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+The Project Gutenberg EBook What Will He Do With It, by Lytton, V7
+#93 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: What Will He Do With It, Book 7.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7665]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 1, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V7 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     VIGNETTES FOR THE NEXT BOOK OF BEAUTY.
+
+"I quite agree with you, Alban; Honoria Vipont is a very superior young
+lady."
+
+"I knew you would think so!"  cried the Colonel, with more warmth than
+usual to him.
+
+"Many years since," resumed Darrell, with reflective air, "I read Miss
+Edgeworth's novels; and in conversing with Miss Honoria Vipont, methinks
+I confer with one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines--so rational, so prudent,
+so well-behaved--so free from silly romantic notions--so replete with
+solid information, moral philosophy and natural history--so sure to
+regulate her watch and her heart to the precise moment, for the one to
+strike, and the other to throb--and to marry at last a respectable steady
+husband, whom she will win with dignity, and would lose with decorum!  A
+very superior girl indeed."
+
+     ["Darrell speaks--not the author.  Darrell is unjust to the more
+     exquisite female characters of a Novelist, admirable for strength of
+     sense, correctness of delineation, terseness of narrative, and
+     lucidity of style-nor less admirable for the unexaggerated nobleness
+     of sentiment by which some of her heroines are notably
+     distinguished.]
+
+"Though your description of Miss Vipont is satirical," said Alban Morley,
+smiling, in spite of some irritation, "yet I will accept it as panegyric;
+for it conveys, unintentionally, a just idea of the qualities that make
+an intelligent coinpanion and a safe wife.  And those are the qualities
+we must look to, if we marry at our age.  We are no longer boys," added
+the Colonel sententiously.
+
+DARRELL.--"Alas, no!  I wish we were.  But the truth of your remark is
+indisputable.  Ah, look!  Is not that a face which might make an
+octogenarian forget that he is not a boy?--what regular features!
+--and what a blush!"
+
+The friends were riding in the park; and as Darrell spoke, he bowed to a
+young lady, who, with one or two others, passed rapidly by in a barouche.
+It was that very handsome young lady to whom Lionel had seen him
+listening so attentively in the great crowd, for which Carr Vipont's
+family party had been deserted.
+
+Yes; Lady Adela is one of the loveliest girls in Loudon," said the
+Colonel, who had also lifted his hat as the barouche whirled by--"and
+amiable too: I have known her ever since she was born.  Her father and I
+are great friends--an excellent man but stingy.  I had much difficulty in
+arranging the eldest girl's marriage with Lord Bolton, and am a trustee
+in the settlement.  If you feel a preference for Lady Adela, though I
+don't think she would suit you so well as Miss Vipont, I will answer for
+her father's encouragement and her consent.  'Tis no drawback to you,
+though it is to most of her admirers, when I add, 'There's nothing with
+her!'"
+
+"And nothing in her!  which is worse," said Darrell.
+
+"Still, it is pleasant to gaze on a beautiful landscape, even though the
+soil be barren."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"That depends upon whether you are merely the artistic
+spectator of the landscape, or the disappointed proprietor of the soil."
+
+"Admirable!"  said Darrell; "you have disposed of Lady Adela.  So ho! so
+ho!"  Darrell's horse (his old high-nettled horse, freshly sent to him
+from Fawley, and in spite of the five years that had added to its age, of
+spirit made friskier by long repose) here put down its ears lashed out--
+and indulged in a bound which would have unseated many a London rider.
+A young Amazon, followed hard by some two or three young gentlemen and
+their grooms, shot by, swift and reckless as a hero at Balaclava.  But
+With equal suddenness, as she caught sight of Darrell--whose hand and
+voice had already soothed the excited nerves of his steed--the Amazon
+wheeled round and gained his side.  Throwing up her veil, she revealed a
+face so prettily arch, so perversely gay--with eye of radiant hazel, and
+fair locks half loosened from their formal braid--that it would have
+beguiled resentment from the most insensible--reconciled to danger the
+most timid.  And yet there was really a grace of humility in the
+apologies she tendered for her discourtesy and thoughtlessness.  As the
+girl reined her light palfrey by Darrell's side-turning from the young
+companions who had now joined her, their hackneys in a foam-and devoting
+to his ear all her lively overflow of happy spirits, not untempered by a
+certain deference, but still apparently free from dissimulation--
+Daxrell's grand face lighted up--his mellow laugh, unrestrained, though
+low, echoed her sportive tones; her youth, her joyousness were
+irresistibly contagious.  Alban Morley watched observant, while
+interchanging talk with her attendant comrades, young men of high ton,
+but who belonged to that /jeunesse doree/ with which the surface of life
+patrician is fretted over--young men with few ideas, fewer duties--but
+with plenty of leisure--plenty of health--plenty of money in their
+pockets--plenty of debts to their tradesmen--daring at Melton--scheming
+at T'attersall's--pride to maiden aunts--plague to thrifty fathers--
+fickle lovers, but solid matches--in brief, fast livers, who get through
+their youth betimes, and who, for the most part, are middle-aged before
+they are thirty--tamed by wedlock--sobered by the responsibilities that
+come with the cares of property and the dignities of rank--undergo abrupt
+metamorphosis into chairmen of quarter sessions, county members, or
+decorous peers;--their ideas enriched as their duties grow--their
+opinions, once loose as willows to the wind, stiffening into the
+palisades of fenced propriety--valuable, busy men, changed as Henry V.,
+when coming into the cares of state, he said to the Chief Justice, "There
+is my hand;" and to Sir John Falstaff,
+
+                   "I know thee not, old roan;
+                    Fall to thy prayers!"
+
+But meanwhile the elite of this /jeunesse doree/ glittered round Flora
+Vyvyan: not a regular beauty like Lady Adela--not a fine girl like Miss
+Vipont, but such a light, faultless figure--such a pretty radiant face--
+more womanly for affection to be manlike--Hebe aping Thalestris.  Flora,
+too, was an heiress--an only child--spoilt, wilful--not at all
+accomplished--(my belief is that accomplishments are thought great bores
+by the jeunesse doree)--no accomplishment except horsemanship, with a
+slight knack at billiards, and the capacity to take three whiffs from a
+Spanish cigarette.  That last was adorable--four offers had been advanced
+to her hand on that merit alone.--(N.B.  Young ladies do themselves no
+good with the jeunesse doree, which, in our time, is a lover that rather
+smokes than "sighs, like furnace," by advertising their horror of
+cigars.)  You would suppose that Flora Vyvyan must be coarse-vulgar
+perhaps; not at all; she was pignaute--original; and did the oddest
+things with the air and look of the highest breeding.  Fairies cannot be
+vulgar, no matter what they do; they may take the strangest liberties--
+pinch the maids--turn the house topsy-turvy; but they are ever the
+darlings of grace and poetry.  Flora Vyvyan was a fairy.  Not peculiarly
+intellectual herself, she had a veneration for intellect; those fast
+young men were the last persons likely to fascinate that fast young lady.
+Women are so perverse; they always prefer the very people you would least
+suspect--the antithesis to themselves.  Yet is it possible that Flora
+Vyvyan can have carried her crotchets to so extravagant a degree as to
+have designed the conquest of Guy Darrell--ten years older than her own
+father?  She, too, an heiress--certainly not mercenary; she who had
+already refused better worldly matches than Darrell himself was--young
+men, handsome men, with coronets on the margin of their note-paper and
+the panels of their broughams!  The idea seemed preposterous;
+nevertheless, Alban Morley, a shrewd observer, conceived that idea, and
+trembled for his friend.
+
+At last the young lady and her satellites shot off, and the Colonel said
+cautiously, "Miss Vyvyan is--alarming."
+
+DARRELL.--"Alarming! the epithet requires construing."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"The sort of girl who might make a man of our years
+really and literally an old fool!"
+
+DARRELL.--"Old fool such a man must be if girls of any sort are permitted
+to make him a greater fool than he was before.  But I think that, with
+those pretty hands resting on one's arm-chair, or that sunny face shining
+into one's study windows, one might be a very happy old fool--and that is
+the most one can expect!"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY (checking an anxious groan).--"I am afraid, my poor
+friend, you are far gone already.  No wonder Honoria Vipont fails to be
+appreciated.  But Lady Selina has a maxim--the truth of which my
+experience attests--'the moment it comes to woman, the most sensible men
+are the'--"
+
+"Oldest fools!"  put  in  Darrell.  "If  Mark Antony made such a goose of
+himself for that painted harridan Cleopatra, what would he have done for
+a blooming Juliet!  Youth and high spirit!  Alas!  why are these to be
+unsuitable companions for us, as we reach that climax in time and sorrow
+--when to the one we are grown the most indulgent, and of the other have
+the most need?  Alban, that girl, if her heart were really won--her wild
+nature wisely mastered, gently guided--would make a true, prudent,
+loving, admirable wife--"
+
+"Heavens!"  cried Alban Morley.
+
+"To such a husband," pursued Darrell, unheeding the ejaculation, "as--
+Lionel Haughton.  What say you?"  "Lionel--oh, I have no objection at all
+to that; but he's too young yet to think of marriage--a mere boy.
+Besides, if you yourself marry, Lionel could scarcely aspire to a girl of
+Miss Vyvyan's birth and fortune."
+
+"Ho, not aspire!  That boy at least shall not have to woo in vain from
+the want of fortune.  The day I marry--if ever that day come--I settle on
+Lionel Haughton and his heirs five thousand a-year; and if, with gentle
+blood, youth, good looks, and a heart of gold, that fortune does not
+allow him to aspire to any girl whose hand he covets, I can double it,
+and still be rich enough to buy a superior companion in Honoria Vipont--"
+
+MORLEY.--"Don't say buy--"
+
+DARRELL.--" Ay, and still be young enough to catch a butterfly in Lady
+Adela--still be bold enough to chain a panther in Flora Vyvyan.  Let the
+world know--your world in each nook of its gaudy auction-mart--that
+Lione: Haughton is no pauper cousin--no penniless fortune-hunter.  I wish
+that world to be kind to him while he is yet young, and can enjoy it.
+Ah, Morley, Pleasure, like Punishment, hobbles after us, /pede claudo/.
+What would have delighted us yesterday does not catch us up till
+to-morrow, and yesterday's pleasure is not the morrow's.  A pennyworth of
+sugar-plums would have made our eyes sparkle when we were scrawling pot-
+hooks at a preparatory school, but no one gave us sugar-plums then.  Now
+every day at dessert France heaps before us her daintiest sugar-plums in
+gilt /bonbonnieres/.  Do you ever covet them?  I never do.  Let Lionel
+have his sugar-plums in time.  And as we talk, there he comes.  Lionel,
+how are you?"
+
+"I resign you to Lionel's charge now," said the Colonel, glancing at his
+watch.  "I have an engagement--trouble some.  Two silly friends of mine
+have been quarrelling--high words--in an age when duels are out of the
+question.  I have promised to meet another man, and draw up the form for
+a mutual apology.  High words are so stupid nowadays.  No option but to
+swallow them up again if they were as high as steeples.  Adieu for the
+present.  We meet to-night at Lady Dulcett's concert?"
+
+"Yes," said Darrell.  "I promised Miss Vyvyan to be there, and keep her
+from disturbing the congregation.  You Lionel, will come with me."
+
+LIONELL (embarrassed).--"No; you must excuse me.  I have long been
+engaged elsewhere."
+
+"That's a pity," said the Colonel, gravely.  "Lady Dulcett's conceit is
+just one of the places where a young man should be seen."  Colonel Morley
+waved his hand with his usual languid elegance, and his hack cantered off
+with him, stately as a charger, easy as a rocking-horse.
+
+"Unalterable man," said Darrell, as his eye followed the horseman's
+receding figure.  "'Through all the mutations on Time's dusty high-road-
+stable as a milestone.  Just what Alban Morley was as a school-boy he is
+now; and if mortal span were extended to the age of the patriarchs, just
+what Alban Morley is now, Alban Morley would be a thousand years hence.
+I don't mean externally, of course; wrinkles will come--cheeks will fade.
+But these are trifles: man's body is a garment, as Socrates said before
+me, and every seven years, according to the physiologists, man has a new
+suit, fibre and cuticle, from top to toe.  The interior being that wears
+the clothes is the same in Alban Morley.  Has he loved, hated, rejoiced,
+suffered?  Where is the sign?  Not one.  At school, as in life, doing
+nothing, but decidedly somebody--respected by small boys, petted by big
+boys--an authority with all.  Never getting honours--arm and arm with
+those who did; never in scrapes--advising those who were; imperturbable,
+immovable, calm above mortal cares as an Epicurean deity.  What can
+wealth give that he has not got?  In the houses of the richest he chooses
+his room.  Talk of ambition, talk of power--he has their rewards without
+an effort.  True prime minister of all the realm he cares for; good
+society has not a vote against him--he transacts its affairs, he knows
+its secrets--he yields its patronage.  Ever requested to do a favour--no
+loan great enough to do him one.  Incorruptible, yet versed to a fraction
+in each man's price; impeccable, yet confidant in each man's foibles;
+smooth as silk, hard as adamant; impossible to wound, vex, annoy him--but
+not insensible; thoroughly kind.  Dear, dear Alban! nature never polished
+a finer gentleman out of a solider block of man!"  Darrell's voice
+quivered a little as he completed in earnest affection the sketch begun
+in playful irony, and then with a sudden change of thought, he resumed
+lightly:
+
+"But I wish you to do me a favour, Lionel.  Aid me to repair a fault in
+good breeding, of which Alban Morley would never have been guilty.  I
+have been several days in London, and not yet called on your mother.
+Will you accompany me now to her house and present me?"
+
+"Thank you, thank you; you will make her so proud and happy; but may I
+ride on and prepare her for your visit?"
+
+"Certainly; her address is--"
+
+"Gloucester Place, No.--."
+
+"I will meet you there in half an hour."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+              "Let observation, with expansive view,
+               Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
+
+--AND OBSERVATION WILL EVERYWHERE FIND, INDISPENSABLE TO THE HAPPINESS OF
+WOMAN, A VISITING ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+Lionel knew that Mrs. Haughton would that day need more than usual
+forewarning of a visit from Mr. Darrell.  For the evening of that day
+Mrs. Haughton proposed "to give a party."  When Mrs. Haughton gave a
+party, it was a serious affair.  A notable and bustling housewife, she
+attended herself to each preparatory detail.  It was to assist at this
+party that Lionel had resigned Lady Dulcett's concert.  The young man,
+reluctantly acquiescing in the arrangements by which Alban Morley had
+engaged him a lodging of his own, seldom or never let a day pass without
+gratifying his mother's proud heart by an hour or two spent in Gloucester
+Place, often to the forfeiture of a pleasant ride, or other tempting
+excursion, with gay comrades.  Difficult in London life, and at the full
+of its season, to devote an hour or two to visits, apart from the track
+chalked out by one's very mode of existence--difficult to cut off an hour
+so as not to cut up a day.  And Mrs. Haughton was exacting-nice in her
+choice as to the exact slice in the day.  She took the prime of the
+joint.  She liked her neighbours to see the handsome, elegant young man
+dismount from his charger or descend from his cabriolet, just at the
+witching hour when Gloucester Place was fullest.  Did he go to a levee,
+he must be sure to come to her before he changed his dress, that she and
+Gloucester Place might admire him in uniform.  Was he going to dine at
+some very great house, he must take her in his way (though no street
+could be more out of his way), that she might be enabled to say in the
+parties to which she herself repaired "There is a great dinner at Lord
+So-and-so's to-day; my son called on me before he went there.  If he had
+been disengaged, I should have asked permission to bring him here."
+
+Not that Mrs. Haughton honestly designed, nor even wished to draw the
+young man from the dazzling vortex of high life into her own little
+currents of dissipation.  She was much too proud of Lionel to think that
+her friends were grand enough for him to honour their houses by his
+presence.  She had in this, too, a lively recollection of her lost
+Captain's doctrinal views of the great world's creed.  The Captain had
+flourished in the time when Impertinence, installed by Brummell, though
+her influence was waning, still schooled her oligarchs, and maintained
+the etiquette of her court; and even when his /misalliance/ and his debts
+had cast him out of his native sphere, he lost not all the original
+brightness of an exclusive.  In moments of connubial confidence, when
+owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the causes
+of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his fortune,
+that gives him his place in society--it depends on his conduct, Jessie.
+He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies track him to
+the haunts of vulgarians.  I date my fall in life to dining with a horrid
+man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street.  His wife took my
+arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as he spoke was
+on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which they called a dinner
+(the Captain at that moment would have welcomed a rasher).  The woman
+went about blabbing--the thing got wind--for the first time my character
+received a soil.  What is a man without character! and character once
+sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless.  Teach my boy to beware of the
+first false step--no association with parvenus.  Don't cry, Jessie--
+I don't mean that he is to cut your--relations are quite different from
+other people--nothing so low as cutting relations.  I continued, for
+instance, to visit Guy Darrell, though he lived at the back of Holborn,
+and I actually saw him once in brown beaver gloves.  But he was a
+relation.  I have even dined at his house, and met odd people there--
+people who lived also at the back of Holborn.  But he did not ask me
+to go to their houses, and if he had, I must have cut him."  By
+reminiscences of this kind of talk, Lionel was saved from any design of
+Mrs. Haughton's to attract his orbit into the circle within which she
+herself moved.  He must come to the parties she gave--illumine or awe odd
+people there.  That was a proper tribute to maternal pride.  But had they
+asked him to their parties, she would have been the first to resent such
+a liberty.
+
+Lionel found Mrs. Haughton in great bustle.  A gardener's cart was before
+the street door.  Men were bringing in a grove of evergreens, intended to
+border the staircase, and make its exiguous ascent still more difficult.
+The refreshments were already laid out in the dining-room.  Mrs.
+Haughton, with scissors in hand, was cutting flowers to fill the eperyne,
+but darting to and fro, like a dragonfly, from the dining-room to the
+hall, from the flowers to the evergreens.
+
+"Dear me, Lionel, is that you?  Just tell me, you who go to all those
+grandees, whether the ratafia-cakes should be opposite to the spauge-
+cakes, or whether they would not go better--thus--at cross-corners?"
+
+"My dear mother, I never observed--I don't know.  But make haste-take off
+that apron-have those doors shut come upstairs.  Mr. Darrell will be here
+very shortly.  I have ridden on to prepare you."
+
+"Mr. Darrell--TO-DAY--HOW could you let him come?  Oh, Lionel, how
+thoughtless you are!  You should have some respect for your mother--I am
+your mother, sir."
+
+"Yes, my own dear mother--don't scold--I could not help it.  He is so
+engaged, so sought after; if I had put him off to-day, he might never
+have come, and--"
+
+"Never have come!  Who is Mr. Darrell, to give himself such airs?--Only a
+lawyer after all," said Mrs. Haughton, with majesty.
+
+"Oh, mother, that speech is not like you.  He is our benefactor--our--"
+
+"Don't, don't say very more--I was very wrong--quite wicked--only my
+temper, Lionel dear.  Good Mr. Darrell!  I shall be so happy to see him--
+see him, too, in this house that I owe to him--see him by your side!  I
+think I shall fall down on my knees to him."
+
+And her eyes began to stream.
+
+Lionel kissed the tears away fondly.  "That's my own mother now indeed--
+now I am proud of you, mother; and how well you look!  I am proud of that
+too."
+
+"Look well--I am not fit to be seen, this figure--though perhaps an
+elderly quiet gentleman like good Mr. Darrell does not notice ladies
+much.  John, John, makes haste with those plants.  Gracious me! you've
+got your coat off!--put it on--I expect a gentleman--I'm at home, in the
+front drawing-room--no--that's all set out--the back drawing-room, John.
+Send Susan to me.  Lionel, do just look at the supper-table; and what is
+to be done with the flowers, and--"
+
+The rest of Mrs. Haughton's voice, owing to the rapidity of her ascent,
+which affected the distinctness of her utterance, was lost in air.  She
+vanished at culminating point--within her chamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     MRS. HAUGHTON AT HOME TO GUY DARRELL.
+
+Thanks to Lionel's activity, the hall was disencumbered--the plants
+hastily stowed away-the parlour closed on the festive preparations--and
+the footman in his livery waiting at the door--when Mr. Darrell arrived.
+Lionel himself came out and welcomed his benefactor's footstep across the
+threshold of the home which the generous man had provided for the widow.
+
+If Lionel had some secret misgivings as to the result of this interview,
+they were soon and most happily dispelled.  For, at the sight of Guy
+Darrell leaning so affectionately on her son's arm, Mrs. Haughton
+mechanically gave herself up to the impulse of her own warm, grateful,
+true woman's heart.  And her bound forward, her seizure of Darrell's
+hand--her first fervent blessing--her after words, simple but eloquent
+with feeling--made that heart so transparent, that Darrell looked it
+through with respectful eyes.
+
+Mrs. Haughton was still a pretty woman, and with much of that delicacy of
+form and outline which constitutes the gentility of person.  She had a
+sweet voice too, except when angry.  Her defects of education, of temper,
+or of conventional polish, were not discernible in the overflow of
+natural emotion.  Darrell had come resolved to be released if possible.
+Pleased he was, much more than he had expected.  He even inly accepted
+for the deceased Captain excuses which he had never before admitted to
+himself.  The linen-draper's daughter was no coarse presuming dowdy, and
+in her candid rush of gratitude there was not that underbred servility
+which Darrell had thought perceptible in her epistolary compositions.
+There was elegance too, void both of gaudy ostentation and penurious
+thrift, in the furniture and arrangements of the room.  The income he
+gave to her was not spent with slatternly waste or on tawdry gewgaws.  To
+ladies in general, Darrell's manner was extremely attractive--not the
+less winning because of a certain shyness which, implying respect for
+those he addressed, and a modest undervaluing of his own merit, conveyed
+compliment and soothed self-love.  And to that lady in especial such
+gentle shyness was the happiest good-breeding.
+
+In short, all went off without a hitch, till, as Darrell was taking
+leave, Mrs. Haughton was reminded by some evil genius of her evening
+party, and her very gratitude, longing for some opportunity to requite
+obligation, prompted her to invite the kind man to whom the facility of
+giving parties was justly due.  She had never realised to herself,
+despite all that Lionel could say, the idea of Darrell's station in the
+world--a lawyer who had spent his youth at the back of Holborn, whom the
+stylish Captain had deemed it a condescension not to cut, might indeed
+become very rich; but he could never be the fashion.  "Poor man," she
+thought, "he must be very lonely.  He is not, like Lionel, a young
+dancing man.  A quiet little party, with people of his own early rank and
+habits, would be more in his way than those grand places to which Lionel
+goes.  I can but ask him--I ought to ask him.  What would he say if I did
+not ask him?  Black ingratitude indeed, if he were not asked!"  All these
+ideas rushed through her mind in a breath, and as she clasped Darrell's
+extended hand in both her own, she said: "I have a little party to-
+night!"--and paused.  Darrell remaining mute, and Lionel not suspecting
+what was to ensue, she continued: "There may be some good music--young
+friends of mine--sing charmingly--Italians!"
+
+Darrell bowed.  Lionel began to shudder.
+
+"And if I might presume to think it would amuse you, Mr. Darrell, oh, I
+should be so happy to see you!--so happy!"
+
+"Would you?"  said Darrell, briefly.  "Then I should be a churl if I did
+not come.  Lionel will escort me.  Of course you expect him too?"
+
+"Yes, indeed.  Though he has so many fine places to go to-and it can't be
+exactly what he is used to-yet he is such a dear good boy that he gives
+up all to gratify his mother."
+
+Lionel, in agonies, turned an unfilial back, and looked steadily out of
+the window; but Darrell, far too august to take offence where none was
+meant, only smiled at the implied reference to Lionel's superior demand
+in the fashionable world, and replied, without even a touch of his
+accustomed irony: "And to gratify his mother is a pleasure I thank you
+for inviting me to share with him."
+
+More and more at her ease, and charmed with having obeyed her hospitable
+impulse, Mrs. Haughton, following Darrell to the landing-place, added:
+
+"And if you like to play a quiet rubber--"
+
+"I never touch cards--I abhor the very name of them, ma'am," interrupted
+Darrell, somewhat less gracious in his tones.
+
+He mounted his horse; and Lionel, breaking from Mrs. Haughton, who was
+assuring him that Mr. Darrell was not at all what she expected, but
+really quite the gentleman--nay, a much grander gentleman than even
+Colonel Morley--regained his kinsman's side, looking abashed and
+discomfited.  Darrell, with the kindness which his fine quick intellect
+enabled him so felicitously to apply, hastened to relieve the young
+guardsman's mind.
+
+"I like your mother much--very much," said he, in his most melodious
+accents.  "Good boy!  I see now why you gave up Lady Dulcett.  Go and
+take a canter by yourself, or with younger friends, and be sure you call
+on me so that we may be both at Mrs. Haughton's by ten o'clock.  I can go
+later to the concert if I feel inclined."
+
+He waved his hand, wheeled his horse, and trotted off towards the fair
+suburban lanes that still proffer to the denizens of London glimpses of
+rural fields, and shadows from quiet hedgerows.  He wished to be alone;
+the sight of Mrs. Haughton had revived recollections of bygone days--
+memory linking memory in painful chain-gay talk with his younger
+schoolfellow--that wild Charlie, now in his grave--his own laborious
+youth, resolute aspirings, secret sorrows--and the strong man felt the
+want of the solitary self-commune, without which self-conquest is
+unattainable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     MRS. HAUGHTON AT HOME MISCELLANEOUSLY.  LITTLE PARTIES ARE USEFUL IN
+     BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER.  ONE NEVER KNOWS WHOM ONE MAY MEET.
+
+Great kingdoms grew out of small beginnings.  Mrs. Haughton's social
+circle was described from a humble centre.  On coming into possession of
+her easy income and her house in Gloucester Place, she was naturally
+seized with the desire of an appropriate "visiting acquaintance."  The
+accomplishment of that desire had been deferred awhile by the excitement
+of Lionel's departure for Paris, and the IMMENSE TEMPTATION to which the
+attentions of the spurious Mr. Courtenay Smith had exposed her widowed
+solitude: but no sooner had she recovered from the shame and anger with
+which she had discarded that showy impostor, happily in time, than the
+desire became the more keen; because the good lady felt that with a mind
+so active and restless as hers, a visiting acquaintance might be her best
+preservative from that sense of loneliness which disposes widows to lend
+the incautious ear to adventurous wooers.  After her experience of her
+own weakness in listening to a sharper, and with a shudder at her escape,
+Mrs. Haughton made a firm resolve never to give her beloved son a father-
+in-law.  No, she would distract her thoughts--she would have a VISITING
+ACQUAINTANCE.  She commenced by singling out such families as at various
+times had been her genteelest lodgers--now lodging elsewhere.  She
+informed them by polite notes of her accession of consequence and
+fortune, which she was sure they would be happy to hear; and these notes,
+left with the card of "Mrs. Haughton, Gloucester Place," necessarily
+produced respondent notes and correspondent cards.  Gloucester Place then
+prepared itself for a party.  The ci-devant lodgers urbanely attended the
+summons.  In their turn they gave parties.  Mrs. Haughton was invited.
+From each such party she bore back a new draught into her "social
+circle."  Thus, long before the end of five years, Mrs. Haughton had
+attained her object.  She had a "VISITING ACQUAINTANCE!"  It is true that
+she was not particular; so that there was a new somebody at whose house a
+card could be left, or a morning call achieved--who could help to fill
+her rooms, or whose rooms she could contribute to fill in turn.  She was
+contented.  She was no tuft-hunter.  She did not care for titles.  She
+had no visions of a column in the Morning Post.  She wanted, kind lady,
+only a vent for the exuberance of her social instincts; and being proud,
+she rather liked acquaintances who looked up to, instead of looking down
+on her.  Thus Gloucester Place was invaded by tribes not congenial to its
+natural civilised atmosphere.  Hengists and Horsas, from remote Anglo-
+Saxon districts, crossed the intervening channel, and insulted the
+British nationality of that salubrious district.  To most of such
+immigrators, Mrs. Haughton, of Gloucester Place, was a personage of the
+highest distinction.  A few others of prouder status in the world, though
+they owned to themselves that there was a sad mixture at Mrs. Haughton's
+house, still, once seduced there, came again--being persons who, however
+independent in fortune or gentle by blood, had but a small "visiting
+acquaintance" in town; fresh from economical colonisation on the
+Continent or from distant provinces in these three kingdoms.  Mrs.
+Haughton's rooms were well lighted.  There was music for some, whist for
+others; tea, ices, cakes, and a crowd for all.
+
+At ten o'clock-the rooms already nearly filled, and Mrs. Haughton, as she
+stood at the door, anticipating with joy that happy hour when the
+staircase would become inaccessible--the head attendant, sent with the
+ices from the neighbouring confectioner, announced in a loud voice: "Mr.
+Haughton--Mr. Darrell."
+
+At that latter name a sensation thrilled the assembly--the name so much
+in every one's mouth at that period, nor least in the mouths of the great
+middle class, on whom--though the polite may call them "a sad mixture,"
+cabinets depend--could not fail to be familiar to the ears of Mrs.
+Haughton's "visiting acquaintance."  The interval between his
+announcement and his ascent from the hall to the drawing-room was busily
+filled up by murmured questions to the smiling hostess: "Darrell! what!
+the Darrell!  Guy Darrell! greatest man of the day!  A connection of
+yours?  Bless me, you don't say so?"  Mrs. Haughton began to feel
+nervous.  Was Lionel right?  Could the man who had only been a lawyer at
+the back of Holborn really be, now, such a very, very great man--greatest
+man of the day?  Nonsense!
+
+"Ma'am," said one pale, puff-cheeked, flat-nosed gentleman, in a very
+large white waistcoat, who was waiting by her side till a vacancy in one
+of the two whist-tables should occur.  "Ma'am, I'm an enthusiastic
+admirer of Mr. Darrell.  You say he is a connection of yours?  Present me
+to him."
+
+Mrs. Haughton nodded flutteringly, for, as the gentleman closed his
+request, and tapped a large gold snuff-box, Darrell stood before her--
+Lionel close at his side, looking positively sheepish.  The great man
+said a few civil words, and was gliding into the room to make way for the
+press behind him, when he of the white waistcoat, touching Mrs.
+Haughton's arm, and staring Darrell full in the face, said, very loud:
+"In these anxious times, public men dispense with ceremony.  I crave an
+introduction to Mr. Darrell."  Thus pressed, poor Mrs. Haughton, without
+looking up, muttered out: "Mr. Adolphus Poole--Mr. Darrell," and turned
+to welcome fresh comers.
+
+"Mr. Darrell," said Mr. Poole, bowing to the ground, "this is an honour."
+
+Darrell gave the speaker one glance of his keen eye, and thought to
+himself: "If I were still at the bar I should be sorry to hold a brief
+for that fellow."  However, he returned the bow formally, and, bowing
+again at the close of a highly complimentary address with which Mr. Poole
+followed up his opening sentence, expressed himself "much flattered," and
+thought he had escaped; but wherever he went through the crowd, Mr. Poole
+contrived to follow him, and claim his notice by remarks on the affairs
+of the day--the weather--the funds--the crops.  At length Darrell
+perceived, sitting aloof in a corner, an excellent man whom indeed it
+surprised him to see in a London drawing-room, but who, many years ago,
+when Darrell was canvassing the enlightened constituency of Ouzelford,
+had been on a visit to the chairman of his committee--an influential
+trader--and having connections in the town--and, being a very high
+character, had done him good service in the canvass.  Darrell rarely
+forgot a face, and never a service.  At any time he would have been glad
+to see the worthy man once more, but at that time he was grateful indeed.
+
+"Excuse me," he said bluntly to Mr. Poole, "but I see an old friend."  He
+moved on, and thick as the crowd had become, it made way, with respect as
+to royalty for the distinguished orator.  The buzz of admiration as he
+passed--louder than in drawing-rooms more refined--would have had
+sweeter music than Grisi's most artful quaver to a vainer man--nay, once
+on a time to him.  But--sugar plums come too late!  He gained the corner,
+and roused the solitary sitter.
+
+"My dear Mr. Hartopp, do you not remember me--Guy Darrell?"
+
+"Mr. Darrell!"  cried the ex-mayor of Gatesboro', rising, "who could
+think that you would remember me?"
+
+"What! not remember those ten stubborn voters, on whom, all and singly,
+I had lavished my powers of argu ment in vain?  You came, and with the
+brief words, 'John--Ned--Dick--oblige me-vote for Darrell!' the men were
+convinced--the votes won.  That's what I call eloquence"--(sotto voce-
+"Confound that fellow! still after me! "Aside to Hartopp)--"Oh! may I ask
+who is that Mr. What's-his-name--there--in the white waistcoat?"
+
+"Poole," answered Hartopp.  "Who is he, sir?  A speculative man.  He is
+connected with a new Company--I am told it answers.  Williams (that's my
+foreman--a very long head he has too) has taken shares in the Company,
+and wanted me to do the same, but 'tis not in my way.  And Mr. Poole may
+be a very honest man, but he does not impress me with that idea.  I have
+grown careless; I know I am liable to be taken in--I was so once--and
+therefore I avoid 'Companies' upon principle--especially when they
+promise thirty per cent., and work copper mines--Mr. Poole has a copper
+mine."
+
+"And deals in brass--you may see it in his face!  But you are not in town
+for good, Mr. Hartopp?  If I remember right, you were settled at
+Gatesboro' when we last met."
+
+"And so I am still--or rather in the neighbourhood.  I am gradually
+retiring from business, and grown more and more fond of farming.  But I
+have a family, and we live in enlightened times, when children require a
+finer education than their parents had.  Mrs. Hartopp thought my daughter
+Anna Maria was in need of some 'finishing lessons'--very fond of the harp
+is Anna Maria--and so we have taken a house in London for six weeks.
