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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Lucretia, by Edward-Bulwer Lytton, Complete
+#119 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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+Title: Lucretia, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7691]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 15, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCRETIA, LYTTON, COMPLETE ***
+
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+This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
+and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
+
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+
+
+
+LUCRETIA
+
+by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
+
+"Lucretia; or, The Children of Night," was begun simultaneously with "The
+Caxtons: a Family Picture."  The two fictions were intended as pendants;
+both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show the
+influence of home education, of early circumstance and example, upon
+after character and conduct.  "Lucretia" was completed and published
+before "The Caxtons."  The moral design of the first was misunderstood
+and assailed; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved:
+the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same.  But in one
+it was sought through the darker side of human nature; in the other
+through the more sunny and cheerful: one shows the evil, the other the
+salutary influences, of early circumstance and training.  Necessarily,
+therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress,
+--the second to the comic elements of humour and agreeable emotion.  These
+differences serve to explain the different reception that awaited the
+two, and may teach us how little the real conception of an author is
+known, and how little it is cared for; we judge, not by the purpose he
+conceives, but according as the impressions he effects are pleasurable or
+painful.  But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the hostile criticism
+this fiction produced at its first appearance, I readily allow that as a
+mere question of art the story might have been improved in itself, and
+rendered more acceptable to the reader, by diminishing the gloom of the
+catastrophe.  In this edition I have endeavoured to do so; and the victim
+whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, as a
+violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from
+the hands of the Children of Night.  Perhaps, whatever the faults of this
+work, it equals most of its companions in the sustainment of interest,
+and in that coincidence between the gradual development of motive or
+passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which
+mainly distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of
+melodrama.  I trust at least that I shall now find few readers who will
+not readily acknowledge that the delineation of crime has only been
+employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the
+due province of the poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the
+heart.
+
+LONDON, December 7.
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
+the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
+last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions.  When Fabricio,
+in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was,
+in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,--
+I need not apply the allusion.
+
+I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
+trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
+that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates
+itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting
+those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining
+virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser.
+But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had
+imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon the stage.
+After some unpublished and imperfect attempts towards so realizing my
+design, I found either that the subject was too wide for the limits of
+the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of concentration which alone
+enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into a very limited
+compass.  With this design, I desired to unite some exhibition of what
+seems to me a principal vice in the hot and emulous chase for happiness
+or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost synonymous with the cant
+phrase of "the March of Intellect," in that crisis of society to which we
+have arrived.  The vice I allude to is Impatience.  That eager desire to
+press forward, not so much to conquer obstacles as to elude them; that
+gambling with the solemn destinies of life, seeking ever to set success
+upon the chance of a die; that hastening from the wish conceived to the
+end accomplished; that thirst after quick returns to ingenious toil, and
+breathless spurrings along short cuts to the goal, which we see
+everywhere around us, from the Mechanics' Institute to the Stock Market,-
+-beginning in education with the primers of infancy, deluging us with
+"Philosophies for the Million" and "Sciences made Easy;" characterizing
+the books of our writers, the speeches of our statesmen, no less than the
+dealings of our speculators,--seem, I confess, to me to constitute a very
+diseased and very general symptom of the times.  I hold that the greatest
+friend to man is labour; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were
+worthless; that toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can
+attain; that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself;
+that it is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but
+the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth,--the
+abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed; in a word, that
+Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth.  While occupied
+with these ideas and this belief, whether right or wrong, and slowly
+convinced that it was only in that species of composition with which I
+was most familiar that I could work out some portion of the plan that I
+began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two
+criminals existing in our own age,--so remarkable, whether from the
+extent and darkness of the guilt committed, whether from the glittering
+accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound knowledge and
+intellectual capacities of the other, that the examination and analysis
+of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy,
+interest.
+
+In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as
+can be found in Human Nature, so far as such points may be traced in the
+kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany the
+perpetration of great crimes, and, without excusing the individual,
+vindicate the species.  Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary
+wickedness was not the dull ferocity of brutes; it was accompanied with
+instruction and culture,--nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives
+and pondering over their own letters, that through their cultivation
+itself we could arrive at the secret of the ruthless and atrocious pre-
+eminence in evil these Children of Night had attained; that here the
+monster vanished into the mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
+aberrations from Nature were explained.
+
+I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
+which had so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries.  And in this
+attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of
+completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier
+design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
+of reproving the impatience which is engendered by a civilization that,
+with much of the good, brings all the evils of competition, and of
+tracing throughout, all the influences of early household life upon our
+subsequent conduct and career.  In such incidental bearings the moral may
+doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and rarer
+crime which forms the staple of my narrative.  For in extraordinary guilt
+we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the peaceful
+conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance of
+familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible
+admonition.  Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly
+found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers.  Those
+terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany of
+Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of Tom
+Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil.  Incredible as it may seem,
+the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen years.
+There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure
+from their details; the means employed, even that which seems most far-
+fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their foundation in
+literal facts.  Nor have I much altered the social position of the
+criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence.
+In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the
+Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent a fiction
+[These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in the novel,
+intimates and accomplices.  Their crimes were of similar character,
+effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which embrace their
+several careers of guilt within the same period; but I have no authority
+to suppose that the one was known to the other.].  All that Romance which
+our own time affords is not more the romance than the philosophy of the
+time.  Tragedy never quits the world,--it surrounds us everywhere.  We
+have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and from the age of
+Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under different garbs,
+will stalk on our paths.  Each age comprehends in itself specimens of
+every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our love or mowed our
+horror.
+
+LONDON, November 1, 1846.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ PART THE FIRST
+
+  PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
+
+  CHAPTER
+      I  A Family Group
+     II  Lucretia
+    III  Conferences
+     IV  Guy's Oak
+      V  Household Treason
+     VI  The Will
+    VII  The Engagement
+   VIII  The Discovery
+     IX  A Soul without Hope
+      X  The Reconciliation between Father and Son
+
+  EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST
+
+ PART THE SECOND
+
+  PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
+
+      I  The Coronation
+     II  Love at First Sight
+    III  Early Training for an Upright Gentleman
+     IV  John Ardworth
+      V  The Weavers and the Woof
+     VI  The Lawyer and the Body-snatcher
+    VII  The Rape of the Mattress
+   VIII  Percival visits Lucretia
+     IX  The Rose beneath the Upas
+      X  The Rattle of the Snake
+     XI  Love and Innocence
+    XII  Sudden Celebrity and Patient Hope
+   XIII  The Loss of the Crossing
+    XIV  News from Grabman
+     XV  Varieties
+    XVI  The Invitation to Laughton
+   XVII  The Waking of the Serpent
+  XVIII  Retrospect
+    XIX  Mr. Grabman's Adventures
+     XX  More of Mrs. Joplin
+    XXI  Beck's Discovery
+   XXII  The Tapestry Chamber
+  XXIII  The Shades on the Dial
+   XXIV  Murder, towards his Design, moves like a Ghost
+    XXV  The Messenger speeds
+   XXVI  The Spy flies
+  XXVII  Lucretia regains her Son
+ XXVIII  The Lots vanish within the Urn
+
+  EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND
+
+
+
+LUCRETIA; OR, THE CHILDREN OF NIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+PART THE FIRST.
+
+
+PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
+
+In an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man,
+whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered with
+papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of a mind
+fond of order and habituated to business.  Behind him rose a tall
+bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were
+filled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which the
+greater number were on chemistry and medicine.  There were to be seen
+also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, some
+English philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts in Arabic.  The
+absence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemed
+to denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from the
+strife and passions of the Revolution.  This supposition was, however,
+disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally and
+laconically labelled "Reports on Lyons," and by packets of letters in the
+handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon.  At one of the windows a young
+boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared to excite the
+curiosity of the person just described; for this last, after examining
+the child's movements for a few moments with a silent scrutiny that
+betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholy affection
+with which busy man is apt to regard childhood, rose noiselessly from his
+seat, approached the boy, and looked over his shoulder unobserved.  In a
+crevice of the wood by the window, a huge black spider had formed his
+web; the child had just discovered another spider, and placed it in the
+meshes: he was watching the result of his operations.  The intrusive
+spider stood motionless in the midst of the web, as if fascinated.  The
+rightful possessor was also quiescent; but a very fine ear might have
+caught a low, humming sound, which probably augured no hospitable
+intentions to the invader.  Anon, the stranger insect seemed suddenly to
+awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, and turned to fly; the huge
+spider darted forward; the boy uttered a chuckle of delight.  The man's
+pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, and he glided back to his seat.
+There, leaning his face on his hand, he continued to contemplate the
+child.  That child might have furnished to an artist a fitting subject
+for fair and blooming infancy.  His light hair, tinged deeply, it is
+true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering abundance down his neck and
+shoulders.  His features, seen in profile, were delicately and almost
+femininely proportioned; health glowed on his cheek, and his form, slight
+though it was, gave promise of singular activity and vigour.  His dress
+was fantastic, and betrayed the taste of some fondly foolish mother; but
+the fine linen, trimmed with lace, was rumpled and stained, the velvet
+jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with dust,--slight tokens these of
+neglect, but serving to show that the foolish fondness which had invented
+the dress had not of late presided over the toilet.
+
+"Child," said the man, first in French; and observing that the boy heeded
+him not,--"child," he repeated in English, which he spoke well, though
+with a foreign accent, "child!"
+
+The boy turned quickly.
+
+"Has the great spider devoured the small one?"
+
+"No, sir," said the boy, colouring; "the small one has had the best of
+it."
+
+The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaning to
+his words,--at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passed over
+his high, thoughtful brow.
+
+"Spiders, then," he said, after a short pause, "are different from men;
+with us, the small do not get the better of the great.  Hum! do you still
+miss your mother?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.
+
+"Well, you will see her once again."
+
+"When?"
+
+The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--"Before that clock
+strikes.  Now, go back to your spiders."  The child looked irresolute and
+disinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowly
+over the man's face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept
+back to the window.
+
+The father--for such was the relation the owner of the room bore to the
+child--drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutes
+rapidly.  Then starting up, he glanced at the clock, took his hat and
+cloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantle till
+it almost concealed his countenance, and said, "Now, boy, come with me; I
+have promised to show you an execution: I am going to keep my promise.
+Come!"
+
+The boy clapped his hands with joy; and you might see then, child as he
+was, that those fair features were capable of a cruel and ferocious
+expression.  The character of the whole face changed.  He caught up his
+gay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.
+
+Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone.  At a
+distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense as throng after
+throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in the
+light blue air.  As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, for
+the first time, took his child's hand.  "I must get you a good place for
+the show," he said, with a quiet smile.
+
+There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearing
+of the man that made the crowd give way as he passed.  They got near the
+dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded with
+eager spectators.
+
+And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the
+tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded
+the procession of death.  The boy's whole attention was absorbed in
+expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed to
+French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of his
+mother's lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heed certain
+observations of the bystanders, which made his father's pale cheek grow
+paler.
+
+"What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher in the wagon.  "Scarce worth
+the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant
+marquis," answered a carpenter.  "Ah, a marquis!  Bon!  And the other?"
+
+"Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, but she
+is English."  And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of
+inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.
+
+"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt.  What did they discover?"
+
+A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and
+answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a
+proscrit.  The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.
+She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long loved
+her, and revenge is sweet."
+
+The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar of his
+cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish of the laugh
+that circled round him.
+
+"They are coming!  There they are!" cried the boy, in ecstatic
+excitement.
+
+"That's the way to bring up citizens," said the butcher, patting the
+child's shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge of
+the wagon.
+
+The crowd now abruptly gave way.  The tumbril was in sight.  A man, young
+and handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,
+looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn.  Though he wore the
+dress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his mien
+and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came out
+even more forcibly at the hour of death.  On the lip was that smile of
+gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless contempt of
+physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombs of the old
+regime.  Even the rude dress was worn with a certain air of foppery, and
+the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for the holiday of the
+headsman.  As the eyes of the young noble wandered over the fierce faces
+of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous triumph answered the
+look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme spoke his scorn of the
+canaille, the child's father lowered the collar of his cloak, and slowly
+raised his hat from his brow.  The eye of the marquis rested upon the
+countenance thus abruptly shown to him, and which suddenly became
+individualized amongst the crowd,--that eye instantly lost its calm
+contempt.  A shudder passed visibly over his frame, and his cheek grew
+blanched with terror.  The mob saw the change, but not the cause, and
+loud and louder rose their triumphant yell.  The sound recalled the pride
+of the young noble; he started, lifted his crest erect, and sought again
+to meet the look which had appalled him.  But he could no longer single
+it out among the crowd.  Hat and cloak once more hid the face of the foe,
+and crowds of eager heads intercepted the view.  The young marquis's lips
+muttered; he bent down, and then the crowd caught sight of his companion,
+who was being lifted up from the bottom of the tumbril, where she had
+flung herself in horror and despair.  The crowd grew still in a moment as
+the pale face of one, familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place
+to place in the dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence
+imploring life and pity.  How often had the sight of that face, not then
+pale and haggard, but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down
+the applause of the crowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now
+fevered by the thirst of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy
+movements of that exquisite form writhing now in no stage-mime agony!
+Plaything of the city, minion to the light amusement of the hour, frail
+child of Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee
+to the shambles?  Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to
+break thee upon the wheel?  A sense of the mockery of such an execution,
+of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a
+mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd.
+There was a low murmur of shame and indignation.  The dangerous sympathy
+of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance.  Hastily he made
+the sign to the headsman, and as he did so, a child's cry was heard in
+the English tongue,--"Mother!  Mother!"  The father's hand grasped the
+child's arm with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy's eyes;
+the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum
+and the tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his
+ear "Learn how they perish who betray me!"
+
+As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman,
+whose ear amidst the dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of her
+child's voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms of the
+headsman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A FAMILY GROUP.
+
+One July evening, at the commencement of the present century, several
+persons were somewhat picturesquely grouped along an old-fashioned
+terrace which skirted the garden-side of a manor-house that had
+considerable pretensions to baronial dignity.  The architecture was of
+the most enriched and elaborate style belonging to the reign of James the
+First: the porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window above,
+was encased with pilasters and reliefs at once ornamental and massive;
+and the large square tower in which it was placed was surmounted by a
+stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a scutcheon blazoned with the
+five-pointed stars which heralds recognize as the arms of St. John.  On
+either side this tower extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which
+was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high
+roof was partially concealed by a balustrade perforated not inelegantly
+into arabesque designs; and what architects call "the sky line" was
+broken with imposing effect by tall chimney-shafts of various form and
+fashion.  These wings terminated in angular towers similar to the centre,
+though kept duly subordinate to it both in size and decoration, and
+crowned with stone cupolas.  A low balustrade, of later date than that
+which adorned the roof, relieved by vases and statues, bordered the
+terrace, from which a double flight of steps descended to a smooth lawn,
+intersected by broad gravel-walks, shadowed by vast and stately cedars,
+and gently and gradually mingling with the wilder scenery of the park,
+from which it was only divided by a ha-ha.
+
+Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, sat the owner,
+Sir Miles St. John of Laughton, a comely old man, dressed with faithful
+precision to the costume which he had been taught to consider appropriate
+to his rank of gentleman, and which was not yet wholly obsolete and
+eccentric.  His hair, still thick and luxuriant, was carefully powdered,
+and collected into a club behind; his nether man attired in gray breeches
+and pearl-coloured silk stockings; his vest of silk, opening wide at the
+breast, and showing a profusion of frill, slightly sprinkled with the
+pulvilio of his favourite Martinique; his three-cornered hat, placed on a
+stool at his side, with a gold-headed crutch-cane (hat made rather to be
+carried in the hand than worn on the head), the diamond in his shirt-
+breast, the diamond on his finger, the ruffles at his wrist,--all bespoke
+the gallant who had chatted with Lord Chesterfield and supped with Mrs.
+Clive.  On a table before him were placed two or three decanters of wine,
+the fruits of the season, an enamelled snuff-box in which was set the
+portrait of a female (perhaps the Chloe or Phyllis of his early love-
+ditties), a lighted taper, a small china jar containing tobacco, and
+three or four pipes of homely clay,--for cherry-sticks and meerschaums
+were not then in fashion, and Sir Miles St. John, once a gay and
+sparkling beau, now a popular country gentleman, great at county meetings
+and sheep-shearing festivals, had taken to smoking, as in harmony with
+his bucolic transformation.  An old setter lay dozing at his feet; a
+small spaniel--old, too--was sauntering lazily in the immediate
+neighbourhood, looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had
+been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise, and which hitherto had
+escaped his attention.  Half seated, half reclined on the balustrade,
+apart from the baronet, but within reach of his conversation, lolled a
+man in the prime of life, with an air of unmistakable and sovereign
+elegance and distinction.  Mr. Vernon was a guest from London; and the
+London man,--the man of clubs and dinners and routs, of noon loungings
+through Bond Street, and nights spent with the Prince of Wales,--seemed
+stamped not more upon the careful carelessness of his dress, and upon the
+worn expression of his delicate features, than upon the listless ennui,
+which, characterizing both his face and attitude, appeared to take pity
+on himself for having been entrapped into the country.
+
+Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we
+designed, by the words "listless ennui," to depict the slumberous
+insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man to
+whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that fills
+up the intervals of excitement.  At that day the word blast was unknown;
+men had not enough sentiment for satiety.  There was a kind of
+Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among whom
+Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was a day of deep
+drinking, of high play, of jovial, reckless dissipation, of strong
+appetite for fun and riot, of four-in-hand coachmanship, of prize-
+fighting, of a strange sort of barbarous manliness that strained every
+nerve of the constitution,--a race of life in which three fourths of the
+competitors died half-way in the hippodrome.  What is now the Dandy was
+then the Buck; and something of the Buck, though subdued by a chaster
+taste than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was apparent in Mr.
+Vernon's costume as well as air.  Intricate folds of muslin, arranged in
+prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, which Brummell had not yet
+arisen to reform; his hat, of a very peculiar shape, low at the crown and
+broad at the brim, was worn with an air of devil-me-care defiance; his
+watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of rings and seals, hung low from
+his white waistcoat; and the adaptation of his nankeen inexpressibles to
+his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece of art.  His whole dress and air
+was not what could properly be called foppish, it was rather what at that
+time was called "rakish."  Few could so closely approach vulgarity
+without being vulgar: of that privileged few, Mr. Vernon was one of the
+elect.
+
+Farther on, and near the steps descending into the garden, stood a man in
+an attitude of profound abstraction, his arms folded, his eyes bent on
+the ground, his brows slightly contracted; his dress was a plain black
+surtout, and pantaloons of the same colour.  Something both in the
+fashion of the dress, and still more in the face of the man, bespoke the
+foreigner.
+
+Sir Miles St. John was an accomplished person for that time of day.  He
+had made the grand tour; he had bought pictures and statues; he spoke and
+wrote well in the modern languages; and being rich, hospitable, social,
+and not averse from the reputation of a patron, he had opened his house
+freely to the host of emigrants whom the French Revolution had driven to
+our coasts.  Olivier Dalibard, a man of considerable learning and rare
+scientific attainments, had been tutor in the house of the Marquis de
+G----, a French nobleman known many years before to the old baronet.  The
+marquis and his family had been among the first emigres at the outbreak
+of the Revolution.  The tutor had remained behind; for at that time no
+danger appeared to threaten those who pretended to no other aristocracy
+than that of letters.  Contrary, as he said, with repentant modesty, to
+his own inclinations, he had been compelled, not only for his own safety,
+but for that of his friends, to take some part in the subsequent events
+of the Revolution,--a part far from sincere, though so well had he
+simulated the patriot that he had won the personal favour and protection
+of Robespierre; nor till the fall of that virtuous exterminator had he
+withdrawn from the game of politics and effected in disguise his escape
+to England.  As, whether from kindly or other motives, he had employed
+the power of his position in the esteem of Robespierre to save certain
+noble heads from the guillotine,--amongst others, the two brothers of the
+Marquis de G----, he was received with grateful welcome by his former
+patrons, who readily pardoned his career of Jacobinism from their belief
+in his excuses and their obligations to the services which that very
+career had enabled him to render to their kindred.  Olivier Dalibard had
+accompanied the marquis and his family in one of the frequent visits they
+paid to Laughton; and when the marquis finally quitted England, and fixed
+his refuge at Vienna, with some connections of his wife's, he felt a
+lively satisfaction at the thought of leaving his friend honourably, if
+unambitiously, provided for as secretary and librarian to Sir Miles St.
+John.  In fact, the scholar, who possessed considerable powers of
+fascination, had won no less favour with the English baronet than he had
+with the French dictator.  He played well both at chess and backgammon;
+he was an extraordinary accountant; he had a variety of information upon
+all points that rendered him more convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir
+Miles's library; and as he spoke both English and Italian with a
+correctness and fluency extremely rare in a Frenchman, he was of
+considerable service in teaching languages to, as well as directing the
+general literary education of, Sir Miles's favourite niece, whom we shall
+take an early opportunity to describe at length.
+
+Nevertheless, there had been one serious obstacle to Dalibard's
+acceptance of the appointment offered to him by Sir Miles.  Dalibard had
+under his charge a young orphan boy of some ten or twelve years old,--a
+boy whom Sir Miles was not long in suspecting to be the scholar's son.
+This child had come from France with Dalibard, and while the marquis's
+family were in London, remained under the eye and care of his guardian or
+father, whichever was the true connection between the two.  But this
+superintendence became impossible if Dalibard settled in Hampshire with
+Sir Miles St. John, and the boy remained in London; nor, though the
+generous old gentleman offered to pay for the child's schooling, would
+Dalibard consent to part with him.  At last the matter was arranged: the
+boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet so well
+mannered, that he became a favourite, and was now fairly quartered in the
+house with his reputed father; and not to make an unnecessary mystery of
+this connection, such was in truth the relationship between Olivier
+Dalibard and Honore Gabriel Varney,--a name significant of the double and
+illegitimate origin: a French father, an English mother.  Dropping,
+however, the purely French appellation of Honore, he went familiarly by
+that of Gabriel.  Half-way down the steps stood the lad, pencil and
+tablet in hand, sketching.  Let us look over his shoulder: it is his
+father's likeness,--a countenance in itself not very remarkable at the
+first glance, for the features were small; but when examined, it was one
+that most persons, women especially, would have pronounced handsome, and
+to which none could deny the higher praise of thought and intellect.  A
+native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his veins,--for his
+grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had married into a Florentine
+family settled at Leghorn,--the dark complexion common with those in the
+South had been subdued, probably by the habits of the student, into a
+bronze and steadfast paleness which seemed almost fair by the contrast of
+the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the still darker brows which
+hung thick and prominent over clear gray eyes.  Compared with the
+features, the skull was disproportionally large, both behind and before;
+and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more favourable to the
+power than the tenderness of the Provencal's character from the compact
+closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness of the iron jaw.
+But the son's sketch exaggerated every feature, and gave to the
+expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least, apparent in
+the quiet and meditative aspect.  Gabriel himself, as be stood, would
+have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is true that he was
+small for his years; but his frame had a vigour in its light proportions
+which came from a premature and almost adolescent symmetry of shape and
+muscular development.  The countenance, however, had much of effeminate
+beauty: the long hair reached the shoulders, but did not curl,--straight,
+fine, and glossy as a girl's, and in colour of the pale auburn, tinged
+with red, which rarely alters in hue as childhood matures to man; the
+complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair.  Nevertheless, there was
+something so hard in the lip, so bold, though not open, in the brow, that
+the girlishness of complexion, and even of outline, could not leave, on
+the whole, an impression of effeminacy.  All the hereditary keenness and
+intelligence were stamped upon his face at that moment; but the
+expression had also a large share of the very irony and malice which he
+had conveyed to his caricature.  The drawing itself was wonderfully
+vigorous and distinct; showing great artistic promise, and done with the
+rapidity and ease which betrayed practice.  Suddenly his father turned,
+and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his tablet in his vest;
+and the sinister expression of his face smoothed into a timorous smile as
+his eye encountered Dalibard's.  The father beckoned to the boy, who
+approached with alacrity.  "Gabriel," whispered the Frenchman, in his own
+tongue, "where are they at this moment?"
+
+The boy pointed silently towards one of the cedars.  Dalibard mused an
+instant, and then, slowly descending the steps, took his noiseless way
+over the smooth turf towards the tree.  Its boughs drooped low and spread
+wide; and not till he was within a few paces of the spot could his eye
+perceive two forms seated on a bench under the dark green canopy.  He
+then paused and contemplated them.
+
+The one was a young man whose simple dress and subdued air strongly
+contrasted the artificial graces and the modish languor of Mr. Vernon;
+but though wholly without that nameless distinction which sometimes
+characterizes those conscious of pure race and habituated to the
+atmosphere of courts, he had at least Nature's stamp of aristocracy in a
+form eminently noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty, which
+were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest timidity.  He
+seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect to his companion, a young
+female by his side, who was speaking to him with an earnestness visible
+in her gestures and her animated countenance.  And though there was much
+to notice in the various persons scattered over the scene, not one,
+perhaps,--not the graceful Vernon, not the thoughtful scholar, nor his
+fair-haired, hard-lipped son, not even the handsome listener she
+addressed,--no, not one there would so have arrested the eye, whether of
+a physiognomist or a casual observer, as that young girl, Sir Miles St.
+John's favourite niece and presumptive heiress.
+
+But as at that moment the expression of her face differed from that
+habitual to it, we defer its description.
+
+"Do not," such were her words to her companion,--"do not alarm yourself
+by exaggerating the difficulties; do not even contemplate them: those be
+my care.  Mainwaring, when I loved you; when, seeing that your diffidence
+or your pride forbade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the
+modesty or the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, 'Forget that I am
+the reputed heiress of Laughton, see in me but the faults and merits of
+the human being, of the wild unregulated girl, see in me but Lucretia
+Clavering'" (here her cheeks blushed, and her voice sank into a lower and
+more tremulous whisper) "'and love her if you can!'--when I went thus
+far, do not think I had not measured all the difficulties in the way of
+our union, and felt that I could surmount them."
+
+"But," answered Mainwaring, hesitatingly, "can you conceive it possible
+that your uncle ever will consent?  Is not pride--the pride of family--
+almost the leading attribute of his character?  Did he not discard your
+mother--his own sister--from his house and heart for no other offence but
+a second marriage which he deemed beneath her?  Has he ever even
+consented to see, much less to receive, your half-sister, the child of
+that marriage?  Is not his very affection for you interwoven with his
+pride in you, with his belief in your ambition?  Has he not summoned your
+cousin, Mr. Vernon, for the obvious purpose of favouring a suit which he
+considers worthy of you, and which, if successful, will unite the two
+branches of his ancient house?  How is it possible that he can ever hear
+without a scorn and indignation which would be fatal to your fortunes
+that your heart has presumed to choose, in William Mainwaring, a man
+without ancestry or career?"
+
+"Not without career," interrupted Lucretia, proudly.  "Do you think if
+you were master of Laughton that your career would not be more brilliant
+than that of yon indolent, luxurious coxcomb?  Do you think that I could
+have been poor-hearted enough to love you if I had not recognized in you
+energies and talents that correspond with my own ambition?  For I am
+ambitious, as you know, and therefore my mind, as well as my heart, went
+with my love for you."
+
+"Ah, Lucretia, but can Sir Miles St. John see my future rise in my
+present obscurity?"
+
+"I do not say that he can, or will; but if you love me, we can wait.  Do
+not fear the rivalry of Mr. Vernon.  I shall know how to free myself from
+so tame a peril.  We can wait,--my uncle is old; his habits preclude the
+chance of a much longer life; he has already had severe attacks.  We are
+young, dear Mainwaring: what is a year or two to those who hope?"
+Mainwaring's face fell, and a displeasing chill passed through his veins.
+Could this young creature, her uncle's petted and trusted darling, she
+who should be the soother of his infirmities, the prop of his age, the
+sincerest mourner at his grave, weigh coldly thus the chances of his
+death, and point at once to the altar and the tomb?
+
+He was saved from the embarrassment of reply by Dalibard's approach.
+
+"More than half an hour absent," said the scholar, in his own language,
+with a smile; and drawing out his watch, he placed it before their eyes.
+"Do you not think that all will miss you?  Do you suppose, Miss
+Clavering, that your uncle has not ere this asked for his fair niece?
+Come, and forestall him."  He offered his arm to Lucretia as he spoke.
+She hesitated a moment, and then, turning to Mainwaring, held out her
+hand.  He pressed it, though scarcely with a lover's warmth; and as she
+walked back to the terrace with Dalibard, the young man struck slowly
+into the opposite direction, and passing by a gate over a foot-bridge
+that led from the ha-ha into the park, bent his way towards a lake which
+gleamed below at some distance, half-concealed by groves of venerable
+trees rich with the prodigal boughs of summer.  Meanwhile, as they passed
+towards the house, Dalibard, still using his native tongue, thus accosted
+his pupil:--
+
+"You must pardon me if I think more of your interests than you do; and
+pardon me no less if I encroach on your secrets and alarm your pride.
+This young man,--can you be guilty of the folly of more than a passing
+caprice for his society, of more than the amusement of playing with his
+vanity?  Even if that be all, beware of entangling yourself in your own
+meshes."
+
+"You do in truth offend me," said Lucretia, with calm haughtiness, "and
+you have not the right thus to speak to me."
+
+"Not the right," repeated the Provencal, mournfully, "not the right!
+Then, indeed, I am mistaken in my pupil.  Do you consider that I would
+have lowered my pride to remain here as a dependent; that, conscious of
+attainments, and perhaps of abilities, that should win their way, even in
+exile, to distinction, I would have frittered away my life in these
+rustic shades,--if I had not formed in you a deep and absorbing interest?
+In that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you.  I saw, or
+fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own; a mind above the
+frivolities of your sex,--a mind, in short, with the grasp and energy of
+a man's.  You were then but a child, you are scarcely yet a woman; yet
+have I not given to your intellect the strong food on which the statesmen
+of Florence fed their pupil-princes, or the noble Jesuits the noble men
+who were destined to extend the secret empire of the imperishable
+Loyola?"
+
+"You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I own," answered
+Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her voice: "and in the
+knowledge you have communicated I felt a charm that at times seems to me
+to be only fatal.  You have confounded in my mind evil and good, or
+rather, you have left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and
+cinder of a crucible.  You have made intellect the only conscience.  Of
+late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!"
+
+"Of late, since you have listened to the pastorals of that meek Corydon!"
+
+"Dare you despise him?  And for what?  That he is good and honest?"
+
+"I despise him, not because he is good and honest, but because he is of
+the common herd of men, without aim or character.  And it is for this
+youth that you will sacrifice your fortunes, your ambition, the station
+you were born to fill and have been reared to improve,--this youth in
+whom there is nothing but the lap-dog's merit, sleekness and beauty!  Ay,
+frown,--the frown betrays you; you love him!"
+
+"And if I do?" said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its utmost height,
+and haughtily facing her inquisitor,--"and, if I do, what then?  Is he
+unworthy of me?  Converse with him, and you will find that the noble form
+conceals as high a spirit.  He wants but wealth: I can give it to him.
+If his temper is gentle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and power.  He
+at least has education and eloquence and mind.  What has Mr. Vernon?"
+
+"Mr. Vernon?  I did not speak of him!"
+
+Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal's countenance,--gazed with that
+unpitying air of triumph with which a woman who detects a power over the
+heart she does not desire to conquer exults in defeating the reasons that
+heart appears to her to prompt.  "No," she said in a calm voice, to which
+the venom of secret irony gave stinging significance,--"no, you spoke not
+of Mr. Vernon; you thought that if I looked round, if I looked nearer, I
+might have a fairer choice."
+
+"You are cruel, you are unjust," said Dalibard, falteringly.  If I once
+presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence?  But," he added
+hurriedly, "in me,--much as you appear to despise me,--in me, at least,
+you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you seriously
+set your heart on Mainwaring."
+
+"You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier
+Dalibard?"
+
+"I think and I know," answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding
+the taunt, "that if you had deigned to render me--poor exile that I am!--
+the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of Laughton."
+
+"So you have said and urged," said Lucretia, with evident curiosity in
+her voice; "yet how, and by what art,--wise and subtle as you are,--could
+you have won my uncle's consent?"
+
+"That is my secret," returned Dalibard, gloomily; "and since the madness
+I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that
+nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may
+call paternal rests there,--let us pass from this painful subject.  Oh,
+my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in the
+dark and complicated history of actual life,--a brief enchantment, not to
+be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all.  Look round the
+world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten years
+afterwards, whither has the passion flown?  With a few, indeed, where
+there is community of object and character, new excitements, new aims and
+hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the passion
+continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres.  But deceive
+yourself not; there is no such community between you and Mainwaring.
+What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to despise as
+feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too soon, will
+shudder at as unwomanly and hateful."
+
+"Hold!" cried Lucretia, tremulously.  "Hold! and if he does, I shall owe
+his hate to you,--to your lessons; to your deadly influence!"
+
+"Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you.  Can cultivation force from the
+soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?"
+
+"I will pluck out the weeds!  I will transform myself!"
+
+"Child, I defy you!" said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his face
+the expression his son had conveyed to it. "I have warned you, and my
+task is done."  With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the side
+of Sir Miles St. John; and the baronet and his librarian, a few moments
+after, entered the house and sat down to chess.
+
+But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not suppose that Sir
+Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the sensual gratification
+bestowed upon Europe by the immortal Raleigh as to neglect his guest and
+kinsman.
+
+"And so, Charley Vernon, it is not the fashion to smoke in Lunnon."  Thus
+Sir Miles pronounced the word, according to the Euphuism of his youth,
+and which, even at that day, still lingered in courtly jargon.
+
+"No, sir.  However, to console us, we have most other vices in full
+force."
+
+"I don't doubt it; they say the prince's set exhaust life pretty
+quickly."
+
+"It certainly requires the fortune of an earl and the constitution of a
+prize-fighter to live with him."
+
+"Yet methinks, Master Charley, you have neither the one nor the other."
+
+"And therefore I see before me, and at no very great distance, the Bench
+and--a consumption!" answered Vernon, suppressing a slight yawn.
+
+"'T is a pity, for you had a fine estate, properly managed; and in spite
+of your faults, you have the heart of a true gentleman.  Come, come!" and
+the old man spoke with tenderness, "you are young enough yet to reform.
+A prudent marriage and a good wife will save both your health and your
+acres."
+
+"If you think so highly of marriage, my dear Sir Miles, it is a wonder
+you did not add to your precepts the value of your example."
+
+"Jackanapes!  I had not your infirmities: I never was a spendthrift, and
+I have a constitution of iron!" There was a pause.  "Charles," continued
+Sir Miles, musingly, "there is many an earl with a less fortune than the
+conjoined estates of Vernon Grange and Laughton Hall.  You must already
+have understood me: it is my intention to leave my estates to Lucretia;
+it is my wish, nevertheless, to think you will not be the worse for my
+will.  Frankly, if you can like my niece, win her; settle here while I
+live, put the Grange to nurse, and recruit yourself by fresh air and
+field-sports.  Zounds, Charles, I love you, and that's the truth!  Give
+me your hand!"
+
+"And a grateful heart with it, sir," said Vernon, warmly, evidently
+affected, as he started from his indolent position and took the hand
+extended to him.  "Believe me, I do not covet your wealth, nor do I envy
+my cousin anything so much as the first place in your regard."
+
+"Prettily said, my boy, and I don't suspect you of insincerity.  What
+think you, then, of my plan?"
+
+Mr. Vernon seemed embarrassed; but recovering himself with his usual
+ease, he replied archly: "Perhaps, sir, it will be of little use to know
+what I think of your plan; my fair cousin may have upset it already."
+
+"Ha, sir! let me look at you.  So, so! you are not jesting.  What the
+deuce do you mean?  'Gad, man, speak out!"
+
+"Do you not think that Mr. Monderling--Mandolin--what's his name, eh?--do
+you not think that he is a very handsome young fellow?" said Mr. Vernon,
+drawing out his snuffbox and offering it to his kinsman.
+
+"Damn your snuff," quoth Sir Miles, in great choler, as he rejected the
+proffered courtesy with a vehemence that sent half the contents of the
+box upon the joint eyes and noses of the two canine favourites dozing at
+his feet.  The setter started up in an agony; the spaniel wheezed and
+sniffled and ran off, stopping every moment to take his head between his
+paws.  The old gentleman continued without heeding the sufferings of his
+dumb friends,--a symptom of rare discomposure on his part.
+
+"Do you mean to insinuate, Mr. Vernon, that my niece--my elder niece,
+Lucretia Clavering--condescends to notice the looks, good or bad, of Mr.
+Mainwaring?  'Sdeath, sir, he is the son of a land-agent!  Sir, he is
+intended for trade!  Sir, his highest ambition is to be partner in some
+fifth-rate mercantile house!"
+
+"My dear Sir Miles," replied Mr. Vernon, as he continued to brush away,
+with his scented handkerchief, such portions of the prince's mixture as
+his nankeen inexpressibles had diverted from the sensual organs of Dash
+and Ponto--"my dear Sir Miles, ca n'empeche pas le sentiment!"
+
+"Empeche the fiddlestick!  You don't know Lucretia.  There are many
+girls, indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing
+spark, with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those;
+she has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she
+has the mind and will of a queen,--old Queen Bess, I believe."
+
+"That is saying much for her talent, sir; but if so, Heaven help her
+intended!  I am duly grateful for the blessings you propose me!"
+
+Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling.
+
+"Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we men of the
+world know how to govern women, I hope,--much more how to break in a girl
+scarce out of her teens.  As for this fancy of yours, it is sheer folly:
+Lucretia knows my mind.  She has seen her mother's fate; she has seen her
+sister an exile from my house.  Why?  For no fault of hers, poor thing,
+but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother's sin is visited
+on her daughter's head.  I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as men go; but
+I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race.  If Lucretia demeaned
+herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike her from my
+will, and put your name where I have placed hers."
+
+"Sir," said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of
+manner, "this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a
+doubt by which it now seems I might benefit.  I think it imprudent, if
+you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her hand,
+to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to myself, and
+to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own years, well
+educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior birth in his
+appearance or his breeding.  I have not the least ground for supposing
+that he has made the slightest impression on Miss Clavering, and if he
+has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl's innocent and thoughtless fancy,
+easily shaken off by time and worldly reflection; but pardon me if I say
+bluntly that should that be so, you would be wholly unjustified in
+punishing, even in blaming, her,--it is yourself you must blame for your
+own carelessness and that forgetful blindness to human nature and
+youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable in one who
+has known the world so intimately."
+
+"Charles Vernon," said the old baronet, "give me your hand again!  I was
+right, at least, when I said you had the heart of a true gentleman.  Drop
+this subject for the present.  Who has just left Lucretia yonder?"
+
+"Your protege, the Frenchman."
+
+"Ah, he, at least, is not blind; go and join Lucretia!"
+
+Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a tumbler, drank
+the contents at a draught, and sauntered towards Lucretia; but she,
+perceiving his approach, crossed abruptly into one of the alleys that led
+to the other side of the house, and he was either too indifferent or too
+well-bred to force upon her the companionship which she so evidently
+shunned.  He threw himself at length upon one of the benches on the lawn,
+and leaning his head upon his hand, fell into reflections which, had he
+spoken, would have shaped themselves somewhat thus into words:--
+
+"If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage, shall I
+gain or lose?  I grant that she has the finest neck and shoulders I ever
+saw out of marble; but far from being in love with her, she gives me a
+feeling like fear and aversion.  Add to this that she has evidently no
+kinder sentiment for me than I for her; and if she once had a heart, that
+young gentleman has long since coaxed it away.  Pleasant auspices, these,
+for matrimony to a poor invalid who wishes at least to decline and to die
+in peace!  Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry as I pleased; if I
+were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to Laughton,--why, there is a
+certain sweet Mary in the world, whose eyes are softer than Lucretia
+Clavering's.  But that is a dream!  On the other hand, if I do not win
+this girl, and my poor kinsman give her all, or nearly all, his
+possessions, Vernon Grange goes to the usurers, and the king will find a
+lodging for myself.  What does it matter?  I cannot live above two or
+three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear stout
+old Sir Miles may outlive me.  At thirty-three I have worn out fortune
+and life; little pleasure could Laughton give me,--brief pain the Bench.
+'Fore Gad, the philosophy of the thing is on the whole against sour looks
+and the noose!"  Thus deciding in the progress of his revery, he smiled,
+and changed his position.  The sun had set, the twilight was over, the
+moon rose in splendour from amidst a thick copse of mingled beech and
+oak; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, and the face seemed
+yet paler and the exhaustion of premature decay yet more evident, by that
+still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by the moon.  This was
+a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their canvas,--the ruin,
+not of stone and brick,  but of humanity and spirit; the wreck of man
+prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not bowed by great toil,
+but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and poor excitements,--
+small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their gnome-like work.
+Something of the gravity and the true lesson of the hour and scene,
+perhaps, forced itself upon a mind little given to sentiment, for Vernon
+rose languidly and muttered,--
+
+"My poor mother hoped better things from me.  It is well, after all, that
+it is broken off with Mary.  Why should there be any one to weep for me?
+I can the better die smiling, as I have lived."
+
+Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the principal
+characters we have introduced through the course of an evening more or
+less eventful in the destiny of all, we return to Mainwaring and
+accompany him to the lake at the bottom of the park, which he reached as
+its smooth surface glistened in the last beams of the sun.  He saw, as he
+neared the water, the fish sporting in the pellucid tide; the dragonfly
+darted and hovered in the air; the tedded grass beneath his feet gave
+forth the fragrance of crushed thyme and clover; the swan paused, as if
+slumbering on the wave; the linnet and finch sang still from the
+neighbouring copses; and the heavy bees were winging their way home with
+a drowsy murmur.  All around were images of that unspeakable peace which
+Nature whispers to those attuned to her music; all fitted to lull, but
+not to deject, the spirit,--images dear to the holiday of the world-worn
+man, to the contemplation of serene and retired age, to the boyhood of
+poets, to the youth of lovers.  But Mainwaring's step was heavy, and his
+brow clouded, and Nature that evening was dumb to him.  At the margin of
+the lake stood a solitary angler who now, his evening's task done, was
+employed in leisurely disjointing his rod and whistling with much
+sweetness an air from one of Izaak Walton's songs.  Mainwaring reached
+the angler and laid his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"What sport, Ardworth?"
+
+"A few large roach with the fly, and one pike with a gudgeon,--a noble
+fellow!  Look at him!  He was lying under the reeds yonder; I saw his
+green back, and teased him into biting.  A heavenly evening!  I wonder
+you did not follow my example, and escape from a set where neither you
+nor I can feel very much at home, to this green banquet of Nature, in
+which at least no man sits below the salt-cellar.  The birds are an older
+family than the St. Johns, but they don't throw their pedigree in our
+teeth, Mainwaring."
+
+"Nay, nay, my good friend, you wrong old Sir Miles; proud he is, no
+doubt, but neither you nor I have had to complain of his insolence."
+
+"Of his insolence, certainly not; of his condescension, yes!  Hang it,
+William, it is his very politeness that galls me.  Don't you observe that
+with Vernon, or Lord A----, or Lord B----, or Mr. C----, he is easy and
+off-hand; calls them by their names, pats them on the shoulder, rates
+them, and swears at them if they vex him.  But with you and me and his
+French parasite, it is all stately decorum and punctilious courtesy: 'Mr.
+Mainwaring, I am delighted to see you;' 'Mr. Ardworth, as you are so
+near, dare I ask you to ring the bell?' 'Monsieur Dalibard, with the
+utmost deference, I venture to disagree with you.'  However, don't let my
+foolish susceptibility ruffle your pride.  And you, too, have a worthy
+object in view, which might well detain you from roach and jack-fish.
+Have you stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?"
+
+"Yes, stolen, as you say; and, like all thieves not thoroughly hardened,
+I am ashamed of my gains."
+
+"Sit down, my boy,--this is a bank in ten thousand; there, that old root
+to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your cushion: sit down and
+confess.  You have something on your mind that preys on you; we are old
+college friends,--out with it!"
+
+"There is no resisting you, Ardworth," said Mainwaring, smiling, and
+drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his
+companion.  "I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and
+perhaps I may profit by your advice.  You know, in the first place, that
+after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to
+which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,
+he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the
+choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering
+into the mercantile profession.  I chose the latter, and went to
+Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated into
+the elementary mysteries.  There I became acquainted with a good
+clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my
+time."
+
+"With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your
+father's ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure."
+
+"Not much of that, I fear."
+
+"Then the clergyman had a daughter?"
+
+"You are nearer the mark now," said Mainwaring, colouring,--"though it
+was not his daughter.  A young lady lived in his family, not even related
+to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich relation.
+In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but she was
+without an independence, and I not yet provided even with the substitute
+of money,--a profession.  I fancied (do not laugh at my vanity) that my
+feelings might be returned.  I was in alarm for her as well as myself; I
+sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining the consent of her
+rich relation, and was informed that he thought it hopeless.  I felt I
+had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and still less to
+entangle further (if I had chanced to touch at all) her affection.  I
+made an excuse to my father to leave the town, and returned home."
+
+"Prudent and honourable enough, so far; unlike me,--I should have run off
+with the girl, if she loved me, and old Plutus, the rascal, might have
+done his worst against Cupid.  But I interrupt you."
+
+"I came back when the county was greatly agitated,--public meetings,
+speeches, mobs; a sharp election going on.  My father had always taken
+keen interest in politics; he was of the same party as Sir Miles, who,
+you know, is red-hot upon politics.  I was easily led--partly by
+ambition, partly by the effect of example, partly by the hope to give a
+new turn to my thoughts--to make an appearance in public."
+
+"And a devilish creditable one too!  Why, man, your speeches have been
+quoted with rapture by the London papers.  Horribly aristocratic and
+Pittish, it is true,--I think differently; but every man to his taste.
+Well--"
+
+"My attempts, such as they were, procured me the favour of Sir Miles.  He
+had long been acquainted with my father, who had helped him in his own
+elections years ago.  He seemed cordially delighted to patronize the son;
+he invited me to visit him at Laughton, and hinted to my father that I
+was formed for something better than a counting-house: my poor father was
+intoxicated.  In a word, here I am; here, often for days, almost weeks,
+together, have I been a guest, always welcomed."
+
+"You pause.  This is the primordium,--now comes the confession, eh?"
+
+"Why, one half the confession is over.  It was my most unmerited fortune
+to attract the notice of Miss Clavering.  Do not fancy me so self-
+conceited as to imagine that I should ever have presumed so high, but
+for--"
+
+"But for encouragement,--I understand!  Well, she is a magnificent
+creature, in her way, and I do not wonder that she drove the poor little
+girl at Southampton out of your thoughts."
+
+"Ah!  but there is the sore,--I am not sure that she has done so.
+Ardworth, I may trust you?"
+
+"With everything but half-a-guinea.  I would not promise to be rock
+against so great a temptation!" and Ardworth turned his empty pockets
+inside out.
+
+"Tush! be serious, or I go."
+
+"Serious!  With pockets like these, the devil's in it if I am not
+serious.  Perge, precor."
+
+"Ardworth, then," said Mainwaring, with great emotion, "I confide to you
+the secret trouble of my heart.  This girl at Southampton is Lucretia's
+sister,--her half-sister; the rich relation on whose allowance she lives
+is Sir Miles St. John."
+
+"Whew! my own poor dear little cousin, by the father's side!  Mainwaring,
+I trust you have not deceived me; you have not amused yourself with
+breaking Susan's heart?  For a heart, and an honest, simple, English
+girl's heart she has."
+
+"Heaven forbid!  I tell you I have never even declared my love; and if
+love it were, I trust it is over.  But when Sir Miles was first kind to
+me, first invited me, I own I had the hope to win his esteem; and since
+he had always made so strong and cruel a distinction between Lucretia and
+Susan, I thought it not impossible that he might consent at last to my
+union with the niece he had refused to receive and acknowledge.  But even
+while the hope was in me, I was drawn on, I was entangled, I was spell-
+bound, I know not how or why; but, to close my confidence, while still
+doubtful whether my own heart is free from the remembrance of the one
+sister, I am pledged to the other."
+
+Ardworth looked down gravely and remained silent.  He was a joyous,
+careless, reckless youth, with unsteady character and pursuits, and with
+something of vague poetry, much of unaccommodating pride about his
+nature,--one of those youths little likely to do what is called well in
+the world; not persevering enough for an independent career, too blunt
+and honest for a servile one.  But it was in the very disposition of such
+a person to judge somewhat harshly of Mainwaring's disclosure, and not
+easily to comprehend what, after all, was very natural,--how a young man,
+new to life, timid by character, and of an extreme susceptibility to the
+fear of giving pain, had, in the surprise, the gratitude, the emotion, of
+an avowed attachment from a girl far above him in worldly position, been
+forced, by receiving, to seem, at least, to return her affection.  And,
+indeed, though not wholly insensible to the brilliant prospects opened to
+him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice, Mainwaring would have
+been equally entangled by a similar avowal from a girl more his equal in
+the world.  It was rather from an amiability bordering upon weakness,
+than from any more degrading moral imperfections, that he had been
+betrayed into a position which neither contented his heart nor satisfied
+his conscience.
+
+With far less ability than his friend, Ardworth had more force and
+steadiness in his nature, and was wholly free from that morbid delicacy
+of temperament to which susceptible and shy persons owe much of their
+errors and misfortunes.  He said, therefore, after a long pause: "My good
+fellow, to be plain with you, I cannot say that your confession has
+improved you in my estimation; but that is perhaps because of the
+bluntness of my understanding.  I could quite comprehend your forgetting
+Susan (and, after all, I am left in doubt as to the extent of her
+conquest over you) for the very different charms of her sister.  On the
+other hand, I could still better understand that, having once fancied
+Susan, you could not be commanded into love for Lucretia.  But I do not
+comprehend your feeling love for one, and making love to the other,--
+which is the long and short of the business."
+
+"That is not exactly the true statement," answered Mainwaring, with a
+powerful effort at composure.  "There are moments when, listening to
+Lucretia, when, charmed by that softness which, contrasting the rest of
+her character, she exhibits to none but me, struck by her great mental
+powers, proud of an unsought triumph over such a being, I feel as if I
+could love none but her; then suddenly her mood changes,--she utters
+sentiments that chill and revolt me; the very beauty seems vanished from
+her face.  I recall with a sigh the simple sweetness of Susan, and I feel
+as if I deceived both my mistress and myself.  Perhaps, however, all the
+circumstances of this connection tend to increase my doubts.  It is
+humiliating to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance;
+that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune; that I am eating Sir
+Miles's bread, and yet counting upon his death; and this shame in myself
+may make me unconsciously unjust to Lucretia.  But it is useless to
+reprove me for what is past; and though I at first imagined you could
+advise me for the future, I now see, too clearly, that no advice could
+avail."
+
+"I grant that too; for all you require is to make up your mind to be
+fairly off with the old love, or fairly on with the new.  However, now
+you have stated your case thus frankly, if you permit me, I will take
+advantage of the strange chance of finding myself here, and watch,
+ponder, and counsel, if I can.  This Lucretia, I own it, puzzles and
+perplexes me; but though no Oedipus, I will not take fright at the
+sphinx.  I suppose now it is time to return.  They expect some of the
+neighbours to drink tea, and I must doff my fishing-jacket.  Come!"
+
+As they strolled towards the house, Ardworth broke a silence which had
+lasted for some moments.
+
+"And how is that dear good Fielden?  I ought to have guessed him at once,
+when you spoke of your clergyman and his young charge; but I did not know
+he was at Southampton."
+
+"He has exchanged his living for a year, on account of his wife's health,
+and rather, I think also, with the wish to bring poor Susan nearer to
+Laughton, in the chance of her uncle seeing her.  But you are, then,
+acquainted with Fielden?"
+
+"Acquainted!--my best friend.  He was my tutor, and prepared me for Caius
+College.  I owe him, not only the little learning I have, but the little
+good that is left in me.  I owe to him apparently, also, whatever chance
+of bettering my prospects may arise from my visit to Laughton."
+
+"Notwithstanding our intimacy, we have, like most young men not related,
+spoken so little of our family matters that I do not now understand how
+you are cousin to Susan, nor what, to my surprise and delight, brought
+you hither three days ago."
+
+"Faith, my story is easier to explain than your own, William.  Here
+goes!"
+
+But as Ardworth's recital partially involves references to family matters
+not yet sufficiently known to the reader, we must be pardoned if we
+assume to ourselves his task of narrator, and necessarily enlarge on his
+details.
+
+The branch of the illustrious family of St. John represented by Sir
+Miles, diverged from the parent stem of the Lords of Bletshoe.  With them
+it placed at the summit of its pedigree the name of William de St. John,
+the Conqueror's favourite and trusted warrior, and Oliva de Filgiers.
+With them it blazoned the latter alliance, which gave to Sir Oliver St.
+John the lands of Bletshoe by the hand of Margaret Beauchamp (by her
+second marriage with the Duke of Somerset), grandmother to Henry VII.  In
+the following generation, the younger son of a younger son had founded,
+partly by offices of state, partly by marriage with a wealthy heiress, a
+house of his own; and in the reign of James the First, the St. Johns of
+Laughton ranked amongst the chief gentlemen of Hampshire.  From that time
+till the accession of George III the family, though it remained untitled,
+had added to its consequence by intermarriages of considerable dignity,--
+chosen, indeed, with a disregard for money uncommon amongst the English
+aristocracy; so that the estate was but little enlarged since the reign
+of James, though profiting, of course, by improved cultivation and the
+different value of money.  On the other hand, perhaps there were scarcely
+ten families in the country who could boast of a similar directness of
+descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest aristocracy of the
+soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost at the distance of
+eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral William.  His
+grandfather, nevertheless, had deviated from the usual disinterested
+practice of the family, and had married an heiress who brought the
+quarterings of Vernon to the crowded escutcheon, and with these
+quarterings an estate of some 4,000 pounds a year popularly known by the
+name of Vernon Grange.  This rare occurrence did not add to the domestic
+happiness of the contracting parties, nor did it lead to the ultimate
+increase of the Laughton possessions.  Two sons were born.  To the elder
+was destined the father's inheritance,--to the younger the maternal
+property.  One house is not large enough for two heirs.  Nothing could
+exceed the pride of the father as a St. John, except the pride of the
+mother as a Vernon.  Jealousies between the two sons began early and
+rankled deep; nor was there peace at Laughton till the younger had
+carried away from its rental the lands of Vernon Grange; and the elder
+remained just where his predecessors stood in point of possessions,--sole
+lord of Laughton sole.  The elder son, Sir Miles's father, had been,
+indeed, so chafed by the rivalry with his brother that in disgust he had
+run away and thrown himself, at the age of fourteen, into the navy.  By
+accident or by merit he rose high in that profession, acquired name and
+fame, and lost an eye and an arm,--for which he was gazetted, at the same
+time, an admiral and a baronet.
+
+Thus mutilated and dignified, Sir George St. John retired from the
+profession; and finding himself unmarried, and haunted by the
+apprehension that if he died childless, Laughton would pass to his
+brother's heirs, he resolved upon consigning his remains to the nuptial
+couch, previous to the surer peace of the family vault.  At the age of
+fifty-nine, the grim veteran succeeded in finding a young lady of
+unblemished descent and much marked with the small-pox, who consented to
+accept the only hand which Sir George had to offer.  From this marriage
+sprang a numerous family; but all died in early childhood, frightened to
+death, said the neighbours, by their tender parents (considered the
+ugliest couple in the county), except one boy (the present Sir Miles) and
+one daughter, many years younger, destined to become Lucretia's mother.
+Sir Miles came early into his property; and although the softening
+advance of civilization, with the liberal effects of travel and a long
+residence in cities, took from him that provincial austerity of pride
+which is only seen in stanch perfection amongst the lords of a village,
+he was yet little less susceptible to the duties of maintaining his
+lineage pure as its representation had descended to him than the most
+superb of his predecessors.  But owing, it was said, to an early
+disappointment, he led, during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory
+life, and so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial,
+until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determination to
+select from the other branches of his house the successor to the heritage
+of St. John.  In thus arrogating to himself a right to neglect his proper
+duties as head of a family, he found his excuse in adopting his niece
+Lucretia.  His sister had chosen for her first husband a friend and
+neighbour of his own, a younger son, of unexceptionable birth and of very
+agreeable manners in society.  But this gentleman contrived to render her
+life so miserable that, though he died fifteen months after their
+marriage, his widow could scarcely be expected to mourn long for him.  A
+year after Mr. Clavering's death, Mrs. Clavering married again, under the
+mistaken notion that she had the right to choose for herself.  She
+married Dr. Mivers, the provincial physician who had attended her husband
+in his last illness,--a gentleman by education, manners, and profession,
+but unhappily the son of a silk-mercer.  Sir Miles never forgave this
+connection.  By her first marriage, Sir Miles's sister had one daughter,
+Lucretia; by her second marriage, another daughter, named Susan.  She
+survived somewhat more than a year the birth of the latter.  On her
+death, Sir Miles formally (through his agent) applied to Dr. Mivers for
+his eldest niece, Lucretia Clavering, and the physician did not think
+himself justified in withholding from her the probable advantages of a
+transfer from his own roof to that of her wealthy uncle.  He himself had
+been no worldly gainer by his connection; his practice had suffered
+materially from the sympathy which was felt by the county families for
+the supposed wrongs of Sir Miles St. John, who was personally not only
+popular, but esteemed, nor less so on account of his pride,--too
+dignified to refer even to his domestic annoyances, except to his most
+familiar associates; to them, indeed, Sir Miles had said, briefly, that
+he considered a physician who abused his entrance into a noble family by
+stealing into its alliance was a character in whose punishment all
+society had an interest. The words were repeated; they were thought just.
+Those who ventured to suggest that Mrs. Clavering, as a widow, was a free
+agent, were regarded with suspicion.  It was the time when French
+principles were just beginning to be held in horror, especially in the
+provinces, and when everything that encroached upon the rights and
+prejudices of the high born was called "a French principle."  Dr. Mivers
+was as much scouted as if he had been a sans-culotte.  Obliged to quit
+the county, he settled at a distance; but he had a career to commence
+again; his wife's death enfeebled his spirits and damped his exertions.
+He did little more than earn a bare subsistence, and died at last, when
+his only daughter was fourteen, poor and embarrassed  On his death-bed he
+wrote a letter to Sir Miles reminding him that, after all, Susan was his
+sister's child, gently vindicating himself from the unmerited charge of
+treachery, which had blasted his fortunes and left his orphan penniless,
+and closing with a touching yet a manly appeal to the sole relative left
+to befriend her.  The clergyman who had attended him in his dying moments
+took charge of this letter; he brought it in person to Laughton, and
+delivered it to Sir Miles.  Whatever his errors, the old baronet was no
+common man.  He was not vindictive, though he could not be called
+forgiving.  He had considered his conduct to his sister a duty owed to
+his name and ancestors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out
+of the pale of his family.  He would not receive as his niece the grand-
+daughter of a silk-mercer.  The relationship was extinct, as, in certain
+countries, nobility is forfeited by a union with an inferior class.  But,
+niece or not, here was a claim to humanity and benevolence, and never yet
+had appeal been made by suffering to his heart and purse in vain.
+
+He bowed his head over the letter as his eye came to the last line, and
+remained silent so long that the clergyman at last, moved and hopeful,
+approached and took his hand.  It was the impulse of a good man and a
+good priest. Sir Miles looked up in surprise; but the calm, pitying face
+bent on him repelled all return of pride.
+
+"Sir," he said tremulously, and he pressed the hand that grasped his own,
+"I thank you.  I am not fit at this moment to decide what to do; to-
+morrow you shall know.  And the man died poor,--not in want, not in
+want?"
+
+"Comfort yourself, worthy sir; he had at the last all that sickness and
+death require, except one assurance, which I ventured to whisper to him,-
+-I trust not too rashly,--that his daughter would not be left
+unprotected.  And I pray you to reflect, my dear sir, that--"
+
+Sir Miles did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence; he rose
+abruptly, and left the room.  Mr. Fielden (so the good priest was named)
+felt confident of the success of his mission; but to win it the more
+support, he sought Lucretia.  She was then seventeen: it is an age when
+the heart is peculiarly open to the household ties,--to the memory of a
+mother, to the sweet name of sister.  He sought this girl, he told his
+tale, and pleaded the sister's cause.  Lucretia heard in silence: neither
+eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her colour went and came.  This was the
+only sign that she was moved: moved, but how?  Fielden's experience in
+the human heart could not guess.  When he had done, she went quietly to
+her desk (it was in her own room that the conference took place), she
+unlocked it with a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocketbook and a
+case of jewels which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday.  "Let
+my sister have these; while I live she shall not want!"
+
+"My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks from you,--it
+is your affection, your sisterly heart, your intercession with her
+natural protector; these, in her name, I ask for,--'non gemmis, neque
+purpura venale, nec auro!'"
+
+Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the good man's
+face deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and said slowly,--
+
+"Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome?"
+
+Much startled by this question, Fielden answered:  "I never saw your
+mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of more than common
+comeliness."
+
+Lucretia's brows grew slightly compressed.  "And her education has been,
+of course, neglected?"
+
+"Certainly, in some points,--mathematics, for instance, and theology; but
+she knows what ladies generally know,--French and Italian, and such like.
+Dr. Mivers was not unlearned in the polite letters.  Oh, trust me, my
+dear young lady, she will not disgrace your family; she will justify your
+uncle's favour.  Plead for her!" And the good man clasped his hands.
+
+Lucretia's eyes fell musingly on the ground; but she resumed, after a
+short pause,--
+
+"What does my uncle himself say?"
+
+"Only that he will decide to-morrow."
+
+"I will see him;" and Lucretia left the room as for that object.  But
+when she had gained the stairs, she paused at the large embayed casement,
+which formed a niche in the landing-place, and gazed over the broad
+domains beyond; a stern smile settled, then, upon her lips,--the smile
+seemed to say, "In this inheritance I will have no rival."
+
+Lucretia's influence with Sir Miles was great, but here it was not
+needed.  Before she saw him he had decided on his course.  Her precocious
+and apparently intuitive knowledge of character detected at a glance the
+safety with which she might intercede.  She did so, and was chid into
+silence.
+
+The next morning, Sir Miles took the priest's arm and walked with him
+into the gardens.
+
+"Mr. Fielden," he said, with the air of a man who has chosen his course,
+and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from it, "if I followed my
+own selfish wishes, I should take home this poor child.  Stay, sir, and
+hear me,--I am no hypocrite, and I speak honestly.  I like young faces; I
+have no family of my own.  I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her; but a
+girl brought up in adversity might be a better nurse and a more docile
+companion,--let that pass.  I have reflected, and I feel that I cannot
+set to Lucretia--set to children unborn--the example of indifference to a
+name degraded and a race adulterated; you may call this pride or
+prejudice,--I view it differently.  There are duties due from an
+individual, duties due from a nation, duties due from a family; as my
+ancestors thought, so think I.  They left me the charge of their name, as
+the fief-rent by which I hold their lands.  'Sdeath, sir!--Pardon me the
+expletive;  I was about to say that if I am now a childless old man, it
+is because I have myself known temptation and resisted.  I loved, and
+denied myself what I believed my best chance of happiness, because the
+object of my attachment was not my equal.  That was a bitter struggle,--I
+triumphed, and I rejoice at it, though the result was to leave all
+thoughts of wedlock elsewhere odious and repugnant.  These principles of
+action have made a part of my creed as gentleman, if not as Christian.
+Now to the point.  I beseech you to find a fitting and reputable home for
+Miss--Miss Mivers," the lip slightly curled as the name was said; "I
+shall provide suitably for her maintenance.  When she marries, I will
+dower her, provided only and always that her choice fall upon one who
+will not still further degrade her lineage on her mother's side,--in a
+word, if she select a gentleman.  Mr. Fielden, on this subject I have no
+more to say."
+
+In vain the good clergyman, whose very conscience, as well as reason, was
+shocked by the deliberate and argumentative manner with which the baronet
+had treated the abandonment of his sister's child as an absolutely moral,
+almost religious, duty,--in vain he exerted himself to repel such
+sophisms and put the matter in its true light.  It was easy for him to
+move Sir Miles's heart,--that was ever gentle; that was moved already:
+but the crotchet in his head was impregnable.  The more touchingly he
+painted poor Susan's unfriended youth, her sweet character, and promising
+virtues, the more Sir Miles St. John considered himself a martyr to his
+principles, and the more obstinate in the martyrdom he became.  "Poor
+thing!  poor child!" he said often, and brushed a tear from his eyes;
+"a thousand pities!  Well, well, I hope she will be happy!  Mind, money
+shall never stand in the way if she have a suitable offer!"
+
+This was all the worthy clergyman, after an hour's eloquence, could
+extract from him.  Out of breath and out of patience, he gave in at last;
+and the baronet, still holding his reluctant arm, led him back towards
+the house.  After a prolonged pause, Sir Miles said abruptly: "I have
+been thinking that I may have unwittingly injured this man,--this
+Mivers,--while I deemed only that he injured me.  As to reparation to his
+daughter, that is settled; and after all, though I do not publicly
+acknowledge her, she is half my own niece."
+
+"Half?"
+
+"Half,--the father's side doesn't count, of course; and, rigidly
+speaking, the relationship is perhaps forfeited on the other.  However,
+that half of it I grant.  Zooks, sir, I say I grant it!  I beg you ten
+thousand pardons for my vehemence.  To return,--perhaps I can show at
+least that I bear no malice to this poor doctor.  He has relations of his
+own,--silk mercers; trade has reverses.  How are they off?"
+
+Perfectly perplexed by this very contradictory and paradoxical, yet, to
+one better acquainted with Sir Miles, very characteristic, benevolence,
+Fielden was some time before he answered.  "Those members of Dr. Mivers's
+family who are in trade are sufficiently prosperous; they have paid his
+debts,--they, Sir Miles, will receive his daughter."
+
+"By no means!" cried Sir Miles, quickly; then, recovering himself, he
+added, "or, if you think that advisable, of course all interference on my
+part is withdrawn."
+
+"Festina lente!--not so quick, Sir Miles.  I do not yet say that it is
+advisable,--not because they are silk-mercers, the which, I humbly
+conceive, is no sin to exclude them from gratitude for their proffered
+kindness, but because Susan, poor child, having been brought up in
+different habits, may feel a little strange, at least at first, with--"
+
+"Strange, yes; I should hope so!" interrupted Sir Miles, taking snuff
+with much energy.  "And, by the way, I am thinking that it would be well
+if you and Mrs. Fielden--you are married, sir?  That is right; clergymen
+all marry!--if you and Mrs. Fielden would take charge of her yourselves,
+it would be a great comfort to me to think her so well placed.  We
+differ, sir, but I respect you.  Think of this.  Well, then, the doctor
+has left no relations that I can aid in any way?"
+
+"Strange man!" muttered Fielden.  "Yes; I must not let one poor youth
+lose the opportunity offered by your--your--"
+
+"Never mind what; proceed.  One poor youth,--in the shop, of course?"
+
+"No; and by his father's side (since you so esteem such vanities) of an
+ancient family,--a sister of Dr. Mivers married Captain Ardworth."
+
+"Ardworth,--a goodish name; Ardworth of Yorkshire?"
+
+"Yes, of that family.  It was, of course, an imprudent marriage,
+contracted while he was only an ensign.  His family did not reject him,
+Sir Miles."
+
+"Sir, Ardworth is a good squire's family, but the name is Saxon; there is
+no difference in race between the head of the Ardworths, if he were a
+duke, and my gardener, John Hodge,--Saxon and Saxon, both.  His family
+did not reject him; go on."
+
+"But he was a younger son in a large family; both himself and his wife
+have known all the distresses common, they tell me, to the poverty of a
+soldier who has no resource but his pay.  They have a son.  Dr. Mivers,
+though so poor himself, took this boy, for he loved his sister dearly,
+and meant to bring him up to his own profession.  Death frustrated this
+intention.  The boy is high-spirited and deserving."
+
+"Let his education be completed; send him to the University; and I will
+see that he is put into some career of which his father's family would
+approve.  You need not mention to any one my intentions in this respect,
+not even to the lad.  And now, Mr. Fielden, I have done my duty,--at
+least, I think so.  The longer you honour my house, the more I shall be
+pleased and grateful; but this topic, allow me most respectfully to say,
+needs and bears no further comment.  Have you seen the last news from the
+army?"
+
+"The army!  Oh, fie, Sir Miles, I must speak one word more.  May not my
+poor Susan have at least the comfort to embrace her sister?"
+
+Sir Miles paused a moment, and struck his crutch-stick thrice firmly on
+the ground.
+
+"I see no great objection to that; but by the address of this letter,
+the poor girl is too far from Laughton to send Lucretia to her."
+
+"I can obviate that objection, Sir Miles.  It is my wish to continue to
+Susan her present home amongst my own children.  My wife loves her
+dearly; and had you consented to give her the shelter of your own roof,
+I am sure I should not have seen a smile in the house for a month after.
+If you permit this plan, as indeed you honoured me by suggesting it, I
+can pass through Southampton on my way to my own living in Devonshire,
+and Miss Clavering can visit her sister there."
+
+"Let it be so," said Sir Miles, briefly; and so the conversation closed.
+
+Some weeks afterwards, Lucretia went in her uncle's carriage, with four
+post-horses, with her maid and her footman,--went in the state and pomp
+of heiress to Laughton,--to the small lodging-house in which the kind
+pastor crowded his children and his young guest. She stayed there some
+days.  She did not weep when she embraced Susan, she did not weep when
+she took leave of her; but she showed no want of actual kindness, though
+the kindness was formal and stately.  On her return, Sir Miles forbore to
+question; but he looked as if he expected, and would willingly permit,
+her to speak on what might naturally be uppermost at her heart.
+Lucretia, however, remained silent, till at last the baronet, colouring,
+as if ashamed of his curiosity, said,--
+
+"Is your sister like your mother?"
+
+"You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my mother."
+
+"Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself."
+
+"She is not like you; they say she is like Dr. Mivers."
+
+"Oh!" said the baronet, and he asked no more.
+
+The sisters did not meet again; a few letters passed between them, but
+the correspondence gradually ceased.
+
+Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, who was no
+ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound mathematician,--a more
+important requisite than classical learning in a tutor for Cambridge.
+But Ardworth was idle, and perhaps even dissipated.  He took a common
+degree, and made some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a
+murmur.  A few letters then passed between the baronet and the clergyman
+as to Ardworth's future destiny; the latter owned that his pupil was not
+persevering enough for the Bar, nor steady enough for the Church.  These
+were no great faults in Sir Miles's eyes.  He resolved, after an effort,
+to judge himself of the capacities of the young man, and so came the
+invitation to Laughton.  Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden
+communicated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not conceived
+the slightest suspicion of his benefactor; he had rather, and naturally,
+supposed that some relation of his father's had paid for his maintenance
+at the University, and he knew enough of the family history to look upon
+Sir Miles as the proudest of men.  How was it, then, that he, who would
+not receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would invite the
+nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him?  However, his curiosity
+was excited, and Fielden was urgent that he should go; to Laughton,
+therefore, had he gone.
+
+We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative the general
+records of the family it concerns; we have reserved our account of the
+rearing and the character of the personage most important, perhaps, in
+the development of its events,--Lucretia Clavering,--in order to place
+singly before the reader the portrait of her dark, misguided, and ill-
+boding youth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LUCRETIA.
