at once the clouds
+gathered, till the black edges of one of them seemed to touch the sea,
+and then from cloud and sea together there was formed a huge
+waterspout, that presently drew to itself and sucked up my boat and
+letter. And when they vanished, the waterspout vanished also, and
+presently the clouds broke away, and in the heavens one splendid star
+was shining, which seemed to me as a token that you had received my
+letter.
+
+"My darling, I have translated this dream as a message from you,
+telling me what I ought to do. Very often of late your face has
+appeared to me in my dreams; but when I have tried to speak to you, an
+invisible finger seemed to be laid on my lips, and my heart could only
+yearn dumbly towards you. But now you have shown me a way by means of
+which a message may reach you--for from you alone that dream could
+come. The boat is ready, and the midnight tide will take it down to
+the sea, and then at dawn of day the waterspout will come and lift my
+letter up into the clouds; but of what will follow after I know
+nothing.
+
+"My darling, day by day the time of our separation grows shorter; soon
+shall we see each other again, and all these long years of waiting and
+trouble will seem but as a dim vision of the night, fading and
+vanishing utterly in the bright dawn of an everlasting day. The
+purpose that has held me and chained me to this life for so, long a
+time is now near its fulfilment, and after that I feel and know that I
+shall not be long before I join you. Soon the time will be here when I
+can tell everything to our child--our child, Mary! whom I have never
+seen since she lay an infant in your arms. Very precious will her love
+be to me, but not so precious as yours. I shall stay with her a little
+while, I shall tell her all about the mother whom she cannot remember,
+and then I shall go to you.
+
+"To-morrow night, darling, you will come to me in my sleep, will you
+not? Then, when I see you, I shall take it as a token that you have
+had my letter.
+
+"Soon I will write to you again--when the sea shall have given up the
+secret which it has hidden so carefully for twenty years. Till then,
+adieu.
+
+     "Your husband,
+
+            "Ambrose Murray."
+
+
+This singular document Mr. Murray sealed up carefully, and then
+addressed it, "To my Wife in Heaven." Then leaving a message for Miss
+Bellamy, who happened to be out shopping, that he was going out for
+the evening, he took a hansom to London Bridge and started by the next
+train for Gravesend, taking the boat and letter with him. He had still
+some hours to wait; but at midnight, having made a previous
+arrangement with a boatman, he put off from the pier stairs, and was
+pulled slowly out to the middle of the black and silent river. A few
+stars could be seen overhead; now and then the moon shone down through
+a rift in the clouds. The whole scene was weird and ghostly. The tide
+was running down rapidly. A cold wind blew faintly across the river,
+as though it were the last chill breath of the dying day. They halted
+in mid-stream just as the clocks on shore began to strike twelve. Then
+Murray took his toy-boat out of its brown paper covering, and having
+firmly fixed his letter in it by means of a strip of wood intended for
+that purpose, he leaned over the side and placed it gently on the
+surface of the stream. On this point, at any rate, poor Murray was
+still insane.
+
+"What are you after, master?" cried the boatman, whose suspicions were
+beginning to be aroused.
+
+"I am sending a letter to my wife," answered Murray, as he lifted his
+hat for a moment. "See how swiftly it starts on its journey. And now I
+can see it no longer. But no harm will happen to it. How pleased my
+darling will be when she reads it!"
+
+The boatman said no more, but thinking that he had got a crazy person
+to deal with, whose next act might be to jump into the river himself,
+he made all possible haste back to shore.
+
+
+It happened, singularly enough, that on the Wednesday previous to the
+Saturday fixed on by Peter Byrne for the journey to Wales, Mr. Van
+Duren entered his room and announced to him and Miriam that he had
+been called suddenly from home on business of great importance. Byrne,
+as yet, had given no hint of any intention on his part to go out of
+town, and he now determined to say nothing about it till after Van
+Duren's departure.
+
+"How long do you expect to be away, Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, as
+she glanced at him out of her big black eyes.
+
+"Four or five days, at the least, I am afraid," he said. "It is a
+source of great annoyance to me to be called away at this time, but
+unfortunately there is no way of avoiding it. You may depend upon my
+getting back as quickly as possible," he added, significantly.
+
+"The house will seem very lonely and dull without you."
+
+"I am afraid you flatter me," he replied, slowly. Then he suddenly
+drew his chair up to her side and took her hand in his. "Miriam," he
+said, "do you know that the time you asked for in order that you might
+be able to make up your mind is nearly at an end?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is," said Miriam, in little more than a whisper.
+
+"As soon as I return from the continent, I shall expect you to give me
+an answer."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"If I only knew what the answer would be!"
+
+She smiled, and gave him another glance out of her black eyes.
+
+The colour mounted to his forehead.
+
+"You won't keep me in suspense much longer?" he said. "You will let me
+know my fate, won't you, as soon as I come back?"
+
+For the first time she bent her eyes on him fully and steadily. "Yes,
+Mr. Van Duren," she said, "you shall know your fate when you get back
+from the Continent."
+
+Before she knew what he was about to do, he had seized her hand and
+pressed it passionately to his lips. She shuddered from head to foot
+as she withdrew it from his grasp. Bakewell knocked and entered. "Your
+hansom is at the door, sir, and you have only just time to catch the
+train."