+That's Mrs. Hartopp yonder, with the bird on her head--bird of paradise,
+I believe; Williams says birds of that kind never rest.  That bird is an
+exception--it has rested on Mrs. Hartopp's head for hours together, every
+evening since we have been in town."
+
+"Significant of your connubial felicity, Mr. Hartopp."
+
+"May it be so of Anna Maria' s.  She is to be married when her education
+is finished--married, by the by, to a son of your old friend Jessop, of
+Ouzelford; and between you and me, Mr. Darrell, that is the reason why I
+consented to come to town.  Do not suppose that I would have a daughter
+finished unless there was a husband at hand who undertook to be
+responsible for the results."
+
+"You retain your wisdom, Mr. Hartopp; and I feel sure that not even your
+fair partner could have brought you up to London unless you had decided
+on the expediency of coming.  Do you remember that I told you the day you
+so admirably settled a dispute in our committee-room, 'it was well you
+were not born a king, for you would have been an irresistible tyrant'?"
+
+"Hush! hush!" whispered Hartopp, in great alarm, "if Mrs. H. should hear
+you!  What an observer you are, sir.  I thought I was a judge of
+character--but I was once deceived.  I dare say you never were."
+
+"You mistake," answered Darrell, wincing, "you deceived!  How?"
+
+"Oh, a long story, sir.  It was an elderly man--the most agreeable,
+interesting companion--a vagabond nevertheless--and such a pretty
+bewitching little girl with him, his grandchild.  I thought he might have
+been a wild harumscarum chap in his day, but that he had a true sense of
+honour"--(Darrell, wholly uninterested in this narrative, suppressed a
+yawn, and wondered when it would end).
+
+"Only think, sir, just as I was saying to myself, 'I know character--I
+never was taken in,' down comes a smart fellow--the man's own son--and
+tells me--or rather he suffers a lady who comes with him to tell me--that
+this charming old gentleman of high sense of honour was a returned
+convict--been transported for robbing his employer."
+
+Pale, breathless, Darrell listened, not unheeding now.  "What was the
+name of--of--"
+
+"The convict?  He called himself Chapman, but the son's name was Losely--
+Jasper."
+
+"Ah!"  faltered Darrell, recoiling.  "And you spoke of a little girl?"
+
+"Jasper Losely's daughter; he came after her with a magistrate's warrant.
+The old miscreant had carried her off,--to teach her his own swindling
+ways, I suppose."
+
+"Luckily she was then in my charge.  I gave her back to her father, and
+the very respectable-looking lady he brought with him.  Some relation, I
+presume."
+
+"What was her name, do you remember?"
+
+"Crane."
+
+"Crane!--Crane!"  muttered Darrell, as if trying in vain to tax his
+memory with that name.  "So he said the child was his daughter--are you
+sure?"
+
+"Oh, of course he said so, and the lady too.  But can you be acquainted
+with their, sir?"
+
+"I?--no!  Strangers to me, except by repute.  Liars--infamous liars!  But
+have the accomplices quarrelled--I mean the son and father--that the
+father should be exposed and denounced by the son?"
+
+"I conclude so.  I never saw them again.  But you believe the father
+really was, then, a felon, a convict--no excuse for him--no extenuating
+circumstances?  There was something in that man, Mr. Darrell, that made
+one love him--positively love him; and when I had to tell him that I had
+given up the child he trusted to my charge, and saw his grief, I felt a
+criminal myself."
+
+Darrell said nothing, but the character of his face was entirely altered
+--stern, hard, relentless--the face of an inexorable judge.  Hartopp,
+lifting his eyes suddenly to that countenance, recoiled in awe.
+
+"You think I was a criminal!"  he said, piteously.
+
+"I think we are both talking too much, Mr. Hartopp, of a gang of
+miserable swindlers, and I advise you to dismiss the whole remembrance of
+intercourse with any of them from your honest breast, and never to repeat
+to other ears the tale you have poured into mine.  Men of honour should
+crush down the very thought that approaches them to knaves."
+
+Thus saying, Darrell moved off with abrupt rudeness, and passing quickly
+back through the crowd, scarcely noticed Mrs. Haughton by a retreating
+nod, nor heeded Lionel at all, but hurried down the stairs.  He was
+impatiently searching for his cloak in the back parlour, when a voice
+behind said: "Let me assist you, sir--do:" and turning round with
+petulant quickness, he beheld again Mr. Adolphus Poole.  It requires an
+habitual intercourse with equals to give perfect and invariable control
+of temper to a man of irritable nerves and frank character; and though,
+where Daxrell really liked, he had much sweet forbearance, and where he
+was indifferent much stately courtesy, yet, when he was offended, he
+could be extremely uncivil.  "Sir," he cried almost stamping his foot,
+"your importunities annoy me I request you to cease them."
+
+"Oh, I ask your pardon," said Mr. Poole, with an angry growl.  "I have no
+need to force myself on any man.  But I beg you to believe that if I
+presumed to seek your acquaintance, it was to do you a service sir--yes,
+a private service, sir."  He lowered his voice into a whisper, and laid
+his finger on his nose: "There's one Jasper Losely, sir--eh?  Oh, sir,
+I'm no mischief-maker.  I respect family secrets.  Perhaps I might be of
+use, perhaps not."
+
+"Certainly not to me, sir," said Darrell, flinging the cloak he had now
+found across his shoulders, and striding from the house.  When he entered
+his carriage, the footman stood waiting for orders.  Darrell was long in
+giving them.  "Anywhere for half an hour--to St.  Paul's, then home."
+But on returning from this objectless plunge into the City, Darrell
+pulled the check-string: "To Belgrave Square--Lady Dulcett's."
+
+The concert was half over; but Flora Vyvyan had still guarded, as she had
+promised, a seat beside herself for Darrell, by lending it for the
+present to one of her obedient vassals.  Her face brightened as she saw
+Darrell enter and approach.  The vassal surrendered the chair.  Darrell
+appeared to be in the highest spirits; and I firmly believe that he was
+striving to the utmost in his power--what? to make himself agreeable to
+Flora Vyvyan?  No; to make Flora Vyvyan agreeable to himself.  The man
+did not presume that a fair young lady could be in love with him; perhaps
+he believed that, at his years, to be impossible.  But he asked what
+seemed much easier, and was much harder--he asked to be himself in love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     IT IS ASSERTED BY THOSE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TO
+     THE STUDY OF THE MANNERS AND HABIT OF INSECT SOCIETY, THAT WHEN A
+     SPIDER HAS LOST ITS LAST WEB, HAVING EXHAUSTED ALL THE GLUTINOUS
+     MATTER WHEREWITH TO SPIN ANOTHER, IT STILL.  PROTRACTS ITS INNOCENT
+     EXISTENCE, BY OBTRUDING ITS NIPPERS ON SOME LESS WARLIKE BUT MORE
+     RESPECTABLE SPIDER, POSSESSED OF A CONVENIENT HOME AND AN AIRY
+     LARDER.  OBSERVANT MORALISTS HAVE NOTICED THE SAME PECULIARITY IN
+     THE MANEATER, OR POCKET-CANNIBAL.
+
+Eleven o'clock, A.M., Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., is in his parlour,
+--the house one of those new dwellings which yearly spring up north of
+the Regent's Park,--dwellings that, attesting the eccentricity of the
+national character, task the fancy of the architect and the gravity of
+the beholder--each tenement so tortured into contrast with the other,
+that, on one little rood of ground, all ages seemed blended, and all
+races encamped.  No. 1 is an Egyptian tomb!--Pharaohs may repose there!
+No. 2 is a Swiss chalet--William Tell may be shooting in its garden!  Lo!
+the severity of Doric columns--Sparta is before you!  Behold that Gothic
+porch--you are rapt to the Norman days!  Ha! those Elizabethan mullions--
+Sidney and Raleigh, rise again!  Ho! the trellises of China--come forth,
+Confucius, and Commissioner Yeh!  Passing a few paces, we are in the land
+of the Zegri and Abencerrage:
+
+               'Land of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor.'
+
+Mr. Poole's house is called Alhambra Villa!  Moorish verandahs--plate-
+glass windows, with cusped heads and mahogany sashes--a garden behind,
+a smaller one in front--stairs ascending to the doorway under a Saracenic
+portico, between two pedestalled lions that resemble poodles--the whole
+new and lustrous--in semblance stone, in substance stucco-cracks in the
+stucco denoting "settlements."  But the house being let for ninety-nine
+years--relet again on a running lease of seven, fourteen, and twenty-one-
+the builder is not answerable for duration, nor the original lessee for
+repairs.  Take it altogether, than Alhambra Villa masonry could devise no
+better type of modern taste and metropolitan speculation.
+
+Mr. Poole, since we saw him between four and five years ago, has entered
+the matrimonial state.  He has married a lady of some money, and become a
+reformed man.  He has eschewed the turf, relinquished Belcher neckcloths
+and Newmarket coats-dropped his old-bachelor acquaintances.  When a man
+marries and reforms, especially when marriage and reform are accompanied
+with increased income, and settled respectably in Alhambra Villa--
+relations, before estranged, tender kindly overtures: the world, before
+austere, becomes indulgent.  It was so with Poole--no longer Dolly.
+Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and, among
+equivocal associates, had been led on by that taste for sporting which is
+a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born Englishman; he
+who loves horses is liable to come in contact with blacklegs; the racer
+is a noble animal; but it is his misfortune that the better his breeding
+the worse his company:--Grant that, in the stables, Adolphus Samuel Poole
+had picked up some wild oats--he had sown them now.  Bygones were
+bygones.  He had made a very prudent marriage.  Mrs. Poole was a sensible
+woman--had rendered him domestic, and would keep him straight!  His uncle
+Samuel, a most worthy man, had found him that sensible woman, and, having
+found her, had paid his nephew's debts, and adding a round sum to the
+lady's fortune, had seen that the whole was so tightly settled on wife
+and children that Poole had the tender satisfaction of knowing that,
+happen what might to himself, those dear ones were safe; nay, that if, in
+the reverses of fortune, he should be compelled by persecuting creditors
+to fly his native shores, law could not impair the competence it had
+settled upon Mrs. Poole, nor destroy her blessed privilege to share that
+competence with a beloved spouse.  Insolvency itself, thus protected by a
+marriage settlement, realises the sublime security of VIRTUE immortalised
+by the Roman muse:
+
+                    --"Repulse nescia sordidae,
+                    Intaminatis fulget honoribus;
+                    Nec sumit ant ponit secures
+                    Arbitrio popularis aurae."
+
+Mr. Poole was an active man in the parish vestry--he was a sound
+politician--he subscribed to public charities--he attended public
+dinners he had votes in half a dozen public institutions--he talked of
+the public interests, and called himself a public man.  He chose his
+associates amongst gentlemen in business--speculative, it is true, but
+steady.  A joint-stock company was set up; he obtained an official
+station at its board, coupled with a salary--not large, indeed, but still
+a salary.
+
+"The money," said Adolphus Samuel Poole, "is not my object; but I like to
+have something to do."  I cannot say how he did something, but no doubt
+somebody was done.
+
+Mr. Poole was in his parlour, reading letters and sorting papers, before
+he departed to his office in the West End.  Mrs. Poole entered, leading
+an infant who had not yet learned to walk alone, and denoting, by an
+interesting enlargement of shape, a kindly design to bless that infant,
+at no distant period, with a brother or sister, as the case might be.
+
+"Come and kiss Pa, Johnny," said she to the infant.  "Mrs. Poole, I am
+busy," growled Pa.
+
+"Pa's busy--working hard for little Johnny.  Johnny will be better for it
+some day," said Mrs. Poole, tossing the infant half up to the ceiling, in
+compensation for the loss of the paternal kiss.
+
+"Mrs. Poole, what do you want?"
+
+"May I hire Jones's brougham for two hours to-day, to pay visits?  There
+are a great many cards we ought to leave; is there any place where I
+should leave a card for you, lovey--any person of consequence you were
+introduced to at Mrs. Haughton's last night?  That great man they were
+all talking about, to whom you seemed to take such a fancy, Samuel,
+duck--"
+
+"Do get out! that man insulted me, I tell you."
+
+"Insulted you!  No; you never told me."
+
+"I did tell you last night coming home."
+
+"Dear me, I thought you meant that Mr. Hartopp."
+
+"Well, he almost insulted me, too.  Mrs. Poole, you are stupid and
+disagreeable.  Is that all you have to say?"
+
+"Pa's cross, Johnny dear!  poor Pa!--people have vexed Pa, Johnny--
+naughty people.  We must go or we shall vex him too."
+
+Such heavenly sweetness on the part of a forbearing wife would have
+softened Tamburlane.  Poole's sullen brow relaxed.  If women knew how to
+treat men, not a husband, unhenpecked, would be found from Indos to the
+Pole.
+
+And Poole, for all his surly demeanour, was as completely governed by
+that angel as a bear by his keeper.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Poole, excuse me.  I own I am out of sorts to-day--give me
+little Johnny--there (kissing the infant; who in return makes a dig at
+Pa's left eye, and begins to cry on finding that he has not succeeded in
+digging it out)--take the brougham.  Hush, Johnny--hush--and you may
+leave a card for me at Mr. Peckham's, Harley Street.  My eye smarts
+horribly; that baby will gouge me one of these days."
+
+Mrs. Poole had succeeded in stilling the infant, and confessing that
+Johnny's fingers are extremely strong for his age--but, adding that
+babies will catch at whatever is very bright and beautiful, such as gold
+and jewels and Mr. Poole's eyes, administers to the wounded orb so
+soothing a lotion of pity and admiration that Poole growls out quite
+mildly: "Nonsense, blarney--by the by, I did not say this morning that
+you should not have the rosewood chiffoniere!"
+
+"No, you said you could not afford it, duck; and when Pa says he can't
+afford it, Pa must be the judge--must not he, Johnny dear?"
+
+"But perhaps I can afford it.  Yes, you may have it yes, I say, you shall
+have it.  Don't forget to leave that card on Peckham--he's a moneyed man.
+There's a ring at the bell.  Who is it? run and see."
+
+Mrs. Poole obeyed with great activity, considering her interesting
+condition.  She came back in half a minute.  "Oh, my Adolphus--I oh, my
+Samuel! it is that dreadful-looking man who was here the other evening--
+stayed with you so long.  I don't like his looks at all.  Pray don't be
+at home."
+
+"I must," said Poole, turning a shade paler, if that were possible.
+"Stop--don't let that girl go to the door; and you--leave me."  He
+snatched his hat and gloves, and putting aside the parlour-maid, who had
+emerged from the shades below in order to answer the "ring," walked
+hastily down the small garden.
+
+Jasper Losely was stationed at the little gate.  Jasper was no longer in
+rags, but he was coarsely clad--clad as if he had resigned all pretence
+to please a lady's eye, or to impose upon a West-End tradesman--a check
+shirt--a rough pea-jacket, his hands buried in its pockets.
+
+Poole started with well--simulated surprise.  "What, you!  I am just
+going to my office--in a great hurry at present."
+
+"Hurry or not, I must and will speak to you," said Jasper, doggedly.
+
+"What now? then, step in;--only remember I can't give you snore than five
+minutes."
+
+The rude visitor followed Poole into the back parlour, and closed the
+door after him.
+
+Leaning his arm over a chair, his hat still on his head, Losely fixed his
+fierce eyes on his old friend, and said in a low, set, deterinined voice:
+"Now, mark me, Dolly Poole, if you think to shirk my business, or throw
+me over, you'll find yourself in Queer Street.  Have you called on Guy
+Darrell, and put my case to him, or have you not?"
+
+"I met Mr. Darrell only last night, at a very genteel party."  (Poole
+deeined it prudent not to say by WHOM that genteel party was given, for
+it will be remembered that Poole had been Jasper's confidant in that
+adventurer's former designs upon Mrs. Haughton; and if Jasper knew that
+Poole had made her acquaintance, might he not insist upon Poole's
+reintroducing him as a visiting acquaintance?)  "A very genteel party,"
+repeated Poole.  "I made a point of being presented to Mr. Darrell, and
+very polite he was at first."
+
+"Curse his politeness--get to the point."
+
+"I sounded my way very carefully, as you may suppose; and when I had got
+him into friendly chat, you understand, I began; Ah! my poor Losely,
+nothing to be done there--he flew off in a tangent--as much as desired me
+to mind my own business, and hold my tongue; and upon my life, I don't
+think there is a chance for you in that quarter."
+
+"Very well--we shall see.  Next, have you taken any steps to find out the
+girl, my daughter?"
+
+"I have, I assure you.  But you give me so slight a clue.  Are you quite
+sure she is not in America after all?"
+
+"I have told you before that that story about America was all bosh! a
+stratagem of the old gentleman's to deceive me.  Poor old man," continued
+Jasper, in a tone that positively betrayed feeling, "I don't wonder that
+he dreads and flies me; yet I would not hurt him more than I have done,
+even to be as well off as you are--blinking at me from your mahogany
+perch like a pet owl with its crop full of mice.  And if I would take the
+girl from him, it is for her own good.  For if Darrell could be got to
+make a provision on her, and, through her, on myself, why, of course the
+old man should share the benefit of it.  And now that these infernal
+pains often keep me awake half the night, I can't always shut out the
+idea of that old man wandering about the world, and dying in a ditch.
+And that runaway girl--to whom, I dare swear, he would give away his last
+crumb of bread--ought to be an annuity to us both: Basta, basta!  As to
+the American story--I had a friend at Paris, who went to America on a
+speculation; I asked him to inquire about this Willaim Waife and his
+granddaughter Sophy, who were said to have sailed for New York nearly
+five years ago, and he saw the very persons--settled in New York--no
+longer under the name of Waife, but their true name of Simpson, and got
+out from the man that they had been induced to take their passage from
+England in the name of Waife, at the request of a person whom the mail
+would not-give up, but to whom he said he was under obligations.  Perhaps
+the old gentleman had done the fellow a kind turn in early life.  The
+description of this /soi-disant/ Waife and his grandchild settles the
+matter--wholly unlike those I seek; so that there is every reason to
+suppose they must still be in England, and it is your business to find
+them.  Continue your search--quicken your wits--let me be better pleased
+with your success when I call again this day week--and meanwhile four
+pounds, if you please--as much more as you like."
+
+"Why, I gave you four pounds the other day, besides six pounds for
+clothes; it can't be gone."
+
+"Every penny."
+
+"Dear, dear!  can't you maintain yourself anyhow?  Can't you get any one
+to play at cards?  Four pounds!  Why, with your talent for whist, four
+pounds are a capital!"
+
+"Whom can I play with!  Whom can I herd with?  Cracksmen and pickpockets.
+Fit me out; ask me to your own house; invite your own friends; make up a
+rubber, and you will then see what I can do with four pounds; and may go
+shares if you like, as we used to do."
+
+"Don't talk so loud.  Losely, you know very well that what you ask is
+impossible.  I've turned over a new leaf."
+
+"But I've still got your handwriting on the old leaf."
+
+"What's the good of these stupid threats?  If you really wanted to do me
+a mischief, where could you go to, and who'd believe you?"
+
+"I fancy your wife would.  I'll try.  Hillo--"
+
+"Stop--stop--stop.  No row here, sir.  No scandal.  Hold your tongue, or
+I'll send for the police."
+
+"Do!  Nothing I should like better.  I'm tired out.  I want to tell my
+own story at the Old Bailey, and have my revenge upon you, upon Darrell,
+upon all.  Send for the police."
+
+Losely threw himself at length on the sofa--(new morocco with spring
+cushions)--and folded his arms.
+
+"You could only give me five minutes--they are gone, I fear.  I am more
+liberal.  I give you your own time to consider.  I don't care if I stay
+to dine; I dare say Mrs. Poole will excuse my dress."
+
+"Losely, you are such a--fellow!  If I do give you the four pounds you
+ask, will you promise to shift for yourself somehow, and molest me no
+more?"
+
+"Certainly not.  I shall come once every week for the same sum.  I can't
+live upon less--until--"
+
+"Until what?"
+
+"Until either you get Mr. Darrell to settle on me a suitable provision;
+or until you place me in possession of my daughter, and I can then be in
+a better condition to treat with him myself; for if I would make a claim
+on account of the girl, I must produce the girl, or he may say she is
+dead.  Besides, if she be as pretty as she was when a child, the very
+sight of her might move him more than all my talk."
+
+"And if I succeed in doing anything with Mr. Darrell, or discovering your
+daughter, you will give up all such letters and documents of mine as you
+say you possess?"
+
+"'Say I possess!'  I have shown them to you in this pocket-book, Dolly
+Poole--your own proposition to rob old Latham's safe."
+
+Poole eyed the book, which the ruffian took out and tapped.  Had the
+ruffian been a slighter man, Poole would have been a braver one.  As it
+was--he eyed and groaned.  "Turn against one's own crony!  So unhandsome,
+so unlike what I thought you were."
+
+"It is you who would turn against me.  But stick to Darrell or find me my
+daughter, and help her and me to get justice out of him; and you shall
+not only have back these letters, but I'll pay you handsomely--
+handsomely, Dolly Poole.  Zooks, sir--I am fallen, but I am always a
+gentleman."
+
+Therewith Losely gave a vehement slap to his hat, which, crushed by the
+stroke, improved his general appearance into an aspect so outrageously
+raffish, that but for the expression of his countenance the contrast
+between the boast and the man would have been ludicrous even to Mr.
+Poole.  The countenance was too dark to permit laughter.  In the dress,
+but the ruin of fortune--in the face, the ruin of man.  Poole heaved a
+deep sigh, and extended four sovereigns.
+
+Losely rose and took them carelessly.  "This day week," he said--shook
+himself--and went his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     FRESH TOUCHES TO THE THREE VIGNETTES FOR THE BOOK OF BEAUTY.
+
+Weeks passed--the London season was beginning--Darrell had decided
+nothing--the prestige of his position was undiminished,--in politics,
+perhaps higher.  He had succeeded in reconciling some great men; he had
+strengthened--it might be saved--a jarring cabinet.  In all this he had
+shown admirable knowledge of mankind, and proved that time and disuse had
+not lessened his powers of perception.  In his matrimonial designs,
+Darrell seemed more bent than ever upon the hazard--irresolute as ever on
+the choice of a partner.  Still the choice appeared to be circumscribed
+to the fair three who had been subjected to Colonel Morley's speculative
+criticism--Lady Adela, Miss Vipont, Flora Vyvyan.  Much pro and con might
+be said in respect to each.  Lady Adela was so handsome that it was a
+pleasure to look at her; and that is much when one sees the handsome face
+every day,--provided the pleasure does not wear off.  She had the
+reputation of a very good temper; and the expression of her countenance
+confirmed it.  There, panegyric stopped; but detraction did not commence.
+What remained was inoffensive commonplace.  She had no salient attribute,
+and no ruling passion.  Certainly she would never have wasted a thought
+on Mr. Darrell, nor have discovered a single merit in him, if he had not
+been quoted as a very rich man of high character in search of a wife, and
+if her father had not said to her: "Adela, Mr. Darrell has been greatly
+struck with your appearance--he told me so.  He is not young, but he is
+still a very fine looking man, and you are twenty-seven.  'Tis a greater
+distinction to be noticed by a person of his years and position, than by
+a pack of silly young fellows, who think more of their own pretty faces
+than they would ever do of yours."
+
+"If you did not mind a little disparity of years, he would make you a
+happy wife; and, in the course of nature, a widow, not too old to enjoy
+liberty, and with a jointure that might entitle you to a still better
+match."
+
+Darrell thus put into Lady Adela's head, he remained there, and became an
+/idee fixe/.  Viewed in the light of a probable husband, he was elevated
+into an "interesting man."  She would have received his addresses with
+gentle complacency; and, being more the creature of habit than impulse,
+would no doubt, in the intimacy of connubial life, have blest him, or any
+other admiring husband, with a resaonable modicum of languid affection.
+Nevertheless, Lady Adela was an unconscious impostor; for, owing to a
+mild softness of eye and a susceptibility to blushes, a victim ensnared
+by her beauty would be apt to give her credit for a nature far more
+accessible to the romance of the tender passion than, happily perhaps for
+her own peace of mind, she possessed; and might flatter himself that he
+had produced a sensation which gave that softness to the eye and that
+damask to the blush.
+
+Honoria Vipont would have been a choice far more creditable to the good
+sense of so mature a wooer.  Few better specimens of a young lady brought
+up to become an accomplished woman of the world.  She had sufficient
+instruction to be the companion of an ambitious man-solid judgment to fit
+her for his occasional adviser.  She could preside with dignity over a
+stately household--receive with grace distinguished guests.  Fitted to
+administer an ample fortune, ample fortune was necessary to the
+development of her excellent qualities.  If a man of Darrell's age were
+bold enough to marry a young wife, a safer wife amongst the young ladies
+of London he could scarcely find; for though Honoria was only three-and-
+twenty, she was as staid, as sensible, and as remote from all girlish
+frivolities, as if she had been eight-and-thirty.  Certainly had Guy
+Darrell been of her own years, his fortunes unmade, his fame to win, a
+lawyer residing at the back of Holborn, or a pretty squire in the petty
+demesnes of Fawley, he would have had no charm in the eyes of Honoria
+Vipont.  Disparity of years was in this case no drawback but his
+advantage, since to that disparity Darrell owed the established name and
+the eminent station which made Honoria think she elevated her own self in
+preferring him.  It is but justice to her to distinguish here between a
+woman's veneration for the attributes of respect which a man gathers
+round him, and the more vulgar sentiment which sinks the man altogether,
+except as the necessary fixture to be taken in with general valuation.
+It is not fair to ask if a girl who entertains a preference for one of
+our toiling, stirring, ambitious sex, who may be double her age or have a
+snub nose, but who looks dignified and imposing on a pedestal of state,
+whether she would like him as much if stripped of all his accessories,
+and left unredeemed to his baptismal register or unbecoming nose.  Just
+as well ask a girl in love with a young Lothario if she would like him as
+much if he had been ugly and crooked.  The high name of the one man is as
+much a part of him as good looks are to the other.  Thus, though it was
+said of Madame de la Valliere that she loved Louis XIV: for himself and
+not for his regal grandeur, is there a woman in the world, however
+disinterested, who believes that Madame de la Valliere would have liked
+Louis XIV. as much if Louis XIV. had been Mr. John Jones; Honoria would
+not have bestowed her hand on a brainless, worthless nobleman, whatever
+his rank or wealth.  She was above that sort of ambition; but neither
+would she have married the best-looking and worthiest John Jones who ever
+bore that British appellation, if he had not occupied the social position
+which brought the merits of a Jones within range of the eyeglass of a
+Vipont.
+
+Many girls in the nursery say to their juvenile confidants, "I will marry
+the man I love."  Honoria had ever said, "I will only marry the man I
+respect."  Thus it was her respect for Guy Darrell that made her honour
+him by her preference.  She appreciated his intellect--she fell in love
+with the reputation which the intellect had acquired.  And Darrell might
+certainly choose worse.  His cool reason inclined him much to Honoria.
+When Alban Morley argued in her favour, he had no escape from
+acquiescence, except in the turns and doubles of his ironical humour.
+But his heart was a rebel to his reason; and, between you and me, Honoria
+was exactly one of those young women by whom a man of grave years ought
+to be attracted, and by whom, somehow or other, he never is; I suspect,
+because the older we grow the more we love youthfulness of character.
+When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life, took a bride
+in Olympus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose Hebe.
+
+Will Darrell find his Hebe in Flora Vyvyan?  Alban Morley became more and
+more alarmed by the apprehension.  He was shrewd enough to recognise in
+her the girl of all others formed to glad the eye and plague the heart of
+a grave and reverend seigneur.  And it might well not only flatter the
+vanity, but beguile the judgment, of a man who feared his hand would be
+accepted only for the sake of his money, that Flora just at this moment
+refused the greatest match in the kingdom, young Lord Vipont, son of the
+new Earl of Montfort, a young man of good sense, high character, well-
+looking as men go--heir to estates almost royal; a young man whom no girl
+on earth is justified in refusing.  But would the whimsical creature
+accept Darrell?  Was she not merely making sport of him, and if, caught
+by her arts, he, sage and elder, solemnly offered homage and hand to that
+/belle dedaigneuse/ who had just doomed to despair a comely young magnet
+with five times his fortune, would she not hasten to make hirer the
+ridicule of London.
+
+Darrell had perhaps his secret reasons for thinking otherwise, but he did
+not confide them even to Alban Morley.  This much only will the narrator,
+more candid, say to the reader: If out of the three whom his thoughts
+fluttered round, Guy Darrell wished to select the one who would love him
+best--love him with the whole fresh unreasoning heart of a girl whose
+childish forwardness sprang from childlike innocence, let him dare the
+hazard of refusal and of ridicule; let him say to Flora Vyvyan, in the
+pathos of his sweet deep voice: "Come and be the spoiled darling of my
+gladdened age; let my life, ere it sink into night, be rejoiced by the
+bloom and fresh breeze of the morning."
+
+But to say it he must wish it; he himself must love--love with all
+the lavish indulgence, all the knightly tenderness, all the grateful
+sympathising joy in the youth of the beloved, when youth for the lover
+is no more, which alone can realise what we sometimes see, though loth
+to own it--congenial unions with unequal years.  If Darrell feel not that
+love, woe to him, woe and thrice shame if he allure to his hearth one who
+might indeed be a Hebe to the spouse who gave up to her his whole heart
+in return for hers; but to the spouse who had no heart to give, or gave
+but the chips of it, the Hebe indignant would be worse than Erinnys!
+
+All things considered, then, they who wish well to Guy Darrell must range
+with Alban Morley in favour of Miss Honoria Vipont.  She, proffering
+affectionate respect--Darrell responding by rational esteem.  So,
+perhaps, Darrell himself thought, for whenever Miss Vipont was named he
+became more taciturn, more absorbed in reflection, and sighed heavily,
+like a man who slowly makes up his mind to a decision, wise, but not
+tempting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     CONTAINING MUCH OF THAT INFORMATION WHICH THE WISEST MEN IN THE
+     WORLD COULD NOT GIVE, BUT WHICH THE AUTHOR CAN.
+
+"Darrell," said Colonel Morley, "you remember my nephew George as a boy?
+He is now the rector of Humberston; married--a very nice sort of woman--
+suits him Humberston is a fine living; but his talents are wasted there.
+He preached for the first time in London last year, and made a
+considerable sensation.  This year he has been much out of town.  He has
+no church here as yet.
+
+"I hope to get him one.  Carr is determined that he shall be a Bisop.
+Meanwhile he preaches at--Chapel tomorrow; come and hear him with me,
+and then tell me frankly--is he eloquent or not?"
+
+Darrell had a prejudice against fashionable preachers; but to please
+Colonel Morley he went to hear George.  He was agreeably surprised by the
+pulpit oratory of the young divine.  It had that rare combination of
+impassioned earnestness with subdued tones, and decorous gesture, which
+suits the ideal of ecclesiastical eloquence conceived by an educated
+English Churchman
+
+          "Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."
+
+Occasionally the old defect in utterance was discernible; there was a
+gasp as for breath, or a prolonged dwelling upon certain syllables,
+which, occurring in the most animated passages, and apparently evincing
+the preacher's struggle with emotion, rather served to heighen the
+sympathy of the audience.  But, for the most part, the original stammer
+was replaced by a felicitous pause, the pause as of a thoughtful reasoner
+or a solemn monitor knitting ideas, that came too quick, into method, or
+chastening impulse into disciplined zeal.  The mind of the preacher, thus
+not only freed from trammel, but armed for victory, came forth with that
+power which is peculiar to an original intellect--the power which
+suggests more than it demonstrates.  He did not so much preach to his
+audience as wind himself through unexpected ways into the hearts of the
+audience; and they who heard suddenly found their hearts preaching to
+themselves.  He took for his text: "Cast down, but not destroyed;" and
+out of this text he framed a discourse full of true Gospel tenderness,
+which seemed to raise up comfort as the saving, against despair as the
+evil, principle of mortal life.  The congregation was what is called
+"brilliant"--statesmen, and peers, and great authors, and fine ladies--
+people whom the inconsiderate believe to stand little in need of comfort,
+and never to be subjected to despair.  In many an intent or drooping
+farce in that brilliant congregation might be read a very different tale.
+But of all present there was no one whom the discourse so moved as a
+woman who, chancing to pass that way, had followed the throng into the
+Chapel, and with difficulty obtained a seat at the far end; a woman who
+had not been within the walls of a chapel or church for long years--
+a grim woman, in iron grey.  There she sate unnoticed, in her remote
+corner; and before the preacher had done, her face was hidden behind her
+clasped hands, and she was weeping such tears as she had not wept since
+childhood.
+
+On leaving church, Darrell said little more to the Colonel than this:
+"Your nephew takes me by surprise.  The Church wants such men.  He will
+have a grand career, if life be spared to him."  Then he sank into a
+reverie, from which he broke abruptly: "Your nephew was, at school with
+my boy.  Had my son lived, what had been his career?"
+
+The Colonel, never encouraging painful subjects, made no rejoinder.
+
+"Bring George to see me to-morrow.  I shrunk from asking it before:
+I thought the sight of him would too much revive old sorrows; but I feel
+I should accustom myself to face every memory.  Bring him."
+
+The next day the Colonel took George to Darrell's; but George had been
+pre-engaged till late at noon, and Darrell was just leaving home, and at
+his street door, when the uncle and nephew came.  They respected his time
+too much to accept his offer to come in, but walked beside him for a few
+minutes, as he bestowed upon George those compliments which are sweet to
+the ears of rising men from the lips of those who have risen.
+
+"I remember you, George, as a boy," said Darrell, "and thanked you then
+for good advice to a schoolfellow, who is lost to your counsels now."