+
+When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was an
+infant about four years old.  The baronet then lived principally in
+London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a watering-
+place than to his own family mansion.  He did not pay any minute
+attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and
+her nursery airy and commodious.  When, at the age of seven, she began to
+interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to
+consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had
+not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was startled
+by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious, so
+obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently contemptuous
+of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her governess honestly
+came to him in despair.
+
+The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles.  It
+caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her much
+in his society, and always in his thoughts.  The result was, that by
+amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections
+than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of
+commonplace children.  Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a
+master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can
+venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so
+flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that nobody else
+can ride.  Extend this principle to the human species, and you may
+understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got at
+his heart through his vanity.  For though, at times, her brow darkened
+and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner in
+his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the
+subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her.  Was this affection?
+He thought so.  Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child's
+mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered conference
+between hirelings.  Was it possible that Lucretia had not often been
+menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle's
+displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss
+or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles's power
+over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon
+some menial's irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been
+told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant
+herself?  Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to dissimulate; and
+rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure and transparent as
+the fond parent deems them.  There is something in children, too, which
+seems like an instinctive deference to the aristocratic appearances which
+sway the world.  Sir Miles's stately person, his imposing dress, the
+respect with which he was surrounded, all tended to beget notions of
+superiority and power, to which it was no shame to succumb, as it was to
+Miss Black, the governess, whom the maids answered pertly, or Martha, the
+nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if Lucretia tore her frock.
+
+Sir Miles's affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded to
+her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding them
+leniently, there was much in Lucretia's external gifts which justified
+the predilection of the haughty man.  As a child she was beautiful, and,
+perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her beauty had that air of
+distinction which the love of command is apt to confer.  If Sir Miles was
+with his friends when Lucretia swept into the room, he was pleased to
+hear them call her their little "princess," and was pleased yet more at a
+certain dignified tranquillity with which she received their caresses or
+their toys, and which he regarded as the sign of a superior mind; nor was
+it long, indeed, before what we call "a superior mind" developed itself
+in the young Lucretia.  All children are quick till they are set
+methodically to study; but Lucretia's quickness defied even that numbing
+ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces.  Rapidity and precision
+in all the tasks set to her, in the comprehension of all the explanations
+given to her questions, evinced singular powers of readiness and
+reasoning.
+
+As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful.  Seeing but
+few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind
+was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the
+restless and wondrous observation, of childhood.  She came in and out of
+Sir Miles's library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening, till
+her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom; she
+listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own conclusions
+unchecked.  It has a great influence upon a child, whether for good or
+for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown up,--for good to
+the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the character and
+discretion of those the child sees and hears.  "Reverence the greatest is
+due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The
+sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that we must revere
+the candour and inexperience and innocence of their minds.
+
+Now, Sir Miles's habitual associates were persons of the world,--well-
+bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of the old school
+were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which the prudent matron
+would send her girls out of the room; but with that reserve speaking of
+the world as the world goes: if talking of young A----, calculating
+carelessly what he would have when old A----, his father, died; naturally
+giving to wealth and station and ability their fixed importance in life;
+not over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness; rather
+inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue; rarely speaking
+but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule mankind.  All these
+had their inevitable effect upon that keen, quick, yet moody and
+reflective intellect.
+
+Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton.  He gave up London,--why, he
+acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
+Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in.  He
+had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage of
+fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
+contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
+county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
+flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
+fresh.  He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
+his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
+was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
+during his youth.
+
+Lucretia was then thirteen.  Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard was
+established in the house; and from that time a great change became
+noticeable in her.  The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
+subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered the
+rare deviations from it more effective and imposing.  Her pride changed
+its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn to the
+low-born and the poor escaped her.  The masculine studies which her
+erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated her
+very errors above the petty distinctions of class.  She imbibed earnestly
+what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of the fallen
+angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity.  All belonging to the mere
+study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and practical in her
+very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave, web,
+and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own ingenuity and
+daring.  The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom teaches us to command
+temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once impetuous girl calm,
+tranquil, and serene.  Sir Miles was pleased by a change that removed
+from Lucretia's outward character its chief blot,--perhaps, as his frame
+declined, he sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there
+appeared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with the
+faults, and was content upon the whole.
+
+If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,
+the pains were not solely disinterested.  In plunging her mind amidst
+that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated in
+scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to serve.
+He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at the fruit
+which his training sought to mature.  In the human heart ill regulated
+there is a dark desire for the forbidden.  This Lucretia felt; this her
+studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over.  She detected, with the
+quickness of her sex, the preceptor's stealthy aim.  She started not at
+the danger.  Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in
+luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up her
+own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to pity him whom she
+had first contemplated with awe.  And with this mere pride of the
+understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had attained the
+years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power.  To inflame
+Dalibard's cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his heart,--that
+marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm.  Strange to say, she
+succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this dangerous and able
+man became enlisted in his hopes.  And now the game played between them
+had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the
+recesses of his pupil's complicated nature, she was far from having yet
+sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring, beneath his own.  Not
+through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her
+inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contemplated the path to his
+victory over her soul and her fate.  And so resolute, so wily, so
+unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys
+and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile
+with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear
+of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his
+mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he
+had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost
+purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had
+evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and impulse, conceived for
+Mainwaring.  And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia's life
+and destiny.  So interwoven with her nature had become the hard
+calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest
+for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot,
+and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the
+villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a
+character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and well-placed
+love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless
+energies, the woman's natural field in sympathies for another.  The
+heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the
+interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and ingenuous
+mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had
+their redeeming and hallowing influence.  Happier, indeed, had it been,
+if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty nature!  But
+perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of Mainwaring's
+temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which, once in play,
+were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with her own hardness
+of spirit and despotism of will.
+
+That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
+less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
+imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
+Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
+Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
+informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
+superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
+neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
+crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
+Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
+seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence.  The listlessness
+and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
+unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
+nature.  In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
+Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
+her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
+undercurrents that met and played below.  Still, Sir Miles's attention
+once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at
+the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
+suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
+indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his
+house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress
+of the St. Johns.  Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various
+intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused
+to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had
+visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to
+his quarters when he joined the prince's regiment; he had come often in
+contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from
+the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fashion; he had
+given him counsel and had even lent him money.  Vernon's spendthrift
+habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the
+old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the
+lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly
+settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an
+expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon's
+riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness
+of his niece to so unstable a partner.  But of late, whether from his
+impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less
+glaring.  He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild
+oats may reasonably be sown.  The composed and steadfast character of
+Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of
+those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
+Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon's reputation--once allowing that
+his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious
+apprehensions.  Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
+honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
+made him popular and beloved.  He was nobody's enemy but his own.  His
+very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
+Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour.  And,
+after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
+direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
+therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line.  With these
+feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
+already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.
+
+And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
+and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton.  It
+had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
+the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
+the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
+State.  And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
+prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
+and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
+supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
+portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
+ordinary destination.  This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
+course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career.  What
+mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
+the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
+too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all.  From this
+dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
+attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
+Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
+the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain
+Sir Miles's intentions.  Too delicate himself to sound them, he had
+prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take
+Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, without
+betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly,
+as it were, the views of the wealthy man.  The result had been a severe
+and terrible disappointment.  Sir Miles had then fully determined upon
+constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his
+character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished
+allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made.  This discovery, in
+breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed
+more than mercenary expectations.  It affected, through his heart,
+Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first
+as a fatal injury.  But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually
+softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and
+unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's
+family and himself had unthinkingly formed.  The baronet was master of
+his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should
+prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation,
+little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in
+the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns?  And, Mary fairly lost to him, his
+constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper,
+a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him
+without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman's decision.  His
+boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and
+though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested
+thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable
+overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady
+side of Pall-Mall."
+
+We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
+assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
+neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
+tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
+three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
+that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
+houses of our rural Thanes.  Our country seats became bustling and
+animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
+resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates.  The Continent was
+closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
+residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
+between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now.  Our squires were less
+educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming.  In a word,
+there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
+London,--a rural society for those who sought it.
+
+The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus.  But first we must cast
+a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
+to attract a stranger's notice.  It was a long, and not particularly
+well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
+for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one.  At the
+distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
+were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
+space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
+domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
+formed a chamber in itself.  But both these divisions of the apartment
+corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
+panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
+candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
+enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
+ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief.  They
+had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies of
+thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--
+interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of
+the upholsterer's art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz.  Two
+windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the
+outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky
+appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent,
+and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation.
+With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were
+covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there
+marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and
+harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs
+to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its
+divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable
+intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young and old.
+In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-
+chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry
+screen, was still at chess with his librarian.  At a little distance a
+middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at
+whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much
+ventured on.  On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the
+day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new publications, and
+such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat.  And round these tables
+grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening's amusement,-
+-two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five
+squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the
+extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all
+the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to
+skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the printer's name.  Amidst
+one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself.  In the
+farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw
+its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed
+the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accompaniments.
+Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced
+infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled
+cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the
+light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests.
+Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons,
+with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been
+taught to please the fair.  The warmth of the evening allowed the upper
+casement to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July
+moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within.  At
+this table it was Miss Clavering's obvious duty to preside; but that was
+a complaisance to which she rarely condescended.  Nevertheless, she had
+her own way of doing the honour of her uncle's house, which was not
+without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a
+few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amusements, and,
+finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age,
+appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary,
+and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not
+unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and
+conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might
+otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the
+old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive.  But if a stranger of
+more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member
+of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist,
+accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and
+undivided attention.  Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper
+than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him
+while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play.  But as
+yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against
+etiquette very unusual in her.  Perhaps her recent conversation with
+Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important
+demands on her attention.  Her absence had not interfered with the gayety
+at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round
+the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the
+ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first
+comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them
+welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and
+outrageously popular.  Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had
+commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and
+fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole
+group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits.
+Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might
+have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any;
+he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on
+the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting
+the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on
+an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in
+vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
+movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
+have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from
+the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons
+whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr. Vernon.
+This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by
+one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in
+command, as it were, of both sections.  Reclined, with the careless grace
+that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in
+one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say
+truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed
+absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round
+young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered
+exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that
+diamond, ma'am!"  "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!"  And somehow or
+other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with
+what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own
+young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now
+was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the
+fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had
+passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not
+one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the
+loss of a shilling point.  And besides this, Vernon had been so
+accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a
+something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first
+time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle.  Those fat
+squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would not have
+Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a nobody to
+them.  Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might
+steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him
+not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire.  They
+felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,
+--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.
+
+Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious
+smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,
+waiting for Lucretia's entrance, and since her uncle's address to him,
+feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is
+apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent
+acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
+At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered.  Mr. Vernon lowered his
+book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and
+admiration.
+
+Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in
+woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--
+a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor.  The dress at
+that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the
+whole disadvantageous.  The short waist gave greater sweep to her
+majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery
+betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour.  The arms then
+were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia's arms were not more
+faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck,
+the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would
+have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist. Fortunately, the sole
+defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the
+hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the
+superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the
+contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand
+of a man than a woman: the shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the
+veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and
+prominent.  In that hand it almost seemed as if the iron force of the
+character betrayed itself.  But, as we have said, this slight defect,
+which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice, could not, of course,
+be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye,
+glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the face.  Was it handsome?
+Was it repelling?  Strange that in feature it had pretensions to the
+highest order of beauty, and yet even that experienced connoisseur in
+female charms was almost as puzzled what sentence to pronounce.  The
+hair, as was the fashion of the day, clustered in profuse curls over the
+forehead, but could not conceal a slight line or wrinkle between the
+brows; and this line, rare in women at any age, rare even in men at hers,
+gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face.
+The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade
+or two perhaps too light,--a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the
+eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--
+at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that
+steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its
+trust,--their expression was rather vague and abstracted.  She usually
+looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but
+shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood.  But when, at
+times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than
+guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with
+sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and
+haunted you with a strange spell.  The eye itself was of a peculiar and
+displeasing colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather
+of that cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the
+shade.  The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty
+seemed incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined
+between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular,
+had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were
+thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which
+added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire.
+The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth
+were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much
+delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that hue
+which study and late vigils give to men; so that she wanted the freshness
+and bloom of youth, and looked older than she was,--an effect confirmed
+by an absence of roundness in the cheek not noticeable in the profile,
+but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp.  In a word,
+the face and the figure were not in harmony: the figure prevented you
+from pronouncing her to be masculine; the face took from the figure the
+charm of feminacy.  It was the head of the young Augustus upon the form
+of Agrippina.  One touch more, and we close a description which already
+perhaps the reader may consider frivolously minute.  If you had placed
+before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole
+character of the upper face would have changed at once,--the eye lost its
+glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have
+pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly.  Take that
+bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and
+startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or
+disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it.  It was
+as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the
+text, the text uncomprehended without the key.
+
+Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of
+twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing
+the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human
+countenance.  The reader must have observed that the effect every face
+that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the
+impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen.  Perhaps no two
+persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our
+earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the
+familiarity of repeated intercourse.  And this was especially the case
+with Lucretia Clavering's: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it
+was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of
+danger.  The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its
+guard.  But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in
+admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian sculpture,
+gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the intellectual
+power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a
+smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive both for that
+reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and persuasion to
+an aspect that needed them so much.  It was literally like the abrupt
+breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of the face thus
+familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural influence; so that
+while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have pronounced her
+almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appearance, those with
+whom she lived, those whom she sought to please, those who saw her daily,
+united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and if they still felt awe,
+attributed it only to the force of her understanding.
+
+As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and ran
+to her caressingly.  Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his
+fair locks.  As she did so, he whispered,--
+
+"Mr. Vernon has been watching for you."
+
+"Hush!  Where is your father?"
+
+"Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles."
+
+"With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia's eye fell, with the direct gaze we have
+before referred to, upon the boy's face.
+
+"I have been looking over them pretty often," said he, meaningly: "they
+have talked of nothing but the game."  Lucretia lifted her head, and
+glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and with
+a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring's
+retreat.  Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to
+her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his
+own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was
+soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther part
+of the room.  A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the tea-
+table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a certain
+age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began within the
+ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players.  Vernon had
+watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano had gained
+Lucretia's side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her hand for the
+opening dance.
+
+At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not
+ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through a
+quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the courtly,
+--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.
+
+Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the
+evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last
+excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life
+supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to
+the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and
+getting at the heart of his fair partner.
+
+"I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if you
+will allow me to call you so.  You ought to have been presented."
+
+"I have no wish to go to London yet."
+
+"Yet!" said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day;
+"beauty even like yours has little time to spare."
+
+"Hands across, hands across!" cried Mr. Ardworth.
+
+"And," continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was permitted to him,
+"there is a song which the prince sings, written by some sensible old-
+fashioned fellow, which says,--
+
+    "'Gather your rosebuds while you may,       For time is still a
+flying."'
+
+"You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, Mr.  Vernon."
+
+"Call me cousin, or Charles,--Charley, if you like, as most of my friends
+do; nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon,--I don't know myself by that name."
+
+"Down the middle; we are all waiting for you," shouted Ardworth.
+
+And down the middle, with wondrous grace, glided the exquisite nankeens
+of Charley Vernon.
+
+The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated and riotous to
+allow more than a few broken monosyllables till Vernon and his partner
+gained the end of the set, and then, flirting his partner's fan, he
+recommenced,--
+
+"Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here."
+
+"Never!" answered Lucretia.  Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr.
+Vernon.  She felt that she was sounded.
+
+"Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities.  Aha! there
+is ambition under those careless curls," said Mr. Vernon, with his easy,
+adorable impertinence.
+
+Lucretia winced.
+
+"But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in
+London?"
+
+"The same as Alexander,--empire, my cousin."
+
+"You forget that I am not a man.  Man, indeed, may hope for an empire.
+It is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings."
+
+Mr. Vernon stared.  Was this stupidity, or what?
+
+"A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt's, and more pitiless
+than that of Governor Hastings."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon--"
+
+"Charles, if you please."
+
+Lucretia's brow darkened.
+
+"Pardon me," she repeated; "but these compliments, if such they are meant
+to be, meet a very ungrateful return.  A woman's empire over gauzes and
+ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not worth
+a journey from Laughton to London."
+
+"You think you can despise admiration?"
+
+"What you mean by admiration,--yes."
+
+"And love too?" said Vernon, in a whisper.
+
+Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her partner.  Was he
+aiming at her secret?  Was he hinting at intentions of his own?  The look
+chilled Vernon, and he turned away his head.
+
+Suddenly, then, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucretia altered
+her manner to him.  She had detected what before she had surmised.  This
+sudden familiarity on his part arose from notions her uncle had
+instilled,--the visitor had been incited to become the suitor.  Her
+penetration into character, which from childhood had been her passionate
+study, told her that on that light, polished, fearless nature scorn would
+have slight effect; to meet the familiarity would be the best means to
+secure a friend, to disarm a wooer.  She changed then her manner; she
+summoned up her extraordinary craft; she accepted the intimacy held out
+to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay open her opponent.  It became
+necessary to her to know this man, to have such power as the knowledge
+might give her.  Insensibly and gradually she led her companion away from
+his design of approaching her own secrets or character, into frank talk
+about himself.  All unconsciously he began to lay bare to his listener
+the infirmities of his erring, open heart.  Silently she looked down, and
+plumbed them all,--the frivolity, the recklessness, the half gay, half
+mournful sense of waste and ruin.  There, blooming amongst the wrecks,
+she saw the fairest flowers of noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,
+--generosity and courage and disregard for self.  Spendthrift and gambler
+on one side the medal; gentleman and soldier on the other.  Beside this
+maimed and imperfect nature she measured her own prepared and profound
+intellect, and as she listened, her smile became more bland and frequent.
+She could afford to be gracious; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety.
+
+As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his partner had quitted
+the dance, and were conversing apart in the recess of one of the windows,
+which the newspaper readers had deserted, in the part of the room where
+Sir Miles and Dalibard, still seated, were about to commence their third
+game at chess.  The baronet's hand ceased from the task of arranging his
+pawns; his eye was upon the pair; and then, after a long and complacent
+gaze, it looked round without discovering the object it sought.
+
+"I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Monsieur Dalibard,"
+said Sir Miles, with that politeness so displeasing to Ardworth, "but
+will you do me the favour to move aside that fold of the screen?  I wish
+for a better view of our young people.  Thank you very much."
+
+Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that, far from
+regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirtation going on
+between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was engaged in animated conversation
+with the chairman of the quarter sessions.  Sir Miles was satisfied, and
+ranged his pawns.  All this time, and indeed ever since they had sat down
+to play, the Provencal had been waiting, with the patience that belonged
+to his character, for some observation from Sir Miles on the subject
+which, his sagacity perceived, was engrossing his thoughts.  There had
+been about the old gentleman a fidgety restlessness which showed that
+something was on his mind.  His eyes had been frequently turned towards
+his niece since her entrance; once or twice he had cleared his throat and
+hemmed,--his usual prelude to some more important communication; and
+Dalibard had heard him muttering to himself, and fancied he caught the
+name of "Mainwaring."  And indeed the baronet had been repeatedly on the
+verge of sounding his secretary, and as often had been checked both by
+pride in himself and pride for Lucretia.  It seemed to him beneath his
+own dignity and hers even to hint to an inferior a fear, a doubt, of the
+heiress of Laughton.  Olivier Dalibard could easily have led on his
+patron, he could easily, if he pleased it, have dropped words to instil
+suspicion and prompt question; but that was not his object,--he rather
+shunned than courted any reference to himself upon the matter; for he
+knew that Lucretia, if she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had
+betrayed her to her uncle, would at once declare his own suit to her, and
+so procure his immediate dismissal; while, aware of her powers of
+dissimulation and her influence over her uncle, he feared that a single
+word from her would suffice to remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however
+ingeniously implanted, and however truthfully grounded.  But all the
+while, under his apparent calm, his mind was busy and his passions
+burning.
+
+"Pshaw! your old play,--the bishop again," said Sir Miles, laughing, as
+he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary's supposed plan; and then,
+turning back, he once more contemplated the growing familiarity between
+Vernon and his niece.  This time he could not contain his pleasure.
+"Dalibard, my dear sir," he said, rubbing his hands, "look yonder: they
+would make a handsome couple!"
+
+"Who, sir?" said the Provencal, looking another way, with dogged
+stupidity.
+
+"Who?  Damn it, man!  Nay, pray forgive my ill manners, but I felt glad,
+sir, and proud, sir.  Who?  Charley Vernon and Lucretia Clavering."
+
+"Assuredly, yes.  Do you think that there is a chance of so happy an
+event?"
+
+"Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force her."  Here Sir
+Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, picked up his patron's
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Olivier Dalibard's gray eyes rested coldly on his son.  "You are not
+dancing to-night, my boy.  Go; I like to see you amused."
+
+The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal commands.  He
+found a partner, and joined a dance just begun; and in the midst of the
+dance, Honore Gabriel Varney seemed a new being,--not Ardworth himself so
+thoroughly entered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights, the
+music.  With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed prematurely
+to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that exhilaration which to
+childhood is usually so innocent.  His glances followed the fairest form;
+his clasp lingered in the softest hand; his voice trembled as the warm
+breath of his partner came on his cheeks.
+
+Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players continued.
+
+"Yes," said the baronet, "it depends only on Lucretia.  And she seems
+pleased with Vernon: who would not be?"
+
+"Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir.  I own I think with you.
+Does Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the alliance?"
+
+"Yes; but--" the baronet stopped short.
+
+"You were saying, but--  But what, Sir Miles?"
+
+"Why, the dog affected diffidence; he had some fear lest he should not
+win her affections.  But luckily, at least, they are disengaged."
+
+Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, glanced towards
+Mainwaring.  As ill-luck would have it, the young man had then ceased his
+conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions, and with arms
+folded, brow contracted, and looks, earnest, anxious, and intent, was
+contemplating the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon.
+
+Sir Miles's eye had followed his secretary's, and his face changed.  His
+hand fell on the chess board and upset half the men; he uttered a very
+audible "Zounds!"
+
+"I think, Sir Miles," said the Provencal, rising, as if conscious that
+Sir Miles wished to play no more,--"I think that if you spoke soon to
+Miss Clavering as to your views with regard to Mr. Vernon, it might ripen
+matters; for I have heard it said by French mothers--and our Frenchwomen
+understand the female heart, sir--that a girl having no other affection
+is often prepossessed at once in favour of a man whom she knows
+beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without that
+knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary acquaintance."
+
+"It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for more reasons
+than one, the sooner I speak to her the better.  Lend me your arm.  It is
+time for supper; I see the dance is over."
+
+Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leaned, the baronet looked at
+him fixedly.  The young man did not notice the gaze.  Sir Miles touched
+him gently.  He started as from a revery.
+
+"You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring."
+
+"I dance so seldom, Sir Miles," said Mainwaring, colouring.
+
+"Ah! you employ your head more than your heels, young gentleman,--very
+right; I must speak to you to-morrow.  Well, ladies, I hope you have
+enjoyed yourselves?  My dear Mrs. Vesey, you and I are old friends, you
+know; many a minuet we have danced together, eh?  We can't dance now, but
+we can walk arm-in-arm together still.  Honour me.  And your little
+grandson--vaccinated, eh?  Wonderful invention!  To supper, ladies, to
+supper!"
+
+The company were gone.  The lights were out,--all save the lights of
+heaven; and they came bright and still through the casements.  Moonbeam
+and Starbeam, they seemed now to have the old house to themselves.  In
+came the rays, brighter and longer and bolder, like fairies that march,
+rank upon rank, into their kingdom of solitude.  Down the oak stairs,
+from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly,
+fearfully.  On the armour in the hall clustered the rays boldly and
+brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror.  In the library, long
+and low, they just entered, stopped short: it was no place for their
+play.  In the drawing-room, now deserted, they were more curious and
+adventurous.  Through the large window, still open, they came in freely
+and archly, as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs
+out of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower
+dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table,--the rays
+lingered upon them all.  Up and down through the house, from the base to
+the roof, roved the children of the air, and found but two spirits awake
+amidst the slumber of the rest.
+
+In that tower to the east, in the tapestry chamber with the large gilded
+bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, as if scared by the
+grosser light on the table.  By that table sat a girl, her brow leaning
+on one hand; in the other she held a rose,--it is a love-token: exchanged
+with its sister rose, by stealth, in mute sign of reproach for doubt
+excited,--an assurance and a reconciliation.  A love-token!--shrink not,
+ye rays; there is something akin to you in love.  But see,--the hand
+closes convulsively on the flower; it hides it not in the breast; it
+lifts it not to the lip: it throws it passionately aside.  "How long!"
+muttered the girl, impetuously,--"how long!  And to think that will here
+cannot shorten an hour!"  Then she rose, and walked to and fro, and each
+time she gained a certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then
+irresolutely passed on again.  What is in that niche?  Only books.  What
+can books teach thee, pale girl?  The step treads firmer; this time it
+halts more resolved.  The hand that clasped the flower takes down a
+volume.  The girl sits again before the light.  See, O rays! what is the
+volume?  Moon and Starbeam, ye love what lovers read by the lamp in the
+loneliness.  No love-ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience, and
+moral to hope.  What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in
+years, with the lore of the leech,--with prognostics and symptoms and
+diseases?  She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that precede the grim
+enemy in his most sudden approach,--the habits that invite him, the
+warnings that he gives.  He whose wealth shall make her free has twice
+had the visiting shock; he starves not, he lives frae!  She closes the
+volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live.
+Shrink back, ye rays!  The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on
+the rose, the thought was on the charnel.
+
+Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came
+the rays.  Childhood is asleep.  Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers
+of the child!  The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in.  The
+father comes to look on the sleep of his son.  Holy tenderness, if this
+be all!  "Gabriel, wake!" said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook
+the sleeper.
+
+The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal
+courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent
+hand.  The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity nor
+surprise.  It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a
+slight cry and a fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's
+throat.  Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in
+approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.
+
+"Blood will out, young tiger," said he.  "Hush, and hear me!"
+
+"Is it you, Father?" said Gabriel.  "I thought, I dreamed--"
+
+"No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence
+from peril!"
+
+"Gabriel," and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, "turn your
+face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look at
+me--so!  Are you not playing false to me?  Are you not Lucretia's spy,
+while you are pretending to be mine?  It is so; your eye betrays you.
+Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years.  Do you love best the
+miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or your
+lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
+atmosphere of wealth?  You have the choice before you."
+
+"I choose, as you would have me, then," said the boy, "the last."
+
+"I believe you.  Attend!  You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
+the son of Clara Varney!  You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
+Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
+Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe withal.
+I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is my aim to
+marry her; to be master of this house and these lands.  If I succeed, you
+share them with me.  By betraying me, word or look, to Lucretia, you
+frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our ruin.  Deem not
+that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--as you might drive
+me,--you share my fate; and mark me, you are delivered up to my revenge!
+You cease to be my son,--you are my foe.  Child! you know me."
+
+The boy, bold as he was, shuddered; but after a pause so brief that a
+breath scarce passed between his silence and his words, he replied with
+emphasis,--
+
+"Father, you have read my heart.  I have been persuaded by Lucretia (for
+she bewitches me) to watch you,--at least, when you are with Sir Miles.
+I knew that this was mixed up with Mr. Mainwaring.  Now that you have
+made me understand your own views, I will be true to you,--true without
+threats."
+
+The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with the gaze.
+"Remember, at least, that your future rests upon your truth; that is no
+threat,--that is a thought of hope. Now sleep or muse on it."  He dropped
+the curtain which his hand had drawn aside, and stole from the room as
+noiselessly as he had entered.  The boy slept no more.  Deceit and
+cupidity and corrupt ambition were at work in his brain.  Shrink back,
+Moon and Starbeam!  On that child's brow play the demons who had followed
+the father's step to his bed of sleep.
+
+Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard.  The walls
+were lined with books,--many in language and deep in lore.  Moon and
+Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of the scholar!  The Provencal
+stole to the casement, and looked forth.  All was serene,--breathless
+trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of
+shadow.  Of what thought the man?  Not of the present loveliness which
+the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars
+should whisper to the soul.  Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past
+roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon plan,
+schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring, and yet
+all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good, and the good
+had conquered!  But the conviction neither touched the conscience nor
+enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of impotence,
+but it brought rage, not despondency.  It was not that he submitted to
+Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed he had not yet gained
+all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil.  And evil he called it not.
+Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the command of Mind;
+they were the slaves of the lamp.  But had he got at the true secret of
+the lamp itself?  "How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently from
+the casement, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most
+assured?  Here the mind has been of my own training, and prepared by
+nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled.  And suddenly the
+merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an unlooked-for
+rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to despise; one of the
+stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth and fair looks,--yea,
+the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is overthrown."
+As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small box on one of the
+tables.  "Yet within this," resumed his soliloquy, and he struck the lid,
+that gave back a dull sound,--"within this I hold the keys of life and
+death!  Fool! the power does not reach to the heart, except to still it.
+Verily and indeed were the old heathens mistaken?  Are there no philters
+to change the current of desire?  But touch one chord in a girl's
+affection, and all the rest is mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all
+the rest are in the opening of this lid!"
+
+Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy,
+pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid
+with the thoughts of murder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CONFERENCES.
+
+The next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast,--not that he was
+unwell, but that he meditated holding certain audiences, and on such
+occasions the good old gentleman liked to prepare himself.  He belonged
+to a school in which, amidst much that was hearty and convivial, there
+was much also that nowadays would seem stiff and formal, contrasting the
+other school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon represented,
+and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faithful and admirable
+type.  The room that Sir Miles appropriated to himself was, properly
+speaking, the state apartment, called, in the old inventories, "King
+James's chamber;" it was on the first floor, communicating with the
+picture-gallery, which at the farther end opened upon a corridor
+admitting to the principal bedrooms.  As Sir Miles cared nothing for
+holiday state, he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this chamber,
+which was really the handsomest in the house, except the banquet-hall,
+placed his bed in one angle with a huge screen before it, filled up the
+space with his Italian antiquities and curiosities; and fixed his
+favourite pictures on the faded gilt leather panelled on the walls.  His
+main motive in this was the communication with the adjoining gallery,
+which, when the weather was unfavourable, furnished ample room for his
+habitual walk.  He knew how many strides by the help of his crutch made a
+mile, and this was convenient.  Moreover, he liked to look, when alone,
+on those old portraits of his ancestors, which he had religiously
+conserved in their places, preferring to thrust his Florentine and
+Venetian masterpieces into bedrooms and parlours, rather than to dislodge
+from the gallery the stiff ruffs, doublets, and farthingales of his
+predecessors.  It was whispered in the house that the baronet, whenever
+he had to reprove a tenant or lecture a dependant, took care to have him
+brought to his sanctum, through the full length of this gallery, so that
+the victim might be duly prepared and awed by the imposing effect of so
+stately a journey, and the grave faces of all the generations of St.
+John, which could not fail to impress him with the dignity of the family,
+and alarm him at the prospect of the injured frown of its representative.
+Across this gallery now, following the steps of the powdered valet,
+strode young Ardworth, staring now and then at some portrait more than
+usually grim, more often wondering why his boots, that never creaked
+before, should creak on those particular boards, and feeling a quiet
+curiosity, without the least mixture of fear or awe as to what old
+Squaretoes intended to say to him.  But all feeling of irreverence ceased
+when, shown into the baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rose
+with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping the
+punctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a little
+prejudice against you before you came, you have conquered it.  You are a
+fine, manly, spirited fellow, sir; and you have an old man's good
+wishes,--which are no bad beginning to a young man's good fortune."
+
+The colour rushed over Ardworth's forehead, and a tear sprang to his
+eyes.  He felt a rising at his throat as he stammered out some not very
+audible reply.
+
+"I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge myself what you
+would like best, and what would best fit you.  Your father is in the
+army: what say you to a pair of colours?"
+
+"Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition!  Anything but law, except the
+Church; anything but the Church, except the desk and a counter!"
+
+The baronet, much pleased, gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder.  "Ha,
+ha! we gentlemen, you see (for the Ardworths are very well born, very),
+we gentlemen understand each other!  Between you and me, I never liked
+the law, never thought a man of birth should belong to it.  Take money
+for lying,--shabby, shocking!  Don't let that go any farther!  The
+Church-Mother Church--I honour her!  Church and State go together!  But
+one ought to be very good to preach to others,--better than you and I
+are, eh? ha, ha!  Well, then, you like the army,--there's a letter for
+you to the Horse Guards.  Go up to town; your business is done.  And, as
+for your outfit,--read this little book at your leisure."  And Sir Miles
+thrust a pocketbook into Ardworth's hand.
+
+"But pardon me," said the young man, much bewildered.  "What claim have
+I, Sir Miles, to such generosity?  I know that my uncle offended you."
+
+"Sir, that's the claim!" said Sir Miles, gravely.  "I cannot live long,"
+he added, with a touch of melancholy in his voice; "let me die in peace
+with all!  Perhaps I injured your uncle,--who knows but, if so, he hears
+and pardons me now?"
+
+"Oh, Sir Miles!" exclaimed the thoughtless, generous-hearted young man;
+"and my little playfellow, Susan, your own niece!"
+
+Sir Miles drew back haughtily; but the burst that offended him rose so
+evidently from the heart, was so excusable from its motive and the
+youth's ignorance of the world, that his frown soon vanished as he said,
+calmly and gravely,--
+
+"No man, my good sir, can allow to others the right to touch on his
+family affairs; I trust I shall be just to the poor young lady.  And so,
+if we never meet again, let us think well of each other.  Go, my boy;
+serve your king and your country!"
+
+"I will do my best, Sir Miles, if only to merit your kindness."
+
+"Stay a moment: you are intimate, I find, with young Mainwaring?"
+
+"An old college friendship, Sir Miles."
+
+"The army will not do for him, eh?"
+
+"He is too clever for it, sir."
+
+"Ah, he'd make a lawyer, I suppose,--glib tongue enough, and can talk
+well; and lie, if he's paid for it?"
+
+"I don't know how lawyers regard those matters, Sir Miles; but if you
+don't make him a lawyer, I am sure you must leave him an honest man."
+
+"Really and truly--"
+
+"Upon my honour I think so."
+
+"Good-day to you, and good luck.  You must catch the coach at the lodge;
+for I see by the papers that, in spite of all the talk about peace, they
+are raising regiments like wildfire."
+
+With very different feelings from those with which he had entered the
+room, Ardworth quitted it.  He hurried into his own chamber to thrust his
+clothes into his portmanteau, and while thus employed, Mainwaring
+entered.
+
+"Joy, my dear fellow, wish me joy!  I am going to town,--into the army;
+abroad; to be shot at, thank Heaven!  That dear old gentleman!  Just
+throw me that coat, will you?"
+
+A very few more words sufficed to explain what had passed to Mainwaring.
+He sighed when his friend had finished: "I wish I were going with you!"
+
+"Do you?  Sir Miles has only got to write another letter to the Horse
+Guards.  But no, you are meant to be something better than food for
+powder; and, besides, your Lucretia!  Hang it, I am sorry I cannot stay
+to examine her as I had promised; but I have seen enough to know that she
+certainly loves you.  Ah, when she changed flowers with you, you did not
+think I saw you,--sly, was not I?  Pshaw! She was only playing with
+Vernon.  But still, do you know, Will, now that Sir Miles has spoken to
+me so, that I could have sobbed, 'God bless you, my old boy!' 'pon my
+life, I could!  Now, do you know that I feel enraged with you for
+abetting that girl to deceive him?"
+
+"I am enraged with myself; and--"
+
+Here a servant entered, and informed Mainwaring that he had been
+searching for him; Sir Miles requested to see him in his room.
+Mainwaring started like a culprit.
+
+"Never fear," whispered Ardworth; "he has no suspicion of you, I'm sure.
+Shake hands.  When shall we meet again?  Is it not odd, I, who am a
+republican by theory, taking King George's pay to fight against the
+French?  No use stopping now to moralize on such contradictions.  John,
+Tom,--what's your name?--here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau on
+your shoulder and come to the lodge."  And so, full of health, hope,
+vivacity, and spirit, John Walter Ardworth departed on his career.
+
+Meanwhile Mainwaring slowly took his way to Sir Miles.  As he approached
+the gallery, he met Lucretia, who was coming from her own room.  "Sir
+Miles has sent for me," he said meaningly.  He had time for no more, for
+the valet was at the door of the gallery, waiting to usher him to his
+host. "Ha! you will say not a word that can betray us; guard your looks
+too!" whispered Lucretia, hurriedly; "afterwards, join me by the cedars."
+She passed on towards the staircase, and glanced at the large clock that
+was placed there.  "Past eleven!  Vernon is never up before twelve.  I
+must see him before my uncle sends for me, as he will send if he
+suspects--"  She paused, went back to her room, rang for her maid,
+dressed as for walking, and said carelessly, "If Sir Miles wants me, I am
+gone to the rectory, and shall probably return by the village, so that I
+shall be back about one."  Towards the rectory, indeed, Lucretia bent her
+way; but half-way there, turned back, and passing through the plantation
+at the rear of the house, awaited Mainwaring on the bench beneath the
+cedars.  He was not long before he joined her.  His face was sad and
+thoughtful; and when he seated himself by her side, it was with a
+weariness of spirit that alarmed her.
+
+"Well," said she, fearfully, and she placed her hand on his.
+
+"Oh, Lucretia," he exclaimed, as he pressed that hand with an emotion
+that came from other passions than love, "we, or rather I, have done
+great wrong.  I have been leading you to betray your uncle's trust, to
+convert your gratitude to him into hypocrisy.  I have been unworthy of
+myself.  I am poor, I am humbly born, but till I came here, I was rich
+and proud in honour.  I am not so now.  Lucretia, pardon me, pardon me!
+Let the dream be over; we must not sin thus; for it is sin, and the worst
+of sin,--treachery.  We must part: forget me!"
+
+"Forget you!  Never, never, never!" cried Lucretia, with suppressed but
+most earnest vehemence, her breast heaving, her hands, as he dropped the
+one he held, clasped together, her eyes full of tears,--transformed at
+once into softness, meekness, even while racked by passion and despair.
+
+"Oh, William, say anything,--reproach, chide, despise me, for mine is all
+the fault; say anything but that word 'part.'  I have chosen you, I have
+sought you out, I have wooed you, if you will; be it so.  I cling to you,
+you are my all,--all that saves me from--from myself," she added
+falteringly, and in a hollow voice.  "Your love--you know not what it is
+to me!  I scarcely knew it myself before.  I feel what it is now, when
+you say 'part.'"
+
+Agitated and tortured, Mainwaring writhed at these burning words, bent
+his face low, and covered it with his hands.
+
+He felt her clasp struggling to withdraw them, yielded, and saw her
+kneeling at his feet.  His manhood and his gratitude and his heart all
+moved by that sight in one so haughty, he opened his arms, and she fell
+on his breast. "You will never say 'part' again, William!" she gasped
+convulsively.
+
+"But what are we to do?"
+
+"Say, first, what has passed between you and my uncle."
+
+"Little to relate; for I can repeat words, not tones and looks.  Sir
+Miles spoke to me, at first kindly and encouragingly, about my prospects,
+said it was time that I should fix myself, added a few words, with
+menacing emphasis, against what he called 'idle dreams and desultory
+ambition,' and observing that I changed countenance,--for I felt that I
+did,--his manner became more cold and severe.  Lucretia, if he has not
+detected our secret, he more than suspects my--my presumption.  Finally,
+he said dryly, that I had better return home, consult with my father, and
+that if I preferred entering into the service of the Government to any
+mercantile profession, he thought he had sufficient interest to promote
+my views.  But, clearly and distinctly, he left on my mind one
+impression,--that my visits here are over."
+
+"Did he allude to me--to Mr. Vernon?"
+
+"Ah, Lucretia! do you know him so little,--his delicacy, his pride?"
+
+Lucretia was silent, and Mainwaring continued:--
+
+"I felt that I was dismissed.  I took my leave of your uncle; I came
+hither with the intention to say farewell forever."
+
+"Hush! hush! that thought is over.  And you return to your father's,--
+perhaps better so: it is but hope deferred; and in your absence I can the
+more easily allay all suspicion, if suspicion exist. But I must write to
+you; we must correspond.  William, dear William, write often,--write
+kindly; tell me, in every letter, that you love me,--that you love only
+me; that you will be patient, and confide."
+
+"Dear Lucretia," said Mainwaring, tenderly, and moved by the pathos of
+her earnest and imploring voice, "but you forget: the bag is always
+brought first to Sir Miles; he will recognize my hand.  And to whom can
+you trust your own letters?"
+
+"True," replied Lucretia, despondingly; and there was a pause.  Suddenly
+she lifted her head, and cried: "But your father's house is not far from
+this,--not ten miles; we can find a spot at the remote end of the park,
+near the path through the great wood: there I can leave my letters; there
+I can find yours."
+
+"But it must be seldom.  If any of Sir Miles's servants see me, if--"
+
+"Oh, William, William, this is not the language of love!"
+
+"Forgive me,--I think of you!"
+
+"Love thinks of nothing but itself; it is tyrannical, absorbing,--it
+forgets even the object loved; it feeds on danger; it strengthens by
+obstacles," said Lucretia, tossing her hair from her forehead, and with
+an expression of dark and wild power on her brow and in her eyes.  "Fear
+not for me; I am sufficient guard upon myself.  Even while I speak, I
+think,--yes, I have thought of the very spot.  You remember that hollow
+oak at the bottom of the dell, in which Guy St. John, the Cavalier, is
+said to have hid himself from Fairfax's soldiers?  Every Monday I will
+leave a letter in that hollow; every Tuesday you can search for it, and
+leave your own.  This is but once a week; there is no risk here."
+
+Mainwaring's conscience still smote him, but he had not the strength to
+resist the energy of Lucretia.  The force of her character seized upon
+the weak part of his own,--its gentleness, its fear of inflicting pain,
+its reluctance to say "No,"--that simple cause of misery to the over-
+timid.  A few sentences more, full of courage, confidence, and passion,
+on the part of the woman, of constraint and yet of soothed and grateful
+affection on that of the man, and the affianced parted.
+
+Mainwaring had already given orders to have his trunks sent to him at his
+father's; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, he now struck across the
+park, passed the dell and the hollow tree, commonly called "Guy's Oak,"
+and across woodland and fields golden with ripening corn, took his way to
+the town, in the centre of which, square, solid, and imposing, stood the
+respectable residence of his bustling, active, electioneering father.
+
+Lucretia's eye followed a form as fair as ever captivated maiden's
+glance, till it was out of sight; and then, as she emerged from the shade
+of the cedars into the more open space of the garden, her usual
+thoughtful composure was restored to her steadfast countenance.  On the
+terrace, she caught sight of Vernon, who had just quitted his own room,
+where he always breakfasted alone, and who was now languidly stretched on
+a bench, and basking in the sun.  Like all who have abused life, Vernon
+was not the same man in the early part of the day.  The spirits that rose
+to temperate heat the third hour after noon, and expanded into glow when
+the lights shone over gay carousers, at morning were flat and exhausted.
+With hollow eyes and that weary fall of the muscles of the cheeks which
+betrays the votary of Bacchus,--the convivial three-bottle man,--Charley
+Vernon forced a smile, meant to be airy and impertinent, to his pale
+lips, as he rose with effort, and extended three fingers to his cousin.
+
+"Where have you been hiding?  Catching bloom from the roses?  You have
+the prettiest shade of colour,--just enough; not a hue too much.  And
+there is Sir Miles's valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman
+puffing away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my
+post at the castle, all looking out for the truant."
+
+"But who wants me, cousin?" said Lucretia, with the full blaze of her
+rare and captivating smile.
+
+"The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel!  The knight of
+the Bleeding Heart may want thee more,--dare he own it?"
+
+And with a hand that trembled a little, not with love, at least, it
+trembled always a little before the Madeira at luncheon,--he lifted hers
+to his lips.
+
+"Compliments again,--words, idle words!" said Lucretia, looking down
+bashfully.
+
+"How can I convince thee of my sincerity, unless thou takest my life as
+its pledge, maid of Laughton?"
+
+And very much tired of standing, Charley Vernon drew her gently to the
+bench and seated himself by her side.  Lucretia's eyes were still
+downcast, and she remained silent; Vernon, suppressing a yawn, felt that
+he was bound to continue.  There was nothing very formidable in
+Lucretia's manner.
+
+"'Fore Gad!" thought he, "I suppose I must take the heiress after all;
+the sooner 't is over, the sooner I can get back to Brook Street."
+
+"It is premature, my fair cousin," said he, aloud,--"premature, after
+less than a week's visit, and only some fourteen or fifteen hours'
+permitted friendship and intimacy, to say what is uppermost in my
+thoughts; but we spendthrifts are provokingly handsome!  Sir Miles, your
+good uncle, is pleased to forgive all my follies and faults upon one
+condition,--that you will take on yourself the task to reform me.  Will
+you, my fair cousin?  Such as I am, you behold me.  I am no sinner in the
+disguise of a saint.  My fortune is spent, my health is not strong; but a
+young widow's is no mournful position.  I am gay when I am well, good-
+tempered when ailing.  I never betrayed a trust,--can you trust me with
+yourself?"
+
+This was a long speech, and Charley Vernon felt pleased that it was over.
+There was much in it that would have touched a heart even closed to him,
+and a little genuine emotion had given light to his eyes, and color to
+his cheek.  Amidst all the ravages of dissipation, there was something
+interesting in his countenance, and manly in his tone and his gesture.
+But Lucretia was only sensible to one part of his confession,--her uncle
+consented to his suit.  This was all of which she desired to be assured,
+and against this she now sought to screen herself.
+
+"Your candour, Mr. Vernon," she said, avoiding his eye, "deserves candour
+in me; I cannot affect to misunderstand you.  But you take me by
+surprise; I was so unprepared for this.  Give me time,--I must reflect."
+
+"Reflection is dull work in the country; you can reflect more amusingly
+in town, my fair cousin."
+
+"I will wait, then, till I find myself in town."
+
+"Ah, you make me the happiest, the most grateful of men," cried Mr.
+Vernon, rising, with a semi-genuflection which seemed to imply, "Consider
+yourself knelt to,"--just as a courteous assailer, with a motion of the
+hand, implies, "Consider yourself horsewhipped."
+
+Lucretia, who, with all her intellect, had no capacity for humour,
+recoiled, and looked up in positive surprise.
+
+"I do not understand you, Mr. Vernon," she said, with austere gravity.
+
+"Allow me the bliss of flattering myself that you, at least, are
+understood," replied Charley Vernon, with imperturbable assurance.  "You
+will wait to reflect till you are in town,--that is to say, the day after
+our honeymoon, when you awake in Mayfair."
+
+Before Lucretia could reply, she saw the indefatigable valet formally
+approaching, with the anticipated message that Sir Miles requested to see
+her.  She replied hurriedly to this last, that she would be with her
+uncle immediately; and when he had again disappeared within the porch,
+she said, with a constrained effort at frankness,--
+
+"Mr. Vernon, if I have misunderstood your words, I think I do not mistake
+your character.  You cannot wish to take advantage of my affection for my
+uncle, and the passive obedience I owe to him, to force me into a step of
+which--of which--I have not yet sufficiently considered the results.  If
+you really desire that my feelings should be consulted, that I should
+not--pardon me--consider myself sacrificed to the family pride of my
+guardian and the interests of my suitor--"
+
+"Madam!" exclaimed Vernon, reddening.
+
+Pleased with the irritating effect her words had produced, Lucretia
+continued calmly, "If, in a word, I am to be a free agent in a choice on
+which my happiness depends, forbear to urge Sir Miles further at present;
+forbear to press your suit upon me.  Give me the delay of a few months; I
+shall know how to appreciate your delicacy."
+
+"Miss Clavering," answered Vernon, with a touch of the St. John
+haughtiness, "I am in despair that you should even think so grave an
+appeal to my honour necessary.  I am well aware of your expectations and
+my poverty.  And, believe me, I would rather rot in a prison than enrich
+myself by forcing your inclinations.  You have but to say the word, and I
+will (as becomes me as a man and gentleman) screen you from all chance of
+Sir Miles's displeasure, by taking it on myself to decline an honour of
+which I feel, indeed, very undeserving."
+
+"But I have offended you," said Lucretia, softly, while she turned aside
+to conceal the glad light of her eyes,--"pardon me; and to prove that you
+do so, give me your arm to my uncle's room."
+
+Vernon, with rather more of Sir Miles's antiquated stiffness than his own
+rakish ease, offered his arm, with a profound reverence, to his cousin,
+and they took their way to the house.  Not till they had passed up the
+stairs, and were even in the gallery, did further words pass between
+them.  Then Vernon said,--
+
+"But what is your wish, Miss Clavering?  On what footing shall I remain
+here?"
+
+"Will you suffer me to dictate?" replied Lucretia, stopping short with
+well-feigned confusion, as if suddenly aware that the right to dictate
+gives the right to hope.
+
+"Ah, consider me at least your slave!" whispered Vernon, as, his eye
+resting on the contour of that matchless neck, partially and
+advantageously turned from him, he began, with his constitutional
+admiration of the sex, to feel interested in a pursuit that now seemed,
+after piquing, to flatter his self-love.
+
+"Then I will use the privilege when we meet again," answered Lucretia;
+and drawing her arm gently from his, she passed on to her uncle, leaving
+Vernon midway in the gallery.
+
+Those faded portraits looked down on her with that melancholy gloom which
+the effigies of our dead ancestors seem mysteriously to acquire.  To
+noble and aspiring spirits, no homily to truth and honour and fair
+ambition is more eloquent than the mute and melancholy canvas from which
+our fathers, made, by death, our household gods, contemplate us still.
+They appear to confide to us the charge of their unblemished names.  They
+speak to us from the grave, and heard aright, the pride of family is the
+guardian angel of its heirs.  But Lucretia, with her hard and scholastic
+mind, despised as the veriest weakness all the poetry that belongs to the
+sense of a pure descent.  It was because she was proud as the proudest in
+herself that she had nothing but contempt for the virtue, the valour, or
+the wisdom of those that had gone before.  So, with a brain busy with
+guile and stratagem, she trod on, beneath the eyes of the simple and
+spotless Dead.
+
+Vernon, thus left alone, mused a few moments on what had passed between
+himself and the heiress; and then, slowly retracing his steps, his eye
+roved along the stately series of his line.  "Faith!" he muttered, "if my
+boyhood had been passed in this old gallery, his Royal Highness would
+have lost a good fellow and hard drinker, and his Majesty would have had
+perhaps a more distinguished soldier,--certainly a worthier subject.  If
+I marry this lady, and we are blessed with a son, he shall walk through
+this gallery once a day before he is flogged into Latin!"
+
+Lucretia's interview with her uncle was a masterpiece of art.  What pity
+that such craft and subtlety were wasted in our little day, and on such
+petty objects; under the Medici, that spirit had gone far to the shaping
+of history.  Sure, from her uncle's openness, that he would plunge at
+once into the subject for which she deemed she was summoned, she evinced
+no repugnance when, tenderly kissing her, he asked if Charles Vernon had
+a chance of winning favour in her eyes.  She knew that she was safe in
+saying "No;" that her uncle would never force her inclinations,--safe so
+far as Vernon was concerned; but she desired more: she desired thoroughly
+to quench all suspicion that her heart was pre-occupied; entirely to
+remove from Sir Miles's thoughts the image of Mainwaring; and a denial of
+one suitor might quicken the baronet's eyes to the concealment of the
+other.  Nor was this all; if Sir Miles was seriously bent upon seeing her
+settled in marriage before his death, the dismissal of Vernon might only
+expose her to the importunity of new candidates more difficult to deal
+with.  Vernon himself she could use as the shield against the arrows of a
+host. Therefore, when Sir Miles repeated his question, she answered, with
+much gentleness and seeming modest sense, that Mr. Vernon had much that
+must prepossess in his favour; that in addition to his own advantages he
+had one, the highest in her eyes,--her uncle's sanction and approval.
+But--and she hesitated with becoming and natural diffidence--were not his
+habits unfixed and roving?  So it was said; she knew not herself,--she
+would trust her happiness to her uncle.  But if so, and if Mr. Vernon
+were really disposed to change, would it not be prudent to try him,--try
+him where there was temptation, not in the repose of Laughton, but amidst
+his own haunts of London?  Sir Miles had friends who would honestly
+inform him of the result.  She did but suggest this; she was too ready to
+leave all to her dear guardian's acuteness and experience.
+
+Melted by her docility, and in high approval of the prudence which
+betokened a more rational judgment than he himself had evinced, the good
+old man clasped her to his breast and shed tears as he praised and
+thanked her.  She had decided, as she always did, for the best; Heaven
+forbid that she should be wasted on an incorrigible man of pleasure!
+"And," said the frank-hearted gentleman, unable long to keep any thought
+concealed,--"and to think that I could have wronged you for a moment, my
+own noble child; that I could have been dolt enough to suppose that the
+good looks of that boy Mainwaring might have caused you to forget what--
+But you change colour!"--for, with all her dissimulation, Lucretia loved
+too ardently not to shrink at that name thus suddenly pronounced.  "Oh,"
+continued the baronet, drawing her still nearer towards him, while with
+one hand he put back her face, that he might read its expression the more
+closely,--"oh, if it had been so,--if it be so, I will pity, not blame
+you, for my neglect was the fault: pity you, for I have known a similar
+struggle; admire you in pity, for you have the spirit of your ancestors,
+and you will conquer the weakness.  Speak! have I touched on the truth?
+Speak without fear, child,--you have no mother; but in age a man
+sometimes gets a mother's heart."
+
+Startled and alarmed as the lark when the step nears its nest, Lucretia
+summoned all the dark wile of her nature to mislead the intruder.  "No,
+uncle, no; I am not so unworthy.  You misconceived my emotion."
+
+"Ah, you know that he has had the presumption to love you,--the puppy!--
+and you feel the compassion you women always feel for such offenders?  Is
+that it?"
+
+Rapidly Lucretia considered if it would be wise to leave that impression
+on his mind.  On one hand, it might account for a moment's agitation; and
+if Mainwaring were detected hovering near the domain, in the exchange of
+their correspondence, it might appear but the idle, if hopeless, romance
+of youth, which haunts the mere home of its object,--but no; on the other
+hand, it left his banishment absolute and confirmed.  Her resolution was
+taken with a promptitude that made her pause not perceptible.
+
+"No, my dear uncle," she said, so cheerfully that it removed all doubt
+from the mind of her listener; "but M. Dalibard has rallied me on the
+subject, and I was so angry with him that when you touched on it, I
+thought more of my quarrel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring
+himself.  Come, now, own it, dear sir!  M.  Dalibard has instilled this
+strange fancy into your head?"
+
+"No, 'S life; if he had taken such a liberty, I should have lost my
+librarian.  No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon; you know true love is
+jealous."
+
+"Vernon!" thought Lucretia; "he must go, and at once."  Sliding from her
+uncle's arms to the stool at his feet, she then led the conversation more
+familiarly back into the channel it had lost; and when at last she
+escaped, it was with the understanding that, without promise or
+compromise, Mr. Vernon should return to London at once, and be put upon
+the ordeal through which she felt assured it was little likely he should
+pass with success.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GUY'S OAK.
+
+Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the
+cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before
+chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream.  Vernon
+had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him, and
+far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any
+engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial itself
+imposed.  His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary; but his
+senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his success with
+the heiress.  Though so free from all mercenary meanness, Mr. Vernon was
+still enough man of the world to be sensible of the advantages of the
+alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir Miles, and from which
+Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse.  The season of London was
+over, but there was always a set, and that set the one in which Charley
+Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller than the country.
+Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was then to England what
+Baiae was to Rome.  The prince was holding gay court at the Pavilion, and
+that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated to breathe.  He was
+no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal affection to the
+prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract.  Nothing
+is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips of
+princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their own perverse
+fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of frank
+kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown.  But
+Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the
+prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of
+another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the
+confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than
+he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and
+his own happiness to trifle with.  He joined his old companions, but he
+kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits.  Beyond what was then
+thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley
+Vernon seemed reformed.
+
+Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of
+action.  Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced
+to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.
+
+Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his chamber,--
+his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles.  He avoided all private
+conferences with Lucretia.  She did not provoke them.  Young Gabriel
+amused himself in copying Sir Miles's pictures, sketching from Nature,
+scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never showed
+his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them alone,
+shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on pretence of
+love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages, where he was
+a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always contrived to
+leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief, upsetting the
+tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved dearly, setting
+two gossips by the ears.  But these occupations were over by the hour
+Lucretia left her apartment.  From that time he never left her out of
+view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged times,
+whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in the drawing-
+room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after plaguing the
+Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche.  These two strange persons had indeed
+apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is sometimes seen
+between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself; but the attraction
+that drew them together was an indefinable instinct of their similarity
+in many traits of their several characters,--the whelp leopard sported
+fearlessly around the she-panther.  Before Olivier's midnight conference
+with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and closer to Lucretia, as an ally
+against his father; for that father he cherished feelings which, beneath
+the most docile obedience, concealed horror and hate, and something of
+the ferocity of revenge.  And if young Varney loved any one on earth
+except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering.  She had administered to his
+ruling passions, which were for effect and display; she had devised the
+dress which set off to the utmost his exterior, and gave it that
+picturesque and artistic appearance which he had sighed for in his study
+of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke.  She supplied him (for in money
+she was generous) with enough to gratify and forestall every boyish
+caprice; and this liberality now turned against her, for it had increased
+into a settled vice his natural taste for extravagance, and made all
+other considerations subordinate to that of feeding his cupidity.  She
+praised his drawings, which, though self-taught, were indeed
+extraordinary, predicted his fame as an artist, lifted him into
+consequence amongst the guests by her notice and eulogies, and what,
+perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that it was to her--to Dalibard's
+desire to conceal before her his more cruel propensities--that he owed
+his father's change from the most refined severity to the most paternal
+gentleness.
+
+And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which she
+trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirant
+become the scheming rival and the secret foe.  But now,--thoroughly aware
+of the gravity of his father's objects, seeing before him the chance of a
+settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential connection
+with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty he recalled
+with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitary malice and
+revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre plans, and without
+scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to his benefactress.
+Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft, resembles the spider,
+whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts the fellow-spider that
+shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes it has woven for a
+victim, to surrender to a master.
+
+Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movement
+of Lucretia's, had reported to his father two visits to the most retired
+part of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discover the
+exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had prevented the detection of
+Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange of correspondence.  Dalibard
+bade him continue his watch, without hinting at his ulterior intentions,
+for, indeed, in these he was not decided.  Even should he discover any
+communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring, how reveal it to Sir Miles
+without forever precluding himself from the chance of profiting by the
+betrayal?  Could Lucretia ever forgive the injury, and could she fail to
+detect the hand that inflicted it?  His only hope was in the removal of
+Mainwaring from his path by other agencies than his own, and (by an
+appearance of generosity and self-abandonment, in keeping her secret and
+submitting to his fate) he trusted to regain the confidence she now
+withheld from him, and use it to his advantage when the time came to
+defend himself from Vernon.  For he had learned from Sir Miles the
+passive understanding with respect to that candidate for her hand; and he
+felt assured that had Mainwaring never existed, could he cease to exist
+for her hopes, Lucretia, despite her dissimulation, would succumb to one
+she feared but respected, rather than one she evidently trifled with and
+despised.
+
+"But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence is
+collected," thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued his
+chess with the baronet.
+
+Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an event
+occurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it more
+immediately interested.
+
+Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by two
+seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character.  Whether they were
+apoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentle
+congestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matter of
+doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a very formal, man.
+Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, and scientific
+class that they are now rapidly becoming.  Sir Miles himself so stoutly
+and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the more unfavourable
+interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by his patient, was awed
+from expressing plainly a contrary opinion.  There are certain persons
+who will dismiss their physician if he tells them the truth: Sir Miles
+was one of them.
+
+In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud.  He did
+not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others should
+calculate on his dying.  He was fond of his power, though he exercised it
+gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled in
+proportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer.  He
+dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his
+peculiar disease: "Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit.  His intellect must
+be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadly
+impaired!"  This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have
+had it most: pardon it in the proud old man!  He enjoined the physician
+to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks were
+wholly innocent and unimportant.  The physician did so, and was generally
+believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous after them as
+before.  Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibard and Lucretia.
+The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied pathology with the
+profound research and ingenious application which he brought to bear upon
+all he undertook.  He whispered from the first to Lucretia,--
+
+"Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and forbears wine
+and the table, his days are numbered."
+
+And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she had
+become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a grief
+sudden and sincere.  We have seen how these better sentiments changed as
+human life became an obstacle in her way.  In her character, what
+phrenologists call "destructiveness," in the comprehensive sense of the
+word, was superlatively developed.  She had not actual cruelty; she was
+not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.
+She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing.  A goal was
+before her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostile
+impediments.  At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to
+fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could
+well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal's she ventured to
+urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise.  But Sir Miles was touchy on
+the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits
+might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt
+as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long since
+left him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints that
+rendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of those
+comfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince no
+displeasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical
+composure.  Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrived to
+coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine was
+necessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.
+The second attack, following four months after the first, was less
+alarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; but
+three nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone for
+some time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose, opened
+his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a slight sigh,
+and took down his Bible.  The next morning he despatched the letters
+which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as he quitted his
+room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon the portraits in
+the gallery.  No one was by the old man to interpret these slight signs,
+in which lay a world of meaning.
+
+A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of the
+restored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles's
+physician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one of
+the children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.
+A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalled in
+all haste to Laughton Hall.  For the third time, he found Sir Miles
+speechless.  Dalibard was by his bedside.  Lucretia had not been made
+aware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (who of
+late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he was
+taken ill.  The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when he
+drew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician's arm.
+
+"Not this time," he said slowly, and with emphasis; "it will be his
+death."
+
+"Pooh, sir!" said the doctor, disdainfully.
+
+"Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility.  I have studied
+medicine,--I know these symptoms.  In this case the apoplexy may spare,--
+the lancet kills."
+
+The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.
+
+"What would you do, then?"
+
+"Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.
+If they fail--"
+
+"Ay, then?"
+
+"A chill bath and vigorous friction."
+
+"Sir, I will never permit it."
+
+"Then murder your patient your own way."
+
+All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his teeth
+locked.  The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and said
+irresolutely,--
+
+"Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that's
+another matter.  Will you guarantee the success of your plan?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;" and he
+appealed to the valet.
+
+"Call up the footman and lift your master," said Dalibard; and the
+doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eight
+inches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room.  Perplexed
+and irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard's movements.  The
+body, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants, under
+Dalibard's directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction.  Several
+minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place.  At length Sir
+Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or two more, and
+the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on the surface of
+the skin; life ebbed back.  The danger was passed, the dark foe driven
+from the citadel.  Sir Miles spoke audibly, though incoherently, as he
+was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, the lights removed, noise
+forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in silence by the
+bedside.
+
+"Rich man," thought Dalibard, "thine hour is not yet come; thy wealth
+must not pass to the boy Mainwaring."  Sir Miles's recovery, under the
+care of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete as
+before.  Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,
+we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation.  Sir
+Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard's wrestle with the
+doctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simple
+means to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, with a
+docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learned
+secretary's urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desired
+to live at all.  Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not
+blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a
+very different temper from the doctor's, he assented with a tolerable
+grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the open
+air.  Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his
+influence was as natural as it was apparent.  Lucretia trembled; she
+divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which
+threatened to be independent of it.  She became abstracted and uneasy;
+jealousy of the Provencal possessed her.  She began to meditate schemes
+for his downfall.  At this time, Sir Miles received the following letter
+from Mr. Fielden:--
+
+SOUTHAMPTON, Aug.  20, 1801.
+
+DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrived at
+Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice written to her
+sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeing that
+she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be
+permitted to visit her.  Miss Clavering has answered as might be expected
+from the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the same
+fears of offending you that actuate her sister.  But now, since the
+worthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found the air
+insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we had
+exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I am
+reluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, being
+already restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I am sure
+I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not only
+provided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,
+but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessions that
+I venture to call "the riches of the heart."  Now, I pray you, my dear
+Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and to suffer
+Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her sister.  Counting on your
+consent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment for
+Miss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of
+such feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautiful
+and fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out of
+muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings and
+fourpence.  I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for your
+noble kindness to young Ardworth.  He is so full of ardour and spirit
+that I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at work on
+that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses' Bridge,--I
+found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, which was only
+just frozen over!  Poor lad!  Heaven will take care of him, I know, as it
+does of all who take no care of themselves.  Ah, Sir Miles, if you could
+but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness!  I have the honour to be,
+Sir Miles,
+              Your most humble, poor servant, to command,
+                                              MATTHEW FIELDEN.
+
+Sir Miles put this letter in his niece's hand, and said kindly, "Why not
+have gone to see your sister before?  I should not have been angry.  Go,
+my child, as soon as you like.  To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling that
+day; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order."
+
+Lucretia hesitated a moment.  To leave Dalibard in sole possession of the
+field, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil could
+he do in that time?  And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could come to
+Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks'
+absence!  She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last
+letter had been colder and shorter; she yearned to hear him say, with his
+own lips, that he loved her still.  This idea banished or prevailed over
+all others.  She thanked her uncle cheerfully and gayly, and the journey
+was settled.
+
+"Be at watch early on Monday," said Olivier to his son.
+
+Monday came; the baronet had ordered the carriage to be at the door at
+ten.  A little before eight, Lucretia stole out, and took her way to
+Guy's Oak.  Gabriel had placed himself in readiness; he had climbed a
+tree at the bottom of the park (near the place where hitherto he had lost
+sight of her); she passed under it,--on through a dark grove of pollard
+oaks.  When she was at a sufficient distance, the boy dropped from his
+perch; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace, following
+from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful.  He saw her pause
+at the dell and look round; she descended into the hollow; he slunk
+through the fern; he gained the marge of the dell, and looked down,--she
+was lost to his sight.  At length, to his surprise, he saw the gleam of
+her robe emerge from the hollow of a tree,--her head stooped as she came
+through the aperture; he had time to shrink back amongst the fern; she
+passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to the house; then
+into the dell crept the boy.  Guy's Oak, vast and venerable, with gnarled
+green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told that its day of
+fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss of the hollow, high
+and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on the vantage-ground above,--
+even as a great name soars the loftier when it springs from the grave.  A
+dark and irregular fissure gave entrance to the heart of the oak.  The
+boy glided in and looked round; he saw nothing, yet something there must
+be.  The rays of the early sun did not penetrate into the hollow, it was
+as dim as a cave.  He felt slowly in every crevice, and a startled moth
+or two flew out.  It was not for moths that the girl had come to Guy's
+Oak!  He drew back, at last, in despair; as he did so, he heard a low
+sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring, angry sound, like a hiss; he
+looked round, and through the dark, two burning eyes fixed his own: he
+had startled a snake from its bed.  He drew out in time, as the reptile
+sprang; but now his task, search, and object were forgotten.  With the
+versatility of a child, his thoughts were all on the enemy he had
+provoked.  That zest of prey which is inherent in man's breast, which
+makes him love the sport and the chase, and maddens boyhood and age with
+the passion for slaughter, leaped up within him; anything of danger and
+contest and excitement gave Gabriel Varney a strange fever of pleasure.
+He sprang up the sides of the dell, climbed the park pales on which it
+bordered, was in the wood where the young shoots rose green and strong
+from the underwood.  To cut a staff for the strife, to descend again into
+the dell, creep again through the fissure, look round for those vengeful
+eyes, was quick done as the joyous play of the impulse.  The poor snake
+had slid down in content and fancied security; its young, perhaps, were
+not far off; its wrath had been the instinct Nature gives to the mother.
+It hath done thee no harm yet, boy; leave it in peace!  The young hunter
+had no ear to such whisper of prudence or mercy.  Dim and blind in the
+fissure, he struck the ground and the tree with his stick, shouted out,
+bade the eyes gleam, and defied them.  Whether or not the reptile had
+spent its ire in the first fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return
+of the intruder rather daunted than exasperated, we leave those better
+versed in natural history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the
+challenge and courting the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak,
+close to the very feet of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged
+its gray coils through the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it.
+Gabriel sprang through the fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it
+with a laugh of scorn as he struck.  Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared
+its crest; the throat swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and
+again, green as emeralds, glared the spite of its eyes.  No fear felt
+Gabriel Varney; his arm was averted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly,
+with the eye of an artist. Had he had pencil and tablet at that moment,
+he would have dropped his weapon for the sketch, though the snake had
+been as deadly as the viper of Sumatra.  The sight sank into his memory,
+to be reproduced often by the wild, morbid fancies of his hand.  Scarce a
+moment, however, had he for the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell,
+baffled and bruised by the involuntary blow of its enemy.  As it writhed
+on the grass, how its colours came out; how graceful were the movements
+of its pain!  And still the boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the
+cruelty returned.  A blow, a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone;
+shapeless, and clotted with gore, that elegant head; mangled and
+dissevered the airy spires of that delicate shape, which had glanced in
+its circling involutions, free and winding as a poet's thought through
+his verse.  The boy trampled the quivering relics into the sod, with a
+fierce animal joy of conquest, and turned once more towards the hollow,
+for a last almost hopeless survey.  Lo, his object was found!  In his
+search for the snake, either his staff or his foot had disturbed a layer
+of moss in the corner; the faint ray, ere he entered the hollow, gleamed
+upon something white.  He emerged from the cavity with a letter in his
+hand; he read the address, thrust it into his bosom, and as stealthily,
+but more rapidly, than he had come, took his way to his father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HOUSEHOLD TREASON.
+
+The Provencal took the letter from his son's hand, and looked at him with
+an approbation half-complacent, half-ironical.  "Mon fils!" said he,
+patting the boy's head gently, "why should we not be friends?  We want
+each other; we have the strong world to fight against."
+
+"Not if you are master of this place."
+
+"Well answered,--no; then we shall have the strong world on our side, and
+shall have only rogues and the poor to make war upon."  Then, with a
+quiet gesture, he dismissed his son, and gazed slowly on the letter.  His
+pulse, which was usually low, quickened, and his lips were tightly
+compressed; he shrank from the contents with a jealous pang; as a light
+quivers strugglingly in a noxious vault, love descended into that hideous
+breast, gleamed upon dreary horrors, and warred with the noxious
+atmosphere: but it shone still.  To this dangerous man, every art that
+gives power to the household traitor was familiar: he had no fear that
+the violated seals should betray the fraud which gave the contents to the
+eye that, at length, steadily fell upon the following lines:--
+
+DEAREST, AND EVER DEAREST,--Where art thou at this moment?  What are thy
+thoughts,--are they upon me?  I write this at the dead of night.  I
+picture you to myself as my hand glides over the paper.  I think I see
+you, as you look on these words, and envy them the gaze of those dark
+eyes.  Press your lips to the paper.  Do you feel the kiss that I leave
+there?  Well, well! it will not be for long now that we shall be divided.