+
+Van Duren arose and made his adieux. "Your father still seems very
+weak and feeble," he said, in a low voice, to Miriam, as he stood for
+a moment at the door. "I am afraid that the warm weather has not done
+much to benefit him."
+
+"Will anything in this world ever do much to benefit him," she
+answered. Then there was a last shake of the hand, and then she
+watched him go downstairs. As soon as she heard the front door clash
+she ran to the window, and waved him a last adieu as he was driven
+away. "Shall I ever see him again, I wonder?" she whispered to herself
+"I hope not."
+
+"Farewell, Max Jacoby, otherwise Van Duren!" cried Byrne, as he took
+off his wig and flung it across the room. "When next we meet it will
+be under very different circumstances."
+
+
+Pringle, as was usual whenever his master was from home, was left in
+special charge of the premises. At such times he slept in the house,
+and was waited upon by Bakewell and his wife. As it was necessary to
+give some sort of an intimation that they were going out of town,
+Byrne, on the Friday morning, sent Miriam downstairs to see Pringle,
+and tell him that they had suddenly made up their minds to take a
+holiday at the seaside for a week or two. Pringle was most affable
+and polite, and desired Miss Byrne to give his respects to her papa,
+and say how sincerely he hoped that the sea air might prove of benefit
+to him. At the same time, might he be permitted to ask for an address
+to which he could send any post letters that might happen to come for
+Mr. Byrne after his departure?
+
+As Miriam had not mentioned the place to which they were going, this
+seemed only a fair question. However, she had an answer ready. She
+wrote down Miss Bellamy's address, to which place Pringle was
+requested to send all letters.
+
+That same evening, between eight and nine, Miriam and her father went
+out for a little while to make a few final arrangements for their
+journey in the morning. They had hardly been gone five minutes when
+Pringle happened to find himself on the landing opposite the door of
+their sitting-room. On turning the handle the door was found to be
+unlocked and the gas only half turned down--signs that the inmates
+might be expected back before very long.
+
+Leaving the door wide open, Pringle glided into the room. He was dying
+to know to what place Byrne and his daughter were going--in fact, he
+did not believe they were going to the seaside at all--and he thought
+that he might perhaps find a luggage label, or something else, in the
+room, that would reveal to him what he wanted to know.
+
+One or two boxes, ready packed, were there, and on the table lay
+several loose labels, but, unfortunately for Pringle's purpose, they
+were still blank. Gliding quietly about the room, he next tried the
+different drawers and cupboards, hoping that in one or other of them
+he might find a clue of some kind to what he was so anxious to know,
+but all his searching proved of no avail. Suddenly he heard the street
+door open, and he had hardly time to get out of the room and round the
+corner of the next landing, before Miriam ran lightly up the stairs to
+fetch something that she had forgotten.
+
+Later on in the evening, when Byrne and Miriam had got back home,
+Pringle sent Bakewell upstairs to ask at what time next morning they
+would like to have a cab in readiness.
+
+"How long will it take to drive to Euston Square?" asked Miriam.
+
+"A good half-hour, miss. Three-quarters, if you happen to meet with a
+block."
+
+"At that rate an hour would be ample time. Will you kindly arrange to
+have a cab in readiness by nine o'clock?"
+
+At five minutes past nine next morning, Mr. Byrne and his daughter,
+together with sundry boxes of luggage, drove away from Spur Alley in a
+four-wheeler for Euston Square. Three minutes later Pringle was
+following on their heels in a hansom. He had timed himself to arrive
+at the station within two minutes of those whom he was following. He
+alighted, and began to reconnoitre cautiously. It would not do to be
+seen by either father or daughter. Peeping round a corner of the
+entrance doors into the large hall, he there saw Miriam standing by
+the luggage, Byrne having in all probability gone to secure tickets.
+Pringle beckoned to a porter. "I'm from Scotland Yard," he whispered.
+"I want you to find out, without its being noticed, for what place
+those boxes are directed by which yonder young lady is standing."
+
+"All right, sir--that's easily done," said the porter.
+
+Three minutes later he came back to Pringle. "The boxes are labelled
+for Marhyddoc, in North Wales," he said. Pringle put down the name of
+the place in his note-book, gave the man a shilling, and took the next
+omnibus back to the City.
+
+But he did not leave the station till he caught a glimpse of Byrne as
+he stood at the refreshment counter waiting for his travelling flask
+to be filled. But the Peter Byrne whom he now saw was a very different
+person from the decrepit, deaf old invalid of Spur Alley, The long
+white locks, the black velvet skull-cap, the hump on the left
+shoulder, and the feeble walk, had all disappeared in the cab, as if
+by magic, leaving behind them a brisk, pleasant-looking gentleman of
+middle age, who was speaking with the young person that was waiting
+upon him, and who seemed to have no difficulty whatever in hearing her
+replies.
+
+"I thought as much," said Pringle, with a knowing shake of the head.
+"It's no more than I expected. I've known all along that the old boy
+and his daughter were up to some private little game of their own.
+Well, so long as it means no good to Van Duren and no harm to me, I'm
+not the man to spoil their sport. But what will Van Duren say when he
+gets back home and finds his birds flown? It don't matter: I hope to
+have flown too by that time."
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. II.
+
+
+
+______________________________________________
+BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Secret of the Sea. Vol. 2 (of 3), by 
+T. W. Speight
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57814 ***