+He faltered an instant, but went on firmly: "You had then a slight defect
+in utterance, which, I understand from your uncle, increased as you grew
+older; so that I never anticipated for you the fame that you are
+achieving.  Orator fit--you must have been admirably taught.  In the
+management of your voice, in the excellence of your delivery, I see that
+you are one of the few who deem that the Divine Word should not be
+unworthily uttered.  The debater on beer bills may be excused from
+studying the orator's effects; but all that enforce, dignify, adorn, make
+the becoming studies of him who strives by eloquence to people heaven;
+whose task it is to adjure the thoughtless, animate the languid, soften
+the callous, humble the proud, alarm the guilty, comfort the sorrowful,
+call back to the fold the lost.  Is the culture to be slovenly where the
+glebe is so fertile?  The only field left in modern times for the ancient
+orator's sublime conceptions, but laborious training, is the Preacher's.
+And I own, George, that I envy the masters who skilled to the Preacher's
+art an intellect like yours."
+
+"Masters," said the Colonel.  "I thought all those elocution masters
+failed with you, George.  You cured and taught yourself.  Did not you?
+No!  Why, then, who was your teacher?"
+
+George looked very much embarrassed, and, attempting to answer, began
+horribly to stutter.
+
+Darrell, conceiving that a preacher whose fame was not yet confirmed
+might reasonably dislike to confess those obligations to elaborate study,
+which, if known, might detract from his effect or expose him to ridicule,
+hastened to change the subject.  "You have been to the country, I hear,
+George; at your living, I suppose?"
+
+"No. I have not been there very lately; travelling about."
+
+"Have you seen Lady Montfort since your return?"  asked the Colonel.
+
+"I only returned on Saturday night.  I go to Lady Montfort's at
+Twickenham, this evening."
+
+"She has a delightful retreat," said the Colonel.  "But if she wish
+to avoid admiration, she should not make the banks of the river her
+favourite haunt.  I know some romantic admirers, who, when she re-appears
+in the world, may be rival aspirants, and who have much taken to rowing
+since Lady Montfort has retired to Twickenham.  They catch a glimpse of
+her, and return to boast of it.  But they report that there is a young
+lady seen walking with her an extremely pretty one--who is she?  People
+ask me--as if I knew everything."
+
+"A companion, I suppose," said George, more and more confused.  "But,
+pardon  me, I  must leave you now.  Good-bye, uncle.  Good day, Mr.
+Darrell."
+
+Darrell did not seem to observe George take leave, but walked on, his hat
+over his brows, lost in one of his frequent fits of abstracted gloom.
+
+"If my nephew were not married," said the Colonel, "I should regard his
+embarrassment with much suspicion--embarrassed at every point, from his
+travels about the country to the question of a young lady at Twickenham.
+I wonder who that young lady can be--not one of the Viponts, or I should
+have heard.  Are there any young ladies on the Lyndsay side?--Eh,
+Darrell?"
+
+"What do I care?--your head runs on young ladies," answered Darrell, with
+peevish vivacity, as he stopped abruptly at Carr Vipont's door.
+
+"And your feet do not seem to run from them," said the Colonel; and, with
+an ironical salute, walked away, while the expanding portals engulfed his
+friend.
+
+As he sauntered up St. James's Street, nodding towards the thronged
+windows of its various clubs, the Colonel suddenly enountered Lionel,
+and, taking the young gentleman's arm, said: "If you are not very much
+occupied, will you waste half an hour on me?--I am going homewards."
+
+Lionel readily assented, and the Colonel continued "Are you in want
+of your cabriolet to-day, or can you lend it to me?  I have asked a
+Frenchman, who brings me a letter of introduction, to dine at the nearest
+restaurant's to which one can ask a Frenchman.  I need not say that is
+Greenwich: and if I took him in a cabriolet, he would not suspect that he
+was taken five miles out of town."
+
+"Alas, my dear Colonel, I have just sold my cabriolet."  What! old-
+fashioned already!--True, it has been built three months.  Perhaps the
+horse, too, has become an antique in some other collection--silent--um!
+--cabriolet and horse both sold?"
+
+"Both," said Lionel, imefully.
+
+"Nothing surprises me that man can do," said the Colonel; "or I should be
+surprised.  When, acting on Darrell's general instructions for your
+outfit, I bought that horse, I flattered myself that I had chosen well.
+But rare are good horses--rarer still a good judge of them;  I suppose I
+was cheated, and the brute proved a screw."
+
+"The finest cab-horse in London, my dear Colonel, and every one knows how
+proud I was of him.  But I wanted money, and had nothing else that would
+bring the sum I required.  Oh, Colonel Morley, do hear me?"
+
+"Certainly, I am not deaf, nor is St. James's Street.  When a man says,
+'I have parted with my horse because I wanted money,' I advise him to say
+it in a whisper."
+
+"I have been imprudent, at least unlucky, and I must pay the penalty.  A
+friend of mine--that is, not exactly a friend, but an acquaintance--whom
+I see every day--one of my own set-asked me to sign my name at Paris to a
+bill at three months' date, as his security.  He gave me his honour that
+I should hear no more of it--he would be sure to take up the bill when
+due--a man whom I supposed to be as well off as myself!  You will allow
+that I could scarcely refuse--at all events, I did not.  The bill became
+due two days ago; my friend does not pay it, and indeed says he cannot,
+and the holder of the bill calls on me.  He was very civil-offered to
+renew it--pressed me to take my time, &c.; but I did not like his manner:
+and as to my friend, I find that, instead of being well off, as I
+supposed, he is hard up, and that I am not the first he has got into the
+same scrape--not intending it, I am sure.  He's really a very good
+fellow, and, if I wanted security, would be it to-morrow to any amount."
+
+"I've no doubt of it--to any amount!"  said the Colonel.
+
+"So I thought it best to conclude the matter at once.  I had saved
+nothing from my allowance, munificent as it is.  I could not have the
+face to ask Mr. Darrell to remunerate me for my own imprudence.  I should
+not like to borrow from my mother--I know it would be inconvenient to
+her.
+
+"I sold both horse and cabriolet this morning.  I had just been getting
+the cheque cashed when I met you.  I intend to take the money myself to
+the bill-holder.  I have just the sum--L200."
+
+"The horse alone was worth that," said the Colonel, with a faint sigh--"
+not to be replaced.  France and Russia have the pick of our stables.
+However, if it is sold, it is sold--talk no more of it.  I hate painful
+subjects.  You did right not to renew the bill--it is opening an account
+with Ruin; and though I avoid preaching on money matters, or, indeed, any
+other (preaching is my nephew's vocation, not mine), yet allow me to
+extract from you a solemn promise never again to sign bills, nor to draw
+them.  Be to your friend what you please except security for him.
+Orestes never asked Pylades to help him to borrow at fifty per cent.
+Promise me--your word of honour as a gentleman!  Do you hesitate?"
+
+"My dear Colonel," said Lionel frankly, "I do hesitate.  I might promise
+not to sign a money-lender's bill on my own account, though really I
+think you take rather an exaggerated view of what is, after all, a common
+occurrence--"
+
+"Do I?"  said the Colonel meekly.  "I'm sorry to hear it.  I detest
+exaggeration.  Go on.  You might promise not to ruin yourself--but you
+object to promise not to help in the ruin of your friend."
+
+"That is exquisite irony, Colonel," said Lionel, piqued; but it does not
+deal with the difficulty, which is simply this: When a man whom you call
+friend--whom you walk with, ride with, dine with almost every day, says
+to you 'I am in immediate want of a few hundreds--I don't ask you to lend
+them to me, perhaps you can't--but assist me to borrow--trust to my
+honour that the debt shall not fall on you,--why, then, it seems as if to
+refuse the favour was to tell the man you call friend that you doubt his
+honour; and though I have been caught once in that way, I feel that I
+must be caught very often before I should have the moral courage to say
+'No!' Don't ask me, then to promise--be satisfied with my assurance that,
+in future at least, I will be more cautious, and if the loss fall on me,
+why, the worst that can happen is to do again what I do now."
+
+"Nay, you would not perhaps have another horse and cab to sell.  In that
+case, you would do the reverse of what you do now--you would renew the
+bill--the debt would run on like a snowball--in a year or two you would
+owe, not hundreds, but thousands.  But come in--here we are at my door."
+
+The Colonel entered his drawing-room.  A miracle of exquisite neatness
+the room was--rather effeminate, perhaps, in its attributes; but that was
+no sign of the Colonel's tastes, but of his popularity with the ladies.
+All those pretty things were their gifts.  The tapestry on the chairs
+their work--the Sevres on the consoles--the clock on the mantel-shelf--
+the inkstand, paper-cutter, taper-stand on the writing-table--their
+birthday presents.  Even the white woolly Maltese dog that sprang from
+the rug to welcome him--even the flowers in the jardiniere--even the
+tasteful cottage-piano, and the very music-stand beside it--and the card-
+trays, piled high with invitations,--were contributions from the
+forgiving sex to the unrequiting bachelor.
+
+Surveying his apartment with a complacent air, the Colonel sank into his
+easy /fauteuil/, and drawing off his gloves leisurely said--
+
+"No man has more friends than I have--never did I lose one--never did
+I sign a bill.  Your father pursued a different policy--he signed many
+bills--and lost many friends."  Lionel, much distressed, looked down, and
+evidently desired to have done with the subject.  Not so the Colonel.
+That shrewd man, though he did not preach, had a way all his own, which
+was perhaps quite as effective as any sermon by a fashionable layman can
+be to an impatient youth.
+
+"Yes," resumed the Colonel, "it is the old story.  One always begins by
+being security to a friend.  The discredit of the thing is familiarised
+to one's mind by the false show of generous confidence in another.  Their
+what you have done for a friend, a friend should do for you;--a hundred
+or two would be useful now--you are sure to repay it in three months.
+To Youth the Future seems safe as the Bank of England, and distant as the
+peaks of Himalaya.  You pledge your honour that in three months you will
+release your friend.  The three months expire.  To release the one
+friend, you catch hold of another--the bill is renewed, premium and
+interest thrown into the next pay-day--soon the account multiplies, and
+with it the honour dwindles--your NAME circulates from hand to hand on
+the back of doubtful paper--your name, which, in all money transactions,
+should grow higher and higher each year you live, falling down every
+month like the shares in a swindling speculation.  You begin by what you
+call trusting a friend, that is, aiding him to self-destruction--buying
+him arsenic to clear his complexion--you end by dragging all near you
+into your own abyss, as a drowning man would clutch at his own brother.
+Lionel Haughton, the saddest expression I ever saw in your father's face
+was when--when--but you shall hear the story--"
+
+"No, sir; spare me.  Since you so insist on it, I will give the promise--
+it is enough; and my father--"
+
+"Was as honourable as you when he first signed his name to a friend's
+bill; and, perhaps, promised to do so no more as reluctantly as you do.
+You had better let me say on; if I stop now, you will forget all about it
+by this day twelve-month; if I go on, you will never forget.  There are
+other examples besides your father; I am about to name one."
+
+Lionel resigned himself to the operation, throwing his handkerchief over
+his face as if he had taken chloroform.  "When I was young," resumed the
+Colonel, "I chanced to make acquaintance with a man of infinite whim and
+humour; fascinating as Darrell himself, though in a very different way.
+We called him Willy--you know the kind of man one calls by his Christian
+name, cordially abbreviated--that kind of man seems never to be quite
+grown up; and, therefore, never rises in life.  I never knew a man called
+Willy after the age of thirty, who did not come to a melancholy end!
+Willy was the natural son of a rich, helter-skelter, cleverish, maddish,
+stylish, raffish, four-in-hand Baronet, by a celebrated French actress.
+The title is extinct now, and so, I believe, is that genus of stylish,
+raffish, four-in-hand Baronet--Sir Julian Losely--"
+
+"Losely!" echoed Lionel.  "Yes; do you know the name?"
+
+"I never heard it till yesterday.  I want to tell you what I did hear
+then--but after your story--go on."
+
+"Sir Julian Losely (Willy's father) lived with the French lady as his
+wife, and reared Willy in his house, with as much pride and fondness as
+if he intended him for his heir.  The poor boy, I suspect, got but little
+regular education; though of course, he spoke his French mother's tongue
+like a native; and, thanks also perhaps to his mother, he had an
+extraordinary talent for mimicry and acting.  His father was passionately
+fond of private theatricals, and Willy had early practice in that line.
+I once saw him act Falstaff in a country house, and I doubt if Quin could
+have acted it better.  Well, when Willy was still a mere boy, he lost his
+mother, the actress.  Sir Julian married--had a legitimate daughter--died
+intestate--and the daughter, of course, had the personal property, which
+was not much; the heir-at-law got the land, and poor Willy nothing.  But
+Willy was an universal favourite with his father's old friends--wild
+fellows like Sir Julian himself amongst them there were two cousins, with
+large country-houses, sporting-men, and bachelors.  They shared Willy
+between them, and quarrelled which should have the most of him.  So he
+grew up to be man, with no settled provision, but always welcome, not
+only to the two cousins, but at every house in which, like Milton's lark,
+'he came to startle the dull night'--the most amusing companion!--
+a famous shot--a capital horseman--knew the ways of all animals, fishes,
+and birds; I verily believe he could have coaxed a pug-dog to point, and
+an owl to sing.  Void of all malice, up to all fun.  Imagine how much
+people would court, and how little they would do for, a Willy of that
+sort.  Do I bore you?"
+
+"On the contrary, I am greatly interested."
+
+"One thing a Willy, if a Willy could be wise, ought to do for himself--
+keep single.  A wedded Willy is in a false position.  My Willy wedded--
+for love too--an amiable girl, I believe (I never saw her; it was long
+afterwards that I knew Willy)--but as poor as himself.  The friends and
+relatives then said: 'This is serious: something--must be done for
+Willy.'  It was easy to say, 'something must be done,' and monstrous
+difficult to do it.  While the relations were consulting, his half-
+sister, the Baronet's lawful daughter, died, unmarried; and though she
+had ignored him in life, left him L2,000.  'I have hit it now, 'cried one
+of the cousins; 'Willy is fond of a country life.  I will let him have a
+farm on a nominal rent, his L2,000 will stock it; and his farm, which is
+surrounded by woods, will be a capital hunting-meet.  As long as I live,
+Willy shall be mounted.'
+
+"Willy took the farm, and astonished his friends by attending to it.  It
+was just beginning to answer when his wife died, leaving him only one
+child--a boy; and her death made him so melancholy that he could no
+longer attend to his farm.  He threw it up, invested the proceeds as a
+capital, and lived on the interest as a gentleman at large.  He travelled
+over Europe for some time--chiefly on foot--came back, having recovered
+his spirits--resumed his old desultory purposeless life at different
+country-houses, and at one of those houses I and Charles Haughton met
+him.  Here I pause, to state that Willy Losely at that time impressed me
+with the idea that he was a thoroughly honest man.  Though he was
+certainly no formalist--though he had lived with wild sets of convivial
+scapegraces--though, out of sheer high spirits, he would now and then
+make conventional Proprieties laugh at their own long faces; yet, I
+should have said that Bayard himself--and Bayard was no saint--could not
+have been more incapable of a disloyal, rascally, shabby action.  Nay, in
+the plain matter of integrity, his ideas might be called refined, almost
+Quixotic.  If asked to give or to lend, Willy's hand was in his pocket in
+an instant; but though thrown among rich men--careless as himself--Willy
+never put his hand into their pockets, never borrowed, never owed.  He
+would accept hospitality--make frank use of your table, your horses, your
+dogs--but your money, no!  He repaid all he took from a host by rendering
+himself the pleasantest guest that host ever entertained.  Poor Willy!  I
+think I see his quaint smile brimming over with sly sport!  The sound of
+his voice was like a cry of 'o-half-holiday' in a schoolroom.  He
+dishonest!  I should as soon have suspected the noonday sun of being a
+dark lantern!  I remember, when he and I were walking home from wild-duck
+shooting in advance of our companions, a short conversation between us
+that touched me greatly, for it showed that, under all his levity, there
+were sound sense and right feeling.  I asked him about his son, then a
+boy at school: 'Why, as it was the Christmas vacation, he had refused our
+host's suggestion to let the lad come down there?'  'Ah,' said he, 'don't
+fancy that I will lead my son to grow up a scatterbrained good-for-nought
+like his father.  His society is the joy of my life; whenever I have
+enough in my pockets to afford myself that joy, I go and hire a quiet
+lodging close by his school, to have him with me from Saturday till
+Monday all to myself--where he never hears wild fellows call me "Willy,"
+and ask me to mimic.  I had hoped to have spent this vacation with him in
+that way, but his school bill was higher than usual, and after paying it,
+I had not a guinea to spare--obliged to come here where they lodge and
+feed me for nothing; the boy's uncle on the mother's side--respectable
+man in business--kindly takes him home for the holidays; but did not ask
+me, because his wife--and I don't blame her--thinks I'm too wild for a
+City clerk's sober household.'
+
+"I asked Willy Losely what he meant to do with his son, and hinted that I
+might get the boy a commission in the army without purchase.
+
+"'No,' said Willy.  'I know what it is to set up for a gentleman on the
+capital of a beggar.  It is to be a shuttlecock between discontent and
+temptation.  I would not have my lost wife's son waste his life as I have
+done.  He would be more spoiled, too, than I have been.  The handsomest
+boy you ever saw-and bold as a lion.  Once in that set' (pointing over
+his shoulder towards some of our sporting comrades, whose loud laughter
+every now and then reached our ears)--'once in that set, he would never
+be out of it--fit for nothing.  I swore to his mother on her death-bed
+that I would bring him up to avoid my errors--that he should be no
+hanger-on and led-captain!  Swore to her that he should be reared
+according to his real station--the station of his mother's kin--(I have
+no station)--and if I can but see him an honest British trader--
+respectable, upright, equal to the highest--because no rich man's
+dependant, and no poor man's jest--my ambition will be satisfied.  And
+now you understand, sir, why my boy is not here.'  You would say a father
+who spoke thus had a man's honest stuff in him.  Eh, Lionel!"
+
+"Yes, and a true gentleman's heart, too!"
+
+"So I thought; yet I fancied I knew the world!  After that conversation,
+I quitted our host's roof, and only once or twice afterwards, at country-
+houses, met William Losely again.  To say truth, his chief patrons and
+friends were not exactly in my set.  But your father continued to see
+Willy pretty often.  They took a great fancy to each other.  Charlie, you
+know, was jovial--fond of private theatricals, too; in short, they became
+great allies.  Some years after, as ill-luck would have it, Charles
+Haughton, while selling off his Middlesex property, was in immediate want
+of L1,200.  He could get it on a bill, but not without security.  His
+bills were already rather down in the market, and he had already
+exhausted most of the friends whose security was esteemed by
+accommodators any better than his own.  In an evil hour he had learned
+that poor Willy had just L1,500 out upon mortgage; and the money-lender,
+who was lawyer for the property on which the mortgage was, knew it too.
+It was on the interest of this L1,500 that Willy lived, having spent the
+rest of his little capital in settling his son as a clerk in a first-rate
+commercial house.  Charles Haughton went down to shoot at the house where
+Willy was a guest-shot with him--drank with him--talked with him--proved to
+him, no doubt, that long before the three months were over the Middlesex
+property would be sold; the bill taken up, Willy might trust to his
+Honour.  Willy did trust.  Like you, my dear Lionel, he had not moral
+courage to say 'No.'  Your father, I am certain, meant to repay him; your
+father never in cold blood meant to defraud any human being; but--your
+father gambled!  A debt of honour at piquet preceded the claim of a bill-
+discounter.  The L1,200 were forestalled--your father was penniless.  The
+money-lender came upon Willy.  Sure that Charles Haughton would yet
+redeem his promise, Willy renewed the bill another three months on
+usurious terms; those months over, he came to town to find your father
+hiding between four walls, unable to stir out for fear of arrest.  Willy
+had no option but to pay the money; and when your father knew that it was
+so paid, and that the usury had swallowed up the whole of Willy's little
+capital, then, I say, I saw upon Charles Haughton's once radiant face the
+saddest expression I ever saw on mortal man's.  And sure I am that all
+the joys your father ever knew as a man of pleasure were not worth the
+agony and remorse of that moment.  I respect your emotion, Lionel, but
+you begin as your father began; and if I had not told you this story, you
+might have ended as your father ended."
+
+Lionel's face remained covered, and it was only by choking gasps that he
+interrupted--the Colonel's narrative.  "Certainly," resumed Alban Morley,
+in a reflective tone "certainly that villain--I mean William Losely, for
+villain he afterwards proved to be--had the sweetest, most forgiving
+temper!  He might have gone about to his kinsmen and friends denouncing
+Charles Haughton, and saying by what solemn promises he had been undone.
+But no! such a story just at that moment would have crushed Charles
+Haughton's last chance of ever holding up his head again, and Charles
+told me (for it was through Charles that I knew the tale) that Willy's
+parting words to him were 'Do not fret, Charles--after all, my boy is now
+settled in life, and I am a cat with nine lives, and should fall on my
+legs if thrown out of a garret window.  Don't fret.'  So he kept the
+secret, and told the money-lender to hold his tongue.  Poor Willy!  I
+never asked a rich friend to lend me money but once in my life.  It was
+then I went to Guy Darrell, who was in full practice, and said to him:
+'Lend me one thousand pounds.  I may never repay you.'  'Five thousand
+pounds, if you like it,' said he.  'One will do.'
+
+"I took the money and sent it to Willy.  Alas!  he returned it, writing
+word that 'Providence had been very kind to him; he had just been
+appointed to a capital place, with a magnificent salary.'  The cat had
+fallen on its legs.  He bade me comfort Haughton with that news.  The
+money went back into Darrell's pocket, and perhaps wandered thence to
+Charles Haughton's creditors.  Now for the appointment.  At the country-
+house to which Willy had returned destitute, he had met a stranger (no
+relation), who said to him: 'You live with these people--shoot their game
+--break in their horses--see to their farms--and they give you nothing!
+You are no longer very young--you should lay by your little income, and
+add to it.  Live with me and I will give you L300 a-year.  I am parting
+with my steward--take his place, but be my friend.' William Losely of
+course closed with the proposition.  This gentleman, whose name was
+Gunston, I had known slightly in former times--(people say I know
+everybody)--a soured, bilious, melancholy, indolent, misanthropical old
+bachelor.  With a splendid place universally admired, and a large estate
+universally envied, he lived much alone, ruminating on the bitterness of
+life and the nothingness of worldly blessings.  Meeing Willy at the
+country-house to which, by some predestined relaxation of misanthropy,
+he had been decoyed-for the first time for years Mr. Gunston was heard to
+laugh.  He said to himself, 'Here is a man who actually amuses me.'
+William Losely contrived to give the misanthrope a new zest of existence;
+and when he found that business could be made pleasant, the rich man
+conceived an interest in his own house, gardens, property.  For the sake
+of William's merry companionship, he would even ride over his farms, and
+actually carried a gun.  Meanwhile, the property, I am told, was really
+well managed.  Ah! that fellow Willy was a born genius, and could have
+managed everybody's affairs except his own.  I heard of all this with
+pleasure--(people say I hear everything)--when one day a sporting man
+seizes me by the button at Tattersall's--'Do you know the news?  Will
+Losely is in prison on a charge; of robbing his employer.'"
+
+"Robbing! incredible!"  exclaimed Lionel.
+
+"My dear Lionel, it was after hearing that news that I established as
+invariable my grand maxim, /Nil admirari/--never to be astonished at
+anything!"
+
+"But of course he was innocent?"
+
+"On the contrary, he confessed,--was committed; pleaded guilty, and was
+transported!  People who knew Willy said that Gunston ought to have
+declined to drag him before a magistrate, or, at the subsequent trial,
+have abstained from giving evidence against him; that Willy had been till
+then a faithful steward; the whole proceeds of the estate lead passed
+through his hands; he might, in transactions for timber, have cheated
+undetected to twice the amount of the alleged robbery; it must have been
+a momentary aberration of reason; the rich man should have let him off.
+But I side with the rich man.  His last belief in his species was
+annihilated.  He must have been inexorable.  He could never be amused,
+never be interested again.  He was inexorable and--vindictive."
+
+"But what were the facts?--what was the evidence?"
+
+"Very little came out on the trial; because, in pleading guilty, the
+court had merely to consider the evidence which had sufficed to commit
+him.  The trial was scarcely noticed in the London papers.  William
+Losely was not like a man known about town.  His fame was confined to
+those who resorted to old-fashioned country-houses, chiefly single men,
+for the sake of sport.  But stay.  I felt such an interest in the case,
+that I made an abstract or praecis, not only of all that appeared, but
+all that I could learn of its leading circumstances.  'Tis a habit
+of mine, whenever any of my acquaintances embroil themselves with the
+Crown--"  The Colonel rose, unlocked a small glazed bookcase, selected
+from the contents a MS. volume, reseated himself, turning the pages,
+found the place sought, and reading from it, resumed his narriative.
+"One evening Mr. Gunston came to William Losely's private apartment.
+Losely had two or three rooms appropriated to himself in one side of the
+house; which was built in a quadrangle round a courtyard.  When Losely
+opened his door to Mr. Gunston's knock, it struck Mr. Gunston that his
+manner seemed confused.  After some talk on general subjects, Losely said
+that he had occasion to go to London next morning for a few days on
+private business of his own.  This annoyed Mr. Gunston.  He observed that
+Losely's absence just then would be inconvenient.  He reminded him that a
+tradesman, who lived at a distance, was coming over the next day to be
+paid for a vinery he had lately erected, and on the charge for which
+there was a dispute.  Could not Losely at least stay to settle it?
+Losely replied, 'that he had already, by correspondence, adjusted the
+dispute, having suggested deductions which the tradesman had agreed to,
+and that Mr. Gunston would only have to give a cheque for the balance-
+viz. L270.'  Thereon Mr. Gunston remarked: 'If you were not in the habit
+of paying my bills for me out of what you receive, you would know that I
+seldom give cheques.  I certainly shall not give one now, for I have the
+money in the house.'  Losely observed 'That is a bad habit of yours
+keeping large sums in your own house.  You may be robbed.' Gunston
+answered 'Safer than lodging large sums in a country bank.  Country banks
+break.  My grandfather lost L1,000 by the failure of a country bank; and
+my father, therefore, always took his payments in cash, remitting them to
+London from time to time as he went thither himself.  I do the same, and
+I have never been robbed of a farthing that I know of.  Who would rob a
+great house like this, full of menservants?'--'That's true,' said Losely;
+'so if you are sure you have as much by you, you will pay the bill and
+have done with it.  I shall be back before Sparks the builder comes to be
+paid for the new barn to the home farm-that will be L600; but I shall be
+taking money for timber next week.  He can be paid out of that.'
+
+GUNSTON.--'No.  I will pay Sparks, too, out of what I have in my bureau;
+and the timber-merchant can pay his debt into my London banker's.'
+
+LOSELY.--'DO you mean that you have enough for both these bills actually
+in the house?'
+
+GUNSTON.--'Certainly, in the bureau in my study.  I don't know how
+much I've got.  It may be L1,500--it may be L1,700.  I have not counted;
+I am such a bad man of business; but I am sure it is more than L1,400.'
+Losely made some jocular observation to the effect that if Gunston never
+kept an account of what be had, he could never tell whether he was
+robbed, and, therefore, never would be robbed; since, according to
+Othello,
+
+              'He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen,
+               Let him not know it, and He's not robbed at all.'
+
+"After that, Losely became absent in manner, and seemed impatient to get
+rid of Mr. Gunston, hinting that he had the labour-book to look over, and
+some orders to write out for the bailiff, and that he should start early
+the next morning."
+
+Here the Colonel looked up from his MS., and said episodically: "Perhaps
+you will fancy that these dialogues are invented by me after the fashion
+of the ancient historians?  Not so.  I give you the report of what
+passed, as Gunston repeated it verbatim; and I suspect that his memory
+was pretty accurate.  Well (here Alban returned to his MS.) Gunston left
+Willy, and went into his own study, where he took tea by himself.  When
+his valet brought it in, he told the man that Mr. Losely was going to
+town early the next morning, and ordered the servant to see himself that
+coffee was served to Mr. Losely before he went.  The servant observed
+'that Mr. Losely had seemed much out of sorts lately, and that it was
+perhaps some unpleasant affair connected with the gentleman who had come
+to see him two days before.' Gunston had not heard of such a visit.
+
+"Losely had not mentioned it.  When the servant retired, Gunston, thinking
+over Losely's quotation respecting his money, resolved to ascertain what
+he had in his bureau.  He opened it, examined the drawers, and found,
+stowed away in different places at different times, a larger sum than he
+had supposed--gold and notes to the amount of L1,975, of which nearly
+L300 were in sovereigns.  He smoothed the notes carefully; and, for want
+of other occupation, and with a view of showing Losely that he could
+profit by a hint, he entered the numbers of the notes in his pocketbook,
+placed them all together in one drawer with the gold, relocked his
+bureau, and went shortly afterwards to bed.  The next day (Losely having
+gone in the morning) the tradesman came to be paid for the vinery.
+Gunston went to his bureau, took out his notes, and found L250 were gone.
+He could hardly believe his senses.  Had he made a mistake in counting?
+No.  There was his pocket book, the missing notes entered duly therein.
+Then he re-re-counted the sovereigns; 142 were gone of them--nearly
+L400 in all thus abstracted.  He refused at first to admit suspicion of
+Losely; but, on interrogating his servants, the valet deposed, that he
+was disturbed about two o'clock in the morning by the bark of the house-
+dog, which was let loose of a night within the front courtyard of the
+house.  Not apprehending robbers, but fearing the dog might also disturb
+his master, he got out of his window (being on the ground-flour) to
+pacify the animal; that he then saw, in the opposite angle of the
+building, a light moving along the casement of the passage between
+Losely's rooms and Mr. Gunston's study.  Surprised at this, at such an
+hour, he approached that part of the building and saw the light very
+faintly through the chinks in the shutters of the study.  The passage
+windows had no shutters, being old-fashioned stone mullions.  He waited
+by the wall a few minutes, when the light again reappeared in the
+passage; and he saw a figure in a cloak, which, being in a peculiar
+colour, he recognised at once as Losely's, pass rapidly along; but before
+the figure had got half through the passage, the light was extinguished,
+and the servant could see no more.  But so positive was he, from his
+recognition of the cloak, that the man was Losely, that he ceased to feel
+alarm or surprise, thinking, on reflection, that Losely, sitting up later
+than usual to transact business before his departure, might have gone
+into his employer's study for any book or paper which he might have left
+there.  The dog began barking again, and seemed anxious to get out of the
+courtyard to which he was confined; but the servant gradually
+appeased him--went to bed, and somewhat overslept himself.  When he
+awoke, he hastened to take the coffee into Losely's room, but Losely was
+gone.  Here there was another suspicious circumstance.  It had been a
+question how the bureau had been opened, the key being safe in Gunston's
+possession, and there being no sign of force.  The lock was one of those
+rude old-fashioned ones which are very easily picked, but to which a
+modern key does not readily fit.  In the passage there was found a long
+nail crooked at the end; and that nail, the superintendent of the police
+(who had been summoned) had the wit to apply to the lock of the bureau,
+and it unlocked and re-locked it easily.  It was clear that whoever had
+so shaped the nail could not have used such an instrument for the first
+time, and must be a practised picklock.  That, one would suppose at
+first, might exonerate Losely; but he was so clever a fellow at all
+mechanical contrivances that, coupled with the place of finding, the nail
+made greatly against him; and still more so when some nails precisely
+similar were found on the chimney-piece of an inner room in his
+apartment, a room between that in which he had received Guar ston and his
+bed-chamber, and used by him both as study and workshop.  The nails,
+indeed, which were very long and narrow, with a Gothic ornamental head,
+were at once recognised by the carpenter on the estate as having been
+made according to Losely's directions, for a garden bench to be placed in
+Gunston's favourite walk, Gunston having remarked, some days before, that
+he should like a seat there, and Losely having undertaken to make one
+from a design by Pugin.  Still loth to believe in Losely's guilt, Gunston
+went to London with the police superintendent, the valet, and the
+neighbouring attorney.  They had no difficulty in finding Losely; he was
+at his son's lodgings in the City, near the commercial house in which the
+son was a clerk.  On being told of the robbery, he seemed at first
+unaffectedly surprised, evincing no fear.  He was asked whether he had
+gone into the study about two o'clock in the morning.  He said, 'No; why
+should I?'  The valet exclaimed: 'But I saw you--I knew you by that old
+grey cloak, with the red lining.  Why, there it is now--on that chair
+yonder.  I'll swear it is the same.'  Losely then began to tremble
+visibly, and grew extremely pale.  A question was next put to him as to
+the nail, but he secured quite stupefied, muttering: 'Good heavens!  the
+cloak--you mean to say you saw that cloak?'  They searched his person-
+found on him some sovereigns, silver, and one bank-note for five pounds.
+The number on that bank-note corresponded with a number in Gunston's
+pocket-book.  He was asked to say where he got that five-pound note.  He
+refused to answer.  Gunston said: 'It is one of the notes stolen from
+me!'  Losely cried fiercely: 'Take care what you say.  How do you know?'
+Gunston replied: 'I took an account of the numbers of my notes on leaving
+your room.  Here is the memorandum in my pocket-book--see--'  Losely
+looked, and fell back as if shot.  Losely's brother-in-law was in the
+room at the time, and he exclaimed, 'Oh, William!  you can't be guilty.
+You are the honestest fellow in the world.  There must be some mistake,
+gentlemen.  Where did you get the note, William--say?'