+Oh, what joy, when I think that I am about to see you!  Two days more, at
+most three, and we shall meet, shall we not?  I am going to see my
+sister.  I subjoin my address.  Come, come, come; I thirst to see you
+once more.  And I did well to say, "Wait, and be patient;" we shall not
+wait long: before the year is out I shall be free.  My uncle has had
+another and more deadly attack.  I see its trace in his face, in his
+step, in his whole form and bearing.  The only obstacle between us is
+fading away.  Can I grieve when I think it,--grieve when life with you
+spreads smiling beyond the old man's grave?  And why should age, that has
+survived all passion, stand with its chilling frown, and the miserable
+prejudices the world has not conquered, but strengthened into a creed,--
+why should age stand between youth and youth?  I feel your mild eyes
+rebuke me as I write.  But chide me not that on earth I see only you.
+And it will be mine to give you wealth and rank!  Mine to see the homage
+of my own heart reflected from the crowd who bow, not to the statue, but
+the pedestal.  Oh, how I shall enjoy your revenge upon the proud!  For I
+have drawn no pastoral scenes in my picture of the future.  No; I see you
+leading senates, and duping fools.  I shall be by your side, your
+partner, step after step, as you mount the height, for I am ambitious,
+you know, William; and not less because I love,--rather ten thousand
+times more so.  I would not have you born great and noble, for what then
+could we look to,--what use all my schemes, and my plans, and aspirings?
+Fortune, accident, would have taken from us the great zest of life, which
+is desire.
+
+When I see you, I shall tell you that I have some fears of Olivier
+Dalibard; he has evidently some wily project in view.  He, who never
+interfered before with the blundering physician, now thrusts him aside,
+affects to have saved the old man, attends him always.  Dares he think to
+win an influence, to turn against me,--against us?  Happily, when I shall
+come back, my uncle will probably be restored to the false strength which
+deceives him; he will have less need of Dalibard; and then--then let the
+Frenchman beware!  I have already a plot to turn his schemes to his own
+banishment.  Come to Southampton, then, as soon as you can,--perhaps the
+day you receive this; on Wednesday, at farthest. Your last letter implies
+blame of my policy with respect to Vernon.  Again I say, it is necessary
+to amuse my uncle to the last. Before Vernon can advance a claim, there
+will be weeping at Laughton.  I shall weep, too, perhaps; but there will
+be joy in those tears, as well as sorrow,--for then, when I clasp thy
+hand, I can murmur, "It is mine at last, and forever!"
+
+Adieu!  No, not adieu,--to our meeting, my lover, my beloved!  Thy
+                                LUCRETIA.
+
+An hour after Miss Clavering had departed on her visit, Dalibard returned
+the letter to his son, the seal seemingly unbroken, and bade him replace
+it in the hollow of the tree, but sufficiently in sight to betray itself
+to the first that entered.  He then communicated the plan he had formed
+for its detection,--a plan which would prevent Lucretia ever suspecting
+the agency of his son or himself; and this done, he joined Sir Miles in
+the gallery.  Hitherto, in addition to his other apprehensions in
+revealing to the baronet Lucretia's clandestine intimacy with Mainwaring,
+Dalibard had shrunk from the thought that the disclosure would lose her
+the heritage which had first tempted his avarice or ambition; but now his
+jealous and his vindictive passions were aroused, and his whole plan of
+strategy was changed.  He must crush Lucretia, or she would crush him, as
+her threats declared.  To ruin her in Sir Miles's eyes, to expel her from
+his house, might not, after all, weaken his own position, even with
+regard to power over herself.  If he remained firmly established at
+Laughton, he could affect intercession,--he could delay, at least, any
+precipitate union with Mainwaring, by practising on the ambition which he
+still saw at work beneath her love; he might become a necessary ally; and
+then--why, then, his ironical smile glanced across his lips.  But beyond
+this, his quick eye saw fair prospects to self-interest: Lucretia
+banished; the heritage not hers; the will to be altered; Dalibard
+esteemed indispensable to the life of the baronet.  Come, there was hope
+here,--not for the heritage, indeed, but at least for a munificent
+bequest.
+
+At noon, some visitors, bringing strangers from London whom Sir Miles had
+invited to see the house (which was one of the lions of the
+neighbourhood, though not professedly a show-place), were expected.
+Aware of this, Dalibard prayed the baronet to rest quiet till his company
+arrived, and then he said carelessly,--
+
+"It will be a healthful diversion to your spirits to accompany them a
+little in the park; you can go in your garden-chair; you will have new
+companions to talk with by the way; and it is always warm and sunny at
+the slope of the hill, towards the bottom of the park."
+
+Sir Miles assented cheerfully; the guests came, strolled over the house,
+admired the pictures and the armour and the hall and the staircase, paid
+due respect to the substantial old-fashioned luncheon, and then,
+refreshed, and in great good-humour, acquiesced in Sir Miles's
+proposition to saunter through the park.
+
+The poor baronet was more lively than usual.  The younger people
+clustered gayly round his chair (which was wheeled by his valet), smiling
+at his jests and charmed with his courteous high-breeding.  A little in
+the rear walked Gabriel, paying special attention to the prettiest and
+merriest girl of the company, who was a great favourite with Sir Miles,--
+perhaps for those reasons.
+
+"What a delightful old gentleman!" said the young lady.  "How I envy Miss
+Clavering such an uncle!"
+
+"Ah, but you are a little out of favour to-day, I can tell you," said
+Gabriel, laughingly; "you were close by Sir Miles when we went through
+the picture-gallery, and you never asked him the history of the old
+knight in the buff doublet and blue sash."
+
+"Dear me, what of that?"
+
+"Why, that was brave Colonel Guy St. John, the Cavalier, the pride and
+boast of Sir Miles; you know his weakness.  He looked so displeased when
+you said, 'What a droll-looking figure!' I was on thorns for you!"
+
+"What a pity!  I would not offend dear Sir Miles for the world."
+
+"Well, it's easy to make it up with him.  Go and tell him that he must
+take you to see Guy's Oak, in the dell; that you have heard so much about
+it; and when you get him on his hobby, it is hard if you can't make your
+peace."
+
+"Oh, I'll certainly do it, Master Varney;" and the young lady lost no
+time in obeying the hint.  Gabriel had set other tongues on the same cry,
+so that there was a general exclamation when the girl named the subject,-
+-"Oh, Guy's Oak, by all means!"
+
+Much pleased with the enthusiasm this memorial of his pet ancestor
+produced, Sir Miles led the way to the dell, and pausing as he reached
+the verge, said,--
+
+"I fear I cannot do you the honours; it is too steep for my chair to
+descend safely."
+
+Gabriel whispered the fair companion whose side he still kept to.
+
+"Now, my dear Sir Miles," cried the girl, "I positively won't stir
+without you; I am sure we could get down the chair without a jolt.  Look
+there, how nicely the ground slopes!  Jane, Lucy, my dears, let us take
+charge of Sir Miles.  Now, then."
+
+The gallant old gentleman would have marched to the breach in such
+guidance; he kissed the fair hands that lay so temptingly on his chair,
+and then, rising with some difficulty, said,--
+
+"No, my dears, you have made me so young again that I think I can walk
+down the steep with the best of you."
+
+So, leaning partly on his valet, and by the help of the hands extended to
+him, step after step, Sir Miles, with well-disguised effort, reached the
+huge roots of the oak.
+
+"The hollow then was much smaller," said he, "so he was not so easily
+detected as a man would be now, the damned crop-ears--I beg pardon, my
+dears; the rascally rebels--poked their swords through the fissure, and
+two went, one through his jerkin, one through his arm; but he took care
+not to swear at the liberty, and they went away, not suspecting him."
+
+While thus speaking, the young people were already playfully struggling
+which should first enter the oak.  Two got precedence, and went in and
+out, one after the other.  Gabriel breathed hard.  "The blind owlets!"
+thought he; "and I put the letter where a mole would have seen it!"
+
+"You know the spell when you enter an oak-tree where the fairies have
+been," he whispered to the fair object of his notice.  "You must turn
+round three times, look carefully on the ground, and you will see the
+face you love best. If I was but a little older, how I should pray--"
+
+"Nonsense!" said the girl, blushing, as she now slid through the crowd,
+and went timidly in; presently she uttered a little exclamation.
+
+The gallant Sir Miles stooped down to see what was the matter, and
+offering his hand as she came out, was startled to see her holding a
+letter.
+
+"Only think what I have found!" said the girl.  "What a strange place for
+a post-office!  Bless me!  It is directed to Mr. Mainwaring!"
+
+"Mr. Mainwaring!" cried three or four voices; but the baronet's was mute.
+His eye recognized Lucretia's hand; his tongue clove to the roof of his
+mouth; the blood surged, like a sea, in his temples; his face became
+purple.  Suddenly Gabriel, peeping over the girl's shoulder, snatched
+away the letter.
+
+"It is my letter,--it is mine!  What a shame in Mainwaring not to have
+come for it as he promised!"
+
+Sir Miles looked round and breathed more freely.
+
+"Yours, Master Varney!" said the young lady, astonished.  "What can make
+your letters to Mr. Mainwaring such a secret?"
+
+"Oh! you'll laugh at me; but--but--I wrote a poem on Guy's Oak, and Mr.
+Mainwaring promised to get it into the county paper for me; and as he was
+to pass close by the park pales, through the wood yonder, on his way to
+D---- last Saturday, we agreed that I should leave it here; but he has
+forgotten his promise, I see."
+
+Sir Miles grasped the boy's arm with a convulsive pressure of gratitude.
+There was a general cry for Gabriel to read his poem on the spot; but the
+boy looked sheepish, and hung down his head, and seemed rather more
+disposed to cry than to recite.  Sir Miles, with an effort at simulation
+that all his long practice of the world never could have nerved him  to,
+unexcited by a motive less strong than the honour of his blood and house,
+came to the relief of the young wit that had just come to his own.
+
+"Nay," he said, almost calmly, "I know our young poet is too shy to
+oblige you.  I will take charge of your verses, Master Gabriel;" and with
+a grave air of command, he took the letter from the boy and placed it in
+his pocket.
+
+The return to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak.  The
+baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as
+before; but it was not successful.  Fortunately, the carriages were all
+at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing
+delayed the parting compliments of the guests.  As the last carriage
+drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him follow him into
+his room.
+
+When there, he dismissed his valet and said,--
+
+"You know, then, who wrote this letter.  Have you been in the secret of
+the correspondence?  Speak the truth, my dear boy; it shall cost you
+nothing."
+
+"Oh, Sir Miles!" cried Gabriel, earnestly, "I know nothing whatever
+beyond this,--that I saw the hand of my dear, kind Miss Lucretia; that I
+felt, I hardly knew why, that both you and she would not have those
+people discover it, which they would if the letter had been circulated
+from one to the other, for some one would have known the hand as well as
+myself, and therefore I spoke, without thinking, the first thing that
+came into my head."
+
+"You--you have obliged me and my niece, sir," said the baronet,
+tremulously; and then, with a forced and sickly smile, he added: "Some
+foolish vagary of Lucretia, I suppose; I must scold her for it.  Say
+nothing about it, however, to any one."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!"
+
+"Good-by, my dear Gabriel!"
+
+"And that boy saved the honour of my niece's name,--my mother's
+grandchild!  O God! this is bitter,--in my old age too!"
+
+He bowed his head over his hands, and tears forced themselves through his
+fingers.  He was long before he had courage to read the letter, though he
+little foreboded all the shock that it would give him.  It was the first
+letter, not destined to himself, of which he had ever broken the seal.
+Even that recollection made the honourable old man pause; but his duty
+was plain and evident, as head of the house and guardian to his niece.
+Thrice he wiped his spectacles; still they were dim, still the tears
+would come.  He rose tremblingly, walked to the window, and saw the
+stately deer grouped in the distance, saw the church spire that rose
+above the burial vault of his ancestors, and his heart sank deeper and
+deeper as he muttered: "Vain pride! pride!"  Then he crept to the door
+and locked it, and at last, seating himself firmly, as a wounded man to
+some terrible operation, he read the letter.
+
+Heaven support thee, old man! thou hast to pass through the bitterest
+trial which honour and affection can undergo,--household treason.  When
+the wife lifts high the blushless front and brazens out her guilt; when
+the child, with loud voice, throws off all control and makes boast of
+disobedience,--man revolts at the audacity; his spirit arms against his
+wrong: its face, at least, is bare; the blow, if sacrilegious, is direct.
+But when mild words and soft kisses conceal the worst foe Fate can arm;
+when amidst the confidence of the heart starts up the form of Perfidy;
+when out from the reptile swells the fiend in its terror; when the breast
+on which man leaned for comfort has taken counsel to deceive him; when he
+learns that, day after day, the life entwined with his own has been a lie
+and a stage-mime,--he feels not the softness of grief, nor the absorption
+of rage; it is mightier than grief, and more withering than rage,--it is
+a horror that appalls.  The heart does not bleed, the tears do not flow,
+as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; it is as if something
+that violates the course of nature had taken place,--something monstrous
+and out of all thought and forewarning; for the domestic traitor is a
+being apart from the orbit of criminals: the felon has no fear of his
+innocent children; with a price on his head, he lays it in safety on the
+bosom of his wife.  In his home, the ablest man, the most subtle and
+suspecting, can be as much a dupe as the simplest. Were it not so as the
+rule, and the exceptions most rare, this world were the riot of a hell!
+
+And therefore it is that to the household perfidy, in all lands, in all
+ages, God's curse seems to cleave, and to God's curse man abandons it; he
+does not honour it by hate, still less will he lighten and share the
+guilt by descending to revenge.  He turns aside with a sickness and
+loathing, and leaves Nature to purify from the earth the ghastly
+phenomenon she abhors.
+
+Old man, that she wilfully deceived thee, that she abused thy belief and
+denied to thy question and profaned maidenhood to stealth,--all this
+might have galled thee; but to these wrongs old men are subjected,--they
+give mirth to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors.  But
+to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side,
+marvelling when the worms should have thee, and looked smiling on thy
+face for the signs of the death-writ--Die quick, old man; the executioner
+hungers for the fee!
+
+There were no tears in those eyes when they came to the close; the letter
+fell noiselessly to the floor, and the head sank on the breast, and the
+hands drooped upon the poor crippled limbs, whose crawl in the sunshine
+hard youth had grudged.  He felt humbled, stunned, crushed; the pride was
+clean gone from him; the cruel words struck home.  Worse than a cipher,
+did he then but cumber the earth?  At that moment old Ponto, the setter,
+shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his master's lap; and
+Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively, for Dash was old,
+too, upon his knees, and licked the numbed, drooping hands.  Now, people
+praise the fidelity of dogs till the theme is worn out; but nobody knows
+what a dog is, unless he has been deceived by men,--then, that honest
+face; then, that sincere caress; then, that coaxing whine that never
+lied!  Well, then,--what then?  A dog is long-lived if he live to ten
+years,--small career this to truth and friendship!  Now, when Sir Miles
+felt that he was not deserted, and his look met those four fond eyes,
+fixed with that strange wistfulness which in our hours of trouble the
+eyes of a dog sympathizingly assume, an odd thought for a sensible man
+passed into him, showing, more than pages of sombre elegy, how deep was
+the sudden misanthropy that blackened the world around.  "When I am
+dead," ran that thought, "is there one human being whom I can trust to
+take charge of the old man's dogs?"
+
+So, let the scene close!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE WILL.
+
+The next day, or rather the next evening, Sir Miles St. John was seated
+before his unshared chicken,--seated alone, and vaguely surprised at
+himself, in a large, comfortable room in his old hotel, Hanover Square.
+Yes, he had escaped.  Hast thou, O Reader, tasted the luxury of escape
+from a home where the charm is broken,--where Distrust looks askant from
+the Lares?  In vain had Dalibard remonstrated, conjured up dangers, and
+asked at least to accompany him.  Excepting his dogs and his old valet,
+who was too like a dog in his fond fidelity to rank amongst bipeds, Sir
+Miles did not wish to have about him a single face familiar at Laughton,
+Dalibard especially.  Lucretia's letter had hinted at plans and designs
+in Dalibard.  It might be unjust, it might be ungrateful; but he grew
+sick at the thought that he was the centre-stone of stratagems and plots.
+The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his eyes; nay,
+he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if to count how long
+before they followed his bier.  So, breaking from all roughly, with a
+shake of his head and a laconic assertion of business in London, he got
+into his carriage,--his own old bachelor's lumbering travelling-
+carriage,--and bade the post-boys drive fast, fast!  Then, when he felt
+alone,--quite alone,--and the gates of the lodge swung behind him, he
+rubbed his hands with a schoolboy's glee, and chuckled aloud, as if he
+enjoyed, not only the sense, but the fun of his safety; as if he had done
+something prodigiously cunning and clever.
+
+So when he saw himself snug in his old, well-remembered hotel, in the
+same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and gay, from the breezes of
+Weymouth or the brouillards of Paris, he thought he shook hands again
+with his youth.  Age and lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were
+forgotten for the moment.  And when, as the excitement died, those grim
+spectres came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced
+and prepared, standing erect on that hearth for whose hospitality he paid
+his guinea a day,--his front proud and defying.  He felt yet that he had
+fortune and power, that a movement of his hand could raise and strike
+down, that at the verge of the tomb he was armed, to punish or reward,
+with the balance and the sword.  Tripped in the smug waiter, and
+announced "Mr. Parchmount."
+
+"Set a chair, and show him in."  The lawyer entered.
+
+"My dear Sir Miles, this is indeed a surprise!  What has brought you to
+town?"
+
+"The common whim of the old, sir.  I would alter my will."
+
+Three days did lawyer and client devote to the task; for Sir Miles was
+minute, and Mr. Parchmount was precise, and little difficulties arose,
+and changes in the first outline were made, and Sir Miles, from the very
+depth of his disgust, desired not to act only from passion.  In that last
+deed of his life, the old man was sublime.  He sought to rise out of the
+mortal, fix his eyes on the Great Judge, weigh circumstances and excuses,
+and keep justice even and serene.
+
+Meanwhile, unconscious of the train laid afar, Lucretia reposed on the
+mine,--reposed, indeed, is not the word; for she was agitated and
+restless that Mainwaring had not obeyed her summons.  She wrote to him
+again from Southampton the third day of her arrival; but before his
+answer came she received this short epistle from London:--
+
+"Mr. Parchmount presents his compliments to Miss Clavering, and, by
+desire of Sir Miles St. John, requests her not to return to Laughton.
+Miss Clavering will hear further in a few days, when Sir Miles has
+concluded the business that has brought him to London."
+
+This letter, if it excited much curiosity, did not produce alarm.  It was
+natural that Sir Miles should be busy in winding up his affairs; his
+journey to London for that purpose was no ill omen to her prospects, and
+her thoughts flew back to the one subject that tyrannized over them.
+Mainwaring's reply, which came two days afterwards, disquieted her much
+more.  He had not found the letter she had left for him in the tree.  He
+was full of apprehensions; he condemned the imprudence of calling on her
+at Mr. Fielden's; he begged her to renounce the idea of such a risk.  He
+would return again to Guy's Oak and search more narrowly: had she changed
+the spot where the former letters were placed?  Yet now, not even the
+non-receipt of her letter, which she ascribed to the care with which she
+had concealed it amidst the dry leaves and moss, disturbed her so much as
+the evident constraint with which Mainwaring wrote,--the cautious and
+lukewarm remonstrance which answered her passionate appeal.  It may be
+that her very doubts, at times, of Mainwaring's affection had increased
+the ardour of her own attachment; for in some natures the excitement of
+fear deepens love more than the calmness of trust. Now with the doubt for
+the first time flashed the resentment, and her answer to Mainwaring was
+vehement and imperious.  But the next day came a messenger express from
+London, with a letter from Mr. Parchmount that arrested for the moment
+even the fierce current of love.
+
+When the task had been completed,--the will signed, sealed, and
+delivered,--the old man had felt a load lifted from his heart.  Three or
+four of his old friends, bons vivants like himself, had seen his arrival
+duly proclaimed in the newspapers, and had hastened to welcome him.
+Warmed by the genial sight of faces associated with the frank joys of his
+youth, Sir Miles, if he did not forget the prudent counsels of Dalibard,
+conceived a proud bitterness of joy in despising them.  Why take such
+care of the worn-out carcass?  His will was made.  What was left to life
+so peculiarly attractive?  He invited his friends to a feast worthy of
+old.  Seasoned revellers were they, with a free gout for a vent to all
+indulgence.  So they came; and they drank, and they laughed, and they
+talked back their young days.  They saw not the nervous irritation, the
+strain on the spirits, the heated membrane of the brain, which made Sir
+Miles the most jovial of all.  It was a night of nights; the old fellows
+were lifted back into their chariots or sedans.  Sir Miles alone seemed
+as steady and sober as if he had supped with Diogenes.  His servant,
+whose respectful admonitions had been awed into silence, lent him his arm
+to bed, but Sir Miles scarcely touched it.  The next morning, when the
+servant (who slept in the same room) awoke, to his surprise the glare of
+a candle streamed on his eyes.  He rubbed them: could he see right?  Sir
+Miles was seated at the table; he must have got up and lighted a candle
+to write,--noiselessly, indeed.  The servant looked and looked, and the
+stillness of Sir Miles awed him: he was seated on an armchair, leaning
+back.  As awe succeeded to suspicion, he sprang up, approached his
+master, took his hand: it was cold, and fell heavily from his clasp.  Sir
+Miles must have been dead for hours.
+
+The pen lay on the ground, where it had dropped from the hand; the letter
+on the table was scarcely commenced: the words ran thus,--
+
+"LUCRETIA,--You will return no more to my house.  You are free as if I
+were dead; but I shall be just. Would that I had been so to your mother,
+to your sister!  But I am old now, as you say, and--"
+
+To one who could have seen into that poor proud heart at the moment the
+hand paused forever, what remained unwritten would have been clear.
+There was, first, the sharp struggle to conquer loathing repugnance, and
+address at all the false and degraded one; then came the sharp sting of
+ingratitude; then the idea of the life grudged and the grave desired;
+then the stout victory over scorn, the resolution to be just; then the
+reproach of the conscience that for so far less an offence the sister had
+been thrown aside, the comfort, perhaps, found in her gentle and
+neglected child obstinately repelled; then the conviction of all earthly
+vanity and nothingness,--the look on into life, with the chilling
+sentiment that affection was gone, that he could never trust again, that
+he was too old to open his arms to new ties; and then, before felt
+singly, all these thoughts united, and snapped the cord.
+
+In announcing his mournful intelligence, with more feeling than might
+have been expected from a lawyer (but even his lawyer loved Sir Miles),
+Mr. Parchmount observed that "as the deceased lay at a hotel, and as Miss
+Clavering's presence would not be needed in the performance of the last
+rites, she would probably forbear the journey to town.  Nevertheless, as
+it was Sir Miles's wish that the will should be opened as soon as
+possible after his death, and it would doubtless contain instructions as
+to his funeral, it would be well that Miss Clavering and her sister
+should immediately depute some one to attend the reading of the testament
+on their behalf.  Perhaps Mr. Fielden would kindly undertake that
+melancholy office."
+
+To do justice to Lucretia, it must be said that her first emotions, on
+the receipt of this letter, were those of a poignant and remorseful
+grief, for which she was unprepared.  But how different it is to count on
+what shall follow death, and to know that death has come!  Susan's
+sobbing sympathy availed not, nor Mr. Fielden's pious and tearful
+exhortations; her own sinful thoughts and hopes came back to her,
+haunting and stern as furies.  She insisted at first upon going to
+London, gazing once more on the clay,--nay, the carriage was at the door,
+for all yielded to her vehemence; but then her heart misgave her: she did
+not dare to face the dead.  Conscience waved her back from the solemn
+offices of nature; she hid her face with her hands, shrank again into her
+room; and Mr. Fielden, assuming unbidden the responsibility, went alone.
+
+Only Vernon (summoned from Brighton), the good clergyman, and the lawyer,
+to whom, as sole executor, the will was addressed, and in whose custody
+it had been left, were present when the seal of the testament was broken.
+The will was long, as is common when the dust that it disposes of covers
+some fourteen or fifteen thousand acres.  But out of the mass of
+technicalities and repetitions these points of interest rose salient: To
+Charles Vernon, of Vernon Grange, Esq., and his heirs by him lawfully
+begotten, were left all the lands and woods and manors that covered that
+space in the Hampshire map known by the name of the "Laughton property,"
+on condition that he and his heirs assumed the name and arms of St. John;
+and on the failure of Mr. Vernon's issue, the estate passed, first (with
+the same conditions) to the issue of Susan Mivers; next to that of
+Lucretia Clavering.  There the entail ceased; and the contingency fell to
+the rival ingenuity of lawyers in hunting out, amongst the remote and
+forgotten descendants of some ancient St. John, the heir-at-law.  To
+Lucretia Clavering, without a word of endearment, was bequeathed 10,000
+pounds,--the usual portion which the house of St. John had allotted to
+its daughters; to Susan Mivers the same sum, but with the addition of
+these words, withheld from her sister: "and my blessing!" To Olivier
+Dalibard an annuity of 200 pounds a year; to Honore Gabriel Varney, 3,000
+pounds; to the Rev. Matthew Fielden, 4,000 pounds; and the same sum to
+John Walter Ardworth.  To his favourite servant, Henry Jones, an ample
+provision, and the charge of his dogs Dash and Ponto, with an allowance
+therefor, to be paid weekly, and cease at their deaths.  Poor old man! he
+made it the interest of their guardian not to grudge their lease of life.
+To his other attendants, suitable and munificent bequests, proportioned
+to the length of their services.  For his body, he desired it to be
+buried in the vault of his ancestors without pomp, but without a pretence
+to a humility which he had not manifested in life; and he requested that
+a small miniature in his writing-desk should be placed in his coffin.
+That last injunction was more than a sentiment,--it bespoke the moral
+conviction of the happiness the original might have conferred on his
+life.  Of that happiness his pride had deprived him; nor did he repent,
+for he had deemed pride a duty.  But the mute likeness, buried in his
+grave,--that told the might of the sacrifice he had made!  Death removes
+all distinctions, and in the coffin the Lord of Laughton might choose his
+partner.
+
+When the will had been read, Mr. Parchmount produced two letters, one
+addressed, in the hand of the deceased, to Mr. Vernon, the other in the
+lawyer's own hand to Miss Clavering.  The last enclosed the fragment
+found on Sir Miles's table, and her own letter to Mainwaring, redirected
+to her in Sir Miles's boldest and stateliest autograph.  He had, no
+doubt, meant to return it in the letter left uncompleted.
+
+The letter to Vernon contained a copy of Lucretia's fatal epistle, and
+the following lines to Vernon himself:--
+
+MY DEAR CHARLES,--With much deliberation, and with natural reluctance to
+reveal to you my niece's shame, I feel it my duty to transmit to you the
+accompanying enclosure, copied from the original with my own hand, which
+the task sullied.
+
+I do so first, because otherwise you might, as I should have done in your
+place, feel bound in honour to persist in the offer of your hand,--feel
+bound the more, because Miss Clavering is not my heiress; secondly,
+because had her attachment been stronger than her interest, and she had
+refused your offer, you might still have deemed her hardly and
+capriciously dealt with by me, and not only sought to augment her
+portion, but have profaned the house of my ancestors by receiving her
+there as an honoured and welcome relative and guest. Now, Charles Vernon,
+I believe, to the utmost of my poor judgment, I have done what is right
+and just. I have taken into consideration that this young person has been
+brought up as a daughter of my house, and what the daughters of my house
+have received, I bequeath her.  I put aside, as far as I can, all
+resentment of mere family pride; I show that I do so, when I repair my
+harshness to my poor sister, and leave both her children the same
+provision.  And if you exceed what I have done for Lucretia, unless, on
+more dispassionate consideration than I can give, you conscientiously
+think me wrong, you insult my memory--and impugn my justice.  Be it in
+this as your conscience dictates; but I entreat, I adjure, I command, at
+least that you never knowingly admit by a hearth, hitherto sacred to
+unblemished truth and honour, a person who has desecrated it with
+treason.  As gentleman to gentleman, I impose on you this solemn
+injunction.  I could have wished to leave that young woman's children
+barred from the entail; but our old tree has so few branches!  You are
+unwedded; Susan too.  I must take my chance that Miss Clavering's
+children, if ever they inherit, do not imitate the mother.  I conclude
+she will wed that Mainwaring; her children will have a low-born father.
+Well, her race at least is pure,--Clavering and St. John are names to
+guarantee faith and honour; yet you see what she is!  Charles Vernon, if
+her issue inherit the soul of gentlemen, it must come, after all, not
+from the well-born mother!  I have lived to say this,--I who--  But
+perhaps if we had looked more closely into the pedigree of those
+Claverings--.
+
+Marry yourself,--marry soon, Charles Vernon, my dear kinsman; keep the
+old house in the old line, and true to its old fame.  Be kind and good to
+my poor; don't strain on the tenants.  By the way, Farmer Strongbow owes
+three years' rent,--I forgive him.  Pension him off; he can do no good to
+the land, but he was born on it, and must not fall on the parish.  But to
+be kind and good to the poor, not to strain the tenants, you must learn
+not to waste, my dear Charles.  A needy man can never be generous without
+being unjust. How give, if you are in debt?  You will think of this now,-
+-now,--while your good heart is soft, while your feelings are moved.
+Charley Vernon, I think you will shed a tear when you see my armchair
+still and empty.  And I would have left you the care of my dogs, but you
+are thoughtless, and will go much to London, and they are used to the
+country now.  Old Jones will have a cottage in the village,--he has
+promised to live there; drop in now and then, and see poor Ponto and
+Dash.  It is late, and old friends come to dine here.  So, if anything
+happens to me, and we don't meet again, good-by, and God bless you.
+
+Your affectionate kinsman,         MILES ST. JOHN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE ENGAGEMENT.
+
+It is somewhat less than three months after the death of Sir Miles St.
+John; November reigns in London.  And "reigns" seems scarcely a
+metaphorical expression as applied to the sullen, absolute sway which
+that dreary month (first in the dynasty of Winter) spreads over the
+passive, dejected city.
+
+Elsewhere in England, November is no such gloomy, grim fellow as he is
+described.  Over the brown glebes and changed woods in the country, his
+still face looks contemplative and mild; and he has soft smiles, too, at
+times,--lighting up his taxed vassals the groves; gleaming where the
+leaves still cling to the boughs, and reflected in dimples from the waves
+which still glide free from his chains.  But as a conqueror who makes his
+home in the capital, weighs down with hard policy the mutinous citizens
+long ere his iron influence is felt in the province, so the first tyrant
+of Winter has only rigour and frowns for London.  The very aspect of the
+wayfarers has the look of men newly enslaved: cloaked and muffled, they
+steal to and fro through the dismal fogs.  Even the children creep
+timidly through the streets; the carriages go cautious and hearse-like
+along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not filled, nor the brisk
+mirth of Christmas commenced; the unsocial shadows flit amidst the mist,
+like men on the eve of a fatal conspiracy.  Each other month in London
+has its charms for the experienced.  Even from August to October, when
+The Season lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her sons to be seen within
+hearing of Bow, the true lover of London finds pleasure still at hand, if
+he search for her duly.  There are the early walks through the parks and
+green Kensington Gardens, which now change their character of resort, and
+seem rural and countrylike, but yet with more life than the country; for
+on the benches beneath the trees, and along the sward, and up the malls,
+are living beings enough to interest the eye and divert the thoughts, if
+you are a guesser into character, and amateur of the human face,--fresh
+nursery-maid and playful children; and the old shabby-genteel, buttoned-
+up officer, musing on half-pay, as he sits alone in some alcove of Kenna,
+or leans pensive over the rail of the vacant Ring; and early tradesman,
+or clerk from the suburban lodging, trudging brisk to his business,--for
+business never ceases in London.  Then at noon, what delight to escape to
+the banks at Putney or Richmond,--the row up the river; the fishing punt;
+the ease at your inn till dark! or if this tempt not, still Autumn shines
+clear and calm over the roofs, where the smoke has a holiday; and how
+clean gleam the vistas through the tranquillized thoroughfares; and as
+you saunter along, you have all London to yourself, Andrew Selkirk, but
+with the mart of the world for your desert.  And when October comes on,
+it has one characteristic of spring,--life busily returns to the city;
+you see the shops bustling up, trade flowing back.  As birds scent the
+April, so the children of commerce plume their wings and prepare for the
+first slack returns of the season.  But November!  Strange the taste,
+stout the lungs, grief-defying the heart, of the visitor who finds charms
+and joy in a London November.
+
+In a small lodging-house in Bulstrode Street, Manchester Square, grouped
+a family in mourning who had had the temerity to come to town in
+November, for the purpose, no doubt, of raising their spirits.  In the
+dull, small drawing-room of the dull, small house we introduce to you,
+first, a middle-aged gentleman whose dress showed what dress now fails to
+show,--his profession.  Nobody could mistake the cut of the cloth and the
+shape of the hat, for he had just come in from a walk, and not from
+discourtesy, but abstraction, the broad brim still shadowed his pleasant,
+placid face.  Parson spoke out in him, from beaver to buckle.  By the
+coal fire, where, through volumes of smoke, fussed and flickered a
+pretension to flame, sat a middle-aged lady, whom, without being a
+conjurer, you would pronounce at once to be wife to the parson; and
+sundry children sat on stools all about her, with one book between them,
+and a low whispered murmur from their two or three pursed-up lips,
+announcing that that book was superfluous.  By the last of three dim-
+looking windows, made dimmer by brown moreen draperies, edged genteelly
+with black cotton velvet, stood a girl of very soft and pensive
+expression of features,--pretty unquestionably, excessively pretty; but
+there was something so delicate and elegant about her,--the bend of her
+head, the shape of her slight figure, the little fair hands crossed one
+on each other, as the face mournfully and listlessly turned to the
+window, that "pretty" would have seemed a word of praise too often
+proffered to milliner and serving-maid.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps the
+right one: "handsome" would have implied something statelier and more
+commanding; "beautiful," greater regularity of feature, or richness of
+colouring.  The parson, who since his entrance had been walking up and
+down the small room with his hands behind him, glanced now and then at
+the young lady, but not speaking, at length paused from that monotonous
+exercise by the chair of his wife, and touched her shoulder.  She stopped
+from her work, which, more engrossing than elegant, was nothing less than
+what is technically called "the taking in" of a certain blue jacket,
+which was about to pass from Matthew, the eldest born, to David, the
+second, and looked up at her husband affectionately.  Her husband,
+however, spoke not; he only made a sign, partly with his eyebrow, partly
+with a jerk of his thumb over his right shoulder, in the direction of the
+young lady we have described, and then completed the pantomime with a
+melancholy shake of the head.  The wife turned round and looked hard, the
+scissors horizontally raised in one hand, while the other reposed on the
+cuff of the jacket.  At this moment a low knock was heard at the street-
+door.  The worthy pair saw the girl shrink back, with a kind of tremulous
+movement; presently there came the sound of a footstep below, the creak
+of a hinge on the ground-floor, and again all was silent.
+
+"That is Mr. Mainwaring's knock," said one of the children.
+
+The girl left the room abruptly, and, light as was her step, they heard
+her steal up the stairs.
+
+"My dears," said the parson, "it wants an hour yet to dark; you may go
+and walk in the square."
+
+"'T is so dull in that ugly square, and they won't let us into the green.
+I am sure we'd rather stay here," said one of the children, as spokesman
+for the rest; and they all nestled closer round the hearth.
+
+"But, my dears," said the parson, simply, "I want to talk alone with your
+mother.  However, if you like best to go and keep quiet in your own room,
+you may do so."
+
+"Or we can go into Susan's?"
+
+"No," said the parson; "you must not disturb Susan."
+
+"She never used to care about being disturbed.  I wonder what's come to
+her?"
+
+The parson made no rejoinder to this half-petulant question.  The
+children consulted together a moment, and resolved that the square,
+though so dull, was less dull than their own little attic.  That being
+decided, it was the mother's turn to address them.  And though Mr.
+Fielden was as anxious and fond as most fathers, he grew a little
+impatient before comforters, kerchiefs, and muffettees were arranged, and
+minute exordiums as to the danger of crossing the street, and the risk of
+patting strange dogs, etc., were half-way concluded; with a shrug and a
+smile, he at length fairly pushed out the children, shut the door, and
+drew his chair close to his wife's.
+
+"My dear," he began at once, "I am extremely uneasy about that poor
+girl."
+
+"What, Miss Clavering?  Indeed, she eats almost nothing at all, and sits
+so moping alone; but she sees Mr. Mainwaring every day.  What can we do?
+She is so proud, I'm afraid of her."
+
+"My dear, I was not thinking of Miss Clavering, though I did not
+interrupt you, for it is very true that she is much to be pitied."
+
+"And I am sure it was for her sake alone that you agreed to Susan's
+request, and got Blackman to do duty for you at the vicarage, while we
+all came up here, in hopes London town would divert her.  We left all at
+sixes and sevens; and I should not at all wonder if John made away with
+the apples."
+
+"But, I say," resumed the parson, without heeding that mournful
+foreboding,--"I say, I was then only thinking of Susan.  You see how pale
+and sad she is grown."
+
+"Why, she is so very soft-hearted, and she must feel for her sister."
+
+"But her sister, though she thinks much, and keeps aloof from us, is not
+sad herself, only reserved.  On the contrary.  I believe she has now got
+over even poor Sir Miles's death."  "And the loss of the great property!"
+
+"Fie, Mary!" said Mr. Fielden, almost austerely.
+
+Mary looked down, rebuked, for she was not one of the high-spirited wives
+who despise their husbands for goodness.
+
+"I beg pardon, my dear," she said meekly; "it was very wrong in me; but I
+cannot--do what I will--I cannot like that Miss Clavering."
+
+"The more need to judge her with charity.  And if what I fear is the
+case, I'm sure we can't feel too much compassion for the poor blinded
+young lady."
+
+"Bless my heart, Mr. Fielden, what is it you mean?"
+
+The parson looked round, to be sure the door was quite closed, and
+replied, in a whisper: "I mean, that I fear William Mainwaring loves, not
+Lucretia, but Susan."
+
+The scissors fell from the hand of Mrs. Fielden; and though one point
+stuck in the ground, and the other point threatened war upon flounces and
+toes, strange to say, she did not even stoop to remove the chevaux-de-
+frise.
+
+"Why, then, he's a most false-hearted young man!"
+
+"To blame, certainly," said Fielden; "I don't say to the contrary,--
+though I like the young man, and am sure that he's more timid than false.
+I may now tell you--for I want your advice, Mary--what I kept secret
+before.  When Mainwaring visited us, many months ago, at Southampton, he
+confessed to me that he felt warmly for Susan, and asked if I thought Sir
+Miles would consent.  I knew too well how proud the poor old gentleman
+was, to give him any such hopes.  So he left, very honourably.  You
+remember, after he went, that Susan's spirits were low,--you remarked
+it."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I remember.  But when the first shock of Sir Miles's death
+was over, she got back her sweet colour, and looked cheerful enough."
+
+"Because, perhaps, then she felt that she had a fortune to bestow on Mr.
+Mainwaring, and thought all obstacle was over."
+
+"Why, how clever you are!  How did you get at her thoughts?"
+
+"My own folly,--my own rash folly," almost groaned Mr. Fielden.  "For not
+guessing that Mr. Mainwaring could have got engaged meanwhile to
+Lucretia, and suspecting how it was with Susan's poor little heart, I let
+out, in a jest--Heaven forgive me!--what William had said; and the dear
+child blushed, and kissed me, and--why, a day or two after, when it was
+fixed that we should come up to London, Lucretia informed me, with her
+freezing politeness, that she was to marry Mainwaring herself as soon as
+her first mourning was over."
+
+"Poor, dear, dear Susan!"
+
+"Susan behaved like an angel; and when I broached it to her, I thought
+she was calm; and I am sure she prayed with her whole heart that both
+might be happy."
+
+"I'm sure she did.  What is to be done?  I understand it all now.  Dear
+me, dear me! a sad piece of work indeed."  And Mrs. Fielden abstractedly
+picked up the scissors.
+
+"It was not till our coming to town, and Mr. Mainwaring's visits to
+Lucretia, that her strength gave way."
+
+"A hard sight to bear,--I never could have borne it, my love.  If I had
+seen you paying court to another, I should have--I don't know what I
+should have done!  But what an artful wretch this young Mainwaring must
+be."
+
+"Not very artful; for you see that he looks even sadder than Susan.  He
+got entangled somehow, to be sure.  Perhaps he had given up Susan in
+despair; and Miss Clavering, if haughty, is no doubt a very superior
+young lady; and, I dare say, it is only now in seeing them both together,
+and comparing the two, that he feels what a treasure he has lost. Well,
+what do you advise, Mary?  Mainwaring, no doubt, is bound in honour to
+Miss Clavering; but she will be sure to discover, sooner or later, the
+state of his feelings, and then I tremble for both.  I'm sure she will
+never be happy, while he will be wretched; and Susan--I dare not think
+upon Susan; she has a cough that goes to my heart."
+
+"So she has; that cough--you don't know the money I spend on black-
+currant jelly!  What's my advice?  Why, I'd speak to Miss Clavering at
+once, if I dared.  I'm sure love will never break her heart; and she's so
+proud, she'd throw him off without a sigh, if she knew how things stood."
+
+"I believe you are right," said Mr. Fielden; "for truth is the best
+policy, after all.  Still, it's scarce my business to meddle; and if it
+were not for Susan--  Well, well, I must think of it, and pray Heaven to
+direct me."
+
+This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to which the
+history of Lucretia had arrived.  Willingly we pass over what it were
+scarcely possible to describe,--her first shock at the fall from the
+expectations of her life; fortune, rank, and what she valued more than
+either, power, crushed at a blow.  From the dark and sullen despair into
+which she was first plunged, she was roused into hope, into something
+like joy, by Mainwaring's letters.  Never had they been so warm and so
+tender; for the young man felt not only poignant remorse that he had been
+the cause of her downfall (though she broke it to him with more delicacy
+than might have been expected from the state of her feelings and the
+hardness of her character), but he felt also imperiously the obligations
+which her loss rendered more binding than ever.  He persuaded, he urged,
+he forced himself into affection; and probably without a murmur of his
+heart, he would have gone with her to the altar, and, once wedded, custom
+and duty would have strengthened the chain imposed on himself, had it not
+been for Lucretia's fatal eagerness to see him, to come up to London,
+where she induced him to meet her,--for with her came Susan; and in
+Susan's averted face and trembling hand and mute avoidance of his eye, he
+read all which the poor dissembler fancied she concealed.  But the die
+was cast, the union announced, the time fixed, and day by day he came to
+the house, to leave it in anguish and despair.  A feeling they shared in
+common caused these two unhappy persons to shun each other.  Mainwaring
+rarely came into the usual sitting-room of the family; and when be did
+so, chiefly in the evening, Susan usually took refuge in her own room.
+If they met, it was by accident, on the stairs, or at the sudden opening
+of a door; then not only no word, but scarcely even a look was exchanged:
+neither had the courage to face the other.  Perhaps, of the two, this
+reserve weighed most on Susan; perhaps she most yearned to break the
+silence,--for she thought she divined the cause of Mainwaring's gloomy
+and mute constraint in the upbraidings of his conscience, which might
+doubtless recall, if no positive pledge to Susan, at least those words
+and tones which betray the one heart, and seek to allure the other; and
+the profound melancholy stamped on his whole person, apparent even to her
+hurried glance, touched her with a compassion free from all the
+bitterness of selfish reproach.  She fancied she could die happy if she
+could remove that cloud from his brow, that shadow from his conscience.
+Die; for she thought not of life.  She loved gently, quietly,--not with
+the vehement passion that belongs to stronger natures; but it was the
+love of which the young and the pure have died.  The face of the Genius
+was calm and soft; and only by the lowering of the hand do you see that
+the torch burns out, and that the image too serene for earthly love is
+the genius of loving Death.
+
+Absorbed in the egotism of her passion (increased, as is ever the case
+with women, even the worst, by the sacrifices it had cost her), and if
+that passion paused, by the energy of her ambition, which already began
+to scheme and reconstruct new scaffolds to repair the ruined walls of the
+past,--Lucretia as yet had not detected what was so apparent to the
+simple sense of Mr. Fielden.  That Mainwaring was grave and thoughtful
+and abstracted, she ascribed only to his grief at the thought of her
+loss, and his anxieties for her altered future; and in her efforts to
+console him, her attempts to convince him that greatness in England did
+not consist only in lands and manors,--that in the higher walks of life
+which conduct to the Temple of Renown, the leaders of the procession are
+the aristocracy of knowledge and of intellect,--she so betrayed, not
+generous emulation and high-souled aspiring, but the dark, unscrupulous,
+tortuous ambition of cunning, stratagem, and intrigue, that instead of
+feeling grateful and encouraged, he shuddered and revolted.  How,
+accompanied and led by a spirit which he felt to be stronger and more
+commanding than his own,--how preserve the whiteness of his soul, the
+uprightness of his honour?  Already he felt himself debased.  But in the
+still trial of domestic intercourse, with the daily, hourly dripping on
+the stone, in the many struggles between truth and falsehood, guile and
+candour, which men--and, above all, ambitious men--must wage, what darker
+angel would whisper him in his monitor?  Still, he was bound,--bound with
+an iron band; he writhed, but dreamed not of escape.
+
+The day after that of Fielden's conference with his wife, an unexpected
+visitor came to the house.  Olivier Dalibard called.  He had not seen
+Lucretia since she had left Laughton, nor had any correspondence passed
+between them.  He came at dusk, just after Mainwaring's daily visit was
+over, and Lucretia was still in the parlour, which she had appropriated
+to herself.  Her brow contracted as his name was announced, and the maid-
+servant lighted the candle on the table, stirred the fire, and gave a tug
+at the curtains.  Her eye, glancing from his, round the mean room, with
+its dingy horsehair furniture, involuntarily implied the contrast between
+the past state and the present, which his sight could scarcely help to
+impress on her.  But she welcomed him with her usual stately composure,
+and without reference to what had been.  Dalibard was secretly anxious to
+discover if she suspected himself of any agency in the detection of the
+eventful letter; and assured by her manner that no such thought was yet
+harboured, he thought it best to imitate her own reserve.  He assumed,
+however, a manner that, far more respectful than he ever before observed
+to his pupil, was nevertheless sufficiently kind and familiar to restore
+them gradually to their old footing; and that he succeeded was apparent,
+when, after a pause, Lucretia said abruptly: "How did Sir Miles St. John
+discover my correspondence with Mr. Mainwaring?"
+
+"Is it possible that you are ignorant?  Ah, how--how should you know it?"
+And Dalibard so simply explained the occurrence, in which, indeed, it was
+impossible to trace the hand that had moved springs which seemed so
+entirely set at work by an accident, that despite the extreme
+suspiciousness of her nature, Lucretia did not see a pretence for
+accusing him.  Indeed, when he related the little subterfuge of Gabriel,
+his attempt to save her by taking the letter on himself, she felt
+thankful to the boy, and deemed Gabriel's conduct quite in keeping with
+his attachment to herself.  And this accounted satisfactorily for the
+only circumstance that had ever troubled her with a doubt,--namely, the
+legacy left to Gabriel.  She knew enough of Sir Miles to be aware that he
+would be grateful to any one who had saved the name of his niece, even
+while most embittered against her, from the shame attached to clandestine
+correspondence.
+
+"It is strange, nevertheless," said she, thoughtfully, after a pause,
+"that the girl should have detected the letter, concealed as it was by
+the leaves that covered it."
+
+"But," answered Dalibard, readily, "you see two or three persons had
+entered before, and their feet must have displaced the leaves."
+
+"Possibly; the evil is now past recall."
+
+"And Mr. Mainwaring?  Do you still adhere to one who has cost you so
+much, poor child?"
+
+"In three months more I shall be his wife."
+
+Dalibard sighed deeply, but offered no remonstrance.
+
+"Well," he said, taking her hand with mingled reverence and affection,--
+"well, I oppose your inclinations no more, for now there is nothing to
+risk; you are mistress of your own fortune; and since Mainwaring has
+talents, that fortune will suffice for a career.  Are you at length
+convinced that I have conquered my folly; that I was disinterested when I
+incurred your displeasure?  If so, can you restore to me your friendship?
+You will have some struggle with the world, and, with my long experience
+of men and life, even I, the poor exile, may assist you."
+
+And so thought Lucretia; for with some dread of Dalibard's craft, she yet
+credited his attachment to herself, and she felt profound admiration for
+an intelligence more consummate and accomplished than any ever yet
+submitted to her comprehension.  From that time, Dalibard became an
+habitual visitor at the house; he never interfered with Lucretia's
+interviews with Mainwaring; he took the union for granted, and conversed
+with her cheerfully on the prospects before her; he ingratiated himself
+with the Fieldens, played with the children, made himself at home, and in
+the evenings when Mainwaring, as often as he could find the excuse,
+absented himself from the family circle, he contrived to draw Lucretia
+into more social intercourse with her homely companions than she had
+before condescended to admit.  Good Mr. Fielden rejoiced; here was the
+very person,--the old friend of Sir Miles, the preceptor of Lucretia
+herself, evidently most attached to her, having influence over her,--the
+very person to whom to confide his embarrassment.  One day, therefore,
+when Dalibard had touched his heart by noticing the paleness of Susan, he
+took him aside and told him all.  "And now," concluded the pastor, hoping
+he had found one to relieve him of his dreaded and ungracious task,
+"don't you think that I--or rather you--as so old a friend, should speak
+frankly to Miss Clavering herself?"
+
+"No, indeed," said the Provencal, quickly; "if we spoke to her, she would
+disbelieve us.  She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and Mainwaring
+would have no choice but to contradict us.  Once put on his guard, he
+would control his very sadness.  Lucretia, offended, might leave your
+house, and certainly she would regard her sister as having influenced
+your confession,--a position unworthy Miss Mivers.  But do not fear: if
+the evil be so, it carries with it its inevitable remedy.  Let Lucretia
+discover it herself; but, pardon me, she must have seen, at your first
+reception of Mainwaring, that he had before been acquainted with you?"
+
+"She was not in the room when we first received Mainwaring; and I have
+always been distant to him, as you may suppose, for I felt disappointed
+and displeased.  Of course, however, she is aware that we knew him before
+she did.  What of that?"
+
+"Why, do you think, then, he told her at Laughton of this acquaintance,--
+that he spoke of Susan?  I suspect not."
+
+"I cannot say, I am sure," said Mr. Fielden.
+
+"Ask her that question accidentally; and for the rest, be discreet, my
+dear sir.  I thank you for your confidence.  I will watch well over my
+poor young pupil.  She must not, indeed, be sacrificed to a man whose
+affections are engaged elsewhere."
+
+Dalibard trod on air as he left the house; his very countenance had
+changed; he seemed ten years younger.  It was evening; and suddenly, as
+he came into Oxford Street, he encountered a knot of young men--noisy and
+laughing loud--obstructing the pavement, breaking jests on the more sober
+passengers, and attracting the especial and admiring attention of sundry
+ladies in plumed hats and scarlet pelisses; for the streets then enjoyed
+a gay liberty which has vanished from London with the lanterns of the
+watchmen.  Noisiest and most conspicuous of these descendants of the
+Mohawks, the sleek and orderly scholar beheld the childish figure of his
+son.  Nor did Gabriel shrink from his father's eye, stern and scornful as
+it was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer.
+
+Right, however, in the midst of the group, strode the Provencal, and
+laying his hand very gently on the boy's shoulder, he said: "My son, come
+with me."
+
+Gabriel looked irresolute, and glanced at his companions.  Delighted at
+the prospect of a scene, they now gathered round, with countenances and
+gestures that seemed little disposed to acknowledge the parental
+authority.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Dalibard, turning a shade more pale, for though morally
+most resolute, physically he was not brave,--"gentlemen, I must beg you
+to excuse me; this child is my son!"
+
+"But Art is his mother," replied a tall, raw-boned young man, with long
+tawny hair streaming down from a hat very much battered.  "At the
+juvenile age, the child is consigned to the mother!  Have I said it?" and
+he turned round theatrically to his comrades.
+
+"Bravo!" cried the rest, clapping their hands.
+
+"Down with all tyrants and fathers! hip, hip, Hurrah!" and the hideous
+diapason nearly split the drum of the ears into which it resounded.
+
+"Gabriel," whispered the father, "you had better follow me, had you not?
+Reflect!"  So saying, he bowed low to the unpropitious assembly, and as
+if yielding the victory, stepped aside and crossed over towards Bond
+Street.
+
+Before the din of derision and triumph died away, Dalibard looked back,
+and saw Gabriel behind him.
+
+"Approach, sir," he said; and as the boy stood still, he added, "I
+promise peace if you will accept it."
+
+"Peace, then," answered Gabriel, and he joined his father's side.
+
+"So," said Dalibard, "when I consented to your studying Art, as you call
+it, under your mother's most respectable brother, I ought to have
+contemplated what would be the natural and becoming companions of the
+rising Raphael I have given to the world."
+
+"I own, sir," replied Gabriel, demurely, "that they are riotous fellows;
+but some of them are clever, and--"
+
+"And excessively drunk," interrupted Dalibard, examining the gait of his
+son.  "Do you learn that accomplishment also, by way of steadying your
+hand for the easel?"
+
+"No, sir; I like wine well enough, but I would not be drunk for the
+world.  I see people when they are drunk are mere fools,--let out their
+secrets, and show themselves up."
+
+"Well said," replied the father, almost admiringly.  "But a truce with
+this bantering, Gabriel.  Can you imagine that I will permit you any
+longer to remain with that vagabond Varney and yon crew of vauriens?  You
+will come home with me; and if you must be a painter, I will look out for
+a more trustworthy master."
+
+"I shall stay where I am," answered Gabriel, firmly, and compressing his
+lips with a force that left them bloodless.
+
+"What, boy?  Do I hear right?  Dare you disobey me?  Dare you defy?"
+
+"Not in your house, so I will not enter it again."  Dalibard laughed
+mockingly.
+
+"Peste! but this is modest!  You are not of age yet, Mr. Varney; you are
+not free from a father's tyrannical control."
+
+"The law does not own you as my father, I am told, sir.  You have said my
+name rightly,--it is Varney, not Dalibard.  We have no rights over each
+other; so at least says Tom Passmore, and his father's a lawyer!"
+
+Dalibard's hand griped his son's arm fiercely.  Despite his pain, which
+was acute, the child uttered no cry; but he growled beneath his teeth,
+"Beware! beware! or my mother's son may avenge her death!"
+
+Dalibard removed his hand, and staggered as if struck.  Gliding from his
+side, Gabriel seized the occasion to escape; he paused, however, midway
+in the dull, lamp-lit kennel when he saw himself out of reach, and then
+approaching cautiously, said: "I know.  I am a boy, but you have made me
+man enough to take care of myself.  Mr. Varney, my uncle, will maintain
+me; when of age, old Sir Miles has provided for me.  Leave me in peace,
+treat me as free, and I will visit you, help you when you want me, obey
+you still,--yes, follow your instructions; for I know you are," he
+paused, "you are wise.  But if you seek again to make me your slave, you
+will only find your foe.  Good-night; and remember that a bastard has no
+father!"
+
+With these words he moved on, and hurrying down the street, turned the
+corner and vanished.
+
+Dalibard remained motionless for some minutes; at length he muttered:
+"Ay, let him go, he is dangerous!  What son ever revolted even from the
+worst father, and throve in life?  Food for the gibbet!  What matters?"
+
+When next Dalibard visited Lucretia, his manner was changed; the
+cheerfulness he had before assumed gave place to a kind of melancholy
+compassion; he no longer entered into her plans for the future, but would
+look at her mournfully, start up, and walk away.  She would have
+attributed the change to some return of his ancient passion, but she
+heard him once murmur with unspeakable pity, "Poor child, poor child!"  A
+vague apprehension seized her,--first, indeed, caught from some remarks
+dropped by Mr. Fielden, which were less discreet than Dalibard had
+recommended.  A day or two afterwards, she asked Mainwaring, carelessly,
+why he had never spoken to her at Laughton of his acquaintance with
+Fielden.
+
+"You asked me that before," he said, somewhat sullenly.
+
+"Did I?  I forget!  But how was it?  Tell me again."
+
+"I scarcely know," he replied confusedly; "we were always talking of each
+other or poor Sir Miles,--our own hopes and fears."
+
+This was true, and a lover's natural excuse.  In the present of love all
+the past is forgotten.
+
+"Still," said Lucretia, with her sidelong glance,--"still, as you must
+have seen much of my own sister--"
+
+Mainwaring, while she spoke, was at work on a button on his gaiter
+(gaiters were then worn tight at the ankle); the effort brought the blood
+to his forehead.
+
+"But," he said, still stooping at his occupation, "you were so little
+intimate with your sister; I feared to offend.  Family differences are so
+difficult to approach."
+
+Lucretia was satisfied at the moment; for so vast was her stake in
+Mainwaring's heart, so did her whole heart and soul grapple to the rock
+left serene amidst the deluge, that she habitually and resolutely thrust
+from her mind all the doubts that at times invaded it.
+
+"I know," she would often say to herself,--"I know he does not love as I
+do; but man never can, never ought to love as woman!  Were I a man, I
+should scorn myself if I could be so absorbed in one emotion as I am
+proud to be now,--I, poor woman!  I know," again she would think,--"I
+know how suspicious and distrustful I am; I must not distrust him,--I
+shall only irritate, I may lose him: I dare not distrust,--it would be
+too dreadful."
+
+Thus, as a system vigorously embraced by a determined mind, she had
+schooled and forced herself into reliance on her lover.  His words now,
+we say, satisfied her at the moment; but afterwards, in absence, they
+were recalled, in spite of herself,--in the midst of fears, shapeless and
+undefined.  Involuntarily she began to examine the countenance, the
+movements, of her sister,--to court Susan's society more than she had
+done; for her previous indifference had now deepened into bitterness.
+Susan, the neglected and despised, had become her equal,--nay, more than
+her equal: Susan's children would have precedence to her own in the
+heritage of Laughton!  Hitherto she had never deigned to talk to her in
+the sweet familiarity of sisters so placed; never deigned to confide to
+her those feelings for her future husband which burned lone and ardent in
+the close vault of her guarded heart.  Now, however, she began to name
+him, wind her arm into Susan's, talk of love and home, and the days to
+come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister's face.  That
+part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance.  Susan loved,--
+loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and unreturned?
+Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so reserved?  He
+might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not sought; and hence,
+with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan to Lucretia; and now,
+perhaps, sought the excuses which at times had chafed and wounded her for
+not joining the household circle.  If one of those who glance over these
+pages chances to be a person more than usually able and acute,--a person
+who has loved and been deceived,--he or she, no matter which, will
+perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt, long put off, insisted
+to be heard.  A weak and foolish heart gives way to the doubt at once;
+not so the subtler and more powerful,--it rather, on the contrary,
+recalls all the little circumstances that justify trust and make head
+against suspicion; it will not render the citadel at the mere sound of
+the trumpet; it arms all its forces, and bars its gates on the foe.
+Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of affection
+are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of life.  Moliere,
+reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human character, and
+clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate wife, is a type of
+a striking truth.  Still, a foreboding, a warning instinct withheld
+Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her own fears.  So
+horrible was the thought that she had been deceived, that rather than
+face it, she would have preferred to deceive herself.  This poor, bad
+heart shrank from inquiry, it trembled at the idea of condemnation.  She
+hailed, with a sentiment of release that partook of rapture, Susan's
+abrupt announcement one morning that she had accepted an invitation from
+some relations of her father to spend some time with them at their villa
+near Hampstead; she was to go the end of the week.  Lucretia hailed it,
+though she saw the cause,--Susan shrank from the name of Mainwaring on
+Lucretia's lips; shrank from the familiar intercourse so ruthlessly
+forced on her!  With a bright eye, that day, Lucretia met her lover; yet
+she would not tell him of Susan's intended departure, she had not the
+courage.
+
+Dalibard was foiled.  This contradiction in Lucretia's temper, so
+suspicious, so determined, puzzled even his penetration.  He saw that
+bolder tactics were required.  He waylaid Mainwaring on the young man's
+way to his lodgings, and after talking to him on indifferent matters,
+asked him carelessly whether he did not think Susan far gone in a
+decline.  Affecting not to notice the convulsive start with which the
+question was received, he went on,--
+
+"There is evidently something on her mind; I observe that her eyes are
+often red, as with weeping, poor girl.  Perhaps some silly love-affair.
+However, we shall not see her again before your marriage; she is going
+away in a day or two.  The change of air may possibly yet restore her,--I
+own, though, I fear the worst. At this time of the year, and in your
+climate, such complaints as I take hers to be are rapid.  Good-day.  We
+may meet this evening."
+
+Terror-stricken at these barbarous words, Mainwaring no sooner reached
+his lodging than he wrote and despatched a note to Fielden, entreating
+him to call.
+
+The vicar obeyed the summons, and found Mainwaring in a state of mind
+bordering on distraction.  Nor when Susan was named did Fielden's words
+take the shape of comfort; for he himself was seriously alarmed for her
+health.  The sound of her low cough rang in his ears, and he rather
+heightened than removed the picture which haunted Mainwaring,--Susan
+stricken, dying, broken-hearted!
+
+Tortured both in heart and conscience, Mainwaring felt as if he had but
+one wish left in the world,--to see Susan once more.  What to say, he
+scarce knew; but for her to depart,--depart perhaps to her grave,
+believing him coldly indifferent,--for her not to know at least his
+struggles, and pronounce his pardon, was a thought beyond endurance.
+After such an interview both would have new fortitude,--each would unite
+in encouraging the other in the only step left to honour.  And this
+desire he urged upon Fielden with all the eloquence of passionate grief
+as he entreated him to permit and procure one last conference with Susan.
+But this, the plain sense and straightforward conscience of the good man
+long refused.  If Mainwaring had been left in the position to explain his
+heart to Lucretia, it would not have been for Fielden to object; but to
+have a clandestine interview with one sister while betrothed to the
+other, bore in itself a character too equivocal to meet with the simple
+vicar's approval.
+
+"What can you apprehend?" exclaimed the young man, almost fiercely; for,
+harassed and tortured, his mild nature was driven to bay.  "Can you
+suppose that I shall encourage my own misery by the guilty pleadings of
+unavailing love?  All that I ask is the luxury--yes, the luxury, long
+unknown to me, of candour--to place fairly and manfully before Susan the
+position in which fate has involved me.  Can you suppose that we shall
+not both take comfort and strength from each other?  Our duty is plain
+and obvious; but it grows less painful, encouraged by the lips of a
+companion in suffering.  I tell you fairly that see Susan I will and
+must. I will watch round her home, wherever it be, hour after hour; come
+what may, I will find my occasion.  Is it not better that the interview
+should be under your roof, within the same walls which shelter her
+sister?  There, the place itself imposes restraint on despair.  Oh, sir,
+this is no time for formal scruples; be merciful, I beseech you, not to
+me, but to Susan.  I judge of her by myself.  I know that I shall go to
+the altar more resigned to the future if for once I can give vent to what
+weighs upon my heart.  She will then see, as I do, that the path before
+me is inevitable; she will compose herself to face the fate that compels
+us.  We shall swear tacitly to each other, not to love, but to conquer
+love.  Believe me, sir, I am not selfish in this prayer; an instinct, the
+intuition which human grief has into the secrets of human grief, assures
+me that that which I ask is the best consolation you can afford to Susan.
+You own she is ill,--suffering.  Are not your fears for her very life--O
+Heaven? for her very life--gravely awakened?  And yet you see we have
+been silent to each other!  Can speech be more fatal in its results than
+silence?  Oh, for her sake, hear me!"
+
+The good man's tears fell fast. His scruples were shaken; there was truth
+in what Mainwaring urged.  He did not yield, but he promised to reflect,
+and inform Mainwaring, by a line, in the evening.  Finding this was all
+he could effect, the young man at last suffered him to leave the house,
+and Fielden hastened to take counsel of Dalibard; that wily persuader
+soon reasoned away Mr. Fielden's last faint objection.  It now only
+remained to procure Susan's assent to the interview, and to arrange that
+it should be undisturbed.  Mr. Fielden should take out the children the
+next morning.  Dalibard volunteered to contrive the absence of Lucretia
+at the hour appointed.  Mrs. Fielden alone should remain within, and
+might, if it were judged proper, be present at the interview, which was
+fixed for the forenoon in the usual drawing-room.  Nothing but Susan's
+consent was now necessary, and Mr. Fielden ascended to her room.  He
+knocked twice,--no sweet voice bade him enter; he opened the door
+gently,--Susan was in prayer.  At the opposite corner of the room, by the
+side of her bed, she knelt, her face buried in her hands, and he heard,
+low and indistinct, the murmur broken by the sob.  But gradually, as he
+stood unperceived, sob and murmur ceased,--prayer had its customary and
+blessed effect with the pure and earnest. And when Susan rose, though the
+tears yet rolled down her cheeks, the face was serene as an angel's.
+
+The pastor approached and took her hand; a blush then broke over her
+countenance,--she trembled, and her eyes fell on the ground.  "My child,"
+he said solemnly, "God will hear you!"  And after those words there was a
+long silence.  He then drew her passively towards a seat, and sat down by
+her, embarrassed how to begin.  At length he said, looking somewhat
+aside, "Mr. Mainwaring has made me a request,--a prayer which relates to
+you, and which I refer to you.  He asks you to grant him an interview
+before you leave us,--to-morrow, if you will.  I refused at first,--I am
+in doubt still; for, my dear, I have always found that when the feelings
+move us, our duty becomes less clear to the human heart,--corrupt, we
+know, but still it is often a safer guide than our reason.  I never knew
+reason unerring, except in mathematics; we have no Euclid," and the good
+man smiled mournfully, "in the problems of real life.  I will not urge
+you one way or the other; I put the case before you: Would it, as the
+young man says, give you comfort and strength to see him once again
+while, while--in short, before your sister is--I mean before--that is,
+would it soothe you now, to have an unreserved communication with him?
+He implores it.  What shall I answer?"
+
+"This trial, too!" muttered Susan, almost inaudibly,--"this trial which I
+once yearned for; "and the hand clasped in Fielden's was as cold as ice.
+Then, turning her eyes to her guardian somewhat wildly, she cried: "But
+to what end, what object?  Why should he wish to see me?"
+
+"To take greater courage to do his duty; to feel less unhappy at--at--"
+
+"I will see him," interrupted Susan, firmly,--"he is right; it will
+strengthen both.  I will see him!"
+
+"But human nature is weak, my child; if my heart be so now, what will be
+yours?"
+
+"Fear me not," answered Susan, with a sad, wandering smile; and she
+repeated vacantly: "I will see him!"
+
+The good man looked at her, threw his arms round her wasted form, and
+lifting up his eyes, his lips stirred with such half-syllabled words as
+fathers breathe on high.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DISCOVERY.
+
+Dalibard had undertaken to get Lucretia from the house,--in fact, her
+approaching marriage rendered necessary a communication with Mr.
+Parchmount, as executor to her uncle's will, relative to the transfer of
+her portion; and she had asked Dalibard to accompany her thither; for her
+pride shrank from receiving the lawyer in the shabby parlour of the
+shabby lodging-house; she therefore, that evening, fixed the next day,
+before noon, for the visit.  A carriage was hired for the occasion, and
+when it drove off, Mr. Fielden took his children a walk to Primrose Hill,
+and called, as was agreed, on Mainwaring by the way.
+
+The carriage had scarcely rattled fifty yards through the street when
+Dalibard fixed his eyes with deep and solemn commiseration on Lucretia.
+Hitherto, with masterly art, he had kept aloof from direct explanations
+with his pupil; he knew that she would distrust no one like himself.  The
+plot was now ripened, and it was time for the main agent to conduct the
+catastrophe.  The look was so expressive that Lucretia felt a chill at
+her heart, and could not, help exclaiming, "What has happened?  You have
+some terrible tidings to communicate!"
+
+"I have indeed to say that which may, perhaps, cause you to hate me
+forever; as we hate those who report our afflictions.  I must endure
+this; I have struggled long between my indignation and my compassion.
+Rouse up your strong mind, and hear me.  Mainwaring loves your sister!"
+
+Lucretia uttered a cry that seemed scarcely to come from a human voice,--
+
+"No, no!" she gasped out; "do not tell me.  I will hear no more; I will
+not believe you!"
+
+With an inexpressible pity and softness in his tone, this man, whose
+career had given him such profound experience in the frailties of the
+human heart, continued: "I do not ask you to believe me, Lucretia; I
+would not now speak, if you had not the opportunity to convince yourself.
+Even those with whom you live are false to you; at this moment they have
+arranged all, for Mainwaring to steal, in your absence, to your sister.
+In a few moments more he will be with her; if you yourself would learn
+what passes between them, you have the power."
+
+"I have--I have not--not--the courage; drive on--faster--faster."
+
+Dalibard again was foiled.  In this strange cowardice there was something
+so terrible, yet so touching, that it became sublime,--it was the grasp
+of a drowning soul at the last plank.
+
+"You are right perhaps," he said, after a pause; and wisely forbearing
+all taunt and resistance, he left the heart to its own workings.
+
+Suddenly, Lucretia caught at the check-string.  "Stop," she exclaimed,--
+"stop!  I will not, I cannot, endure this suspense to last through a
+life!  I will learn the worst. Bid him drive back."
+
+"We must descend and walk; you forget we must enter unsuspected;" and
+Dalibard, as the carriage stopped, opened the door and let down the
+steps.
+
+Lucretia recoiled, then pressing one hand to her heart, she descended,
+without touching the arm held out to her.  Dalibard bade the coachman
+wait, and they walked back to the house.
+
+"Yes, he may see her," exclaimed Lucretia, her face brightening.  "Ah,
+there you have not deceived me; I see your stratagem,--I despise it; I
+know she loves him; she has sought this interview.  He is so mild and
+gentle, so fearful to give pain; he has consented, from pity,--that is
+all.  Is he not pledged to me?  He, so candid, so ingenuous!  There must
+be truth somewhere in the world.  If he is false, where find truth?  Dark
+man, must I look for it in you,-- you?"
+
+"It is not my truth I require you to test; I pretend not to truth
+universal; I can be true to one, as you may yet discover.  But I own your
+belief is not impossible; my interest in you may have made me rash and
+unjust,--what you may overhear, far from destroying, may confirm forever
+your happiness.  Would that it may be so!"
+
+"It must be so," returned Lucretia, with a fearful gloom on her brow and
+in her accent; "I will interpret every word to my own salvation."
+
+Dalibard's countenance changed, despite his usual control over it.  He
+had set all his chances upon this cast, and it was more hazardous than he
+had deemed.  He had counted too much upon the jealousy of common natures.
+After all, how little to the ear of one resolved to deceive herself might
+pass between these two young persons, meeting not to avow attachment, but
+to take courage from each other!  What restraint might they impose on
+their feelings!  Still, the game must be played out.
+
+As they now neared the house, Dalibard looked carefully round, lest they
+should encounter Mainwaring on his way to it.  He had counted on arriving
+before the young man could get there.
+
+"But," said Lucretia, breaking silence, with an ironical smile,--"but--
+for your tender anxiety for me has, no doubt, provided all means and
+contrivance, all necessary aids to baseness and eavesdropping, that can
+assure my happiness--how am I to be present at this interview?"
+
+"I have provided, as you say," answered Dalibard, in the tone of a man
+deeply hurt, "those means which I, who have found the world one foe and
+one traitor, deemed the best to distinguish falsehood from truth.  I have
+arranged that we shall enter the house unsuspected.  Mainwaring and your
+sister will be in the drawing-room; the room next to it will be vacant,
+as Mr. Fielden is from home: there is but a glass-door between the two
+chambers."