+
+"Losely made no answer, but seemed lost in thought or stupefaction.  'I
+will go for your son, William--perhaps he may help to explain.' Losely
+then seemed to wake up.  'My son! what! would you expose me before my
+son?  he's gone into the country, as you know.  What has he to do with
+it?  I took the notes--there--I have confessed. --Have done with it,'--
+or words to that effect.
+
+"Nothing more of importance," said the Colonel, turning over the leaves
+of his MS., "except to account for the crime.  And here we come back to
+the money-lender.  You remember the valet said that a gentleman had
+called on Losely two days before the robbery.  This proved to be the
+identical bill-discounter to whom Losely had paid away his fortune.  This
+person deposed that Losely had written to him some days before, stating
+that he wanted to borrow two or three hundred pounds, which he could
+repay by instalments out of his salary.  What would be the terms?  The
+money-lender, having occasion to be in the neighbourhood, called to
+discuss the matter in person, and to ask if Losely could not get some
+other person to join in security--suggesting his brother-in-law.  Losely
+replied that it was a favour he would never ask of any one; that his
+brother-in-law had no pecuniary means beyond his salary as a senior
+clerk; and, supposing that he (Losely) lost his place, which he might any
+day, if Gunston were displeased with him--how then could he be sure that
+his debt would not fall on the security?  Upon which the money-lender
+remarked that the precarious nature of his income was the very reason why
+a security was wanted.  And Losely answered, 'Ay; but you know that you
+incur that risk, and charge accordingly.  Between me and you the debt and
+the hazard are mere matter of business, but between me and my security it
+would be a matter of honour.'  Finally the money-lender agreed to find
+the sum required, though asking very high terms.  Losely said he would
+consider, and let him know.  There the conversation ended.  But Gunston
+inquired 'if Losely had ever had dealings with the money-lender before,
+and for what purpose it was likely he would leant the money now;' and the
+money-lender answered 'that probably Losely had some sporting or gaming
+speculations on the sly, for that it was to pay a gambling debt that he
+had joined Captain Haughton in a bill for L1,200.'  And Gunston
+afterwards told a friend of mine that this it was that decided him to
+appear as a witness at the trial; and you will observe that if Gunston
+had kept away there would have been no evidence sufficient to insure
+conviction.  But Gunston considered that the man who could gamble away
+his whole fortune must be incorrigible, and that Losely, having concealed
+from him that he had become destitute by such transactions, must have
+been more than a mere security in a joint bill with Captain Haughton.
+
+"Gunston could never have understood such an inconsistency in human
+nature, that the same man who broke open his bureau should have become
+responsible to the amount of his fortune for a debt of which he had not
+shared the discredit, and still less that such a man should, in case he
+had been so generously imprudent, have concealed his loss out of delicate
+tenderness for the character of the man to whom he owed his ruin.
+Therefore, in short, Gunston looked on his dishonest steward not as a man
+tempted by a sudden impulse in some moment of distress, at which a
+previous life was belied, but as a confirmed, dissimulating sharper, to
+whom public justice allowed no mercy.  And thus, Lionel, William Losely
+was prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to seven years' transportation.  By
+pleading guilty, the term was probably made shorter than it otherwise
+would have been."
+
+Lionel continued too agitated for words.  The Colonel, not seeming to
+heed his emotions, again ran his eye over the MS.
+
+"I observe here that there are some queries entered as to the evidence
+against Losely.  The solicitor whom, when I heard of his arrest, I
+engaged and sent down to the place on his behalf--"
+
+"You did!  Heaven reward you!"  sobbed out Lionel.  "But my father?--
+where was he?"
+
+"Then?--in his grave."
+
+Lionel breathed a deep sigh, as of thankfulness.
+
+"The lawyer, I say--a sharp fellow--was of opinion that if Losely had
+refused to plead guilty, he could have got him off in spite of his first
+confession--turned the suspicion against some one else.  In the passage
+where the nail was picked up there was a door into the park.  That door
+was found unbolted in the inside the next morning: a thief might
+therefore have thus entered and passed at once into the study.  The nail
+was discovered close by the door; the thief might have dropped it on
+putting out his light, which, by the valet's account, he must have done
+when he was near the door in question, and required the light no more.
+Another circumstance in Losely's favour: just outside the door, near a
+laurel-bush, was found the fag-end of one of those small rose-coloured
+wax-lights which are often placed in Lucifer-match boxes.  If this had
+been used by the thief, it would seem as if, extinguishing the light
+before he stepped into the air, he very naturally jerked away the morsel
+of taper left, when, in the next moment, he was out of the house.  But
+Losely would not have gone out of the house; nor was he, nor any one
+about the premises, ever known to make use of that kind of taper, which
+would rather appertain to the fashionable fopperies of a London dandy.
+You will have observed, too, the valet had not seen the thief's face.
+His testimony rested solely on the colours of a cloak, which, on cross-
+examination; might have gone for nothing.  The dog had barked before the
+light was seen.  It was not the light that made him bark.  He wished to
+get out of the courtyard; that looked as if there were some stranger in
+the grounds beyond.  Following up this clue, the lawyer ascertained that
+a strange man had been seen in the park towards the grey of the evening,
+walking up in the direction of the house.  And here comes the strong
+point.  At the railway station, about five miles from Mr. Gunston's, a
+strange man had arrived just in time to take his place in the night-train
+from the north towards London, stopping there at four o'clock in the
+morning.  The station-master remembered the stranger buying the ticket,
+but did not remark his appearance.  The porter did, however, so far
+notice him as he hurried into a first-class carriage, that he said
+afterwards to the stationmaster: 'Why, that gentleman has a grey cloak
+just like Mr. Losely's.  If he had not been thinner and taller, I should
+have thought it was Mr. Losely.' Well, Losely went to the same station
+the next morning, taking an early train, going thither on foot, with his
+carpet-bag in his hand; and both the porter and station-master declared
+that he had no cloak on him at the time; and as he got into a second-
+class carriage, the porter even said to him: "Tis a sharp morning, sir;
+I'm afraid you'll be cold.'  Furthermore, as to the purpose for which
+Losely had wished to borrow of the money-lender, his brother-in-law
+stated that Losely's son had been extravagant, had contracted debts, and
+was even hiding from his creditors in a county town, at which William
+Losely had stopped for a few hours on his way to London.  He knew the
+young man's employer had written kindly to Losely several days before,
+lamenting the son's extravagance; intimating that unless his debts were
+discharged he must lose the situation, in which otherwise he might soon
+rise to competence, for that he was quick and sharp; and that it was
+impossible not to feel indulgent towards him, he was so lively and so
+good-looking.  The trader added that he would forbear to dismiss the
+young man as long as he could.  It was on the receipt of that letter that
+Losely had entered into communication with the money-lender, whom he had
+come to town to seek, and to whose house he was actually going at the
+very hour of Gunston's arrival.  But why borrow of the money-lender, if
+he had just stolen more money than he had any need to borrow?
+
+The most damning fact against Losely, by the discovery in his possession
+of the L5 note, of which Mr. Gunston deposed to have taken the number,
+was certainly hard to get over; still an ingenious lawyer might have
+thrown doubt on Gunstun's testimony--a man confessedly so careless might
+have mistaken the number, &c.  The lawyer went, with these hints for
+defence, to see Losely himself in prison; but Losely declined his help--
+became very angry--said that he would rather suffer death itself than
+have suspicion transferred to some innocent man; and that, as to the
+cloak, it had been inside his carpet-bag.  So you see, bad as he was,
+there was something inconsistently honourable left in him still.  Poor
+Willy! he would not even subpeena any of his old friends as to his
+general character.  But even if he had, what could the Court do since he
+pleaded guilty?  And now dismiss that subject, it begins to pain me
+extremely.  You were to speak to me about some one of the same name when
+my story was concluded.  What is it?"
+
+"I am so confused," faltered Lionel, still quivering with emotion, "that
+I can scarcely answer you--scarcely recollect myself.  But--but--while
+you were describing this poor William Losely, his talent for mimicry and
+acting, I could not help thinking that I had seen him."  Lionel proceeded
+to speak of Gentleman Waife.  "Can that be the man?"
+
+Alban shook his head incredulously.  He thought it so like a romantic
+youth to detect imaginary resemblances.
+
+"No," said he, "my dear boy.  My William Losely could never become a
+strolling-player in a village fair.  Besides, I have good reason to
+believe that Willy is well off; probably made money in the colony by some
+lucky hit for when do you say you saw your stroller?  Five years ago?
+Well, not very long before that date-perhaps a year or two-less than two
+years, I am sure-this eccentric rascal sent Mr. Gunston, the man who had
+transported him, L100!  Gunston, you must know, feeling more than ever
+bored and hipped when he lost Willy, tried to divert himself by becoming
+director in some railway company.  The company proved a bubble; all
+turned their indignation on the one rich man who could pay where others
+cheated.  Gunston was ruined--purse and character--fled to Calais; and
+there, less than seven years ago, when in great distress, he received
+from poor Willy a kind, affectionate, forgiving letter, and L100.  I have
+this from Gunston's nearest relation, to whom he told it, crying like a
+child.  Willy gave no address! but it is clear that at the time he must
+have been too well off to turn mountebank at your miserable exhibition.
+Poor, dear, rascally, infamous, big-hearted Willy," burst out the
+Colonel.  "I wish to heaven he had only robbed me!"
+
+"Sir," said Lionel, "rely upon it, that man you described never robbed
+any one--'tis impossible."
+
+"No--very possible!--human nature," said Alban Morley.  "And, after all,
+he really owed Gunston that L100.  For, out of the sum stolen, Gunston
+received anonymously, even before the trial, all the missing notes, minus
+about that L100; and Willy, therefore, owed Gunston the money, but not,
+perhaps, that kind, forgiving letter.  Pass on--quick--the subject is
+worse than the gout.  You have heard before the name of Losely--possibly.
+There are many members of the old Baronet's family; but when or where did
+you hear it?"
+
+"I will tell you; the man who holds the bill (ah, the word sickens me)
+reminded me when he called that I had seen him at my mother's house--a
+chance acquaintance of hers--professed great regard for me--great
+admiration for Mr. Darrell--and then surprised me by asking if I had
+never heard Mr. Darrell speak of Mr. Jasper Losely."
+
+"Jasper!" said the Colonel; "Jasper!--well, go on."  "When I answered,
+'No,' Mr. Poole (that is his name) shook his head, and muttered: 'A sad
+affair--very bad business--I could do Mr. Darrell a great service if he
+would let me;' and then went on talking what seemed to me impertinent
+gibberish about 'family exposures' and 'poverty making men desperate,'
+and 'better compromise matters;' and finally wound up by begging me, 'if
+I loved Mr. Darrell, and wished to guard him from very great annoyance
+and suffering, to persuade him to give Mr. Poole an interview.' Then he
+talked about his own character in the City, and so forth, and entreating
+me 'not to think of paying him till quite convenient; that he would keep
+the bill in his desk; nobody should know of it; too happy to do me a
+favour'--laid his card on the table, and went away.  Tell me, should I
+say anything to Mr. Darrell about this or not?"
+
+"Certainly not, till I have seen Mr. Poole myself.  You have the money to
+pay him about you?  Give it to me, with Mr. Poole's address; I will call,
+and settle the matter.  Just ring the bell."  (To the servant entering)
+"Order my horse round."  Then, when they were again alone, turning to
+Lionel, abruptly laying one hand on leis shoulder, with the other
+grasping his hand warmly, cordially: "Young man," said Alban Morley, "I
+love you--I am interested in you-who would not be?  I have gone through
+this story; put myself positively to pain--which I hate--solely for your
+good.  You see what usury and money-lenders bring men to.  Look me in the
+face!  Do you feel now that you would have the 'moral courage' you before
+doubted of?  Have you done with such things for ever?"
+
+"For ever, so help me Heaven!  The lesson has been cruel, but I do thank
+and bless you for it."
+
+"I knew you would.  Mark this! never treat money affairs with levity--
+MONEY is CHARACTER!  Stop.  I have bared a father's fault to a son.  It
+was necessary--or even in his grave those faults might have revived in
+you.  Now, I add this, if Charles Haughton--like you, handsome, high-
+spirited, favoured by men, spoiled by women--if Charles Haughton, on
+entering life, could have seen, in the mirror I have held up to you, the
+consequences of pledging the morrow to pay for to-day, Charles Haughton
+would have been shocked as you are, cured as you will be.  Humbled by
+your own first error, be lenient to all his.  Take up his life where I
+first knew it: when his heart was loyal, his lips truthful.  Raze out the
+interval; imagine that he gave birth to you in order to replace the
+leaves of existence we thus blot out and tear away.  In every error
+avoided say, 'Thus the father warns the son;' in every honourable action,
+or hard self-sacrifice, say, 'Thus the son pays a father's debt.'"
+
+Lionel, clasping his hands together, raised his eyes streaming with
+tears, as if uttering inly a vow to Heaven.  The Colonel bowed his
+soldier-crest with religious reverence, and glided from the room
+noiselessly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     BEING BUT ONE OF THE CONSIDERATE PAUSES IN A LONG JOURNEY,
+     CHARITABLY AFFORDED TO THE READER.
+
+Colonel Morley found Mr. Poole at home, just returned from his office;
+he stayed with that gentleman nearly an hour, and then went straight to
+Darrell.  As the time appointed to meet the French acquaintance, who
+depended on his hospitalities for a dinner, was now nearly arrived,
+Alban's conference with his English friend was necessarily brief and
+hurried, though long enough to confirm one fact in Mr. Poole's statement,
+which had been unknown to the Colonel before that day, and the admission
+of which inflicted on Guy Darrell a pang as sharp as ever wrenched
+confession from the lips of a prisoner in the cells of the Inquisition.
+On returning from Greenwich, and depositing his Frenchman in some
+melancholy theatre, time enough for that resentful foreigner to witness
+theft and murder committed upon an injured countryman's vaudeville, Alban
+hastened again to Carlton Gardens.  He found Darrell alone, pacing his
+floor to and fro, in the habit he had acquired in earlier life, perhaps
+when meditating some complicated law case, or wrestling with himself
+against some secret sorrow.  There are men of quick nerves who require a
+certain action of the body for the better composure of the mind; Darrell
+was one of them.
+
+During these restless movements, alternated by abrupt pauses, equally
+inharmonious to the supreme quiet which characterised his listener's
+tastes and habits, the haughty gentleman disburdened himself of at least
+one of the secrets which he had hitherto guarded from his early friend.
+But as that secret connects itself with the history of a Person about
+whom it is well that the reader should now learn more than was known to
+Darrell himself, we will assume our privilege to be ourselves the
+narrator, and at the cost of such dramatic vivacity as may belong to
+dialogue, but with the gain to the reader of clearer insight into those
+portions of the past which the occasion permits us to reveal--we will
+weave into something like method the more imperfect and desultory
+communications by which Guy Darrell added to Alban Morley's distasteful
+catalogue of painful subjects.  The reader will allow, perhaps, that we
+thus evince a desire to gratify his curiosity, when we state that of
+Arabella Crane Darrell spoke but in one brief and angry sentence, and
+that not by the name in which the reader as yet alone knows her; and it
+is with the antecedents of Arabella Crane that our explanation will
+tranquilly commence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     GRIM ARABELLA CRANE.
+
+Once on a time there lived a merchant named Fossett, a widower with three
+children, of whom a daughter, Arabella, was by some years the eldest.  He
+was much respected, deemed a warm man, and a safe--attended diligently to
+his business--suffered no partner, no foreman, to dictate or intermeddle
+--liked his comforts, but made no pretence to fashion.  His villa was at
+Clapham, not a showy but a solid edifice, with lodge, lawn, and gardens
+chiefly notable for what is technically called glass--viz. a range of
+glass-houses on the most improved principles, the heaviest pines, the
+earliest strawberries.  "I'm no judge of flowers," quoth Mr. Fossett,
+meekly.  "Give me a plain lawn, provided it be close-shaven.  But I say
+to my gardener: 'Forcing is my hobby--a cucumber with my fish all the
+year round!'"  Yet do not suppose Mr Fossett ostentatious--quite the
+reverse.  He would no more ruin himself for the sake of dazzling others,
+than he would for the sake of serving them.  He liked a warm house,
+spacious rooms, good living, old wine, for their inherent merits:  He
+cared not to parade them to public envy.  When he dined alone, or with
+a single favoured guess, the best Lafitte, the oldest sherry!--when
+extending the rites of miscellaneous hospitality to neighbours,
+relations, or other slight acquaintances--for Lafitte, Julien; and for
+sherry, Cape!--Thus not provoking vanity, nor courting notice, Mr.
+Fossett was without an enemy, and seemed without a care.  Formal were his
+manners, formal his household, formal even the stout cob that bore him
+from Cheapside to Clapham, from Claphain to Cheapside.  That cob could
+not even prick up its ears if it wished to shy--its ears were cropped,
+so were its mane and its tail.
+
+Arabella early gave promise of beauty, and more than ordinary power of
+intellect and character.  Her father be stowed on her every advantage of
+education.  She was sent to a select boarding-school of the highest
+reputation; the strictest discipline, the best masters, the longest
+bills.  At the age of seventeen she had become the show pupil of the
+seminary.  Friends wondered somewhat why the prim merchant took such
+pains to lavish on his daughter the worldly accomplishments which seemed
+to give him no pleasure, and of which he never spoke with pride.  But
+certainly, if she was so clever--first-rate musician, exquisite artist,
+accomplished linguist, "it was very nice in old Fossett to bear it so
+meekly, never crying her up, nor showing her off to less fortunate
+parents--very nice in him--good sense--greatness of mind."
+
+"Arabella," said the worthy man one day, a little time after his eldest
+daughter had left school for good; "Arabella," said he, "Mrs. -------,"
+naming the head teacher in that famous school, "pays you a very high
+compliment in a letter I received from her this morning.  She says it is
+a pity you are not a poor man's daughter--that you are so steady and so
+clever that you could make a fortune for yourself as a teacher."
+
+Arabella at that age could smile gaily, and gaily she smiled at the
+notion conveyed in the compliment.
+
+"No one can guess," resumed the father, twirling his thumbs and speaking
+rather through his nose; "the ups and downs in this mortal sphere of
+trial, 'specially in the mercantile community.  If ever, when I'm dead
+and gone, adversity should come upon you, you will gratefully remember
+that I have given you the best of education, and take care of your little
+brother and sister, who are both--stupid!"
+
+These doleful words did not make much impression on Arabella, uttered as
+they were in a handsome drawing-room, opening on the neat-shaven lawn it
+took three gardeners to shave, with a glittering side-view of those
+galleries of glass in which strawberries were ripe at Christmas, and
+cucumbers never failed to fish.  Time--went on.  Arabella was now twenty-
+three--a very fine girl, with a decided manner--much occupied by her
+music, her drawing, her books, and her fancies.  Fancies--for, like most
+girls with very active heads and idle hearts, she had a vague yearning
+for some excitement beyond the monotonous routine of a young lady's life;
+and the latent force of her nature inclined her to admire whatever was
+out of the beaten track--whatever was wild and daring.  She had received
+two or three offers from young gentlemen in the same mercantile community
+as that which surrounded her father in this sphere of trial.  But they
+did not please her; and she believed her father when he said that they
+only courted her under the idea that he would come down with something
+handsome; "whereas," said the merchant, "I hope you will marry an honest
+man, who will like you for yourself; and wait for your fortune till my
+will is read.  As King William says to his son, in the History of
+England, 'I don't mean to strip till I go to bed.'"
+
+One night, at a ball in Clapham, Arabella saw the man who was destined to
+exercise so baleful an influence over her existence.  Jasper Losely had
+been brought to this ball by a young fellow-clerk in the same commercial
+house as himself; and then in all the bloom of that conspicuous beauty,
+to which the miniature Arabella had placed before his eyes so many years
+afterwards did but feeble justice, it may well be conceived that he
+concentred on himself the admiring gaze of the assembly.  Jasper was
+younger than Arabella; but, what with the height of his stature and the
+self-confidence of his air, he looked four or five and twenty.
+Certainly, in so far as the distance from childhood may be estimated by
+the loss of innocence, Jasper might have been any age!  He was told that
+old Fossett's daughter would have a very fine fortune; that she was a
+strong-minded young lady, who governed her father, and would choose for
+herself; and accordingly he devoted himself to Arabella the whole of the
+evening.  The effect produced on the mind of this ill-fated woman by her
+dazzling admirer was as sudden as it proved to be lasting.  There was a
+strange charm in the very contrast between his rattling audacity and the
+bashful formalities of the swains who had hitherto wooed her as if she
+frightened them.  Even his good looks fascinated her less than that vital
+energy and power about the lawless brute, which to her seemed the
+elements of heroic character, though but the attributes of riotous
+spirits, magnificent formation, flattered vanity, and imperious egotism.
+She was a bird gazing spell-bound on a gay young boa-constrictor, darting
+from bough to bough, sunning its brilliant hues, and showing off all its
+beauty, just before it takes the bird for its breakfast.
+
+When they parted that night, their intimacy had so far advanced that
+arrangements had been made for its continuance.  Arabella had an
+instinctive foreboding that her father would be less charmed than herself
+with Jasper Losely; that, if Jasper were presented to him, he would
+possibly forbid her farther acquaintance with a young clerk, however
+superb his outward appearance.  She took the first false step.  She had a
+maiden aunt by the mother's side, who lived in Bloomsbury, gave and went
+to small parties, to which Jasper could easily get introduced.  She
+arranged to pay a visit for some weeks to this aunt, who was then very
+civil to her, accepting with marked kindness seasonable presents of
+strawberries, pines, spring chickens, and so forth, and offering in turn,
+whenever it was convenient, a spare room, and whatever amusement a round
+of small parties, and the innocent flirtations incidental thereto, could
+bestow.  Arabella said nothing to her father about Jasper Losely, and to
+her aunt's she went.  Arabella saw Jasper very often; they became engaged
+to each other, exchanged vows and love-tokens, locks of hair, &c.
+Jasper, already much troubled by duns, became naturally ardent to insure
+his felicity and Arabella's supposed fortune.  Arabella at last summoned
+courage, and spoke to her father.  To her delighted surprise, Mr.
+Fossett, after some moralising, more on the uncertainty of life in
+general than her clandestine proceedings in particular, agreed to see Mr.
+Jasper Losely, and asked him down to dinner.  After dinner, over 'a
+bottle of Lafitte, in an exceedingly plain but exceedingly weighty silver
+jug, which made Jasper's mouth water (I mean the jug), Mr. Fossett,
+commencing with that somewhat coarse though royal saying of William the
+Conqueror, with which he had before edified his daughter, assured Jasper
+that he gave his full consent to the young gentleman's nuptials with
+Arabella, provided Jasper or his relations would maintain her in a plain
+respectable way, and wait for her fortune till his (Fossett's) will was
+read.  What that fortune would be, Mr. Fossett declined even to hint.
+Jasper went away very much cooled.  Still the engagement remained in
+force; the nuptials were tacitly deferred.  Jasper and his relations
+maintain a wife!  Preposterous idea!  It would take a clan of relations
+and a Zenana of wives to maintain in that state to which he deemed
+himself entitled--Jasper himself!  But just as he was meditating the
+possibility of a compromise with old Fossett, by which he would agree to
+wait till the will was read for contingent advantages, provided Fossett,
+in his turn, would agree in the mean while to afford lodging and board,
+with a trifle for pocket-money, to Arabella and himself, in the Clapham
+villa, which, though not partial to rural scenery, Jasper preferred, on
+the whole, to a second floor in the City,--old Fossett fell ill, took to
+his bed; was unable to attend to his business, some one else attended to
+it; and the consequence was, that the house stopped payment, and was
+discovered to have been insolvent for the last ten years.  Not a
+discreditable bankruptcy.  There might perhaps be seven shillings in the
+pound ultimately paid, and not more than forty families irretrievably
+ruined.  Old Fossett, safe in his bed, bore the affliction with
+philosophical composure; observed to Arabella that he had always warned
+her of the ups and downs in this sphere of trial; referred again with
+pride to her first-rate education; commended again to her care Tom and
+Biddy; and, declaring that he died in charity with all men, resigned
+himself to the last slumber.
+
+Arabella at first sought a refuge with her maiden aunt.  But that lady,
+though not hit in pocket by her brother-in-law's failure, was more
+vehement against his memory than his most injured creditor--not only that
+she deemed herself unjustly defrauded of the pines, strawberries, and
+spring chickens, by which she had been enabled to give small parties at
+small cost, though with ample show, but that she was robbed of the
+consequence she had hitherto derived from the supposed expectations of
+her niece.  In short, her welcome was so hostile, and her condolences so
+cutting, that Arabella quitted her door with a solemn determination never
+again to enter it.
+
+And now the nobler qualities of the bankrupt's daughter rose at once into
+play.  Left penniless, she resolved by her own exertions to support and
+to rear her young brother and sister.  The great school to which she had
+been the ornament willingly received her as a teacher, until some more
+advantageous place in a private family, and with a salary worthy of her
+talents and accomplishments, could be found.
+
+Her intercourse with Jasper became necessarily suspended.  She had the
+generosity to write, offering to release him from his engagement.  Jasper
+considered himself fully released without that letter; but he deemed it
+neither gallant nor discreet to say so.  Arabella might obtain a
+situation with larger salary than she could possibly need, the
+superfluities whereof Jasper might undertake to invest.  Her aunt had
+evidently something to leave, though she might have nothing to give.  In
+fine, Arabella, if not rich enough for a wife, might be often rich enough
+for a friend at need; and so long as he was engaged to her for life, it
+must be not more her pleasure than her duty to assist him to live.
+Besides, independently of these prudential though not ardent motives for
+declaring unalterable fidelity to troth, Jasper at that time really did
+entertain what he called love for the handsome young woman--flattered
+that one of attainments so superior to all the girls he had ever known
+should be so proud even less of his affection for her than her own
+affection for himself.  Thus the engagement lasted--interviews none--
+letters frequent.  Arabella worked hard, looking to the future; Jasper
+worked as little as possible, and was very much bored by the present.
+
+Unhappily, as it turned out, so great a sympathy, not only amongst the
+teachers, but amongst her old schoolfellows, was felt for Arabella's
+reverse; her character for steadiness, as well as talent, stood so high,
+and there was something so creditable in her resolution to maintain her
+orphan brother and sister, that an effort was made to procure her a
+livelihood much more lucrative, and more independent, than she could
+obtain either in a school or a family.  Why not take a small house of her
+own, live there with her fellow-orphans, and give lessons out by the
+hour?  Several families at once agreed so to engage her, and an income
+adequate to all her wants was assured.  Arabella adopted this plan.  She
+took the house; Bridget Greggs, the nurse of her infancy, became her
+servant, and soon to that house, stealthily in the shades of evening,
+glided Jasper Losely.  She could not struggle against his influence--had
+not the heart to refuse his visits--he was so poor--in such scrapes--and
+professed himself to be so unhappy.  There now became some one else to
+toil for, besides the little brother and sister.  But what were
+Arabella's gains to a man who already gambled?  New afflictions smote
+her.  A contagious fever broke out in the neighborhood; her little
+brother caught it; her little sister sickened the next day; in less than
+a week two small coffins were borne from her door by the Black Horses--
+borne to that plot of sunny turf in the pretty suburban cemetery, bought
+with the last earnings made for the little ones by the mother-like
+sister:--Motherless lone survivor! what! no friend on earth, no soother
+but that direful Jasper!  Alas! the truly dangerous Venus is not that
+Erycina round whom circle Jest and Laughter.  Sorrow, and that sense of
+solitude which makes us welcome a footstep as a child left in the
+haunting dark welcomes the entrance of light, weaken the outworks of
+female virtue more than all the vain levities of mirth, or the flatteries
+which follow the path of Beauty through the crowd.  Alas, and alas!  let
+the tale hurry on!
+
+Jasper Losely has still more solemnly sworn to marry his adored Arabella.
+But when?  When they are rich enough.  She feels as if her spirit was
+gone--as if she could work no more.  She was no weak commonplace girl,
+whom love can console for shame.  She had been rigidly brought up; her
+sense of female rectitude was keen; her remorse was noiseless, but it was
+stern.  Harassments of a more vulgar nature beset her: she had
+forestalled her sources of income; she had contracted debts for Jasper's
+sake;--in vain: her purse was emptied, yet his no fuller.  His creditors
+pressed him; he told her that he must hide.  One winter's day he thus
+departed; she saw him no more for a year.  She heard, a few days after he
+left her, of his father's crime and committal.  Jasper was sent abroad by
+his maternal uncle, at his father's prayer; sent to a commercial house
+in France, in which the uncle obtained him a situation.  In fact, the
+young man had been despatched to France under another name, in order to
+save him from the obloquy which his father had brought upon his own.
+
+Soon came William Losely's trial and sentence.  Arabella felt the
+disgrace acutely--felt how it would affect the audacious insolent Jasper;
+did not wonder that he forbore to write to her.  She conceived him bowed
+by shame, but she was buoyed up by her conviction that they should meet
+again.  For good or for ill, she held herself bound to him for life.  But
+meanwhile the debts she had incurred on his account came upon her.  She
+was forced to dispose of her house; and at this time Mrs. Lyndsay,
+looking out for some first-rate superior governess for Matilda Darrell,
+was urged by all means to try and secure for that post Arabella Fossett.
+The highest testimonials from the school at which she had been reared,
+from the most eminent professional masters, from the families at which
+she had recently taught, being all brought to bear upon Mr. Darrell, he
+authorised Mrs. Lyndsay to propose such a salary as could not fail to
+secure a teacher of such rare qualifications.  And thus Arabella became
+governess to Miss Darrell.
+
+There is a kind of young lady of whom her nearest relations will say, "I
+can't make that girl out."  Matilda Darrell was that kind of young lady.
+She talked very little; she moved very noiselessly; she seemed to regard
+herself as a secret which she had solemnly sworn not to let out.  She had
+been steeped in slyness from her early infancy by a sly mother.  Mrs.
+Darrell was a woman who had always something to conceal.  There was
+always some note to be thrust out of sight; some visit not to be spoken
+of; something or other which Matilda was not on any account to mention to
+Papa.
+
+When Mrs. Darrell died, Matilda was still a child, but she still
+continued to view her father as a person against whom prudence demanded
+her to be constantly on her guard.  It was not that she was exactly
+afraid of him--he was very gentle to her, as he was to all children; but
+his loyal nature was antipathetic to hers.  She had no sympathy with him.
+How confide her thoughts to him?  She had an instinctive knowledge that
+those thoughts were not such as could harmonise with his.  Yet, though
+taciturn, uncaressing, undemonstrative, she appeared mild and docile.
+Her reserve was ascribed to constitutional timidity.  Timid to a degree
+she usually seemed; yet, when you thought you had solved the enigma, she
+said or did something so coolly determined, that you were forced again to
+exclaim, "I can't make that girl out!"  She was not quick at her lessons.
+You had settled in your mind that she was dull, when, by a chance remark,
+you were startled to find that she was very sharp; keenly observant, when
+you had fancied her fast asleep.  She had seemed, since her mother's
+death, more fond of Mrs. Lyndsay and Caroline than of any other human
+beings--always appeared sullen or out of spirits when they were absent;
+yet she confided to them no more than she did to her father.  You would
+suppose from this description that Matilda could inspire no liking in
+those with whom she lived.  Not so; her very secretiveness had a sort of
+attraction--a puzzle always creates some interest.  Then her face, though
+neither handsome nor pretty, had in it a treacherous softness--a subdued,
+depressed expression.  A kind observer could not but say with an
+indulgent pity; "There must be a good deal of heart in that girl, if one
+could but--make her out."
+
+She appeared to take at once to Arabella, more than she had taken to Mrs.
+Lyndsay, or even to Caroline, with whom she had been brought up as a
+sister, but who, then joyous and quick and innocently fearless--with her
+soul in her eyes and her heart on her lips--had no charm for Matilda,
+because there she saw no secret to penetrate, and her she had no object
+in deceiving.
+
+But this stranger, of accomplishments so rare, of character so decided,
+with a settled gloom on her lip, a gathered care on her brow--there was
+some one to study, and some one with whom she felt a sympathy; for she
+detected at once that Arabella was also a secret.
+
+At first, Arabella, absorbed in her own reflections, gave to Matilda but
+the mechanical attention which a professional teacher bestows on an
+ordinary pupil.  But an interest in Matilda sprung up in her breast, in
+proportion as she conceived a venerating gratitude for Darrell.  He was
+aware of the pomp and circumstance which had surrounded her earlier
+years; he respected the creditable energy with which she had devoted her
+talents to the support of the young children thrown upon her care;
+compassionated her bereavement of those little fellow-orphans for whom
+toil had been rendered sweet; and he strove, by a kindness of forethought
+and a delicacy of attention, which were the more prized in a man so
+eminent and so preoccupied, to make her forget that she was a salaried
+teacher--to place her saliently, and as a matter of course, in the
+position of a gentlewoman, guest, and friend.  Recognising in her a
+certain vigour and force of intellect apart from her mere
+accomplishments, he would flatter her scholastic pride, by referring to
+her memory in some question of reading, or consulting her judgment on
+some point of critical taste.  She, in return, was touched by his
+chivalrous kindness to the depth of a nature that, though already
+seriously injured by its unhappy contact with a soul like Jasper's,
+retained that capacity of gratitude, the loss of which is humanity's
+last deprivation.  Nor this alone: Arabella was startled by the intellect
+and character of Darrell into that kind of homage which a woman, who has
+hitherto met but her own intellectual inferiors, renders to the first
+distinguished personage in whom she recognises, half with humility and
+half with awe, an understanding and a culture to which her own reason is
+but the flimsy glass-house, and her own knowledge but the forced exotic.
+
+Arabella, thus roused from her first listlessness, sought to requite
+Darrell's kindness by exerting every energy to render his insipid
+daughter an accomplished woman.  So far as mere ornamental education
+extends, the teacher was more successful than, with all her experience,
+her skill, and her zeal, she had presumed to anticipate.  Matilda,
+without ear, or taste, or love for music, became a very fair mechanical
+musician.  Without one artistic predisposition, she achieved the science
+of perspective--she attained even to the mixture of colours--she filled a
+portfolio with drawings which no young lady need have been ashamed to see
+circling round a drawing-room.  She carried Matilda's thin mind to the
+farthest bound it could have reached without snapping, through an elegant
+range of selected histories and harmless feminine classics--through
+Gallic dialogues--through Tuscan themes--through Teuton verbs--yea,
+across the invaded bounds of astonished Science into the Elementary
+Ologies.  And all this being done, Matilda Darrell was exactly the same
+creature that she was before.  In all that related to character, to
+inclinations, to heart, even that consummate teacher could give no
+intelligible answer, when Mrs. Lyndsay in her softest accents (and no
+accents ever were softer) sighed: "Poor dear Matilda! can you make her
+out, Miss Fossett?"  Miss Fossett could not make her out.  But, after the
+most attentive study, Miss Fossett had inly decided that there was
+nothing to make out--that, like many other very nice girls, Matilda
+Darrell was a harmless nullity, what you call "a Miss" white deal or
+willow, to which Miss Fossett had done all in the way of increasing its
+value as ornamental furniture, when she had veneered it over with
+rosewood or satinwood, enriched its edges with ormolu, and strewed its
+surface with nicknacks and albums.  But Arabella firmly believed Matilda
+Darrell to be a quiet, honest, good sort of "Miss," on the whole--very
+fond of her, Arabella.  The teacher had been several months in Darrell's
+family, when Caroline Lyndsay, who had been almost domesticated with
+Matilda (sharing the lessons bestowed on the latter, whether by Miss
+Fossett or visiting masters), was taken away by Mrs. Lyndsay on a
+visit to the old Marchioness of Montfort.  Matilda, who was to come out
+the next year, was thus almost exclusively with Arabella, who redoubled
+all her pains to veneer the white deal, and protect with ormolu its
+feeble edges--so that, when it "came out," all should admire that
+thoroughly fashionable piece of furniture.  It was the habit of Miss
+Fossett and her pupil to take a morning walk in the quiet retreats of the
+Green Park; and one morning, as they were thus strolling, nursery-maids
+and children, and elderly folks who were ordered to take early exercises,
+undulating round their unsuspecting way,--suddenly, right upon their path
+(unlooked--for as the wolf that startled Horace in the Sabine wood, but
+infinitely more deadly than that runaway animal), came Jasper Losely!
+Arabella uttered a faint scream.  She could not resist--had no thought of
+resisting--the impulse to bound forward--lay her hand on his arm.  She
+was too agitated to perceive whether his predominant feeling was surprise
+or rapture.  A few hurried words were exchanged, while Matilda Darrell
+gave one sidelong glance towards the handsome stranger, and walked
+quietly by them.  On his part, Jasper said that he had just returned to
+London--that he had abandoned for ever all idea of a commercial life--
+that his father's misfortune (he gave that gentle appellation to the
+incident of penal transportation) had severed him from all former
+friends, ties, habits--that he had dropped the name of Losely for ever
+--entreated Arabella not to betray it--his name now was Hammond--his
+"prospects," he said, "fairer than they had ever been."  Under the name
+of Hammond, as an independent gentleman, he had made friends more
+powerful than he could ever have made under the name of Losely as a city
+clerk.  He blushed to think he had ever been a city clerk.  No doubt he
+should get into some Government office; and then, oh then, with assured
+income and a certainty to rise, he might claim the longed-for hand of the
+"best of creatures."
+
+On Arabella's part, she hastily explained her present position.  She was
+governess to Miss Darrell--that was Miss Darrell.  Arabella must not
+leave her walking on by herself--she would write to him.  Addresses were
+exchanged--Jasper gave a very neat card--"Mr. Hammond, No.--, Duke
+Street, St. James's."
+
+Arabella, with a beating heart, hastened to join her friend.  At the
+rapid glance she had taken of her perfidious lover, she thought him, if
+possible, improved.  His dress, always studied, was more to the fashion
+of polished society, more simply correct--his air more decided.
+Altogether he looked prosperous, and his manner had never been more
+seductive, in its mixture of easy self-confidence and hypocritical
+coaxing.  In fact, Jasper had not been long in the French commercial
+house--to which he had been sent out of the way while his father's trial
+was proceeding and the shame of it fresh--before certain licenses of
+conduct had resulted in his dismissal.  But, meanwhile, he had made many
+friends amongst young men of his own age--those loose wild viveurs who,
+without doing anything the law can punish as dishonest, contrive for a
+few fast years to live very showily on their wits.  In that strange
+social fermentation which still prevails in a country where an
+aristocracy of birth, exceedingly impoverished, and exceedingly numerous
+so far as the right to prefix a De to the name, or to stamp a coronet on
+the card, can constitute an aristocrat--is diffused amongst an ambitious,
+adventurous, restless, and not inelegant young democracy--each cemented
+with the other by that fiction of law called egalite; in that yet
+unsettled and struggling society in which so much of the old has been
+irretrievably destroyed, and so little of the new has been solidly
+constructed--there are much greater varieties, infinitely more subtle
+grades and distinctions, in the region of life which lies between
+respectability and disgrace, than can be found in a country like ours.
+The French novels and dramas may apply less a mirror than a magnifying-
+glass to the beings that move through that region.  But still those
+French novels and dramas do not unfaithfully represent the
+classifications of which they exaggerate the types.  Those strange
+combinations, into one tableau, of students and grisettes; opera-dancers,
+authors, viscounts, swindlers, romantic Lorettes, gamblers on the Bourse,
+whose pedigree dates from the Crusades; impostors, taking titles from
+villages in which their grandsires might have been saddlers--and if
+detected, the detection but a matter of laugh; delicate women living like
+lawless men; men making trade out of love, like dissolute women, yet with
+point of honour so nice, that, doubt their truth or their courage, and--
+piff! you are in Charon's boat,--humanity in every civilised land may
+present single specimens, more or less, answering to each thus described.
+But where, save in France, find them all, if not precisely in the same
+salons, yet so crossing each other to and fro as to constitute a social
+phase, and give colour to a literature of unquestionable genius?  And
+where, over orgies so miscellaneously Berecynthian, an atmosphere so
+elegantly Horatian?  And where can coarseness so vanish into polished
+expression as in that diamond-like language--all terseness and sparkle--
+which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in
+its torrent of cloud-wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of
+spite to the Muse?
+
+Into circles such as those of which the dim outline is here so
+imperfectly sketched, Jasper Losely niched himself, as /le bel Anglais/.
+(Pleasant representative of the English nation!)  Not that those circles
+are to have the sole credit of his corruption.  No!  Justice is justice!
+Stand we up for our native land! /Le bel Anglais/ entered those circles a
+much greater knave than most of those whom he found there.  But there, at
+least, he learned to set a yet higher value on his youth, and strength,
+and comeliness--on his readiness of resource--on the reckless audacity
+that browbeat timid and some even valiant men--on the six feet one of
+faultless symmetry that captivated foolish, and some even sensible women.
+Gaming was, however, his vice by predilection.  A month before Arabella
+met him, he had had a rare run of luck.  On the strength of it he had
+resolved to return to London, and (wholly oblivious of the best of
+creatures till she had thus startled him) hunt out and swoop off with an
+heiress.  Three French friends accompanied him.  Each had the same
+object.  Each believed that London swarmed with heiresses.  They were
+all three fine-looking men.  One was a Count,--at least he said so.  But
+proud of his rank?--not a bit of it: all for liberty (no man more likely
+to lose it)--all for fraternity (no man you would less love as a
+brother).  And as for /egalite!/--the son of a shoemaker who was /homme
+de lettres/, and wrote in a journal, inserted a jest on the Count's
+courtship.  "All men are equal before the pistol," said the Count; and
+knowing that in that respect he was equal to most, having practised at
+/poupees/ from the age of fourteen, he called out the son of Crispin and
+shot him through the lungs.  Another of Jasper's travelling friends was
+an /enfant die peuple/--boasted that he was a foundling.  He made verses
+of lugubrious strain, and taught Jasper how to shuffle at whist.  The
+third, like Jasper, had been designed for trade; and, like Jasper, he had
+a soul above it.  In politics he was a Communist--in talk Philanthropist.
+He was the cleverest man of them all, and is now at the galleys.  The
+fate of his two compatriots--more obscure it is not my duty to discover.
+In that peculiar walk of life Jasper is as much as I can possibly manage.
+
+It need not be said that Jasper carefully abstained from reminding his
+old city friends of his existence.  It was his object and his hope to
+drop all identity with that son of a convict who had been sent out of the
+way to escape humiliation.  In this resolve he was the more confirmed
+because he had no old city friends out of whom anything could be well
+got.  His poor uncle, who alone of his relations in England had been
+privy to his change of name, was dead; his end hastened by grief for
+William Losely's disgrace, and the bad reports he had received from
+France of the conduct of William Losely's son.  That uncle had left, in
+circumstances too straitened to admit the waste of a shilling, a widow of
+very rigid opinions; who, if ever by some miraculous turn in the wheel of
+fortune she could have become rich enough to slay a fatted calf, would
+never have given the shin-bone of it to a prodigal like Jasper, even had
+he been her own penitent son, instead of a graceless step-nephew.
+Therefore, as all civilisation proceeds westward, Jasper turned his face
+from the east; and had no more idea of recrossing Temple Bar in search of
+fortune, friends, or kindred, than a modern Welshman would dream of a
+pilgrimage to Asian shores to re-embrace those distant relatives whom Hu
+Gadarn left behind him countless centuries ago, when that mythical chief
+conducted his faithfid Cymrians over the Hazy Sea to this happy island of
+Honey.
+
+     [Mel Ynnys--Isle of Honey.  One of the poetic names given to England
+     in the language of the ancient Britons.]
+
+Two days after his rencontre with Arabella in the Green Park, the /soi-
+disant/ Hammond having, in the interim, learned that Darrell was
+immensely rich, and that Matilda was his only surviving child, did not
+fail to find himself in the Green Park again--and again--and again!
+
+Arabella, of course, felt how wrong it was to allow him to accost her,
+and walk by one side of her while Miss Darrell was on the other.  But she
+felt, also, as if it would be much more wrong to slip out and meet him
+alone.  Not for worlds would she again have placed herself in such peril.
+To refuse to meet him at all?--she had not strength enough for that!  Her
+joy at seeing him was so immense.  And nothing could be more respectful
+than Jasper's manner and conversation.  Whatever of warmer and more
+impassioned sentiment was exchanged between them passed in notes.  Jasper
+had suggested to Arabella to represent him to Matilda as some near
+relation.  But Arabella refused all such disguise.  Her sole claim to
+self-respect was in considering him solemnly engaged to her--the man she
+was to marry.
+
+And, after the second time they thus met, she said to Matilda, who had
+not questioned her by a word-by a look: "I was to be married to that
+gentleman before my father died; we are to be married as soon as we have
+something to live upon."
+
+Matilda made some commonplace but kindly rejoinder.  And thus she became
+raised into Arabella's confidence, so far as that confidence could be
+given, without betraying Jasper's real name or one darker memory in
+herself.  Luxury, indeed, it was to Arabella to find, at last, some one
+to whom she could speak of that betrothal in which her whole future was
+invested--of that affection which was her heart's sheet-anchor--of that
+home, humble it might be and far off, but to which Time rarely fails to
+bring the Two, if never weary of the trust to become as One.  Talking
+thus, Arabella forgot the relationship of pupil and teacher; it was as
+woman to woman--girl to girl--friend to friend.  Matilda seemed touched
+by the confidence--flattered to possess at last another's secret.
+Arabella was a little chafed that she did not seem to admire Jasper as
+much as Arabella thought the whole world must admire.  Matilda excused
+herself.  "She had scarcely noticed Mr. Hammond.  Yes: she had no doubt
+he would be considered handsome; but she owned, though it might be bad
+taste, that she preferred a pale complexion, with auburn hair;" and then
+she sighed and looked away, as if she had, in the course of her secret
+life, encountered some fatal pale complexion, with never-to-be-forgotten
+auburn hair.  Not a word was said by either Matilda or Arabella as to
+concealing from Mr. Darrell these meetings with Mr. Hammond.  Perhaps
+Arabella could not stoop to ask that secrecy; but there was no necessity
+to ask; Matilda was always too rejoiced to have something to conceal.
+
+Now, in these interviews, Jasper scarcely ever addressed himself to
+Matilda; not twenty spoken words could have passed between them; yet, in
+the very third interview, Matilda's sly fingers had closed on a sly note.
+And from that day, in each interview, Arabella walking in the centre,
+Jasper on one side, Matilda the other--behind Arabella's back-passed the
+sly fingers and the sly notes, which Matilda received and answered.  Not
+more than twelve or fourteen times was even this interchange effected.
+Darrell was about to move to Fawley.  All such meetings would be now
+suspended.  Two or three mornings before that fixed for leaving London,
+Matilda's room was found vacant.  She was gone.  Arabella was the first
+to discover her flight, the first to learn its cause.  Matilda had left
+on her writing-table a letter for Miss Fossett.  It was very short, very
+quietly expressed, and it rested her justification on a note from Jasper,
+which she enclosed--a note in which that gallant hero, ridiculing the
+idea that he could ever have been in love with Arabella, declared that he
+would destroy himself if Matilda refused to fly.  She need not fear such
+angelic confidence in him.  No!  Even
+
+                    Had he a heart for falsehood framed,
+                    He ne'er could injure her."
+
+Stifling each noisier cry--but panting--gasping--literally half out of
+her mind, Arabella rushed into Darrell's study.  He, unsuspecting man,
+calmly bending over his dull books, was startled by her apparition.  Few
+minutes sufficed to tell him all that it concerned him to learn.  Few
+brief questions, few passionate answers, brought him to the very worst.
+
+Who, and what, was this Mr. Hammond?  Heaven of heavens! the son of
+William Losely--of a transported felon!
+
+Arabella exulted in a reply which gave her a moment's triumph over the
+rival who had filched from her such a prize.  Roused from his first
+misery and sense of abasement in this discovery, Darrell's wrath was
+naturally poured, not on the fugitive child, but on the frontless woman,
+who, buoyed up by her own rage and sense of wrong, faced him, and did not
+cower.  She, the faithless governess, had presented to her pupil this
+convict's son in another name; she owned it--she had trepanned into the
+snares of so vile a fortune-hunter an ignorant child: she might feign
+amaze--act remorse--she must have been the man's accomplice.  Stung,
+amidst all the bewilderment of her anguish, by this charge, which, at
+least, she did not deserve, Arabella tore from her bosom Jasper's recent
+letters to herself--letters all devotion and passion--placed them before
+Darrell, and bade him read.  Nothing thought she then of name and fame--
+nothing but of her wrongs and of her woes.  Compared to herself, Matilda
+seemed the perfidious criminal--she the injured victim.  Darrell but
+glanced over the letters; they were signed "your loving husband."
+
+"What is this?"  he exclaimed; "are you married to the man?"
+
+"Yes," cried Arabella, "in the eyes of Heaven!"
+
+To Darrell's penetration there was no mistaking the significance of those
+words and that look; and his wrath redoubled.  Anger in him, when once
+roused, was terrible; he had small need of words to vent it.  His eye
+withered, his gesture appalled.  Conscious but of one burning firebrand
+in brain and heart--of a sense that youth, joy, and hope were for ever
+gone, that the world could never be the same again--Arabella left the
+house, her character lost, her talents useless, her very means of
+existence stopped.  Who henceforth would take her to teach?  Who
+henceforth place their children under her charge?
+
+She shrank into a gloomy lodging--she--shut herself up alone with her
+despair.  Strange though it may seem, her anger against Jasper was slight
+as compared with the in tensity of her hate to Matilda.  And stranger
+still it may seem, that as her thoughts recovered from their first chaos,
+she felt more embittered against the world, more crushed by a sense of
+shame, and yet galled by a no less keen sense of injustice, in recalling
+the scorn with which Darrell had rejected all excuse for her conduct in
+the misery it had occasioned her, than she did by the consciousness of
+her own lamentable errors.  As in Darrell's esteem there was something
+that, to those who could appreciate it, seemed invaluable, so in his
+contempt to those who had cherished that esteem there was a weight of
+ignominy, as if a judge had pronounced a sentence that outlaws the rest
+of life.
+
+Arabella had not much left out of her munificent salary.  What she had
+hitherto laid by had passed to Jasper--defraying, perhaps, the very cost
+of his flight with her treacherous rival.  When her money was gone, she
+pawned the poor relics of her innocent happy girlhood, which she had been
+permitted to take from her father's home, and had borne with her wherever
+she went, like household gods, the prize-books, the lute, the costly
+work-box, the very bird-cage, all which the reader will remember to have
+seen in her later life, the books never opened--the lute broken, the bird
+long, long, long vanished from the cage!  Never did she think she should
+redeem those pledges from that Golgotha, which takes, rarely to give
+back, so many hallowed tokens of the Dreamland called "Better Days,"--
+the trinkets worn at the first ball, the ring that was given with the
+earliest love-vow--yea, even the very bells and coral that pleased the
+infant in his dainty cradle, and the very Bible in which the lips, that
+now bargain for sixpence more, read to some grey-haired father on his bed
+of death!
+
+Soon the sums thus miserably raised were as miserably doled away.  With a
+sullen apathy the woman contemplated famine.  She would make no effort to
+live--appeal to no relations, no friends.  It was a kind of vengeance she
+took on others, to let herself drift on to death.  She had retreated from
+lodging to lodging, each obscurer, more desolate than the other.  Now,
+she could no longer pay rent for the humblest room; now, she was told to
+go forth--whither?  She knew not--cared not--took her way towards the
+River, as by that instinct which, when the mind is diseased, tends
+towards self-destruction, scarce less involuntarily than it turns, in
+health, towards self-preservation.  Just as she passed under the lamp-
+light at the foot of Westminster Bridge, a man looked at her, and seized
+her arm.  She raised her head with a chilly, melancholy scorn, as if she
+had received an insult--as if she feared that the man knew the stain upon
+her name, and dreamed, in his folly, that the dread of death might cause
+her to sin again.
+
+"Do you not know me?"  said the man; "more strange that I should
+recognise you!  Dear, dear, and what a dress!--how you are altered!  Poor
+thing!"
+
+At the words "poor thing" Arabella burst into tears; and in those tears
+the heavy cloud on her brain seemed to melt away.
+
+"I have been inquiring, seeking for you everywhere, Miss," resumed the
+man.  "Surely, you know me now!  Your poor aunt's lawyer!  She is no
+more--died last week.  She has left you all she had in the world; and a
+very pretty income it is, too, for a single lady."
+
+Thus it was that we find Arabella installed in the dreary comforts of
+Podden Place.  "She exchanged," she said, "in honour to her aunt's
+memory, her own name for that of Crane, which her aunt had borne--her own
+mother's maiden name."  She assumed, though still so young, that title of
+"Mrs." which spinsters, grown venerable, moodily adopt when they desire
+all mankind to know that henceforth they relinquish the vanities of
+tender misses--that, become mistress of themselves, they defy and spit
+upon our worthless sex, which, whatever its repentance, is warned that it
+repents in vain.  Most of her aunt's property was in houses, in various
+districts of Bloombury.  Arabella moved from one to the other of these
+tenements, till she settled for good into the dullest of all.  To make it
+duller yet, by contrast with the past, the Golgotha for once gave up its
+buried treasures--broken lute, birdless cage!
+
+Somewhere about two years after Matilda's death, Arabella happened to be
+in the office of the agent who collected her house-rents, when a well-
+dressed man entered, and, leaning over the counter, said: "There is an
+advertisement in to-day's Times about a lady who offers a home,
+education, and so forth, to any little motherless girl; terms moderate,
+as said lady loves children for their own sake.  Advertiser refers to
+your office for particulars--give them!"
+
+The agent turned to his books; and Arabella turned towards the inquirer.
+"For whose child do you want a home, Jasper Losely?"
+
+Jasper started.  "Arabella!  Best of creatures!  And can you deign to
+speak to such a vil---"
+
+"Hush--let us walk.  Never mind the advertisement of a stranger.  I may
+find a home for a motherless child--a home that will cost you nothing."
+
+She drew him into the street.  "But can this be the child of--of--Matilda
+Darrell?"--
+
+"Bella!"  replied, in coaxing accents, that most execrable of lady-
+killers, "can I trust you?--can you be my friend in spite of my having
+been such a very sad dog?  But money--what can one do without money in
+this world?  'Had I a heart for falsehood framed, it would ne'er have
+injured you'--if I had not been so cursedly hard up!  And indeed, now, if
+you would but condescend to forgive and forget, perhaps some day or other
+we may be Darby and Joan--only, you see, just at this moment I am really
+not worthy of such a Joan.  You know, of course, that I am a widower--not
+inconsolable."
+
+"Yes; I read of Mrs. Hammond's death in an old newspaper."
+
+"And you did not read of her baby's death, too--some weeks afterwards?"'
+
+"No; it is seldom that I see a newspaper.  Is the infant dead?"
+
+"Hum--you shall hear."  And Jasper entered into a recital, to which
+Arabella listened with attentive interest.  At the close she offered to
+take, herself, the child for whom Jasper sought a home.  She informed him
+of her change of name and address.  The wretch promised to call that
+evening with the infant; but he sent the infant, and did not call.  Nor
+did he present himself again to her eyes, until, several years
+afterwards, those eyes so luridly welcomed him to Podden Place.  But
+though he did not even condescend to write to her in the mean while, it
+is probable that Arabella contrived to learn more of his habits and mode
+of life at Paris than she intimated when they once more met face to face.
+
+And now the reader knows more than Alban Morley, or Guy Darrell, perhaps
+ever will know, of the grim woman in iron-grey,
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+              "Sweet are the uses of Adversity,
+               Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
+               Bears yet a precious jewel in its head."
+
+     MOST PERSONS WILL AGREE THAT THE TOAD IS UGLY AND VENOMOUS, BUT FEW
+     INDEED ARE THE PERSONS WHO CAN BOAST OF HAVING ACTUALLY DISCOVERED
+     THAT "PRECIOUS JEWEL IN ITS HEAD," WHICH THE POET ASSURES US IS
+     PLACED THERE.  BUT CALAMITY MAY BE CLASSED IN TWO GREAT DIVISIONS--
+     1ST, THE AFFLICTIONS, WHICH NO PRUDENCE CAN AVERT; 2ND, THE
+     MISFORTUNES, WHICH MEN TAKE ALL POSSIBLE PAINS TO BRING UPON
+     THEMSELVES.  AFFLICTIONS OF THE FIRST CLASS MAY BUT CALL FORTH OUR
+     VIRTUES, AND RESULT IN OUR ULTIMATE GOOD.  SUCH IS THE ADVERSITY
+     WHICH MAY GIVE US THE JEWEL.  BUT TO GET AT THE JEWEL WE MUST KILL
+     THE TOAD.  MISFORTUNES OF THE SECOND CLASS BUT TOO OFTEN INCREASE
+     THE ERRORS OR THE VICES BY WHICH THEY WERE CREATED.  SUCH IS THE
+     ADVERSITY WHICH IS ALL TOAD AND NO JEWEL.  IF YOU CHOOSE TO BREED
+     AND FATTEN YOUR OWN TOADS, THE INCREASE OF THE VENOM ABSORBS EVERY
+     BIT OF THE JEWEL.
+
+Never did I know a man who was an habitual gambler, otherwise than
+notably inaccurate in his calculations of probabilities in the ordinary
+affairs of life.  Is it that such a man has become so chronic a drunkard
+of hope, that he sees double every chance in his favour?
+
+Jasper Losely had counted upon two things as matters of course.
+
+1st.  Darrell's speedy reconciliation with his only child.  2nd.  That
+Darrell's only child must of necessity be Darrell's heiress.
+
+In both these expectations the gambler was deceived.  Darrell did not
+even answer the letters that Matilda addressed to him from France, to the
+shores of which Jasper had borne her, and where he had hastened to make
+her his wife under the assumed name of Hammond, but his true Christian
+name of Jasper.
+
+In the disreputable marriage Matilda had made, all the worst parts of her
+character seemed suddenly revealed to her father's eye, and he saw what
+he had hitherto sought not to see, the true child of a worthless mother.
+A mere mesalliance, if palliated by long or familiar acquaintance with
+the object, however it might have galled him, his heart might have
+pardoned; but here, without even a struggle of duty, without the ordinary
+coyness of maiden pride, to be won with so scanty a wooing, by a man who
+she knew was betrothed to another--the dissimulation, the perfidy, the
+combined effrontery and meanness of the whole transaction, left no force
+in Darrell's eyes to the common place excuses of experience and youth.
+Darrell would not have been Darrell if he could have taken back to his
+home or his heart a daughter so old in deceit, so experienced in thoughts
+that dishonour.
+
+Darrell's silence, however, little saddened the heartless bride, and
+little dismayed the sanguine bridegroom.  Both thought that pardon and
+plenty were but the affair of time a little more or little less.  But
+their funds rapidly diminished; it became necessary to recruit them.  One
+can't live in hotels entirely upon hope.  Leaving his bride for a while
+in a pleasant provincial town, not many hours distant from Paris, Jasper
+returned to London, intent upon seeing Darrell himself; and, should the
+father-in-law still defer articles of peace, Jasper believed that he
+could have no trouble in raising a present supply upon such an El Dorado
+of future expectations.  Darrell at once consented to see Jasper, not at
+his own house, but at his solicitor's.  Smothering all opposing disgust,
+the proud gentleman deemed this condescension essential to the clear and
+definite understanding of those resolves upon which depended the worldly
+station and prospects of the wedded pair.
+
+When Jasper was shown into Mr. Gotobed's office, Darrell was alone,
+standing near the hearth, and by a single quiet gesture repelled that
+tender rush towards his breast which Jasper had elaborately prepared; and
+thus for the first time the two men saw each other, Darrell perhaps yet
+more resentfully mortified while recognising those personal advantages in
+the showy profligate which had rendered a daughter of his house so facile
+a conquest: Jasper (who had chosen to believe that a father-in-law so
+eminent must necessarily be old and broken) shocked into the most
+disagreeable surprise by the sight of a man still young, under forty,
+with a countenance, a port, a presence, that in any assemblage would have
+attracted the general gaze from his own brilliant self, and looking
+altogether as unfavourable an object, whether for pathos or for post-
+obits, as unlikely to breathe out a blessing or to give up the ghost, as
+the worst brute of a father-in-law could possibly be.  Nor were Darrell's
+words more comforting than his aspect.
+
+"Sir, I have consented to see you, partly that you may learn from my own
+lips once for all that I admit no man's right to enter my family without
+my consent, and that consent you will never receive; and partly that,
+thus knowing each other by sight, each may know the man it becomes him
+most to avoid.  The lady who is now your wife is entitled by my marriage-
+settlement to the reversion of a small fortune at my death; nothing more
+from me is she likely to inherit.  As I have no desire that she to whom I
+once gave the name of daughter should be dependent wholly on yourself for
+bread, my solicitor will inform you on what conditions I am willing,
+during my life, to pay the interest of the sum which will pass to your
+wife at my death.  Sir, I return to your hands the letters that lady has
+addressed to me, and which, it is easy to perceive, were written at your
+dictation.  No letter from her will I answer.  Across my threshold her
+foot will never pass.  Thus, sir, concludes all possible intercourse
+between you and myself; what rests is between you and that gentleman."
+
+Darrell had opened a side-door in speaking the last words--pointed
+towards the respectable form of Mr. Gotobed standing tall beside his tall
+desk--and, before Jasper could put in a word, the father-in-law was gone.
+
+With becoming brevity, Mr. Gotobed made Jasper fully aware that not only
+all, Mr. Darrell's funded or personal property was entirely at his own
+disposal--that not only the large landed estates he had purchased (and
+which Jasper had vaguely deemed inherited and in strict entail) were in
+the same condition--condition enviable to the proprietor, odious to the
+bridegroom of the proprietor's sole daughter; but that even the fee-
+simple of the poor Fawley Manor House and lands were vested in Darrell,
+encumbered only by the portion of L10,000 which the late Mrs. Darrell had
+brought to her husband, and which was settled, at the death of herself
+and Darrell, on the children of the marriage.
+
+In the absence of marriage-settlements between Jasper and Matilda, that
+sum at Darrell's death was liable to be claimed by Jasper, in right of
+his wife, so as to leave no certainty that provision would remain for the
+support of his wife and family; and the contingent reversion might, in
+the mean time, be so dealt with as to bring eventual poverty on them all.
+
+"Sir," said the lawyer, "I will be quite frank with you.  It is my wish,
+acting for Mr. Darrell, so to settle this sum of L10,000 on your wife,
+and any children she may bear you, as to place it out of your power to
+anticipate or dispose of it, even with Mrs. Hammond's consent.  If you
+part with that power, not at present a valuable one, you are entitled to
+compensation.  I am prepared to make that compensation liberal.  Perhaps
+you would prefer communicating with me through your own solicitor.  But I
+should tell you, that the terms are more likely to be advantageous to you
+in proportion as negotiation is confined to us two.  It might, for
+instance, be expedient to tell your solicitor that your true name (I beg
+you a thousand pardons) is not Hammond.  That is a secret which, the more
+you can keep it to yourself, the better I think it will be for you.  We
+have no wish to blab it out."
+
+Jasper, by this time, had somewhat recovered the first shock of
+displeasure and disappointment; and with that quickness which so
+erratically darted through a mind that contrived to be dull when anything
+honest was addressed to its apprehension, he instantly divined that his
+real name of Losely was worth something.  He had no idea of reusing--was,
+indeed, at that time anxious altogether to ignore and eschew it; but he
+had a right to it, and a man's rights are not to be resigned for nothing.
+Accordingly, he said with some asperity: "I shall resume my family name
+whenever I choose it.  If Mr. Darrell does not like his daughter to be
+called Mrs. Jasper Losely--or all the malignant tittle-tattle which my
+poor father's unfortunate trial might provoke--he must, at least, ask me
+as a favour to retain the name I have temporarily adopted--a name in my
+family, sir.  A Losely married a Hammond, I forget when--generations ago
+--you'll see it in the Baronetage.  My grandfather, Sir Julian, was not a
+crack lawyer, but he was a baronet of as good birth as any in the
+country; and my father, sir"--(Jasper's voice trembled) "my father," he
+repeated, fiercely striking his clenched hand on the table, "was a
+gentleman every inch of his body; and I'll pitch any man out of the
+window who says a word to the contrary!"
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Gotobed, shrinking towards the bell pull, "I think, on
+the whole, I had better see your solicitor."
+
+Jasper cooled down at that suggestion; and, with a slight apology for
+natural excitement, begged to know what Mr. Gotobed wished to propose.
+To make an end of this part of the story, after two or three interviews,
+in which the two negotiators learned to understand each other, a
+settlement was legally completed, by which the sum of L10,000 was
+inalienably settled on Matilda, and her children by her marriage with
+Jasper; in case he survived her, the interest was to be his for life--
+in case she died childless, the capital would devolve to himself at
+Darrell's decease.  Meanwhile, Darrell agreed to pay L500 a year, as the
+interest of the L10,000 at five per cent., to Jasper Hammond, or his
+order, provided always that Jasper and his wife continued to reside
+together, and fixed that residence abroad.
+
+By a private verbal arrangement, not even committed to writing, to this
+sum was added another L200 a year, wholly at Darrell's option and
+discretion.  It being clearly comprehended that these words meant so long
+as Mr. Hammond kept his own secret, and so long, too, as he forbore,
+directly or indirectly, to molest, or even to address, the person at
+whose pleasure it was held.  On the whole, the conditions to Jasper were
+sufficiently favourable: he came into an income immeasurably beyond his
+right to believe that he should ever enjoy; and sufficient--well managed
+--for even a fair share of the elegancies as well as comforts of life, to
+a young couple blest in each other's love, and remote from the horrible
+taxes and emulous gentilities of this opulent England, where out of fear
+to be thought too poor nobody is ever too rich.
+
+Matilda wrote no more to Darrell.  But some months afterwards he received
+an extremely well-expressed note in French, the writer whereof
+represented herself as a French lady, who had very lately seen Madame
+Hammondwho was now in London, but for a few days, and had something to
+communicate, of such importance as to justify the liberty she took in
+requesting him to honour her with a visit.  After some little hesitation,
+Darrell called on this lady.  Though Matilda had forfeited his affection,
+he could not contemplate her probable fate without painful anxiety.