+
+"Enough, enough!" and Lucretia turned round and placed her hand lightly
+on the Provencal's arm.  "The next hour will decide whether the means you
+suggest to learn truth and defend safety will be familiar or loathsome to
+me for life,--will decide whether trust is a madness; whether you, my
+youth's teacher, are the wisest of men, or only the most dangerous."
+
+"Believe me, or not, when I say I would rather the decision should
+condemn me; for I, too, have need of confidence in men."
+
+Nothing further was said; the dull street was quiet and desolate as
+usual.  Dalibard had taken with him the key of the house-door.  The door
+opened noiselessly; they were in the house.  Mainwaring's cloak was in
+the hall; he had arrived a few moments before them.  Dalibard pointed
+silently to that evidence in favour of his tale.  Lucretia bowed her
+head.  but with a look that implied defiance; and (still without a word)
+she ascended the stairs, and entered the room appointed for concealment.
+But as she entered, at the farther corner of the chamber she saw Mrs.
+Fielden seated,--seated, remote and out of hearing.  The good-natured
+woman had yielded to Mainwaring's prayer, and Susan's silent look that
+enforced it, to let their interview be unwitnessed.  She did not perceive
+Lucretia till the last walked glidingly, but firmly, up to her, placed a
+burning hand on her lips, and whispered: "Hush, betray me not; my
+happiness for life--Susan's--his--are at stake; I must hear what passes:
+it is my fate that is deciding.  Hush!  I command; for I have the right."
+
+Mrs. Fielden was awed and startled; and before she could recover even
+breath, Lucretia had quitted her side and taken her post at the fatal
+door.  She lifted the corner of the curtain from the glass panel, and
+looked in.
+
+Mainwaring was seated at a little distance from Susan, whose face was
+turned from her.  Mainwaring's countenance was in full view.  But it was
+Susan's voice that met her ear; and though sweet and low, it was
+distinct, and even firm.  It was evident from the words that the
+conference had but just begun.
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Mainwaring, you have nothing to explain, nothing of which to
+accuse yourself.  It was not for this, believe me,"--and here Susan
+turned her face, and its aspect of heavenly innocence met the dry, lurid
+eye of the unseen witness,--"not for this, believe me, that I consented
+to see you.  If I did so, it was only because I thought, because I feared
+from your manner, when we met at times, still more from your evident
+avoidance to meet me at all, that you were unhappy (for I know you kind
+and honest),--unhappy at the thought that you had wounded me, and my
+heart could not bear that, nor, perhaps, my pride either.  That you
+should have forgotten me--"
+
+"Forgotten you!"
+
+"That you should have been captivated," continued Susan, in a more
+hurried tone, "by one so superior to me in all things as Lucretia, is
+very natural.  I thought, then--thought only--that nothing could cloud
+your happiness but some reproach of a conscience too sensitive.  For this
+I have met you,--met you without a thought which Lucretia would have a
+right to blame, could she read my heart; met you," and the voice for the
+first time faltered, "that I might say, 'Be at peace; it is your sister
+that addresses you.  Requite Lucretia's love,--it is deep and strong;
+give her, as she gives to you, a whole heart; and in your happiness I,
+your sister--sister to both--I shall be blest.'"  With a smile
+inexpressibly touching and ingenuous, she held out her hand as she
+ceased.  Mainwaring sprang forward, and despite her struggle, pressed it
+to his lips, his heart.
+
+"Oh," he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually became more clear
+and loud, "what--what have I lost!--lost forever!  No, no, I will be
+worthy of you!  I do not, I dare not, say that I love you still!  I feel
+what I owe to Lucretia.  How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how,
+with your image graven so deeply here--"
+
+"Mainwaring--Mr. Mainwaring--I must not hear you.  Is this your promise?"
+
+"Yes, you must hear me yet.  How I became engaged to your sister,--so
+different indeed from you,--I start in amaze and bewilderment when I seek
+to conjecture.  But so it was.  For me she has forfeited fortune, rank,
+all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted.  Heaven is my
+witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own!  If I
+cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers.
+Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I
+shall have strength to tear you from my heart; it is my duty, my fate.
+With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials.  Oh, shudder not,
+turn not away.  Forgive the word; but I must speak,--my heart will out;
+yes, abhorred nuptials!  Between my grave and the altar, would--would
+that I had a choice!"
+
+From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to
+check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins, as
+a ghost from the grave.  The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood in
+the aperture,--stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was so
+colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of
+aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.
+
+Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan
+turned and beheld her sister.  With the impulse of the pierced and loving
+heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia's
+side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.
+
+"Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment.  He
+spoke but to deceive me,--me, who loved him once!  Mine alone, mine is
+the crime.  He knows all your worth.  Pity--pity--pity on yourself, on
+him, on me!"
+
+Lucretia's eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face
+lifted to her own.  Her lips moved, but no sound was audible.  At length
+she drew herself from her sister's clasp, and walked steadily up to
+Mainwaring.  She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she
+enjoyed his shame and terror.  Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden,
+who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia's movements, and, without
+hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue, but
+had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and broke
+the charm of her awe,--before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in, and
+giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms round
+Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of
+grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.
+
+"My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the low-born!
+He, the schemer, too, is right.  All hollow,--all false!" Thus said
+Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful, at
+last only quietly abstracted.  "Rise, sir," she then added, with her most
+imperious tone; "do you not hear your Susan weep?  Do you fear in my
+presence to console her?  Coward to her, as forsworn to me!  Go, sir, you
+are free!"
+
+"Hear me," faltered Mainwaring, attempting to seize her hand; "I do not
+ask you to forgive; but--"
+
+"Forgive, sir!" interrupted Lucretia, rearing her head, and with a look
+of freezing and unspeakable majesty.  "There is only one person here who
+needs a pardon; but her fault is inexpiable: it is the woman who stooped
+beneath her--"
+
+With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which crushed while it
+galled, she mechanically drew round her form her black mantle; her eye
+glanced on the deep mourning of the garment, and her memory recalled all
+that love had cost her; but she added no other reproach.  Slowly she
+turned away.  Passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs. Fielden's arms,
+she paused, and kissed her forehead.
+
+"When she recovers, madam," she said to Mrs. Fielden, who was moved and
+astonished by this softness, "say that Lucretia Clavering uttered a vow
+when she kissed the brow of William Mainwaring's future wife!"
+
+Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlour below when Lucretia
+entered.  Her face yet retained its almost unearthly rigidity and calm;
+but a sort of darkness had come over its ashen pallor,--that shade so
+indescribable, which is seen in the human face, after long illness, a day
+or two before death.  Dalibard was appalled; for he had too often seen
+that hue in the dying not to recognize it now.  His emotion was
+sufficiently genuine to give more than usual earnestness to his voice and
+gesture, as he poured out every word that spoke sympathy and soothing.
+For a long time Lucretia did not seem to hear him; at last her face
+softened,--the ice broke.
+
+"Motherless, friendless, lone, alone forever, undone, undone!" she
+murmured.  Her head sank upon the shoulder of her fearful counsellor,
+unconscious of its resting-place, and she burst into tears,--tears which
+perhaps saved her reason or her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE.
+
+When Mr. Fielden returned home, Lucretia had quitted the house.  She left
+a line for him in her usual bold, clear handwriting, referring him to his
+wife for explanation of the reasons that forbade a further residence
+beneath his roof.  She had removed to an hotel until she had leisure to
+arrange her plans for the future.  In a few months she should be of age;
+and in the meanwhile, who now living claimed authority over her?  For the
+rest, she added, "I repeat what I told Mr. Mainwaring: all engagement
+between us is at an end; he will not insult me either by letter or by
+visit.  It is natural that I should at present shrink from seeing Susan
+Mivers.  Hereafter, if permitted, I will visit Mrs. Mainwaring."
+
+Though all had chanced as Mr. Fielden had desired (if, as he once half
+meditated, he had spoken to Lucretia herself); though a marriage that
+could have brought happiness to none, and would have made the misery of
+two, was at an end,--he yet felt a bitter pang, almost of remorse, when
+be learned what had occurred.  And Lucretia, before secretly disliked (if
+any one he could dislike), became dear to him at once, by sorrow and
+compassion.  Forgetting every other person, he hurried to the hotel
+Lucretia had chosen; but her coldness deceived and her pride repelled
+him.  She listened dryly to all he said, and merely replied: "I feel only
+gratitude at my escape.  Let this subject now close forever."
+
+Mr. Fielden left her presence with less anxious and commiserating
+feelings,--perhaps all had chanced for the best. And on returning home,
+his whole mind became absorbed in alarm for Susan.  She was delirious,
+and in great danger; it was many weeks before she recovered.  Meanwhile,
+Lucretia had removed into private apartments, of which she withheld the
+address.  During this time, therefore, they lost sight of her.
+
+If amidst the punishments with which the sombre imagination of poets has
+diversified the Realm of the tortured Shadows, it had depicted some soul
+condemned to look evermore down into an abyss, all change to its gaze
+forbidden, chasm upon chasm yawning deeper and deeper, darker and darker,
+endless and infinite, so that, eternally gazing, the soul became, as it
+were, a part of the abyss,--such an image would symbol forth the state of
+Lucretia's mind.
+
+It was not the mere desolation of one whom love has abandoned and
+betrayed.  In the abyss were mingled inextricably together the gloom of
+the past and of the future,--there, the broken fortunes, the crushed
+ambition, the ruin of the worldly expectations long inseparable from her
+schemes; and amidst them, the angry shade of the more than father, whose
+heart she had wrung, and whose old age she had speeded to the grave.
+These sacrifices to love, while love was left to her, might have haunted
+her at moments; but a smile, a word, a glance, banished the regret and
+the remorse.  Now, love being razed out of life, the ruins of all else
+loomed dismal amidst the darkness; and a voice rose up, whispering: "Lo,
+fool, what thou hast lost because thou didst believe and love!"  And this
+thought grasped together the two worlds of being,--the what has been, and
+the what shall be.  All hope seemed stricken from the future, as a man
+strikes from the calculations of his income the returns from a property
+irrevocably lost. At her age but few of her sex have parted with
+religion; but even such mechanical faith as the lessons of her childhood,
+and the constrained conformities with Christian ceremonies, had
+instilled, had long since melted away in the hard scholastic scepticism
+of her fatal tutor,--a scepticism which had won, with little effort, a
+reason delighting in the maze of doubt, and easily narrowed into the
+cramped and iron logic of disbelief by an intellect that scorned to
+submit where it failed to comprehend.  Nor had faith given place to those
+large moral truths from which philosophy has sought to restore the proud
+statue of Pagan Virtue as a substitute for the meek symbol of the
+Christian cross.  By temperament unsocial, nor readily moved to the
+genial and benevolent, that absolute egotism in which Olivier Dalibard
+centred his dreary ethics seemed sanctioned to Lucretia by her studies
+into the motives of man and the history of the world.  She had read the
+chronicles of States and the memoirs of statesmen, and seen how craft
+carries on the movements of an age.  Those Viscontis, Castruccios, and
+Medici; those Richelieus and Mazarins and De Retzs; those Loyolas and
+Mohammeds and Cromwells; those Monks and Godolphins; those Markboroughs
+and Walpoles; those founders of history and dynasties and sects; those
+leaders and dupers of men, greater or lesser, corrupters or corrupt, all
+standing out prominent and renowned from the guiltless and laurelless
+obscure,--seemed to win, by the homage of posterity, the rewards that
+attend the deceivers of their time.  By a superb arrogance of
+generalization, she transferred into private life, and the rule of
+commonplace actions, the policy that, to the abasement of honour, has so
+often triumphed in the guidance of States.  Therefore, betimes, the whole
+frame of society was changed to her eye, from the calm aspect it wears to
+those who live united with their kind; she viewed all seemings with
+suspicion; and before she had entered the world, prepared to live in it
+as a conspirator in a city convulsed, spying and espied, schemed against
+and scheming,--here the crown for the crafty, there the axe for the
+outwitted.
+
+But her love--for love is trust--had led her half way forth from this
+maze of the intellect.  That fair youth of inexperience and candour which
+seemed to bloom out in the face of her betrothed; his very shrinking from
+the schemes so natural to her that to her they seemed even innocent; his
+apparent reliance on mere masculine ability, with the plain aids of
+perseverance and honesty,--all had an attraction that plucked her back
+from herself.  If she clung to him firmly, blindly, credulously, it was
+not as the lover alone.  In the lover she beheld the good angel.  Had he
+only died to her, still the angel smile would have survived and warned.
+But the man had not died; the angel itself had deceived; the wings could
+uphold her no more,--they had touched the mire, and were sullied with the
+soil; with the stain, was forfeited the strength.  All was deceit and
+hollowness and treachery.  Lone again in the universe rose the eternal I.
+So down into the abyss she looked, depth upon depth, and the darkness had
+no relief, and the deep had no end.
+
+Olivier Dalibard alone, of all she knew, was admitted to her seclusion.
+He played his part as might be expected from the singular patience and
+penetration which belonged to the genius of his character.  He forbore
+the most distant allusion to his attachment or his hopes.  He evinced
+sympathy rather by imitating her silence, than attempts to console.  When
+he spoke, he sought to interest her mind more than to heal directly the
+deep wounds of her heart.  There is always, to the afflicted, a certain
+charm in the depth and bitterness of eloquent misanthropy.  And Dalibard,
+who professed not to be a man-hater, but a world-scorner, had powers of
+language and of reasoning commensurate with his astute intellect and his
+profound research.  His society became not only a relief, it grew almost
+a want, to that stern sorrower.  But whether alarmed or not by the
+influence she felt him gradually acquiring, or whether, through some
+haughty desire to rise once more aloft from the state of her rival and
+her lover, she made one sudden effort to grasp at the rank from which she
+had been hurled.  The only living person whose connection could re-open
+to her the great world, with its splendours and its scope to ambition,
+was Charles Vernon.  She scarcely admitted to her own mind the idea that
+she would now accept, if offered, the suit she had before despised; she
+did not even contemplate the renewal of that suit,--though there was
+something in the gallant and disinterested character of Vernon which
+should have made her believe he would regard their altered fortunes
+rather as a claim on his honour than a release to his engagements.  But
+hitherto no communication had passed between them; and this was strange
+if he retained the same intentions which he had announced at Laughton.
+Putting aside, we say, however, all such considerations, Vernon had
+sought her friendship, called her "cousin," enforced the distant
+relationship between them.  Not as lover, but as kinsman,--the only
+kinsman of her own rank she possessed,--his position in the world, his
+connections, his brilliant range of acquaintance, made his counsel for
+her future plans, his aid in the re-establishment of her consequence (if
+not--as wealthy, still as well-born), and her admission amongst her
+equals, of price and value.  It was worth sounding the depth of the
+friendship he had offered, even if his love had passed away with the
+fortune on which doubtless it had been based.
+
+She took a bold step,--she wrote to Vernon: not even to allude to what
+had passed between them; her pride forbade such unwomanly vulgarity.  The
+baseness that was in her took at least a more delicate exterior.  She
+wrote to him simply and distantly, to state that there were some books
+and trifles of hers left at Laughton, which she prized beyond their
+trivial value, and to request, as she believed him to be absent from the
+Hall, permission to call at her old home, in her way to a visit in a
+neighbouring county, and point out to whomsoever he might appoint to meet
+her, the effects she deemed herself privileged to claim.  The letter was
+one merely of business, but it was a sufficient test of the friendly
+feelings of her former suitor.
+
+She sent this letter to Vernon's house in London, and the next day came
+the answer.
+
+Vernon, we must own, entirely sympathized with Sir Miles in the solemn
+injunctions the old man had bequeathed.  Immediately after the death of
+one to whom we owe gratitude and love, all his desires take a sanctity
+irresistible and ineffable; we adopt his affection, his dislikes, his
+obligations, and his wrongs.  And after he had read the copy of
+Lucretia's letter, inclosed to him by Sir Miles, the conquest the poor
+baronet had made over resentment and vindictive emotion, the evident
+effort at passionless justice with which he had provided becomingly for
+his niece, while he cancelled her claims as his heiress, had filled
+Vernon with a reverence for his wishes and decisions that silenced all
+those inclinations to over-generosity which an unexpected inheritance is
+apt to create towards the less fortunate expectants.  Nevertheless,
+Lucretia's direct application, her formal appeal to his common courtesy
+as host and kinsman, perplexed greatly a man ever accustomed to a certain
+chivalry towards the sex; the usual frankness of his disposition
+suggested, however, plain dealing as the best escape from his dilemma,
+and therefore he answered thus:--
+
+MADAM,--Under other circumstances it would have given me no common
+pleasure to place the house that you so long inhabited again at your
+disposal; and I feel so painfully the position which my refusal of your
+request inflicts upon me, that rather than resort to excuses and
+pretexts, which, while conveying an impression of my sincerity, would
+seem almost like an insult to yourself, I venture frankly to inform you
+that it was the dying wish of my lamented kinsman, in consequence of a
+letter which came under his eye, that the welcome you had hitherto
+received at Laughton should be withdrawn.  Pardon me, Madam, if I express
+myself thus bluntly; it is somewhat necessary to the vindication of my
+character in your eyes, both as regards the honour of your request and my
+tacit resignation of hopes fervently but too presumptuously entertained.
+In this most painful candour, Heaven forbid that I should add wantonly to
+your self-reproaches for the fault of youth and inexperience, which I
+should be the last person to judge rigidly, and which, had Sir Miles's
+life been spared, you would doubtless have amply repaired.  The feelings
+which actuated Sir Miles in his latter days might have changed; but the
+injunction those feelings prompted I am bound to respect.
+
+For the mere matter of business on which you have done me the honour to
+address me, I have only to say that any orders you may give to the
+steward, or transmit through any person you may send to the Hall, with
+regard to the effects you so naturally desire to claim, shall be
+implicitly obeyed.
+
+And believe me, Madam (though I do not presume to add those expressions
+which might rather heighten the offence I fear this letter will give
+you), that the assurance of your happiness in the choice you have made,
+and which now no obstacle can oppose, will considerably--lighten the pain
+with which I shall long recall my ungracious reply to your communication.
+
+    I have the honour to be, etc.,             C. VERNON ST. JOHN.
+
+  BROOK STREET, Dec.  28, 18--.
+
+The receipt of such a letter could hardly add to the profounder grief
+which preyed in the innermost core of Lucretia's heart; but in repelling
+the effort she had made to distract that grief by ambition, it blackened
+the sullen despondency with which she regarded the future.  As the insect
+in the hollow snare of the ant-lion, she felt that there was no footing
+up the sides of the cave into which she had fallen; the sand gave way to
+the step.  But despondency in her brought no meekness; the cloud did not
+descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its darkness was tinged with
+the fires which it fed.  The heart, already so embittered, was stung and
+mortified into intolerable shame and wrath.  From the home that should
+have been hers, in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down on
+the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had supplanted her, as one
+worthless and polluted.  Though, from motives of obvious delicacy, Vernon
+had not said expressly that he had seen the letter to Mainwaring, the
+unfamiliar and formal tone which he assumed indirectly declared it, and
+betrayed the impression it had made, in spite of his reserve.  A living
+man then was in possession of a secret which justified his disdain, and
+that man was master of Laughton!  The suppressed rage which embraced the
+lost lover extended darkly over this witness to that baffled and
+miserable love.  But what availed rage against either?  Abandoned and
+despoiled, she was powerless to avenge.  It was at this time, when her
+prospects seemed most dark, her pride was most crushed, and her despair
+of the future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard as the only
+friend left to her under the sun.  Even the vices she perceived in him
+became merits, for they forbade him to despise her.  And now, this man
+rose suddenly into another and higher aspect of character.  Of late,
+though equally deferential to her, there had been something more lofty in
+his mien, more assured on his brow; gleams of a secret satisfaction, even
+of a joy, that he appeared anxious to suppress, as ill in harmony with
+her causes for dejection, broke out in his looks and words.  At length,
+one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he informed her that he was
+free to return to France; that even without the peace between England and
+France, which (known under the name of the Peace of Amiens) had been just
+concluded, he should have crossed the Channel.  The advocacy and interest
+of friends whom he had left at Paris had already brought him under the
+special notice of the wonderful man who then governed France, and who
+sought to unite in its service every description and variety of
+intellect.  He should return to France, and then--why, then, the ladder
+was on the walls of Fortune and the foot planted on the step!  As he
+spoke, confidently and sanguinely, with the verve and assurance of an
+able man who sees clear the path to his goal, as he sketched with rapid
+precision the nature of his prospects and his hopes, all that subtle
+wisdom which had before often seemed but vague and general, took
+practical shape and interest, thus applied to the actual circumstances of
+men; the spirit of intrigue, which seemed mean when employed on mean
+things, swelled into statesmanship and masterly genius to the listener
+when she saw it linked with the large objects of masculine ambition.
+Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest, her mind aroused.
+The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of her humiliation and
+despair,--a field for energy, stratagem, and contest,--invited her
+restless intelligence.  As Dalibard had profoundly calculated, there was
+no new channel for her affections,--the source was dried up, and the
+parched sands heaped over it; but while the heart lay dormant, the mind
+rose sleepless, chafed, and perturbed.  Through the mind, he indirectly
+addressed and subtly wooed her.
+
+"Such," he said, as he rose to take leave, "such is the career to which I
+could depart with joy if I did not depart alone!"
+
+"Alone!" that word, more than once that day, Lucretia repeated to
+herself--"alone!" And what career was left to her?--she, too, alone!
+
+In certain stages of great grief our natures yearn for excitement.  This
+has made some men gamblers; it has made even women drunkards,--it had
+effect over the serene calm and would-be divinity of the poet-sage.  When
+his son dies, Goethe does not mourn, he plunges into the absorption of a
+study uncultivated before.  But in the great contest of life, in the
+whirlpool of actual affairs, the stricken heart finds all,--the gambling,
+the inebriation, and the study.
+
+We pause here.  We have pursued long enough that patient analysis, with
+all the food for reflection that it possibly affords, to which we were
+insensibly led on by an interest, dark and fascinating, that grew more
+and more upon us as we proceeded in our research into the early history
+of a person fated to pervert no ordinary powers into no commonplace
+guilt.
+
+The charm is concluded, the circle closed round; the self-guided seeker
+after knowledge has gained the fiend for the familiar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON.
+
+We pass over an interval of some months.
+
+A painter stood at work at the easel, his human model before him.  He was
+employed on a nymph,--the Nymph Galatea.  The subject had been taken
+before by Salvator, whose genius found all its elements in the wild
+rocks, gnarled, fantastic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the landscape;
+in the huge ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace and suavity
+and unconscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her tresses dripping
+from the bath.  The painter, on a larger canvas (for Salvator's picture,
+at least the one we have seen, is among the small sketches of the great
+artistic creator of the romantic and grotesque), had transferred the
+subject of the master; but he had left subordinate the landscape and the
+giant, to concentrate all his art on the person of the nymph.  Middle-
+aged was the painter, in truth; but he looked old.  His hair, though
+long, was gray and thin; his face was bloated by intemperance; and his
+hand trembled much, though, from habit, no trace of the tremor was
+visible in his work.
+
+A boy, near at hand, was also employed on the same subject, with a rough
+chalk and a bold freedom of touch.  He was sketching his design of a
+Galatea and Polyphemus on the wall; for the wall was only whitewashed,
+and covered already with the multiform vagaries whether of master or
+pupils,--caricatures and demigods, hands and feet, torsos and monsters,
+and Venuses.  The rude creations, all mutilated, jarring, and mingled,
+gave a cynical, mocking, devil-may-care kind of aspect to the sanctum of
+art.  It was like the dissection-room of the anatomist. The boy's sketch
+was more in harmony with the walls of the studio than the canvas of the
+master.  His nymph, accurately drawn, from the undressed proportions of
+the model, down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish.  The
+forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands of
+skeletons.  Polyphemus, peering over  the rocks, had the leer of a demon;
+and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous likeness
+of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of Olivier Dalibard.
+
+All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken,--rickety, worn-
+out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pictures, pell-mell in the
+corner, covered with dust; broken casts of plaster; a lay-figure battered
+in its basket-work arms, with its doll-like face all smudged and
+besmeared.  A pot of porter and a noggin of gin on a stained deal table,
+accompanied by two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some tattered
+song-books, and old numbers of the "Covent Garden Magazine," betrayed the
+tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand and the bloated
+form.  A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was Tom Varney.  A
+bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion, and a terrible
+borrower.  Clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he
+had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he had one
+trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his profession.  He
+took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once clutched the
+money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture.  The only things
+Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which no order had been
+given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became interested, and on
+them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed.  But the subjects
+were rarely salable.  Nymphs and deities undraperied have few worshippers
+in England amongst the buyers of "furniture pictures."  And, to say
+truth, nymph and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they
+came from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries of
+Drury.  When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon clover till the
+money was gone.  But the poorer and less steady alumni of the rising
+school, especially those at war with the Academy, from which Varney was
+excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked and courted him withal.  In
+addition to his good qualities of blithe song-singer, droll story-teller,
+and stanch Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was liberally good-natured in
+communicating instruction really valuable to those who knew how to avail
+themselves of a knowledge he had made almost worthless to himself.  He
+was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, had many little secrets of
+colouring and composition, which an invitation to supper, or the loan of
+ten shillings, was sufficient to bribe from him.  Ragged, out of elbows,
+unshaven, and slipshod, he still had his set amongst the gay and the
+young,--a precious master, a profitable set for his nephew, Master Honore
+Gabriel!  But the poor rapscallion had a heart larger than many honest,
+painstaking men.  As soon as Gabriel had found him out, and entreated
+refuge from his fear of his father, the painter clasped him tight in his
+great slovenly arms, sold a Venus half-price to buy him a bed and a
+washstand, and swore a tremendous oath that the son of his poor
+guillotined sister should share the last shilling in his pocket, the last
+drop in his can.
+
+Gabriel, fresh from the cheer of Laughton, and spoiled by the prodigal
+gifts of Lucretia, had little gratitude for shillings and porter.
+Nevertheless, he condescended to take what he could get, while he sighed,
+from the depths of a heart in which cupidity and vanity had become the
+predominant rulers, for a destiny more worthy his genius, and more in
+keeping with the sphere from which he had descended.
+
+The boy finished his sketch, with an impudent wink at the model, flung
+himself back on his chair, folded his arms, cast a discontented glance at
+the whitened seams of the sleeves, and soon seemed lost in his own
+reflections.  The painter worked on in silence.  The model, whom
+Gabriel's wink had aroused, half-flattered, half-indignant for a moment,
+lapsed into a doze.  Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary,-
+-a dingy, smoke-coloured canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for they
+were as ragged as the garments of its master; still, it contrived to
+sing, trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in its native
+woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage.  The bird was the only
+true artist there, it sang as the poet sings,--to obey its nature and
+vent its heart.  Trill-trill-trillela-la-la-trill-trill, went the song,--
+louder, gayer than usual; for there was a gleam of April sunshine
+struggling over the rooftops.  The song at length roused up Gabriel; he
+turned his chair round, laid his head on one side, listened, and looked
+curiously at the bird.
+
+At length an idea seemed to cross him; he rose, opened the window, drew
+in the cage, placed it on the chair, then took up one of his uncle's
+pipes, walked to the fireplace, and thrust the shank of the pipe into the
+bars.  When it was red-hot he took it out by the bowl, having first
+protected his hand from the heat by wrapping round it his handkerchief;
+this done, he returned to the cage.  His movements had wakened up the
+dozing model.  She eyed them at first with dull curiosity, then with
+lively suspicion; and presently starting up with an exclamation such as
+no novelist but Fielding dare put into the mouth of a female,--much less
+a nymph of such renown as Galatea,--she sprang across the room, wellnigh
+upsetting easel and painter, and fastened firm hold on Gabriel's
+shoulders.
+
+"The varment!" she cried vehemently; "the good-for-nothing varment!  If
+it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well and good; but a poor little
+canary!"
+
+"Hoity-toity! what are you about, nephew?  What's the matter?" said Tom
+Varney, coming up to the strife.  And, indeed, it was time; for Gabriel's
+teeth were set in his catlike jaws, and the glowing point of the pipe-
+shank was within an inch of the cheek of the model.
+
+"What's the matter?" replied Gabriel, suddenly; "why, I was only going to
+try a little experiment."
+
+"An experiment?  Not on my canary, poor dear little thing!  The hours and
+hours that creature has strained its throat to say 'Sing and be merry,'
+when I had not a rap in my pocket!  It would have made a stone feel to
+hear it."
+
+"But I think I can make it sing much better than ever,--only just let me
+try!  They say that if you put out the eyes of a canary, it--"
+
+Gabriel was not allowed to conclude his sentence; for here rose that
+clamour of horror and indignation from both painter and model which
+usually greets the announcement of every philosophical discovery,--at
+least, when about to be practically applied; and in the midst of the
+hubbub, the poor little canary, who had been fluttering about the cage to
+escape the hand of the benevolent operator, set up no longer the cheerful
+trill-trillela-la-trill, but a scared and heart-breaking chirp,--a
+shrill, terrified twit-twit-twitter-twit.
+
+"Damn the bird!  Hold your tongues!" cried Gabriel Varney, reluctantly
+giving way, but still eying the bird with the scientific regret with
+which the illustrious Majendie might contemplate a dog which some brute
+of a master refused to disembowel for the good of the colics of mankind.
+
+The model seized on the cage, shut the door of the wires, and carried it
+off.  Tom Varney drained the rest of his porter, and wiped his forehead
+with the sleeve of his coat.
+
+"And to use my pipe for such cruelty!  Boy, boy, I could not have
+believed it!  But you were not in earnest; oh, no, impossible!  Sukey, my
+love--Galatea the divine--calm thy breast; Cupid did but jest.
+
+    'Cupid is the God of Laughter,
+     Quip and jest and joke, sir.'"
+
+"If you don't whip the little wretch within an inch of his life, he'll
+have a gallows end on't," replied Galatea.
+
+"Go, Cupid, go and kiss Galatea, and make your peace.
+
+    `Oh, leave a kiss within the cup,
+     And I'll not ask for wine.'
+
+And 't is no use asking for wine, or for gin either,--not a drop in the
+noggin!"
+
+All this while Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held forth to him,
+was employed in brushing his jacket with a very mangy-looking brush; and
+when he had completed that operation he approached his uncle, and coolly
+thrust his hands into that gentleman's waistcoat-pockets.
+
+"Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings?  I am going out to
+spend the day."
+
+"If you give them to him, Tom, I'll scratch your eyes out," cried the
+model; "and then we'll see how you'll sing.  Whip him, I say, whip him!"
+
+But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy quite reopened the heart of
+his uncle,--it was a pleasure to him, who put his hands so habitually
+into other people's pockets, to be invested with the novel grandeur of
+the man sponged upon.  "That's right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all's
+common property amongst friends.  Seven shillings, I have 'em not.  'They
+now are five who once were seven;' but such as they are, we'll share.
+
+    'Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
+     Or both divide the crown.'"
+
+"Crowns bear no division, my uncle," said Gabriel, dryly; and he pocketed
+the five shillings.  Then, having first secured his escape by gaining the
+threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by its leg, and
+regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right against the
+model, who was shaking her fist at him.  A scream and a fall and a sharp
+twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that
+the missive had taken effect.  Gabriel did not wait for the probable
+reaction; he was in the streets in an instant.  "This won't do," he
+muttered to himself; "there is no getting on here.  Foolish drunken
+vagabond! no good to be got from him.  My father is terrible, but he will
+make his way in the world.  Umph! if I were but his match,--and why not?
+I am brave, and he is not.  There's fun, too, in danger."
+
+Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard's lodgings.  His father was at
+home.  Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion,
+Olivier Dalibard's apartments had an air of refinement, and even
+elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel
+had just left and the meanness of Dalibard's former quarters in London,
+The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way
+in the world.  And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb of
+his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of
+precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the
+prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are
+strongly developed,--qualities which give even to neediness a certain
+dignity.  As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose
+senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young
+ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had
+just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard,
+always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave
+intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its calm, but
+from that nameless refinement which rarely fails to give to the student
+the air of a gentleman,--Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even
+detest; but he was not ashamed of him.
+
+"I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me," said Gabriel, in
+a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defiance, as if in doubt of
+his reception.
+
+The father's slow full eye, so different from the sidelong, furtive
+glance of Lucretia, turned on the son, as if to penetrate his very heart.
+
+"You look pale and haggard, child; you are fast losing your health and
+beauty.  Good gifts these, not to be wasted before they can be duly
+employed.  But you have taken your choice.  Be an artist,--copy Tom
+Varney, and prosper."  Gabriel remained silent, with his eyes on the
+floor.
+
+"You come in time for my farewell," resumed Dalibard.  "It is a comfort,
+at least, that I leave your youth so honourably protected.  I am about to
+return to my country; my career is once more before me!"
+
+"Your country,--to Paris?"
+
+"There are fine pictures in the Louvre,--a good place to inspire an
+artist!"
+
+"You go alone, Father!"
+
+"You forget, young gentleman, you disown me as father!  Go alone!  I
+thought I told you in the times of our confidence, that I should marry
+Lucretia Clavering.  I rarely fail in my plans.  She has lost Laughton,
+it is true; but 10,000 pounds will make a fair commencement to fortune,
+even at Paris.  Well, what do you want with me, worthy godson of Honore
+Gabriel Mirabeau?"
+
+"Sir, if you will let me, I will go with you."
+
+Dalibard shaded his brow with his hand, and reflected on the filial
+proposal.  On the one hand, it might be convenient, and would certainly
+be economical, to rid himself evermore of the mutinous son who had
+already thrown off his authority; on the other hand, there was much in
+Gabriel, mutinous and even menacing as he had lately become, that
+promised an unscrupulous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with
+interests that every year the ready youth would more and more discover
+were bound up in his plotting father's.  This last consideration, joined,
+if not to affection, still to habit,--to the link between blood and
+blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever,--prevailed.  He
+extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently,--
+
+"I will take you, if we rightly understand each other.  Once again in my
+power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true.  But I rather confer
+with you as man to man than as man to boy."
+
+"It is the best way," said Gabriel, firmly.
+
+"I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,--unless, indeed, amply
+merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit.  But if I meet with
+these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me!  I ask implicit
+confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests.
+Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to
+gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your
+pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I
+rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from
+your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son."
+
+"Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel.  "And Lucretia is going?  Oh, I
+so long to see her!"
+
+"See her--not yet; but next week."
+
+"Do not fear that I should let out about the letter.  I should betray
+myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his
+father's delay.
+
+The evil scholar smiled.
+
+"You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I should
+not fear.  Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right, like the
+rats, to run from the falling house.  Next week I will send for you,
+Gabriel!"
+
+Not, however, back to the studio went the boy.  He sauntered leisurely
+through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair
+women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions
+of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he
+sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom
+his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with
+this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors or
+study the play, but to stroll in the saloon.  A supper in the Finish
+completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day's rank
+experience of life.  By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he
+laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay
+gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of his
+father's calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already had
+attended his wiles,--a confidence and a triumph which, exciting his
+reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution.  He
+thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her
+praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt that
+they should have need of each other.  Oh, no, he never would tell her of
+the snare laid at Guy's Oak,--never, not even if incensed with his
+father.  An instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven,
+and that, henceforth, Lucretia's was a destiny bound up in his own.  He
+thought, too, of Dalibard's warning and threat.  But with fear itself
+came a strange excitement of pleasure,--to grapple, if necessary, he a
+mere child, with such a man!  His heart swelled at the thought.  So at
+last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother's trunkless face
+dripping gore and frowning on him,--dreamed that he heard her say: "Goest
+thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?"  Then a
+nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning mobs and
+agonized faces, came on him,--dark, confused, and indistinct.  And he
+woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the rising sun,
+the merry song of the poor canary,--trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-
+lill-la!  Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been stayed?
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
+
+It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted
+the roof of Mr. Fielden.  And first we must recall the eye of the reader
+to the old-fashioned terrace at Laughton,--the jutting porch, the quaint
+balustrades, the broad, dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond.  The
+day is calm, clear, and mild, for November in the country is often a
+gentle month.  On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his
+new name of St. John.  Is it the change of name that has so changed the
+person?  Can the wand of the Herald's Office have filled up the hollows
+of the cheek, and replaced by elastic vigour the listless languor of the
+tread?  No; there is another and a better cause for that healthful
+change.  Mr. Vernon St. John is not alone,--a fair companion leans on his
+arm.  See, she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and
+whisper, "We did well to have hope and faith!"
+
+The husband's faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary's, and a slight
+blush passed over his cheek as he thought of his concession to Sir
+Miles's wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia Clavering.  Still, that
+fault had been fairly acknowledged to his wife, and she felt, the moment
+she had spoken, that she had committed an indiscretion; nevertheless,
+with an arch touch of womanly malice she added softly,--
+
+"And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really handsome?"
+
+"My love," replied the husband, gravely, "you would oblige me by not
+recalling the very painful recollections connected with that name.  Let
+it never be mentioned in this house."
+
+Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she understood Charles's
+feelings.  For though he had not shown her Sir Miles's letter and its
+enclosure, he had communicated enough to account for the unexpected
+heritage, and to lessen his wife's compassion for the disappointed
+heiress.  Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy
+twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one whose
+hopes he had supplanted.  Lucretia's banishment from Laughton was a just
+humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to inflict the sentence.
+Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia was painful and
+unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles.  There was a silence; Lady Mary
+pressed her husband's hand.
+
+"It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender sign
+of sympathy in his feeling,--"strange that, after all, she did not marry
+Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman.  But she has
+settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind.  Yes,
+let us never recur to her."
+
+"Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she does not seem
+to have created much interest here.  The poor seldom name her to me, and
+our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage.  In another year she
+will be forgotten!"
+
+Mr. St. John sighed.  Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been
+forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor!  His light
+nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of annoyance,
+and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for
+the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be
+repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed.  For though it may
+seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his wife's meek
+superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship, had begun to feel
+the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps, than if he had been
+accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of life, and missed that
+stir of intellect which is the element of those who have warred in the
+democracy of letters, or contended for the leadership of States.  He had
+begun already to think that the country was no such exile after all.
+Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to share the occupations his
+Mary had already found in the busy "luxury of doing good," and to
+conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually unites the lord of the
+village with its poor.
+
+"I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more till my
+pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old friends at
+Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary."
+
+"Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!"
+
+"But we'll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent
+mother to keep us in order.  And if I sit more than half an hour after
+dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears.  Mary, what do you
+say to thinning the grove yonder?  We shall get a better view of the
+landscape beyond.  No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better
+than the prospect; I won't lop a bough.  But that avenue we are planting
+will be certainly a noble improvement--"
+
+"Fifty years hence, Charles!"
+
+"It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant
+spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous.  "But hark! is
+that two o'clock?  Three, by Jove!  How time flies! and my new bullocks
+that I was to see at two!  Come down to the farm, that's my own Mary.
+Ah, your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!"
+
+"And your fine gentlemen--"
+
+"Capital farmers!  I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so
+interesting an animal.  One lives to learn.  Put me in mind, by the by,
+to write to Coke about his sheep."
+
+"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor
+Ponto and Dash."
+
+The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes.  "If poor Sir Miles could have
+known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work
+on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife
+as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.
+
+From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old friend
+the vicar,--the same day, the same hour.  Here also the scene is without
+doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are playing at
+hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding gravel-walks
+from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora.  The vicar is seated
+in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden.
+The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had
+just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to
+look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene.  His
+wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a
+little aside, not to obstruct the view.
+
+"It does one's heart good to see them," said the vicar, "little dears!"
+
+"Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," observed Mrs.
+Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.
+
+"And so fresh!"
+
+"Fresh, indeed,--how different from London!  In London they were not fit
+to be seen,--as old as---I am sure I can't guess how old they were.  But
+you see here they are new laid every morning!"
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes,--"new laid every morning!"
+
+"Two dozen and four."
+
+"Two dozen and four!  What on earth are you talking about, Mrs. Fielden?"
+
+"Why, the eggs, to be sure, my love!"
+
+"Oh," said the vicar, "two dozen and four!  You alarmed me a little; 't
+is of no consequence,--only my foolish mistake.  Always prudent and
+saving, my dear Sarah,--just as if poor Sir Miles had not left us that
+munificent fortune, I may call it."
+
+"It will not go very far when we have our young ones to settle.  And
+David is very extravagant already; he has torn such a hole in his
+jacket!"
+
+At this moment up the gravel-walk two young persons came in sight.  The
+children darted across them, whooping and laughing, and vanished in the
+further recess of the garden.
+
+"All is for the best, blind mortals that we are; all is for the best,"
+said the vicar, musingly, as his eyes rested upon the approaching pair.
+
+"Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked to grumble.
+Still, if you saw what a hole it was,--past patching, I fear!"
+
+"Look round," said Mr. Fielden, benevolently.  "How we grieved for them
+both; how wroth we were with William,--how sad for Susan!  And now see
+them; they will be the better man and wife for their trial."
+
+"Has Susan then consented?  I was almost afraid she never would consent.
+How often have I been almost angry with her, poor lamb, when I have heard
+her accuse herself of causing her sister's unhappiness, and declare with
+sobs that she felt it a crime to think of William Mainwaring as a
+husband."
+
+"I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility which, while it
+could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, must have insured the
+wretchedness of herself and William.   But if Lucretia had not married,
+and so forever closed the door on William's repentance (that is,
+supposing he did repent), I believe poor Susan would rather have died of
+a broken heart than have given her hand to Mainwaring."
+
+"It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady's, after all," said Mrs.
+Fielden,--"so much older than she; a foreigner, too!"
+
+"But he is a very pleasant man, and they have known each other so long.
+I did not, however, quite like a sort of cunning he showed, when I came
+to reflect on it, in bringing Lucretia back to the house; it looks as if
+he had laid a trap for her from the first."
+
+"Ten thousand pounds,--a great catch for a foreigner!" observed Mrs.
+Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her sex; and then she added, in the
+spirit of a prudent sympathy equally characteristic: "But I think you say
+Mr. Parchmount persuaded her to allow half to be settled on herself.
+That will be a hold on him."
+
+"A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah.  There is a better,--he is a learned
+man and a scholar.  Scholars are naturally domestic, and make good
+husbands."
+
+"But you know he must be a papist!" said Mrs. Fielden.
+
+"Umph!" muttered the vicar, irresolutely.
+
+While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not
+having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding
+walk.
+
+"Indeed," said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, "these
+scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself.  If you
+were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister.  Nay, even
+were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be assured
+that I can retain no place in her affections.  What has chanced was not
+our crime.  Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself,
+from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!"
+
+"If she would but answer one of my letters!" sighed Susan; "or if I could
+but know that she were happy and contented!"
+
+"Your letters must have miscarried,--you are not sure even of her
+address.  Rely upon it, she is happy.  Do you think that she would a
+second time have 'stooped beneath her'"--Mainwaring's lip writhed as he
+repeated that phrase--"if her feelings had not been involved?  I would
+not wrong your sister,--I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and
+remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the nature
+of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting."
+
+"Ah, William, how can you know her heart?"
+
+"By comparing it with yours.  Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith!
+Susan, we were formed for each other!  Our natures are alike, save that
+yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its
+simple candour.  You will be my guide to good.  Without you I should have
+no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world.  Ah, this
+hand trembles still!"
+
+"William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition!  At
+night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,--pale with
+suppressed despair.  Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,--need of
+our services, our affections,--if we could but repair the grief we have
+caused her!"
+
+Susan's head sank on her lover's shoulder.  She had said "need of us,"
+"need of our services."  In those simple monosyllables the union was
+pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.
+
+From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,--we are at
+Paris.  In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant
+courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and
+downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the
+First Consul.
+
+"Par Dieu!" said B----, "power, like misery, makes us acquainted with
+strange bedfellows.  I should like to hear what the First Consul can have
+to say to Olivier Dalibard."
+
+Fouche, who at that period was scheming for the return to his old
+dignities of minister of police, smiled slightly, and answered: "In a
+time when the air is filled with daggers, one who was familiar with
+Robespierre has his uses.  Olivier Dalibard is a remarkable man.  He is
+one of those children of the Revolution whom that great mother is bound
+to save."
+
+"By betraying his brethren?" said B----, dryly.
+
+"I do not allow the inference.  The simple fact is that Dalibard has
+spent many years in England; he has married an Englishwoman of birth and
+connections; he knows well the English language and the English people;
+and just now when the First Consul is so anxious to approfondir the
+popular feelings of that strange nation, with whose government he is
+compelled to go to war, he may naturally have much to say to so acute an
+observer as Olivier Dalibard."
+
+"Um!" said B----; "with such patronage, Robespierre's friend should hold
+his head somewhat higher!"
+
+Meanwhile, Olivier Dalibard, crossing the gardens of the palace, took his
+way to the Faubourg St. Germain.  There was no change in the aspect of
+this man: the same meditative tranquillity characterized his downward
+eyes and bonded brow; the same precise simplicity of dress which had
+pleased the prim taste of Robespierre gave decorum to his slender,
+stooping form.  No expression more cheerful, no footstep more elastic,
+bespoke the exile's return to his native land, or the sanguine
+expectations of Intellect restored to a career.  Yet, to all appearance,
+the prospects of Dalibard were bright and promising.  The First Consul
+was at that stage of his greatness when he sought to employ in his
+service all such talent as the Revolution had made manifest, provided
+only that it was not stained with notorious bloodshed, or too strongly
+associated with the Jacobin clubs.  His quick eye seemed to have
+discovered already the abilities of Dalibard, and to have appreciated the
+sagacity and knowledge of men which had enabled this subtle person to
+obtain the friendship of Robespierre, without sharing in his crimes.  He
+had been frequently closeted with Bonaparte; he was in the declared
+favour of Fouche, who, though not at that period at the head of the
+police, was too necessary amidst the dangers of the time, deepened as
+they were by the rumours of some terrible and profound conspiracy, to be
+laid aside, as the First Consul had at one moment designed.  One man
+alone, of those high in the State, appeared to distrust Olivier
+Dalibard,--the celebrated Cambaceres.  But with his aid the Provencal
+could dispense.  What was the secret of Dalibard's power?  Was it, in
+truth, owing solely to his native talent, and his acquired experience,
+especially of England?  Was it by honourable means that he had won the
+ear of the First Consul?  We may be sure of the contrary; for it is a
+striking attribute of men once thoroughly tainted by the indulgence of
+vicious schemes and stratagems that they become wholly blinded to those
+plain paths of ambition which common-sense makes manifest to ordinary
+ability.  If we regard narrowly the lives of great criminals, we are
+often very much startled by the extraordinary acuteness, the profound
+calculation, the patient, meditative energy which they have employed upon
+the conception and execution of a crime.  We feel inclined to think that
+such intellectual power would have commanded great distinction, worthily
+used and guided; but we never find that these great criminals seem to
+have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which they have
+thrown away.  Often we observe that there have been before them vistas
+into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and exertion, would
+have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and power; but, with a
+strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have looked from these broad
+clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in which, by the subtlest
+ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils, they might attain at
+last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of a vice.  In crime once
+indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the fascination is, not
+rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the criminal.  There is
+always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid man, led by accident
+or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great ability, and highly
+educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark and terrible
+excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy ways, the good
+angel abandons him forever.
+
+Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the most
+desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious stairs,
+and rang at the door of an attic next the roof.  After some moments the
+door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce eyes,
+peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through the
+aperture.  The gaze seemed satisfactory.
+
+"Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and as
+Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.
+
+The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was blackened
+with smoke.  A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong chest, a small
+cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory.  The dress of the
+occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was not such
+as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign of
+poverty.  A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion, was
+buttoned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments were of
+leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came half-way
+up the thigh.  A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave never excited
+the admiration which physical power always has a right to command; and
+Dalibard gazed on him with envy.  The pale scholar absolutely sighed as
+he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming mind would have been so
+tough a frame!
+
+But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast
+the man of wile and craft.  Opposite that high forehead, with its massive
+development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought was
+unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where
+phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked in
+some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those
+higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct.  But in rich
+atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in the
+immense mass and width of the skull behind.  And as the hair, long
+before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw
+before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which
+recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good
+qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the
+obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil
+control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend
+the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.
+
+For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other.  At length
+Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--
+
+"My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your
+party!"
+
+"Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all
+chiefs, when it comes to blows.  You have seen my credentials; you know
+that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"
+
+"For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous.  I have sounded,
+as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are
+favourable.  This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron
+grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.
+But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men!  It is one thing to destroy
+Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons.  How can the
+Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons
+will forget the old offences and reward the new service?  You apprise me-
+-so do your credentials--that a prince of the blood is engaged in this
+enterprise, that he will appear at the proper season.  Put me in direct
+communication with this representative of the Bourbons, and I promise in
+return, if his assurances are satisfactory, that you shall have an
+emeute, to be felt from Paris to Marseilles.  If you cannot do this, I am
+useless; and I withdraw--"
+
+"Withdraw!  Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant!  No man withdraws alive
+from a conspiracy like ours."
+
+We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically brave; and
+the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, would have frozen the
+blood of many a bolder man.  But the habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard
+enabled him to disguise his fear, and he replied dryly,--
+
+"Monsieur le Chouan, it is not by threats that you will gain adherents to
+a desperate cause, which, on the contrary, requires mild words and
+flattering inducements.  If you commit a violence,--a murder,--mon cher,
+Paris is not Bretagne; we have a police: you will be discovered."
+
+"Ha, ha!  What then?  Do you think I fear the guillotine?"
+
+"For yourself, no; but for your leaders, yes!  If you are discovered, and
+arrested for crime, do you fancy that the police will not recognize the
+right arm of the terrible George Cadoudal; that they will not guess that
+Cadoudal is at Paris; that Cadoudal will not accompany you to the
+guillotine?"
+
+The Chouan's face fell.  Olivier watched him, and pursued his advantage.
+
+"I asked you to introduce to me this shadow of a prince, under which you
+would march to a counter-revolution.  But I will be more easily
+contented.  Present me to George Cadoudal, the hero of Morbihan; he is a
+man in whom I can trust, and with whom I can deal.  What, you hesitate?
+How do you suppose enterprises of this nature can be carried on?  If,
+from fear and distrust of each other, the man you would employ cannot
+meet the chief who directs him, there will be delay, confusion, panic,
+and you will all perish by the executioner.  And for me, Pierre Guillot,
+consider my position.  I am in some favour with the First Consul; I have
+a station of respectability,--a career lies before me.  Can you think
+that I will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child?  Do
+you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I would consent
+to treat only with subordinates?  Do not deceive yourself.  Again, I say,
+tell your employers that they must confer with me directly, or je m'en
+lave les mains."
+
+"I will repeat what you say," answered Guillot, sullenly, "Is this all?"
+
+"All for the present," said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his gloves, and
+retreating towards the door.  The Chouan watched him with a suspicious
+and sinister eye; and as the Provencal's hand was on the latch, he laid
+his own rough grasp on Dalibard's shoulder,--
+
+"I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust you."
+
+"Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire," replied the
+scholar, quietly.  "I do not ask you to confide in me.  Your employers
+bade you seek me: I have mentioned my conditions; let them decide."
+
+"You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard, and I am under a solemn oath,
+which poor George made me take, knowing me to be a hot-headed, honest
+fellow,--mauvaise tete, if you will,--that I will keep my hand off pistol
+and knife upon mere suspicion; that nothing less than his word, or than
+clear and positive proof of treachery, shall put me out of good humour
+and into warm blood.  But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard: if I
+once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should George see
+you, and one hair of his head come to injury through your hands,--I will
+wring your neck as a housewife wrings a pullet's."
+
+"I don't doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot; but my
+neck will be safe: you have enough to do to take care of your own.
+Au revoir."
+
+With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke,
+and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught
+at the balustrade,--the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or to
+be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command, or
+simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural
+and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a noble
+cause.  In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly formidable;
+for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a
+hypocrite's cowardice.
+
+While thus the interview is going on between Dalibard and the
+conspirator, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal's home.
+
+In an apartment in one of the principal streets between the Boulevards
+and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sat side by side, conversing in
+whispers.  The boy was Gabriel Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard.  The
+apartment was furnished in the then modern taste, which affected
+classical forms; and though not without a certain elegance, had something
+meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin-legged chairs.
+There was in the apartment that air which bespeaks the struggle for
+appearances,--that struggle familiar to those of limited income and vain
+aspirings, who want the taste which smooths all inequalities and gives a
+smile to home; that taste which affection seems to prompt, if not to
+create, which shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless trifles, each
+a grace.  No sign was there of the household cares or industry of women.
+No flowers, no music, no embroidery-frame, no work-table.  Lucretia had
+none of the sweet feminine habits which betray so lovelily the whereabout
+of women.  All was formal and precise, like rooms which we enter and
+leave,--not those in which we settle and dwell.
+
+Lucretia herself is changed; her air is more assured, her complexion more
+pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm and pronounced.
+
+Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of man.  The
+down shades his lip.  His dress, though showy and theatrical, is no
+longer that of boyhood.  His rounded cheek has grown thin, as with the
+care and thought which beset the anxious step of youth on entering into
+life.
+
+Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers; both from time to time
+glanced fearfully at the door; both felt that they belonged to a hearth
+round which smile not the jocund graces of trust and love and the heart's
+open ease.
+
+"But," said Gabriel,--"but if you would be safe, my father must have no
+secrets hid from you."
+
+"I do not know that he has.  He speaks to me frankly of his hopes, of the
+share he has in the discovery of the plot against the First Consul, of
+his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the Breton."
+
+"Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your acuteness assists
+his own.  Such secrets belong to his public life, his political schemes;
+with those he will trust you.  It is his private life, his private
+projects, you must know."
+
+"But what does he conceal from me?  Apart from politics, his whole mind
+seems bent on the very natural object of securing intimacy with his rich
+cousin, M. Bellanger, from whom he has a right to expect so large an
+inheritance."
+
+"Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father."
+
+"He has bad health."
+
+"No," said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange smile, "he has not
+bad health; but he may not be long-lived."
+
+"How do you mean?" asked Lucretia, sinking her voice into a still lower
+whisper, while a shudder, she scarce knew why, passed over her frame.
+
+"What does my father do," resumed Gabriel, "in that room at the top of
+the house?  Does he tell you that secret?"
+
+"He makes experiments in chemistry.  You know that that was always his
+favourite study.  You smile again!  Gabriel, do not smile so; it appalls
+me.  Do you think there is some mystery in that chamber?"
+
+"It matters not what we think, belle-mere; it matters much what we know.
+If I were you, I would know what is in that chamber.  I repeat, to be
+safe, you must have all his secrets, or none.  Hush, that is his step!"
+
+The door-handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered.  His look fell
+on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his
+unexpected return.  He then glanced at Lucretia's, which was, as usual,
+cold and impenetrable.
+
+"Gabriel," said Dalibard, gently, "I have come in for you.  I have
+promised to take you to spend the day at M. Bellanger's; you are a great
+favourite with Madame.  Come, my boy.  I shall be back soon, Lucretia.  I
+shall but drop in to leave Gabriel at my cousin's."
+
+Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of the bon-
+bons and compliments he received habitually from Madame Bellanger.
+
+"And you can take your drawing implements with you," continued Dalibard.
+"This good M. Bellanger has given you permission to copy his Poussin."
+
+"His Poussin!  Ah, that is placed in his bedroom [It is scarcely
+necessary to observe that bedchambers in Paris, when forming part of the
+suite of reception-rooms, are often decorated no less elaborately than
+the other apartments], is it not?"
+
+"Yes," answered Dalibard, briefly.
+
+Gabriel lifted his sharp, bright eyes to his father's face.  Dalibard
+turned away.
+
+"Come!" he said with some impatience; and the boy took up his hat.
+
+In another minute Lucretia was alone.
+
+"Alone," in an English home, is a word implying no dreary solitude to an
+accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign land, alone in those half-
+furnished, desolate apartments,--few books, no musical instruments, no
+companions during the day to drop in,--that loneliness was wearying.  And
+that mind so morbidly active!  In the old Scottish legend, the spirit
+that serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend its work
+for a moment, and it rends the enchanter.  It is so with minds that crave
+for excitement, and live, without relief of heart and affection, on the
+hard tasks of the intellect.
+
+Lucretia mused over Gabriel's words and warning: "To be safe, you must
+know all his secrets, or none."  What was the secret which Dalibard had
+not communicated to her?
+
+She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to the attic
+which Dalibard had lately hired.  It was locked; and she observed that
+the lock was small,--so small that the key might be worn in a ring.  She
+descended, and entered her husband's usual cabinet, which adjoined the
+sitting-room.  All the books which the house contained were there,--a few
+works on metaphysics, Spinoza in especial, the great Italian histories,
+some volumes of statistics, many on physical and mechanical philosophy,
+and one or two works of biography and memoirs.  No light literature,--
+that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all,
+humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours,
+elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind.  She
+took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the rest, for she
+was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read.  To her surprise, the
+first passage she opened was singularly interesting, though the title was
+nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of Padua in the
+Sixteenth Century."  It related to that singular epoch of terror in Italy
+when some mysterious disease, varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all
+remedy, and long defied all conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the
+heads of families, father and husband; rarely women.  In one city, seven
+hundred husbands perished, but not one wife!  The disease was poison.
+The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier discoverers of the true
+cause of this household epidemic.  He had been a chief authority in a
+commission of inquiry.  Startling were the details given in the work,--
+the anecdotes, the histories, the astonishing craft brought daily to bear
+on the victim, the wondrous perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of
+the certain murder,--here swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as
+long decline.  The lecture was absorbing; and absorbed in the book
+Lucretia still was, when she heard Dalibard's voice behind: he was
+looking over her shoulder.
+
+"A strange selection for so fair a student!  En fant, play not with such
+weapons."
+
+"But is this all true?"
+
+"True, though scarce a fragment of the truth.  The physician was a sorry
+chemist and a worse philosopher.  He blundered in his analysis of the
+means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the
+motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading
+pestilence?  It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking
+license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the
+individual waging war against the many."
+
+"I do not understand you."
+
+"No?  In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they
+married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them;
+they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for
+example.  Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant.  His
+life was in her hands.  So the weak had no mercy on the strong.  But man,
+too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.
+Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought
+him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home.  Suddenly the
+frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant foe.
+The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.
+Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw
+through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw
+those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and
+power and esteem.  As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through
+velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way.  No.
+A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for the
+crime.  It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an army,--
+more than an army!  What thousands and millions of men, with trumpet and
+banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to do,--destroy a foe,--
+that, with little more than an effort of the will,--with a drop, a grain,
+for all his arsenal,--one man can do!"
+
+There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke
+thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded.  That animation which a noble
+thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for
+the darkest and basest of human crimes.  Lucretia shuddered; but her
+gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her
+terror.
+
+"Hush! you appall me," she said at last, timidly.  "But, happily, this
+fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"
+
+"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to
+learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said
+Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question.  "Portions of the
+art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous
+exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us.  To kill by a flower, a
+pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible
+suspicion,--is it credible?  What say you?  An amusing research, indeed,
+if one had leisure!  But enough of this now; it grows late.  We dine with
+M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel.  Why, Lucretia, if we knew a
+little of this old art, par Dieu! we could soon hire the hotel!  Well,
+well; perhaps we may survive my cousin Jean Bellanger!"
+
+Three days afterwards, Lucretia stood by her husband's side in the secret
+chamber.  From the hour when she left it, a change was perceptible in her
+countenance, which gradually removed from it the character of youth.
+Paler the cheek could scarce become, nor more cold the discontented,
+restless eye.  But it was as if some great care had settled on her brow,
+and contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips.  Gabriel noted the
+alteration, but he did not attempt to win her confidence.  He was
+occupied rather in considering, first, if it were well for him to sound
+deeper into the mystery he suspected; and, secondly, to what extent, and
+on what terms, it became his interest to aid the designs in which, by
+Dalibard's hints and kindly treatment, he foresaw that he was meant to
+participate.
+
+A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards.  Jean Bellanger had been
+one of those prudent Republicans who had put the Revolution to profit.
+By birth a Marseillais, he had settled in Paris, as an epicier, about the
+year 1785, and had distinguished himself by the adaptability and finesse
+which become those who fish in such troubled waters.  He had sided with
+Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud and the Girondins.  These he forsook in
+time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made him a seductive patron.
+He was a large purchaser in the sale of the emigrant property; he
+obtained a contract for the supply of the army in the Netherlands; he
+abandoned Danton as he had abandoned the Girondins, but without taking
+any active part in the after-proceedings of the Jacobins.  His next
+connection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself yet more
+under the Directory than he had done in the earlier stages of the
+Revolution.  Under cover of an appearance of bonhomie and good humour, a
+frank laugh and an open countenance, Jean Bellanger had always retained
+general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom the policy of
+the First Consul led him to conciliate.  He had long since retired from
+the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to flourish as an
+army contractor.  He had a large hotel and a splendid establishment; he
+was one of the great capitalists of Paris.  The relationship between
+Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was that of cousins twice
+removed; and during Dalibard's previous residence at Paris, each
+embracing different parties, and each eager in his career, the blood-tie
+between them had not been much thought of, though they were good friends,
+and each respected the other for the discretion with which he had kept
+aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the time.  As Bellanger was
+not many years older than Dalibard; as the former had but just married in
+the year 1791, and had naturally before him the prospect of a family; as
+his fortunes at that time, though rising, were unconfirmed; and as some
+nearer relations stood between them, in the shape of two promising,
+sturdy nephews,--Dalibard had not then calculated on any inheritance from
+his cousin.  On his return, circumstances were widely altered: Bellanger
+had been married some years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials.  His
+nephews, draughted into the conscription, had perished in Egypt.
+Dalibard apparently became his nearest relative.
+
+To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very
+dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.
+The contractor's splendid mode of living, vying with that of the fermier-
+general of old, the colossal masses of capital by which he backed and
+supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered practical
+and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid restlessness
+of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil scholar; for that
+restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not constitutional to
+it.  Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either to a miser or a
+spendthrift.  In his youth, his books and the simple desires of an
+abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of method and order,
+a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his acts, from the least
+to the greatest, preserved him, even when most poor, from neediness and
+want.  Nor was he by nature vain and ostentatious,--those infirmities
+accompany a larger and more luxurious nature.  His philosophy rather
+despised, than inclined to, show.  Yet since to plot and to scheme made
+his sole amusement, his absorbing excitement, so a man wrapped in
+himself, and with no generous ends in view, has little to plot or to
+scheme for but objects of worldly aggrandizement.  In this Dalibard
+resembled one whom the intoxication of gambling has mastered, who neither
+wants nor greatly prizes the stake, but who has grown wedded to the
+venture for it.  It was a madness like that of a certain rich nobleman in
+our own country who, with more money than he could spend, and with a
+skill in all games where skill enters that would have secured him success
+of itself, having learned the art of cheating, could not resist its
+indulgence.  No hazard, no warning, could restrain him,--cheat he must;
+the propensity became iron-strong as a Greek destiny.
+
+That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle
+Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed to
+more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.
+Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and
+excites.  Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had the
+sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes pleasure
+in every pomp and show of life.  Lucretia, with a hardness of mind that
+disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may be applied
+to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid infirmities of
+the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to which gold was a
+necessary instrument.  Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the
+ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in
+another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the nobler desire
+for power based on fame and genius.  But now she had the gloomy cravings
+of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore herself to a lost
+position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to bitterness of all beings
+and all things around her.  She was gnawed by that false fever which
+riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console
+themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the
+world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly
+advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt.
+
+To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in
+Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not
+only by his conversation, but his habits of life.  He mixed with those
+much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the hot
+and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new
+aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of
+many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm.  Every one about
+them was actuated by the keen desire "to make a fortune;" the desire was
+contagious.  They were not absolutely poor in the proper sense of the
+word "poverty," with Dalibard's annuity and the interest of Lucretia's
+fortune; but they were poor compared to those with whom they associated,-
+-poor enough for discontent.  Thus, the image of the mighty wealth from
+which, perhaps, but a single life divided them, became horribly haunting.
+To Gabriel's sensual vision the image presented itself in the shape of
+unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia it wore the solemn
+majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was but the Eureka of a
+calculation,--the palpable reward of wile and scheme and dexterous
+combinations.  The devil had temptations suited to each.
+
+Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers.  Olivier
+glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the market.
+Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor's boasts of
+past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious games at
+tric-trac.  Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on the walls,
+complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both for trinkets
+and crowns.  Like three birds of night and omen, these three evil natures
+settled on the rich man's roof.
+
+Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into
+such attentive affection?  His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion
+of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions.  But he
+took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard's hints and
+suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia,
+and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted
+with bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures.  But at times
+there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and an
+inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which
+perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia.  Had his wealth been wholly at
+his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the new
+law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property could not be
+alienated from his nearest kin.  Was not Dalibard the nearest?
+
+These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the
+restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but capacious and
+grasping intellect.  Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main
+political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated
+conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of
+Pichegru, the Duc d'Enghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La
+Vendee, George Cadoudal.  In the midst of these dark plots for personal
+aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the
+sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.
+
+ Time has passed on, and spring is over the world.  The seeds buried in
+the earth burst to flower; but man's breast knoweth not the sweet
+division of the seasons.  In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike,
+his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny
+gathers in her harvests.
+
+The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is born
+to the old name and fair lands of St. John.  And, as usual, the present
+race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace it,--that
+which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves, and wrest
+from them the pleasant goods of the world.  The joy-bell of birth is a
+note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the worms beneath the
+mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and flourishes, speeds the
+parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that the infant shall become
+the heir?  Who can tell that Death sits not side by side with the nurse
+at the cradle?  Can the mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae,
+or the father's eye detect through the darkness of the morrow the gleam
+of the fatal shears?
+
+ It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England.  There
+Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form.  You see not the
+stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of the
+capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer, Civilization.
+There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind
+with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn;
+there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of
+cottage and farm.  The thronging of men, and the clacking of whips, and
+the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the crowd as it passes, and
+the lowing of herds and the bleating of sheep,--all are sounds of
+movement and bustle, yet blend with the pastoral associations of the
+primitive commerce, when the link between market and farm was visible and
+direct.
+
+Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebbing on, you
+might see stream after stream pour its way.  The large doors swinging
+light on their hinges, the gilt letters that shine above the threshold,
+the windows, with their shutters outside cased in iron and studded with
+nails, announce that that house is the bank of the town.  Come in with
+that yeoman whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed,--he
+has come, not to invest, but to borrow.  What matters?  War is breaking
+out anew, to bring the time of high prices and paper money and credit.
+Honest yeoman, you will not be refused.  He scratches his rough head,
+pulls a leg, as he calls it, when the clerk leans over the counter, and
+asks to see "Muster Mawnering hisself."  The clerk points to the little
+office-room of the new junior partner, who has brought 10,000 pounds and
+a clear head to the firm.  And the yeoman's great boots creak heavily in.
+I told you so, honest yeoman; you come out with a smile on your brown
+face, and your hand, that might fell an ox, buttons up your huge breeches
+pocket.  You will ride home with a light heart; go and dine, and be
+merry.
+
+The yeoman tramps to the ordinary; plates clatter, tongues wag, and the
+borrower's full heart finds vent in a good word for that kind "Muster
+Mawnering."  For a wonder, all join in the praise.  "He's an honour to
+the town; he's a pride to the country.  Thof he's such a friend at a
+pinch, he's a rale mon of business.  He'll make the baunk worth a
+million!  And how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the
+war, and the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers!  If their members
+were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!"
+
+The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are
+giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and
+the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at the
+skirts of the town.  Not villa nor cottage, that plain English house,
+with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of shape,--
+a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner!  Yet as he passes, he
+sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town.  He
+pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly.  That pause and that sigh betray
+the germ of ambition and discontent.  Why should not he, who can speak so
+well, be member for the town, instead of that stammering squire?  But his
+reason has soon silenced the querulous murmur.  He hastens his step,--he
+is at home!  And there, in the neat-furnished drawing-room, which looks
+on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming tea-urn; and the piano is
+open, and there is a packet of new books on the table; and, best of all,
+there is the glad face of the sweet English wife.  The happy scene was
+characteristic of the time, just when the simpler and more innocent
+luxuries of the higher class spread, not to spoil, but refine the middle.
+The dress, air, mien, movements of the young couple; the unassuming,
+suppressed, sober elegance of the house; the flower-garden, the books,
+and the music, evidences of cultivated taste, not signals of display,--
+all bespoke the gentle fusion of ranks before rude and uneducated wealth,
+made in looms and lucky hits, rushed in to separate forever the gentleman
+from the parvenu.
+
+ Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame and the crowded
+alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and thousands eager, joyous,
+aspiring, reckless,--the New Race of France, bound to one man's destiny,
+children of glory and of carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture
+scent, hungry, from afar!
+
+The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul has been detected and
+defeated.  Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial, the
+Duc d'Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; the imperial crown is prepared
+for the great soldier, and the great soldier's creatures bask in the
+noonday sun.  Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative employment; his
+rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions.  No service connected with
+the detection of the conspiracy is traced or traceable by the public eye.
+If such exist, it is known but to those who have no desire to reveal it.
+The old apartments are retained, but they are no longer dreary and
+comfortless and deserted.  They are gay with draperies and ormolu and
+mirrors; and Madame Dalibard has her nights of reception, and Monsieur
+Dalibard has already his troops of clients.  In that gigantic
+concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called the State,
+Dalibard has found his place.  He has served to swell the power of the
+unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in the sum.
+
+Jean Bellanger is no more.  He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick
+disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.
+But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir to
+the dead millionnaire.  What mistake is this?  The bulk of that wealth
+must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law.  But the will is read; and,
+for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a son,-
+-a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown, amidst
+the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a proscrit.
+The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons, and
+unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and whom
+that discovery might have deterred from the altar.  Unacknowledged
+through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and
+Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain!  For days
+has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope
+in litigation.  The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come
+out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the
+profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death.  Olivier
+Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir
+is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to
+his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.
+Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss.  The widow
+Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond
+expectation.  In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his
+affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name.  The widow then is
+rich,--rich as the heir himself.  She is still fair.  Poor woman, she
+needs consolation!  But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are
+disturbed and broken.  His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he
+is seldom seen on foot in the streets.  Fear is his companion by day, and
+sits at night on his pillow.  The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to
+George Cadoudal as a god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed,
+and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a
+heart steeled against all mercy.  Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted for
+that Chouan's blood!  With what relentless pertinacity, with what
+ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the
+track of that single man!  How notably he had failed!  An avenger lived;
+and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall.  But he did
+not the less continue to plot and to intrigue--nay, such occupation
+became more necessary, as an escape from himself.
+
+And in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take courage from the
+recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath (and he knew that oaths
+are held sacred with the Bretons) that he would keep his hand from his
+knife unless he had clear evidence of treachery; such evidence existed,
+but only in Dalibard's desk or the archives of Fouche.  Tush, he was
+safe!  And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the depth of night,
+so his bolder wife would whisper to him with firm, uncaressing lips:
+"Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the living: dost thou never fear the
+dead?  Thy dreams are haunted with a spectre.  Why takes it not the
+accusing shape of thy mouldering kinsman?" and Dalibard would answer, for
+he was a philosopher in his cowardice: "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne
+reviennent pas."
+
+It is the notable convenience of us narrators to represent, by what is
+called "soliloquy," the thoughts, the interior of the personages we
+describe.  And this is almost the master-work of the tale-teller,--that
+is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what self-commune is in the dim
+and tangled recesses of the human heart!  But to this privilege we are
+rarely admitted in the case of Olivier Dalibard, for he rarely communed
+with himself.  A sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally went
+on within him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a
+mechanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of thought,
+with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and crime, which gives
+its appalling interest to the soliloquy of tragedy.  Amidst the
+tremendous secrecy of that profound intellect, as at the bottom of a sea,
+only monstrous images of terror, things of prey, stirred in cold-blooded
+and devouring life; but into these deeps Olivier himself did not dive.
+He did not face his own soul; his outer life and his inner life seemed
+separate individualities, just as, in some complicated State, the social
+machine goes on through all its numberless cycles of vice and dread,
+whatever the acts of the government, which is the representative of the
+State, and stands for the State in the shallow judgment of history.
+
+Before this time Olivier Dalibard's manner to his son had greatly changed
+from the indifference it betrayed in England,--it was kind and
+affectionate, almost caressing; while, on the other hand, Gabriel, as if
+in possession of some secret which gave him power over his father, took a
+more careless and independent tone, often absented himself from the house
+for days together, joined the revels of young profligates older than
+himself, with whom he had formed acquaintance, indulged in spendthrift
+expenses, and plunged prematurely into the stream of vicious pleasure
+that oozed through the mud of Paris.
+
+One morning Dalibard, returning from a visit to Madame Bellanger, found
+Gabriel alone in the salon, contemplating his fair face and gay dress in
+one of the mirrors, and smoothing down the hair, which he wore long and
+sleek, as in the portraits of Raphael.  Dalibard's lip curled at the
+boy's coxcombry,--though such tastes he himself had fostered, according
+to his ruling principles, that to govern, you must find a foible, or
+instil it; but the sneer changed into a smile.
+
+"Are you satisfied with yourself, joli garcon?" he said, with saturnine
+playfulness.
+
+"At least, sir, I hope that you will not be ashamed of me when you
+formally legitimatize me as your son.  The time has come, you know, to
+keep your promise."
+
+"And it shall be kept, do not fear.  But first I have an employment for
+you,--a mission; your first embassy, Gabriel."
+
+"I listen, sir."
+
+"I have to send to England a communication of the utmost importance--
+public importance--to the secret agent of the French government.  We are
+on the eve of a descent on England.  We are in correspondence with some
+in London on whom we count for support.  A man might be suspected and
+searched,--mind, searched.  You, a boy, with English name and speech,
+will be my safest envoy.  Bonaparte approves my selection.  On your
+return, he permits me to present you to him.  He loves the rising
+generation.  In a few days you will be prepared to start."
+
+Despite the calm tone of the father, so had the son, from the instinct of
+fear and self-preservation, studied every accent, every glance of
+Olivier,--so had he constituted himself a spy upon the heart whose
+perfidy was ever armed, that he detected at once in the proposal some
+scheme hostile to his interests.  He made, however, no opposition to the
+plan suggested; and seemingly satisfied with his obedience, the father
+dismissed him.
+
+As soon as he was in the streets, Gabriel went straight to the house of
+Madame Bellanger.  The hotel had been purchased in her name, and she
+therefore retained it.  Since her husband's death he had avoided that
+house, before so familiar to him; and now he grew pale and breathed hard
+as he passed by the porter's lodge up the lofty stairs.
+
+He knew of his father's recent and constant visits at the house; and
+without conjecturing precisely what were Olivier's designs, he connected
+them, in the natural and acquired shrewdness he possessed, with the
+wealthy widow.  He resolved to watch, observe, and draw his own
+conclusions.  As he entered Madame Bellanger's room rather abruptly, he
+observed her push aside amongst her papers something she had been gazing
+on,--something which sparkled to his eyes.  He sat himself down close to
+her with the caressing manner he usually adopted towards women; and in
+the midst of the babbling talk with which ladies generally honour boys,
+he suddenly, as if by accident, displaced the papers, and saw his
+father's miniature set in brilliants.  The start of the widow, her blush,
+and her exclamation strengthened the light that flashed upon his mind.
+"Oh, ho!  I see now," he said laughing, "why my father is always praising
+black hair; and--nay, nay--gentlemen may admire ladies in Paris, surely?"
+
+"Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my poor husband,
+and a near relation too!  But, Gabriel, mon petit ange, you had better
+not say at home that you have seen this picture; Madame Dalibard might be
+foolish enough to be angry."
+
+"To be sure not.  I have kept a secret before now!" and again the boy's
+cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly round.
+
+"And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard too; so you must not vex her."
+
+"Who says I'm fond of Madame Dalibard?  A stepmother!"
+
+"Why, your father, of course,--il est si bon, ce pauvre Dalibard; and all
+men like cheerful faces.  But then, poor lady,--an Englishwoman, so
+strange here; very natural she should fret, and with bad health, too."
+
+"Bad health!  Ah, I remember!  She, also, does not seem likely to live
+long!"
+
+"So your poor father apprehends.  Well, well; how uncertain life is!  Who
+would have thought dear Bellanger would have--"
+
+Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow's pathetic reflections.
+"I only ran in to say Bon jour.  I must leave you now."
+
+"Adieu, my dear boy,--not a word on the miniature!  By the by, here's a
+shirt-pin for you,--tu es joli comme un amour."
+
+All was clear now to Gabriel; it was necessary to get rid of him, and
+forever.  Dalibard might dread his attachment to Lucretia,--he would
+dread still more his closer intimacy with the widow of Bellanger, should
+that widow wed again, and Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?), be
+her choice!  Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent,
+the young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a terror seized
+on him,--a terror of life and death.  Would Dalibard spare even his own
+son, if that son had the power to injure?  This mission, was it exile
+only,--only a fall back to the old squalor of his uncle's studio; only
+the laying aside of a useless tool?  Or was it a snare to the grave?
+Demon as Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him.  But guilt
+construes guilt for the worst.
+
+Gabriel had formerly enjoyed the thought to match himself, should danger
+come, with Dalibard; the hour had come, and he felt his impotence.  Brave
+his father, and refuse to leave France!  From that, even his reckless
+hardihood shrank, as from inevitable destruction.  But to depart,--be the
+poor victim and dupe; after having been let loose amongst the riot of
+pleasure, to return to labour and privation,--from that option his vanity
+and his senses vindictively revolted.  And Lucretia, the only being who
+seemed to have a human kindness to him!  Through all the vicious egotism
+of his nature, he had some grateful sentiments for her; and even the
+egotism assisted that unwonted amiability, for he felt that, Lucretia
+gone, he had no hold on his father's house, that the home of her
+successor never would be his.  While thus brooding, he lifted his eyes,
+and saw Dalibard pass in his carriage towards the Tuileries.  The house,
+then, was clear; he could see Lucretia alone.  He formed his resolution
+at once, and turned homewards.  As he did so, he observed a man at the
+angle of the street, whose eyes followed Dalibard's carriage with an
+expression of unmistakable hate and revenge; but scarcely had he marked
+the countenance, before the man, looking hurriedly round, darted away,
+and was lost amongst the crowd.
+
+Now, that countenance was not quite unfamiliar to Gabriel.  He had seen
+it before, as he saw it now,--hastily, and, as it were, by fearful
+snatches.  Once he had marked, on returning home at twilight, a figure
+lurking by the house; and something, in the quickness with which it
+turned from his gaze, joined to his knowledge of Dalibard's
+apprehensions, made him mention the circumstance to his father when he
+entered.  Dalibard bade him hasten with a note, written hurriedly, to an
+agent of the police, whom he kept lodged near at hand.  The man was still
+on the threshold when the boy went out on this errand, and he caught a
+glimpse of his face; but before the police-agent reached the spot, the
+ill-omened apparition had vanished.  Gabriel now, as his eye rested full
+upon that threatening brow and those burning eyes, was convinced that be
+saw before him the terrible Pierre Guillot, whose very name blenched his
+father's cheek.  When the figure retreated, he resolved at once to
+pursue.  He hurried through the crowd amidst which the man had
+disappeared, and looked eagerly into the faces of those he jostled;
+sometimes at the distance he caught sight of a figure which appeared to
+resemble the one which he pursued, but the likeness faded on approach.
+The chase, however, vague and desultory as it was, led him on till his
+way was lost amongst labyrinths of narrow and unfamiliar streets.  Heated
+and thirsty, he paused, at last, before a small cafe, entered to ask for
+a draught of lemonade, and behold, chance had favoured him!  The man he
+sought was seated there before a bottle of wine, and intently reading the
+newspaper.  Gabriel sat himself down at the adjoining table.  In a few
+moments the man was joined by a newcomer; the two conversed, but in
+whispers so low that Gabriel was unable to hear their conversation,
+though he caught more than once the name of "George."  Both the men were
+violently excited, and the expression of their countenances was menacing
+and sinister.  The first comer pointed often to the newspaper, and read
+passages from it to his companion.  This suggested to Gabriel the demand
+for another journal.  When the waiter brought it to him, his eye rested
+upon a long paragraph, in which the name of George Cadoudal frequently
+occurred.  In fact, all the journals of the day were filled with
+speculations on the conspiracy and trial of that fiery martyr to an
+erring adaptation of a noble principle.  Gabriel knew that his father had
+had a principal share in the detection of the defeated enterprise; and
+his previous persuasions were confirmed.
+
+His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and at length he
+heard the first comer say distinctly, "If I were but sure that I had
+brought this fate upon George by introducing to him that accursed
+Dalibard; if my oath did but justify me, I would--" The concluding
+sentence was lost. A few moments after, the two men rose, and from the
+familiar words that passed between them and the master of the cafe, who
+approached, himself, to receive the reckoning, the shrewd boy perceived
+that the place was no unaccustomed haunt.  He crept nearer and nearer;
+and as the landlord shook hands with his customer, he heard distinctly
+the former address him by the name of "Guillot."  When the men withdrew,
+Gabriel followed them at a distance (taking care first to impress on his
+memory the name of the cafe, and the street in which it was placed) and,
+as he thought, unobserved; he was mistaken.  Suddenly, in one street more
+solitary than the rest, the man whom he was mainly bent on tracking
+turned round, advanced to Gabriel, who was on the other side of the
+street, and laid his hand upon him so abruptly that the boy was fairly
+taken by surprise.
+
+"Who bade you follow us?" said he, with so dark and fell an expression of
+countenance that even Gabriel's courage failed him.  "No evasion, no
+lies; speak out, and at once;" and the grasp tightened on the boy's
+throat.
+
+Gabriel's readiness of resource and presence of mind did not long forsake
+him.
+
+"Loose your hold, and I will tell you--you stifle me."  The man slightly
+relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said quickly "My mother perished on the
+guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I am for the Bourbons.  I thought I
+overheard words which showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan.
+I followed you; for I thought I was following friends."
+
+The man smiled as he fixed his steady eye upon the unflinching child.
+"My poor lad," he said gently, "I believe you,--pardon me; but follow us
+no more,--we are dangerous!"  He waved his hand, and strode away and
+rejoined his companion, and Gabriel reluctantly abandoned the pursuit and
+went homeward.  It was long before he reached his father's house, for he
+had strayed into a strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently to
+inquire the way.  At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to a
+small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a
+narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard.  His
+stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so
+absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a shade,
+intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the approach of
+the boy till he threw his arms round her neck, and then she started as in
+alarm.
+
+"You! only you," she said, with a constrained smile; "see, my nerves are
+not so strong as they were."
+
+"You are disturbed, belle-mere,--has he been vexing you?"
+
+"He--Dalibard?  No, indeed; we were only this morning discussing matters
+of business."
+
+"Business,--that means money."
+
+"Truly," said Lucretia, "money does make the staple of life's business.
+In spite of his new appointment, your father needs some sums in hand,--
+favours are to be bought, opportunities for speculation occur, and--"
+
+"And my father," interrupted Gabriel, "wishes your consent to raise the
+rest of your portion?"
+
+Lucretia looked surprised, but answered quietly: "He had my consent long
+since; but the trustees to the marriage-settlement--mere men of business,
+my uncle's bankers; for I had lost all claim on my kindred--refuse, or at
+least interpose such difficulties as amount to refusal."
+
+"But that reply came some days since," said Gabriel, musingly.
+
+"How did you know,--did your father tell you?"
+
+"Poor belle-mere!" said Gabriel, almost with pity; "can you live in this
+house and not watch all that passes,--every stranger, every message,
+every letter?  But what, then, does he wish with you?"
+
+"He has suggested my returning to England and seeing the trustees myself.
+His interest can obtain my passport."
+
+"And you have refused?"
+
+"I have not consented."
+
+"Consent!--hush!--your maid; Marie is not waiting without;" and Gabriel
+rose and looked forth.  "No, confound these doors! none close as they
+ought in this house.  Is it not a clause in your settlement that the half
+of your fortune now invested goes to the survivor?"
+
+"It is," replied Lucretia, struck and thrilled at the question.  "How,
+again, did you know this?"
+
+"I saw my father reading the copy.  If you die first, then, he has all.
+If he merely wanted the money, he would not send you away."
+
+There was a terrible pause.  Gabriel resumed: "I trust you, it may be,
+with my life; but I will speak out.  My father goes much to Bellanger's
+widow; she is rich and weak.  Come to England!  Yes, come; for he is
+about to dismiss me.  He fears that I shall be in the way, to warn you,
+perhaps, or to--to--  In short, both of us are in his way.  He gives you
+an escape.  Once in England, the war which is breaking out will prevent
+your return.  He will twist the laws of divorce to his favour; he will
+marry again!  What then?  He spares you what remains of your fortune; he
+spares your life.  Remain here,--cross his schemes, and-- No, no; come to
+England,--safer anywhere than here!"
+
+As he spoke, great changes had passed over Lucretia's countenance.  At
+first it was the flash of conviction, then the stunned shock of horror;
+now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and deadly
+light in her eyes,--the light of conscious courage and power and revenge.
+"Fool," she muttered, "with all his craft!  Fool, fool!  As if, in the
+war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer!  Man's only
+chance is to be mailed in honour."
+
+"But," said Gabriel, overhearing her, "but you do not remember what it
+is.  There is nothing you can see and guard against. It is not like an
+enemy face to face; it is death in the food, in the air, in the touch.
+You stretch out your arms in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die!
+Oh, do not fancy that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man now)
+if there were no means to resist,--there are none!  As well make head
+against the plague,--it is in the atmosphere.  Come to England, and
+return.  Live poorly, if you must, but live--but live!"
+
+"Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to him, or a
+disgraced and divorced wife,--disgraced by the low-born dependant on my
+kinsman's house,--and fawn perhaps upon my sister and her husband for
+bread!  Never!  I am at my post, and I will not fly."
+
+"Brave, brave!" said the boy, clapping his hands, and sincerely moved by
+a daring superior to his own; "I wish I could help you!"
+
+Lucretia's eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its looks.
+She drew him to her and kissed his brow.  "Boy, through life, whatever
+our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each other.  I may yet live to
+have wealth; if so, it is yours as a son's.  I may be iron to others,--
+never to you.  Enough of this; I must reflect!"  She passed her hands
+over her eyes a moment, and resumed: "You would help me in my self-
+defence; I think you can.  You have been more alert in your watch than I
+have.  You must have means I have not secured.  Your father guards well
+all his papers."
+
+"I have keys to every desk.  My foot passed the threshold of that room
+under the roof before yours.  But no; his powers can never be yours!  He
+has never confided to you half his secrets.  He has antidotes for every--
+every--"
+
+"Hist! what noise is that?  Only the shower on the casements.  No, no,
+child, that is not my object.  Cadoudal's conspiracy!  Your father has
+letters from Fouche which show how he has betrayed others who are
+stronger to avenge than a woman and a boy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I would have those letters.  Give me the keys.  But hold!  Gabriel,
+Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him.  This woman--wife to the dead man--his
+wife!  Horror!  Have you no proofs of what you imply?"
+
+"Proofs!" echoed Gabriel, in a tone of wonder; "I can but see and
+conjecture.  You are warned, watch and decide for yourself.  But again I
+say, come to England; I shall go!"
+
+Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel's half-reluctant hand,
+and passed into her husband's writing-room.  When she had entered, she
+locked the door.  She passed at once to a huge secretary, of which the
+key was small as a fairy's work.  She opened it with ease by one of the
+counterfeits.  No love-correspondence--the first object of her search,
+for she was woman--met her eye.  What need of letters, when interviews
+were so facile?  But she soon found a document that told all which love-
+letters could tell,--it was an account of the moneys and possessions of
+Madame Bellanger; and there were pencil notes on the margin: "Vautran
+will give four hundred thousand francs for the lands in Auvergne,--to be
+accepted.  Consult on the power of sale granted to a second husband.
+Query, if there is no chance of the heir-at-law disputing the moneys
+invested in Madame B.'s name,"--and such memoranda as a man notes down in
+the schedule of properties about to be his own.  In these inscriptions
+there was a hideous mockery of all love; like the blue lights of
+corruption, they showed the black vault of the heart.  The pale reader
+saw what her own attractions had been, and, fallen as she was, she smiled
+superior in her bitterness of scorn.  Arranged methodically with the
+precision of business, she found the letters she next looked for; one
+recognizing Dalibard's services in the detection of the conspiracy, and
+authorizing him to employ the police in the search of Pierre Guillot,
+sufficed for her purpose.  She withdrew, and secreted it.  She was about
+to lock up the secretary, when her eye fell on the title of a small
+manuscript volume in a corner; and as shet read, she pressed one hand
+convulsively to her heart, while twice with the other she grasped the
+volume, and twice withdrew the grasp.  The title ran harmlessly thus:
+"Philosophical and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature and Materials of
+the Poisons in Use between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries."
+Hurriedly, and at last as if doubtful of herself, she left the
+manuscript, closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel.
+
+"You have got the paper you seek?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then whatever you do, you must be quick; he will soon discover the
+loss."
+
+"I will be quick."
+
+"It is I whom he will suspect," said Gabriel, in alarm, as that thought
+struck him.  "No, for my sake do not take the letter till I am gone.  Do
+not fear in the mean time; he will do nothing against you while I am
+here."
+
+"I will replace the letter till then," said Lucretia, meekly.  "You have
+a right to my first thoughts."  So she went back, and Gabriel (suspicious
+perhaps) crept after her.
+
+As she replaced the document, he pointed to the manuscript which had
+tempted her.  "I have seen that before; how I longed for it!  If anything
+ever happens to him, I claim that as my legacy."
+
+Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other convulsively;
+Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she gained the next room, she
+tottered to a chair.  Her strong nerves gave way for the moment; she
+uttered no cry, but by the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she
+was senseless,--senseless for a minute or so; scarcely more.  But the
+return to consciousness with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance, and
+a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather the awaking from
+some frightful dream of violence and struggle than the slow, languid
+recovery from the faintness of a swoon.  Yes, henceforth, to sleep was to
+couch by a serpent,--to breathe was to listen for the avalanche!  Thou
+who didst trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely front the grim
+comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the Household Gods,
+now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what the hearth is without
+them!
+
+Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and solitary despair.
+An instinct of nature had hitherto checked him from actively aiding
+Lucretia in that struggle with his father which could but end in the
+destruction of one or the other.  He had contented himself with
+forewarnings, with hints, with indirect suggestions; but now all his
+sympathy was so strongly roused on her behalf that the last faint scruple
+of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood over which stood
+that lonely Titaness.  He drew near, and clasping her hand, said, in a
+quick and broken voice,--
+
+"Listen!  You know where to find proof of my fa--that is, of Dalibard's
+treason to the conspirators, you know the name of the man he dreads as an
+avenger, and you know that he waits but the proof to strike; but you do
+not know where to find that man, if his revenge is wanting for yourself.
+The police have not hunted him out: how can you?  Accident has made me
+acquainted with one of his haunts.  Give me a single promise, and I will
+put you at least upon that clew,--weak, perhaps, but as yet the sole one
+to be followed.  Promise me that, only in defence of your own life, not
+for mere jealousy, you will avail yourself of the knowledge, and you
+shall know all I do!"
+
+"Do you think," said Lucretia, in a calm, cold voice, "that it is for
+jealousy, which is love, that I would murder all hope, all peace?  For we
+have here"--and she smote her breast--"here, if not elsewhere, a heaven
+and a hell!  Son, I will not harm your father, except in self-defence.
+But tell me nothing that may make the son a party in the father's doom."
+
+"The father slew the mother," muttered Gabriel, between his clenched
+teeth; "and to me, you have wellnigh supplied her place.  Strike, if need
+be, in her name!  If you are driven to want the arm of Pierre Guillot,
+seek news of him at the Cafe Dufour, Rue S----, Boulevard du Temple.  Be
+calm now; I hear your husband's step."
+
+A few days more, and Gabriel is gone!  Wife and husband are alone with
+each other.  Lucretia has refused to depart.  Then that mute coma of
+horror, that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death; for the
+subtle, prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he  himself is
+suspected,--further he shuns from sifting!  Glance fastens on glance, and
+then hurries smilingly away.  From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board
+warns a spectre.  But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone;
+and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,--brain plotting
+against brain, heart loathing heart.  It is a duel of life and death
+between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar.  But it
+is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of
+chivalry.  No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on
+the surface of the wave,--the monsters in the hell of the abyss war
+invisibly below.  At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she
+feels the taint in her veins,--the slow victory is begun.  What mattered
+all her vigilance and caution?  Vainly glide from the fangs of the
+serpent,--his very breath suffices to destroy!  Pure seems the draught
+and wholesome the viand,--that master of the science of murder needs not
+the means of the bungler!  Then, keen and strong from the creeping
+lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of
+revenge.  Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to
+defy all detection, work but slowly to their end.
+
+One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by the angle of a
+wall.  The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at
+hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and
+save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of
+the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom.  The night was clouded and
+starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the
+gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not
+chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at
+her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro,
+to look through the window of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on one
+figure seated apart from the rest. At length her pulse beat more quickly,
+and the patient lips smiled sternly.  The figure had risen to depart.  A
+man came out and walked quickly up the street; the woman approached, and
+when the man was under the single lamp swung aloft, he felt his arm
+touched: the woman was at his side, and looking steadily into his face--
+
+"You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George Cadoudal.  Will
+you be his avenger?"
+
+The Chouan's first impulse had been to place his hand in his vest, and
+something shone bright in the lamp-light, clasped in those iron fingers.
+The voice and the manner reassured him, and he answered readily,--
+
+"I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge."
+
+"Read, then, and act," answered the woman, as she placed a paper in his
+hands.
+
+ At Laughton the babe is on the breast of the fair mother, and the father
+sits beside the bed; and mother and father dispute almost angrily whether
+mother or father those soft, rounded features of slumbering infancy
+resemble most. At the red house, near the market-town, there is a
+hospitable bustle.  William is home earlier than usual.  Within the last
+hour, Susan has been thrice into every room.  Husband and wife are now
+watching at the window.  The good Fieldens, with a coach full of
+children, are expected, every moment, on a week's visit at least.
+
+ In the cafe in the Boulevard du Temple sit Pierre Guillot, the Chouan,
+and another of the old band of brigands whom George Cadoudal had mustered
+in Paris.  There is an expression of content on Guillot's countenance,--
+it seems more open than usual, and there is a complacent smile on his
+lips.  He is whispering low to his friend in the intervals of eating,--an
+employment pursued with the hearty gusto of a hungry man.  But his friend
+does not seem to sympathize with the cheerful feelings of his comrade; he
+is pale, and there is terror on his face; and you may see that the
+journal in his hand trembles like a leaf.
+
+In the gardens of the Tuileries some score or so of gossips group
+together.
+
+"And no news of the murderer?" asked one.
+
+"No; but the man who had been friend to Robespierre must have made secret
+enemies enough."
+
+"Ce pauvre Dalibard!  He was not mixed up with the Terrorists,
+nevertheless."
+
+"Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps; a sly man was Olivier
+Dalibard!"
+
+"What's the matter?" said an employee, lounging up to the group.  "Are
+you talking of Olivier Dalibard?  It is but the other day he had Marsan's
+appointment.  He is now to have Pleyel's.  I heard it two days ago; a
+capital thing!  Peste! il ira loin.  We shall have him a senator soon."
+
+"Speak for yourself," quoth a ci-devant abbe, with a laugh; "I should be
+sorry to see him again soon, wherever he be."
+
+"Plait-il?  I don't understand you!"
+
+"Don't you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered, found stabbed,--in his
+own house, too!"
+
+"Ciel!  Pray tell me all you know.  His place, then, is vacant!"
+
+"Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to medicine, was
+still fond of chemical experiments.  He hired a room at the top of the
+house for such scientific amusements.  He was accustomed to spend part of
+his nights there.  They found him at morning bathed in his blood, with
+three ghastly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone.  He
+had struggled hard with the knife that butchered him."
+
+"In his own house!" said a lawyer.  "Some servant or spendthrift heir."
+
+"He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche a millions, and is
+now but a schoolboy at Lyons.  No; it seems that the window was left
+open, and that it communicates with the rooftops.  There the murderer had
+entered, and by that way escaped; for they found the leads of the gutter
+dabbled with blood.  The next house was uninhabited,--easy enough to get
+in there, and lie perdu till night."
+
+"Hum!" said the lawyer.  "But the assassin could only have learned
+Dalibard's habits from some one in the house.  Was the deceased married?"
+
+"Oh, yes,--to an Englishwoman."
+
+"She had lovers, perhaps?"
+
+"Pooh, lovers!  The happiest couple ever known; you should have seen them
+together!  I dined there last week."
+
+"It is strange," said the lawyer.
+
+"And he was getting on so well," muttered a hungry-looking man.
+
+"And his place is vacant!" repeated the employee, as he quitted the crowd
+abstractedly.
+
+In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia alone, and in her own
+usual morning-room.  The officer appointed to such tasks by the French
+law has performed his visit, and made  his notes, and expressed
+condolence with the widow, and promised justice and retribution, and
+placed his seal on the locks till the representatives of the heir-at-law
+shall arrive; and the heir-at-law is the very boy who had succeeded so
+unexpectedly to the wealth of Jean Bellanger the contractor!  But
+Lucretia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the rest. An
+open box is on the floor, into which her hand drops noiselessly a volume
+in manuscript.  On the forefinger of that hand is a ring, larger and more
+massive than those usually worn by women,--by Lucretia never worn before.
+Why should that ring have been selected with such care from the dead
+man's hoards?  Why so precious the dull opal in that cumbrous setting?
+From the hand the volume drops without sound into the box, as those whom
+the secrets of the volume instruct you to destroy may drop without noise
+into the grave.  The trace of some illness, recent and deep, nor
+conquered yet, has ploughed lines in that young countenance, and dimmed
+the light of those searching eyes.  Yet courage! the poison is arrested,
+the poisoner is no more.  Minds like thine, stern woman, are cased in
+coffers of steel, and the rust as yet has gnawed no deeper than the
+surface.  So over that face, stamped with bodily suffering, plays a calm
+smile of triumph.  The schemer has baffled the schemer!  Turn now to the
+right, pass by that narrow corridor: you are in the marriage-chamber; the
+windows are closed; tall tapers burn at the foot of the bed.  Now go back
+to that narrow corridor.  Disregarded, thrown aside, are a cloth and a
+besom: the cloth is wet still; but here and there the red stains are dry,
+and clotted as with bloody glue; and the hairs of the besom start up,
+torn and ragged, as if the bristles had a sense of some horror, as if
+things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds.  If you
+passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that
+homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the
+slatternly housework.  But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down
+those stairs to the left,--borne along those floors to that marriage-
+bed,--with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers
+passed with their burden, then straight that dead thing would take the
+awe of the dead being; it told its own tale of violence and murder; it
+had dabbled in the gore of the violated clay; it had become an evidence
+of the crime.  No wonder that its hairs bristled up, sharp and ragged, in
+the shadow of the wall.
+
+The first part of the tragedy ends; let fall the curtain.  When next it
+rises, years will have passed away, graves uncounted will have wrought
+fresh hollows in our merry sepulchre,--sweet earth!  Take a sand from the
+shore, take a drop from the ocean,--less than sand-grain and drop in
+man's planet one Death and one Crime!  On the map, trace all oceans, and
+search out every shore,--more than seas, more than lands, in God's
+balance shall weigh one Death and one Crime!
+
+
+
+
+
+PART THE SECOND.
+
+PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.
+
+The century has advanced.  The rush of the deluge has ebbed back; the old
+landmarks have reappeared; the dynasties Napoleon willed into life have
+crumbled to the dust; the plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn after
+autumn the harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire.  Through
+the immense ocean of universal change we look back on the single track
+which our frail boat has cut through the waste.  As a star shines
+impartially over the measureless expanse, though it seems to gild but one
+broken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the light
+spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battled
+and argosies gone down,--it falls narrow and confined along the single
+course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, and
+see the sparkles but reflected from the waves that it divides.
+
+On the terrace at Laughton but one step paces slowly.  The bride clings
+not now to the bridegroom's arm.  Though pale and worn, it is still the
+same gentle face; but the blush of woman's love has gone from it
+evermore.
+
+Charles Vernon (to call him still by the name in which he is best known
+to us) sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns.  He had lived longer than he
+himself had expected, than his physician had hoped,--lived, cheerful and
+happy, amidst quiet pursuits and innocent excitements.  Three sons had
+blessed his hearth, to mourn over his grave.  But the two elder were
+delicate and sickly.  They did not long survive him, and died within a
+few months of each other.  The third seemed formed of a different mould
+and constitution from his brethren.  To him descended the ancient
+heritage of Laughton, and he promised to enjoy it long.
+
+It is Vernon's widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; sad still,
+for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she misses yet the
+children in the grave.  From the date of Vernon's death, she wore
+mourning without and within; and the sorrows that came later broke more
+the bruised reed,--sad still, but resigned.  One son survives, and earth
+yet has the troubled hopes and the holy fears of affection.  Though that
+son be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working out
+his destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it seems.  When
+does the son's image not walk beside the mother?  Though she lives in
+seclusion, though the gay world tempts no more, the gay world is yet
+linked to her thoughts.  From the distance she hears its murmurs in
+music.  Her fancy still mingles with the crowd, and follows on, to her
+eye, outshining all the rest. Never vain in herself, she is vain now of
+another; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born seem trophies
+of renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived.
+
+In the old-fashioned market-town still the business goes on, still the
+doors of the bank open and close every moment on the great day of the
+week; but the names over the threshold are partially changed.  The junior
+partner is busy no more at the desk; not wholly forgotten, if his name
+still is spoken, it is not with thankfulness and praise.  A something
+rests on the name,--that something which dims and attaints; not proven,
+not certain, but suspected and dubious.  The head shakes, the voice
+whispers; and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at the verge
+of the town.
+
+In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused from his
+work.  Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, save that his hair
+is gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as of
+years, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer, blithe-
+voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers.  Those
+children, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose, and
+therefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world.  The
+young ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here and
+there, search food in their turn for their young.  But the blithe voice
+and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth misses
+the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to departure, the
+natural changes are gradual and prepared.  The absence most missed is
+that household life which presided, which kept things in order, and must
+be coaxed if a chair were displaced.  That providence in trifles, that
+clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now pleased, now
+complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour; that active life
+which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet, though its prose
+be the humblest, transferring self into others, with its right to be
+cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is clear,--it takes what
+it loves too anxiously to heart.  The door of the parlour is open, the
+garden-path still passes before the threshold; but no step now has full
+right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave thought on Greek texts;
+no small talk on details and wise sayings chimes in with the wrath of
+"Medea."  The Prudent Genius is gone from the household; and perhaps as
+the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden,
+he would have given with joy all that Athens produced, from Aeschylus to
+Plato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on torn
+jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.
+
+But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,
+the vicar's home is not utterly desolate.  See, along the same walk on
+which William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent,--see, what fairy
+advances?  Is it Susan returned to youth?  How like!  Yet look again, and
+how unlike!  The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear,
+limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair,--light, but
+not auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colour
+which too nearly approaches to red.  But how much more blooming and
+joyous than Susan's is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smiles
+forth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder, if
+slighter still, the wave of that undulating form!  She smiles, her lips
+move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent, even when
+alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent like a bird's.
+But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from
+the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that it
+springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music.  See, while she
+pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidst
+that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave and
+sustained,--the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes, though rarely,
+he is heard,--perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he sees
+from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race),--see, as she
+listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smile
+is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive, steals over the brow.  It is
+but the mystic sympathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade.
+In that heart lightly moved beats the fine sense of the poet.  It is the
+exquisite sensibility of the nerves that sends its blithe play to those
+spirits, and from the clearness of the atmosphere comes, warm and
+ethereal, the ray of that light.
+
+And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring's youth?
+Has Death taken from her the natural protectors?  Those forms which we
+saw so full of youth and youth's heart in that very spot, has the grave
+closed on them yet?  Yet!  How few attain to the age of the Psalmist!
+Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in those
+years, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old!  William
+Mainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his name had
+cankered into his heart.  Susan's life, always precarious, had struggled
+on, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will; she would
+not die, for who then could console him?  But at his death the power gave
+way.  She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and then, for
+the first time since William's death, she smiled: that smile remained on
+the lips of the corpse.  They had had many trials, that young couple whom
+we left so prosperous and happy.  Not till many years after their
+marriage had one sweet consoler been born to them.  In the season of
+poverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride on
+Mainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born in his arms.  By her
+will, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden
+and her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so the
+vicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan.  She was not
+unprovided for.  The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been long
+since gone, it is true,--lost in the calamity which had wrecked William
+Mainwaring's name and blighted his prospects; but Helen's grandfather,
+the landagent, had died some time subsequent to that event, and, indeed,
+just before William's death.  He had never forgiven his son the stain on
+his name,--never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day; but
+he left to Helen a sum of about 8,000 pounds; for she, at least, was
+innocent.  In Mr. Fielden's eyes, Helen was therefore an heiress.  And
+who amongst his small range of acquaintance was good enough for her?--not
+only so richly portioned, but so lovely,--accomplished, too; for her
+parents had of late years lived chiefly in France, and languages there
+are easily learned, and masters cheap.  Mr. Fielden knew but one, whom
+Providence had also consigned to his charge,--the supposed son of his old
+pupil Ardworth; but though a tender affection existed between the two
+young persons, it seemed too like that of brother and sister to afford
+much ground for Mr. Fielden's anxiety or hope.
+
+From his window the vicar observed the still attitude of the young orphan
+for a few moments; then he pushed aside his books, rose, and approached
+her.  At the sound of his tread she woke from her revery and bounded
+lightly towards him.
+
+"Ah, you would not see me before!" she said, in a voice in which there
+was the slightest possible foreign accent, which betrayed the country in
+which her childhood had been passed; "I peeped in twice at the window.  I
+wanted you so much to walk to the village.  But you will come now, will
+you not?" added the girl, coaxingly, as she looked up at him under the
+shade of her straw hat.
+
+"And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?"
+
+"Why, you know it is fair day, and you promised Bessie that you would buy
+her a fairing,--to say nothing of me."
+
+"Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the poor people
+from drinking.  A clergyman should mix with his parishioners in their
+holidays.  We must not associate our office only with grief and sickness
+and preaching.  We will go.  And what fairing are you to have?"
+
+"Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you!  I have formed grand
+notions of a fair.  I am sure it must be like the bazaars we read of last
+night in that charming 'Tour in the East.'"
+
+The vicar smiled, half benignly, half anxiously.  "My dear child, it is
+so like you to suppose a village fair must be an Eastern bazaar.  If you
+always thus judge of things by your fancy, how this sober world will
+deceive you, poor Helen!"
+
+"It is not my fault; ne me grondez pas, mechant," answered Helen, hanging
+her head.  "But come, sir, allow, at least, that if I let my romance, as
+you call it, run away with me now and then, I can still content myself
+with the reality.  What, you shake your head still?  Don't you remember
+the sparrow?"
+
+"Ha! ha! yes,--the sparrow that the pedlar sold you for a goldfinch; and
+you were so proud of your purchase, and wondered so much why you could
+not coax the goldfinch to sing, till at last the paint wore away, and it
+was only a poor little sparrow!"
+
+"Go on!  Confess: did I fret then?  Was I not as pleased with my dear
+sparrow as I should have been with the prettiest goldfinch that ever
+sang?  Does not the sparrow follow me about and nestle on my shoulder,
+dear little thing?  And I was right after all; for if I had not fancied
+it a goldfinch, I should not have bought it, perhaps.  But now I would
+not change it for a goldfinch,--no, not even for that nightingale I heard
+just now.  So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it is a double
+pleasure, first to fancy the bazaar, and then to be surprised at the
+fair."
+
+"You argue well," said the vicar, as they now entered the village; "I
+really think, in spite of all your turn for poetry and Goldsmith and
+Cowper, that you would take as kindly to mathematics as your cousin John
+Ardworth, poor lad!
+
+"Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churlish, I was going
+to say; but that word does him wrong, dear cousin, so kind and so rough!"
+
+"It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed,"
+said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most,--
+poverty and ambition."
+
+"Nay, do not sigh; it must be such a pleasure to feel, as he does, that
+one must triumph at last!"
+
+"Umph!  John must have nearly reached London by this time," said Mr.
+Fielden, "for he is a stout walker, and this is the third day since he
+left us.  Well, now that he is about fairly to be called to the Bar, I
+hope that his fever will cool, and he will settle calmly to work.  I have
+felt great pain for him during this last visit."
+
+"Pain!  But why?"
+
+"My dear, do you remember what I read to you both from Sir William Temple
+the night before John left us?"
+
+Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which showed a
+memory equally quick and retentive, replied, "Yes; was it not to this
+effect?  I am not sure of the exact words:  'To have something we have
+not, and be something we are not, is the root of all evil.'"
+
+"Well remembered, my darling!"
+
+"Ah, but," said Helen, archly, "I remember too what my cousin replied:
+'If Sir William Temple had practised his theory, he would not have been
+ambassador at the Hague, or--"
+
+"Pshaw! the boy's always ready enough with his answers," interrupted Mr.
+Fielden, rather petulantly.  "There's the fair, my dear,--more in your
+way, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy."
+
+And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted
+that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,--delighted with the
+swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt
+gingerbread kings and queens!  All minds genuinely poetical are
+peculiarly susceptible to movement,--that is, to the excitement of
+numbers.  If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a
+village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the
+movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the
+impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident
+object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and
+dejected.  Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order of
+minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are
+called fashionable pleasures.  Hence the same person most alive to a
+dance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's.  It was not
+because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in King
+Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in the
+others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the first
+is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and
+melancholy pretence.  Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths that
+gave her that innocent exhilaration,--it was not so; it was the
+unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her.  When the poetical nature
+quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses
+itself into the hearts and humours of others.  The two wings of that
+spirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy.  But poor little
+Helen had no idea that she had genius.  Whether chasing the butterfly or
+talking fond fancies to her birds, or whether with earnest, musing eyes
+watching the stars come forth, and the dark pine-trees gleam into silver;
+whether with airy daydreams and credulous wonder poring over the magic
+tales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether spellbound to awe by the solemn
+woes of Lear, or following the blind great bard into "the heaven of
+heavens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air,"--she obeyed but the
+honest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and would
+have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood that
+prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy by
+which Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the lively
+senses of genius.
+
+While Helen, leaning on the vicar's arm, thus surrendered herself to the
+innocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded to
+his parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with the
+youngest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality which
+the Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its tempting
+vortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across his
+waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat,
+said, "Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter."
+
+The vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distant
+children, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to persons
+of narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier who plied
+between the post-town and the village failed to excite in his breast that
+indignation for being an hour or more behind his time which would have
+animated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the day.  He took
+the letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a thrifty sigh as he
+glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him,--perhaps from some clergyman
+poorer than himself.  However, that was not the place to read letters, so
+he put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who watched his
+countenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly proposed to
+return home.  As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden remembered his
+letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles.  Helen stooped over the
+bank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on the stile.  As he
+again looked at the address, the handwriting, before unfamiliar, seemed
+to grow indistinctly on his recollection.  That bold, firm hand--thin and
+fine as woman's, but large and regular as man's--was too peculiar to be
+forgotten.  He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise and recognition,
+and hastily broke the seal.  The contents ran thus:--
+
+DEAR SIR,--So many years have passed since any communication has taken
+place between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem more
+strange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering.  I have recently returned
+to England after long residence abroad.  I perceive by my deceased
+sister's will that she has confided her only daughter to my guardianship,
+conjointly with yourself.  I am anxious to participate in that tender
+charge.  I am alone in the world,--an habitual sufferer; afflicted with a
+partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my limbs.  In such
+circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn to the only
+relative left me.  My journey to England has so exhausted my strength,
+and all movement is so painful, that I must request you to excuse me for
+not coming in person for my niece.  Your benevolence, however, will, I am
+sure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her society, and as soon as
+you can, contrive some suitable arrangement for her journey.  Begging you
+to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance of such a welcome as is
+due from me to my sister's child, and waiting with great anxiety your
+reply, I am, dear Sir,           Your very faithful servant,
+   LUCRETIA DALIBARD.
+
+P. S.  I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,
+but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded me
+the pleasure of seeing you once again.  I am anxious, in addition to such
+details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learn
+something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in whom I
+felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, left an
+infant, his supposed son, under your care.  So long absent from England,
+how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones tell us of
+the dead!
+
+While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and
+unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering
+flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and
+the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still over the
+bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new generation
+equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance with two
+persons connected with the progress of our tale.
+
+ The britzska stopped.  The servant, who had been gradually accumulating
+present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a rumble-
+tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to the
+ground and opened the carriage-door.
+
+"This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right."
+
+Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled to
+a spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly.  Light was the step
+of the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it chased from
+the road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear air,--
+favourites of Nature both, man and dog.  You had but to glance at
+Percival St. John to know at once that he was of the race that toils not;
+the assured step spoke confidence in the world's fair smile.  No care for
+the morrow dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom.
+
+About the middle height,--his slight figure, yet undeveloped, seemed not
+to have attained to its full growth,--the darkening down only just shaded
+a cheek somewhat sunburned, though naturally fair, round which locks
+black as jet played sportively in the fresh air; about him altogether
+there was the inexpressible charm of happy youth.  He scarcely looked
+sixteen, though above four years older; but for his firm though careless
+step, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might have almost
+taken him for a girl in men's clothes,--not from effeminacy of feature,
+but from the sparkling bloom of his youth, and from his unmistakable
+newness to the cares and sins of man.  A more delightful vision of
+ingenuous boyhood opening into life under happy auspices never inspired
+with pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious, half-
+pitying age.
+
+"And that," mused Percival St. John,--"that is London!  Oh for the Diable
+Boiteux to unroof me those distant houses, and show me the pleasures that
+lurk within!  Ah, what long letters I shall have to write home!  How the
+dear old captain will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother will
+put down her work and sigh!  Home!--um, I miss it already.  How strange
+and grim, after all, the huge city seems!"
+
+His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into shreds.
+The young man laughed, and throwing himself on the grass, played gayly
+with the dog.
+
+"Fie, Beau, sir, fie! gloves are indigestible.  Restrain your appetite,
+and we'll lunch together at the Clarendon."
+
+At this moment there arrived at the same patch of greensward a pedestrian
+some years older than Percival St. John,--a tall, muscular, raw-boned,
+dust-covered, travel-stained pedestrian; one of your pedestrians in good
+earnest,--no amateur in neat gambroon manufactured by Inkson, who leaves
+his carriage behind him and walks on with his fishing-rod by choice, but
+a sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and strapless trousers, a threadbare
+coat and a knapsack at his back.  Yet, withal, the young man had the air
+of a gentleman,--not gentleman as the word is understood in St. James's,
+the gentleman of the noble and idle class, but the gentleman as the title
+is accorded, by courtesy, to all to whom both education and the habit of
+mixing with educated persons gives a claim to the distinction and imparts
+an air of refinement.  The new-comer was strongly built, at once lean and
+large,--far more strongly built than Percival St. John, but without his
+look of cheerful and comely health.  His complexion had not the florid
+hues that should have accompanied that strength of body; it was pale,
+though not sickly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the face
+strongly marked.  By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish,
+footsore Scotch terrier.  Beau sprang from his master's caress, cocked
+his handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt his right
+fore-paw.  Percival cast over his left shoulder a careless glance at the
+intruder.  The last heeded neither Beau nor Percival.  He slipped his
+knapsack to the ground, and the Scotch terrier sank upon it, and curled
+himself up into a ball.  The wayfarer folded his arms tightly upon his
+breast, heaved a short, unquiet sigh, and cast over the giant city, from
+under deep-pent, lowering brows, a look so earnest, so searching, so full
+of inexpressible, dogged, determined power, that Percival, roused out of
+his gay indifference, rose and regarded him with curious interest.
+
+In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking
+terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a
+small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and
+lifting his hind leg--  O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for
+your breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the
+stain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back of
+the bilious terrier!  The space around was wide, Beau; you had all the
+world to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot on
+which reposed the wornout and unoffending?  O dainty Beau!  O dainty
+world!  Own the truth, both of ye.  There is something irresistibly
+provocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog!  The poor
+terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleam
+of just indignation from its dark eyes.  But it neither stirred nor
+growled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged his
+tail in triumph and returned to his master,--perhaps, in parliamentary
+phrase, to "report proceedings and ask leave to sit again."
+
+"I wonder," soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor fellow is
+thinking of?  Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I look
+again.  And I so rich!  I should like to-- Hem! let's see what he's made
+of."
+
+Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bashful, half-
+saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir."  The pedestrian started,
+and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that accosted him.
+Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks; but that glance
+might have abashed many a more experienced man.  The glance of a squire
+upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon a Regent Street
+tiger, could not have been more disdainful.
+
+"Tush!" said the pedestrian, rudely, and turned upon his heel.
+
+Percival  coloured, and--shall we  own it?--was  boy enough to double his
+fist. Little would he have been deterred by the brawn of those great arms
+and the girth of that Herculean chest, if he had been quite sure that it
+was a proper thing to resent pugilistically so discourteous a
+monosyllable.  The "tush!" stuck greatly in his throat.  But the man, now
+removed to the farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lost
+in thought that the short-lived anger died.
+
+"And after all, if I were as poor as he looks, I dare say I should be
+just as proud," muttered Percival.  "However, it's his own fault if he
+goes to London on foot, when I might at least have given him a lift.
+Come, Beau, sir."
+
+With his face still a little flushed, and his hat unconsciously cocked
+fiercely on one side, Percival sauntered back to his britzska.
+
+As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four posters
+down the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from the view before
+to the cloud behind, and muttered: "Ay, a fine prospect for the rich,--a
+noble field for the poor!"  The tone in which those words were said told
+volumes; there spoke the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition which
+make youth laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned.
+
+The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued his silent
+and intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in the west. When,
+then, he rose, his eye was bright, his mien erect, and a smile, playing
+round his firm, full lips, stole the moody sternness from his hard face.
+Throwing his knapsack once more on his back, John Ardworth went
+resolutely on to the great vortex.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE CORONATION.
+
+The 8th of September, 1831, was a holiday in London.  William the Fourth
+received the crown of his ancestors in that mighty church in which the
+most impressive monitors to human pomp are the monuments of the dead.
+The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold
+hands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and
+the great men of the Modern time were assembled in homage to the monarch
+to whom the prowess and the liberty of generations had bequeathed an
+empire in which the sun never sets.  In the Abbey--thinking little of the
+past, caring little for the future--the immense audience gazed eagerly on
+the pageant that occurs but once in that division of history,--the
+lifetime of a king.  The assemblage was brilliant and imposing.  The
+galleries sparkled with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrity
+for form and feature which, from the remotest times, has been awarded to
+the great English race.  Below, in their robes and coronets, were men who
+neither in the senate nor the field have shamed their fathers.
+Conspicuous amongst all for grandeur of mien and stature towered the
+brothers of the king; while, commanding yet more the universal gaze, were
+seen, here the eagle features of the old hero of Waterloo, and there the
+majestic brow of the haughty statesman who was leading the people (while
+the last of the Bourbons, whom Waterloo had restored to the Tuileries,
+had left the orb and purple to the kindred house so fatal to his name)
+through a stormy and perilous transition to a bloodless revolution and a
+new charter.
+
+Tier upon tier, in the division set apart for them, the members of the
+Lower House moved and murmured above the pageant; and the coronation of
+the new sovereign was connected in their minds with the great measure
+which, still undecided, made at that time a link between the People and
+the King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aristocracy,
+at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as its
+representative.  Without the space was one dense mass.  Houses, from
+balcony to balcony, window to window, were filled as some immense
+theatre.  Up, through the long thoroughfare to Whitehall, the eye saw
+that audience,--A PEOPLE; and the gaze was bounded at the spot where
+Charles the First had passed from the banquet-house to the scaffold.
+
+The ceremony was over, the procession had swept slowly by, the last huzza
+had died away; and after staring a while upon Orator Hunt, who had
+clambered up the iron palisade near Westminster Hall, to exhibit his
+goodly person in his court attire, the serried crowds, hurrying from the
+shower which then unseasonably descended, broke into large masses or
+lengthening columns.
+
+In that part of London which may be said to form a boundary between its
+old and its new world, by which, on the one hand, you pass to
+Westminster, or through that gorge of the Strand which leads along
+endless rows of shops that have grown up on the sites of the ancient
+halls of the Salisburys and the Exeters, the Buckinghams and
+Southamptons; to the heart of the City built around the primeval palace
+of the "Tower;" while, on the other hand, you pass into the new city of
+aristocracy and letters, of art and fashion, embracing the whilom chase
+of Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico,--by this
+ignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, at the bottom of the
+Haymarket, to the commencement of Charing Cross) stood a person whose
+discontented countenance was in singular contrast with the general gayety
+and animation of the day.  This person, O gentle reader, this sour,
+querulous, discontented person, was a king, too, in his own walk!  None
+might dispute it.  He feared no rebel; he was harassed by no reform; he
+ruled without ministers.  Tools he had; but when worn out, he replaced
+them without a pension or a sigh.  He lived by taxes, but they were
+voluntary; and his Civil List was supplied without demand for the redress
+of grievances.  This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was suspended
+from his empire for the day.  He was pushed aside; he was forgotten.  He
+was not distinct from the crowd.  Like Titus, he had lost a day,--his
+vocation was gone.  This person was the Sweeper of the Crossing!
+
+He was a character.  He was young, in the fairest prime of youth; but it
+was the face of an old man on young shoulders.  His hair was long, thin,
+and prematurely streaked with gray; his face was pale and deeply
+furrowed; his eyes were hollow, and their stare gleamed, cold and stolid,
+under his bent and shaggy brows.  The figure was at once fragile and
+ungainly, and the narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop.  It was a
+person, once noticed, that you would easily remember, and associate with
+some undefined, painful impression.  The manner was humble, but not meek;
+the voice was whining, but without pathos.  There was a meagre,
+passionless dulness about the aspect, though at times it quickened into a
+kind of avid acuteness.  No one knew by what human parentage this
+personage came into the world.  He had been reared by the charity of a
+stranger, crept through childhood and misery and rags mysteriously; and
+suddenly succeeded an old defunct negro in the profitable crossing
+whereat he is now standing.  All education was unknown to him, so was all
+love.  In those festive haunts at St. Giles's where he who would see
+"life in London" may often discover the boy who has held his horse in the
+morning dancing merrily with his chosen damsel at night, our sweeper's
+character was austere as Charles the Twelfth's.  And the poor creature
+had his good qualities.  He was sensitively alive to kindness,--little
+enough had been shown him to make the luxury the more prized from its
+rarity!  Though fond of money, he would part with it (we do not say
+cheerfully, but part with it still),--not to mere want, indeed (for he
+had been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse to
+pinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that prompts to charity),
+but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who had
+even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile.  He was honest, too,--
+honest to the backbone.  You might have trusted him with gold untold.
+Through the heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor books
+enlightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still natural rays
+from the great parent source of Deity struggled, fitful and dim.  He had
+no lawful name; none knew if sponsors had ever stood security for his
+sins at the sacred fount.  But he had christened himself by the strange,
+unchristian like name of "Beck."  There he was, then, seemingly without
+origin, parentage, or kindred tie,--a lonesome, squalid, bloodless thing,
+which the great monster, London, seemed to have spawned forth of its own
+self; one of its sickly, miserable, rickety offspring, whom it puts out
+at nurse to Penury, at school to Starvation, and, finally, and literally,
+gives them stones for bread, with the option of the gallows or the
+dunghill when the desperate offspring calls on the giant mother for
+return and home.
+
+And this creature did love something,--loved, perhaps, some fellow-being;
+of that hereafter, when we dive into the secrets of his privacy.
+Meanwhile, openly and frankly, he loved his crossing; he was proud of his
+crossing; he was grateful to his crossing.  God help thee, son of the
+street, why not?  He had in it a double affection,--that of serving and
+being served.  He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept him.  He smiled
+at times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the mire
+around; it bestowed on him a sense of property!  What a man may feel for
+a fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that isthmus of the kennel
+which was subject to his broom.  The coronation had made one rebellious
+spirit when it swept the sweeper from his crossing.
+
+He stood, then, half under the colonnade of the Opera House as the crowd
+now rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: and when the last carriage
+of a long string of vehicles had passed by, he muttered audibly,--
+
+"It'll take a deal of pains to make she right agin!"
+
+"So you be's 'ere to-day, Beck!" said a ragamuffin boy, who, pushing and
+scrambling through his betters, now halted, and wiped his forehead as he
+looked at the sweeper.  "Vy, ve are all out pleasuring.  Vy von't you
+come with ve?  Lots of fun!"
+
+The sweeper scowled at the urchin, and made no answer, but began
+sedulously to apply himself to the crossing.
+
+"Vy, there isn't another sweep in the streets, Beck.  His Majesty King
+Bill's currynation makes all on us so 'appy!"
+
+"It has made she unkimmon dirty!" returned Beck, pointing to the dingy
+crossing, scarce distinguished from the rest of the road.
+
+The ragamuffin laughed.
+
+"But ve be's goin' to 'ave Reform now, Beck.  The peopul's to have their
+rights and libties, hand the luds is to be put down, hand beefsteaks is
+to be a penny a pound, and--"
+
+"What good will that do to she?"
+
+"Vy, man, ve shall take turn about, and sum vun helse will sveep the
+crossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse's coach and four, p'r'aps,-
+-cos vy? ve shall hall be hequals!"
+
+"Hequals!  I tells you vot, if you keeps jawing there, atween me and she,
+I shall vop you, Joe,--cos vy?  I be's the biggest!" was the answer of
+Beck the sweeper to Joe the ragamuffin.
+
+The jovial Joe laughed aloud, snapped his fingers, threw up his ragged
+cap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scampering and whooping to
+join those festivities which Beck had so churlishly disdained.
+
+Time crept on; evening began to close in, and Beck was still at his
+crossing, when a young gentleman on horseback, who, after seeing the
+procession, had stolen away for a quiet ride in the suburbs, reined in
+close by the crossing, and looking round, as for some one to hold his
+horse, could discover no loiterer worthy that honour except the solitary
+Beck.  So young was the rider that he seemed still a boy.  On his smooth
+countenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its witching
+stamp.  A smile, at once gay and sweet, played on his lips.  There was a
+charm, even in a certain impatient petulance, in his quick eye and the
+slight contraction of his delicate brows.  Almaviva might well have been
+jealous of such a page.  He was the beau-ideal of Cherubino.  He held up
+his whip, with an arch sign, to the sweeper.  "Follow, my man," he said,
+in a tone the very command of which sounded gentle, so blithe was the
+movement of the lips, and so silvery the easy accent; and without
+waiting, he cantered carelessly down Pall Mall.
+
+The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain.  But he had
+gained but little that day, and the offer was too tempting to be
+rejected.  He heaved a sigh, shouldered his broom, and murmuring to
+himself that he would give her a last brush before he retired for the
+night, he put his long limbs into that swinging, shambling trot which
+characterizes the motion of those professional jackals who, having once
+caught sight of a groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear when
+he least expects it, the instant he dismounts.  The young rider lightly
+swung himself from his sleek, high-bred gray at the door of one of the
+clubs in St. James's Street, patted his horse's neck, chucked the rein to
+the sweeper, and sauntered into the house, whistling musically,--if not
+from want of thought, certainly from want of care.
+
+As he entered the club, two or three men, young indeed, but much older,
+to appearance at least, than himself, who were dining together at the
+same table, nodded to him their friendly greeting.
+
+"Ah, Perce," said one, "we have only just sat down; here is a seat for
+you."
+
+The boy blushed shyly as he accepted the proposal, and the young men made
+room for him at the table, with a smiling alacrity which showed that his
+shyness was no hindrance to his popularity.
+
+"Who," said an elderly dandy, dining apart with one of his
+contemporaries,--"who is that lad?  One ought not to admit such mere boys
+into the club."
+
+"He is the only surviving son of an old friend of ours," answered the
+other, dropping his eyeglass,--"young Percival St. John."
+
+"St. John!  What!  Vernon St. John's son?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He has not his father's good air.  These young fellows have a tone, a
+something,--a want of self-possession, eh?"
+
+"Very true.  The fact is, that Percival was meant for the navy, and even
+served as a mid for a year or so.  He was a younger son, then,--third, I
+think.  The two elder ones died, and Master Percival walked into the
+inheritance.  I don't think he is quite of age yet."
+
+"Of age! he does not look seventeen."
+
+"Oh, he is more than that; I remember him in his jacket at Laughton.  A
+fine property!"
+
+"Ay, I don't wonder those fellows are so civil to him.  This claret is
+corked!  Everything is so bad at this d----d club,--no wonder, when a
+troop of boys are let in!  Enough to spoil any club; don't know Larose
+from Lafitte!  Waiter!"
+
+Meanwhile, the talk round the table at which sat Percival St. John was
+animated, lively, and various,--the talk common with young idlers; of
+horses, and steeplechases, and opera-dancers, and reigning beauties, and
+good-humoured jests at each other.  In all this babble there was a
+freshness about Percival St. John's conversation which showed that, as
+yet, for him life had the zest of novelty.  He was more at home about
+horses and steeplechases than about opera-dancers and beauties and the
+small scandals of town.  Talk on these latter topics did not seem to
+interest him, on the contrary, almost to pain.  Shy and modest as a girl,
+he coloured or looked aside when his more hardened friends boasted of
+assignations and love-affairs.  Spirited, gay, and manly enough in all
+really manly points, the virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in his
+frank, charming manner; and often, out of respect for his delicacy, some
+hearty son of pleasure stopped short in his narrative, or lost the point
+of his anecdote.  And yet so lovable was Percival in his good humour, his
+naivete, his joyous entrance into innocent joy, that his companions were
+scarcely conscious of the gene and restraint he imposed on them.  Those
+merry, dark eyes and that flashing smile were conviviality of themselves.
+They brought with them a contagious cheerfulness which compensated for
+the want of corruption.
+
+Night had set in.  St. John's companions had departed to their several
+haunts, and Percival himself stood on the steps of the club, resolving
+that he would join the crowds that swept through the streets to gaze on
+the illuminations, when he perceived Beck (still at the rein of his
+dozing horse), whom he had quite forgotten till that moment.  Laughing at
+his own want of memory, Percival put some silver into Beck's hand,--more
+silver than Beck had ever before received for similar service,--and
+said,--
+
+"Well, my man, I suppose I can trust you to take my horse to his
+stables,--No.----, the Mews, behind Curzon Street.  Poor fellow, he wants
+his supper,--and you, too, I suppose!"
+
+Beck smiled a pale, hungry smile, and pulled his forelock politely.
+
+"I can take the 'oss werry safely, your 'onor."
+
+"Take him, then, and good evening; but don't get on, for your life."
+
+"Oh, no, sir; I never gets on,--'t aint in my ways."
+
+And Beck slowly led the horse through the crowd, till he vanished from
+Percival's eyes.
+
+Just then a man passing through the street paused as he saw the young
+gentleman on the steps of the club, and said gayly, "Ah! how do you do?
+Pretty faces in plenty out to-night.  Which way are you going?"
+
+"That is more than I can tell you, Mr. Varney.  I was just thinking which
+turn to take,--the right or the left."
+
+"Then let me be your guide;" and Varney offered his arm.
+
+Percival accepted the courtesy, and the two walked on towards Piccadilly.
+Many a kind glance from the milliners--and maid-servants whom the
+illuminations drew abroad, roved, somewhat impartially, towards St. John
+and his companion; but they dwelt longer on the last, for there at least
+they were sure of a return.  Varney, if not in his first youth, was still
+in the prime of life, and Time had dealt with him so leniently that he
+retained all the personal advantages of youth itself.  His complexion
+still was clear; and as only his upper lip, decorated with a slight
+silken and well-trimmed mustache, was unshaven, the contour of the face
+added to the juvenility of his appearance by the rounded symmetry it
+betrayed.  His hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged luxuriance.
+And the nervous figure, agile as a panther's, though broad-shouldered and
+deep-chested, denoted all the slightness and elasticity of twenty-five,
+combined with the muscular power of forty.  His dress was rather
+fantastic,--too showy for the good taste which is habitual to the English
+gentleman,--and there was a peculiarity in his gait, almost approaching
+to a strut, which bespoke a desire of effect, a consciousness of personal
+advantages, equally opposed to the mien and manner of Percival's usual
+companions; yet withal, even the most fastidious would have hesitated to
+apply to Gabriel Varney the epithet of "vulgar."  Many turned to look
+again, but it was not to remark the dress or the slight swagger; an
+expression of reckless, sinister power in the countenance, something of
+vigour and determination even in that very walk, foppish as it would have
+been in most, made you sink all observation of the mere externals, in a
+sentiment of curiosity towards the man himself.  He seemed a somebody,--
+not a somebody of conventional rank, but a somebody of personal
+individuality; an artist, perhaps a poet, or a soldier in some foreign
+service, but certainly a man whose name you would expect to have heard
+of.  Amongst the common mob of passengers he stood out in marked and
+distinct relief.
+
+"I feel at home in a crowd," said Varney.  "Do you understand me?"
+
+"I think so," answered Percival.  "If ever I could become distinguished,
+I, too, should feel at home in a crowd."
+
+"You have ambition, then; you mean to become distinguished?" asked
+Varney, with a sharp, searching look.
+
+There was a deeper and steadier flash than usual from Percival's dark
+eyes, and a manlier glow over his cheek, at Varney's question.  But he
+was slow in answering; and when he did so, his manner had all its wonted
+mixture of graceful bashfulness and gay candour.
+
+"Our rise does not always depend on ourselves.  We are not all born
+great, nor do we all have 'greatness thrust on us.'"
+
+"One can be what one likes, with your fortune," said Varney; and there
+was a growl of envy in his voice.
+
+"What, be a painter like you!  Ha, ha!"
+
+"Faith," said Varney, "at least, if you could paint at all, you would
+have what I have not,--praise and fame."
+
+Percival pressed kindly on Varney's arm.  "Courage! you will get justice
+some day."
+
+Varney shook his head.  "Bah! there is no such thing as justice; all are
+underrated or overrated.  Can you name one man who you think is estimated
+by the public at his precise value?  As for present popularity, it
+depends on two qualities, each singly, or both united,--cowardice and
+charlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of
+the moment, or a quack's spasmodic efforts at originality.  But why bore
+you on such matters?  There are things more attractive round us.  A good
+ankle that, eh?  Why, pardon me, it is strange, but you don't seem to
+care much for women?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I do," said Percival, with a sly demureness.  "I am very fond
+of--my mother!"
+
+"Very proper and filial," said Varney, laughing; "and does your love for
+the sex stop there?"
+
+"Well, and in truth I fancy so,--pretty nearly.  You know my grandmother
+is not alive!  But that is something really worth looking at!"  And
+Percival pointed, almost with a child's delight, at an illumination more
+brilliant than the rest.
+
+"I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars at
+Laughton hung with coloured lamps.  Ah, you must ask me there some day; I
+should so like to see the old place again."
+
+"You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's time?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Yet you knew him."
+
+"But slightly."
+
+"And you never saw my mother?"
+
+"No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she
+must be a very superior person,--rather proud, I suppose."
+
+"Proud, no,--that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very
+affable.  But yet--"
+
+"'But yet--'  You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps,
+walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir
+Miles's librarian,--Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney the
+adventurer!"
+
+"As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character and
+honour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able and
+accomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage.  But my mother
+would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the
+first in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist had
+lost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman.  In a word, she is
+most sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards."
+
+"Hem!" Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot, while
+he continued carelessly: "Impossible to walk the streets and keep one's
+boots out of the mire.  Well--and you agree with your mother?"
+
+"It would be strange if I did not.  When I was scarcely four years old,
+my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery at
+Laughton and say: 'Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked
+down on you.' And," added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, "my mother
+would put in her word,--'And those unstained women too, my Percival.'"
+
+There was something noble and touching in the boy's low accents as he
+said this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty and his frank,
+healthful innocence of character.
+
+The devil in Varney's lip sneered mockingly.
+
+"My young friend, you have never loved yet.  Do you think you ever
+shall?"
+
+"I have dreamed that I could love one day.  But I can wait."
+
+Varney was about to reply, when he was accosted abruptly by three men of
+that exaggerated style of dress and manner which is implied by the vulgar
+appellation of "Tigrish."  Each of the three men had a cigar in his
+mouth, each seemed flushed with wine.  One wore long brass spurs and
+immense mustaches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface of
+black satin cravat, across which meandered a Pactolus of gold chain; a
+third had his coat laced and braided a la Polonaise, and pinched and
+padded a la Russe, with trousers shaped to the calf of a sinewy leg, and
+a glass screwed into his right eye.
+
+"Ah, Gabriel! ah, Varney! ah, prince of good fellows, well met!  You sup
+with us to-night at little Celeste's; we were just going in search of
+you."
+
+"Who's your friend,--one of us?" whispered a second.  And the third
+screwed his arm tight and lovingly into Varney's.
+
+Gabriel, despite his habitual assurance, looked abashed foz a moment, and
+would have extricated himself from cordialities not at that moment
+welcome; but he saw that his friends were too far gone in their cups to
+be easily shaken off, and he felt relieved when Percival, after a
+dissatisfied glance at the three, said quietly: "I must detain you no
+longer; I shall soon look in at your studio;" and without waiting for an
+answer, slid off, and was lost among the crowd.
+
+Varney walked on with his new-found friends, unheeding for some moments
+their loose remarks and familiar banter.  At length he shook off his
+abstraction, and surrendering himself to the coarse humours of his
+companions, soon eclipsed them all by the gusto of his slang and the
+mocking profligacy of his sentiments; for here he no longer played a
+part, or suppressed his grosser instincts.  That uncurbed dominion of the
+senses, to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willing
+slave in the man.  Even the talents themselves that he displayed came
+from the cultivation of the sensual.  His eye, studying externals, made
+him a painter,--his ear, quick and practised, a musician.  His wild,
+prodigal fancy rioted on every excitement, and brought him in a vast
+harvest of experience in knowledge of the frailties and the vices on
+which it indulged its vagrant experiments.  Men who over-cultivate the
+art that connects itself with the senses, with little counterpoise from
+the reason and pure intellect, are apt to be dissipated and irregular in
+their lives.  This is frequently noticeable in the biographies of
+musicians, singers, and painters; less so in poets, because he who deals
+with words, not signs and tones, must perpetually compare his senses with
+the pure images of which the senses only see the appearances,--in a word,
+he must employ his intellect, and his self-education must be large and
+comprehensive.  But with most real genius, however fed merely by the
+senses,--most really great painters, singers, and musicians, however
+easily led astray into temptation,--the richness of the soil throws up
+abundant good qualities to countervail or redeem the evil; they are
+usually compassionate, generous, sympathizing.  That Varney had not such
+beauties of soul and temperament it is unnecessary to add,--principally,
+it is true, because of his nurture, education, parental example, the
+utter corruption in which his childhood and youth had passed; partly
+because he had no real genius,---it was a false apparition of the divine
+spirit, reflected from the exquisite perfection of his frame (which
+rendered all his senses so vigorous and acute) and his riotous fancy and
+his fitful energy, which was capable at times of great application, but
+not of definite purpose or earnest study.  All about him was flashy and
+hollow.  He had not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that had
+characterized his terrible father.  The graft of the opera-dancer was
+visible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits of method
+and order, without the patience, without the mathematical calculating
+brain of Dalibard, he played wantonly with the horrible and loathsome
+wickedness of which Olivier had made dark and solemn study.  Extravagant
+and lavish, he spent money as fast as he gained it; he threw away all
+chances of eminence and career.  In the midst of the direst plots of his
+villany or the most energetic pursuit of his art, the poorest excitement,
+the veriest bauble would draw him aside.  His heart was with Falri in the
+sty, his fancy with Aladdin in the palace.  To make a show was his
+darling object; he loved to create effect by his person, his talk, his
+dress, as well as by his talents.  Living from hand to mouth, crimes
+through which it is not our intention to follow him had at times made him
+rich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to-morrow.  What he called
+"luck," or "his star," had favoured him,--he was not hanged!--he lived;
+and as the greater part of his unscrupulous career had been conducted in
+foreign lands and under other names, in his own name and in his own
+country, though something scarcely to be defined, but equivocal and
+provocative of suspicion, made him displeasing to the prudent, and
+vaguely alarmed the experience of the sober, still, no positive
+accusation was attached to the general integrity of his character, and
+the mere dissipation of his habits was naturally little known out of his
+familiar circle.  Hence he had the most presumptuous confidence in
+himself,--a confidence native to his courage, and confirmed by his
+experience.  His conscience was so utterly obtuse that he might almost be
+said to present the phenomenon of a man without conscience at all.
+Unlike Conrad, he did not "know himself a villain;" all that he knew of
+himself was that he was a remarkably clever fellow, without prejudice or
+superstition.  That, with all his gifts, he had not succeeded better in
+life, he ascribed carelessly to the surpassing wisdom of his philosophy.
+He could have done better if he had enjoyed himself less; but was not
+enjoyment the be-all and end-all of this little life?  More often,
+indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he would lay the fault upon the
+world.  How great he could have been, if he had been rich and high-born!
+Oh, he was made to spend, not to save,--to command, not to fawn!  He was
+not formed to plod through the dull mediocrities of fortune; he must toss
+up for the All or the Nothing!  It was no control over himself that made
+Varney now turn his thoughts from certain grave designs on Percival St.
+John to the brutal debauchery of his  three companions,--rather, he then
+yielded most to his natural self.  And when the morning star rose over
+the night he passed with low profligates and venal nymphs; when over the
+fragments on the board and emptied bottles and drunken riot dawn gleamed
+and saw him in all the pride of his magnificent organization and the
+cynicism of his measured vice, fair, fresh, and blooming amidst those
+maudlin eyes and flushed cheeks and reeling figures, laughing hideously
+over the spectacle he had provoked, and kicking aside, with a devil's
+scorn, the prostrate form of the favoured partner whose head had rested
+on his bosom, as alone with a steady step, he passed the threshold and
+walked into the fresh, healthful air,--Gabriel Varney enjoyed the fell
+triumph of his hell-born vanity, and revelled in his sentiment of
+superiority and power.
+
+Meanwhile, on quitting Varney young Percival strolled on as the whim
+directed him.  Turning down the Haymarket, he gained the colonnade of the
+Opera House.  The crowd there was so dense that his footsteps were
+arrested, and he leaned against one of the columns in admiration of the
+various galaxies in view.  In front blazed the rival stars of the United
+Service Club and the Athenaeum; to the left, the quaint and peculiar
+device which lighted up Northumberland House; to the right, the anchors,
+cannons, and bombs which typified ingeniously the martial attributes of
+the Ordnance Office.