+Perhaps Jasper had ill-used her--perhaps she had need of shelter
+elsewhere.  Though that shelter could not again be under a father's roof
+--and though Darrell would have taken no steps to separate her from the
+husband she had chosen, still, in secret, he would have felt comparative
+relief and ease had she herself sought to divide her fate from one whose
+path downwards in dishonour his penetration instinctively divined.  With
+an idea that some communication might be made to him, to which he might
+reply that Matilda, if compelled to quit her husband, should never want
+the home and subsistence of a gentlewoman, he repaired to the house (a
+handsome house in a quiet street) temporarily occupied by the French
+lady.  A tall chasseur, in full costume, opened the door--a page ushered
+him into the drawing-room.  He saw a lady--young-and with all the grace
+of a Parisieune in her manner--who, after some exquisitely-turned phrases
+of excuse, showed him (as a testimonial of the intimacy between herself
+and Madame Hammond) a letter she had received from Matilda, in a very
+heart-broken, filial strain, full of professions of penitence--of a
+passionate desire for her father's forgivenessbut far from complaining of
+Jasper, or hinting at the idea of deserting a spouse with whom, but for
+the haunting remembrance of a beloved parent, her lot would be blest
+indeed.  Whatever of pathos was deficient in the letter, the French lady
+supplied by such apparent fine feeling, and by so many touching little
+traits of Matilda's remorse, that Darrell's heart was softened in spite
+of his reason.  He went away, however, saying very little, and intending
+to call no more.  But another note came.  The French lady had received a
+letter from a mutual friend--"Matilda," she feared, "was dangerously
+ill."  This took him again to the house, and the poor French lady seemed
+so agitated by the news she had heard--and yet so desirous not to
+exaggerate nor alarm him needlessly, that Darrell suspected his daughter
+was really dying, and became nervously anxious himself for the next
+report.  Thus, about three or four visits in all necessarily followed the
+first one.  Then Darrell abruptly closed the intercourse, and could not
+be induced to call again.  Not that he for an instant suspected that this
+amiable lady, who spoke so becomingly, and whose manners were so high-
+bred, was other than the well-born Baroness she called herself, and
+looked to be, but partly because, in the last interview, the charming
+Parisienne had appeared a little to forget Matilda's alarming illness,
+in a not forward but still coquettish desire to centre his attention more
+upon herself; and the moment she did so, he took a dislike to her which
+he had not before conceived; and partly because his feelings having
+recovered the first effect which the vision of a penitent, pining, dying
+daughter could not fail to produce, his experience of Matilda's duplicity
+and falsehood made him discredit the penitence, the pining, and the
+dying.  The Baroness might not wilfully be deceiving him--Matilda might
+be wilfully deceiving the Baroness.  To the next note, therefore,
+despatched to him by the feeling and elegant foreigner, he replied but
+by a dry excuse--a stately hint, that family matters could never be
+satisfactorily discussed except in family councils, and that if her
+friend's grief or illness were really in any way occasioned by a belief
+in the pain her choice of life might have inflicted on himself, it might
+comfort her to know that that pain had subsided, and that his wish for
+her health and happiness was not less sincere, because henceforth he
+could neither watch over the one nor administer to the other.  To this
+note, after a day or two, the Baroness replied by a letter so beautifully
+worded, I doubt whether Madame de Sevigne could have written in purer
+French, or Madame de Steel with a finer felicity of phrase.  Stripped of
+the graces of diction, the substance was but small: "Anxiety for a friend
+so beloved--so unhappy--more pitied even than before, now that the
+Baroness had been enabled to see how fondly a daughter must idolise a
+father in the Man whom the nation revered!--(here two lines devoted to
+compliment personal)--compelled by that anxiety to quit even sooner than
+she had first intended the metropolis of that noble Country," &c.--(here
+four lines devoted to compliment national)--and then proceeding through
+some charming sentences about patriot altars and domestic hearths, the
+writer suddenly checked herself--" would intrude no more on time
+sublimely dedicated to the Human Race--and concluded with the assurance
+of sentiments the most /distinguees/."  Little thought Darrell that this
+complimentary stranger, whom he never again beheld, would exercise an
+influence over that portion of his destiny which then seemed to him most
+secure from evil; towards which, then, be looked for the balm to every
+wound--the compensation to every loss!
+
+Darrell heard no more of Matilda, till, not long afterwards, her death
+was announced to him.  She had died from exhaustion shortly after giving
+birth to a female child.  The news came upon him at a moment; when, from
+other causes--(the explanation of which, forming no part of his
+confidence to Alban, it will be convenient to reserve)--his mind was in a
+state of great affliction and disorder--when he had already buried
+himself in the solitudes of Fawley--ambition resigned and the world
+renounced--and the intelligence saddened and shocked him more than it
+might have done some months before.  If, at that moment of utter
+bereavement, Matilda's child had been brought to him--given up to him to
+rear--would he have rejected it? would he have forgotten that it was a
+felon's grandchild?
+
+I dare not say.  But his pride was not put to such a trial.  One day he
+received a packet from Mr. Gotobed, enclosing the formal certificates of
+the infant's death, which had been presented to him by Jasper, who had
+arrived in London for that melancholy purpose, with which he combined
+a pecuniary proposition.  By the death of Matilda and her only child, the
+sum of L10,000 absolutely reverted to Jasper in the event of Darrell's
+decease.  As the interest meanwhile was continued to Jasper, that widowed
+mourner suggested "that it would be a great boon to himself and no
+disadvantage to Darrell if the principal were made over to him at once.
+He had been brought up originally to commerce.  He had abjured all
+thoughts of resuming such vocation during his wife's lifetime, out of
+that consideration for her family and ancient birth which motives of
+delicacy imposed.  Now that the connection with Mr. Darrell was
+dissolved, it might be rather a relief than otherwise to that gentleman
+to know that a son-in-law so displeasing to him was finally settled, not
+only in a foreign land, but in a social sphere in which his very
+existence would soon be ignored by all who could remind Mr. Darrell that
+his daughter had once a husband.  An occasion that might never occur
+again now presented itself.  A trading firm at Paris, opulent, but
+unostentatiously quiet in its mercantile transactions, would accept him
+as a partner could he bring to it the additional capital of L10,000."
+Not without dignity did Jasper add, "that since his connection had been
+so unhappily distasteful to Mr. Darrell, and since the very payment, each
+quarter, of the interest on the sum in question must in itself keep alive
+the unwelcome remembrance of that connection, he had the less scruple in
+making a proposition which would enable the eminent personage who so
+disdained his alliance to get rid of him altogether."  Darrell closed at
+once with Jasper's proposal, pleased to cut off from his life each tie
+that could henceforth link it to Jasper's, nor displeased to relieve his
+hereditary acres from every shilling of the marriage portion which was
+imposed on it as a debt, and associated with memories of unmingled
+bitterness.  Accordingly, Mr. Gotobed, taking care first to ascertain
+that the certificates as to the poor child's death were genuine, accepted
+Jasper's final release of all claim on Mr. Darrell's estate.  There
+still, however, remained the L200 a year which Jasper had received during
+Matilda's life, on the tacit condition of remaining Mr. Hammond, and not
+personally addressing Mr. Darrell.  Jasper inquired "if that annuity was
+to continue?"  Mr. Gotobed referred the inquiry to Darrell, observing
+that the object for which this extra allowance had been made was rendered
+nugatory by the death of Mrs. Hammond and her child; since Jasper
+henceforth could have neither power nor pretext to molest Mr. Darrell,
+and that it could signify but little what name might in future be borne
+by one whose connection with the Darrell family was wholly dissolved.
+Darrell impatiently replied, "That nothing having been said as to the
+withdrawal of the said allowance in case Jasper became a widower, he
+remained equally entitled, in point of honour, to receive that allowance,
+or an adequate equivalent."
+
+This answer being intimated to Jasper, that gentleman observed "that it
+was no more than he had expected from Mr. Darrell's sense of honour," and
+apparently quite satisfied, carried himself and his L10,000 back to
+Paris.  Not long after, however, he wrote to Mr. Gotobed that "Mr.
+Darrell having alluded to an equivalent for the L200 a year allowed to
+him, evidently implying that it was as disagreeable to Mr. Darrell to see
+that sum entered quarterly in his banker's books, as it had been to see
+there the quarterly interest of the L10,000, so Jasper might be excused
+in owning that he should prefer an equivalent.  The commercial firm to
+which he was about to attach himself required a somewhat larger capital
+on his part than he had anticipated, &c., &c.  Without presuming to
+dictate any definite sum, he would observe that L1,500 or even L1000
+would be of more avail to his views and objects in life than an annuity
+of L200 a year, which, being held only at will, was not susceptible of a
+temporary loan."  Darrell, wrapped in thoughts wholly remote from
+recollections of Jasper, chafed at being thus recalled to the sense of
+that person's existence wrote back to the solicitor who transmitted to
+him this message, "that an annuity held on his word was not to be
+calculated by Mr. Hammond's notions of its value.  That the L200 a year
+should therefore be placed on the same footing as the L500 a year that
+had been allowed on a capital of L10,000; that accordingly it might be
+held to represent a principal of L4,000, for which he enclosed a cheque,
+begging Mr. Gotobed not only to make Mr. Hammond fully understand that
+there ended all possible accounts or communication between them, but
+never again to trouble him with any matters whatsoever in reference to
+affairs that were thus finally concluded."  Jasper, receiving the L4,000,
+left Darrell and Gotobed in peace till the following year.  He then
+addressed to Gotobed an exceedingly plausible, business-like letter.
+"The firm he had entered, in the silk trade, was in the most flourishing
+state--an opportunity occurred to purchase a magnificent mulberry
+plantation in Provence, with all requisite magnanneries, &c., which would
+yield an immense increase of profit.  That if, to insure him a share in
+this lucrative purchase, Mr. Darrell could accommodate him for a year
+with a loan of L2,000 or L3,000, he sanguinely calculated on attaining so
+high a position in the commercial world as, though it could not render
+the recollection of his alliance more obtrusive to Mr. Darrell, would
+render it less humiliating."
+
+Mr. Gotobed, in obedience to the peremptory instructions he had received
+from his client, did not refer this letter to Darrell, but having
+occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business, he resolved
+(without calling on Mr. Hammond) to institute there some private inquiry-
+into that rising trader's prospects and status.  He found, on arrival at
+Paris, these inquiries difficult.  No one in either the /beau monde/ or
+in the /haut commerce/ seemed to know anything about this Mr. Jasper
+Hammond.  A few fashionable English /roues/ remembered to have seen, once
+or twice during Matilda's life, and shortly after her decease, a very
+fine-looking man shooting meteoric across some equivocal /salons/, or
+lounging in the Champs Elysees, or dining at the Cafe de Paris; but of
+late that meteor had vanished.  Mr. Gotobed, then anxiously employing a
+commissioner to gain some information of Mr. Hammond's firm at the
+private residence from which Jasper addressed his letter, ascertained
+that in that private residence Jasper did not reside.  He paid the porter
+to receive occasional letters, for which he called or sent; and the
+porter, who was evidently a faithful and discreet functionary, declared
+his belief that Monsieur Hammond lodged in the house in which he
+transacted business, though where was the house or what was the business,
+the porter observed, with well-bred implied rebuke, "Monsieur Hammond was
+too reserved to communicate, he himself too incurious to inquire."  At
+length, Mr. Gotobed's business, which was, in fact, a commission from a
+distressed father to extricate an imprudent son, a mere boy, from some
+unhappy associations, having brought him into the necessity of seeing
+persons who belonged neither to the /beau monde/ nor to the /haut
+commerce/, he gleaned from them the information he desired.  Mr. Hammond
+lived in the very heart of a certain circle in Paris, which but few
+Englishmen ever penetrate.  In that circle Mr. Hammond had, on receiving
+his late wife's dowry, become the partner in a private gambling hell; in
+that hell had been engulfed all the monies he had received--a hell that
+ought to have prospered with him, if he could have economised his
+villanous gains.  His senior partner in that firm retired into the
+country with a fine fortune--no doubt the very owner of those mulberry
+plantations which were now on sale!  But Jasper scattered napoleons
+faster than any croupier could rake them away.  And Jasper's natural
+talent for converting solid gold into thin air had been assisted by a
+lady who, in the course of her amiable life, had assisted many richer men
+than Jasper to lodgings in /St. Pelagie/, or cells in the /Maison des
+Fous/.  With that lady he had become acquainted during the lifetime of
+his wife, and it was supposed that Matilda's discovery of this liaison
+had contributed perhaps to the illness which closed in her decease; the
+name of that lady was Gabrielle Desinarets.  She might still be seen
+daily at the Bois de Boulogne, nightly at opera-house or theatre; she had
+apartments in the Chaussee d'Antin far from inaccessible to Mr. Gotobed,
+if he coveted the honour of her acquaintance.  But Jasper was less before
+an admiring world.  He was supposed now to be connected with another
+gambling-house of lower grade than the last, in which he had contrived to
+break his own bank and plunder his own till.  It was supposed also that
+he remained good friends with Mademoiselle Desmarets; but if he visited
+her at her house, he was never to be seen there.  In fact, his temper was
+so uncertain, his courage so dauntless, his strength so prodigious, that
+gentlemen who did not wish to be thrown out of the window, or hurled down
+a staircase, shunned any salon or boudoir in which they had a chance
+to encounter him.  Mademoiselle Desmarets had thus been condemned to the
+painful choice between his society and that of nobody else, or that of
+anybody else with the rigid privation of his.  Not being a turtle-dove,
+she had chosen the latter alternative.  It was believed, nevertheless,
+that if Gabrielle Desmarets had known the weakness of a kind sentiment,
+it was for this turbulent lady-killer; and that, with a liberality she
+had never exhibited in any other instance, when she could no longer help
+him to squander, she would still, at a pinch, help him to live; though,
+of course, in such a reverse of the normal laws of her being,
+Mademoiselle Desmarets set those bounds on her own generosity which she
+would not have imposed upon his, and had said with a sigh: "I could
+forgive him if he beat me and beggared my friends! but to beat my friends
+and to beggar me,--that is not the kind of love which makes the world go
+round!"
+
+Scandalised to the last nerve of his respectable system by the
+information thus gleaned, Mr. Gotobed returned to London.  More letters
+from Jasper--becoming urgent, and at last even insolent--Mr. Gotobed
+worried into a reply, wrote back shortly "that he could not even
+communicate such applications to Mr. Darrell, and that he must
+peremptorily decline all further intercourse, epistolary or personal,
+with Mr. Hammond."
+
+Darrell, on returning from one of the occasional rambles on the
+Continent, "remote, unfriended, melancholy," by which he broke the
+monotony of his Fawley life, found a letter from Jasper, not fawning, but
+abrupt, addressed to himself, complaining of Mr. Gotobed's improper tone,
+requesting pecuniary assistance, and intimating that he could in return
+communicate to Mr. Darrell an intelligence that would give him more joy
+than all his wealth could purchase.  Darrell enclosed that note to Mr.
+Gotobed; Mr. Gotobed came down to Fawley to make those revelations of
+Jasper's mode of life which were too delicate--or too much the reverse of
+delicate--to commit to paper.  Great as Darrell's disgust at the memory
+of Jasper had hitherto been, it may well be 'conceived how much more
+bitter became that memory now.  No answer was, of course, vouchsafed to
+Jasper, who, after another extremely forcible appeal for money, and
+equally enigmatical boast of the pleasurable information it was in his
+power to bestow, relapsed into sullen silence.
+
+One day, somewhat more than five years after Matilda's death, Darrell,
+coming in from his musing walks, found a stranger waiting for him.  This
+stranger was William Losely, returned from penal exile; and while
+Darrell, on hearing this announcement, stood mute with haughty wonder
+that such a visitor could cross the threshold of his father's house, the
+convict began what seemed to Darrell a story equally audacious and
+incomprehensible--the infant Matilda had borne to Jasper, and the
+certificates of whose death had been so ceremoniously produced and so
+prudently attested, lived still!  Sent out to nurse as soon as born, the
+nurse had in her charge another babe, and this last was the child who had
+died and been buried as Matilda Hammond's.  The elder Losely went on to
+stammer out a hope that his son was not at the time aware of the
+fraudulent exchange, but had been deceived by the nurse--that it had not
+been a premeditated imposture of his own to obtain his wife's fortune.
+
+When Darrell came to this part of his story, Alban Morley's face grew
+more seriously interested.  "Stop!"  he said; "William Losely assured
+you of his own conviction that this strange tale was true.  What proofs
+did he volunteer?"
+
+"Proofs!  Death, man, do you think that at such moments I was but a
+bloodless lawyer, to question and cross examine?  I could but bid the
+impostor leave the house which his feet polluted."
+
+Alban heaved a sigh, and murmured, too low for Darrell to overhear, "Poor
+Willy!" then aloud: "But, my dear friend, bear with me one moment.
+Suppose that, by the arts of this diabolical Jasper, the exchange really
+had been effected, and a child to your ancient line lived still, would it
+not be a solace, a comfort--"
+
+"Comfort!" cried Darrell, "comfort in the perpetuation of infamy!  The
+line I promised my father to restore to its rank in the land, to be
+renewed in the grandchild of a felon!--in the child of the yet viler
+sharper of a hell!  You, gentleman and soldier, call that thought--
+'comfort!'  O Alban!--out on you!  Fie!  fie!  No!--leave such a thought
+to the lips of a William Losely!  He indeed, clasping his hands, faltered
+forth some such word; he seemed to count on my forlorn privation of kith
+and kindred--no heir to my wealth--no representative of my race--would I
+deprive myself of--ay--your very words--of a solace--a comfort!  He asked
+me, at least, to inquire."
+
+"And you answered?"
+
+"Answered so as to quell and crush in the bud all hopes in the success of
+so flagrant a falsehold--answered: 'Why inquire?  Know that, even if your
+tale were true, I have no heir, no representative, no descendant in the
+child of Jasper--the grandchild of William-Losely.  I can at least leave
+my wealth to the son of Charles Haughton.  True, Charles Haughton was a
+spendthrift, a gamester; but he was neither a professional cheat nor a
+convicted felon.'"
+
+"You said that--Oh, Darrell!"
+
+The Colonel checked himself.  But for Charles Haughton, the spendthrift
+and gamester, would William Losely have been the convicted felon?  He
+checked that thought, and hurried on: "And how did William Losely reply?"
+
+"He made no reply--he skulked away without a word."  Darrell then
+proceeded to relate the interview which Jasper had forced on him at
+Fawley during Lionel's visit there--on Jasper's part an attempt to tell
+the same tale as William had told--on Darrell's part, the same scornful
+refusal to hear it out.  "And," added Darrell, "the man, finding it thus
+impossible to dupe my reason, had the inconceivable meanness to apply to
+me for alms.  I could not better show the disdain in which I held himself
+and his story than in recognising his plea as a mendicant.  I threw my
+purse at his feet, and so left him.
+
+"But," continued Darrell, his brow growing darker and darker--" but wild
+and monstrous as the story was, still the idea that it MIGHT be true--a
+supposition which derived its sole strength from the character of Jasper
+Losely--from the interest he had in the supposed death of a child that
+alone stood between himself and the money he longed to grasp--an interest
+which ceased when the money itself was gone, or rather changed into the
+counter-interest of proving a life that, he thought, would re-establish a
+hold on me--still, I say, an idea that the story might be true would
+force itself on my fears, and if so, though my resolution never to
+acknowledge the child of Jasper Losely as a representative, or even as a
+daughter, of my house, would of course be immovable--yet it would become
+my duty to see that her infancy was sheltered, her childhood reared, her
+youth guarded, her existence amply provided for."
+
+"Right--your plain duty," said Alban bluntly.  "Intricate sometimes are
+the obligations imposed on us as gentlemen; 'noblesse oblige' is a motto
+which involves puzzles for a casuist; but our duties as men are plain--
+the idea very properly haunted you--and--"
+
+"And I hastened to exorcise the spectre.  I left England--I went to the
+French town in which poor Matilda died--I could not, of course, make
+formal or avowed inquiries of a nature to raise into importance the very
+conspiracy (if conspiracy there were) which threatened me.  But I saw the
+physician who had attended both my daughter and her child--I sought those
+who had seen them both when living--seen them both when dead.  The doubt
+on my mind was dispelled--not a pretext left for my own self-torment.
+The only person needful in evidence whom I failed to see was the nurse to
+whom the infant had been sent.  She lived in a village some miles from
+the town--I called at her house--she was out.  I left word I should call
+the next day--I did so--she had absconded.  I might, doubtless, have
+traced her, but to what end if she were merely Jasper's minion and tool?
+Did not her very flight prove her guilt and her terror?  Indirectly I
+inquired into her antecedents and character.  The inquiry opened a field
+of conjecture, from which I hastened to turn my eyes.  This woman had a
+sister who had been in the service of Gabrielle Desmarets, and Gabrielle
+Desmarets had been in the neighbourhood during my poor daughter's life-
+time, and just after my daughter's death.  And the nurse had had two
+infants under her charge; the nurse had removed with one of them to
+Paris--and Gabrielle Desmarets lived in Paris--and, O Alban, if there be
+really in flesh and life a child by Jasper Losely, to be forced upon my
+purse or my pity--is it his child, not by the ill-fated Matilda, but by
+the vile woman for whom Matilda, even in the first year of wedlock, was
+deserted?  Conceive how credulity itself would shrink appalled from the
+horrible snare!--I to acknowledge, adopt, proclaim as the last of the
+Darrells, the adulterous offspring of a Jasper Losely and a Gabrielle
+Desmarets!--or, when I am in my grave, some claim advanced upon the sum
+settled by my marriage articles on Matilda's issue, and which, if a child
+survived, could not have been legally transferred to its father--a claim
+with witnesses suborned--a claim that might be fraudulently established
+--a claim that would leave the representative--not indeed of my lands and
+wealth, but, more precious far, of my lineage and blood--in--in the
+person of--of--"
+
+Darrell paused, almost stifling, and became so pale that Alban started
+from his seat in alarm.
+
+"It is nothing," resumed Darrell, faintly, "and, ill or well, I must
+finish this subject now, so that we need not reopen it."
+
+"I remained abroad, as you know, for some years.  During that time two or
+three letters from Jasper Losely were forwarded to me; the latest in date
+more insolent than all preceding ones.  It contained demands as if they
+were rights, and insinuated threats of public exposure, reflecting on
+myself and my pride: 'He was my son-in-law after all, and if he came to
+disgrace, the world should know the tie.'  Enough.  This is all I knew
+until the man who now, it seems, thrusts himself forward as Jasper
+Losely's friend or agent, spoke to me the other night at Mrs. Haughton's.
+That man you have seen, and you say that he--"
+
+"Represents Jasper's poverty as extreme; his temper unscrupulous and
+desperate; that he is capable of any amount of scandal or violence.  It
+seems that though at Paris he has (Poole believes) still preserved the
+name of Hammond, yet that in England he has resumed that of Losely; and
+seems by Poole's date of the time at which he, Poole, made Jasper's
+acquaintance, to have done so after his baffled attempt on you at Fawley-
+whether in so doing he intimated the commencement of hostilities, or
+whether, as is more likely, the sharper finds it convenient to have one
+name in one country, and one in another, 'tis useless to inquire; enough
+that the identity between the Hammond who married poor Matilda, and the
+Jasper Losely whose father was transported, that unscrupulous rogue has
+no longer any care to conceal.  It is true that the revelation of this
+identity would now be of slight moment to a man of the world-as thick-
+skinned as myself, for instance; but to you it would be disagreeable-
+there is no denying that--and therefore, in short, when Mr. Poole advises
+a compromise, by which Jasper could be secured from want and yourself
+from annoyance, I am of the same opinion as Mr. Poole is."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Certainly.  My dear Darrell, if in your secret heart there was something
+so galling in the thought that the man who had married your daughter,
+though without your consent, was not merely the commonplace adventurer
+whom the world supposed, but the son of that poor dear--I mean that
+rascal who was transported, Jasper, too, himself a cheat and a sharper-if
+this galled you so, that you have concealed the true facts from myself,
+your oldest friend, till this day--if it has cost you even now so sharp a
+pang to divulge the true name of that Mr. Hammond, whom our society never
+saw, whom even gossip has forgotten in connection with yourself--how
+intolerable would be your suffering to have this man watching for you in
+the streets, some wretched girl in his hand, and crying out, 'A penny for
+your son-in-law and your grandchild!'  Pardon me--I must be blunt.  You
+can give him to the police--send him to the treadmill.  Does that mend
+the matter?  Or, worse still, suppose the man commits some crime that
+fills all the newspapers with his life and adventures, including of
+course his runaway marriage with the famous Guy Darrell's heiress--no one
+would blame you, no one respect you less; but do not tell me that you
+would not be glad to save your daughter's name from being coupled with
+such a miscreant's at the price of half your fortune."
+
+"Alban'" said Darrell, gloomily, "you can say nothing on this score that
+has not been considered by myself.  But the man has so placed the matter,
+that honour itself forbids me to bargain with him for the price of my
+name.  So long as he threatens, I cannot buy off a threat; so long as he
+persists in a story by which he would establish a claim on me on behalf
+of a child whom I have every motive as well as every reason to disown as
+inheriting my blood--whatever I bestowed on himself would seem like hush-
+money to suppress that claim."
+
+"Of course--I understand, and entirely agree with you.  But if the man
+retract all threats, confess his imposture in respect to this pretended
+offspring, and consent to retire for life to a distant colony, upon an
+annuity that may suffice for his wants, but leave no surplus beyond, to
+render more glaring his vices, or more effective his powers of evil; if
+this could be arranged between Mr. Poole and myself, I think that your
+peace might be permanently secured without the slightest sacrifice of
+honour.  Will you leave the matter in my hands on this assurance--that I
+will not give this person a farthing except on the conditions I have
+premised?"
+
+"On these conditions, yes, and most gratefully," said Darrell.  "Do what
+you will; but one favour more: never again speak to me (unless absolutely
+compelled) in reference to this dark portion of my inner life."
+
+Alban pressed his friend's hand, and both were silent for some moments.
+Then said the Colonel, with an attempt at cheerfulness: "Darrell, more
+than ever now do I see that the new house at Fawley, so long suspended,
+must be finished.  Marry again you must!--you can never banish old
+remembrances unless you can supplant them by fresh hopes."
+
+"I feel it--I know it," cried Darrell, passionately.  And oh! if one
+remembrance could be wrenched away!  But it shall--it shall!"
+
+"Ah!" thought Alban--" the remembrance of his former conjugal life!--a
+remembrance which might well make the youngest and the boldest Benedict
+shrink from the hazard of a similar experiment."
+
+In proportion to the delicacy, the earnestness, the depth of a man's
+nature, will there be a something in his character which no male friend
+can conceive, and a something in the secrets of his life which no male
+friend can ever conjecture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     OUR OLD FRIEND THE POCKET-CANNIBAL EVINCES UNEXPECTED PATRIOTISM AND
+     PHILOSOPHICAL MODERATION, CONTENTED WITH A STEAK OFF HIS OWN
+     SUCCULENT FRIEND IN THE AIRS OF HIS OWN NATIVE SKY.
+
+Colonel Morley had a second interview with Mr. Poole.  It needed not
+Alban's knowledge of the world to discover that Poole was no partial
+friend to Jasper Losely; that, for some reason or other, Poole was no
+less anxious than the Colonel to get that formidable client, whose cause
+he so warmly advocated, pensioned and packed off into the region most
+remote from Great Britain in which a spirit hitherto so restless might
+consent to settle.  And although Mr. Poole had evidently taken offence at
+Mr. Darrell's discourteous rebuff of his amiable intentions, yet no
+grudge against Darrell furnished a motive for conduct equal to his
+Christian desire that Darrell's peace should be purchased by Losely's
+perpetual exile.  Accordingly, Colonel Morley took leave, with a well-
+placed confidence in Poole's determination to do all in his power to
+induce Jasper to listen to reason.  The Colonel had hoped to learn
+something from Poole of the elder Losely's present residence and
+resources.  Poole, as we know, could give him there no information.  The
+Colonel also failed to ascertain any particulars relative to that female
+pretender on whose behalf Jasper founded his principal claim to Darrell's
+aid.  And so great was Poole's embarrassment in reply to all questions on
+that score--Where was the young person?  With whom had she lived?  What
+was she like?  Could the Colonel see her, and hear her own tale?--that
+Alban entertained a strong suspicion that no such girl was in existence;
+that she was a pure fiction and myth; or that, if Jasper were compelled
+to produce some petticoated fair, she would be an artful baggage hired
+for the occasion.
+
+Poole waited Jasper's next visit with impatience and sanguine delight.
+He had not a doubt that the ruffian would cheerfully consent to allow
+that, on further inquiry, he found he had been deceived in his belief of
+Sophy's parentage, and that there was nothing in England so peculiarly
+sacred to his heart, but what he might consent to breathe the freer air
+of Columbian skies, or even to share the shepherd's harmless life amidst
+the pastures of auriferous Australia!  But, to Poole's ineffable
+consternation, Jasper declared sullenly that he would not consent to
+expatriate himself merely for the sake of living.
+
+"I am not so young as I was," said the bravo; "I don't speak of years,
+but feeling.  I have not the same energy; once I had high spirits--they
+are broken; once I had hope--I have none: I am not up to exertion; I have
+got into lazy habits.  To go into new scenes, form new plans, live in a
+horrid raw new world, everybody round me bustling and pushing--No!  that
+may suit your thin dapper light Hop-o'-my-thumbs!  Look at me!  See how I
+have increased in weight the last five years--all solid bone and muscle.
+I defy any four draymen to move me an inch if I am not in the mind to it;
+and to be blown off to the antipodes as if I were the down of a pestilent
+thistle, I am not in the mind for that, Dolly Poole!"
+
+"Hum!" said Poole, trying to smile.  "This is funny talk.  You always
+were a funny fellow.  But I am quite sure, from Colonel Morley's decided
+manner, that you can get nothing from Darrell if you choose to remain in
+England."
+
+"Well, when I have nothing else left, I may go to Darrell myself, and
+have that matter out with him.  At present I am not up to it.  Dolly,
+don't bore!"  And the bravo, opening a jaw strong enough for any
+carnivorous animal, yawned--yawned much as a bored tiger does in the face
+of a philosophical student of savage manners in the Zoological Gardens.
+
+"Bore!" said Poole, astounded and recoiling from that expanded jaw.
+"But I should have thought no subject could bore you less than the
+consideration of how you are to live?"
+
+"Why, Dolly, I have learned to be easily contented, and you see at
+present I live upon you."
+
+"Yes," groaned Poole, "but that can't go on for ever; and, besides, you
+promised that you would leave me in peace as soon as I had got Darrell to
+provide for you."
+
+"So I will.  Zounds, sir, do you doubt my word?  So I will.  But I don't
+call exile 'a provision'--Basta!  I understand from you that Colonel
+Morley offers to restore the niggardly L200 a year Darrell formerly
+allowed to me, to be paid monthly or weekly, through some agent in Van
+Diemen's Land, or some such uncomfortable half-way house to Eternity,
+that was not even in the Atlas when I studied geography at school.  But
+L200 a year is exactly my income in England, paid weekly too, by your
+agreeable self, with whom it is a pleasure to talk over old times.
+Therefore that proposal is out of the question.  Tell Colonel Morley,
+with my compliments, that if he will double the sum, and leave me to
+spend it where I please, I scorn haggling, and say 'done.'  And as to the
+girl, since I cannot find her (which, on penalty of being threshed to a
+mummy, you will take care not to let out), I would agree to leave Mr.
+Darrell free to disown her.  But are you such a dolt as not to see that I
+put the ace of trumps on my adversary's pitiful deuce, if I depose that
+my own child is not my own child, when all I get for it is what I equally
+get out of you, with my ace of trumps still in my hands?  Basta!--I say
+again Basta!  It is evidently an object to Darrell to get rid of all fear
+that Sophy should ever pounce upon him tooth and claw: if he be so
+convinced that she is not his daughter's child, why make a point of my
+saying that I told him a fib, when I said she was?  Evidently, too, he is
+afraid of my power to harass and annoy him; or why make it a point that I
+shall only nibble his cheese in a trap at the world's end, stared at by
+bushmen, and wombats, and rattlesnakes, and alligators, and other
+American citizens or British settlers!  L200 a year, and my wife's father
+a millionaire!  The offer is an insult.  Ponder this: put on the screw;
+make them come to terms which I can do them the honour to accept;
+meanwhile, I will trouble you for my four sovereigns."
+
+Poole had the chagrin to report to the Colonel, Jasper's refusal of the
+terms proposed, and to state the counter-proposition he was commissioned
+to make.  Alban was at first surprised, not conjecturing the means of
+supply, in his native land, which Jasper had secured in the coffers of
+Poole himself.  On sounding the unhappy negotiator as to Jasper's
+reasons, he surmised, however, one part of the truth--viz., that Jasper
+built hopes of better terms precisely on the fact that terms had been
+offered to him at all; and this induced Alban almost to regret that he
+had made any such overtures, and to believe that Darrell's repugnance to
+open the door of conciliation a single inch to so sturdy a mendicant was
+more worldly-wise than Alban had originally supposed.  Yet partly, even
+for Darrell's own security and peace, from that persuasion of his own
+powers of management which a consummate man of the world is apt to
+entertain, and partly from a strong curiosity to see the audacious soil
+of that poor dear rascal Willy, and examine himself into the facts he
+asserted, and the objects he aimed at, Alban bade Poole inform Jasper
+that Colonel Morley would be quite willing to convince him, in a personal
+interview, of the impossibility of acceding to the propositions Jasper
+had made; and that he should be still more willing to see the young
+person whom Jasper asserted to be the child of his marriage.
+
+Jasper, after a moment's moody deliberation, declined to meet Colonel
+Morley, actuated to some extent in that refusal by the sensitive vanity
+which once had given him delight, and now only gave him pain.  Meet thus
+--altered, fallen, imbruted--the fine gentleman whose calm eye had
+quelled him in the widow's drawing-room in his day of comparative
+splendour--that in itself was distasteful to the degenerated bravo.  But
+he felt as if he should be at more disadvantage in point of argument with
+a cool and wary representative of Darrell's interests, than he should
+be even with Darrell himself.  And unable to produce the child whom he
+arrogated the right to obtrude, he should be but exposed to a fire of
+cross-questions without a shot in his own locker.  Accordingly he
+declined, point-blank, to see Colonel Morley; and declared that the terms
+he himself had proposed were the lowest he would accept.  "Tell Colonel
+Morley, however, that if negotiations fail, I shall not fail, sooner or
+later, to argue my view of the points in dispute with my kind father-in-
+law, and in person."
+
+"Yes, hang it!"  cried Poole, exasperated; "go and see Darrell yourself.
+He is easily found."