+
+At that moment there were three persons connected with this narrative
+within a few feet of each other, distinguished from the multitude by the
+feelings with which each regarded the scene, and felt the jostle of the
+crowd.  Percival St. John, in whom the harmless sense of pleasure was yet
+vivid and unsatiated, caught from the assemblage only that physical
+hilarity which heightened his own spirits.  If in a character as yet so
+undeveloped, to which the large passions and stern ends of life were as
+yet unknown, stirred some deeper and more musing thoughts and
+speculations, giving gravity to the habitual smile on his rosy lip, and
+steadying the play of his sparkling eyes, he would have been at a loss
+himself to explain the dim sentiment and the vague desire.
+
+Screened by another column from the pressure of the mob, with his arms
+folded on his breast, a man some few years older in point of time,--many
+years older in point of character,--gazed (with thoughts how turbulent,--
+with ambition how profound!) upon the dense and dark masses that covered
+space and street far as the eye could reach.  He, indeed, could not have
+said, with Varney, that he was "at home in a crowd."  For a crowd did not
+fill him with the sense of his own individual being and importance, but
+grappled him to its mighty breast with the thousand tissues of a common
+destiny.  Who shall explain and disentangle those high and restless and
+interwoven emotions with which intellectual ambition, honourable and
+ardent, gazes upon that solemn thing with which, in which, for which it
+lives and labours,--the Human Multitude?  To that abstracted, solitary
+man, the illumination, the festivity, the curiosity, the holiday, were
+nothing, or but as fleeting phantoms and vain seemings.  In his heart's
+eye he saw before him but the PEOPLE, the shadow of an everlasting
+audience,--audience at once and judge.
+
+And literally touching him as he stood, the ragged sweeper, who had
+returned in vain to devote a last care to his beloved charge, stood
+arrested with the rest, gazing joylessly on the blazing lamps, dead as
+the stones he heeded, to the young vivacity of the one man, the solemn
+visions of the other.  So, O London, amidst the universal holiday to
+monarch and to mob, in those three souls lived the three elements which,
+duly mingled and administered, make thy vice and thy virtue, thy glory
+and thy shame, thy labour and thy luxury; pervading the palace and the
+street, the hospital and the prison,--enjoyment, which is pleasure;
+energy, which is action; torpor, which is want!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
+
+Suddenly across the gaze of Percival St. John there flashed a face that
+woke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes the sleeper.  It was as
+a recognition of something seen dimly before,--a truth coming out from a
+dream.  It was not the mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it was)
+that arrested his eye and made his heart beat more quickly, it was rather
+that nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love at first
+sight,--a sort of impulse and instinct common to the dullest as the
+quickest, the hardest reason as the liveliest fancy.  Plain Cobbett,
+seeing before the cottage-door, at her homeliest of house-work, the girl
+of whom he said, "That girl should be my wife," and Dante, first thrilled
+by the vision of Beatrice,--are alike true types of a common experience.
+Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight; it streams on
+us abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash,--a destiny revealed to us
+face to face.
+
+Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circumstance, still
+less in the companionship in which this fair creature startled the virgin
+heart of that careless boy; she was leaning on the arm of a stout, rosy-
+faced matron in a puce-coloured gown, who was flanked on the other side
+by a very small, very spare man, with a very wee face, the lower part of
+which was enveloped in an immense belcher.  Besides these two
+incumbrances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an umbrella,
+a basket, and a pair of pattens.
+
+In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye conveyed to
+his heart, Percival's ear was displeasingly jarred by the loud, bluff,
+hearty voice of the girl's female companion--
+
+"Gracious me! if that is not John Ardworth.  Who'd have thought it?  Why,
+John,--I say, John!" and lifting her umbrella horizontally, she poked
+aside two city clerks in front of her, wheeled round the little man on
+her left, upon whom the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation of
+"feller," and driving him, as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge at
+hand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while, following
+his involuntary progress, she looked defiance on the malcontents, she
+succeeded in clearing her way to the spot where stood the young man she
+had discovered.  The ambitious dreamer, for it was he, thus detected and
+disturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the stout lady, touching
+him with the umbrella, said,--
+
+"Well, I declare if this is not too bad!  You sent word that you should
+not be able to come out with us to see the 'luminations, and here you are
+as large as life!"
+
+"I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-"
+
+"Oh, stuff!" interrupted the stout woman, with a significant, good-
+humoured shake of her head; "I know what's what.  Tell the truth, and
+shame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet.  You are a wild
+fellow, John Ardworth, you are!  You like looking after the pretty faces,
+you do, you do--ha, ha, ha! very natural!  So did you once,--did not you,
+Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh?  Men must be men,--they always are men, and
+it's my belief that men they always will be!"
+
+With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr. Mivers,
+who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin from the
+folds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a small
+voice, "Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you have,
+Mrs. M.!"
+
+And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voice
+died into a small sigh.
+
+The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her
+address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile,
+observed encouragingly,--
+
+"Yes, there's nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you will
+find some day.  Howsomever, your time's not come for the altar, so
+suppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us."
+
+"Do," said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice.
+
+Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen's, and an evident
+pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines.  "I cannot resist you," he began,
+and then he paused and frowned.  "Pish!" he added, "I was talking folly;
+but what head would not you turn?  Resist you I must, for I am on my way
+now to my drudgery.  Ask me anything some years hence, when I have time
+to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, "are you coming, or are you not?
+Don't stand there shilly-shally."
+
+"Mrs. Mivers," returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, "I am sure
+you would be very angry with your husband's excellent shopmen if that was
+the way they spoke to your customers.  If some unhappy dropper-in,--some
+lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,--was suddenly dazzled, as I
+am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted,--a splendid lace
+veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies desiderate,--
+and while she was balancing between prudence and temptation, your foreman
+exclaimed: `Don't stand shilly-shally'--come, I put it to you."
+
+"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mivers.
+
+"Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake
+of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless," added Ardworth,
+irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,--"unless, indeed, you are not
+sufficiently protected, and--"
+
+"Purtected!" exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of astonishment,
+and agitating the formidable umbrella; "as if I was not enough, with the
+help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a dozen such.
+Purtected, indeed!"
+
+"John is right, Mrs. M.,--business is business," said Mr. Mivers.  "Let
+us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us, and
+sniggering."
+
+"Sniggering!" exclaimed the gentle helpmate.  "I should like to see those
+who presume for to snigger;" and as she spoke, she threw a look of
+defiance around her.  Then, having thus satisfied her resentment, she
+prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master.
+Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and
+taking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut
+her way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons,
+and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed by
+a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream,
+accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation which
+gradually died in the distance.
+
+Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; and
+when it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turned
+away, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his path
+through the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which he
+was responsibly engaged.
+
+But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that took place so
+near him,--Percival, happy child of idleness and whim,--had no motive of
+labour and occupation to stay the free impulse of his heart, and his
+heart drew him on, with magnetic attraction, in the track of the first
+being that had ever touched the sweet instincts of youth.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn--though perhaps the lesson
+little availed her--that to get smoothly through this world it is
+necessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certain
+point, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people's
+ribs and treading mercilessly upon people's toes, yet the endurance of
+ribs and toes has its appointed limits.
+
+Helen, half terrified, also half amused by her companion's robust
+resolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers's general courage and success
+that confidence which the weak repose in the strong; and though whenever
+she turned her eyes from the illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers to
+be more gentle, yet, seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul's to
+St. James's, she had no distinct apprehension of any practically ill
+results from the energies she was unable to mitigate.  But now, having
+just gained the end of St. James's Street, Mrs. Mivers at last found her
+match.  The crowd here halted, thick and serried, to gaze in peace upon
+the brilliant vista which the shops and clubs of that street presented.
+Coaches and carriages had paused in their line, and immediately before
+Mrs. Mivers stood three very thin, small women, whose dress bespoke them
+to be of the humblest class.
+
+"Make way, there; make way, my good women, make way!" cried Mrs. Mivers,
+equally disdainful of the size and the rank of the obstructing parties.
+
+"Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you old
+busybody?" said one of the dames, turning round, and presenting a very
+formidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. Mivers.
+
+Without deigning a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual tactics.
+Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine obstructives;
+and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the assailant,
+husband and umbrella instantly vanished.  The three small furies had
+pounced upon both.  They were torn from their natural owner; they were
+hurried away; the stream behind, long fretted at the path so abruptly
+made amidst it, closed in, joyous, with a thousand waves.  Mrs. Mivers
+and Helen were borne forward in one way, the umbrella and the husband in
+the other; in the distance a small voice was heard: "Don't you! don't!
+Be quiet!  Mrs.--Mrs. M.!  Oh, oh, Mrs. M.!"  At that last repetition of
+the beloved and familiar initial, uttered in a tone of almost superhuman
+anguish, the conjugal heart of Mrs. Mivers was afflicted beyond control.
+
+"Wait here a moment, my dear; I'll just give it them, that's all!" And in
+another moment Mrs. Mivers was heard bustling, scolding, till all trace
+of her whereabout was gone from the eyes of Helen.  Thus left alone, in
+exceeding shame and dismay, the poor girl cast a glance around.  The
+glance was caught by two young men, whose station, in these days when
+dress is an equivocal designator of rank, could not be guessed by their
+exterior.  They might be dandies from the west,--they might be clerks
+from the east.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed one, "that's a sweet pretty girl!" and, by a sudden
+movement of the crowd, they both found themselves close to Helen.
+
+"Are you alone, my dear?" said a voice rudely familiar.  Helen made no
+reply; the tone of the voice frightened her.  A gap in the mob showed the
+space towards Cleveland Row, which, leading to no illuminations, was
+vacant and solitary.  She instantly made towards this spot; the two men
+followed her, the bolder and elder one occasionally trying to catch hold
+of her arm.  At last, as she passed the last house to the left, a house
+then owned by one who, at once far-sighted and impetuous, affable and
+haughty, characterized alike by solid virtues and brilliant faults,
+would, but for hollow friends, have triumphed over countless foes, and
+enjoyed at last that brief day of stormy power for which statesmen resign
+the health of manhood and the hope of age,--as she passed that memorable
+mansion, she suddenly perceived that the space before her had no
+thoroughfare; and, while she paused in dismay, her pursuers blockaded her
+escape.
+
+One of them now fairly seized her hand.  "Nay, pretty one, why so cruel?
+But one kiss,--only one!" He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waist
+while he spoke.  Helen eluded him, and darted forward, to find her way
+stopped by her persecutor's companion, when, to her astonishment, a third
+person gently pushed aside the form that impeded her path, approached,
+and looking mute defiance at the unchivalric molesters, offered her his
+arm.  Helen gave but one timid, hurrying glance to her unexpected
+protector; something in his face, his air, his youth, appealed at once to
+her confidence.  Mechanically, and scarce knowing what she did, she laid
+her trembling hand on the arm held out to her.
+
+The two Lotharios looked foolish.  One pulled up his shirt-collar, and
+the other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel.  Boy as Percival
+seemed, and little more than boy as he was, there was a dangerous fire in
+his eye, and an expression of spirit and ready courage in his whole
+countenance, which, if it did not awe his tall rivals, made them at least
+unwilling to have a scene and provoke the interference of a policeman;
+one of whom was now seen walking slowly up to the spot.  They therefore
+preserved a discomfited silence; and Percival St. John, with his heart
+going ten knots a beat, sailed triumphantly off with his prize.
+
+Scarcely knowing whither he went, certainly forgetful of Mr. Mivers, in
+his anxiety to escape at least from the crowd, Percival walked on till he
+found himself with his fair charge under the trees of St. James's Park.
+
+Then Helen, recovering herself, paused, and said, alarmed: "But this is
+not my way; I must go back to the street!"
+
+"How foolish I am!  That is true," said Percival, looking confused.  "I--
+I felt so happy to be with you, feel your hand on my arm, and think that
+we were all by ourselves, that--that---But you have dropped your
+flowers!"
+
+And as a bouquet Helen wore, dislodged somehow or other, fell to the
+ground, both stooped to pick it up, and their hands met.  At that touch,
+Percival felt a strange tremble, which perhaps communicated itself (for
+such things are contagious) to his fair companion.  Percival had got the
+nosegay, and seemed willing to detain it; for he bent his face
+lingeringly over the flowers.  At length he turned his bright, ingenuous
+eyes to Helen, and singling one rose from the rest, said beseechingly:
+"May I keep this?  See, it is not so fresh as the others."
+
+"I am sure, sir," said Helen, colouring, and looking down, "I owe you so
+much that I should be glad if a poor flower could repay it."
+
+"A poor flower!  You don't know what a prize this is to me!"  Percival
+placed the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two moved back slowly,
+as if reluctant both, through the old palace-court into the street.
+
+"Is that lady related to you?" asked Percival, looking another way, and
+dreading the reply,--"not your mother, surely!"
+
+"Oh, no!  I have no mother!"
+
+"Forgive me!" said Percival; for the tone of Helen's voice told him that
+he had touched the spring of a household sorrow.  "And," he added, with a
+jealousy that he could scarcely restrain from making itself evident in
+his accent, "that gentleman who spoke to you under the Colonnade,--I have
+seen him before, but where I cannot remember.  In fact, you have put
+everything but yourself out of my head.  Is he related to you?"
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"Cousin!" repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again there was
+silence.
+
+"I don't know how it is," said Percival at last, and very gravely, as if
+much perplexed by some abstruse thought, "but I feel as if I had known
+you all my life.  I never felt this for any one before."
+
+There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy's serious,
+wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself,
+broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen's charming lips.
+Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time.
+
+Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the smile, and
+said, drawing up his head, and shaking back his jetty curls: "I dare say
+you are laughing at me as a mere boy; but I am older than I look.  I am
+sure I am much older than you are.  Let me see, you are seventeen, I
+suppose?"
+
+Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful assent.
+
+"And I am not far from twenty-one.  Ah, you may well look surprised, but
+so it is.  An hour ago I felt a mere boy; now I shall never feel a boy
+again!"
+
+Once more there was a long pause, and before it was broken, they had
+gained the very spot in which Helen had lost her friend.
+
+"Why, bless us and save us!" exclaimed a voice "loud as a trumpet," but
+not "with a silver sound," "there you are, after all;" and Mrs. Mivers
+(husband and umbrella both regained) planted herself full before them.
+
+"Oh, a pretty fright I have been in!  And now to see you coming along as
+cool as if nothing had happened; as if the humbrella had not lost its
+hivory 'andle,--it's quite purvoking.  Dear, dear, what we have gone
+through!  And who is this young gentleman, pray?"
+
+Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. Mivers did not
+seem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor fellow, had a right to
+expect.  She stared him full in the face, and shook her head suspiciously
+when she saw him a little confused by the survey.  Then, tucking Helen
+tightly under her arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket, merely
+saying to Percival,--
+
+"Much obligated, and good-night.  I have a long journey to take to set
+down this here young lady; and the best thing we can all do is to get
+home as fast as we can, and have a refreshing cup of tea--that's my mind,
+sir.  Excuse me!"
+
+Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his Helen as
+she was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at seeing her look back
+with (as he thought) a touch of regret in her parting smile.  Then
+suddenly it flashed across him how sadly he had wasted his time.  Novice
+that he was, he had not even learned the name and address of his new
+acquaintance.  At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but only
+reached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her placed in a
+coach, and to catch a full view of the luxuriant proportions of Mrs.
+Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle.
+
+As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itself
+into motion, Percival's eye fell on the sweeper, who was still leaning on
+his broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted generosity
+that had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and smiled drowsily
+on his young customer.  Love sharpens the wit and animates the timid; a
+thought worthy of the most experienced inspired Percival St. John; he
+hurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his patchwork coat, and said
+breathlessly,--
+
+"You see that coach turning into the square?  Follow it,--find out where
+it sets down.  There's a sovereign for you; another if you succeed.  Call
+and tell me your success.  Number ---- Curzon Street!  Off, like a shot!"
+
+The sweeper nodded and grinned; it was possibly not his first commission
+of a similar kind.  He darted down the street; and Percival, following
+him with equal speed, had the satisfaction to see him, as the coach
+traversed St. James's Square, comfortably seated on the footboard.
+
+Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing as to the
+motives or purpose of his employer.  Honest love or selfish vice, it was
+the same to him.  He saw only the one sovereign which, with astounded
+eyes, he still gazed at on his palm, and the vision of the sovereign that
+was yet to come.
+
+    "Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves
+     Cura; nee turmas equitum relinquit."
+
+It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether on the track
+of innocence or at the command of guile.
+
+At half-past ten o'clock Percival St. John was seated in his room, and
+the sweeper stood at the threshold.  Wealth and penury seemed brought
+into visible contact in the persons of the visitor and the host. The
+dwelling is held by some to give an index to the character of the owner;
+if so, Percival's apartments differed much from those generally favoured
+by young men of rank and fortune.  On the one hand, it had none of that
+affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or the
+more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval
+curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious
+bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which
+individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by
+engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if the
+Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of
+figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, "Le Soir," or "La
+Reveillee," "L'Espoir," or "L'Abandon."  But the rooms had a physiognomy
+of their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity.  The
+chintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up the
+niches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces,--well
+chosen, well placed.
+
+There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certain
+inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemed
+actually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of a
+plainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on the
+wall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner.  These gave a
+redeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of a
+boy,--half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervaded
+one room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the
+other.  Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had never
+been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine.  He stood at the
+door for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled.  But his
+natural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him the
+same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first
+surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer.  St. John rose eagerly
+from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops of
+Chesterfield Gardens,--
+
+"Well, well?" said Percival.
+
+"Hold Brompton," said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness of
+perception worthy a Spartan.
+
+"Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural in
+the world.
+
+"In a big 'ous by hisself," continued Beck, "with a 'igh vall in front."
+
+"You would know it again?"
+
+"In course; he's so wery peculiar."
+
+"He,--who?"
+
+"Vy, the 'ous.  The young lady got out, and the hold folks driv back.  I
+did not go arter them!" and Beck looked sly.
+
+"So!  I must find out the name."
+
+"I axed at the public," said Beck, proud of his diplomacy.  "They keeps a
+sarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals.  The young lady's mabe a
+foriner."
+
+"A foreigner!  Then she lives there with her mother?"
+
+"So they s'pose at the public."
+
+"And the name?"
+
+Beck shook his head.  "'T is a French 'un, your honour; but the sarvant's
+is Martha."
+
+"You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, tomorrow, and show me
+the house."
+
+"Vy, I's in bizness all day, please your honour."
+
+"In business?"'
+
+"I's the place of the crossing," said Beck, with much dignity; "but arter
+eight I goes vere I likes."
+
+"To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turnpike."
+
+Beck pulled his forelock assentingly.
+
+"There's the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow; much good may it
+do you.  Perhaps you have some father or mother whose heart it will
+glad."
+
+"I never had no such thing," replied Beck, turning the coin in his hand.
+
+"Well, don't spend it in drink."
+
+"I never drinks nothing but svipes."
+
+"Then," said Percival, laughingly, "what, my good friend, will you ever
+do with your money?"
+
+Beck put his finger to his nose, sunk his voice into a whisper, and
+replied solemnly: "I 'as a mattris."
+
+"A mistress," said Percival.  "Oh, a sweetheart.  Well, but if she's a
+good girl, and loves you, she'll not let you spend your money on her."
+
+"I haint such a ninny as that," said Beck, with majestic contempt.  "I
+'spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens.  I 'as a mattris."
+
+"A mattress! a mattress!  Well, what has that to do with the money?"
+
+"Vy, I lines it."
+
+Percival looked puzzled.  "Oh," said he, after a thoughtful pause, and in
+a tone of considerable compassion, "I understand: you sew your money in
+your mattress.  My poor, poor lad, you can do better than that!  There
+are the savings banks."
+
+Beck looked frightened.  "I 'opes your honour von't tell no vun.  I 'opes
+no vun von't go for to put my tin vere I shall know nothing vatsomever
+about it.  Now, I knows vere it is, and I lays on it."
+
+"Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?"
+
+"No.  It's hodd," said Beck, musingly, "but the more I lines it, the
+vorse I sleeps."
+
+Percival laughed, but there was melancholy in his laughter; something in
+the forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser went to the core of his
+open, generous heart.
+
+"Do you ever read your Bible," said he, after a pause, "or even the
+newspaper?"
+
+"I does not read nothing; cos vy?  I haint been made a scholard, like
+swell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery."
+
+"You go to church on a Sunday?"
+
+"Yes; I 'as a weekly hingagement at the New Road."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"To see arter the gig of a gemman vot comes from 'Igate."
+
+Percival lifted his brilliant eyes, and they were moistened with a
+heavenly dew, on the dull face of his fellow-creature.  Beck made a
+scrape, looked round, shambled back to the door, and ran home, through
+the lamp-lit streets of the great mart of the Christian universe, to sew
+the gold in his mattress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN.
+
+Percival St. John had been brought up at home under the eye of his mother
+and the care of an excellent man who had been tutor to himself and his
+brothers.  The tutor was not much of a classical scholar, for in great
+measure he had educated himself; and he who does so, usually lacks the
+polish and brilliancy of one whose footsteps have been led early to the
+Temple of the Muses.  In fact, Captain Greville was a gallant soldier,
+with whom Vernon St. John had been acquainted in his own brief military
+career, and whom circumstances had so reduced in life as to compel him to
+sell his commission and live as he could.  He had always been known in
+his regiment as a reading man, and his authority looked up to in all the
+disputes as to history and dates, and literary anecdotes, which might
+occur at the mess-table.  Vernon considered him the most learned man of
+his acquaintance; and when, accidentally meeting him in London, he
+learned his fallen fortunes, he congratulated himself on a very brilliant
+idea when he suggested that Captain Greville should assist him in the
+education of his boys and the management of his estate.  At first, all
+that Greville modestly undertook, with respect to the former, and,
+indeed, was expected to do, was to prepare the young gentlemen for Eton,
+to which Vernon, with the natural predilection of an Eton man, destined
+his sons.  But the sickly constitutions of the two elder justified Lady
+Mary in her opposition to a public school; and Percival conceived early
+so strong an affection for a sailor's life that the father's intentions
+were frustrated.  The two elder continued their education at home, and
+Percival, at an earlier age than usual, went to sea.  The last was
+fortunate enough to have for his captain one of that new race of naval
+officers who, well educated and accomplished, form a notable contrast to
+the old heroes of Smollett.  Percival, however, had not been long in the
+service before the deaths of his two elder brothers, preceded by that of
+his father, made him the head of his ancient house, and the sole prop of
+his mother's earthly hopes.  He conquered with a generous effort the
+passion for his noble profession, which service had but confirmed, and
+returned home with his fresh, childlike nature uncorrupted, his
+constitution strengthened, his lively and impressionable mind braced by
+the experience of danger and the habits of duty, and quietly resumed his
+reading under Captain Greville, who moved from the Hall to a small house
+in the village.
+
+Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was less adapted
+prematurely to quicken his intellect and excite his imagination than to
+warm his heart and elevate, while it chastened, his moral qualities; for
+in Lady Mary there was, amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high cast
+of character and thought.  She was not what is commonly called clever,
+and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that of most
+women of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast theatre of London.
+But she became superior by a certain single-heartedness which made truth
+so habitual to her that the light in which she lived rendered all objects
+around her clear.  One who is always true in the great duties of life is
+nearly always wise.  And Vernon, when he had fairly buried his faults,
+had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they had led him.
+Gradually more and more wedded to his home, he dropped his old
+companions.  He set grave guard on his talk (his habits now required no
+guard), lest any of the ancient levity should taint the ears of his
+children.  Nothing is more common in parents than their desire that their
+children should escape their faults.  We scarcely know ourselves till we
+have children; and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly into
+failings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the young.
+
+The inborn gentleman, with the native courage and spirit and horror of
+trick and falsehood which belong to that chivalrous abstraction, survived
+almost alone in Vernon St. John; and his boys sprang up in the atmosphere
+of generous sentiments and transparent truth.  The tutor was in harmony
+with the parents,--a soldier every inch of him; not a mere
+disciplinarian, yet with a profound sense of duty, and a knowledge that
+duty is to be found in attention to details.  In inculcating the habit of
+subordination, so graceful to the young, he knew how to make himself
+beloved, and what is harder still, to be understood.  The soul of this
+poor soldier was white and unstained, as the arms of a maiden knight; it
+was full of suppressed but lofty enthusiasm.  He had been ill used,
+whether by Fate or the Horse Guards; his career had been a failure; but
+he was as loyal as if his hand held the field-marshal's truncheon, and
+the garter bound his knee.  He was above all querulous discontent.  From
+him, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spirit of
+honour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiar
+cleanliness of thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs to
+the ideal of youthful chivalry.  In mere booklearning, Percival, as may
+be supposed, was not very extensively read; but his mind, if not largely
+stored, had a certain unity of culture, which gave it stability and
+individualized its operations.  Travels, voyages, narratives of heroic
+adventure, biographies of great men, had made the favourite pasture of
+his enthusiasm.  To this was added the more stirring, and, perhaps, the
+more genuine order of poets who make you feel and glow, rather than doubt
+and ponder.  He knew at least enough of Greek to enjoy old Homer; and if
+he could have come but ill through a college examination into Aeschylus
+and Sophocles, he had dwelt with fresh delight on the rushing storm of
+spears in the "Seven before Thebes," and wept over the heroic calamities
+of Antigone.  In science, he was no adept; but his clear good sense and
+quick appreciation of positive truths had led him easily through the
+elementary mathematics, and his somewhat martial spirit had made him
+delight in the old captain's lectures on military tactics.  Had he
+remained in the navy, Percival St. John would doubtless have been
+distinguished.  His talents fitted him for straightforward, manly action;
+and he had a generous desire of distinction, vague, perhaps, the moment
+he was taken from his profession, and curbed by his diffidence in himself
+and his sense of deficiencies in the ordinary routine of purely classical
+education.  Still, he had in him all the elements of a true man,--a man
+to go through life with a firm step and a clear conscience and a gallant
+hope.  Such a man may not win fame,--that is an accident; but he must
+occupy no despicable place in the movement of the world.
+
+It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford; but for some reason
+or other that design was abandoned.  Perhaps Lady Mary, over cautious, as
+mothers left alone sometimes are, feared the contagion to which a young
+man of brilliant expectations and no studious turn is necessarily exposed
+in all places of miscellaneous resort.  So Percival was sent abroad for
+two years, under the guardianship of Captain Greville.  On his return, at
+the age of nineteen, the great world lay before him, and he longed
+ardently to enter.  For a year Lady Mary's fears and fond anxieties
+detained him at Laughton; but though his great tenderness for his mother
+withheld Percival from opposing her wishes by his own, this interval of
+inaction affected visibly his health and spirits.  Captain Greville, a
+man of the world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, and one morning,
+earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall.
+
+The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain man enough
+when business was to be done.  Like his great commander, he came to the
+point in a few words.
+
+"My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London,--we are killing him here."
+
+"Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting aside her
+embroidery,--"killing him?"
+
+"Killing the man in him.  I don't mean to alarm you; I dare say his lungs
+are sound enough, and that his heart would bear the stethoscope to the
+satisfaction of the College of Surgeons.  But, my dear ma'am, Percival is
+to be a man; it is the man you are killing by keeping him tied to your
+apron-string."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Greville, I am sure you don't wish to wound me, but--"
+
+"I beg ten thousand pardons.  I am rough, but truth is rough sometimes."
+
+"It is not for my sake," said the mother, warmly, and with tears in her
+eyes, "that I have wished him to be here.  If he is dull, can we not fill
+the house for him?"
+
+"Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary.  Percival should have a plunge in the
+ocean."
+
+"But he is so young yet,--that horrid London; such temptations,--
+fatherless, too!"
+
+"I have no fear of the result if Percival goes now, while his principles
+are strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him here
+much longer against his bent, he will learn to brood and to muse, write
+bad poetry perhaps, and think the world withheld from him a thousand
+times more delightful than it is.  This very dread of temptation will
+provoke his curiosity, irritate his fancy, make him imagine the
+temptation must be a very delightful thing.  For the first time in my
+life, ma'am, I have caught him sighing over fashionable novels, and
+subscribing to the Southampton Circulating Library.  Take my word for it,
+it is time that Percival should begin life, and swim without corks."
+
+Lady Mary had a profound confidence in Greville's judgment and affection
+for Percival, and, like a sensible woman, she was aware of her own
+weakness.  She remained silent for a few moments, and then said, with an
+effort,--
+
+"You know how hateful London is to me now,--how unfit I am to return to
+the hollow forms of its society; still, if you think it right, I will
+take a house for the season, and Percival can still be under our eye."
+
+"No, ma'am,--pardon me,--that will be the surest way to make him either
+discontented or hypocritical.  A young man of his prospects and temper
+can hardly be expected to chime in with all our sober, old-fashioned
+habits.  You will impose on him--if he is to conform to our hours and
+notions and quiet set--a thousand irksome restraints; and what will be
+the consequence?  In a year he will be of age, and can throw us off
+altogether, if he pleases.  I know the boy; don't seem to distrust him,--
+he may be trusted.  You place the true restraint on temptation when you
+say to him: 'We confide to you our dearest treasure,--your honour, your
+morals, your conscience, yourself!'"
+
+"But at least you will go with him, if it must be so," said Lady Mary,
+after a few timid arguments, from which, one by one, she was driven.
+
+"I!  What for?  To be a jest of the young puppies he must know; to make
+him ashamed of himself and me,--himself as a milksop, and me as a dry
+nurse?"
+
+"But this was not so abroad."
+
+"Abroad, ma'am, I gave him full swing I promise you; and when we went
+abroad he was two years younger."
+
+"But he is a mere child still."
+
+"Child, Lady Mary!  At his age I had gone through two sieges.  There are
+younger faces than his at a mess-room.  Come, come!  I know what you
+fear,--he may commit some follies; very likely.  He may be taken in, and
+lose some money,--he can afford it, and he will get experience in return.
+Vices he has none.  I have seen him,--ay, with the vicious.  Send him out
+against the world like a saint of old, with his Bible in his hand, and no
+spot on his robe.  Let him see fairly what is, not stay here to dream of
+what is not.  And when he's of age, ma'am, we must get him an object, a
+pursuit; start him for the county, and make him serve the State.  He will
+understand that business pretty well.  Tush! tush! what is there to cry
+at?"
+
+The captain prevailed.  We don't say that his advice would have been
+equally judicious for all youths of Percival's age; but he knew well the
+nature to which he confided; he knew well how strong was that young heart
+in its healthful simplicity and instinctive rectitude; and he appreciated
+his manliness not too highly when he felt that all evident props and aids
+would be but irritating tokens of distrust.
+
+And thus, armed only with letters of introduction, his mother's tearful
+admonitions, and Greville's experienced warnings, Percival St. John was
+launched into London life.  After the first month or so, Greville came up
+to visit him, do him sundry kind, invisible offices amongst his old
+friends, help him to equip his apartments, and mount his stud; and wholly
+satisfied with the result of his experiment, returned in high spirits,
+with flattering reports, to the anxious mother.
+
+But, indeed, the tone of Percival's letters would have been sufficient to
+allay even maternal anxiety.  He did not write, as sons are apt to do,
+short excuses for not writing more at length, unsatisfactory compressions
+of details (exciting worlds of conjecture) into a hurried sentence.
+Frank and overflowing, those delightful epistles gave accounts fresh from
+the first impressions of all he saw and did.  There was a racy, wholesome
+gusto in his enjoyment of novelty and independence.  His balls and his
+dinners and his cricket at Lord's, his partners and his companions, his
+general gayety, his occasional ennui, furnisbed ample materials to one
+who felt he was corresponding with another heart, and had nothing to fear
+or to conceal.
+
+But about two months before this portion of our narrative opens with the
+coronation, Lady Mary's favourite sister, who had never married, and who,
+by the death of her parents, was left alone in the worse than widowhood
+of an old maid, had been ordered to Pisa for a complaint that betrayed
+pulmonary symptoms; and Lady Mary, with her usual unselfishness,
+conquered both her aversion to movement and her wish to be in reach of
+her son, to accompany abroad this beloved and solitary relative.  Captain
+Greville was pressed into service as their joint cavalier.  And thus
+Percival's habitual intercourse with his two principal correspondents
+received a temporary check.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOHN ARDWORTH.
+
+At noon the next day Beck, restored to his grandeur, was at the helm of
+his state; Percival was vainly trying to be amused by the talk of two or
+three loungers who did him the honour to smoke a cigar in his rooms; and
+John Ardworth sat in his dingy cell in Gray's Inn, with a pile of law
+books on the table, and the daily newspapers carpeting a footstool of
+Hansard's Debates upon the floor,--no unusual combination of studies
+amongst the poorer and more ardent students of the law, who often owe
+their earliest, nor perhaps their least noble, earnings to employment in
+the empire of the Press.  By the power of a mind habituated to labour,
+and backed by a frame of remarkable strength and endurance, Ardworth
+grappled with his arid studies not the less manfully for a night mainly
+spent in a printer's office, and stinted to less than four hours' actual
+sleep.  But that sleep was profound and refreshing as a peasant's.  The
+nights thus devoted to the Press (he was employed in the sub-editing of a
+daily journal), the mornings to the law, he kept distinct the two
+separate callings with a stern subdivision of labour which in itself
+proved the vigour of his energy and the resolution of his will.  Early
+compelled to shift for himself and carve out his own way, he had obtained
+a small fellowship at the small college in which he had passed his
+academic career.  Previous to his arrival in London, by contributions to
+political periodicals and a high reputation at that noble debating
+society in Cambridge which has trained some of the most eminent of living
+public men [Amongst those whom the "Union" almost contemporaneously
+prepared for public life, and whose distinction has kept the promise of
+their youth, we may mention the eminent barristers, Messrs. Austin and
+Cockburn; and amongst statesmen, Lord Grey, Mr. C. Buller, Mr. Charles
+Villiers, and Mr. Macaulay.  Nor ought we to forget those brilliant
+competitors for the prizes of the University, Dr. Kennedy (now head-
+master of Shrewsbury School) and the late Winthrop M. Praed.], he had
+established a name which was immediately useful to him in obtaining
+employment on the Press.  Like most young men of practical ability, he
+was an eager politician.  The popular passion of the day kindled his
+enthusiasm and stirred the depths of his soul with magnificent, though
+exaggerated, hopes in the destiny of his race.  He identified himself
+with the people; his stout heart beat loud in their stormy cause.  His
+compositions, if they wanted that knowledge of men, that subtle
+comprehension of the true state of parties, that happy temperance in
+which the crowning wisdom of statesmen must consist,--qualities which
+experience alone can give,--excited considerable attention by their bold
+eloquence and hardy logic.  They were suited to the time.  But John
+Ardworth had that solidity of understanding which betokens more than
+talent, and which is the usual substratum of genius.  He would not depend
+alone on the precarious and often unhonoured toils of polemical
+literature for that distinction on which he had fixed his steadfast
+heart.  Patiently he plodded on through the formal drudgeries of his new
+profession, lighting up dulness by his own acute comprehension, weaving
+complexities into simple system by the grasp of an intellect inured to
+generalize, and learning to love even what was most distasteful, by the
+sense of difficulty overcome, and the clearer vision which every step
+through the mists and up the hill gave of the land beyond.  Of what the
+superficial are apt to consider genius, John Ardworth had but little.  He
+had some imagination (for a true thinker is never without that), but he
+had a very slight share of fancy.  He did not flirt with the Muses; on
+the granite of his mind few flowers could spring.  His style, rushing and
+earnest, admitted at times of a humour not without delicacy,--though less
+delicate than forcible and deep,--but it was little adorned with wit, and
+still less with poetry.  Yet Ardworth had genius, and genius ample and
+magnificent.  There was genius in that industrious energy so patient in
+the conquest of detail, so triumphant in the perception of results.
+There was genius in that kindly sympathy with mankind; genius in that
+stubborn determination to succeed; genius in that vivid comprehension of
+affairs, and the large interests of the world; genius fed in the labours
+of the closet, and evinced the instant he was brought into contact with
+men,--evinced in readiness of thought, grasp of memory, even in a rough,
+imperious nature, which showed him born to speak strong truths, and in
+their name to struggle and command.
+
+Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and kind-
+hearted.  John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have thrown
+Lord Chesterfield into a fever.  Not that he was ever vulgar, for
+vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
+laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
+boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
+Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly and
+boorishly those who interrupted him.  Young men were mostly afraid of
+him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples.  Old
+men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
+Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
+character, they generally do what is honest and sterling.  Some strange
+failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
+contradictions of clever men.  As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
+For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
+bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up some
+allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-
+saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn in one
+of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of blessed
+debauch!"  Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
+consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, and
+an extra bottle or two of fiery port.  Sometimes this jollity, which was
+always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the cider-cellars
+or midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press made that latter
+dissipation extremely rare.  These relaxations were always succeeded by a
+mien more than usually grave, a manner more than usually curt and
+ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous and intense.  John
+Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the best-natured man
+that ever breathed.  He was, like all ambitious persons, very much
+occupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous misapplication
+of words to call him selfish.  Even the desire of fame which absorbed him
+was but a part of benevolence,--a desire to promote justice and to serve
+his kind.
+
+John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when his
+clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the
+twopenny-postman had just delivered.  With an impatient shrug of the
+shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye
+became earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand.
+"Again!" he muttered.  "What mystery is this?  Who can feel such interest
+in my fate?"  He broke the seal and read as follows:--
+
+Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it?  Are you
+contented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or will
+you make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge at
+once into fame and power?  I repeat that you fritter away your talents
+and your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal.  I am
+impatient for you.  Come forward yourself, put your force and your
+knowledge into some work of which the world may know the author.  Day
+after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe
+more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which
+you doom your youth.  I would have you great, but in the senate, not a
+wretched casuist at the Bar.  Appear in public as an individual
+authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while
+dreaded as the Press.  Write for renown.  Go into the world, and make
+friends.  Soften your rugged bearing.  Lift yourself above that herd whom
+you call "the people."  What if you are born of the noble class!  What if
+your career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money.  Use what I
+send you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at least
+gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your struggle
+to emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame.
+                                                   YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND
+
+A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth silently
+replaced the letter on the table.
+
+Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting, and
+much to the same effect.  Certainly, to a mind of less strength there
+would have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of a
+station higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsome
+lot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his lone
+position in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth's steady
+sense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations had
+effected.  His mother's family was indeed unknown to him, he was even
+ignorant of her maiden name.  But that very obscurity seemed unfavourable
+to much hope from such a quarter.  The connections with the rich and
+well-born are seldom left obscure.  From his father's family he had not
+one expectation.  More had he been moved by exhortation now generally
+repeated, but in a previous letter more precisely detailed; namely, to
+appeal to the reading public in his acknowledged person, and by some
+striking and original work.  This idea he had often contemplated and
+revolved; but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the many
+exigencies of the hour had deterred him, and partly also the conviction
+of his sober judgment that a man does himself no good at the Bar even by
+the most brilliant distinction gained in discursive fields.  He had the
+natural yearning of the Restless Genius; and the Patient Genius (higher
+power of the two) had suppressed the longing.  Still, so far, the
+whispers of his correspondent tempted and aroused.  But hitherto he had
+sought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forced
+on him arose perhaps from idle motives,--a jest, it might be, of one of
+his old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some more
+credulous admirer.  But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either of
+these suppositions.  Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or so
+extravagant a tribute?  He was perplexed, and with his perplexity was
+mixed a kind of fear.  Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common
+acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his fate,
+this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and the
+privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may feel at
+noises in the dark.  That day he could apply no more, he could not settle
+back to his Law Reports.  He took two or three unquiet turns up and down
+his smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and enclosure, seized his
+hat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging strides, into the open
+air.
+
+But still the letter haunted him.  "And if," he said almost audibly,--"if
+I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart
+like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--"  He paused, sighed, shook his
+rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then I
+could steal myself into a girl's good graces!  Man's esteem I may
+command, though poor; woman's love could I win, though rich?  Pooh! pooh!
+every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of will
+scarcely cut up into a lover."
+
+Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his
+way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house
+where Helen lodged with her aunt.  It was a building that stood apart
+from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down a
+narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in which a
+small door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gave
+unfrequented entrance to the demesne.  A woman servant of middle age and
+starched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, and
+Ardworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as,
+with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwise
+comely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to the
+house.  That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior.  It
+was not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect.  The
+vine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall, and
+fell in crawling branches over the ground.  The house had once been
+whitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained with
+damp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath.
+There was no peculiar want of what is called "tenantable repair;" the
+windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain.  But
+the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered
+the tiles.  Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about
+the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why.  And Ardworth
+steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the
+creaking stairs.
+
+On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye,
+searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair
+set by the fireless hearth.  And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale
+face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.
+
+Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to the
+sufferer's.
+
+"You are better, I hope?" he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more
+respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice.
+
+"I am always the same," was the quiet answer; "come nearer still.  Your
+visits cheer me."
+
+And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself from
+her recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth's face of power and
+front of thought.  "You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman," she said,
+with a certain tenderness; "you look already too old for your young
+years."
+
+"That's no disadvantage at the Bar."
+
+"Is the Bar your means, or your end?"
+
+"My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession."
+
+"No, your profession is to rise.  John Ardworth," and the low voice
+swelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this, I
+love you,--love you almost--almost as a mother.  Your fate," she
+continued hurriedly, "interests me; your energies inspire me with
+admiration.  Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be,
+so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live."
+
+Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment he
+began, hesitatingly: "I should think too highly of myself if I could
+really believe that you--"
+
+"Tell me," interrupted Madame Dalibard,--"we have had many conversations
+upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries
+of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward
+life and the mechanism of the social world,--tell me, then, and frankly,
+what do you think of me?  Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to
+regard the woman who aspires to equal men,--a thing of borrowed phrases
+and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you
+recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours,
+ruled by an experience larger than your own?"
+
+"I think of you," answered Ardworth, frankly, "as the most remarkable
+woman I have ever met.  Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield to
+the influence which you gain over me when we meet.  It disturbs my
+convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so
+easily after your breath has passed over it."
+
+"And yet," said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, "that
+influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on
+ardent youth.  It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your
+happy calm.  It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you
+name 'convictions.'  Let this pass.  I asked your opinion of me, because
+I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I
+possess.  In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my
+counsels."
+
+"I have benefited by them already.  It is the tone that you advised me to
+assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old
+formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to
+your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and
+the greater hold they have taken on the public."
+
+"Trifles indeed, these," said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile.  "Let
+them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path
+more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid."
+
+Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression of
+doubt and curiosity.  However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh,--
+
+"You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road to
+distinction.
+
+    'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
+     The steep where
+     Fame's proud temple shines afar!'
+
+A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their whining
+'Ahs' and 'Ohs!'"
+
+"What we are is nothing," pursued Madame Dalibard; "what we seem is
+much."
+
+Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head.  The wise
+woman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises,--
+
+"Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is that
+likeness which the world values.  Take a man out of the streets, poor and
+ragged, what will the world do with him?  Send him to the workhouse, if
+not to the jail.  Ask a great painter to take that man's portrait,--rags,
+squalor, and all,--and kings will bid for the picture.  You would thrust
+the man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces.
+It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the truth.
+What is virtue without character?  But a man without virtue may thrive on
+a character!  What is genius without success?  But how often you bow to
+success without genius!  John Ardworth, possess yourself of the
+portraits,--win the character; seize the success."
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, "this is horrible!"
+
+"Horrible it may be," said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling, perhaps,
+that she had gone too far; "but it is the world's judgment.  Seem, then,
+as well as be.  You have virtue, as I believe.  Well, wrap yourself in
+it--in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character.  If you have
+genius, let it comfort you.  Rush into the crowd, and get success."
+
+"Stop!" cried Ardworth; "I recognize you.  How could I be so blind?  It
+is you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbed
+yourself,--you, poor sufferer,--to throw extravagance into these strong
+hands.  And why?  What am I to you?"  An expression of actual fondness
+softened Lucretia's face as she looked up at him and replied: "I will
+tell you hereafter what you are to me.  First, I confess that it is I
+whose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you.  The sum that I sent
+I do not miss.  I have more,--will ever have more at your command; never
+fear.  Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but as
+an equal to the world's favourites.  I wish you to know more of men than
+mere law-books teach you.  I wish you to be in men's mouths, create a
+circle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to those
+who can advance your career.  The very possession of money in certain
+stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction to the
+address."
+
+"But," said Ardworth, "all this is very well for some favourite of birth
+and fortune; but for me--Yet speak, and plainly.  You throw out hints
+that I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves and
+his brain than is plain John Ardworth.  What is it you mean?"
+
+Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in her
+chair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered.
+
+"When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally to
+learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my long
+residence abroad had estranged me.  John Walter Ardworth was related to
+my half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection.  However, I knew
+something of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son.  Shortly
+before I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son had
+been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since learned
+all the grounds for that belief from which you take the name of
+Ardworth."
+
+Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient, wondering,
+and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:
+
+"Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless and
+extravagant habits.  He had been put into the army by my uncle, and he
+entered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine nature.
+I remember those days,--that day!  Well, to return--where was I?--Walter
+Ardworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of politics.  He
+dreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to be a republican.
+His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he disguised
+nothing, he neglected the portraits of things,--appearances.  He excited
+the rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then, more even than
+now, were implacable ministrants to hate.  Occasion presented itself.
+During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled.  He had to head a
+detachment of soldiers against some mob,--in Ireland, I believe; he did
+not fire on the mob, according to orders,--so, at least, it was said.
+John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and broke!  But you
+know all this, perhaps?"
+
+"My poor father!  Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the
+army,--I believed unjustly.  He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think
+for himself and be humane!"
+
+"But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,--none of
+that old man's gold did.  Where are they all now,--Dalibard, Susan, and
+her fair-faced husband,--where?  Vernon is in his grave,--but one son of
+many left!  Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I!  But that gold,--
+yea, in our hands there was a curse on it!  Walter Ardworth had his
+legacy.  His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men
+to pity and praise him,--Fools of Party like himself.  He lived joyously,
+drank or gamed, or lent or borrowed,--what matters the wherefore?  He was
+in debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching
+bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels.  Then, for a short
+time, we met again."
+
+Lucretia's brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last
+sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,--
+
+"In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late
+one night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant.  He seemed--so says Mr.
+Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard.  He entered into no explanations with
+respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest.
+What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down.  Read, and see
+what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to
+you."
+
+As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a
+paper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in Ardworth's hand.  After some
+preliminary statement of the writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth,
+and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame
+Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:--
+
+The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah came
+to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me.  As is my
+wont, I bade them be shown in.  On their entrance (two rough, farmer-
+looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my little
+pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman was just
+overhead.  Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two
+strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in a
+few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above.  I recovered myself, and
+thinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out lustily,
+when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went upstairs, and
+found  that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed robbers, who
+in truth were but bailiffs.  They would not trust him out of their sight
+for a moment.  However, he took it more pleasantly than I could have
+supposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the child, and
+I should soon hear from him again.  In less than an hour he was gone.
+Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter, without
+address, of which this is a copy:--
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe little
+tavern in sight of the sea!  Mother Country is a very bad parent to me!
+Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse.  I shall work out my
+passage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health (sea-air is
+bracing), I don't despair of getting my bread honestly, somehow.  If ever
+I can pay my debts, I may return.  But, meanwhile, my good old tutor,
+what will you think of me?  You to whom my sole return for so much pains,
+taken in vain, is another mouth to feed!  And no money to pay for the
+board!  Yet you'll not grudge the child a place at your table, will you?
+No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,--God bless her tender,
+economical soul!  You know quite enough of me to be sure that I shall
+very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to prevent
+its being an encumbrance.  I would say, love and pity the child for my
+sake.  But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first signal
+from the vessel that--                               Yours in haste,
+                           J.  W.  A.
+
+Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily.  There
+seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,--a certain levity
+and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles.  And the want
+of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,--not one fond
+word.  He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.
+
+This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three
+years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at
+bottom (the son's eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and the
+child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth's sake, but
+for its own, and for charity's and Christ's.  Ardworth's second letter
+was as follows:--
+
+En iterum Crispinus!  I am still alive, and getting on in the world,--ay,
+and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my
+debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing.  First, for
+my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally valid,
+on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds.  Repay yourself what the boy has
+cost.  Let him be educated to get his own living,--if clever, as a
+scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman.  Whatever I may gain, he
+will have his own way to make.  I ought to tell you the story connected
+with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I
+feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth an
+opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless.  If ever I return to
+England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide.  Love to
+all your happy family.                               Your grateful
+                           FRIEND AND PUPIL.
+
+From this letter I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not
+born in wedlock, and that Ardworth's silence arose from his compunction.
+I conceived it best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he
+grew up.  Why should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father
+shrank, and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and
+uncharitable interpretation of some vague words?  When John was fourteen,
+I received from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without
+any line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were
+directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf
+of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge
+by John Walter Ardworth.  My young pupil had been two years at the
+University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--
+
+"How are you?  Still well, still happy?  Let me hope so!  I have not
+written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you; I
+have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from
+time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you.
+I find that you have given the boy my name.  Well, let him bear it,--it
+is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do
+not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son.  I wish him to think himself
+without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own
+industry and talent--if talent he has.  Let him go through the healthful
+probation of toil; let him search for and find independence.  Till he is
+of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for
+him at Messrs. Drummond's.  If then, to set him up in any business or
+profession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line,
+signed A. B., Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will
+reach and find me disposed to follow your instructions.  But after that
+time all further supply from me will cease.  Do not suppose, because I
+send this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope to
+attain is a competence.  That boy is not the only one who has claims to
+share it.  Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to the
+extravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power.  Yes, let
+him lean on his own strength.  In the letter you send me, write fully of
+your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help them
+in the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repay
+all he owes you.  You would smile approvingly if you saw me now,--a
+steady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever."
+
+"P.S.--Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this clew to my
+address."
+
+On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth about the
+excellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected son.  I told him
+truly he was a son any father might be proud of, and rebuked, even to
+harshness, Walter's unseemly tone respecting him.  One's child is one's
+child, however the father may have wronged the mother.  To this letter I
+never received any answer.  When John was of age, and had made himself
+independent of want by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke to him
+about his prospects.  I told him that his father, though residing abroad
+and for some reason keeping himself concealed, had munificently paid
+hitherto for his maintenance, and would lay down what might be necessary
+to start him in business, or perhaps place him in the army, but that his
+father might be better pleased if he could show a love of independence,
+and henceforth maintain himself.  I knew the boy I spoke to!  John
+thought as I did, and I never applied for another donation to the elder
+Ardworth.  The allowance ceased; John since then has maintained himself.
+I have heard no more from his father, though I have written often to the
+address he gave me.  I begin to fear that he is dead.  I once went up to
+town and saw one of the heads of Messrs. Drummond's firm, a very polite
+gentleman, but he could give me no information, except that he obeyed
+instructions from a correspondent at Calcutta,--one Mr. Macfarren.
+Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I thought very
+pressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ardworth the elder.  He
+answered shortly that he knew of no such person at all, and that A. B.
+was a French merchant, settled in Calcutta, who had been dead for above
+two years.  I now gave up all hopes of any further intelligence, and was
+more convinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding from
+poor John my correspondence with his father.  The lad had been curious
+and inquisitive naturally; but when I told him that I thought it my duty
+to his father to be so reserved, he forebore to press me.  I have only to
+add, first, that by all the inquiries I could make of the surviving
+members of Walter Ardworth's family, it seemed their full belief that he
+had never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude that he had
+no legitimate children,--which may account for, though it cannot excuse,
+his neglect; and secondly, with respect to the sums received on dear
+John's account, I put them all by, capital and interest, deducting only
+the expense of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not defray
+without injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name at
+Messrs. Drummond's, vested in the Three per Cents.  That I have not told
+him of this was by my poor dear wife's advice; for she said, very
+sensibly,--and she was a shrewd woman on money matters,--"If he knows he
+has such a large sum all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle and
+extravagant, and spend it at once, like his father before him?  Whereas,
+some time or other he will want to marry, or need money for some
+particular purpose,--then what a blessing it will be!"
+
+However, my dear madam, as you know the world better than I do, you can
+now do as you please, both as to communicating to John all the
+information herein contained as to his parentage, and as to apprising him
+of the large sum of which he is lawfully possessed.
+                                                   MATTHEW FIELDEN.
+
+P.S.--In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that whatever whim he
+may have conceived about his own child, he had still a heart kind enough
+to remember mine, though Heaven knows I said nothing about them in my
+letters, my eldest boy received an offer of an excellent place in a West
+India merchant's house, and has got on to be chief clerk; and my second
+son was presented to a living of 117 pounds a year by a gentleman he
+never heard of.  Though I never traced these good acts to Ardworth, from
+whom else could they come?
+
+Ardworth put down the paper without a word; and Lucretia, who had watched
+him while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced when he
+came to the end of the disclosure.  She laid her hand on his and said,--
+
+"Courage! you have lost nothing!"
+
+"Nothing!" said Ardworth, with a bitter smile.  "A father's love and a
+father's name,--nothing!"
+
+"But," exclaimed Lucretia, "is this man your father?  Does a father's
+heart beat in one line of those hard sentences?  No, no; it seems to me
+probable,--it seems to me almost certain, that you are--"  She stopped,
+and continued, with a calmer accent, "near to my own blood.  I am now in
+England, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope.  If
+so, if so, you shall--"  Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, and
+there was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance.
+She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at self-
+command, "If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for you.  Suffer
+me yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief, and--and--love me a
+little in the mean while!"
+
+Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, and
+there was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in the
+gesture of the clasped hands she held out to him.
+
+Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made known
+to him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down and
+kissed the extended hands.  Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the
+room, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open, as
+for air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath.  When he turned round,
+however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breast
+with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than to
+his listener,--
+
+"What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers?  We ourselves
+make our own fate!  Bastard or noble, not a jot care I.  Give me
+ancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very name
+of father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!"
+
+As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and the
+strong ease of his powerful form.  And while thus standing and thus
+looking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly.
+
+These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, but no intimacy
+had been established between them.  Varney was formal and distant to
+Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney.  With the instinct of
+sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked
+heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which
+pervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner,--even the trick of his walk
+and the cut of his dress.  And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful
+luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to
+please and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration for
+all talent and all distinction.  For art, if not the highest, Ardworth
+cared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted and
+composed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble, or toyed
+with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics.  He saw but a charlatan,
+and he had not yet learned from experience what strength and what danger
+lie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and shifting, in the
+sensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough.
+
+Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first on
+Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard.  But Ardworth, jarred
+from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his ear
+at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him, scarcely
+returned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seized
+his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably disturbing the
+gravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame Dalibard, pressed her
+hand, and said in a whisper, "I shall see you again soon," and vanished.
+
+Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid into
+the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, and
+said: "If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such a
+son!"
+
+Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspicious
+glances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said,--
+
+"Clytemnestra was happy!  The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted but
+the avenger."
+
+"Hist!" said Varney.
+
+The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared.
+
+"I quite forgot what I half came to know.  How is Helen?  Did she return
+home safe?"
+
+"Safe--yes!"
+
+"Dear girl, I am glad to hear it!  Where is she?  Not gone to those
+Miverses again?  I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple together
+refinement and vulgarity?"
+
+"Mr. Ardworth," said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, "my niece is
+under my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how to
+discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation,--a nearer one than
+you are."
+
+Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly: "Well, I
+shall talk to you again on that subject.  Meanwhile, pray give my love to
+her,--Helen, I mean."
+
+Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sank back again, motioning
+with her hand to Ardworth to approach.  Varney rose and walked to the
+window, as if sensible that something was about to be said not meant for
+his ear.
+
+When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard grasped his hand
+with a vigour that surprised him, and drawing him nearer still, whispered
+as he bent down,--
+
+"I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin's, or, if you will, a
+brother's love.  Do you intend--do you feel--an other, a warmer love?
+Speak, sir!" and drawing suddenly back, she gazed on his face with a
+stern and menacing expression, her teeth set, and the lips firmly pressed
+together.
+
+Ardworth, though a little startled, and half angry, answered with the
+low, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, "Pish! you ladies are apt to
+think us men much greater fools than we are.  A briefless lawyer is not
+very inflammable tinder.  Yes, a cousin's love,--quite enough.  Poor
+little Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and then--
+she will have a sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!"
+
+"Ay," said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, "ay, I am satisfied.
+Come soon."
+
+Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs.  As he gained the door, he
+caught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over a flower-bed in the
+neglected garden.  He paused, irresolute, a moment.  "No," he muttered to
+himself, "no; I am fit company only for myself!  A long walk into the
+fields, and then away with these mists round the Past and Future; the
+Present at least is mine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF.
+
+"And what," said Varney,--"what, while we are pursuing a fancied clew,
+and seeking to provide first a name, and then a fortune for this young
+lawyer,--what steps have you really taken to meet the danger that menaces
+me,--to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence for yourself?
+Months have elapsed, and you have still shrunk from advancing the great
+scheme upon which we built, when the daughter of Susan Mainwaring was
+admitted to your hearth."
+
+"Why recall me, in these rare moments when I feel myself human still,--
+why recall me back to the nethermost abyss of revenge and crime?  Oh, let
+me be sure that I have still a son!  Even if John Ardworth, with his
+gifts and energies, be denied to me, a son, though in rags, I will give
+him wealth!--a son, though ignorant as the merest boor, I will pour into
+his brain my dark wisdom!  A son! a son! my heart swells at the word.
+Ah, you sneer!  Yes, my heart swells, but not with the mawkish fondness
+of a feeble mother.  In a son, I shall live again,--transmigrate from
+this tortured and horrible life of mine; drink back my youth.  In him I
+shall rise from my fall,--strong in his power, great in his grandeur.  It
+is because I was born a woman,--had woman's poor passions and infirm
+weakness,--that I am what I am.  I would transfer myself into the soul of
+man,--man, who has the strength to act, and the privilege to rise.  Into
+the bronze of man's nature I would pour the experience which has broken,
+with its fierce elements, the puny vessel of clay.  Yes, Gabriel, in
+return for all I have done and sacrificed for you, I ask but co-operation
+in that one hope of my shattered and storm-beat being.  Bear, forbear,
+await; risk not that hope by some wretched, peddling crime which will
+bring on us both detection,--some wanton revelry in guilt, which is not
+worth the terror that treads upon its heels."
+
+"You forget," answered Varney, with a kind of submissive sullenness,--for
+whatever had passed between these two persons in their secret and fearful
+intimacy, there was still a power in Lucretia, surviving her fall amidst
+the fiends, that impressed Varney with the only respect he felt for man
+or woman,--"you forget strangely the nature of our elaborate and master
+project when you speak of 'peddling crime,' or 'wanton revelry' in guilt!
+You forget, too, how every hour that we waste deepens the peril that
+surrounds me, and may sweep from your side the sole companion that can
+aid you in your objects,--nay, without whom they must wholly fail.  Let
+me speak first of that most urgent danger, for your memory seems short
+and troubled, since you have learned only to hope the recovery of your
+son.  If this man Stubmore, in whom the trust created by my uncle's will
+is now vested, once comes to town, once begins to bustle about his
+accursed projects of transferring the money from the Bank of England, I
+tell you again and again that my forgery on the bank will be detected,
+and that transportation will be the smallest penalty inflicted.  Part of
+the forgery, as you know, was committed on your behalf, to find the
+moneys necessary for the research for your son,--committed on the clear
+understanding that our project on Helen should repay me, should enable
+me, perhaps undetected, to restore the sums illegally abstracted, or, at
+the worst, to confess to Stubmore--whose character I well know--that,
+oppressed by difficulties, I had yielded to temptation, that I had forged
+his name (as I had forged his father's) as an authority to sell the
+capital from the bank, and that now, in replacing the money, I repaid my
+error and threw myself on his indulgence, on his silence.  I say that I
+know enough of the man to know that I should be thus cheaply saved, or at
+the worst, I should have but to strengthen his compassion by a bribe to
+his avarice; but if I cannot replace the money, I am lost."
+
+"Well, well," said Lucretia; "the money you shall have, let me but find
+my son, and--"
+
+"Grant me patience!" cried Varney, impetuously.  "But what can your son
+do, if found, unless you endow him with the heritage of Laughton?  To do
+that, Helen, who comes next to Percival St. John in the course of the
+entail, must cease to live!  Have I not aided, am I not aiding you
+hourly, in your grand objects?  This evening I shall see a man whom I
+have long lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life the true
+scent after evidence: if that evidence exist, it shall be found.  I have
+just learned his address.  By tomorrow he shall be on the track.  I have
+stinted myself to save from the results of the last forgery the gold to
+whet his zeal.  For the rest, as I have said, your design involves the
+removal of two lives.  Already over the one more difficult to slay the
+shadow creeps and the pall hangs.  I have won, as you wished, and as was
+necessary, young St. John's familiar acquaintance; when the hour comes,
+he is in my hands."
+
+Lucretia smiled sternly.  "So!" she said, between her ground teeth, "the
+father forbade me the house that was my heritage!  I have but to lift a
+finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I am, I thrust from that home
+the son!  The spoiler left me the world,--I leave his son the grave!"
+
+"But," said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, "why force me
+to repeat that his is not the only life between you and your son's
+inheritance?  St. John gone, Helen still remains.  And what, if your
+researches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yield
+us,--a harvest you reap with the same sickle which gathers in your
+revenge?  Do you no longer see in Helen's face the features of her
+mother?  Is the perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?"
+
+"Gabriel Varney," said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous voice, "when
+in that hour in which my whole being was revulsed, and I heard the cord
+snap from the anchor, and saw the demons of the storm gather round my
+bark; when in that hour I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival's
+brow,--I murmured an oath which seemed not inspired by my own soul, but
+by an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidy
+dealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existence
+should fall on the brow which I kissed.  I vowed that if shame and
+disgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would not
+stand alone amidst the scorn of the pitiless world.  In the vision of my
+agony, I saw, afar, the altar dressed and the bride-chamber prepared; and
+I breathed my curse, strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth and the
+marriage-bed.  Why dream, then, that I would rescue the loathed child of
+that loathed union from your grasp?  But is the time come?  Yours may be
+come: is mine?"
+
+Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, so intense in
+the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, and
+contemplating at that very hour the foulest and most hideous guilt, drew
+back, appalled.
+
+Madame Dalibard resumed, and in a somewhat softer tone, but softened only
+by the anguish of despair.
+
+"Oh, had it been otherwise, what might I have been!  Given over from that
+hour to the very incarnation of plotting crime, none to resist the evil
+impulse of my own maddening heart, the partner, forced on me by fate,
+leading me deeper and deeper into the inextricable hell,--from that hour
+fraud upon fraud, guilt upon guilt, infamy heaped on infamy, till I stand
+a marvel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not, that Nature thrusts
+not from her breast a living outrage on all her laws!  Was I not
+justified in the desire of retribution?  Every step that I fell, every
+glance that I gave to the gulf below, increased but in me the desire for
+revenge.  All my acts had flowed from one fount: should the stream roll
+pollution, and the fount spring pure?"
+
+"You have had your revenge on your rival and her husband."
+
+"I had it, and I passed on!" said Lucretia, with nostrils dilated as with
+haughty triumph; "they were crushed, and I suffered them to live!  Nay,
+when, by chance, I heard of William Mainwaring's death, I bowed down my
+head, and I almost think I wept.  The old days came back upon me.  Yes, I
+wept!  But I had not destroyed their love.  No, no; there I had miserably
+failed.  A pledge of that love lived.  I had left their hearth barren;
+Fate sent them a comfort which I had not foreseen.  And suddenly my hate
+returned, my wrongs rose again, my vengeance was not sated.  The love
+that had destroyed more than my life,--my soul,--rose again and cursed me
+in the face of Helen.  The oath which I took when I kissed my rival's
+brow, demanded another prey when I kissed the child of those nuptials."
+
+"You are prepared at last, then, to act?" cried Varney, in a tone of
+savage joy.
+
+At that moment, close under the window, rose, sudden and sweet, the voice
+of one singing,--the young voice of Helen.  The words were so distinct
+that they came to the ears of the dark-plotting and guilty pair.  In the
+song itself there was little to remark or peculiarly apposite to the
+consciences of those who heard; yet in the extreme and touching purity of
+the voice, and in the innocence of the general spirit of the words, trite
+as might be the image they conveyed, there was something that contrasted
+so fearfully their own thoughts and minds that they sat silent, looking
+vacantly into each other's faces, and shrinking perhaps to turn their
+eyes within themselves.
+
+    HELEN'S HYMN.
+
+    Ye fade, yet still how sweet, ye Flowers!       Your scent outlives
+the bloom!     So, Father, may my mortal hours       Grow sweeter towards
+the tomb!
+
+    In withered leaves a healing cure       The simple gleaners find;
+So may our withered hopes endure       In virtues left behind!
+
+    Oh, not to me be vainly given       The lesson ye bestow,     Of
+thoughts that rise in sweets to Heaven,       And turn to use below.
+
+The song died, but still the listeners remained silent, till at length,
+shaking off the effect, with his laugh of discordant irony, Varney said,-
+-
+
+"Sweet innocence, fresh from the nursery!  Would it not be sin to suffer
+the world to mar it?  You hear the prayer: why not grant it, and let the
+flower 'turn to use below'?"
+
+"Ah, but could it wither first!" muttered Lucretia, with an accent of
+suppressed rage.  "Do you think that her--that his--daughter is to me but
+a vulgar life to be sacrificed merely for gold?  Imagine away your sex,
+man!  Women only know what I--such as I, woman still--feel in the
+presence of the pure!  Do you fancy that I should not have held death a
+blessing if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is?  Ah,
+could she but live to suffer!  Die!  Well, since it must be, since my son
+requires the sacrifice, do as you will with the victim that death
+mercifully snatches from my grasp.  I could have wished to prolong her
+life, to load it with some fragment of the curse her parents heaped upon
+me,--baffled love, and ruin, and despair!  I could have hoped, in this
+division of the spoil, that mine had been the vengeance, if yours the
+gold.  You want the life, I the heart,--the heart to torture first; and
+then--why then more willingly than I do now, could I have thrown the
+carcass to the jackal!"
+
+"Listen!" began Varney; when the door opened and Helen herself stood
+unconsciously smiling at the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER.
+
+That same evening Beck, according to appointment, met Percival and showed
+him the dreary-looking house which held the fair stranger who had so
+attracted his youthful fancy.  And Percival looked at the high walls with
+the sailor's bold desire for adventure, while confused visions reflected
+from plays, operas, and novels, in which scaling walls with rope-ladders
+and dark-lanterns was represented as the natural vocation of a lover,
+flitted across his brain; and certainly he gave a deep sigh as his
+common-sense plucked him back from such romance.  However, having now
+ascertained the house, it would be easy to learn the name of its inmates,
+and to watch or make his opportunity.  As slowly and reluctantly he
+walked back to the spot where he had left his cabriolet, he entered into
+some desultory conversation with his strange guide; and the pity he had
+before conceived for Beck increased upon him as he talked and listened.
+This benighted mind, only illumined by a kind of miserable astuteness and
+that "cunning of the belly" which is born of want to engender avarice;
+this joyless temperament; this age in youth; this living reproach, rising
+up from the stones of London against our social indifference to the souls
+which wither and rot under the hard eyes of science and the deaf ears of
+wealth,--had a pathos for his lively sympathies and his fresh heart.
+
+"If ever you want a friend, come to me," said St. John, abruptly.
+
+The sweeper stared, and a gleam of diviner nature, a ray of gratitude and
+unselfish devotion, darted through the fog and darkness of his mind.  He
+stood, with his hat off, watching the wheels of the cabriolet as it bore
+away the happy child of fortune, and then, shaking his head, as at some
+puzzle that perplexed and defied his comprehension, strode back to the
+town and bent his way homeward.
+
+Between two and three hours after Percival thus parted from the sweeper,
+a man whose dress was little in accordance with the scene in which we
+present him, threaded his way through a foul labyrinth of alleys in the
+worst part of St. Giles's,--a neighbourhood, indeed, carefully shunned at
+dusk by wealthy passengers; for here dwelt not only Penury in its
+grimmest shape, but the desperate and dangerous guilt which is not to be
+lightly encountered in its haunts and domiciles.  Here children imbibe
+vice with their mother's milk.  Here Prostitution, commencing with
+childhood, grows fierce and sanguinary in the teens, and leagues with
+theft and murder.  Here slinks the pickpocket, here emerges the burglar,
+here skulks the felon.  Yet all about and all around, here, too, may be
+found virtue in its rarest and noblest form,--virtue outshining
+circumstance and defying temptation; the virtue of utter poverty, which
+groans, and yet sins not.  So interwoven are these webs of penury and
+fraud that in one court your life is not safe; but turn to the right
+hand, and in the other, you might sleep safely in that worse than Irish
+shealing, though your pockets were full of gold.  Through these haunts
+the ragged and penniless may walk unfearing, for they have nothing to
+dread from the lawless,--more, perhaps, from the law; but the wealthy,
+the respectable, the spruce, the dainty, let them beware the spot, unless
+the policeman is in sight or day is in the skies!
+
+As this passenger, whose appearance, as we have implied, was certainly
+not that of a denizen, turned into one of the alleys, a rough hand seized
+him by the arm, and suddenly a group of girls and tatterdemalions issued
+from a house, in which the lower shutters unclosed showed a light
+burning, and surrounded him with a hoarse whoop.
+
+The passenger whispered a word in the ear of the grim blackguard who had
+seized him, and his arm was instantly released.
+
+"Hist! a pal,--he has the catch," said the blackguard, surlily.  The
+group gave way, and by the light of the clear starlit skies, and a single
+lamp hung at the entrance of the alley, gazed upon the stranger.  But
+they made no effort to detain him; and as he disappeared in the distant
+shadows, hastened back into the wretched hostlery where they had been
+merry-making.  Meanwhile, the stranger gained a narrow court, and stopped
+before a house in one of its angles,--a house taller than the rest, so
+much taller than the rest that it had the effect of a tower; you would
+have supposed it (perhaps rightly) to be the last remains of some ancient
+building of importance, around which, as population thickened and fashion
+changed, the huts below it had insolently sprung up.  Quaint and massive
+pilasters, black with the mire and soot of centuries, flanked the deep-
+set door; the windows were heavy with mullions and transoms, and strongly
+barred in the lower floor; but few of the panes were whole, and only here
+and there had any attempt been made to keep out the wind and rain by
+rags, paper, old shoes, old hats, and other ingenious contrivances.
+Beside the door was conveniently placed a row of some ten or twelve bell-
+pulls, appertaining no doubt to the various lodgments into which the
+building was subdivided.  The stranger did not seem very familiar with
+the appurtenances of the place.  He stood in some suspense as to the
+proper bell to select; but at last, guided by a brass plate annexed to
+one of the pulls, which, though it was too dark to decipher the
+inscription, denoted a claim to superior gentility to the rest of that
+nameless class, he hazarded a tug, which brought forth a 'larum loud
+enough to startle the whole court from its stillness.
+
+In a minute or less, the casement in one of the upper stories opened, a
+head peered forth, and one of those voices peculiar to low debauch--raw,
+cracked, and hoarse--called out: "Who waits?"
+
+"Is it you, Grabman?" asked the stranger, dubiously.
+
+"Yes,--Nicholas Grabman, attorney-at-law, sir, at your service; and your
+name?"
+
+"Jason," answered the stranger.
+
+"Ho, there! ho, Beck!" cried the cracked voice to some one within; "go
+down and open the door."
+
+In a few moments the heavy portal swung and creaked and yawned sullenly,
+and a gaunt form, half-undressed, with an inch of a farthing rushlight
+glimmering through a battered lantern in its hand, presented itself to
+Jason.  The last eyed the ragged porter sharply.
+
+"Do you live here?"
+
+"Yes," answered Beck, with the cringe habitual to him.  "H-up the ladder,
+vith the rats, drat 'em."
+
+"Well, lead on; hold up the lantern.  A devil of a dark place this!"
+grumbled Jason, as he nearly stumbled over sundry broken chattels, and
+gained a flight of rude, black, broken stairs, that creaked under his
+tread.
+
+"'St! 'st!" said Beck between his teeth, as the stranger, halting at the
+second floor, demanded, in no gentle tones, whether Mr. Grabman lived in
+the chimney-pots.
+
+"'St!  'st!  Don't make such a rumpus, or No.  7 will be at you."
+
+"What do I care for No. 7?  And who the devil is No. 7?"
+
+"A body-snatcher!" whispered Beck, with a shudder.  "He's a dillicut
+sleeper,--can't abide having his night's rest sp'ilt.  And he's the
+houtrageoustest great cretur when he's h-up in his tantrums; it makes
+your 'air stand on ind to 'ear him!"
+
+"I should like very much to hear him, then," said the stranger,
+curiously.  And while he spoke, the door of No. 7 opened abruptly.  A
+huge head, covered with matted hair, was thrust for a moment through the
+aperture, and two dull eyes, that seemed covered with a film like that of
+the birds which feed on the dead, met the stranger's bold, sparkling
+orbs.
+
+"Hell and fury!" bawled out the voice of this ogre, like a clap of near
+thunder, "if you two keep tramp, tramp, there close at my door, I'll make
+you meat for the surgeons, b---- you!"
+
+"Stop a moment, my civil friend," said the stranger, advancing; "just
+stand where you are: I should like to make a sketch of your head."
+
+That head protruded farther from the door, and with it an enormous bulk
+of chest and shoulder.  But the adventurous visitor was not to be
+daunted.  He took out, very coolly, a pencil and the back of a letter,
+and began his sketch.
+
+The body-snatcher stared at him an instant in mute astonishment; but that
+operation and the composure of the artist were so new to him that they
+actually inspired him with terror.  He slunk back, banged to the door;
+and the stranger, putting up his implements, said, with a disdainful
+laugh, to Beck, who had slunk away into a corner,--
+
+"No. 7 knows well how to take care of No. 1.  Lead on, and be quick,
+then!"
+
+As they continued to mount, they heard the body-snatcher growling and
+blaspheming in his den, and the sound made Beck clamber the quicker, till
+at the next landing-place he took breath, threw open a door, and Jason,
+pushing him aside, entered first.
+
+The interior of the room bespoke better circumstances than might have
+been supposed from the approach; the floor was covered with sundry scraps
+of carpet, formerly of different hues and patterns, but mellowed by time
+into one threadbare mass of grease and canvas.  There was a good fire on
+the hearth, though the night was warm; there were sundry volumes piled
+round the walls, in the binding peculiar to law books; in a corner stood
+a tall desk, of the fashion used by clerks, perched on tall, slim legs,
+and companioned by a tall, slim stool.  On a table before the fire were
+scattered the remains of the nightly meal,--broiled bones, the skeleton
+of a herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler containing a liquid
+colourless as water, but poisonous as gin.
+
+The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slovenly habits; but
+it did not bespeak penury and want, it had even an air of filthy comfort
+of its own,--the comfort of the swine in its warm sty.  The occupant of
+the chamber was in keeping with the localities.  Figure to yourself a man
+of middle height, not thin, but void of all muscular flesh,--bloated,
+puffed, unwholesome.  He was dressed in a gray-flannel gown and short
+breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet in slippers.
+The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those of a skeleton;
+the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy's, but livid, bespeckled,
+of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy.  The head, covered
+in patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some promise of intellect, for
+the forehead was high, and appeared still more so from partial baldness;
+the eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin, were small and lustreless,
+but they still had that acute look which education and ability
+communicate to the human orb; the mouth most showed the animal,--full-
+lipped, coarse, and sensual; while behind one of two great ears stuck a
+pen.
+
+You see before you, then, this slatternly figure,--slipshod, half-
+clothed, with a sort of shabby demi-gentility about it, half ragamuffin,
+half clerk; while in strong contrast appeared the new-comer, scrupulously
+neat, new, with bright black-satin stock, coat cut jauntily to the waist,
+varnished boots, kid gloves, and trim mustache.
+
+Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in torn shirt
+open at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted face, stood the
+lean and gawky Beck.
+
+"Set a chair for the gentleman," said the inmate of the chamber to Beck,
+with a dignified wave of the hand.
+
+"How do you do, Mr.--Mr.--humph--Jason?  How do you do?  Always smart and
+blooming; the world thrives with you."
+
+"The world is a farm that thrives with all who till it properly,
+Grabman," answered Jason, dryly; and with his handkerchief he carefully
+dusted the chair, on which he then daintily deposited his person.
+
+"But who is your Ganymede, your valet, your gentleman-usher?"
+
+"Oh, a lad about town who lodges above and does odd jobs for me,--brushes
+my coat, cleans my shoes, and after his day's work goes an errand now and
+then.  Make yourself scarce, Beck!  Anatomy, vanish!"
+
+Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, and closed the
+door.
+
+"One of your brotherhood, that?" asked Jason, carelessly.
+
+"He, oaf?  No," said Grabman, with profound contempt in his sickly
+visage.  "He works for his bread,--instinct!  Turnspits and truffle-dogs
+and some silly men have it!  What an age since we met!  Shall I mix you a
+tumbler?"
+
+"You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in Champagne and
+Bordeaux I am any man's match."
+
+"And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of your mind by
+those washy potations?"
+
+"Old black thoughts--of what?"
+
+"Of black actions, Jason.  We have not met since you paid me for
+recommending the nurse who attended your uncle in his last illness."
+
+"Well, poor coward?"
+
+Grabman knit his thin eyebrows and gnawed his blubber lips.
+
+"I am no coward, as you know."
+
+"Not when a thing is to be done, but after it is done.  You brave the
+substance, and tremble at the shadow.  I dare say you see ugly goblins in
+the dark, Grabman?"
+
+"Ay, ay; but it is no use talking to you.  You call yourself Jason
+because of your yellow hair, or your love for the golden fleece; but your
+old comrades call you 'Rattlesnake,' and you have its blood, as its
+venom."
+
+"And its charm, man," added Jason, with a strange smile, that, though
+hypocritical and constrained, had yet a certain softness, and added
+greatly to the comeliness of features which many might call beautiful,
+and all would allow to be regular and symmetrical.  "I shall find at
+least ten love-letters on my table when I go home.  But enough of these
+fopperies, I am here on business."
+
+"Law, of course; I am your man.  Who's the victim?" and a hideous grin on
+Grabman's face contrasted the sleek smile that yet lingered upon his
+visitor's.
+
+"No; something less hazardous, but not less lucrative than our old
+practices.  This is a business that may bring you hundreds, thousands;
+that may take you from this hovel to speculate at the West End; that may
+change your gin into Lafitte, and your herring into venison; that may
+lift the broken attorney again upon the wheel,--again to roll down, it
+may be; but that is your affair."
+
+"'Fore Gad, open the case," cried Grabman, eagerly, and shoving aside the
+ignoble relics of his supper, he leaned his elbows on the table and his
+chin on his damp palms, while eyes that positively brightened into an
+expression of greedy and relentless intelligence were fixed upon his
+visitor.
+
+"The case runs thus," said Jason.  "Once upon a time there lived, at an
+old house in Hampshire called Laughton, a wealthy baronet named St. John.
+He was a bachelor, his estates at his own disposal.  He had two nieces
+and a more distant kinsman.  His eldest niece lived with him,--she was
+supposed to be destined for his heiress; circumstances needless to relate
+brought upon this girl her uncle's displeasure,--she was dismissed his
+house.  Shortly afterwards he died, leaving to his kinsman--a Mr. Vernon-
+-his estates, with remainder to Vernon's issue, and in default thereof,
+first to the issue of the younger niece, next to that of the elder and
+disinherited one.  The elder married, and was left a widow without
+children.  She married again, and had a son.  Her second husband, for
+some reason or other, conceived ill opinions of his wife.  In his last
+illness (he did not live long) he resolved to punish the wife by robbing
+the mother.  He sent away the son, nor have we been able to discover him
+since.  It is that son whom you are to find."
+
+"I see, I see; go on," said Grabman.  "This son is now the remainderman.
+How lost?  When?  What year?  What trace?"
+
+"Patience.  You will find in this paper the date of the loss and the age
+of the child, then a mere infant.  Now for the trace.  This husband--did
+I tell you his name?  No?  Alfred Braddell--had one friend more intimate
+than the rest,--John Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man,
+pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs.  To this man we have lately
+had reason to believe that the child was given.  Ardworth, however, was
+shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors.  We know that he went to
+India; but if residing there, it must have been under some new name, and
+we fear he is now dead.  All our inquiries, at least after this man, have
+been fruitless.  Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor a
+child corresponding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell's.  In this child she
+thinks she recognizes her son.  All that you have to do is to trace his
+identity by good legal evidence.  Don't smile in that foolish way,--I
+mean sound, bona fide evidence that will stand the fire of cross-
+examination; you know what that is!  You will therefore find out,--first,
+whether Braddell did consign his child to Ardworth, and, if so, you must
+then follow Ardworth, with that child in his keeping, to Matthew
+Fielden's house, whose address you find noted in the paper I gave you,
+together with many other memoranda as to Ardworth's creditors and those
+whom he is likely to have come across."
+
+"John Ardworth, I see!"
+
+"John Walter Ardworth,--commonly called Walter; he, like me, perferred to
+be known only by his second baptismal name.  He, because of a favourite
+Radical godfather; I, because Honore is an inconvenient Gallicism.  And
+perhaps when Honore Mirabeau (my godfather) went out of fashion with the
+sans-culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer designation.  Now I have
+told you all."
+
+"What is the mother's maiden name?"
+
+"Her maiden name was Clavering; she was married under that of Dalibard,
+her first husband."
+
+"And," said Grabman, looking over the notes in the paper given to him,
+"it is at Liverpool that the husband died, and whence the child was sent
+away?"
+
+"It is so; to Liverpool you will go first. I tell you fairly, the task is
+difficult, for hitherto it has foiled me.  I knew but one man who,
+without flattery, could succeed, and therefore I spared no pains to find
+out Nicholas Grabman.  You have the true ferret's faculty; you, too, are
+a lawyer, and snuff evidence in every breath.  Find us a son,--a legal
+son,--a son to be shown in a court of law, and the moment he steps into
+the lands and the Hall of Laughton, you have five thousand pounds."
+
+"Can I have a bond to that effect?"
+
+"My bond, I fear, is worth no more than my word.  Trust to the last; if I
+break it, you know enough of my secrets to hang me!"
+
+"Don't talk of hanging; I hate that subject.  But stop.  If found, does
+this son succeed?  Did this Mr. Vernon leave no heir; this other sister
+continue single, or prove barren?"
+
+"Oh, true!  He, Mr. Vernon, who by will took the name of St. John, he
+left issue; but only one son still survives, a minor and unmarried.  The
+sister, too, left a daughter; both are poor, sickly creatures,--their
+lives not worth a straw.  Never mind them.  You find Vincent Braddell,
+and he will not be long out of his property, nor you out of your 5,000
+pounds!  You see, under these circumstances a bond might become dangerous
+evidence!"
+
+Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle,--a laugh like the laugh
+of a superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards.
+He chuckled, and his hair bristled.  But after a pause, in which he
+seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are
+a strange man, Jason; you love your joke.  I have nothing to do except to
+find out this ultimate remainderman; mind that!"
+
+"Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labour."
+
+"The search will be expensive."
+
+"There is oil for your wheels," answered Jason, putting a note-book into
+his confidant's hands.  "But mind you waste it not.  No tricks, no false
+play, with me; you know Jason, or, if you like the name better, you know
+the Rattlesnake!"
+
+"I will account for every penny," said Grabman, eagerly, and clasping his
+hands, while his pale face grew livid.
+
+"I do not doubt it, my quill-driver.  Look sharp, start to-morrow.  Get
+thyself decent clothes, be sober, cleanly, and respectable.  Act as a man
+who sees before him 5,000 pounds.  And now, light me downstairs."
+
+With the candle in his hand, Grabman stole down the rugged steps even
+more timorously than Beck had ascended them, and put his finger to his
+mouth as they came in the dread vicinity of No. 7.  But Jason, or rather
+Gabriel Varney, with that fearless, reckless bravado of temper which,
+while causing half his guilt, threw at times a false glitter over its
+baseness, piqued by the cowardice of his comrade, gave a lusty kick at
+the closed door, and shouted out: "Old grave-stealer, come out, and let
+me finish your picture.  Out, out! I say, out!" Grabman left the candle
+on the steps, and made but three bounds to his own room.
+
+At the third shout of his disturber the resurrection-man threw open his
+door violently and appeared at the gap, the upward flare of the candle
+showing the deep lines ploughed in his hideous face, and the immense
+strength of his gigantic trunk and limbs.  Slight, fair, and delicate as
+he was, Varney eyed him deliberately, and trembled not.
+
+"What do you want with me?" said the terrible voice, tremulous with rage.
+
+"Only to finish your portrait as Pluto.  He was the god of Hell, you
+know."
+
+The next moment the vast hand of the ogre hung like a great cloud over
+Gabriel Varney.  This last, ever on his guard, sprang aside, and the
+light gleamed on the steel of a pistol.  "Hands off! Or--"
+
+The click of the pistol-cock finished the sentence.  The ruffian halted.
+A glare of disappointed fury gave a momentary lustre to his dull eyes.
+"P'r'aps I shall meet you again one o' these days, or nights, and I shall
+know ye in ten thousand."
+
+"Nothing like a bird in the hand, Master Grave-stealer.  Where can we
+ever meet again?"
+
+"P'r'aps in the fields, p'r'aps on the road, p'r'aps at the Old Bailey,
+p'r'aps at the gallows, p'r'aps in the convict-ship.  I knows what that
+is!  I was chained night and day once to a chap jist like you.  Didn't I
+break his spurit; didn't I spile his sleep!  Ho, ho! you looks a bit less
+varmently howdacious now, my flash cove!"
+
+Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker beat of the
+heart before.  But the image presented to his irritable fancy (always
+prone to brood over terrors),--the image of that companion chained to him
+night and day,--suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before him
+palpably like the Oulos Oneiros,--the Evil Dream of the Greeks.
+
+He breathed loud.  The body-stealer's stupid sense saw that he had
+produced the usual effect of terror, which gratified his brutal self-
+esteem; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to the door, followed by
+Varney's appalled and staring eye, and closed it with such violence that
+the candle was extinguished.
+
+Varney, not daring,--yes, literally not daring,--to call aloud to Grabman
+for another light, crept down the dark stairs with hurried, ghostlike
+steps; and after groping at the door-handle with one hand, while the
+other grasped his pistol with a strain of horror, he succeeded at last in
+winning access to the street, and stood a moment to collect himself in
+the open air,--the damps upon his forehead, and his limbs trembling like
+one who has escaped by a hairbreadth the crash of a falling house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS.
+
+That Mr. Grabman slept calmly that night is probable enough, for his gin-
+bottle was empty the next morning; and it was with eyes more than usually
+heavy that he dozily followed the movements of Beck, who, according to
+custom, opened the shutters of the little den adjoining his sitting-room,
+brushed his clothes, made his fire, set on the kettle to boil, and laid
+his breakfast things, preparatory to his own departure to the duties of
+the day.  Stretching himself, however, and shaking off slumber, as the
+remembrance of the enterprise he had undertaken glanced pleasantly across
+him, Grabman sat up in his bed and said, in a voice that, if not maudlin,
+was affectionate, and if not affectionate, was maudlin,--
+
+"Beck, you are a good fellow.  You have faults, you are human,--humanism
+est errare; which means that you some times scorch my muffins.  But, take
+you all in all, you are a kind creature.  Beck, I am going into the
+country for some days.  I shall leave my key in the hole in the wall,--
+you know; take care of it when you come in.  You were out late last
+night, my poor fellow.  Very wrong!  Look well to yourself, or who knows?
+You may be clutched by that blackguard resurrection-man, No. 7.  Well,
+well, to think of that Jason's foolhardiness!  But he's the worse devil
+of the two.  Eh! what was I saying?  And always give a look into my room
+every night before you go to roost. The place swarms with cracksmen, and
+one can't be too cautious.  Lucky dog, you, to have nothing to be robbed
+of!"
+
+Beck winced at that last remark.  Grabman did not seem to notice his
+confusion, and proceeded, as he put on his stockings: "And, Beck, you are
+a good fellow, and have served me faithfully; when I come back, I will
+bring you something handsome,--a backey-box or--who knows?--a beautiful
+silver watch.  Meanwhile, I think--let me see--yes, I can give you this
+elegant pair of small-clothes.  Put out my best,--the black ones.  And
+now, Beck, I'll not keep you any longer."
+
+The poor sweep, with many pulls at his forelock, acknowledged the
+munificent donation; and having finished all his preparations, hastened
+first to his room, to examine at leisure, and with great admiration, the
+drab small-clothes.  "Room," indeed, we can scarcely style the wretched
+enclosure which Beck called his own.  It was at the top of the house,
+under the roof, and hot--oh, so hot--in the summer!  It had one small
+begrimed window, through which the light of heaven never came, for the
+parapet, beneath which ran the choked gutter, prevented that; but the
+rain and the wind came in.  So sometimes, through four glassless frames,
+came a fugitive tom-cat.  As for the rats, they held the place as their
+own.  Accustomed to Beck, they cared nothing for him.
+
+They were the Mayors of that Palace; he only le roi faineant.  They ran
+over his bed at night; he often felt them on his face, and was convinced
+they would have eaten him, if there had been anything worth eating upon
+his bones; still, perhaps out of precaution rather than charity, he
+generally left them a potato or two, or a crust of bread, to take off the
+edge of their appetites.  But Beck was far better off than most who
+occupied the various settlements in that Alsatia,--he had his room to
+himself.  That was necessary to his sole luxury,--the inspection of his
+treasury, the safety of his mattress; for it he paid, without grumbling,
+what he thought was a very high rent.  To this hole in the roof there was
+no lock,--for a very good reason, there was no door to it.  You went up a
+ladder, as you would go into a loft.  Now, it had often been matter of
+much intense cogitation to Beck whether or not he should have a door to
+his chamber; and the result of the cogitation was invariably the same,--
+he dared not!  What should he want with a door,--a door with a lock to
+it?  For one followed as a consequence to the other.  Such a novel piece
+of grandeur would be an ostentatious advertisement that he had something
+to guard.  He could have no pretence for it on the ground that he was
+intruded on by neighbours; no step but his own was ever caught by him
+ascending that ladder; it led to no other room.  All the offices required
+for the lodgment he performed himself.  His supposed poverty was a better
+safeguard than doors of iron.  Besides this, a door, if dangerous, would
+be superfluous; the moment it was suspected that Beck had something worth
+guarding, that moment all the picklocks and skeleton keys in the
+neighbourhood would be in a jingle.  And a cracksman of high repute
+lodged already on the ground-floor.  So Beck's treasure, like the bird's
+nest, was deposited as much out of sight as his instinct could contrive;
+and the locks and bolts of civilized men were equally dispensed with by
+bird and Beck.
+
+On a rusty nail the sweep suspended the drab small-clothes, stroked them
+down lovingly, and murmured, "They be 's too good for I; I should like to
+pop 'em!  But vould n't that be a shame?  Beck, be n't you be a
+hungrateful beast to go for to think of nothin' but the tin, ven your
+'art ought to varm with hemotion?  I vill vear 'em ven I vaits on him.
+Ven he sees his own smalls bringing in the muffins, he will say, 'Beck,
+you becomes 'em!'"
+
+Fraught with this noble resolution, the sweep caught up his broom, crept
+down the ladder, and with a furtive glance at the door of the room in
+which the cracksman lived, let himself out and shambled his way to his
+crossing.  Grabman, in the mean while, dressed himself with more care
+than usual, shaved his beard from a four days' crop, and while seated at
+his breakfast, read attentively over the notes which Varney had left to
+him, pausing at times to make his own pencil memoranda.  He then packed
+up such few articles as so moderate a worshipper of the Graces might
+require, deposited them in an old blue brief-bag, and this done, he
+opened his door, and creeping to the threshold, listened carefully.
+Below, a few sounds might be heard,--here, the wail of a child; there,
+the shrill scold of a woman in that accent above all others adapted to
+scold,--the Irish.  Farther down still, the deep bass oath of the
+choleric resurrection-man; but above, all was silent.  Only one floor
+intervened between Grabman's apartment and the ladder that led to Beck's
+loft.  And the inmates of that room gave no sound of life.  Grabman took
+courage, and shuffling off his shoes, ascended the stairs; he passed the
+closed door of the room above; he seized the ladder with a shaking hand;
+he mounted, step after step; he stood in Beck's room.
+
+Now, O Nicholas Grabman! some moralists may be harsh enough to condemn
+thee for what thou art doing,--kneeling yonder in the dim light, by that
+curtainless pallet, with greedy fingers feeling here and there, and a
+placid, self-hugging smile upon thy pale lips.  That poor vagabond whom
+thou art about to despoil has served thee well and faithfully, has borne
+with thine ill-humours, thy sarcasms, thy swearings, thy kicks, and
+buffets; often, when in the bestial sleep of drunkenness he has found
+thee stretched helpless on thy floor, with a kindly hand he has moved
+away the sharp fender, too near that knavish head, now bent on his ruin,
+or closed the open window, lest the keen air, that thy breath tainted,
+should visit thee with rheum and fever.  Small has been his guerdon for
+uncomplaining sacrifice of the few hours spared to this weary drudge from
+his daily toil,--small, but gratefully received.  And if Beck had been
+taught to pray, he would have prayed for thee as for a good man, O
+miserable sinner!  And thou art going now, Nicholas Grabman, upon an
+enterprise which promises thee large gains, and thy purse is filled; and
+thou wantest nothing for thy wants or thy swinish luxuries.  Why should
+those shaking fingers itch for the poor beggar-man's hoards?
+
+But hadst thou been bound on an errand that would have given thee a
+million, thou wouldst not have left unrifled that secret store which thy
+prying eye had discovered, and thy hungry heart had coveted.  No; since
+one night,--fatal, alas! to the owner of loft and treasure, when, needing
+Beck for some service, and fearing to call aloud (for the resurrection-
+man in the floor below thee, whose oaths even now ascend to thine ear,
+sleeps ill, and has threatened to make thee mute forever if thou
+disturbest him in the few nights in which his dismal calling suffers him
+to sleep at all), thou didst creep up the ladder, and didst see the
+unconscious miser at his nightly work, and after the sight didst steal
+down again, smiling,--no; since that night, no schoolboy ever more
+rootedly and ruthlessly set his mind upon nest of linnet than thine was
+set upon the stores in Beck's mattress.
+
+And yet why, O lawyer, should rigid moralists blame thee more than such
+of thy tribe as live, honoured and respectable, upon the frail and the
+poor?  Who among them ever left loft or mattress while a rap could be
+wrung from either?  Matters it to Astraea whether the spoliation be made
+thus nakedly and briefly, or by all the acknowledged forms in which, item
+on item, six-and-eightpence on six-and-eightpence, the inexorable hand
+closes at length on the last farthing of duped despair?  Not--Heaven
+forbid!--that we make thee, foul Nicholas Grabman, a type for all the
+class called attorneys-at-law!  Noble hearts, liberal minds, are there
+amongst that brotherhood, we know and have experienced; but a type art
+thou of those whom want and error and need have proved--alas! too well--
+the lawyers of the poor.  And even while we write, and even while ye
+read, many a Grabman steals from helpless toil the savings of a life.
+
+Ye poor hoards,--darling delights of your otherwise joyless owner,--how
+easily has his very fondness made ye the prey of the spoiler!  How
+gleefully, when the pence swelled into a shilling, have they been
+exchanged into the new bright piece of silver, the newest and brightest
+that could be got; then the shillings into crowns, then the crowns into
+gold,--got slyly and at a distance, and contemplated with what rapture;
+so that at last the total lay manageable and light in its radiant
+compass.  And what a total! what a surprise to Grabman!  Had it been but
+a sixpence, he would have taken it; but to grasp sovereigns by the
+handful, it was too much for him; and as he rose, he positively laughed,
+from a sense of fun.
+
+But amongst his booty there was found one thing that specially moved his
+mirth: it was a child's coral, with its little bells.  Who could have
+given Beck such a bauble, or how Beck could have refrained from turning
+it into money, would have been a fit matter for speculation.  But it was
+not that at which Grabman chuckled; he laughed, first because it was an
+emblem of the utter childishness and folly of the creature he was leaving
+penniless, and secondly, because it furnished his ready wit with a
+capital contrivance to shift Beck's indignation from his own shoulders to
+a party more liable to suspicion.  He left the coral on the floor near
+the bed, stole down the ladder, reached his own room, took up his brief-
+bag, locked his door, slipped the key in the rat-hole, where the trusty,
+plundered Beck alone could find it, and went boldly downstairs; passing
+successively the doors within which still stormed the resurrection-man,
+still wailed the child, still shrieked the Irish shrew, he paused at the
+ground-floor occupied by Bill the cracksman and his long-fingered,
+slender, quick-eyed imps, trained already to pass through broken window-
+panes, on their precocious progress to the hulks.
+
+The door was open, and gave a pleasant sight of the worthy family within.
+Bill himself, a stout-looking fellow with a florid, jolly countenance,
+and a pipe in his mouth, was sitting at his window, with his brawny legs
+lolling on a table covered with the remains of a very tolerable
+breakfast. Four small Bills were employed in certain sports which, no
+doubt, according to the fashionable mode of education, instilled useful
+lessons under the artful guise of playful amusement.  Against the wall,
+at one corner of the room, was affixed a row of bells, from which were
+suspended exceedingly tempting apples by slender wires.  Two of the boys
+were engaged in the innocent entertainment of extricating the apples
+without occasioning any alarm from the bells; a third was amusing himself
+at a table, covered with mock rings and trinkets, in a way that seemed
+really surprising; with the end of a finger, dipped probably in some
+glutinous matter, he just touched one of the gewgaws, and lo, it
+vanished!--vanished so magically that the quickest eye could scarcely
+trace whither; sometimes up a cuff, sometimes into a shoe,--here, there,
+anywhere, except back again upon the table.  The fourth, an urchin
+apparently about five years old,--he might be much younger, judging from
+his stunted size; somewhat older, judging from the vicious acuteness of
+his face,--on the floor under his father's chair, was diving his little
+hand into the paternal pockets in search for a marble sportively hidden
+in those capacious recesses.  On the rising geniuses around him Bill the
+cracksman looked, and his father's heart was proud.  Pausing at the
+threshold, Grabman looked in and said cheerfully, "Good-day to you; good-
+day to you all, my little dears."
+
+"Ah, Grabman," said Bill, rising, and making a bow,--for Bill valued
+himself much on his politeness,--"come to blow a cloud, eh?  Bob," this
+to the eldest born, "manners, sir; wipe your nose, and set a chair for
+the gent."
+
+"Many thanks to you, Bill, but I can't stay now; I have a long journey to
+take.  But, bless my soul, how stupid I am!  I have forgotten my clothes-
+brush.  I knew there was some thing on my mind all the way I was coming
+downstairs.  I was saying, 'Grabman, there is something forgotten! '"
+
+"I know what that 'ere feelin' is," said Bill, thoughtfully; "I had it
+myself the night afore last; and sure enough, when I got to the ----.
+But that's neither here nor there.  Bob, run upstairs and fetch down Mr.
+Grabman's clothes-brush.  'T is the least you can do for a gent who saved
+your father from the fate of them 'ere innocent apples.  Your fist,
+Grabman.  I have a heart in my buzzom; cut me open, and you will find
+there `Halibi, and Grabman!'  Give Bob your key."
+
+"The brush is not in my room," answered Grabman; "it is at the top of the
+house, up the ladder, in Beck's loft,--Beck, the sweeper.  The stupid dog
+always keeps it there, and forgot to give it me.  Sorry to occasion my
+friend Bob so much trouble."
+
+"Bob has a soul above trouble; his father's heart beats in his buzzom.
+Bob, track the dancers.  Up like a lark, and down like a dump."
+
+Bob grinned, made a mow at Mr. Grabman, and scampered up the stairs.
+
+"You never attends our free-and-easy," said Bill; "but we toasts you with
+three times three, and up standing.  "'T is a hungrateful world!  But
+some men has a heart; and to those who has a heart, Grabman is a trump!"
+
+"I am sure, whenever I can do you a service, you may reckon on me.
+Meanwhile, if you could get that cursed bullying fellow who lives under
+me to be a little more civil, you would oblige me."
+
+"Under you?  No. 7?  No. 7, is it?  Grabman, h-am I a man?  Is this a h-
+arm, and this a bunch of fives?  I dares do all that does become a man;
+but No. 7 is a body-snatcher!  No. 7 has bullied me, and I bore it!  No.
+7 might whop me, and this h-arm would let him whop!  He lives with graves
+and churchyards and stiff 'uns, that damnable No. 7!  Ask some'at else,
+Grabman.  I dares not touch No. 7 any more than the ghostesses."
+
+Grabman sneered as he saw that Bill, stout rogue as he was, turned pale
+while he spoke; but at that moment Bob reappeared with the clothes-brush,
+which the ex-attorney thrust into his pocket, and shaking Bill by the
+hand, and patting Bob on the head, he set out on his journey.
+
+Bill reseated himself, muttering, "Bully a body-snatcher!  Drot that
+Grabman, does he want to get rid of poor Bill?"
+
+Meanwhile Bob exhibited slyly, to his second brother, the sight of Beck's
+stolen coral.  The children took care not to show it to their father.
+They were already inspired by the laudable ambition to set up in business
+on their own account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+PERCIVAL VISITS LUCRETIA.
+
+Having once ascertained the house in which Helen lived, it was no
+difficult matter for St. John to learn the name of the guardian whom Beck
+had supposed to be her mother.  No common delight mingled with Percival's
+amaze when in that name he recognized one borne by his own kinswoman.
+Very little indeed of the family history was known to him.  Neither his
+father nor his mother ever willingly conversed of the fallen heiress,--it
+was a subject which the children had felt to be proscribed; but in the
+neighbourhood, Percival had of course heard some mention of Lucretia as
+the haughty and accomplished Miss Clavering, who had, to the astonishment
+of all, stooped to a mesalliance with her uncle's French librarian.  That
+her loss of the St. John property, the succession of Percival's father,
+were unexpected by the villagers and squires around, and perhaps set down
+to the caprice of Sir Miles, or to an intellect impaired by apoplectic
+attacks, it was not likely that he should have heard.  The rich have the
+polish of their education, and the poor that instinctive tact, so
+wonderful amongst the agricultural peasantry, to prevent such unmannerly
+disclosures or unwelcome hints; and both by rich and poor, the Vernon St.
+Johns were too popular and respected for wanton allusions to subjects
+calculated to pain them.  All, therefore, that Percival knew of his
+relation was that she had resided from infancy with Sir Miles; that after
+their uncle's death she had married an inferior in rank, of the name of
+Dalibard, and settled abroad; that she was a person of peculiar manners,
+and, he had heard somewhere, of rare gifts.  He had been unable to learn
+the name of the young lady staying with Madame Dalibard; he had learned
+only that she went by some other name, and was not the daughter of the
+lady who rented the house.  Certainly it was possible that this last
+might not be his kinswoman, after all.  The name, though strange to
+English ears, and not common in France, was no sufficient warrant for
+Percival's high spirits at the thought that he had now won legitimate and
+regular access to the house; still, it allowed him to call, it furnished
+a fair excuse for a visit.
+
+How long he was at his toilet that day, poor boy!  How sedulously, with
+comb and brush, he sought to smooth into straight precision that
+luxuriant labyrinth of jetty curls, which had never cost him a thought
+before!  Gil Blas says that the toilet is a pleasure to the young, though
+a labour to the old; Percival St. John's toilet was no pleasure to him
+that anxious morning.
+
+At last he tore himself, dissatisfied and desperate, from the glass,
+caught his hat and his whip, threw himself on his horse, and rode, at
+first very fast, and at last very slowly, to the old, decayed, shabby,
+neglected house that lay hid, like the poverty of fallen pride, amidst
+the trim villas and smart cottages of fair and flourishing Brompton.
+
+The same servant who had opened the gate to Ardworth appeared to his
+summons, and after eying him for some moments with a listless, stupid
+stare, said: "You'll be after some mistake!" and turned away.
+
+"Stop, stop!" cried Percival, trying to intrude himself through the gate;
+but the servant blocked up the entrance sturdily.  "It is no mistake at
+all, my good lady.  I have come to see Madame Dalibard, my--my relation!"
+
+"Your relation!" and again the woman stared at Percival with a look
+through the dull vacancy of which some distrust was dimly perceptible.
+"Bide a bit there, and give us your name."
+
+Percival gave his card to the servant with his sweetest and most
+persuasive smile.  She took it with one hand, and with the other turned
+the key in the gate, leaving Percival outside.  It was five minutes
+before she returned; and she then, with the same prim, smileless
+expression of countenance, opened the gate and motioned him to follow.
+
+The kind-hearted boy sighed as he cast a glance at the desolate and
+poverty-stricken appearance of the house, and thought within himself:
+"Ah, pray Heaven she may be my relation; and then I shall have the right
+to find her and that sweet girl a very different home!"  The old woman
+threw open the drawing-room door, and Percival was in the presence of his
+deadliest foe!  The armchair was turned towards the entrance, and from
+amidst the coverings that hid the form, the remarkable countenance of
+Madame Dalibard emerged, sharp and earnest, directly fronting the
+intruder.
+
+"So," she said slowly, and, as it were, devouring him with her keen,
+steadfast eyes,--"so you are Percival St. John!  Welcome!  I did not know
+that we should ever meet.  I have not sought you, you seek me!  Strange--
+yes, strange--that the young and the rich should seek the suffering and
+the poor!"
+
+Surprised and embarrassed by this singular greeting, Percival halted
+abruptly in the middle of the room; and there was something inexpressibly
+winning in his shy, yet graceful confusion.  It seemed, with silent
+eloquence, to apologize and to deprecate.  And when, in his silvery
+voice, scarcely yet tuned to the fulness of manhood, he said feelingly,
+"Forgive me, madam, but my mother is not in England," the excuse evinced
+such delicacy of idea, so exquisite a sense of high breeding, that the
+calm assurance of worldly ease could not have more attested the chivalry
+of the native gentleman.
+
+"I have nothing to forgive, Mr. St. John," said Lucretia, with a softened
+manner.  "Pardon me rather that my infirmities do not allow me to rise to
+receive you.  This seat,--here,--next to me.  You have a strong likeness
+to your father."
+
+Percival received this last remark as a compliment, and bowed.  Then, as
+he lifted his ingenuous brow, he took for the first time a steady view of
+his new-found relation.  The peculiarities of Lucretia's countenance in
+youth had naturally deepened with middle age.  The contour, always too
+sharp and pronounced, was now strong and bony as a man's; the line
+between the eyebrows was hollowed into a furrow.  The eye retained its
+old uneasy, sinister, sidelong glance, or at rare moments (as when
+Percival entered), its searching penetration and assured command; but the
+eyelids themselves, red and injected, as with grief or vigil, gave
+something haggard and wild, whether to glance or gaze.  Despite the
+paralysis of the frame, the face, though pale and thin, showed no bodily
+decay.  A vigour surpassing the strength of woman might still be seen in
+the play of the bold muscles, the firmness of the contracted lips.  What
+physicians call "vitality," and trace at once (if experienced) on the
+physiognomy as the prognostic of long life, undulated restlessly in every
+aspect of the face, every movement of those thin, nervous hands, which,
+contrasting the rest of that motionless form, never seemed to be at rest.
+The teeth were still white and regular, as in youth; and when they shone
+out in speaking, gave a strange, unnatural freshness to a face otherwise
+so worn.
+
+As Percival gazed, and, while gazing, saw those wandering eyes bent down,
+and yet felt they watched him, a thrill almost of fear shot through his
+heart.  Nevertheless, so much more impressionable was he to charitable
+and trustful than to suspicious and timid emotions that when Madame
+Dalibard, suddenly looking up and shaking her head gently, said, "You see
+but a sad wreck, young kinsman," all those instincts, which Nature itself
+seemed to dictate for self-preservation, vanished into heavenly
+tenderness and pity.
+
+"Ah!" he said, rising, and pressing one of those deadly hands in both his
+own, while tears rose to his eyes,--"Ah! since you call me kinsman, I
+have all a kinsman's privileges. You must have the best advice, the most
+skilful surgeons.  Oh, you will recover; you must not despond."
+
+Lucretia's lips moved uneasily.  This kindness took her by surprise.  She
+turned desperately away from the human gleam that shot across the
+sevenfold gloom of her soul.  "Do not think of me," she said, with a
+forced smile; "it is my peculiarity not to like allusion to myself,
+though this time I provoked it.  Speak to me of the old cedar-trees at
+Laughton,--do they stand still?  You are the master of Laughton now!  It
+is a noble heritage!"
+
+Then St. John, thinking to please her, talked of the old manor-house,
+described the improvements made by his father, spoke gayly of those which
+he himself contemplated; and as he ran on, Lucretia's brow, a moment
+ruffled, grew smooth and smoother, and the gloom settled back upon her
+soul.
+
+All at once she interrupted him.  "How did you discover me?  Was it
+through Mr. Varney?  I bade him not mention me: yet how else could you
+learn?"  As she spoke, there was an anxious trouble in her tone, which
+increased while she observed that St. John looked confused.
+
+"Why," he began hesitatingly, and brushing his hat with his hand, "why--
+perhaps you may have heard from the--that is--I think there is a young
+----.  Ah, it is you, it is you!  I see you once again!"  And springing
+up, he was at the side of Helen, who at that instant had entered the
+room, and now, her eyes downcast, her cheeks blushing, her breast gently
+heaving, heard, but answered not that passionate burst of joy.
+
+Startled, Madame Dalibard (her hands firmly grasping the sides of her
+chair) contemplated the two.  She had heard nothing, guessed nothing of
+their former meeting.  All that had passed before between them was
+unknown to her.  Yet there was evidence unmistakable, conclusive: the son
+of her despoiler loved the daughter of her rival; and--if the virgin
+heart speaks by the outward sign--those downcast eyes, those blushing
+cheeks, that heaving breast, told that he did not love in vain!
+
+Before her lurid and murderous gaze, as if to defy her, the two
+inheritors of a revenge unglutted by the grave stood, united mysteriously
+together.  Up, from the vast ocean of her hate, rose that poor isle of
+love; there, unconscious of the horror around them, the victims found
+their footing!  How beautiful at that hour their youth; their very
+ignorance of their own emotions; their innocent gladness; their sweet
+trouble!  The fell gazer drew a long breath of fiendlike complacency and
+glee, and her hands opened wide, and then slowly closed, as if she felt
+them in her grasp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS.
+
+And from that day Percival had his privileged entry into Madame
+Dalibard's house.  The little narrative of the circumstances connected
+with his first meeting with Helen, partly drawn from Percival, partly
+afterwards from Helen (with blushing and faltered excuses from the latter
+for not having mentioned before an incident that might, perhaps
+needlessly, vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health), was
+received by Lucretia with rare graciousness.  The connection, not only
+between herself and Percival, but between Percival and Helen, was allowed
+and even dwelt upon by Madame Dalibard as a natural reason for permitting
+the artless intimacy which immediately sprang up between these young
+persons.  She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain for hours, to
+share in their simple meals, to wander alone with Helen in the garden,
+assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, and sit by her in the old ivy-
+grown arbour when their work was done.  She affected to look upon them
+both as children, and to leave to them that happy familiarity which
+childhood only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of maturer
+years seems at once coarse and cold.
+
+As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities in their
+characters came out, and nothing more delightful than the harmony into
+which even the contrasts blended ever invited the guardian angel to pause
+and smile.  As flowers in some trained parterre relieve each other, now
+softening, now heightening, each several hue, till all unite in one
+concord of interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natures, brought
+together, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their affluences
+into one wealth of innocence and sweetness.  Both had a native buoyancy
+and cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trustfulness in others, a singular
+candour and freshness of mind and feeling.  But beneath the gayety of
+Helen there was a soft and holy under-stream of thoughtful melancholy, a
+high and religious sentiment, that vibrated more exquisitely to the
+subtle mysteries of creation, the solemn unison between the bright world
+without and the grave destinies of that world within (which is an
+imperishable soul), than the lighter and more vivid youthfulness of
+Percival had yet conceived.  In him lay the germs of the active mortal
+who might win distinction in the bold career we run upon the surface of
+the earth.  In her there was that finer and more spiritual essence which
+lifts the poet to the golden atmosphere of dreams, and reveals in
+glimpses to the saint the choral Populace of Heaven.  We do not say that
+Helen would ever have found the utterance of the poet, that her reveries,
+undefined and unanalyzed, could have taken the sharp, clear form of
+words; for to the poet practically developed and made manifest to the
+world, many other gifts besides the mere poetic sense are needed,--stern
+study, and logical generalization of scattered truths, and patient
+observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that comes from
+sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual, embracing
+the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime.  But despite all that has
+been said in disparagement or disbelief of "mute, inglorious Miltons," we
+maintain that there are natures in which the divinest element of poetry
+exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping from bodily form and
+evaporating from the coarser vessels into which the poet, so called, must
+pour the ethereal fluid.  There is a certain virtue within us,
+comprehending our subtlest and noblest emotions, which is poetry while
+untold, and grows pale and poor in proportion as we strain it into poems.
+Nay, it may be said of this airy property of our inmost being that, more
+or less, it departs from us according as we give it forth into the world,
+even, as only by the loss of its particles, the rose wastes its perfume
+on the air.  So this more spiritual sensibility dwelt in Helen as the
+latent mesmerism in water, as the invisible fairy in an enchanted ring.
+It was an essence or divinity, shrined and shrouded in herself, which
+gave her more intimate and vital union with all the influences of the
+universe, a companion to her loneliness, an angel hymning low to her own
+listening soul.  This made her enjoyment of Nature, in its merest
+trifles, exquisite and profound; this gave to her tenderness of heart all
+the delicious and sportive variety love borrows from imagination; this
+lifted her piety above the mere forms of conventional religion, and
+breathed into her prayers the ecstasy of the saint.
+
+But Helen was not the less filled with the sweet humanities of her age
+and sex; her very gravity was tinged with rosy light, as a western cloud
+with the sun.  She had sportiveness and caprice, and even whim, as the
+butterfly, though the emblem of the soul, still flutters wantonly over
+every wild-flower, and expands its glowing wings on the sides of the
+beaten road.  And with a sense of weakness in the common world (growing
+out of her very strength in nobler atmospheres), she leaned the more
+trustfully on the strong arm of her young adorer, not fancying that the
+difference between them arose from superiority in her; but rather as a
+bird, once tamed, flies at the sight of the hawk to the breast of its
+owner, so from each airy flight into the loftier heaven, let but the
+thought of danger daunt her wing, and, as in a more powerful nature, she
+took refuge on that fostering heart.
+
+The love between these children--for so, if not literally in years, in
+their newness to all that steals the freshness and the dew from maturer
+life they may be rightly called--was such as befitted those whose souls
+have not forfeited the Eden.  It was more like the love of fairies than
+of human beings.  They showed it to each other innocently and frankly;
+yet of love as we of the grosser creation call it, with its impatient
+pains and burning hopes, they never spoke nor dreamed.  It was an
+unutterable, ecstatic fondness, a clinging to each other in thought,
+desire, and heart, a joy more than mortal in each other's presence; yet,
+in parting, not that idle and empty sorrow which unfits the weak for the
+homelier demands on time and life, and this because of the wondrous trust
+in themselves and in the future, which made a main part of their
+credulous, happy natures.  Neither felt fear nor jealousy, or if jealousy
+came, it was the pretty, childlike jealousies which have no sting,--of
+the bird, if Helen listened to its note too long; of the flower, if
+Percival left Helen's side too quickly to tie up its drooping petals or
+refresh its dusty leaves.  Close by the stir of the great city, with all
+its fret and chafe and storm of life, in the desolate garden of that
+sombre house, and under the withering eyes of relentless Crime, revived
+the Arcady of old,--the scene vocal to the reeds of idyllist and
+shepherd; and in the midst of the iron Tragedy, harmlessly and
+unconsciously arose the strain of the Pastoral Music.
+
+It would be a vain effort to describe the state of Lucretia's mind while
+she watched the progress of the affection she had favoured, and gazed on
+the spectacle of the fearless happiness she had promoted.  The image of a
+felicity at once so great and so holy wore to her gloomy sight the aspect
+of a mocking Fury.  It rose in contrast to her own ghastly and crime-
+stained life; it did not upbraid her conscience with guilt so loudly as
+it scoffed at her intellect for folly.  These children, playing on the
+verge of life, how much more of life's true secret did they already know
+than she, with all her vast native powers and wasted realms of blackened
+and charred experience!  For what had she studied, and schemed, and
+calculated, and toiled, and sinned?  As a conqueror stricken unto death
+would render up all the regions vanquished by his sword for one drop of
+water to his burning lips, how gladly would she have given all the
+knowledge bought with blood and fire, to feel one moment as those
+children felt!  Then, from out her silent and grim despair, stood forth,
+fierce and prominent, the great fiend, Revenge.
+
+By a monomania not uncommon to those who have made self the centre of
+being, Lucretia referred to her own sullen history of wrong and passion
+all that bore analogy to it, however distant.  She had never been
+enabled, without an intolerable pang of hate and envy, to contemplate
+courtship and love in others.  From the rudest shape to the most refined,
+that master-passion in the existence, at least of woman,--reminding her
+of her own brief episode of human tenderness and devotion,--opened every
+wound and wrung every fibre of a heart that, while crime had indurated it
+to most emotions, memory still left morbidly sensitive to one.  But if
+tortured by the sight of love in those who had had no connection with her
+fate, who stood apart from her lurid orbit and were gazed upon only afar
+(as a lost soul, from the abyss, sees the gleam of angels' wings within
+some planet it never has explored), how ineffably more fierce and
+intolerable was the wrath that seized her when, in her haunted
+imagination, she saw all Susan's rapture at the vows of Mainwaring
+mantling in Helen's face!  All that might have disarmed a heart as hard,
+but less diseased, less preoccupied by revenge, only irritated more the
+consuming hate of that inexorable spirit.  Helen's seraphic purity, her
+exquisite, overflowing kindness, ever forgetting self, her airy
+cheerfulness, even her very moods of melancholy, calm and seemingly
+causeless as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing,
+preternatural susceptibility which is formed by the consciousness of
+infamy, the dreary egotism of one cut off from the charities of the
+world, with whom all mirth is sardonic convulsion, all sadness rayless
+and unresigned despair.
+
+Of the two, Percival inspired her with feelings the most akin to
+humanity.  For him, despite her bitter memories of his father, she felt
+something of compassion, and shrank from the touch of his frank hand in
+remorse.  She had often need to whisper to herself that his life was an
+obstacle to the heritage of the son of whom, as we have seen, she was in
+search, and whom, indeed, she believed she had already found in John
+Ardworth; that it was not in wrath and in vengeance that this victim was
+to be swept into the grave, but as an indispensable sacrifice to a
+cherished object, a determined policy.  As, in the studies of her youth,
+she had adopted the Machiavelism of ancient State-craft as a rule
+admissible in private life, so she seemed scarcely to admit as a crime
+that which was but the removal of a barrier between her aim and her end.
+Before she had become personally acquainted with Percival she had
+rejected all occasion to know him.  She had suffered Varney to call upon
+him as the old protege of Sir Miles, and to wind into his intimacy,
+meaning to leave to her accomplice, when the hour should arrive, the
+dread task of destruction.  This not from cowardice, for Gabriel had once
+rightly described her when he said that if she lived with shadows she
+could quell them, but simply because, more intellectually unsparing than
+constitutionally cruel (save where the old vindictive memories thoroughly
+unsexed her), this was a victim whose pangs she desired not to witness,
+over whose fate it was no luxury to gloat and revel.  She wished not to
+see nor to know him living, only to learn that he was no more, and that
+Helen alone stood between Laughton and her son.  Now that he had himself,
+as if with predestined feet, crossed her threshold, that he, like Helen,
+had delivered himself into her toils, the hideous guilt, before removed
+from her hands, became haunting, fronted her face to face, and filled her
+with a superstitious awe.
+
+Meanwhile, her outward manner to both her meditated victims, if moody and
+fitful at times, was not such as would have provoked suspicion even in
+less credulous hearts.  From the first entry of Helen under her roof she
+had been formal and measured in her welcome,--kept her, as it were,
+aloof, and affected no prodigal superfluity of dissimulation; but she had
+never been positively harsh or unkind in word or in deed, and had coldly
+excused herself for the repulsiveness of her manner.
+
+"I am irritable," she said, "from long suffering, I am unsocial from
+habitual solitude; do not expect from me the fondness and warmth that
+should belong to our relationship.  Do not harass yourself with vain
+solicitude for one whom all seeming attention but reminds more painfully
+of infirmity, and who, even thus stricken down, would be independent of
+all cares not bought and paid for.  Be satisfied to live here in all
+reasonable liberty, to follow your own habits and caprices uncontrolled.
+Regard me but as a piece of necessary furniture.  You can never displease
+me but when you notice that I live and suffer."
+
+If Helen wept bitterly at these hard words when first spoken, it was not
+with anger that her loving heart was so thrown back upon herself.  On the
+contrary, she became inspired with a compassion so great that it took the
+character of reverence.  She regarded this very coldness as a mournful
+dignity.  She felt grateful that one who could thus dispense with, should
+yet have sought her.  She had heard her mother say that she had been
+under great obligations to Lucretia; and now, when she was forbidden to
+repay them even by a kiss on those weary eyelids, a daughter's hand to
+that sleepless pillow; when she saw that the barrier first imposed was
+irremovable, that no time diminished the distance her aunt set between
+them, that the least approach to the tenderness of service beyond the
+most casual offices really seemed but to fret those excitable nerves, and
+fever the hand that she ventured timorously to clasp,--she retreated into
+herself with a sad amaze that increased her pity and heightened her
+respect.  To her, love seemed so necessary a thing in the helplessness of
+human life, even when blessed with health and youth, that this rejection
+of all love in one so bowed and crippled, struck her imagination as
+something sublime in its dreary grandeur and stoic pride of independence.
+She regarded it as of old a tender and pious nun would have regarded the
+asceticism of some sanctified recluse,--as Theresa (had she lived in the
+same age) might have regarded Saint Simeon Stylites existing aloft from
+human sympathy on the roofless summit of his column of stone; and with
+this feeling she sought to inspire Percival.  He had the heart to enter
+into her compassion, but not the imagination to sympathize with her
+reverence.  Even the repugnant awe that he had first conceived for Madame
+Dalibard, so bold was he by temperament, he had long since cast off; he
+recognized only the moroseness and petulance of an habitual invalid, and
+shook playfully his glossy curls when Helen, with her sweet seriousness,
+insisted on his recognizing more.
+
+To this house few, indeed, were the visitors admitted.  The Miverses,
+whom the benevolent officiousness of Mr. Fielden had originally sent
+thither to see their young kinswoman, now and then came to press Helen to
+join some party to the theatre or Vauxhall, or a picnic in Richmond Park;
+but when they found their overtures, which had at first been politely
+accepted by Madame Dalibard, were rejected, they gradually ceased their
+visits, wounded and indignant.
+
+Certain it was that Lucretia had at one time eagerly caught at their
+well-meant civilities to Helen,--now she as abruptly declined them.  Why?
+It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart.  It
+would have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no
+worse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her into
+such uncongenial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of the
+corrupt city,--to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared by
+those gallants ever on the watch for defenceless beauty; and to contrast
+with their elegance of mien and fatal flatteries the grossness of the
+companions selected for her, and the unloving discomfort of the home into
+which she had been thrown.  But now that St. John had appeared, that
+Helen's heart and fancy were steeled alike against more dangerous
+temptation, the object to be obtained from the pressing courtesy of Mrs.
+Mivers existed no more.  The vengeance flowed into other channels.
+
+The only other visitors at the house were John Ardworth and Gabriel
+Varney.
+
+Madame Dalibard watched vigilantly the countenance and manner of Ardworth
+when, after presenting him to Percival, she whispered: "I am glad you
+assured me as to your sentiments for Helen.  She had found there the
+lover you wished for her,--'gay and handsome as herself.'"
+
+And in the sudden paleness that overspread Ardworth's face, in his
+compressed lips and convulsive start, she read with unspeakable rage the
+untold secret of his heart, till the rage gave way to complacency at the
+thought that the last insult to her wrongs was spared her,--that her son
+(as son she believed he was) could not now, at least, be the successful
+suitor of her loathed sister's loathed child.  Her discovery, perhaps,
+confirmed her in her countenance to Percival's progressive wooing, and
+half reconciled her to the pangs it inflicted on herself.
+
+At the first introduction Ardworth had scarcely glanced at Percival.  He
+regarded him but as the sleek flutterer in the sunshine of fortune.  And
+for the idle, the gay, the fair, the well-dressed and wealthy, the sturdy
+workman of his own rough way felt something of the uncharitable disdain
+which the laborious have-nots too usually entertain for the prosperous
+haves.  But the moment the unwelcome intelligence of Madame Dalibard was
+conveyed to him, the smooth-faced boy swelled into dignity and
+importance.
+
+Yet it was not merely as a rival that that strong, manly heart, after the
+first natural agony, regarded Percival.  No, he looked upon him less with
+anger than with interest,--as the one in whom Helen's happiness was
+henceforth to be invested.  And to Madame Dalibard's astonishment,--for
+this nature was wholly new to her experience,--she saw him, even in that
+first interview, composing his rough face to smiles, smoothing his bluff,
+imperious accents into courtesy, listening patiently, watching benignly,
+and at last thrusting his large hand frankly forth, griping Percival's
+slender fingers in his own; and then, with an indistinct chuckle that
+seemed half laugh and half groan, as if he did not dare to trust himself
+further, he made his wonted unceremonious nod, and strode hurriedly from
+the room.
+
+But he came again and again, almost daily, for about a fortnight.
+Sometimes, without entering the house, he would join the young people in
+the garden, assist them with awkward hands in their playful work on the
+garden, or sit with them in the ivied bower; and warming more and more
+each time he came, talk at last with the cordial frankness of an elder
+brother.  There was no disguise in this; he began to love Percival,--what
+would seem more strange to the superficial, to admire him.  Genius has a
+quick perception of the moral qualities; genius, which, differing thus
+from mere talent, is more allied to the heart than to the head,
+sympathizes genially with goodness.  Ardworth respected that young,
+ingenuous, unpolluted mind; he himself felt better and purer in its
+atmosphere.  Much of the affection he cherished for Helen passed thus
+beautifully and nobly into his sentiments for the one whom Helen not
+unworthily preferred.  And they grew so fond of him,--as the young and
+gentle ever will grow fond of genius, however rough, once admitted to its
+companionship!
+
+Percival by this time had recalled to his mind where he had first seen
+that strong-featured, dark-browed countenance, and he gayly reminded
+Ardworth of his discourtesy, on the brow of the hill which commanded the
+view of London.  That reminiscence made his new friend writhe; for then,
+amidst all his ambitious visions of the future, he had seen Helen in the
+distance,--the reward of every labour, the fairest star in his horizon.
+But he strove stoutly against the regret of the illusion lost; the
+vivendi causae were left him still, and for the nymph that had glided
+from his clasp, he clung at least to the laurel that was left in her
+place.  In the folds of his robust fortitude Ardworth thus wrapped his
+secret.  Neither of his young playmates suspected it.  He would have
+disdained himself if he had so poisoned their pleasure.  That he suffered
+when alone, much and bitterly, is not to be denied; but in that masculine
+and complete being, Love took but its legitimate rank amidst the passions
+and cares of man.  It soured no existence, it broke no heart; the wind
+swept some blossoms from the bough, and tossed wildly the agitated
+branches from root to summit, but the trunk stood firm.
+
+In some of these visits to Madame Dalibard's, Ardworth renewed with her
+the more private conversation which had so unsettled his past convictions
+as to his birth, and so disturbed the calm, strong currents of his mind.
+He was chiefly anxious to learn what conjectures Madame Dalibard had
+formed as to his parentage, and what ground there was for belief that he
+was near in blood to herself, or that he was born to a station less
+dependent on continuous exertion; but on these points the dark sibyl
+preserved an obstinate silence.  She was satisfied with the hints she had
+already thrown out, and absolutely refused to say more till better
+authorized by the inquiries she had set on foot.  Artfully she turned
+from these topics of closer and more household interest to those on which
+she had previously insisted, connected with the general knowledge of
+mankind, and the complicated science of practical life.  To fire his
+genius, wing his energies, inflame his ambition above that slow,
+laborious drudgery to which he had linked the chances of his career, and
+which her fiery and rapid intellect was wholly unable to comprehend--save
+as a waste of life for uncertain and distant objects--became her task.
+And she saw with delight that Ardworth listened to her more assentingly
+than he had done at first. In truth, the pain shut within his heart, the
+conflict waged keenly between his reason and his passion, unfitted him
+for the time for mere mechanical employment, in which his genius could
+afford him no consolation.  Now, genius is given to man, not only to
+enlighten others, but to comfort as well as to elevate himself.  Thus, in
+all the sorrows of actual existence, the man is doubly inclined to turn
+to his genius for distraction.  Harassed in this world of action, he
+knocks at the gate of that world of idea or fancy which he is privileged
+to enter; he escapes from the clay to the spirit.  And rarely, till some
+great grief comes, does the man in whom the celestial fire is lodged know
+all the gift of which he is possessed.  At last Ardworth's visits ceased
+abruptly.  He shut himself up once more in his chambers; but the law
+books were laid aside.
+
+Varney, who generally contrived to call when Ardworth was not there,
+seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise of the garden; but
+he took occasion to ripen and cement his intimacy with Percival.
+Sometimes he walked or (if St. John had his cabriolet) drove home and
+dined with him, tete-a-tete, in Curzon Street; and as he made Helen his
+chief subject of conversation, Percival could not but esteem him amongst
+the most agreeable of men.  With Helen, when Percival was not there,
+Varney held some secret conferences,--secret even from Percival.  Two or
+three times, before the hour in which Percival was accustomed to come,
+they had been out together; and Helen's face looked more cheerful than
+usual on their return.  It was not surprising that Gabriel Varney, so
+displeasing to a man like Ardworth, should have won little less favour
+with Helen than with Percival; for, to say nothing of an ease and suavity
+of manner which stole into the confidence of those in whom to confide was
+a natural propensity, his various acquisitions and talents, imposing from
+the surface over which they spread, and the glitter which they made, had
+an inevitable effect upon a mind so susceptible as Helen's to admiration
+for art and respect for knowledge.  But what chiefly conciliated her to
+Varney, whom she regarded, moreover, as her aunt's most intimate friend,
+was that she was persuaded he was unhappy, and wronged by the world of
+fortune.  Varney had a habit of so representing himself,--of dwelling
+with a bitter eloquence, which his natural malignity made forcible, on
+the injustice of the world to superior intellect.  He was a great accuser
+of Fate.  It is the illogical weakness of some evil natures to lay all
+their crimes, and the consequences of crime, upon Destiny.  There was a
+heat, a vigour, a rush of words, and a readiness of strong, if trite,
+imagery in what Varney said that deceived the young into the monstrous
+error that he was an enthusiast,--misanthropical, perhaps, but only so
+from enthusiasm.  How could Helen, whose slightest thought, when a star
+broke forth from the cloud, or a bird sung suddenly from the copse, had
+more of wisdom and of poetry than all Varney's gaudy and painted seemings
+ever could even mimic,--how could she be so deceived?  Yet so it was.
+Here stood a man whose youth she supposed had been devoted to refined and
+elevating pursuits, gifted, neglected, disappointed, solitary, and
+unhappy.  She saw little beyond.  You had but to touch her pity to win
+her interest and to excite her trust. Of anything further, even had
+Percival never existed, she could not have dreamed.  It was because a
+secret and undefinable repugnance, in the midst of pity, trust, and
+friendship, put Varney altogether out of the light of a possible lover,
+that all those sentiments were so easily kindled.  This repugnance arose
+not from the disparity between their years; it was rather that nameless
+uncongeniality which does not forbid friendship, but is irreconcilable
+with love.  To do Varney justice, he never offered to reconcile the two.
+Not for love did he secretly confer with Helen; not for love did his
+heart beat against the hand which reposed so carelessly on his murderous
+arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE.
+
+The progress of affection between natures like those of Percival and
+Helen, favoured by free and constant intercourse, was naturally rapid.
+It was scarcely five weeks from the day he had first seen Helen, and he
+already regarded her as his plighted bride.  During the earlier days of
+his courtship, Percival, enamoured and absorbed for the first time in his
+life, did not hasten to make his mother the confidante of his happiness.
+He had written but twice; and though he said briefly, in the second
+letter, that he had discovered two relations, both interesting and one
+charming, he had deferred naming them or entering into detail.  This not
+alone from that indescribable coyness which all have experienced in
+addressing even those with whom they are most intimate, in the early,
+half-unrevealed, and mystic emotions of first love, but because Lady
+Diary's letters had been so full of her sister's declining health, of her
+own anxieties and fears, that he had shrunk from giving her a new subject
+of anxiety; and a confidence full of hope and joy seemed to him unfeeling
+and unseasonable.  He knew how necessarily uneasy and restless an avowal
+that his heart was seriously engaged to one she had never seen, would
+make that tender mother, and that his confession would rather add to her
+cares than produce sympathy with his transports.  But now, feeling
+impatient for his mother's assent to the formal proposals which had
+become due to Madame Dalibard and Helen, and taking advantage of the
+letter last received from her, which gave more cheering accounts of her
+sister, and expressed curiosity for further explanation as to his half
+disclosure, he wrote at length, and cleared his breast of all its
+secrets.  It was the same day in which he wrote this confession and
+pleaded his cause that we accompany him to the house of his sweet
+mistress, and leave him by her side, in the accustomed garden.  Within,
+Madame Dalibard, whose chair was set by the window, bent over certain
+letters, which she took, one by one, from her desk and read slowly,
+lifting her eyes from time to time and glancing towards the young people
+as they walked, hand in hand, round the small demesnes, now hid by the
+fading foliage, now emerging into view.  Those letters were the early
+love-epistles of William Mainwaring.  She had not recurred to them for
+years.  Perhaps she now felt that food necessary to the sustainment of
+her fiendish designs.  It was a strange spectacle to see this being, so
+full of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, condemned to that
+helpless decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat, not as in the resigned
+and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whom in the
+prime of life the rack has broken, leaving the limbs inert, the mind
+active, the form as one dead, the heart with superabundant vigour,--a,
+cripple's impotence and a Titan's will!  What, in that dreary
+imprisonment and amidst the silence she habitually preserved, passed
+through the caverns of that breast, one can no more conjecture than one
+can count the blasts that sweep and rage through the hollows of
+impenetrable rock, or the elements that conflict in the bosom of the
+volcano, everlastingly at work.  She had read and replaced the letters,
+and leaning her cheek on her hand, was gazing vacantly on the wall, when
+Varney intruded on that dismal solitude.
+
+He closed the door after him with more than usual care; and drawing a
+seat close to Lucretia, said, "Belle-mere, the time has arrived for you
+to act; my part is wellnigh closed."
+
+"Ay," said Lucretia, wearily, "what is the news you bring?"
+
+"First," replied Varney, and as he spoke, he shut the window, as if his
+whisper could possibly be heard without,--"first, all this business
+connected with Helen is at length arranged.  You know when, agreeably to
+your permission, I first suggested to her, as it were casually, that you
+were so reduced in fortune that I trembled to regard your future; that
+you had years ago sacrificed nearly half your pecuniary resources to
+maintain her parents,--she of herself reminded me that she was entitled,
+when of age, to a sum far exceeding all her wants, and--"
+
+"That I might be a pensioner on the child of William Mainwaring and Susan
+Mivers," interrupted Lucretia.  "I know that, and thank her not.  Pass
+on."
+
+"And you know, too, that in the course of my conversation with the girl I
+let out also incidentally that, even so, you were dependent on the
+chances of her life; that if she died (and youth itself is mortal) before
+she was of age, the sum left her by her grandfather would revert to her
+father's family; and so, by hints, I drew her on to ask if there was no
+mode by which, in case of her death, she might insure subsistence to you.
+So that you see the whole scheme was made at her own prompting.  I did
+but, as a man of business, suggest the means,--an insurance on her life."
+
+"Varney, these details are hateful.  I do not doubt that you have done
+all to forestall inquiry and elude risk.  The girl has insured her life
+to the amount of her fortune?"
+
+"To that amount only?  Pooh!  Her death will buy more than that.  As no
+one single office will insure for more than 5,000 pounds, and as it was
+easy to persuade her that such offices were liable to failure, and that
+it was usual to insure in several, and for a larger amount than the sum
+desired, I got her to enter herself at three of the principal offices.
+The amount paid to us on her death will be 15,000 pounds.  It will be
+paid (and here I have followed the best legal advice) in trust to me for
+your benefit.  Hence, therefore, even if our researches fail us, if no
+son of yours can be found, with sufficient evidence to prove, against the
+keen interests and bought advocates of heirs-at-law, the right to
+Laughton, this girl will repay us well, will replace what I have taken,
+at the risk of my neck, perhaps,--certainly at the risk of the hulks,--
+from the capital of my uncle's legacy, will refund what we have spent on
+the inquiry; and the residue will secure to you an independence sufficing
+for your wants almost for life, and to me what will purchase with
+economy," and Varney smiled, "a year or so of a gentleman's idle
+pleasures.  Are you satisfied thus far?"
+
+"She will die happy and innocent," muttered Lucretia, with the growl of
+demoniac disappointment.
+
+"Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have no power to
+buy the silence of the trustees,--wait till I am in prison, and on a
+trial for life and death?  Reflect, every day, every hour, of delay is
+fraught with peril.  But if my safety is nothing compared to the
+refinement of your revenge, will you wait till Helen marries Percival St.
+John?  You start!  But can you suppose that this innocent love-play will
+not pass rapidly to its denouement?  It is but yesterday that Percival
+confided to me that he should write this very day to his mother, and
+communicate all his feelings and his hopes; that he waited but her assent
+to propose formally for Helen.  Now one of two things must happen.
+Either this mother, haughty and vain as lady-mothers mostly are, may
+refuse consent to her son's marriage with the daughter of a disgraced
+banker and the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom her husband would not
+admit beneath his roof--"
+
+"Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia, haughtily; and amidst all the passions
+that darkened her countenance and degraded her soul, some flash of her
+ancestral spirit shot across her brow.  But it passed quickly, and she
+added, with fierce composure, "You are right; go on!"
+
+"Either-and pardon me for an insult that comes not from me--either this
+will be the case: Lady Mary St. John will hasten back in alarm to London;
+she exercises extraordinary control over her son; she may withdraw him
+from us altogether, from me as well as you, and the occasion now
+presented to us may be lost (who knows?) forever,--or she may be a weak
+and fond woman; may be detained in Italy by her sister's illness; may be
+anxious that the last lineal descendant of the St. Johns should marry
+betimes, and, moved by her darling's prayers, may consent at once to the
+union.  Or a third course, which Percival thinks the most probable, and
+which, though most unwelcome to us of all, I had wellnigh forgotten, may
+be adopted.  She may come to England, and in order to judge her son's
+choice with her own eyes, may withdraw Helen from your roof to hers.  At
+all events, delays are dangerous,--dangerous, putting aside my personal
+interest, and regarding only your own object,--may bring to our acts new
+and searching eyes; may cut us off from the habitual presence either of
+Percival or Helen, or both; or surround them, at the first breath of
+illness, with prying friends and formidable precautions.  The birds now
+are in our hands.  Why then open the cage and bid them fly, in order to
+spread the net?  This morning all the final documents with the Insurance
+Companies are completed.  It remains for me but to pay the first
+quarterly premiums.  For that I think I am prepared, without drawing
+further on your hoards or my own scanty resources, which Grabman will
+take care to drain fast enough."
+
+"And Percival St. John?" said Madame Dalibard.  "We want no idle
+sacrifices.  If my son be not found, we need not that boy's ghost amongst
+those who haunt us."
+
+"Surely not," said Varney; "and for my part, he may be more useful to me
+alive than dead.  There is no insurance on his life, and a rich friend
+(credulous greenhorn that he is!) is scarcely of that flock of geese
+which it were wise to slay from the mere hope of a golden egg.  Percival
+St. John is your victim, not mine; not till you give the order would I
+lift a finger to harm him."
+
+"Yes, let him live, unless my son be found to me," said Madame Dalibard,
+almost exultingly,--"let him live to forget yon fair-faced fool, leaning
+now, see you, so delightedly on his arm, and fancying eternity in the
+hollow vows of love; let him live to wrong and abandon her by
+forgetfulness, though even in the grave; to laugh at his boyish dreams,--
+to sully her memory in the arms of harlots!  Oh, if the dead can suffer,
+let him live, that she may feel beyond the grave his inconstancy and his
+fall.  Methinks that that thought will comfort me if Vincent be no more,
+and I stand childless in the world!"
+
+"It is so settled, then," said Varney, ever ready to clinch the business
+that promised gold, and relieve his apprehensions of the detection of his
+fraud.  "And now to your noiseless hands, as soon as may be, I consign
+the girl; she has lived long enough!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LOVE AND INNOCENCE.
+
+During this conference between these execrable and ravening birds of
+night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in the
+garden; while the autumn sun--for it was in the second week of October--
+broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil shrubs, and
+the flowers, which should have died with the gone summer, still fresh by
+tender care, despite the lateness of the season, smiled gratefully as
+their light footsteps passed.
+
+"Yes, Helen," said Percival,--"yes, you will love my mother, for she is
+one of those people who seem to attract love, as if it were a property
+belonging to them.  Even my dog Beau (you know how fond Beau is of me!)
+always nestles at her feet when we are at home.  I own she has pride, but
+it is a pride that never offended any one.  You know there are some
+flowers that we call proud.  The pride of the flower is not more harmless
+than my mother's.  But perhaps pride is not the right word,--it is rather
+the aversion to anything low or mean, the admiration for everything pure
+and high.  Ah, how that very pride--if pride it be--will make her love
+you, my Helen!"
+
+"You need not tell me," said Helen, smiling seriously, "that I shall love
+your mother,--I love her already; nay, from the first moment you said you
+had a mother, my heart leaped to her.  Your mother,--if ever you are
+really jealous, it must be of her!  But that she should love me,--that is
+what I doubt and fear.  For if you were my brother, Percival, I should be
+so ambitious for you.  A nymph must rise from the stream, a sylphid from
+the rose, before I could allow another to steal you from my side.  And if
+I think I should feel this only as your sister, what can be precious
+enough to satisfy a mother?"