+
+"Ay," answered Jasper, with the hardest look of his downcast sidelong
+eye--"Ay; some day or other it may come to that.  I would rather not,
+if possible.  I might not keep my temper.  It is not merely a matter of
+money between us, if we two meet.  There are affronts to efface.
+Banished his house like a mangy dog--treated by a jackanapes lawyer like
+the dirt in the kennel!  The Loselys, I suspect, would have looked down
+on the Darrells fifty years ago; and what if my father was born out of
+wedlock, is the blood not the same?  Does the breed dwindle down for want
+of a gold ring and priest?  Look at me.  No; not what I now am; not even
+as you saw me five years ago; but as I leapt into youth!  Was I born to
+cast sums and nib pens as a City clerk?  Aha, my poor father, you were
+wrong there!  Blood will out!  Mad devil, indeed, is a racer in a
+citizen's gig!  Spavined, and wind-galled, and foundered--let the brute
+go at last to the knockers; but by his eye, and his pluck, and his bone,
+the brute shows the stock that he came from!"
+
+Dolly opened his eyes and-blinked.  Never in his gaudy days had Jasper
+half so openly revealed what, perhaps, had been always a sore in his
+pride; and his outburst now may possibly aid the reader to a subtler
+comprehension of the arrogance, and levity, and egotism, which
+accompanied his insensibility to honour, and had converted his very claim
+to the blood of a gentleman into an excuse for a cynic's disdain of the
+very virtues for which a gentleman is most desirous of obtaining credit.
+But by a very ordinary process in the human mind, as Jasper had fallen
+lower and lower into the lees and dregs of fortune, his pride had more
+prominently emerged from the group of the other and gaudier vices, by
+which, in health and high spirits, it had been pushed aside and outshone.
+
+"Humph!" said Poole, after a pause.  "If Darrell was as uncivil to you as
+he was to me, I don't wonder that you owe him a grudge.  But even if you
+do lose temper in seeing him, it might rather do good than not.  You can
+make yourself cursedly unpleasant if you choose it; and perhaps you will
+have a better chance of getting your own terms if they see you can bite
+as well as bark!  Set at Darrell, and worry him; it is not fair to worry
+nobody but me!"
+
+"Dolly, don't bluster!  If I could stand at his door, or stop him in the
+streets, with the girl in my hand, your advice would be judicious.  The
+world would not care for a row between a rich man and a penniless son-in-
+law.  But an interesting young lady, who calls him grandfather, and falls
+at his knees,--he could not send her to hard labour; and if he does not
+believe in her birth, let the thing but just get into the newspapers, and
+there are plenty who will: and I should be in a very different position
+for treating.  'Tis just because, if I meet Darrell again, I don't wish
+that again it should be all bark and no bite, that I postpone the
+interview.  All your own laziness--exert yourself and find the girl."
+
+"But I can't find the girl, and you know it.  And I tell you what, Mr.
+Losely, Colonel Morley, who is a very shrewd man, does not believe in the
+girl's existence."
+
+"Does not he!  I begin to doubt it myself.  But, at all events, you can't
+doubt of mine, and I am grateful for yours; and since you have given me
+the trouble of coming here to no purpose, I may as well take the next
+week's pay in advance--four sovereigns if you please, Dolly Poole."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     ANOTHER HALT--CHANGE OF HORSES--AND A TURN ON THE ROAD.
+
+Colonel Morley, on learning that Jasper declined a personal conference
+with himself, and that the proposal of an interview with Jasper's alleged
+daughter was equally scouted or put aside, became still more confirmed in
+his belief that Jasper had not yet been blest with a daughter
+sufficiently artful to produce.  And pleased to think that the sharper
+was thus unprovided with a means of annoyance, which, skilfully managed,
+might have been seriously harassing; and convinced that when Jasper found
+no farther notice taken of him, he himself 'would be compelled to
+petition for the terms he now rejected, the Colonel dryly informed Poole
+"that his interference was at an end; that if Mr. Losely, either through
+himself, or through Mr. Poole, or any one else, presumed to address Mr.
+Darrell direct, the offer previously made would be peremptorily and
+irrevocably withdrawn.  I myself," added the Colonel, "shall be going
+abroad very shortly for the rest of the summer; and should Mr. Losely, in
+the mean while, think better of a proposal which secures him from want, I
+refer him to Mr. Darrell's solicitor.  To that proposal, according to
+your account of his destitution, he must come sooner or later; and I am
+glad to see that he has in yourself so judicious an adviser"--
+a compliment which by no means consoled the miserable Poole.
+
+In the briefest words, Alban informed Darrell of his persuasion that
+Jasper was not only without evidence to support a daughter's claim, but
+that the daughter herself was still in that part of Virgil's Hades
+appropriated to souls that have not yet appeared upon the upper earth;
+and that Jasper himself, although holding back, as might be naturally
+expected, in the hope of conditions more to his taste, had only to be
+left quietly to his own meditations in order to recognise the advantages
+of emigration.  Another L100 a-year or so, it is true, he might bargain
+for, and such a demand might be worth conceding.  But, on the whole,
+Alban congratulated Darrell upon the probability of hearing very little
+more of the son-in-law, and no more at all of the son-in-law's daughter.
+
+Darrell made no comment nor reply.  A grateful look, a warm pressure of
+the hand, and, when the subject was changed, a clearer brow and livelier
+smile, thanked the English Alban better than all words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+     COLONEL MORLEY SHOWS THAT IT IS NOT WITHOUT REASON THAT HE ENJOYS
+     HIS REPUTATION OF KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYBODY.
+
+"Well met," said Darrell, the day after Alban had conveyed to him the
+comforting assurances which had taken one thorn from his side-dispersed
+one cloud in his evening sky.  "Well met," said Darrell, encountering the
+Colonel a few paces from his own door.  "Pray walk with me as far as the
+New Road.  I have promised Lionel to visit the studio of an artist friend
+of his, in whom he chooses to find a Raffaele, and in whom I suppose, at
+the price of truth, I shall be urbanely compelled to compliment a
+dauber."
+
+"Do you speak of Frank Vance?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"You could not visit a worthier man, nor compliment a more promising
+artist.  Vance is one of the few who unite gusto and patience, fancy and
+brushwork.  His female heads, in especial, are exquisite, though they are
+all, I confess, too much like one another.  The man himself is a
+thoroughly fine fellow.  He has been much made of in good society, and
+remains unspoiled.  You will find his manner rather off-hand, the reverse
+of shy; partly, perhaps, because he has in himself the racy freshness and
+boldness which he gives to his colours; partly, perhaps, also, because he
+has in his art the self-esteem that patricians take from their pedigree,
+and shakes a duke by the hand to prevent the duke holding out to him a
+finger."
+
+"Good," said Darrell, with his rare, manly laugh.  "Being shy myself, I
+like men who meet one half-way.  I see that we shall be at our ease with
+each other."
+
+"And perhaps still more 'when I tell you that he is connected with an old
+Eton friend of ours, and deriving no great benefit from that connection;
+you remember poor Sidney Branthwaite?"
+
+"To be sure.  He and I were great friends at Eton somewhat in the same
+position of pride and poverty.  Of all the boys in the school we two had
+the least pocket-money.  Poor Branthwaite!  I lost sight of him
+afterwards.  He went into the Church, got only a curacy, and died young."
+
+"And left a son, poorer than himself, who married Frank Vance's sister."
+
+"You don't say so.  The Branthwaites were of good old family; what is Mr.
+Vance's?"
+
+"Respectable enough.  Vance's father was one of those clever men who have
+too many strings to their bow.  He, too, was a painter; but he was also a
+man of letters, in a sort of a way--had a share in a journal, in which he
+wrote Criticisms on the Fine Arts.  A musical composer, too.
+
+"Rather a fine gentleman, I suspect, with a wife who was rather a fine
+lady.  Their house was much frequented by artists and literary men: old
+Vance, in short, was hospitable--his wife extravagant.  Believing that
+posterity would do that justice to his pictures which his contemporaries
+refused, Vance left to his family no other provision.  After selling his
+pictures and paying his debts, there was just enough left to bury him.
+Fortunately, Sir --------, the great painter of that day, had already
+conceived a liking to Frank Vance--then a mere boy--who had shown genius
+from an infant, as all true artists do.  Sir -------- took him into his
+studio and gave him lessons.  It would have been unlike Sir --------, who
+was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else.  But the boy
+contrived to support his mother and sister.  That fellow, who is now as
+arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor
+may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy
+shops, and imitate Watteau on fans.  I have two hand-screens that he
+painted for a shop in Rathbone Place.  I suppose he may have got ten
+shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 apiece
+for them."
+
+"That is the true soul in which genius lodges, and out of which fire
+springs," cried Darrell cordially.  "Give me the fire that lurks in the
+flint, and answers by light the stroke of the hard steel.  I'm glad
+Lionel has won a friend in such a man.  Sidney Branthwaite's son married
+Vance's sister--after Vance had won reputation?"
+
+"No; while Vance was still a boy.  Young Arthur Branthwaite was an
+orphan.  If he had any living relations, they were too poor to assist
+him.  He wrote poetry much praised by the critics (they deserve to be
+hanged, those critics!)--scribbled, I suppose, in old Vance's journal;
+saw Mary Vance a little before her father died; fell in love with her;
+and on the strength of a volume of verse, in which the critics all
+solemnly deposed to his surpassing riches--of imagination, rushed to the
+altar, and sacrificed a wife to the Muses!  Those villanous critics will
+have a dark account to render in the next world!  Poor Arthur
+Branthwaite!  For the sake of our old friend, his father, I bought a copy
+of his little volume.  Little as the volume was, I could not read it
+through."
+
+What!--below contempt?"
+
+"On the contrary, above comprehension!  All poetry praised by critics
+now-a-days is as hard to understand as a hieroglyphic.  I own a weakness
+for Pope and common sense.  I could keep up with our age as far as Byron;
+after him I was thrown out.  However, Arthur was declared by the critics
+to be a great improvement on Byron--more 'poetical in form'--more
+'aesthetically artistic'--more 'objective' or 'subjective' (I am sure I
+forget which; but it was one or the other, nonsensical, and not English)
+in his views of man and nature.  Very possibly.  All I know is--I bought
+the poems, but could not read them; the critics read them, but did not
+buy.  All that Frank Vance could make by painting hand-screens and fans
+and album-scraps, he sent, I believe, to the poor poet; but I fear it did
+not suffice.  Arthur, I suspect, must have been publishing another volume
+on his own account.  I saw a Monody on something or other, by Arthur
+Branthwaite, advertised, and no doubt Frank's fans and hand-screens must
+have melted into the printer's bill.  But the Monody never appeared: the
+poet died, his young wife too.  Frank Vance remains a bachelor, and
+sneers at gentility--abhors poets--is insulted if you promise posthumous
+fame--gets the best price he can for his pictures--and is proud to be
+thought a miser.  Here we are at his door."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+     ROMANTIC LOVE PATHOLOGICALLY REGARDED BY FRANK VANCE AND ALBAN
+     MORLEY.
+
+Vance was before his easel, Lionel looking over his shoulder.  Never was
+Darrell more genial than he was that day to Frank Vance.  The two men
+took to each other at once, and talked as familiarly as if the retired
+lawyer and the rising painter were old fellow-travellers along the same
+road of life.  Darrell was really an exquisite judge of art, and his
+praise was the more gratifying because discriminating.  Of course he gave
+the due meed of panegyric to the female heads, by which the artist had
+become so renowned.  Lionel took his kinsman aside, and, with a mournful
+expression of face, showed him the portrait by which, all those varying
+ideals had been suggested--the portrait of Sophy as Titania.
+
+"And that is Lionel," said the artist, pointing to the rough outline of
+Bottom.
+
+"Pish!" said Lionel, angrily.  Then turning to Darrell: "This is the
+Sophy we have failed to find, sir--is it not a lovely face?"
+
+"It is indeed," said Darrell.  "But that nameless refinement in
+expression--that arch yet tender elegance in the simple, watchful
+attitude--these, Mr. Vance, must he your additions to the original."
+
+"No, I assure you, sir," said Lionel:  "besides that elegance, that
+refinement, there was a delicacy in the look and air of that child to
+which Vance failed to do justice.  Own it, Frank."
+
+"Reassure yourself, Mr. Darrell," said Vance, "of any fears which
+Lionel's enthusiasm might excite.  He tells me that Titania is in
+America; yet, after all, I would rather he saw her again--no cure for
+love at first sight like a second sight of the beloved object after a
+long absence."
+
+DARRELL (somewhat gravely).--"A hazardous remedy--it might kill, if it
+did not cure."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"I suspect, from Vance's manner, that he has tested its
+efficacy on his own person."
+
+LIONEL.--"NO, mon Colonel--I'll answer for Vance.  He in love!  Never."
+
+Vance coloured--gave a touch to the nose of a Roman senator in the famous
+classical picture which he was then painting for a merchant at
+Manchester--and made no reply.  Darrell looked at the artist with a sharp
+and searching glance.
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then all the more credit to Vance for his intuitive
+perception of philosophical truth.  Suppose, my dear Lionel, that we
+light, one idle day, on a beautiful novel, a glowing romance--suppose
+that, by chance, we are torn from the book in the middle of the interest
+--we remain under the spell of the illusion--we recall the scenes--we try
+to guess what should have been the sequel--we think that no romance ever
+was so captivating, simply because we were not allowed to conclude it.
+Well, if, some years afterwards, the romance fall again in our way, and
+we open at the page where we left off, we cry, in the maturity of our
+sober judgment, 'Mawkish stuff!--is this the same thing that I once
+thought so beautiful?--how one's tastes do alter!'"
+
+DARRELL.--"Does it not depend on the age in which one began the romance?"
+
+LIONEL.--"Rather, let me think,  sir,  upon the real depth of the
+interest--the true beauty of the--"
+
+VANCE (interrupting).--" Heroine?--Not at all, Lionel.  I once fell in
+love--incredible as it may seem to you--nine years ago last January.  I
+was too poor then to aspire to any young lady's hand--therefore I did not
+tell my love, but 'let concealment,' et cetera, et cetera.  She went away
+with her mamma to complete her education on the Continent.  I remained
+'Patience on a monument.'  She was always before my eyes--the slenderest,
+shyest creature just eighteen.  I never had an idea that she could grow
+any older, less slender, or less shy.  Well, four years afterwards (just
+before we made our excursion into Surrey, Lionel), she returned to
+England, still unmarried.  I went to a party at which I knew she was to
+be-saw her, and was cured."
+
+"Bad case of small-pox, or what?"  asked the Colonel, smiling.
+
+VANCE--"Nay; everybody said she was extremely improved--that was the
+mischief--she had improved herself out of my fancy.  I had been faithful
+as wax to one settled impression, and when I saw a fine, full-formed,
+young Frenchified lady, quite at her ease, armed with eyeglass and
+bouquet and bustle, away went my dream of the slim blushing maiden.  The
+Colonel is quite right, Lionel; the romance once suspended, 'tis a
+haunting remembrance till thrown again in our way, but complete
+disillusion if we try to renew it; though I swear that in my case the
+interest was deep, and the heroine improved in her beauty.  So with you
+and that dear little creature.  See her again, and you'll tease, me no
+more to give you that portrait of Titania at watch over Bottom's soft
+slumbers.  All a Midsummer Night's Dream, Lionel.  Titania fades back
+into the arms of Oberon, and would not be Titania if you could make her-
+Mrs. Bottom."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+     EVEN COLONEL MORLEY, (KNOWING EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING), IS PUZZLED
+     WHEN IT COMES TO THE PLAIN QUESTION--"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"
+
+"I am delighted with Vance," said Darrell, when he and the Colonel were
+again walking arm-in-arm.  "His is not one of those meagre intellects
+which have nothing to spare out of the professional line.  He has humour.
+Humour--strength's rich superfluity."
+
+"I like your definition," said the Colonel.  "And humour in Vance, though
+fantastic, is not without subtlety.  There was much real kindness in his
+obvious design to quiz Lionel out of that silly enthusiasm for--"
+
+"For a pretty child, reared up to be a strolling player," interrupted
+Darrell.  "Don't call it silly enthusiasm.  I call it chivalrous
+compassion.  Were it other than compassion, it would not be enthusiasm--
+it would be degradation.  But do you believe, then, that Vance's
+confession of first love, and its cure, was but a whimsical invention?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not so.  Many a grave truth is spoken jestingly.  I
+have no doubt that, allowing for the pardonable exaggeration of a
+/raconteur/, Vance was narrating an episode in his own life."
+
+DARRELL.--"Do you think that a grown man, who has ever really felt love,
+can make a jest of it, and to mere acquaintances?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Yes; if he be so thoroughly cured, that he has made a
+jest of it to himself.  And the more lightly he speaks of it, perhaps the
+more solemnly at one time he felt it.  Levity is his revenge on the
+passion that fooled him."
+
+DARRELL.--"You are evidently an experienced philosopher in the lore of
+such folly.  '/Consultas insapientis sapientiae/.' Yet I can scarcely
+believe that you have ever been in love."
+
+"Yes, I have," said the Colonel bluntly, "and very often!  Everybody at
+my age has--except yourself.  So like a man's observation, that,"
+continued the Colonel with much tartness.  "No man ever thinks another
+man capable of a profound and romantic sentiment!"
+
+DARRELL.--"True; I own my shallow fault, and beg you ten thousand
+pardons.  So then you really believe, from your own experience, that
+there is much in Vance's theory and your own very happy illustration?
+Could we, after many years, turn back to the romance at the page at which
+we left off, we should--"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not care a straw to read on!  Certainly, half the
+peculiar charm of a person beloved must be ascribed to locality and
+circumstance."
+
+DARRELL.--"I don't quite understand you."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Then, as you liked my former illustration, I will
+explain myself by another one more homely.  In a room to which you are
+accustomed there is a piece of furniture, or an ornament, which so
+exactly suits the place that you say: 'The prettiest thing I ever saw!'
+You go away--you return--the piece of furniture or the ornament has been
+moved into another room.  You see it there, and you say: 'Bless me, is
+that the thing I so much admired!'  The strange room does not suit it-
+losing its old associations and accessories, it has lost its charm.  So
+it is with human beings--seen in one place, the place would be nothing
+without them; seen in another, the place without them would be all the
+better!"
+
+DARRELL (musingly)--"There are some puzzles in life which resemble the
+riddles a child asks you to solve.  Your imagination cannot descend low
+enough for the right guess.  Yet, when you are told, you are obliged to
+say, 'How clever!'  Man lives to learn."
+
+"Since you have arrived at that conviction," replied Colonel Morley,
+amused by his friend's gravity, "I hope that you will rest satisfied with
+the experiences of Vance and myself; and that if you have a mind to
+propose to one of the young ladies whose merits we have already
+discussed, you will not deem it necessary to try what effect a prolonged
+absence might produce on your good resolution."
+
+"No!"  said Darrell, with sudden animation.  "Before three days are over
+my mind shall be made up."  "Bravo!--as to whom of the three you would
+ask in marriage?"
+
+"Or as to the idea of ever marrying again.  Adieu, I am going to knock at
+that door."
+
+"Mr. Vyvyan's!  Ah, is it so, indeed?  Verily, you are a true Dare-all."
+
+"Do not be alarmed.  I go afterwards to an exhibition with Lady Adela,
+and I dine with the Carr Viponts.  My choice is not yet made, and my hand
+still free."
+
+"His hand still free!"  muttered the Colonel, pursuing his walk alone.
+"Yes--but three days hence--O--What will he do with it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+     GUY DARRELL'S DECISION.
+
+Guy Darrell returned home from Carr Vipont's dinner at a late hour.  On
+his table was a note from Lady Adela's father, cordially inviting Darrell
+to pass the next week at his country-house; London was now emptying fast.
+On the table too was a parcel, containing a book which Darrell had lent
+to Miss Vyvyan some weeks ago, and a note from herself.  In calling at
+her father's house that morning, he had learned that Mr. Vyvyan had
+suddenly resolved to take her into Switzerland, with the view of passing
+the next winter in Italy.  The room was filled with loungers of both
+sexes.  Darrell had stayed but a short time.  The leave-taking had been
+somewhat formal--Flora unusually silent.  He opened her note, and read
+the first lines listlessly; those that followed, with a changing cheek
+and an earnest eye.  He laid down the note very gently, again took it up
+and reperused.  Then he held it to the candle, and it dropped from his
+hand in tinder.  "The innocent child," murmured he, with a soft paternal
+tenderness; "she knows not what she writes."  He began to pace the room
+with his habitual restlessness when in solitary thought--often stopping--
+often sighing heavily.  At length his face cleared-his lips became firmly
+set.  He summoned his favourite servant.  "Mills," said he, "I shall
+leave town on horseback as soon as the sun rises.  Put what I may require
+for a day or two into the saddle-bags.  Possibly, however I may be back
+by dinner-time.  Call me at five o'clock, and then go round to the
+stables.  I shall require no groom to attend me."
+
+The next morning, while the streets were deserted, no houses as yet
+astir, but the sun bright, the air fresh, Guy Darrell rode from his door.
+He did not return the same day, nor the next, nor at all.  But, late in
+the evening of the second day, his horse, reeking hot and evidently hard-
+ridden, stopped at the porch of Fawley Manor-House; and Darrell flung
+himself from the saddle, and into Fairthorn's arms.  "Back again--back
+again--and to leave no more!" said he, looking round; "Spes et Fortuna
+valete!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+     A MAN'S LETTER--UNSATISFACTORY AND PROVOKING AS A MAN'S LETTERS
+     ALWAYS ARE.
+
+
+GUY DARRELL To COLONEL MORLEY.
+
+Fawley Manor-House, August 11, 18--.  I HAVE decided, my dear Alban.  I
+did not take three days to do so, though the third day may be just over
+ere you learn my decision.  I shall never marry again: I abandon that
+last dream of declining years.  My object in returning to the London
+world was to try whether I could not find, amongst the fairest and most
+attractive women that the world produces--at least to an English eye--
+some one who could inspire me with that singleness of affection which
+could alone justify the hope that I might win in return a wife's esteem
+and a contented home.  That object is now finally relinquished, and with
+it all idea of resuming the life of cities.  I might have re-entered a
+political career, had I first secured to myself a mind sufficiently
+serene and healthful for duties that need the concentration of thought
+and desire.  Such a state of mind I cannot secure.  I have striven for
+it; I am baffled.  It is said that politics are a jealous mistress--that
+they require the whole man.  The saying is not invariably true in the
+application it commonly receives--that is, a politician may have some
+other employment of intellect, which rather enlarges his powers than
+distracts their political uses.  Successful politicians have united with
+great parliamentary toil and triumph legal occupations or learned
+studies.  But politics do require that the heart should be free, and at
+peace from all more absorbing private anxieties--from the gnawing of a
+memory or a care, which dulls ambition and paralyses energy.  In this
+sense politics do require the whole man.  If I return to politics now,
+I should fail to them, and they to me.  I feel that the brief interval
+between me and the grave has need of repose: I find that repose here.
+I have therefore given the necessary orders to dismiss the pompous
+retinue which I left behind me, and instructed my agent to sell my London
+house for whatever it may fetch.  I was unwilling to sell it before--
+unwilling to abandon the hope, however faint, that I might yet regain
+strength for action.  But the very struggle to obtain such strength
+leaves me exhausted more.
+
+You may believe that it is not without a pang, less of pride than of
+remorse, that I resign unfulfilled the object towards which all my
+earlier life was so resolutely shaped.  The house I promised my father to
+re-found dies to dust in my grave.  To my father's blood no heir to my
+wealth can trace.  Yet it is a consolation to think that Lionel Haughton
+is one on whom my father would have smiled approvingly.  At my death,
+therefore, at least the old name will not die; Lionel Haughton will take
+and be worthy to bear it.  Strange weakness of mine, you will say; but I
+cannot endure the thought that the old name should be quite blotted out
+of the land.  I trust that Lionel may early form a suitable and happy
+marriage.  Sure that he will not choose ignobly, I impose no fetters on
+his choice.
+
+One word only on that hateful subject, confided so tardily to your
+friendship, left so thankfully to your discretion.  Now that I have once
+more buried myself in Fawley, it is very unlikely that the man it pains
+me to name will seek me here.  If he does, he cannot molest me as if I
+were in the London world.  Continue, then, I pray you, to leave him
+alone.  And, in adopting your own shrewd belief, that after all there is
+no such child as he pretends to claim, my mind becomes tranquillised on
+all that part of my private griefs.
+
+Farewell, old school-friend!  Here, so far as I can foretell--here, where
+my life began, it returns, when Heaven pleases, to close.  Here I could
+not ask you to visit me: what is rest to me would be loss of time to you.
+But in my late and vain attempt to re-enter that existence in which you
+have calmly and wisely gathered round yourself, "all that should
+accompany old age-honour, love, obedience, troops of friends"--nothing so
+repaid the effort--nothing now so pleasantly remains to recollection--as
+the brief renewal of that easy commune which men like me never know, save
+with those whose laughter brings back to them a gale from the old
+playground.  "/Vive, vale/;" I will not add, "/Sis memor mei/."  So many
+my obligations to your kindness, that you will be forced to remember me
+whenever you recall the not "painful subjects" of early friendship and
+lasting gratitude.  Recall only those when reminded of  GUY DARRELL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+     NO COINAGE IN CIRCULATION S0 FLUCTUATES IN VALUE AS THE WORTH OF A
+     MARRIAGEABLE MAN.
+
+Colonel Morley was not surprised (that, we know, he could not be, by any
+fresh experience of human waywardness and caprice), but much disturbed
+and much vexed by the unexpected nature of Darrell's communication.
+Schemes for Darrell's future lead become plans of his own.  Talk with his
+old school-fellow had, within the last three months, entered into the
+pleasures of his age.  Darrell's abrupt and final renunciation of this
+social world made at once a void in the business of Alban's mind, and in
+the affections of Alban's heart.  And no adequate reason assigned for so
+sudden a flight and so morbid a resolve!  Some tormenting remembrance--
+some rankling grief--distinct from those of which Alban was cognisant,
+from those in which he had been consulted, was implied, but by vague and
+general hints.  But what was the remembrance or the grief, Alban Morley,
+who knew everything, was quite persuaded that Darrell would never suffer
+him to know.  Could it be in any way connected with those three young
+ladies to whom Darrell's attentions had been so perversely impartial?
+The Colonel did not fail to observe that to those young ladies Darrell's
+letter made no allusion.  Was it not possible that he had really felt for
+one of them a deeper sentiment than a man advanced in years ever likes to
+own even to his nearest friend--hazarded a proposal, and met with a
+rebuff?  If so, Alban conjectured the female culprit by whom the
+sentiment had been inspired, and the rebuff administered.  "That
+mischievous kitten, Flora Vyvyan," growled the Colonel.  "I always felt
+that she had the claws of a tigress under her /patte de velours/!"
+Roused by this suspicion, he sallied forth to call on the Vyvyans.  Mr.
+Vyvyan, a widower, one of those quiet gentleman-like men who sit much in
+the drawing-room and like receiving morning visitors, was at home to him.
+"So Darrell has left town for the season," said the Colonel, pushing
+straight to the point.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Vyvyan.  "I had a note from him this morning to say he
+had renounced all hope of--"
+
+"What?" cried the Colonel.
+
+"Joining us in Switzerland.  I am so sorry.  Flora still more sorry.  She
+is accustomed to have her own way, and she had set her heart on hearing
+Darrell read 'Manfred' in sight of the Jungfrau!"
+
+"Um!" said the Colonel.  "What might be sport to her might be death to
+him.  A man at his age is not too old to fall in love with a young lady
+of hers.  But he is too old not to be extremely ridiculous to such a
+young lady if he does."
+
+"Colonel Morley--Fie!" cried an angry voice behind him.  Flora had
+entered the room unobserved.  Her face was much flushed, and her eyelids
+looked as if tears had lately swelled beneath them, and were swelling
+still.
+
+"What have I said to merit your rebuke?"  asked the Colonel composedly.
+
+"Said! coupled the thought of ridicule with the name of Mr. Darrell!"
+
+"Take care, Morley," said Mr. Vyvyan, laughing.  "Flora is positively
+superstitious in her respect for Guy Darrell; and you cannot offend her
+more than by implying that he is mortal.  Nay, child, it is very natural.
+Quite apart from his fame, there is something in that man's familiar
+talk, or rather, perhaps, in the very sound of his voice, which makes
+most other society seem flat and insipid.
+
+"I feel it myself.  And when Flora's young admirers flutter and babble
+round her--just after Darrell has quitted his chair beside her--they seem
+very poor company.  I am sure, Flora," continued Vyvyan kindly, "that the
+mere acquaintance of such a man has done you much good; and I am now in
+great hopes that, whenever you marry, it will be a man of sense."
+
+"Um!" again said the Colonel, eyeing Flora aslant, but with much
+attention.  "How I wish, for my friend's sake, that he was of an age
+which inspired Miss Vyvyan with less--veneration."
+
+Flora turned her back on the Colonel, looking out of the window, and her
+small foot beating the ground with nervous irritation.
+
+"It was given out that Darrell intended to marry again," said Mr. Vyvyan.
+"A man of that sort requires a very superior highly-educated woman; and
+if Miss Carr Vipont had been a little more of his age she would have just
+suited him.  But I am patriot enough to hope that he will remain single,
+and have no wife but his country, like Mr. Pitt."  The Colonel having now
+satisfied his curiosity, and assured himself that Darrell was, there at
+least, no rejected suitor, rose and approached Flora to make peace and to
+take leave.  As he held out his hand, he was struck with the change in a
+countenance usually so gay in its aspect--it spoke of more than
+dejection, it betrayed distress; when she took his hand, she retained it,
+and looked into his eyes wistfully; evidently there was something on her
+mind which she wished to express and did not know how.  At length she
+said in a whisper: "You are Mr. Darrell's most intimate friend; I have
+heard him say so; shall you see him soon?"
+
+"I fear not; but why?"
+
+"Why? you, his friend; do you not perceive that he is not happy?  I, a
+mere stranger, saw it at the first.  You should cheer and comfort him;
+you have that right--it is a noble privilege."
+
+"My dear young lady," said the Colonel, touched, "you have a better heart
+than I thought for.  It is true Darrell is not a happy man; but can you
+give me any message that might cheer him more than an old bachelor's
+commonplace exhortations to take heart, forget the rains of yesterday,
+and hope for some gleam of sun on the morrow?"
+
+"No," said Flora, sadly, "it would be a presumption indeed in me, to
+affect the consoler's part; but"--(her lips quivered)--"but if I may
+judge by his letter, I may never see him again."
+
+"His letter!  He has written to you, then, as well as to your father?"
+
+"Yes," said Flora, confused and colouring, "a few lines in answer to a
+silly note of mine; yes, tell him that I shall never forget his kind
+counsels, his delicate, indulgent construction of--of--in short, tell him
+my father is right, and that I shall be better and wiser all my life for
+the few short weeks in which I have known Guy Darrell."
+
+"What secrets are you two whispering there?"  asked Mr. Vyvyan from his
+easy-chair.
+
+"Ask her ten years hence," said the Colonel, as he retreated to the door.
+"The fairest leaves in the flower are the last that the bud will
+disclose."
+
+From Mr. Vyvyan the Colonel went to Lord -----'s.  His lordship had also
+heard from Darrell that morning; Darrell declined the invitation to ----
+Hall; business at Fawley.  Lady Adela had borne the disappointment with
+her wonted serenity of temper, and had gone out shopping.  Darrell had
+certainly not offered his hand in that quarter; had he done so--whether
+refused or accepted--all persons yet left in London would have heard the
+news.  Thence the Colonel repaired to Carr Vipont's.  Lady Selina was at
+home and exceedingly cross.  Carr had been astonished by a letter from
+Mr. Darrell, dated Fawley--left town for the season without even calling
+to take leave--a most eccentric man.  She feared his head was a little
+touched--that he knew it, but did not like to own it--perhaps the doctors
+had told him he must keep quiet, and not excite himself with politics.
+"I had thought," said Lady Selina, "that he might have felt a growing
+attachment for Honoria; and considering the disparity of years, and that
+Honoria certainly might marry any one, he was too proud to incur the risk
+of refusal.  But I will tell you in confidence, as a relation and dear
+friend, that Honoria has a very superior mind, and might have overlooked
+the mere age: congenial tastes--you understand.  But on thinking it all
+over, I begin to doubt whether that be the true reason for his running
+away in this wild sort of manner.  My maid tells me that his house-
+steward called to say that the establishment was to be broken up.  That
+looks as if he had resigned London for good; just, too, when, Carr says,
+the CRISIS, so long put off, is sure to burst on us.  I'm quite sick of
+clever men--one never knows how to trust them; if they are not dishonest
+they are eccentric!  I have just been telling Honoria that clever men
+are, after all, the most tiresome husbands.  Well, what makes you so
+silent?  What do you say?  Why don't you speak?"
+
+"I am slowly recovering from my shock," said the Colonel.  "So Darrell
+shirks the CRISIS, and has not even hinted a preference for Honoria, the
+very girl in all London that would have made him a safe, rational
+companion.  I told him so, and he never denied it.  But it is a comfort
+to think he is no loss.  Old monster!"
+
+"Nay," said Lady Selina, mollified by so much sympathy, "I don't say he
+is no loss.  Honestly speaking--between ourselves--I think he is a very
+great loss.  An alliance between him and Honoria would have united all
+the Vipont influence.  Lord Montfort has the greatest confidence in
+Darrell; and if this CRISIS comes, it is absolutely necessary for the
+Vipont interest that it should find somebody who can speak.  Really, my
+dear Colonel Morley, you, who have such an influence over this very odd
+man, should exert it now.  One must not be over-nice in times of CRISIS;
+the country is at stake, Cousin Alban."
+
+"I will do my best," said the Colonel; "I am quite aware that an alliance
+which would secure Darrell's talents to the House of Vipont, and the
+House of Vipont to Darrell's talents, would--but 'tis no use talking, we
+must not sacrifice Honoria even on the altar of her country's interest!"
+
+"Sacrifice!  Nonsense!  The man is not young certainly, but then what a
+grand creature, and so clever."
+
+"Clever--yes!  But that was your very objection to him five minutes ago."
+
+"I forgot the CRISIS.--One don't want clever men every day, but there are
+days when one does want them!"
+
+"I envy you that aphorism.  But from what you now imply, I fear that
+Honoria may have allowed her thoughts to settle upon what may never take
+place; and if so, she may fret."
+
+"Fret! a daughter of mine fret!--and of all my daughters, Honoria!  A
+girl of the best-disciplined mind!  Fret! what a word!--vulgar!"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"So it is; I blush for it; but let us understand each
+other.  If Darrell proposed for Honoria, you think, ambition apart, she
+would esteem him sufficiently for a decided preference."
+
+LADY SELINA,--"If that be his doubt, re-assure him.  He is shy-men of
+genius are; Honoria would esteem him!  Till he has actually proposed it
+would compromise her to say more even to you."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"And if that be not the doubt, and if I ascertain that
+Darrell has no idea of proposing, Honoria would--"
+
+LADY SELINA.--"Despise him.  Ah, I see by your countenance that you think
+I should prepare her.  Is it so, frankly?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Frankly, then.  I think Guy Darrell, like many other
+men, has been so long in making up his mind to marry again that he has
+lost the right moment, and will never find it."
+
+Lady Selina smells at her vinaigrette, and replies in her softest,
+affectedest, civilest, and crushingest manner: "POOR--DEAR--OLD MAN!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+     MAN IS NOT PERMITTED, WITH ULTIMATE IMPUNITY, TO EXASPERATE THE
+     ENVIES AND INSULT THE MISERIES OF THOSE AROUND HIM, BY A SYSTEMATIC
+     PERSEVERANCE IN WILFUL-CELIBACY.  IN VAIN MAY HE SCHEME, IN THE
+     MARRIAGE OF INJURED FRIENDS, TO PROVIDE ARM-CHAIRS, AND FOOT-STOOLS,
+     AND PRATTLING BABIES FOR THE LUXURIOUS DELECTATION OF HIS INDOLENT
+     AGE.  THE AVENGING EUMENIDES (BEING THEMSELVES ANCIENT VIRGINS
+     NEGLECTED) SHALL HUMBLE HIS INSOLENCE, BAFFLE HIS PROJECTS, AND
+     CONDEMN HIS DECLINING YEARS TO THE HORRORS OF SOLITUDE,--RARELY EVEN
+     WAKENING HIS SOUL TO THE GRACE OF REPENTANCE.
+
+The Colonel, before returning home, dropped into the Clubs, and took care
+to give to Darrell's sudden disappearance a plausible and commonplace
+construction.  The season was just over.  Darrell had gone to the
+country.  The town establishment was broken up, because the house in
+Carlton Gardens was to be sold.  Darrell did not like the situation--
+found the air relaxing--Park Lane or Grosvenor Square were on higher
+ground.  Besides, the staircase was bad for a house of such pretensions--
+not suited to large parties.  Next season Darrell might be in a position
+when he would have to give large parties, &c., &c.  As no one is inclined
+to suppose that a man will retire from public life just when he has
+a chance of office, so the Clubs took Alban Morley's remarks
+unsuspiciously, and generally agreed that Darrell showed great tact in
+absenting himself from town during the transition state of politics that
+always precedes a CRISIS, and that it was quite clear that he calculated
+on playing a great part when the CRISIS was over, by finding his house
+had grown too small for him.  Thus paving the way to Darrell's easy
+return to the world, should he repent of his retreat (a chance which
+Alban by no means dismissed from his reckoning), the Colonel returned
+home to find his nephew George awaiting him there.  The scholarly
+clergyman had ensconced himself in the back drawing-room, fitted up as
+a library, and was making free with the books.  "What have you there,
+George?"  asked the Colonel, after shaking him by the hand.  "You seemed
+quite absorbed in its contents, and would not have noticed my presence
+but for Gyp's bark."
+
+"A volume of poems I never chanced to meet before, full of true genius."
+
+"Bless me, poor Arthur Branthwaite's poems.  And you were positively
+reading those--not induced to do so by respect for his father?  Could you
+make head or tail of them?"
+
+"There is a class of poetry which displeases middle age by the very
+attributes which render it charming to the young; for each generation has
+a youth with idiosyncrasies peculiar to itself, and a peculiar poetry by
+which those idiosyncrasies are expressed."
+
+Here George was beginning to grow metaphysical, and somewhat German, when
+his uncle's face assumed an expression which can only be compared to that
+of a man who dreads a very severe and long operation.  George humanely
+hastened to relieve his mind.
+
+"But I will not bore you at present."
+
+"Thank you," said the Colonel, brightening up.
+
+"Perhaps you will lend me the book.  I am going down to Lady Montfort's
+by-and-by, and I can read it by the way."
+
+"Yes, I will lend it to you till next season.  Let me have it again then,
+to put on the table when Frank Vance comes to breakfast with me.  The
+poet was his brother-in-law; and though, for that reason, poets and
+poetry are a sore subject with Frank, yet the last time he breakfasted
+here, I felt, by the shake of his hand in parting, that he felt pleased
+by a mark of respect to all that is left of poor Arthur Branthwaite.  So
+you are going to Lady Montfort?  Ask her why she chits me!"
+
+"My dear uncle!  You know how secluded her life is at present; but she
+has charged me to assure you of her unalterable regard for you; and
+whenever her health and spirits are somewhat more recovered, I have no
+doubt that she will ask you to give her the occasion to make that
+assurance in person."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Can her health and spirits continue so long affected by
+grief for the loss of that distant acquaintance whom the law called her
+husband?"
+
+GEORGE.--"She is very far from well, and her spirits are certainly much
+broken.  And now, uncle, for the little favour I came to ask.  Since you
+presented me to Mr. Darrell, he kindly sent me two or three invitations
+to dinner, which my frequent absence from town would not allow me to
+accept.  I ought to call on him; and, as I feel ashamed not to have done
+so before, I wish you would accompany me to his house.  One happy word
+from you would save me a relapse into stutter.  When I want to apologise
+I always stutter."
+
+"Darrell has left town," said the Colonel, roughly, "you have missed an
+opportunity that will never occur again.  The most charming companion; an
+intellect so manly, yet so sweet!  I shall never find such another."  And
+for the first time in thirty years a tear stole to Alban Morley's eye.
+
+GEORGE.--"When did he leave town?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Three days ago."
+
+GEORGE.--"Three  days ago! and for the Continent again?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"No; for the Hermitage, George.  I have such a letter
+from him!  You know how many years he has been absent from the world.
+When, this year, he re-appeared, he and I grew more intimate than we had
+ever been since we had left school; for though the same capital held us
+before, he was then too occupied for much familiarity with an idle man
+like me.  But just when I was intertwining what is left of my life with
+the bright threads of his, he snaps the web asunder: he quits this London
+world again; says he will return to it no more."
+
+GEORGE.--"Yet I did hear that he proposed to renew his parliamentary
+career; nay, that he was about to form a second marriage, with Honoria
+Vipont?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Mere gossip-not true.  No, he will never marry again.
+Three days ago I thought it certain that he would--certain that I should
+find for my old age a nook in his home--the easiest chair in his social
+circle; that my daily newspaper would have a fresh interest, in the
+praise of his name or the report of his speech; that I should walk
+proudly into White's, sure to hear there of Guy Darrell; that I should
+keep from misanthropical rust my dry knowledge of life, planning shrewd
+panegyrics to him of a young happy wife, needing all his indulgence--
+panegyrics to her of the high-minded sensitive man, claiming tender
+respect and delicate soothing;--that thus, day by day, I should have made
+more pleasant the home in which I should have planted myself, and found
+in his children boys to lecture and girls to spoil.  Don't be jealous,
+George.  I like your wife, I love your little ones, and you will inherit
+all I have to leave.  But to an old bachelor, who would keep young to the
+last, there is no place so sunny as the hearth of an old school-friend.
+But my house of cards is blown down--talk of it no more--'tis a painful
+subject.  You met Lionel Haughton here the last time you called--how did
+you like him!"
+
+"Very much indeed."
+
+"Well, then, since you cannot call on Darrell, call on him."
+
+GEORGE (with animation).--"It is just what I meant to do--what is his
+address?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY--"There is his card--take it.  He was here last night to
+inquire if I knew where Darrell had gone, though no one in his household,
+nor I either, suspected till this morning that Darrell had left town for
+good.  You will find Lionel at home, for I sent him word I would call.
+But really I am not up to it now.  Tell him from me that Mr. Darrell will
+not return to Carlton Gardens this season, and is gone to Fawley.  At
+present Lionel need not know more--you understand?  And now, my dear
+George, good day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+     EACH GENERATION HAS ITS OWN CRITICAL CANONS IN POETRY AS WELL AS IN
+     POLITICAL CREEDS, FINANCIAL SYSTEMS, OR WHATEVER OTHRR CHANGEABLE
+     MATTERS OF TASTE ARE CALLED "SETTLED QUESTIONS" AND "FIXED OPINIONS."
+
+George, musing much over all that his uncle had said respecting Darrell,
+took his way to Lionel's lodgings.  The young man received him with the
+cordial greeting due from Darrell's kinsman to Colonel Morley's nephew,
+but tempered by the respect no less due to the distinction and the
+calling of the eloquent preacher.
+
+Lionel was perceptibly affected by learning that Darrell had thus
+suddenly returned to the gloomy beech-woods of Fawley; and he evinced his
+anxious interest in his benefactor with so much spontaneous tenderness of
+feeling that George, as if in sympathy, warmed into the same theme.
+"I can well conceive," said he, "your affection for Mr. Darrell.  I
+remember, when I was a boy, how powerfully he impressed me, though I saw
+but little of him.  He was then in the zenith of his career, and had but
+few moments to give to a boy like me; but the ring of his voice and the
+flash of his eye sent me back to school, dreaming of fame and intent on
+prizes.  I spent part of one Easter vacation at his house in town; he
+bade his son, who was my schoolfellow, invite me."
+
+LIONEL.--"You knew his son?  How Mr. Darrell has felt that loss!"
+
+GEORGE.--"Heaven often veils its most provident mercy in what to man
+seems its sternest inflictions.  That poor boy must have changed his
+whole nature, if his life had not, to a father like Mr. Darrell,
+occasioned grief sharper than his death."
+
+LIONEL.--"You amaze me.  Mr. Darrell spoke of him as a boy of great
+promise."
+
+GEORGE.--"He had that kind of energy which to a father conveys the idea
+of promise, and which might deceive those older than himself--a fine
+bright-eyed, bold-tongued boy, with just enough awe of his father to
+bridle his worst qualities before him."
+
+LIONEL.--"What were those?"
+
+GEORGE.--"Headstrong arrogance--relentless cruelty.  He had a pride which
+would have shamed his father out of pride, had Guy Darrell detected its
+nature--purse pride!  I remember his father said to me with a half-laugh:
+'My boy must not be galled and mortified as I was every hour at school--
+clothes patched and pockets empty.'  And so, out of mistaken kindness,
+Mr. Darrell ran into the opposite extreme, and the son was proud, not of
+his father's fame, but of his father's money, and withal not generous,
+nor exactly extravagant, but using money as power-power that allowed him
+to insult an equal or to buy a slave.  In a word, his nickname at school
+was 'Sir Giles Overreach.'  His death was the result of his strange
+passion for tormenting others.  He had a fag who could not swim, and who
+had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while driving this child
+into the river out of his depth that cramp seized himself, and he was
+drowned.  Yes, when I think what that boy would have been as a man,
+succeeding to Darrell's wealth--and had Darrell persevered (as he would,
+perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public career--to the rank and
+titles he would probably have acquired and bequeathed--again, I say, in
+man's affliction is often Heaven's mercy."
+
+Lionel listened aghast.  George continued: "Would that I could speak as
+plainly to Mr. Darrell himself!  For we find constantly in the world that
+there is no error that misleads us like the error that is half a truth
+wrenched from the other half; and nowhere is such an error so common as
+when man applies it to the judgment of some event in his own life, and
+separates calamity from consolation."
+
+LIONEL.--"True; but who could have the heart to tell a mourning father
+that his dead son was worthless?"
+
+GEORGE.--"Alas!  my young friend, the preacher must sometimes harden his
+own heart if he would strike home to another's soul.  But I am not sure
+that Mr. Darrell would need so cruel a kindness.  I believe that his
+clear intellect must have divined some portions of his son's nature which
+enabled him to bear the loss with fortitude.  And he did bear it bravely.
+But now, Mr. Haughton, if you have the rest of the day free, I am about
+to make you an unceremonious proposition for its disposal.  A lady who
+knew Mr. Darrell when she was very young has--a strong desire to form
+your acquaintance.  She resides on the banks of the Thames, a little
+above Twickenham.  I have promised to call on her this evening.  Shall we
+dine together at Richmond? and afterwards we can take a boat to her
+villa."
+
+Lionel at once accepted, thinking so little of the lady that he did not
+even ask her name.  He was pleased to have a companion with whom he could
+talk of Darrell.  He asked but delay to write a few lines of affectionate
+inquiry to his kinsman at Fawley, and, while he wrote, George took out
+Arthur Branthwaite's poems, and resumed their perusal.  Lionel having
+sealed his letter, George extended the book to him.  "Here are some
+remarkable poems by a brother-in-law of that remarkable artist, Frank
+Vance."
+
+"Frank Vance!  True, he had a brother-in-law a poet.  I admire Frank so
+much; and, though he professes to sneer at poetry, he is so associated in
+my mind with poetical images that I am prepossessed beforehand in favour
+of all that brings him, despite himself, in connection with poetry."
+
+"Tell me then," said George, pointing out a passage in the volume, "what
+you think of these lines.  My good uncle would call them gibberish.  I am
+not sure that I can construe them; but when I was your age, I think I
+could--what say you?"
+
+Lionel glanced.  "Exquisite indeed!--nothing can be clearer--they express
+exactly a sentiment in myself that I could never explain."
+
+"Just so," said George, laughing.  "Youth has a sentiment that it cannot
+explain, and the sentiment is expressed in a form of poetry that middle
+age cannot construe.  It is true that poetry of the grand order interests
+equally all ages; but the world ever throws out a poetry not of the
+grandest; not meant to be durable--not meant to be universal, but
+following the shifts and changes of human sentiment, and just like those
+pretty sundials formed by flowers, which bloom to tell the hour, open
+their buds to tell it, and, telling it, fade themselves from time."
+
+Not listening to the critic, Lionel continued to read the poems,
+exclaiming, "How exquisite!--how true!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+     IN LIFE, AS IN ART, THE BEAUTIFUL MOVES IN CURVES.
+
+They have dined.--George Morley takes the oars, and the boat cuts through
+the dance of waves flushed by the golden sunset.  Beautiful river! which
+might furnish the English tale-teller with legends wild as those culled
+on shores licked by Hydaspes, and sweet as those which Cephisus ever
+blended with the songs of nightingales and the breath of violets!  But
+what true English poet ever names thee, O Father Thames, without a
+melodious tribute?  And what child ever whiled away summer noons along
+thy grassy banks, nor hallowed thy remembrance among the fairy days of
+life?
+
+Silently Lionel bent over the side of the gliding boat; his mind carried
+back to the same soft stream five years ago.  How vast a space in his
+short existence those five years seemed to fill!  And how distant from
+the young man, rich in the attributes of wealth, armed with each weapon
+of distinction, seemed the hour when the boy had groaned aloud, "'Fortune
+is so far, Fame so impossible!'"  Farther and farther yet than his
+present worldly station from his past seemed the image that had first
+called forth in his breast the dreamy sentiment, which the sternest of us
+in after life never, utterly forget.  Passions rage and vanish, and when
+all their storms are gone, yea, it may be, at the verge of the very
+grave, we look back and see like a star the female face, even though it
+be a child's, that first set us vaguely wondering at the charm in a human
+presence, at the void in a smile withdrawn!  How many of us could recall
+a Beatrice through the gaps of ruined hope, seen, as by the Florentine,
+on the earth a guileless infant, in the heavens a spirit glorified!
+Yes--Laura was an affectation--Beatrice a reality!
+
+George's voice broke somewhat distastefully on Lionel's reverie.  "We
+near our destination, and you have not asked me even the name of the lady
+to whom you are to render homage.  It is Lady Montfort, widow to the last
+Marquess.  You have no doubt heard Mr. Darrell speak of her?"
+
+"Never Mr. Darrell--Colonel Morley often.  And in the world I have heard
+her cited as perhaps the handsomest, and certainly the haughtiest, woman
+in England."
+
+"Never heard Mr. Darrell mention her! that is strange indeed," said
+George Morley, catching at Lionel's first words, and unnoticing his after
+comment.  "She was much in his house as a child, shared in his daughter's
+education."
+
+"Perhaps for that very reason he shuns her name.  Never but once did I
+hear him allude to his daughter; nor can I wonder at that, if it be true,
+as I have been told by people who seem to know very little of the
+particulars, that, while yet scarcely out of the nursery, she fled from
+his house with some low adventurer--a Mr. Hammond--died abroad the first
+year of that unhappy marriage."
+
+"Yes, that is the correct outline of the story; and, as you guess, it
+explains why Mr. Darrell avoids mention of one, whom he associates with
+his daughter's name; though, if you desire a theme dear to Lady Montfort,
+you can select none that more interests her grateful heart than praise of
+the man who saved her mother from penury, and secured to herself the
+accomplishments and instruction which have been her chief solace."
+
+"Chief solace!  Was she not happy with Lord Montfort?  What sort of man
+was he?"
+
+"I owe to Lord Montfort the living I hold, and I can remember the good
+qualities alone of a benefactor.  If Lady Montfort was not happy with
+him, it is just to both to say that she never complained.  But there is
+much in Lady Montfort's character which the Marquess apparently failed to
+appreciate; at all events, they had little in common, and what was called
+Lady Montfort's haughtiness was perhaps but the dignity with which a
+woman of grand nature checks the pity that would debase her--the
+admiration that would sully--guards her own beauty, and protects her
+husband's name.  Here we are.  Will you stay for a few minutes in the
+boat, while I go to prepare Lady Montfort for your visit?"
+
+George leapt ashore, and Lionel remained under the covert of mighty
+willows that dipped their leaves into the wave.  Looking through the
+green interstices of the foliage, he saw at the far end of the lawn, on a
+curving bank by which the glittering tide shot oblique, a simple arbour-
+an arbour like that from which he had looked upon summer stars five.
+years ago--not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the
+honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides; and
+through the trellis of the woodwork and the leaves of the flowering
+shrub, he just caught a glimpse of some form within--the white robe of a
+female form in a slow gentle movement-tending perhaps the flowers that
+wreathed the arbour.  Now it was still, now it stirred again; now it was
+suddenly lost to view.  Had the inmate left the arbour?  Was the inmate
+Lady Montfort?  George Morley's step had not passed in that direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+     A QUIET SCENE-AN UNQUIET HEART.
+
+Meanwhile, not far from the willow-bank which sheltered Lionel, but far
+enough to be out of her sight and beyond her hearing, George Morley found
+Lady Montfort seated alone.  It was a spot on which Milton might have
+placed the lady in "Comus"--a circle of the smoothest sward, ringed
+everywhere (except at one opening which left the glassy river in full
+view) with thick bosks of dark evergreens and shrubs of livelier verdure;
+oak and chest nut backing and overhanging all.  Flowers, too, raised on
+rustic tiers and stages; a tiny fountain, shooting up from a basin
+starred with the water-lily; a rustic table, on which lay hooks and the
+implements of woman's graceful work; so that the place had the home-look
+of a chamber, and spoke that intense love of the out-door life which
+abounds in our old poets from Chaucer down to the day when minstrels,
+polished into wits, took to Will's Coffee-house, and the lark came no
+more to bid bards
+
+                              "Good morrow
+               From his watch-tower in the skies."
+
+But long since, thank Heaven we have again got back the English poetry
+which chimes to the babble of the waters, and the riot of the birds; and
+just as that poetry is the freshest which the out-door life has the most
+nourished, so I believe that there is no surer sign of the rich vitality
+which finds its raciest joys in sources the most innocent, than the
+childlike taste for that same out-door life.  Whether you take from
+fortune the palace or the cottage, add to your chambers a hall in the
+courts of Nature.  Let the earth but give you room to stand on; well,
+look up--Is it nothing to have for your roof-tree--Heaven?
+
+Caroline Montfort (be her titles dropped) is changed since we last saw
+her.  The beauty is not less in degree, but it has gained in one
+attribute, lost in another; it commands less, it touches more.  Still in
+deep mourning, the sombre dress throws a paler shade over the cheek.  The
+eyes, more sunken beneath the brow, appear larger, softer.  There is that
+expression of fatigue which either accompanies impaired health or
+succeeds to mental struggle and disquietude.  But the coldness or pride
+of mien which was peculiar to Caroline as a wife is gone--as if in
+widowhood it was no longer needed.  A something like humility prevailed
+over the look and the bearing which had been so tranquilly majestic.  As
+at the approach of her cousin she started from her seat, there was a
+nervous tremor in her eagerness; a rush of colour to the cheeks; an
+anxious quivering of the lip; a flutter in the tones of the sweet low
+voice: "Well, George."
+
+"Mr. Darrell is not in London; he went to Fawley three days ago; at least
+he is there now.  I have this from my uncle, to whom he wrote; and whom
+his departure has vexed and saddened."
+
+"Three days ago!  It must have been he, then!  I was not deceived,"
+murmured Caroline, and her eyes wandered mound.
+
+"There is no truth in the report you heard that he was to marry Honoria
+Vipont.  My uncle thinks he will never marry again, and implies that he
+has resumed his solitary life at Fawley with a resolve to quit it no
+more."
+
+Lady Montfort listened silently, bending her face over the fountain, and
+dropping amidst its playful spray the leaves of a rose which she had
+abstractedly plucked as George was speaking.
+
+"I have, therefore, fulfilled your commission so far," renewed George
+Morley.  "I have ascertained that Mr. Darrell is alive, and doubtless
+well; so that it could not have been his ghost that startled you amidst
+yonder thicket.  But I have done more: I have forestalled the wish you
+expressed to become acquainted with young Haughton; and your object in
+postponing the accomplishment of that wish while Mr. Darrell himself was
+in town having ceased with Mr. Darrell's departure, I have ventured to
+bring the young man with me.  He is in the boat yonder.  Will you receive
+him?  Or--but, my dear cousin, are you not too unwell today?  What is the
+matter?  Oh, I can easily make an excuse for you to Haughton.  I will run
+and do so."
+
+"No, George, no.  I am as well as usual.  I will see Mr. Haughton.  All
+that you have heard of him, and have told me, interests me so much in his
+favour; and besides--"  She did not finish the sentence; but led away by
+some other thought, asked, "Have you no news of our missing friend?"
+
+"None as yet; but in a few days I shall renew my search.  Now, then, I
+will go for Haughton."
+
+"Do so; and George, when you have presented him to me, will you kindly
+join that dear anxious child yonder!
+
+"She is in the new arbour, or near it-her favourite spot.  You must
+sustain her spirits, and give her hope.  You cannot guess how eagerly she
+looks forward to your visits, and how gratefully she relies on your
+exertions."
+
+George shook his head half despondingly, and saying briefly, "My
+exertions have established no claim to her gratitude as yet," went
+quickly back for Lionel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+     SOMETHING ON AN OLD SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SAID BEFORE
+
+Although Lionel was prepared to see a very handsome woman in Lady
+Montfort, the beauty of her countenance took him by surprise.  No
+preparation by the eulogies of description can lessen the effect that
+the first sight of a beautiful object produces upon a mind to which
+refinement of idea gives an accurate and quick comprehension of beauty.
+Be it a work of art, a scene in nature, or, rarest of all, a human face
+divine, a beauty never before beheld strikes us with hidden pleasure,
+like a burst of light.  And it is a pleasure that elevates; the
+imagination feels itself richer by a new idea of excellence; for not only
+is real beauty wholly original, having no prototype, but its immediate
+influence is spiritual.  It may seem strange--I appeal to every observant
+artist if the assertion be not true--but the first sight of the most
+perfect order of female beauty, rather than courting, rebukes and strikes
+back, every grosser instinct that would alloy admiration.  There must be
+some meanness and blemish in the beauty which the sensualist no sooner
+beholds than he covets.  In the higher incarnation of the abstract idea
+which runs through all our notions of moral good and celestial purity--
+even if the moment the eye sees the heart loves the image--the love has
+in it something of the reverence which it was said the charms of Virtue
+would produce could her form be made visible; nor could mere human love
+obtrude itself till the sweet awe of the first effect had been
+familiarised away.  And I appreheud that it is this exalting or
+etherealising attribute of beauty to which all poets, all writers who
+would poetise the realities of life, have unconsciously rendered homage,
+in the rank to which they elevate what, stripped of such attribute, would
+be but a gaudy idol of painted clay.  If, from the loftiest epic to the
+tritest novel, a heroine is often little more than a name to which we are
+called upon to bow, as to a symbol representing beauty, and if we
+ourselves (be we ever so indifferent in our common life to fair faces)
+feel that, in art at least, imagination needs an image of the Beautiful--
+if, in a word, both poet and reader here would not be left excuseless, it
+is because in our inmost hearts there is a sentiment which links the
+ideal of beauty with the Supersensual.  Wouldst thou, for instance, form
+some vague conception of the shape worn by a pure soul released? wouldst
+thou give to it the likeness of an ugly hag? or wouldst thou not ransack
+all thy remembrances and conceptions of forms most beauteous to clothe
+the holy image?  Do so: now bring it thus robed with the richest graces
+before thy mind's eye.  Well, seest thou now the excuse for poets in the
+rank they give to BEAUTY?  Seest thou now how high from the realm of the
+senses soars the mysterious Archetype?  Without the idea of beauty,
+couldst thou conceive a form in which to clothe a soul that has entered
+heaven?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+     AGREEABLE SURPRISES ARE THE PERQUISITES OF YOUTH.
+
+If the beauty of Lady Montfort's countenance took Lionel by surprise,
+still more might he wonder at the winning kindness of her address--a
+kindness of look, manner, voice, which seemed to welcome him not as a
+chance acquaintance but as a new-found relation.  The first few
+sentences, in giving them a subject of common interest, introduced into
+their converse a sort of confiding household familiarity.  For Lionel,
+ascribing Lady Montfort's gracious reception to her early recollections
+of his kinsman, began at once to speak of Guy Darrell; and in a little
+time they were walking over the turf, or through the winding alleys of
+the garden, linking talk to the same theme, she by question, he by
+answer--he, charmed to expatiate--she, pleased to listen--and liking each
+other more and more, as she recognised in all he said a bright young
+heart, overflowing with grateful and proud affection, and as he felt
+instinctively that he was with one who sympathised in his enthusiasm--one
+who had known the great man in his busy day, ere the rush of his career
+had paused, whose childhood had lent a smile to the great man's home
+before childhood and smile had left it.
+
+As they thus conversed, Lionel now and then, in the turns of their walk,
+caught a glimpse of George Morley in the distance, walking also side by
+side with some young companion, and ever as he caught that glimpse a
+strange restless curiosity shot across his mind, and distracted it even
+from praise of Guy Darrell.  Who could that be with George?  Was it a
+relation of Lady Montfort's?  The figure was not in mourning; its shape
+seemed slight and youthful--now it passes by that acacia tree,--standing
+for a moment apart and distinct from George's shadow, but its own outline
+dim in the deepening twilight--now it has passed on, lost amongst the
+laurels.
+
+A turn in the walk brought Lionel and Lady Montfort before the windows of
+the house, which was not large for the rank of the owner, but commodious,
+with no pretence to architectural beauty--dark-red brick, a century and a
+half old--irregular; jutting forth here, receding there, so as to produce
+that depth of light and shadow which lends a certain picturesque charm
+even to the least ornate buildings--a charm to which the Gothic
+architecture owes half its beauty.  Jessamine, roses, wooodbine, ivy,
+trained up the angles and between the windows.  Altogether the house had
+that air of HOME which had been wanting to the regal formality of
+Moutfort Court.  One of the windows, raised above the ground by a short
+winding stair, stood open.  Lights had just been brought into the room
+within, and Lionel's eye was caught by the gleam.  Lady Montfort turned
+up the stair, and Lionel followed her into the apartment.  A harp stood
+at one corner--not far from it a piano and music-stand.  On one of the
+tables there were the implements of drawing--a sketch in water-colours
+half finished.
+
+"Our work-room," said Lady Montfort, with a warm cheerful smile, and yet
+Lionel could see that tears were in her eyes--" mine and my dear pupil's.
+Yes, that harp is hers.  Is he still fond of music--I mean Mr. Darrell?"
+
+"Yes, though he does not care for it in crowds; but he can listen for
+hours to Fairthorn's flute.  You remember Mr. Fairthorn?"
+
+"Ay, I remember him," answered Lady Montfort softly.  "Mr. Darrell then
+likes his music, still?"
+
+Lionel here uttered an exclamation of more than surprise.  He had turned
+to examine the water-colour sketch--a rustic inn, a honeysuckle arbour,
+a river in front; a boat yonder--just begun.
+
+"I know the spot!"  he cried.  "Did you make the sketch of it?"
+
+"I? no; it is hers--my pupil's--my adopted child's."  Lionel's dark eyes
+turned to Lady Montfort's wistfully, inquiringly; they asked what his
+lips could not presume to ask.  "Your adopted child--what is she?--who?"
+
+As if answering to the eyes, Lady Montfort said: "Wait here a moment; I
+will go for her."
+
+She left him, descended the stairs into the garden, joined George Morley
+and his companion; took aside the former, whispered him, then drawing the
+arm of the latter within her own, led her back into the room, while
+George Morley remained in the garden, throwing himself on a bench, and
+gazing on the stars as they now came forth, fast and frequent, though one
+by one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                    "Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit
+                    Lucro appone."--HORAT.
+
+Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two female
+forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces.  That younger face
+--it is she--it is she, the unforgotten--the long-lost.  Instinctively,
+as if no years had rolled between--as if she were still the little child,
+he the boy who had coveted such a sister--he sprang forward and opened
+his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the arms to, his side,
+blushing, confused, abashed.  She! that vagrant child!--she! that form
+so elegant--that great peeress's pupil--adopted daughter, she the poor
+wandering Sophy!  She!--impossible!
+
+But her eyes, at first downcast, are now fixed on him.  She, too, starts
+--not forward, but in recoil; she, too, raises her arms, not to open, but
+to press them to her breast; and she, too, as suddenly checks an impulse,
+and stands, like him, blushing, confused, abashed.
+
+"Yes," said Caroline Montfort, drawing Sophy nearer to her breast, "yes,
+you will both forgive me for the surprise.  Yes, you do see before you,
+grown up to become the pride of those who cherish her, that Sophy who--"
+
+"Sophy!"  cried Lionel advancing; "it is so, then!  I knew you were no
+stroller's grandchild."
+
+Sophy drew up: "I am, I am his grandchild, and as proud to be so as I was
+then."
+
+"Pardon me, pardon me; I meant to say that he too was not what be seemed.
+You forgive me," extending his hand, and Sophy's soft hand fell into his
+forgivingly.
+
+"But he lives? is well? is here? is--"  Sophy burst into tears, and Lady
+Montfort made a sign to Lionel to go into the garden, and leave them.
+Reluctantly and dizzily, as one in a dream, he obeyed, leaving the
+vagrant's grandchild to be soothed in the fostering arms of her whom, an
+hour or two ago, he knew but by the titles of her rank and the reputation
+of her pride.
+
+It was not many minutes before Lady Montfort rejoined him.
+
+"You touched unawares," said she, "upon the poor child's most anxious
+cause of sorrow.  Her grandfather; for whom her affection is so
+sensitively keen, has disappeared.  I will speak of that later; and if
+you wish, you shall be taken into our consultations.  But--" she paused,
+looked into his face-open, loyal face, face of gentleman--with heart of
+man in its eyes, soul of man on its brow; face formed to look up to the
+stars which now lighted it--and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder,
+resumed with hesitating voice: "but I feel like a culprit in asking you
+what, nevertheless, I must ask, as an imperative condition, if your
+visits here are to be renewed--if your intimacy here is to be
+established.  And unless you comply with that condition, come no more;
+we cannot confide in each other."
+
+"Oh, Lady Montfort, impose any condition.  I promise beforehand."
+
+"Not beforehand.  The condition is this: inviolable secrecy.  You will
+not mention to any one your visits here; your introduction to me; your
+discovery of the stroller's grandchild in my adopted daughter."
+
+"Not to Mr. Darrell?"
+
+"To him least of all; but this I add, it is for Mr. Darrell's sake that I
+insist on such concealment; and I trust the concealment will not be long
+protracted."
+
+"For Mr. Darrell's sake?"
+
+"For the sake of his happiness," cried Lady Montfort, clasping her hands.
+"My debt to him is larger far than yours; and in thus appealing to you,
+I scheme to pay back a part of it.  Do you trust me?"
+
+"I do, I do."
+
+And from that evening Lionel Haughton became the constant visitor in that
+house.
+
+Two or three days afterwards Colonel Morley, quitting England for a
+German Spa at which he annually recruited himself for a few weeks,
+relieved Lionel from the embarrassment of any questions which that shrewd
+observer might otherwise have addressed to him.  London itself was now
+empty.  Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham.  And
+when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate into
+that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that famous
+Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter
+Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured
+the spell that unlocks the gates of Oberon,
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V7 ***
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