+
+"You, and you only," answered Percival, with his blithesome laugh,--"you,
+my sweet Helen, much better than nymph or sylphid, about whom, between
+ourselves, I never cared three straws, even in a poem.  How pleased you
+will be with Laughton!  Do you know, I was lying awake all last night to
+consider what room you would like best for your own?  And at last I have
+decided.  Come, listen,--it opens from the music-gallery that overhangs
+the hall.  From the window you overlook the southern side of the park,
+and catch a view of the lake beyond.  There are two niches in the wall,--
+one for your piano, one for your favourite books.  It is just large
+enough to hold four persons with ease,--our mother and myself, your aunt,
+whom by that time we shall have petted into good humour; and if we can
+coax Ardworth there,--the best good fellow that ever lived,--I think our
+party will be complete.  By the way, I am uneasy about Ardworth, it is so
+long since we have seen him; I have called three times,--nay, five,--but
+his odd-looking clerk always swears he is not at home.  Tell me, Helen,
+now you know him so well,--tell me how I can serve him?  You know, I am
+so terribly rich (at least, I shall be in a month or two), I can never
+get through my money, unless my friends will help me.  And is it not
+shocking that that noble fellow should be so poor, and yet suffer me to
+call him 'friend,' as if in friendship one man should want everything,
+and the other nothing?  Still, I don't know how to venture to propose.
+Come, you understand me, Helen; let us lay our wise heads together and
+make him well off, in spite of himself."
+
+It was in this loose boyish talk of Percival that he had found the way,
+not only to Helen's heart, but to her soul.  For in this she (grand,
+undeveloped poetess!) recognized a nobler poetry than we chain to
+rhythm,--the poetry of generous deeds.  She yearned to kiss the warm hand
+she held, and drew nearer to his side as she answered: "And sometimes,
+dear, dear Percival, you wonder why I would rather listen to you than to
+all Mr. Varney's bitter eloquence, or even to my dear cousin's aspiring
+ambition.  They talk well, but it is of themselves; while you--"
+
+Percival blushed, and checked her.
+
+"Well," she said,--"well, to your question.  Alas! you know little of my
+cousin if you think all our arts could decoy him out of his rugged
+independence; and much as I love him, I could not wish it.  But do not
+fear for him; he is one of those who are born to succeed, and without
+help."
+
+"How do you know that, pretty prophetess?" said Percival, with the
+superior air of manhood.  "I have seen more of the world than you have,
+and I cannot see why Ardworth should succeed, as you call it; or, if so,
+why he should succeed less if he swung his hammock in a better berth than
+that hole in Gray's Inn, and would just let me keep him a cab and groom."
+
+Had Percival talked of keeping John Ardworth an elephant and a palaquin,
+Helen could not have been more amused.  She clapped her little hands in a
+delight that provoked Percival, and laughed out loud.  Then, seeing her
+boy-lover's lip pouted petulantly, and his brow was overcast, she said,
+more seriously,--
+
+"Do you not know what it is to feel convinced of something which you
+cannot explain?  Well, I feel this as to my cousin's fame and fortunes.
+Surely, too, you must feel it, you scarce know why, when he speaks of
+that future which seems so dim and so far to me, as of something that
+belonged to him."
+
+"Very true, Helen," said Percival; "he lays it out like the map of his
+estate.  One can't laugh when he says so carelessly: 'At such an age I
+shall lead my circuit; at such an age I shall be rich; at such an age I
+shall enter parliament; and beyond that I shall look as yet--no farther.'
+And, poor fellow, then he will be forty-three!  And in the mean while to
+suffer such privations!"
+
+"There are no privations to one who lives in the future," said Helen,
+with that noble intuition into lofty natures which at times flashed from
+her childish simplicity, foreshadowing what, if Heaven spare her life,
+her maturer intellect may develop; "for Ardworth there is no such thing
+as poverty.  He is as rich in his hopes as we are in--"  She stopped
+short, blushed, and continued, with downcast looks: "As well might you
+pity me in these walks, so dreary without you.  I do not live in them, I
+live in my thoughts of you."
+
+Her voice trembled with emotion in those last words.  She slid from
+Percival's arm, and timidly sat down (and he beside her) on a little
+mound under the single chestnut-tree, that threw its shade over the
+garden.
+
+Both were silent for some moments,--Percival, with grateful ecstasy;
+Helen, with one of those sudden fits of mysterious melancholy to which
+her nature was so subjected.
+
+He was the first to speak.  "Helen," he said gravely, "since I have known
+you, I feel as if life were a more solemn thing than I ever regarded it
+before.  It seems to me as if a new and more arduous duty were added to
+those for which I was prepared,--a duty, Helen, to become worthy of you!
+Will you smile?  No, you will not smile if I say I have had my brief
+moments of ambition.  Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand,
+stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a
+sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with
+tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned
+musingly over the boundless sea.  But when this ample heritage passed to
+me, when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank to build up,
+such dreams became less and less frequent.  Is it not true that wealth
+makes us contented to be obscure?  Yes; I understand, while I speak, why
+poverty itself befriends, not cripples, Ardworth's energies.  But since I
+have known you, dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than
+ever.  He who claims you should be--must be--something nobler than the
+crowd.  Helen,"--and he rose by an irresistible and restless impulse,--"I
+shall not be contented till you are as proud of your choice as I of
+mine!"
+
+It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were cast from him
+forever.  The unusual weight and gravity of his words, to which his tone
+gave even eloquence; the steady flash of his dark eyes; his erect,
+elastic form,--all had the dignity of man.  Helen gazed on him silently,
+and with a heart so full that words would not come, and tears overflowed
+instead.
+
+That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms
+around her,--it was his first embrace,--and kissed the tears away.
+
+"How have I distressed you?  Why do you weep?"
+
+"Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival!  These tears are like prayers,-
+-they speak to Heaven--and of you!"
+
+A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the
+sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.
+
+Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that day,
+though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those animal
+spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and the
+obtuseness of his conscience.  Seeing, at length, that his gayety did not
+communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at him
+suspiciously.  A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guilty
+man.
+
+"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly.  "What has disturbed you?"
+
+"It is nothing,--or, at least, would seem nothing to you," answered
+Percival, with an effort to smile, for I have heard you laugh at the
+doctrine of presentiments.  We sailors are more superstitious."
+
+"What presentiment can you possibly entertain?" asked Varney, more
+anxiously than Percival could have anticipated.
+
+"Presentiments are not so easily defined, Varney.  But, in truth, poor
+Helen has infected me.  Have you not remarked that, gay as she habitually
+is, some shadow comes over her so suddenly that one cannot trace the
+cause?"
+
+"My dear Percival," said Varney, after a short pause, "what you say does
+not surprise me.  It would be false kindness to conceal from you that I
+have heard Madame Dalibard say that her mother was, when about her age,
+threatened with consumptive symptoms; but she lived many years
+afterwards.  Nay, nay, rally yourself; Helen's appearance, despite the
+extreme purity of her complexion, is not that of one threatened by the
+terrible malady of our climate.  The young are often haunted with the
+idea of early death.  As we grow older, that thought is less cherished;
+in youth it is a sort of luxury.  To this mournful idea (which you see
+you have remarked as well as I) we must attribute not only Helen's
+occasional melancholy, but a generosity of forethought which I cannot
+deny myself the pleasure of communicating to you, though her delicacy
+would be shocked at my indiscretion.  You know how helpless her aunt is.
+Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a moderate competence, has
+persuaded me to insure her life and accept a trust to hold the moneys (if
+ever unhappily due) for the benefit of my mother-in-law, so that Madame
+Dalibard may not be left destitute if her niece die before she is twenty-
+one.  How like Helen, is it not?"
+
+Percival was too overcome to answer.
+
+Varney resumed: "I entreat you not to mention this to Helen; it would
+offend her modesty to have the secret of her good deeds thus betrayed by
+one to whom alone she confided them.  I could not resist her entreaties,
+though, entre nous, it cripples me not a little to advance for her the
+necessary sums for the premiums.  Apropos, this brings me to a point on
+which I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,'--as I always do
+in these confounded money-matters.  But you were good enough to ask me to
+paint you a couple of pictures for Laughton.  Now, if you could let me
+have some portion of the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price my
+paintings to you), it would very much oblige me."
+
+Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, and muttered,
+with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divine forethought.
+Good Heavens! she, so young, to look thus beyond the grave, always for
+others--for others!"
+
+Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal struck
+Varney with a sentiment like compunction.  He had designed to appropriate
+the lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should
+propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a
+horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading
+apprehensions had familiarized his conscience.
+
+"No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackest
+criminals are sometimes susceptible,--"no.  I have promised Helen to
+regard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age.  What
+you may advance me is for the pictures.  I have a right to do as I please
+with what is bought by my own labour.  And the subjects of the pictures,
+what shall they be?"
+
+"For one picture try and recall Helen's aspect and attitude when you came
+to us in the garden, and entitle your subject: 'The Foreboding.'"
+
+"Hem!" said Varney, hesitatingly.  "And the other subject?"
+
+"Wait for that till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed a bride, and
+then--and then, Varney," added Percival, with something of his natural
+joyous smile, "you must take the expression as you find it.  Once under
+my care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid the
+other!"
+
+As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door.  Varney dined
+with him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert to
+the subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and so
+tried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did as soon
+as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into his
+hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from his
+generosity.
+
+"This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his head; and
+then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: "Well, some years hence
+the world shall not call them overpaid.  Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such
+men, and Art would revive in England."
+
+When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on both
+hands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacy
+that belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge in
+the presence of another.  Never had he so loved Helen as in that hour;
+never had he so intimately and intensely felt her matchless worth.  The
+image of her unselfish, quiet, melancholy consideration for that austere,
+uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade her young heart
+must have withered, seemed to him filled with a celestial pathos.  And he
+almost hated Varney that the cynic painter could have talked of it with
+that business-like phlegm.  The evening deepened; the tranquil street
+grew still; the air seemed close; the solitude oppressed him; he rose
+abruptly, seized his hat, and went forth slowly, and still with a heavy
+heart.
+
+As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house successively
+inhabited by the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Hertford,--on the step of
+that mansion up which so many footsteps light with wanton pleasure have
+gayly trod, Percival's eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object,
+doubled up, as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased to beg,
+that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live.  Percival halted,
+and touched the outcast.
+
+"What is the matter, my poor fellow?  Take care; the policeman will not
+suffer you to rest here.  Come, cheer up, I say!  There is something to
+find you a better lodging!"
+
+The silver fell unheeded on the stones.  The thing of rags did not even
+raise its head, but a low, broken voice muttered,--
+
+"It be too late now; let 'em take me to prison, let 'em send me 'cross
+the sea to Buttany, let 'em hang me, if they please.  I be 's good for
+nothin' now,--nothin'!"
+
+Altered as the voice was, it struck Percival as familiar.  He looked down
+and caught a view of the drooping face.  "Up, man, up!" he said cheerily.
+"See, Providence sends you an old friend in need, to teach you never to
+despair again."
+
+The hearty accent, more than the words, touched and aroused the poor
+creature.  He rose mechanically, and a sickly, grateful smile passed over
+his wasted features as he recognized St. John.
+
+"Come!  how is this?  I have always understood that to keep a crossing
+was a flourishing trade nowadays."
+
+"I 'as no crossin'.  I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck.  "I be's good for
+nothin' now but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch, and
+hang like the rest on us!  Thank you kindly, sir," and Beck pulled his
+forelock, "but, please your honour, I vould rather make an ind on it!"
+
+"Pooh, pooh! didn't I tell you when you wanted a friend to come to me?
+Why did you doubt me, foolish fellow?  Pick up those shillings; get a bed
+and a supper.  Come and see me to-morrow at nine o'clock; you know
+where,--the same house in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then your
+whole story, and it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, or
+get you something just as good."
+
+Poor Beck swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunken man,
+and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of his
+benefactor's garment, and fairly wept.  Those tears relieved him; they
+seemed to wash the drought of despair from his heart.
+
+"Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us.  You'll not forget, my
+poor friend, No.---- Curzon Street,--nine to-morrow.  Make haste now, and
+get food and rest; you look, indeed, as if you wanted them.  Ah, would to
+Heaven all the poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, and we
+could aid it as easily as I can thee!"
+
+Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and looking back, he
+had the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly crawling after him, and
+had escaped the grim question of a very portly policeman, who had no
+doubt expressed a natural indignation at the audacity of so ragged a
+skeleton not keeping itself respectably at home in its churchyard.
+
+Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival found a small
+knot of politicians in eager conversation respecting a new book which had
+been published but a day or two before, but which had already seized the
+public attention with that strong grasp which constitutes always an era
+in an author's life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature.  The
+newspapers were full of extracts from the work,--the gossips, of
+conjecture as to the authorship.  We need scarcely say that a book which
+makes this kind of sensation must hit some popular feeling of the hour,
+supply some popular want.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, therefore,
+its character is political; it was so in the present instance.  It may be
+remembered that that year parliament sat during great part of the month
+of October, that it was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejected by
+the House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had never been so
+keenly excited.  This work appeared during the short interval between the
+rejection of the Bill and the prorogation of parliament [Parliament was
+prorogued October 20th; the bill rejected by the Lords, October 8th].
+And what made it more remarkable was, that while stamped with the passion
+of the time, there was a weight of calm and stern reasoning embodied in
+its vigorous periods, which gave to the arguments of the advocate
+something of the impartiality of the judge.  Unusually abstracted and
+unsocial,--for, despite his youth and that peculiar bashfulness before
+noticed, he was generally alive enough to all that passed around him,--
+Percival paid little attention to the comments that circulated round the
+easy-chairs in his vicinity, till a subordinate in the administration,
+with whom he was slightly acquainted, pushed a small volume towards him
+and said,--"You have seen this, of course, St. John?  Ten to one you do
+not guess the author.  It is certainly not B----m, though the Lord
+Chancellor has energy enough for anything.  R---- says it has a touch of
+S----r."
+
+"Could M----y have written it?" asked a young member of parliament,
+timidly.
+
+"M----y!  Very like his matchless style, to be sure!  You can have read
+very little of M----y, I should think," said the subordinate, with the
+true sneer of an official and a critic.
+
+The young member could have slunk into a nutshell.  Percival, with very
+languid interest, glanced over the volume.  But despite his mood, and his
+moderate affection for political writings, the passage he opened upon
+struck and seized him unawares.  Though the sneer of the official was
+just, and the style was not comparable to M----y's (whose is?), still,
+the steady rush of strong words, strong with strong thoughts, heaped
+massively together, showed the ease of genius and the gravity of thought.
+The absence of all effeminate glitter, the iron grapple with the pith and
+substance of the argument opposed, seemed familiar to Percival.  He
+thought he heard the deep bass of John Ardworth's earnest voice when some
+truth roused his advocacy, or some falsehood provoked his wrath.  He put
+down the book, bewildered.  Could it be the obscure, briefless lawyer in
+Gray's Inn (that very morning the object of his young pity) who was thus
+lifted into fame?  He smiled at his own credulity.  But he listened with
+more attention to the enthusiastic praises that circled round, and the
+various guesses which accompanied them.  Soon, however, his former gloom
+returned,--the Babel began to chafe and weary him.  He rose, and went
+forth again into the air.  He strolled on without purpose, but
+mechanically, into the street where he had first seen Helen.  He paused a
+few moments under the colonnade which faced Beck's old deserted crossing.
+His pause attracted the notice of one of the unhappy beings whom we
+suffer to pollute our streets and rot in our hospitals.  She approached
+and spoke to him,--to him whose heart was so full of Helen!  He
+shuddered, and strode on.  At length he paused before the twin towers of
+Westminster Abbey, on which the moon rested in solemn splendour; and in
+that space one man only shared his solitude.  A figure with folded arms
+leaned against the iron rails near the statue of Canning, and his gaze
+comprehended in one view the walls of the Parliament, in which all
+passions wage their war, and the glorious abbey, which gives a Walhalla
+to the great.  The utter stillness of the figure, so in unison with the
+stillness of the scene, had upon Percival more effect than would have
+been produced by the most clamorous crowd.  He looked round curiously as
+he passed, and uttered an exclamation as he recognized John Ardworth.
+
+"You, Percival!" said Ardworth.  "A strange meeting-place at this hour!
+What can bring you hither?"
+
+"Only whim, I fear; and you?" as Percival linked his arm into Ardworth's.
+
+"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answered
+Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.
+
+"If we are alive then!"
+
+"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses have
+passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another.  For the soul
+is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confined in its
+career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same planets or
+rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless centre of moving
+worlds.  But the soul, when it sinks into seeming darkness and the deep,
+rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited before.  What we call
+Eternity, may be but an endless series of those transitions which men
+call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home, ever to fairer scenes and
+loftier heights.  Age after age, the spirit, that glorious Nomad, may
+shift its tent, fated not to rest in the dull Elysium of the Heathen, but
+carrying with it evermore its elements,--Activity and Desire.  Why should
+the soul ever repose?  God, its Principle, reposes never.  While we
+speak, new worlds are sparkling forth, suns are throwing off their
+nebulae, nebulae are hardening into worlds.  The Almighty proves his
+existence by creating.  Think you that Plato is at rest, and Shakspeare
+only basking on a sun-cloud?  Labour is the very essence of spirit, as of
+divinity; labour is the purgatory of the erring; it may become the hell
+of the wicked, but labour is not less the heaven of the good!"
+
+Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion, and his idea of the
+future was emblematic of his own active nature; for each of us is wisely
+left to shape out, amidst the impenetrable mists, his own ideal of the
+Hereafter.  The warrior child of the biting North placed his Hela amid
+snows, and his Himmel in the banquets of victorious war; the son of the
+East, parched by relentless summer,--his hell amidst fire, and his
+elysium by cooling streams; the weary peasant sighs through life for
+rest, and rest awaits his vision beyond the grave; the workman of
+genius,--ever ardent, ever young,--honours toil as the glorious
+development of being, and springs refreshed over the abyss of the grave,
+to follow, from star to star, the progress that seems to him at once the
+supreme felicity and the necessary law.  So be it with the fantasy of
+each!  Wisdom that is infallible, and love that never sleeps, watch over
+the darkness, and bid darkness be, that we may dream!
+
+"Alas!" said the young listener, "what reproof do you not convey to
+those, like me, who, devoid of the power which gives results to every
+toil, have little left to them in life, but to idle life away.  All have
+not the gift to write, or harangue, or speculate, or--"
+
+"Friend," interrupted Ardworth, bluntly, "do not belie yourself.  There
+lives not a man on earth--out of a lunatic asylum--who has not in him the
+power to do good.  What can writers, haranguers, or speculators do more
+than that?  Have you ever entered a cottage, ever travelled in a coach,
+ever talked with a peasant in the field, or loitered with a mechanic at
+the loom, and not found that each of those men had a talent you had not,
+knew some things you knew not?  The most useless creature that ever
+yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the suns of
+Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect.  What men want is not
+talent, it is purpose,--in other words, not the power to achieve, but the
+will to labour.  You, Percival St. John,--you affect to despond, lest you
+should not have your uses; you, with that fresh, warm heart; you, with
+that pure enthusiasm for what is fresh and good; you, who can even admire
+a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, you recognize art
+and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, who have only to
+live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all around you,--fie,
+foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why I come from my
+rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a plain country
+squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of eight hundred
+years."
+
+"Ardworth, I will not wait your time to tell me what took you yonder.  I
+have penetrated a secret that you, not kindly, kept from me.  This
+morning you rose and found yourself famous; this evening you have come to
+gaze upon the scene of the career to which that fame will more rapidly
+conduct you--"
+
+"And upon the tomb which the proudest ambition I can form on earth must
+content itself to win!  A poor conclusion, if all ended here!"
+
+"I am right, however," said Percival, with boyish pleasure.  "It is you
+whose praises have just filled my ears.  You, dear, dear Ardworth!  How
+rejoiced I am!"
+
+Ardworth pressed heartily the hand extended to him: "I should have
+trusted you with my secret to-morrow, Percival; as it is, keep it for the
+present.  A craving of my nature has been satisfied, a grief has found
+distraction.  As for the rest, any child that throws a stone into the
+water with all his force can make a splash; but he would be a fool indeed
+if he supposed that the splash was a sign that he had turned a stream."
+
+Here Ardworth ceased abruptly; and Percival, engrossed by a bright idea,
+which had suddenly occurred to him, exclaimed,--
+
+"Ardworth, your desire, your ambition, is to enter parliament; there must
+be a dissolution shortly,--the success of your book will render you
+acceptable to many a popular constituency.  All you can want is a sum for
+the necessary expenses.  Borrow that sum from me; repay me when you are
+in the Cabinet, or attorney-general.  It shall be so!"
+
+A look so bright that even by that dull lamplight the glow of the cheek,
+the brilliancy of the eye were visible, flashed over Ardworth's face.  He
+felt at that moment what ambitious man must feel when the object he has
+seen dimly and afar is placed within his grasp; but his reason was proof
+even against that strong temptation.
+
+He passed his arm round the boy's slender waist, and drew him to his
+heart with grateful affection as he replied,--"And what, if now in
+parliament, giving up my career,--with no regular means of subsistence,--
+what could I be but a venal adventurer?  Place would become so vitally
+necessary to me that I should feed but a dangerous war between my
+conscience and my wants.  In chasing Fame, the shadow, I should lose the
+substance, Independence.  Why, that very thought would paralyze my
+tongue.  No, no, my generous friend.  As labour is the arch elevator of
+man, so patience is the essence of labour.  First let me build the
+foundation; I may then calculate the height of my tower.  First let me be
+independent of the great; I will then be the champion of the lowly.
+Hold!  Tempt me no more; do not lure me to the loss of self-esteem.  And
+now, Percival," resumed Ardworth, in the tone of one who wishes to plunge
+into some utterly new current of thought, "let us forget for awhile these
+solemn aspirations, and be frolicsome and human.  'Nemo mortalium omnibus
+horis sapit.'  'Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo.'  What say you to a
+cigar?"
+
+Percival stared.  He was not yet familiarized to the eccentric whims of
+his friend.
+
+"Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, full of
+drollery, played round the corners of his lips and twinkled in his deep-
+set eyes.
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"Not serious; I have been serious enough," and Ardworth sighed, "for the
+last three weeks.  Who goes 'to Corinth to be sage,' or to the Cider
+Cellar to be serious?"
+
+"I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar," said Percival, smiling; and
+he had no cause to repent his compliance as he accompanied Ardworth to
+one of the resorts favoured by that strange person in his rare hours of
+relaxation.
+
+For, seated at his favourite table, which happened, luckily, to be
+vacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus steaming
+before him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, till the clock struck
+three, jest upon jest, pun upon pun, broad drollery upon broad drollery,
+without flagging, without intermission, so varied, so copious, so ready,
+so irresistible that Percival was transported out of all his melancholy
+in enjoying, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of a
+grave mind once set free,--all its intellect sparkling into wit, all its
+passion rushing into humour.  And this was the man he had pitied,
+supposed to have no sunny side to his life!  How much greater had been
+his compassion and his wonder if he could have known all that had passed,
+within the last few weeks, through that gloomy, yet silent breast, which,
+by the very breadth of its mirth, showed what must be the depth of its
+sadness!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE LOSS OF THE CROSSING.
+
+Despite the lateness of the hour before he got to rest, Percival had
+already breakfasted, when his valet informed him, with raised,
+supercilious eyebrows, that an uncommon ragged sort of a person insisted
+that he had been told to call.  Though Beck had been at the house before,
+and the valet had admitted him, so much thinner, so much more ragged was
+he now, that the trim servant--no close observer of such folk--did not
+recognize him.  However, at Percival's order, too well-bred to show
+surprise, he ushered Beck up with much civility; and St. John was
+painfully struck with the ravages a few weeks had made upon the sweeper's
+countenance.  The lines were so deeply ploughed, the dry hair looked so
+thin, and was so sown with gray that Beck might have beat all Farren's
+skill in the part of an old man.
+
+The poor sweeper's tale, extricated from its peculiar phraseology, was
+simple enough, and soon told.  He had returned home at night to find his
+hoards stolen, and the labour of his life overthrown.  How he passed that
+night he did not very well remember.  We may well suppose that the little
+reason he possessed was wellnigh bereft from him.  No suspicion of the
+exact thief crossed his perturbed mind.  Bad as Grabman's character might
+be, he held a respectable position compared with the other lodgers in the
+house.  Bill the cracksman, naturally and by vocation, suggested the hand
+that had despoiled him: how hope for redress or extort surrender from
+such a quarter?  Mechanically, however, when the hour arrived to return
+to his day's task, he stole down the stairs, and lo, at the very door of
+the house Bill's children were at play, and in the hand of the eldest he
+recognized what he called his "curril."
+
+"Your curril!" interrupted St. John.
+
+"Yes, curril,--vot the little 'uns bite afore they gets their teethin'."
+
+St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or other been
+puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded to him to continue.  To
+seize upon the urchin, and, in spite of kicks, bites, shrieks, or
+scratches, repossess himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment.
+The brat's clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the
+coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced eye
+and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief)
+loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed.  Him he charged and accused
+and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine.  Then, changing his
+tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt.  As soon as the startled cracksman
+recovered his astonishment at such audacity, and comprehended the nature
+of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the more indignant
+from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness of innocence.  Seizing Beck
+by the nape of the neck, with a dexterous application of hand and foot he
+sent him spinning into the kennel.
+
+"Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!" cried Bill, in a voice of thunder; "and if
+ever thou sayst such a vopper agin,--'sparaging the characters of them
+'ere motherless babes,--I'll seal thee up in a 'tato-sack, and sell thee
+for fiv'pence to No. 7, the great body-snatcher.  Take care how I ever
+sets eyes agin on thy h-ugly mug!"
+
+With that Bill clapped to the door, and Beck, frightened out of his wits,
+crawled from the kennel and, bruised and smarting, crept to his crossing.
+But he was unable to discharge his duties that day; his ill-fed,
+miserable frame was too weak for the stroke he had received.  Long before
+dusk he sneaked away, and dreading to return to his lodging, lest, since
+nothing now was left worth robbing but his carcass, Bill might keep his
+word and sell that to the body-snatcher, he took refuge under the only
+roof where he felt he could sleep in safety.
+
+And here we must pause to explain.  In our first introduction of Beck we
+contented ourselves with implying to the ingenious and practised reader
+that his heart might still be large enough to hold something besides his
+crossing.  Now, in one of the small alleys that have their vent in the
+great stream of Fleet Street there dwelt an old widow-woman who eked out
+her existence by charing,--an industrious, drudging creature, whose sole
+occupation, since her husband, the journeyman bricklayer, fell from a
+scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her happily childless as well as
+penniless, had been scrubbing stone floors and cleaning out dingy houses
+when about to be let,--charing, in a word.  And in this vocation had she
+kept body and soul together till a bad rheumatism and old age had put an
+end to her utilities and entitled her to the receipt of two shillings
+weekly from parochial munificence.  Between this old woman and Beck there
+was a mysterious tie, so mysterious that he did not well comprehend it
+himself.  Sometimes he called her "mammy," sometimes "the h-old crittur."
+But certain it is that to her he was indebted for that name which he
+bore, to the puzzlement of St. Giles's.  Becky Carruthers was the name of
+the old woman; but Becky was one of those good creatures who are always
+called by their Christian names, and never rise into the importance of
+the surname and the dignity of "Mistress;" lopping off the last syllable
+of the familiar appellation, the outcast christened himself "Beck."
+
+"And," said St. John, who in the course of question and answer had got
+thus far into the marrow of the sweeper's narrative, "is not this good
+woman really your mother?"
+
+"Mother!" echoed Beck, with disdain; "no, I 'as a gritter mother nor she.
+Sint Poll's is my mother.  But the h-old crittur tuk care on me."
+
+"I really don't understand you.  St. Paul's is your mother?  How?"
+
+Beck shook his head mysteriously, and without answering the question,
+resumed the tale, which we must thus paraphrastically continue to
+deliver.
+
+When he was a little more than six years old, Beck began to earn his own
+livelihood, by running errands, holding horses, scraping together pence
+and halfpence.  Betimes, his passion for saving began; at first with a
+good and unselfish motive,--that of surprising "mammy" at the week's end.
+But when "mammy," who then gained enough for herself, patted his head and
+called him "good boy," and bade him save for his own uses, and told him
+what a great thing it would be if he could lay by a pretty penny against
+he was a man, he turned miser on his own account; and the miserable
+luxury grew upon him.  At last, by the permission of the police
+inspector, strengthened by that of the owner of the contiguous house, he
+made his great step in life, and succeeded a deceased negro in the
+dignity and emoluments of the memorable crossing.  From that hour he felt
+himself fulfilling his proper destiny.  But poor Becky, alas! had already
+fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; with her decline, her good
+qualities were impaired.  She took to drinking,--not to positive
+intoxication, but to making herself "comfortable;" and, to satisfy her
+craving, Beck, waking betimes one morning, saw her emptying his pockets.
+Then he resolved, quietly and without upbraiding her, to remove to a
+safer lodging.  To save had become the imperative necessity of his
+existence.  But to do him justice, Beck had a glimmering sense of what
+was due to the "h-old crittur."  Every Saturday evening he called at her
+house and deposited with her a certain sum, not large even in proportion
+to his earnings, but which seemed to the poor ignorant miser, who grudged
+every farthing to himself, an enormous deduction from his total, and a
+sum sufficient for every possible want of humankind, even to satiety.
+And now, in returning, despoiled of all save the few pence he had
+collected that day, it is but fair to him to add that not his least
+bitter pang was in the remembrance that this was the only Saturday on
+which, for the first time, the weekly stipend would fail.
+
+But so ill and so wretched did he look when he reached her little room
+that "mammy" forgot all thought of herself; and when he had told his
+tale, so kind was her comforting, so unselfish her sympathy, that his
+heart smote him for his old parsimony, for his hard resentment at her
+single act of peculation.  Had not she the right to all he made?  But
+remorse and grief alike soon vanished in the fever that now seized him;
+for several days he was insensible; and when he recovered sufficiently to
+be made aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated beside him,
+within four bare walls.  Everything, except the bed he slept on, had been
+sold to support him in his illness.  As soon as he could totter forth,
+Beck hastened to his crossing.  Alas! it was preoccupied.  His absence
+had led to ambitious usurpation.  A one-legged, sturdy sailor had mounted
+his throne, and wielded his sceptre.  The decorum of the street forbade
+altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred discussion
+to a meeting at a flash house in the Rookery that evening.  There a jury
+was appointed, and the case opened.  By the conventional laws that
+regulate this useful community, Beck was still in his rights; his
+reappearance sufficed to restore his claims, and an appeal to the
+policeman would no doubt re-establish his authority.  But Beck was still
+so ill and so feeble that he had a melancholy persuasion that he could
+not suitably perform the duties of his office; and when the sailor, not a
+bad fellow on the whole, offered to pay down on the nail what really
+seemed a very liberal sum for Beck's peaceful surrender of his rights,
+the poor wretch thought of the bare walls at his "mammy's," of the long,
+dreary interval that must elapse, even if able to work, before the
+furniture pawned could be redeemed by the daily profits of his post, and
+with a groan he held out his hand and concluded the bargain.
+
+Creeping home to his "h-old crittur," he threw the purchase money into
+her lap; then, broken-hearted and in despair, he slunk forth again in a
+sort of vague, dreamy hope that the law, which abhors vagabonds, would
+seize and finish him.
+
+When this tale was done, Percival did not neglect the gentle task of
+admonition, which the poor sweeper's softened heart and dull remorse made
+easier.  He pointed out, in soft tones, how the avarice he had indulged
+had been perhaps mercifully chastised, and drew no ineloquent picture of
+the vicious miseries of the confirmed miser.  Beck listened humbly and
+respectfully; though so little did he understand of mercy and Providence
+and vice that the diviner part of the homily was quite lost on him.
+However, he confessed penitently that "the mattress had made him vorse
+nor a beast to the h-old crittur;" and that "he was cured of saving to
+the end of his days."
+
+"And now," said Percival, "as you really seem not strong enough to bear
+this out-of-door work (the winter coming on, too), what say you to
+entering into my service?  I want some help in my stables.  The work is
+easy enough, and you are used to horses, you know, in a sort of a way."
+
+Beck hesitated, and looked a moment undecided.  At last he said, "Please
+your honour, if I bean't strong enough for the crossin', I 'se afeared
+I'm too h-ailing to sarve you.  And voud n't I be vorse nor a wiper to
+take your vages and not vork for 'em h-as I h-ought?"
+
+"Pooh! we'll soon make you strong, my man.  Take my advice; don't let
+your head run on the crossing.  That kind of industry exposes you to bad
+company and bad thoughts."
+
+"That's vot it is, sir," said Beck, assentingly, laying his dexter
+forefinger on his sinister palm.
+
+"Well! you are in my service, then.  Go downstairs now and get your
+breakfast; by and by you shall show me your 'mammy's' house, and we'll
+see what can be done for her."
+
+Beck pressed his hands to his eyes, trying hard not to cry; but it was
+too much for him; and as the valet, who appeared to Percival's summons,
+led him down the stairs, his sobs were heard from attic to basement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+NEWS FROM GRABMAN.
+
+That day, opening thus auspiciously to Beck, was memorable also to other
+and more prominent persons in this history.
+
+Early in the forenoon a parcel was brought to Madame Dalibard which
+contained Ardworth's already famous book, a goodly assortment of extracts
+from the newspapers thereon, and the following letter from the young
+author:--
+
+You will see, by the accompanying packet, that your counsels have had
+weight with me.  I have turned aside in my slow, legitimate career.  I
+have, as you desired, made "men talk of me."  What solid benefit I may
+reap from this I know not.  I shall not openly avow the book.  Such
+notoriety cannot help meat the Bar.  But liberavi animam meam,--excuse my
+pedantry,--I have let my soul free for a moment; I am now catching it
+back to put bit and saddle on again.  I will not tell you how you have
+disturbed me, how you have stung me into this premature rush amidst the
+crowd, how, after robbing me of name and father, you have driven me to
+this experiment with my own mind, to see if I was deceived when I groaned
+to myself, "The Public shall give you a name, and Fame shall be your
+mother."  I am satisfied with the experiment.  I know better now what is
+in me, and I have regained my peace of mind.  If in the success of this
+hasty work there be that which will gratify the interest you so kindly
+take in me, deem that success your own; I owe it to you,--to your
+revelations, to your admonitions.  I wait patiently your own time for
+further disclosures; till then, the wheel must work on, and the grist be
+ground.  Kind and generous friend, till now I would not wound you by
+returning the sum you sent me,--nay, more, I knew I should please you by
+devoting part of it to the risk of giving this essay to the world, and so
+making its good fortune doubly your own work.  Now, when the publisher
+smiles, and the shopmen bow, and I am acknowledged to have a bank in my
+brains,--now, you cannot be offended to receive it back.  Adieu.  When my
+mind is in train again, and I feel my step firm on the old dull road, I
+will come to see you.  Till then, yours--by what name?  Open the
+Biographical Dictionary at hazard, and send me one.     GRAY'S INN.
+
+Not at the noble thoughts and the deep sympathy with mankind that glowed
+through that work, over which Lucretia now tremulously hurried, did she
+feel delight.  All that she recognized, or desired to recognize, were
+those evidences of that kind of intellect which wins its way through the
+world, and which, strong and unmistakable, rose up in every page of that
+vigorous logic and commanding style.  The book was soon dropped, thus
+read; the newspaper extracts pleased even more.
+
+"This," she said audibly, in the freedom of her solitude, "this is the
+son I asked for,--a son in whom I can rise; in whom I can exchange the
+sense of crushing infamy for the old delicious ecstasy of pride!  For
+this son can I do too much?  No; in what I may do for him methinks there
+will be no remorse.  And he calls his success mine,--mine!"  Her nostrils
+dilated, and her front rose erect.
+
+In the midst of this exultation Varney found her; and before he could
+communicate the business which had brought him, he had to listen, which
+he did with the secret, gnawing envy that every other man's success
+occasioned him, to her haughty self-felicitations.
+
+He could not resist saying, with a sneer, when she paused, as if to ask
+his sympathy,--
+
+"All this is very fine, belle-mere; and yet I should hardly have thought
+that coarse-featured, uncouth limb of the law, who seldom moves without
+upsetting a chair, never laughs but the panes rattle in the window,--I
+should hardly have thought him the precise person to gratify your pride,
+or answer the family ideal of a gentleman and a St. John."
+
+"Gabriel," said Lucretia, sternly, "you have a biting tongue, and it is
+folly in me to resent those privileges which our fearful connection gives
+you.  But this raillery--"
+
+"Come, come, I was wrong;  forgive  it!" interrupted Varney, who,
+dreading nothing else, dreaded much the rebuke of his grim stepmother.
+
+"It is forgiven," said Lucretia, coldly, and with a slight wave of her
+hand; then she added, with composure,--
+
+"Long since--even while heiress of Laughton--I parted with mere pride in
+the hollow seemings of distinction.  Had I not, should I have stooped to
+William Mainwaring?  What I then respected, amidst all the degradations I
+have known, I respect still,--talent, ambition, intellect, and will.  Do
+you think I would exchange these in a son of mine for the mere graces
+which a dancing-master can sell him?  Fear not.  Let us give but wealth
+to that intellect, and the world will see no clumsiness in the movements
+that march to its high places, and hear no discord in the laugh that
+triumphs over fools.  But you have some news to communicate, or some
+proposal to suggest."
+
+"I have both," said Varney.  "In the first place, I have a letter from
+Grabman!"
+
+Lucretia's eyes sparkled, and she snatched eagerly at the letter her son-
+in-law drew forth.
+
+LIVERPOOL, October, 1831.
+
+JASON,--I think I am on the road to success.  Having first possessed
+myself of the fact, commemorated in the parish register, of the birth and
+baptism of Alfred Braddell's son,--for we must proceed regularly in these
+matters,--I next set my wits to work to trace that son's exodus from the
+paternal mansion.  I have hunted up an old woman-servant, Jane Prior, who
+lived with the Braddells.  She now thrives as a laundress; she is a rank
+Puritan, and starches for the godly.  She was at first very wary and
+reserved in her communications; but by siding with her prejudices and
+humours, and by the intercession of the Rev. Mr. Graves (of her own
+persuasion), I have got her to open her lips.  It seems that these
+Braddells lived very unhappily; the husband, a pious dissenter, had
+married a lady who turned out of a very different practice and belief.
+Jane Prior pitied her master, and detested her mistress.  Some
+circumstances in the conduct of Mrs. Braddell made the husband, who was
+then in his last illness, resolve, from a point of conscience, to save
+his child from what he deemed the contamination of her precepts and
+example.  Mrs.  Braddell was absent from Liverpool on a visit, which was
+thought very unfeeling by the husband's friends; during this time
+Braddell was visited constantly by a gentleman (Mr. Ardworth), who
+differed from him greatly in some things, and seemed one of the carnal,
+but with whom agreement in politics (for they were both great politicians
+and republicans) seems to have established a link.  One evening, when Mr.
+Ardworth was in the house, Jane Prior, who was the only maidservant (for
+they kept but two, and one had been just discharged), had been sent out
+to the apothecary's.  On her return, Jane Prior, going into the nursery,
+missed the infant: she thought it was with her master; but coming into
+his room, Mr. Braddell told her to shut the door, informed her that he
+had intrusted the boy to Mr. Ardworth, to be brought up in a righteous
+and pious manner, and implored and commanded her to keep this a secret
+from his wife, whom he was resolved, indeed, if he lived, not to receive
+back into his house.  Braddell, however, did not survive more than two
+days this event.  On his death, Mrs. Braddell returned; but circumstances
+connected with the symptoms of his malady, and a strong impression which
+haunted himself, and with which he had infected Jane Prior, that he had
+been poisoned, led to a posthumous examination of his remains.  No trace
+of poison was, however, discovered, and suspicions that had been directed
+against his wife could not be substantiated by law; still, she was
+regarded in so unfavourable a light by all who had known them both, she
+met with such little kindness or sympathy in her widowhood, and had been
+so openly denounced by Jane Prior, that it is not to be wondered at that
+she left the place as soon as possible.  The house, indeed, was taken
+from her; for Braddell's affairs were found in such confusion, and his
+embarrassments so great, that everything was seized and sold off,--
+nothing left for the widow nor for the child (if the last were ever
+discovered.)
+
+As may be supposed, Mrs. Braddell was at first very clamorous for the
+lost child; but Jane Prior kept her promise and withheld all clew to it,
+and Mrs. Braddell was forced to quit the place, in ignorance of what had
+become of it.  Since then no one had heard of her; but Jane Prior says
+that she is sure she has come to no good.  Now, though much of this may
+be, no doubt, familiar to you, dear Jason, it is right, when I put the
+evidence before you, that you should know and guard against what to
+expect; and in any trial at law to prove the identity of Vincent
+Braddell, Jane Prior must be a principal witness, and will certainly not
+spare poor Mrs. Braddell.  For the main point, however,--namely, the
+suspicion of poisoning her husband,--the inquest and verdict may set
+aside all alarm.
+
+My next researches have been directed on the track of Walter Ardworth,
+after leaving Liverpool, which (I find by the books at the inn where he
+lodged and was known) he did in debt to the innkeeper, the very night he
+received the charge of the child.  Here, as yet, I am in fault; but I
+have ascertained that a woman, one of the sect, of the name of Joplin,
+living in a village fifteen miles from the town, had the care of some
+infant, to replace her own, which she had lost. I am going to this
+village to-morrow.  But I cannot expect much in that quarter, since it
+would seem at variance with your more probable belief that Walter
+Ardworth took the child at once to Mr. Fielden's.  However, you see I
+have already gone very far in the evidence,--the birth of the child, the
+delivery of the child to Ardworth.  I see a very pretty case already
+before us, and I do not now doubt for a moment of ultimate success.
+                       Yours,      N.  GRABMAN.
+
+Lucretia read steadily, and with no change of countenance, to the last
+line of the letter.  Then, as she put it down on the table before her,
+she repeated, with a tone of deep exultation: "No doubt of ultimate
+success!"
+
+"You do not fear to brave all which the spite of this woman, Jane Prior,
+may prompt her to say against you?" asked Varney.
+
+Lucretia's brow fell.  "It is another torture," she said, "even to own my
+marriage with a low-born hypocrite.  But I can endure it for the cause,"
+she added, more haughtily.  "Nothing can really hurt me in these obsolete
+aspersions and this vague scandal.  The inquest acquitted me, and the
+world will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and rank and
+that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, shall command opinion
+in renown."
+
+"You are now, then, disposed at once to proceed to action.  For Helen all
+is prepared,--the insurances are settled, the trust for which I hold them
+on your behalf is signed and completed.  But for Percival St. John I
+await your directions.  Will it be best first to prove your son's
+identity, or when morally satisfied that that proof is forthcoming, to
+remove betimes both the barriers to his inheritance?  If we tarry for the
+last, the removal of St. John becomes more suspicious than it does at a
+time when you have no visible interest in his death.  Besides, now we
+have the occasion, or can make it, can we tell how long it will last?
+Again, it will seem more natural that the lover should break his heart in
+the first shock of--"
+
+"Ay," interrupted Lucretia, "I would have all thought and contemplation
+of crime at an end when, clasping my boy to my heart, I can say, 'Your
+mother's inheritance is yours.' I would not have a murder before my eyes
+when they should look only on the fair prospects beyond.  I would cast
+back all the hideous images of horror into the rear of memory, so that
+hope may for once visit me again undisturbed.  No, Gabriel, were I to
+speak forever, you would comprehend not what I grasp at in a son.  It is
+at a future!  Rolling a stone over the sepulchre of the past, it is a
+resurrection into a fresh world; it is to know again one emotion not
+impure, one scheme not criminal,--it is, in a word, to cease to be as
+myself, to think in another soul, to hear my heart beat in another form.
+All this I covet in a son.  And when all this should smile before me in
+his image, shall I be plucked back again into my hell by the
+consciousness that a new crime is to be done?  No; wade quickly through
+the passage of blood, that we may dry our garments and breathe the air
+upon the bank where sun shines and flowers bloom!"
+
+"So be it, then," said Varney.  "Before the week is out, I must be under
+the same roof as St. John.  Before the week is out, why not all meet in
+the old halls of Laughton?"
+
+"Ay, in the halls of Laughton.  On the hearth of our ancestors the deeds
+done for our descendants look less dark."
+
+"And first, to prepare the way, Helen should sicken in these fogs of
+London, and want change of air."
+
+"Place before me that desk.  I will read William Mainwaring's letters
+again and again, till from every shadow in the past a voice comes forth,
+'The child of your rival, your betrayer, your undoer, stands between the
+daylight and your son!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+VARIETIES.
+
+Leaving the guilty pair to concert their schemes and indulge their
+atrocious hopes, we accompany Percival to the hovel occupied by Becky
+Carruthers.
+
+On following Beck into the room she rented, Percival was greatly
+surprised to find, seated comfortably on the only chair to be seen, no
+less a person than the worthy Mrs. Mivers.  This good lady in her
+spinster days had earned her own bread by hard work.  She had captivated
+Mr. Mivers when but a simple housemaid in the service of one of his
+relations.  And while this humble condition in her earlier life may
+account for much in her language and manners which is nowadays
+inconsonant with the breeding and education that characterize the wives
+of opulent tradesmen, so perhaps the remembrance of it made her unusually
+susceptible to the duties of charity.  For there is no class of society
+more prone to pity and relieve the poor than females in domestic service;
+and this virtue Mrs. Mivers had not laid aside, as many do, as soon as
+she was in a condition to practise it with effect.  Mrs. Mivers blushed
+scarlet on being detected in her visit of kindness, and hastened to
+excuse herself by the information that she belonged to a society of
+ladies for "The Bettering the Condition of the Poor," and that having
+just been informed of Mrs. Becky's destitute state, she had looked in to
+recommend her--a ventilator!
+
+"It is quite shocking to see how little the poor attends to the proper
+wentilating their houses.  No wonder there's so much typus about!" said
+Mrs. Mivers.  "And for one-and-sixpence we can introduce a stream of h-
+air that goes up the chimbly, and carries away all that it finds!".
+
+"I 'umbly thank you, marm," said the poor bundle of rags that went by the
+name of "Becky," as with some difficulty she contrived to stand in the
+presence of the benevolent visitor; "but I am much afeard that the h-air
+will make the rheumatiz very rumpatious!"
+
+"On the contrary, on the contrary," said Mrs. Mivers, triumphantly; and
+she proceeded philosophically to explain that all the fevers, aches,
+pains, and physical ills that harass the poor arise from the want of an
+air-trap in the chimney and a perforated network in the window-pane.
+Becky listened patiently; for Mrs. Mivers was only a philosopher in her
+talk, and she had proved herself anything but a philosopher in her
+actions, by the spontaneous present of five shillings, and the promise of
+a basket of victuals and some good wine to keep the cold wind she invited
+to the apartment out of the stomach.
+
+Percival imitated the silence of Becky, whose spirit was so bowed down by
+an existence of drudgery that not even the sight of her foster-son could
+draw her attention from the respect due to a superior.
+
+"And is this poor cranky-looking cretur your son, Mrs. Becky?" said the
+visitor, struck at last by the appearance of the ex-sweeper as he stood
+at the threshold, hat in hand.
+
+"No, indeed, marm," answered Becky; "I often says, says I: 'Child, you be
+the son of Sint Poll's.'"
+
+Beck smiled proudly.
+
+"It was agin the grit church, marm ----  But it's a long story.  My poor
+good man had not a long been dead,--as good a man as hever lived, marm,"
+and Becky dropped a courtesy; "he fell off a scaffold, and pitched right
+on his 'ead, or I should not have come on the parish, marm,--and that's
+the truth on it!"
+
+"Very well, I shall call and hear all about it; a sad case, I dare say.
+You see, your husband should have subscribed to our Loan Society, and
+then they'd have found him a 'andsome coffin, and given three pounds to
+his widder.  But the poor are so benighted in these parts.  I'm sure,
+sir, I can't guess what brought you here; but that's no business of mine.
+And how are all at Old Brompton?" Here Mrs. Mivers bridled indignantly.
+"There was a time when Miss Mainwaring was very glad to come and chat
+with Mr. M. and myself; but now 'rum has riz,' as the saying is,--not but
+what I dare say it's not her fault, poor thing!  That stiff aunt of
+hers,--she need not look so high; pride and poverty, forsooth!"
+
+While delivering these conciliatory sentences, Mrs. Mivers had gathered
+up her gown, and was evidently in the bustle of departure.  As she now
+nodded to Becky, Percival stepped up, and, with his irresistible smile,
+offered her his arm.  Much surprised and much flattered, Mrs. Mivers
+accepted it.  As she did so, he gently detained her while he said to
+Becky,--"My good friend, I have brought you the poor lad to whom you have
+been a mother, to tell you that good deeds find their reward sooner or
+later.  As for him, make yourself easy; he will inform you of the new
+step he has taken, and for you, good, kind-hearted creature, thank the
+boy you brought up if your old age shall be made easy and cheerful.  Now,
+Beck, silly lad, go and tell all to your nurse!  Take care of this step,
+Mrs. Mivers."
+
+As soon as he was in the street, Percival, who, if amused at the
+ventilator, had seen the five shillings gleam on Becky's palm, and felt
+that he had found under the puce-coloured gown a good woman's heart to
+understand him, gave Mrs. Mivers a short sketch of poor Becky's history
+and misfortunes, and so contrived to interest her in behalf of the nurse
+that she willingly promised to become Percival's almoner, to execute his
+commission, to improve the interior of Becky's abode, and distribute
+weekly the liberal stipend he proposed to settle on the old widow.  They
+had grown, indeed, quite friendly and intimate by the time he reached the
+smart plate-glazed mahogany-coloured facade within which the flourishing
+business of Mr. Mivers was carried on; and when, knocking at the private
+door, promptly opened by a lemon-coloured page, she invited him upstairs,
+it so chanced that the conversation had slid off to Helen, and Percival
+was sufficiently interested to bow assent and to enter.
+
+Though all the way up the stairs Mrs. Mivers, turning back at every other
+step, did her best to impress upon her young visitor's mind the important
+fact that they kept their household establishment at their "willer," and
+that their apartments in Fleet Street were only a "conwenience," the
+store set by the worthy housewife upon her goods and chattels was
+sufficiently visible in the drugget that threaded its narrow way up the
+gay Brussels stair-carpet, and in certain layers of paper which protected
+from the profanation of immediate touch the mahogany hand-rail.  And
+nothing could exceed the fostering care exhibited in the drawing-room,
+when the door thrown open admitted a view of its damask moreen curtains,
+pinned back from such impertinent sunbeams as could force their way
+through the foggy air of the east into the windows, and the ells of
+yellow muslin that guarded the frames, at least, of a collection of
+coloured prints and two kit-kat portraitures of Mr. Mivers and his lady
+from the perambulations of the flies.
+
+But Percival's view of this interior was somewhat impeded by his portly
+guide, who, uttering a little exclamation of surprise, stood motionless
+on the threshold as she perceived Mr. Mivers seated by the hearth in
+close conference with a gentleman whom she had never seen before.  At
+that hour it was so rare an event in the life of Mr. Mivers to be found
+in the drawing-room, and that he should have an acquaintance unknown to
+his helpmate was a circumstance so much rarer still, that Mrs. Mivers may
+well be forgiven for keeping St. John standing at the door till she had
+recovered her amaze.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Mivers rose in some confusion, and was apparently about to
+introduce his guest, when that gentleman coughed, and pinched the host's
+arm significantly.  Mr. Mivers coughed also, and stammered out: "A
+gentleman, Mrs. M.,--a friend; stay with us a day or two.  Much honoured,
+hum!"
+
+Mrs. Mivers stared and courtesied, and stared again.  But there was an
+open, good-humoured smile in the face of the visitor, as he advanced and
+took her hand, that attracted a heart very easily conciliated.  Seeing
+that that was no moment for further explanation, she plumped herself into
+a seat and said,--
+
+"But bless us and save us, I am keeping you standing, Mr. St. John!"
+
+"St. John!" repeated the visitor, with a vehemence that startled Mrs.
+Mivers.  "Your name is St. John, sir,--related to the St. Johns of
+Laughton?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Percival, with his shy, arch smile.  "Laughton at
+present has no worthier owner than myself."
+
+The gentleman made two strides to Percival and shook him heartily by the
+hand.
+
+"This is pleasant indeed!" he exclaimed.  "You must excuse my freedom;
+but I knew well poor old Sir Miles, and my heart warms at the sight of
+his representative."
+
+Percival glanced at his new acquaintance, and on the whole was
+prepossessed in his favour.  He seemed somewhere on the sunnier side of
+fifty, with that superb yellow bronze of complexion which betokens long
+residence under Eastern skies.  Deep wrinkles near the eyes, and a dark
+circle round them, spoke of cares and fatigue, and perhaps dissipation.
+But he had evidently a vigour of constitution that had borne him passably
+through all; his frame was wiry and nervous; his eye bright and full of
+life; and there was that abrupt, unsteady, mercurial restlessness in his
+movements and manner which usually accompanies the man whose sanguine
+temperament prompts him to concede to the impulse, and who is blessed or
+cursed with a superabundance of energy, according as circumstance may
+favour or judgment correct that equivocal gift of constitution.
+
+Percival said something appropriate in reply to so much cordiality paid
+to the account of the Sir Miles whom he had never seen, and seated
+himself, colouring slightly under the influence of the fixed, pleased,
+and earnest look still bent upon him.
+
+Searching for something else to say, Percival asked Mrs. Mivers if she
+had lately seen John Ardworth.
+
+The guest, who had just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that
+question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack.  Her chairs
+were not meant for such usage.  A shade fell over her rosy countenance as
+she replied,--
+
+"No, indeed (please, sir, them chairs is brittle)!  No, he is like Madame
+at Brompton, and seldom condescends to favour us now.  It was but last
+Sunday we asked him to dinner.  I am sure he need not turn up his nose at
+our roast beef and pudding!"
+
+Here Mr. Mivers was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which drew off
+his wife's attention.  She was afraid he had taken cold.
+
+The stranger took out a large snuff-box, inhaled a long pinch of snuff,
+and said to St. John,--
+
+"This Mr. John Ardworth, a pert enough jackanapes, I suppose,--a limb of
+the law, eh?"
+
+"Sir," said Percival, gravely, "John Ardworth is my particular friend.
+It is clear that you know very little of him."
+
+"That's true," said the stranger,--"'pon my life, that's very true.  But
+I suppose he's like all lawyers,--cunning and tricky, conceited and
+supercilious, full of prejudice and cant, and a red-hot Tory into the
+bargain.  I know them, sir; I know them!"
+
+"Well," answered St. John, half gayly, half angrily, "your general
+experience serves you very little here; for Ardworth is exactly the
+opposite of all you have described."
+
+"Even in politics?"
+
+"Why, I fear he is half a Radical,--certainly more than a Whig," answered
+St. John, rather mournfully; for his own theories were all the other way,
+notwithstanding his unpatriotic forgetfulness of them in his offer to
+assist Ardworth's entrance into parliament.
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," cried the stranger, again taking snuff.
+"And this Madame at Brompton--perhaps I know her a little better than I
+do young Mr. Ardworth--Mrs. Brad--I mean Madame Dalibard!" and the
+stranger glanced at Mr. Mivers, who was slowly recovering from some
+vigorous slaps on the back administered to him by his wife as a counter-
+irritant to the cough.  "Is it true that she has lost the use of her
+limbs?"
+
+Percival shook his head.
+
+"And takes care of poor Helen Mainwaring the orphan?  Well, well, that
+looks amiable enough.  I must see; I must see!"
+
+"Who shall I say inquired after her, when I see Madame Dalibard?" asked
+Percival, with some curiosity.
+
+"Who?  Oh, Mr. Tomkins.  She will not recollect him, though,"--and the
+stranger laughed, and Mr. Mivers laughed too; and Mrs. Mivers, who,
+indeed, always laughed when other people laughed, laughed also.  So
+Percival thought he ought to laugh for the sake of good company, and all
+laughed together as he arose and took leave.
+
+He had not, however, got far from the house, on his way to his cabriolet,
+which he had left by Temple Bar, when, somewhat to his surprise, he found
+Mr. Tomkins at his elbow.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. St. John, but I have only just returned to
+England, and on such occasions a man is apt to seem curious.  This young
+lawyer ----  You see the elder Ardworth, a good-for-nothing scamp, was a
+sort of friend of mine,--not exactly friend, indeed, for, by Jove, I
+think he was a worse friend to me than he was to anybody else; still I
+had a foolish interest for him, and should be glad to hear something more
+about any one bearing his name than I can coax out of that droll little
+linen draper.  You are really intimate with young Ardworth, eh?"
+
+"Intimate! poor fellow, he will not let any one be that; he works too
+hard to be social.  But I love him sincerely, and I admire him beyond
+measure."
+
+"The dog has industry, then;--that's good.  And does he make debts, like
+that rascal, Ardworth senior?"
+
+"Really, sir, I must say this tone with respect to Mr. Ardworth's father-
+-"
+
+"What the devil, sir!  Do you take the father's part as well as the
+son's?"
+
+"I don't know anything about Mr. Ardworth senior," said Percival,
+pouting; "but I do know that my friend would not allow any one to speak
+ill of his father in his presence; and I beg you, sir, to consider that
+whatever would offend him must offend me."
+
+"Gad's my life!  He's the luckiest young rogue to have such a friend.
+Sir, I wish you a very good-day."
+
+Mr. Tomkins took off his hat, bowed, and passing St. John with a rapid
+step, was soon lost to his eye amongst the crowd hurrying westward.
+
+But our business being now rather with him than Percival, we leave the
+latter to mount his cabriolet, and we proceed with Mr. Mivers's mercurial
+guest on his eccentric way through the throng.  There was an odd mixture
+of thoughtful abstraction and quick observation in the soliloquy in which
+this gentleman indulged, as he walked briskly on.
+
+"A pretty young spark that St. John!  A look of his father, but
+handsomer, and less affected.  I like him.  Fine shop that, very!  London
+wonderfully improved.  A hookah in that window,--God bless me!--a real
+hookah!  This is all very good news about that poor boy, very.  After
+all, he is not to blame if his mother was such a damnable--I must
+contrive to see and judge of him myself as soon as possible.  Can't trust
+to others; too sharp for that.  What an ugly dog that is, looking after
+me!  It is certainly a bailiff.  Hang it, what do I care for bailiffs?
+Hem, hem!"  And the gentleman thrust his hands into his pockets, and
+laughed, as the jingle of coin reached his ear through the din without.
+"Well, I must make haste to decide; for really there is a very
+troublesome piece of business before me.  Plague take her, what can have
+become of the woman?  I shall have to hunt out a sharp lawyer.  But
+John's a lawyer himself.  No, attorneys, I suppose, are the men.  Gad!
+they were sharp enough when they had to hunt me.  What's that great bill
+on the wall about?  'Down with the Lords!' Pooh, pooh!  Master John Bull,
+you love lords a great deal too much for that.  A prettyish girl!
+English women are very good-looking, certainly.  That Lucretia, what
+shall I do, if ----  Ah, time enough to think of her when I have got over
+that mighty stiff if!"
+
+In such cogitations and mental remarks our traveller whiled away the time
+till he found himself in Piccadilly.  There, a publisher's shop (and he
+had that keen eye for shops which betrays the stranger in London), with
+its new publications exposed at the window, attracted his notice.
+Conspicuous amongst the rest was the open title-page of a book, at the
+foot of which was placed a placard with the enticing words, "FOURTH
+EDITION; JUST OUT," in red capitals.  The title of the work struck his
+irritable, curious fancy; he walked into the shop, asked for the volume,
+and while looking over the contents with muttered ejaculations, "Good!
+capital!  Why, this reminds one of Horne Tooke!  What's the price?  Very
+dear; must have it though,--must.  Ha, ha! home-thrust there!"--while
+thus turning over the leaves, and rending them asunder with his
+forefinger, regardless of the paper cutter extended to him by the
+shopman, a gentleman, pushing by him, asked if the publisher was at home;
+and as the shopman, bowing very low, answered "Yes," the new-comer darted
+into a little recess behind the shop.  Mr. Tomkins, who had looked up
+very angrily on being jostled so unceremoniously, started and changed
+colour when he saw the face of the offender.  "Saints in heaven!" he
+murmured almost audibly, "what a look of that woman; and yet--no--it is
+gone!"
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" he asked abruptly, as he paid for his book.
+
+The shopman smiled, but answered, "I don't know, sir."
+
+"That's a lie!  You would never bow so low to a man you did not know!"
+
+The shopman smiled again.  "Why, sir, there are many who come to this
+house who don't wish us to know them."
+
+"Ah, I understand; you are political publishers,--afraid of libels, I
+dare say.  Always the same thing in this cursed country; and then they
+tell us we are 'free!'  So I suppose that gentleman has written something
+William Pitt does not like.  But William Pitt--ha--he's dead!  Very true,
+so he is!  Sir, this little book seems most excellent; but in my time, a
+man would have been sent to Newgate for printing it."  While thus running
+on, Mr. Tomkins had edged himself pretty close to the recess within which
+the last-comer had disappeared; and there, seated on a high stool, he
+contrived to read and to talk at the same time, but his eye and his ear
+were both turned every instant towards the recess.
+
+The shopman, little suspecting that in so very eccentric, garrulous a
+person he was permitting a spy to encroach upon the secrets of the house,
+continued to make up sundry parcels of the new publication which had so
+enchanted his customer, while he expatiated on the prodigious sensation
+the book had created, and while the customer himself had already caught
+enough of the low conversation within the recess to be aware that the
+author of the book was the very person who had so roused his curiosity.
+
+Not till that gentleman, followed to the door by the polite publisher,
+had quitted the shop, did Mr. Tomkins put this volume in his pocket, and,
+with a familiar nod at the shopman, take himself off.
+
+He was scarcely in the street when he saw Percival St. John leaning out
+of his cabriolet and conversing with the author he had discovered.  He
+halted a moment irresolute; but the young man, in whom our reader
+recognizes John Ardworth, declining St. John's invitation to accompany
+him to Brompton, resumed his way through the throng; the cabriolet drove
+on; and Mr. Tomkins, though with a graver mien and a steadier step,
+continued his desultory rambles.  Meanwhile, John Ardworth strode
+gloomily back to his lonely chamber.
+
+There, throwing himself on the well-worn chair before the crowded desk,
+he buried his face in his hands, and for some minutes he felt all that
+profound despondency peculiar to those who have won fame, to add to the
+dark volume of experience the conviction of fame's nothingness.  For some
+minutes he felt an illiberal and ungrateful envy of St. John, so fair, so
+light-hearted, so favoured by fortune, so rich in friends,--in a mother's
+love, and in Helen's half-plighted troth.  And he, from his very birth,
+cut off from the social ties of blood; no mother's kiss to reward the
+toils or gladden the sports of childhood; no father's cheering word up
+the steep hill of man!  And Helen, for whose sake he had so often, when
+his heart grew weary, nerved himself again to labour, saying, "Let me be
+rich, let me be great, and then I will dare to tell Helen that I love
+her!"--Helen smiling upon another, unconscious of his pangs!  What could
+fame bestow in compensation?  What matter that strangers praised, and the
+babble of the world's running stream lingered its brief moment round the
+pebble in its way.  In the bitterness of his mood, he was unjust to his
+rival.  All that exquisite but half-concealed treasure of imagination and
+thought which lay beneath the surface of Helen's childlike smile he
+believed that he alone--he, soul of power and son of genius--was worthy
+to discover and to prize.  In the pride not unfrequent with that
+kingliest of all aristocracies, the Chiefs of Intellect, he forgot the
+grandeur which invests the attributes of the heart; forgot that, in the
+lists of love, the heart is at least the equal of the mind.  In the
+reaction that follows great excitement, Ardworth had morbidly felt, that
+day, his utter solitude,--felt it in the streets through which he had
+passed; in the home to which he had returned; the burning tears, shed for
+the first time since childhood, forced themselves through his clasped
+fingers.  At length he rose, with a strong effort at self-mastery, some
+contempt of his weakness, and much remorse at his ungrateful envy.  He
+gathered together the soiled manuscript and dingy proofs of his book, and
+thrust them through the grimy bars of his grate; then, opening his desk,
+he drew out a small packet, with tremulous fingers unfolding paper after
+paper, and gazed, with eyes still moistened, on the relics kept till then
+in the devotion of the only sentiment inspired by Eros that had ever,
+perhaps, softened his iron nature.  These were two notes from Helen, some
+violets she had once given him, and a little purse she had knitted for
+him (with a playful prophecy of future fortunes) when he had last left
+the vicarage.  Nor blame him, ye who, with more habitual romance of
+temper, and richer fertility of imagination, can reconcile the tenderest
+memories with the sternest duties, if he, with all his strength, felt
+that the associations connected with those tokens would but enervate his
+resolves and embitter his resignation.  You can guess not the extent of
+the sacrifice, the bitterness of the pang, when, averting his head, he
+dropped those relics on the hearth.  The evidence of the desultory
+ambition, the tokens of the visionary love,--the same flame leaped up to
+devour both!  It was as the funeral pyre of his youth!
+
+"So," he said to himself, "let all that can divert me from the true ends
+of my life consume!  Labour, take back your son."
+
+An hour afterwards, and his clerk, returning home, found Ardworth
+employed as calmly as usual on his Law Reports.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE INVITATION TO LAUGHTON.
+
+That day, when he called at Brompton, Percival reported to Madame
+Dalibard his interview with the eccentric Mr. Tomkins.  Lucretia seemed
+chafed and disconcerted by the inquiries with which that gentleman had
+honoured her, and as soon as Percival had gone, she sent for Varney.  He
+did not come till late; she repeated to him what St. John had said of the
+stranger.  Varney participated in her uneasy alarm.  The name, indeed,
+was unknown to them, nor could they conjecture the bearer of so ordinary
+a patronymic; but there had been secrets enough in Lucretia's life to
+render her apprehensive of encountering those who had known her in
+earlier years; and Varney feared lest any rumour reported to St. John
+might create his mistrust, or lessen the hold obtained upon a victim
+heretofore so unsuspicious.  They both agreed in the expediency of
+withdrawing themselves and St. John as soon as possible from London, and
+frustrating Percival's chance of closer intercourse with the stranger,
+who had evidently aroused his curiosity.
+
+The next day Helen was much indisposed; and the symptoms grew so grave
+towards the evening that Madame Dalibard expressed alarm, and willingly
+suffered Percival (who had only been permitted to see Helen for a few
+minutes, when her lassitude was so extreme that she was obliged to retire
+to her room) to go in search of a physician.  He returned with one of the
+most eminent of the faculty.  On the way to Brompton, in reply to the
+questions of Dr. ---- , Percival spoke of the dejection to which Helen
+was occasionally subject, and this circumstance confirmed Dr. ---- ,
+after he had seen his patient, in his view of the case.  In addition to
+some feverish and inflammatory symptoms which he trusted his
+prescriptions would speedily remove, he found great nervous debility, and
+willingly fell in with the casual suggestion of Varney, who was present,
+that a change of air would greatly improve Miss Mainwaring's general
+health, as soon as the temporary acute attack had subsided.  He did not
+regard the present complaint very seriously, and reassured poor Percival
+by his cheerful mien and sanguine predictions.  Percival remained at the
+house the whole day, and had the satisfaction, before he left, of hearing
+that the remedies had already abated the fever, and that Helen had fallen
+into a profound sleep.  Walking back to town with Varney, the last said
+hesitatingly,--
+
+"You were saying to me the other day that you feared you should have to
+go for a few days both to Vernon Grange and to Laughton, as your steward
+wished to point out to you some extensive alterations in the management
+of your woods to commence this autumn.  As you were so soon coming of
+age, Lady Mary desired that her directions should yield to your own.
+Now, since Helen is recommended change of air, why not invite Madame
+Dalibard to visit you at one of these places?  I would suggest Laughton.
+My poor mother-in-law I know longs to revisit the scenes of her youth,
+and you could not compliment or conciliate her more than by such an
+invitation."
+
+"Oh," said Percival, joyfully, "it would realize the fondest dream of my
+heart to see Helen under the old roof-tree of Laughton; but as my mother
+is abroad, and there is therefore no lady to receive them, perhaps--"
+
+"Why," interrupted Varney, "Madame Dalibard herself is almost the very
+person whom les bienseances might induce you to select to do the honours
+of your house in Lady Mary's absence, not only as kinswoman to yourself,
+but as the nearest surviving relative of Sir Miles,--the most immediate
+descendant of the St. Johns; her mature years and decorum of life, her
+joint kindred to Helen and yourself, surely remove every appearance of
+impropriety."
+
+"If she thinks so, certainly; I am no accurate judge of such formalities.
+You could not oblige me more, Varney, than in pre-obtaining her consent
+to the proposal.  Helen at Laughton!  Oh, blissful thought!"
+
+"And in what air would she be so likely to revive?" said Varney; but his
+voice was thick and husky.
+
+The ideas thus presented to him almost banished anxiety from Percival's
+breast. In a thousand delightful shapes they haunted him during the
+sleepless night; and when, the next morning, he found that Helen was
+surprisingly better, he pressed his invitation upon Madame Dalibard with
+a warmth that made her cheek yet more pale, and the hand, which the boy
+grasped as he pleaded, as cold as the dead.  But she briefly consented,
+and Percival, allowed a brief interview with Helen, had the rapture to
+see her smile in a delight as childlike as his own at the news he
+communicated, and listen with swimming eye when he dwelt on the walks
+they should take together amidst haunts to become henceforth dear to her
+as to himself.  Fairyland dawned before them.
+
+The visit of the physician justified Percival's heightened spirits.  All
+the acuter symptoms had vanished already.  He sanctioned his patient's
+departure from town as soon as Madame Dalibard's convenience would
+permit, and recommended only a course of restorative medicines to
+strengthen the nervous system, which was to commence with the following
+morning, and be persisted in for some weeks.  He dwelt much on the effect
+to be derived from taking these medicines the first thing in the day, as
+soon as Helen woke.  Varney and Madame Dalibard exchanged a rapid glance.
+Charmed with the success that in this instance had attended the skill of
+the great physician, Percival, in his usual zealous benevolence, now
+eagerly pressed upon Madame Dalibard the wisdom of consulting Dr. ----
+for her own malady; and the doctor, putting on his spectacles and drawing
+his chair nearer to the frowning cripple, began to question her of her
+state.  But Madame Dalibard abruptly and discourteously put a stop to all
+interrogatories: she had already exhausted all remedies art could
+suggest; she had become reconciled to her deplorable infirmity, and lost
+all faith in physicians.  Some day or other she might try the baths at
+Egra, but till then she must be permitted to suffer undisturbed.
+
+The doctor, by no means wishing to undertake a case of chronic paralysis,
+rose smilingly, and with a liberal confession that the German baths were
+sometimes extremely efficacious in such complaints, pressed Percival's
+outstretched hand, then slipped his own into his pocket, and bowed his
+way out of the room.
+
+Relieved from all apprehension, Percival very good-humouredly received
+the hint of Madame Dalibard that the excitement through which she had
+gone for the last twenty-four hours rendered her unfit for his society,
+and went home to write to Laughton and prepare all things for the
+reception of his guests.  Varney accompanied him.  Percival found Beck in
+the hall, already much altered, and embellished, by a new suit of livery.
+The ex-sweeper stared hard at Varney, who, without recognizing, in so
+smart a shape, the squalid tatterdemalion who had lighted him up the
+stairs to Mr. Grabman's apartments, passed him by into Percival's little
+study, on the ground-floor.
+
+"Well, Beck," said Percival, ever mindful of others, and attributing his
+groom's astonished gaze at Varney to his admiration of that gentleman's
+showy exterior, "I shall send you down to the country to-morrow with two
+of the horses; so you may have to-day to yourself to take leave of your
+nurse.  I flatter myself you will find her rooms a little more
+comfortable than they were yesterday."
+
+Beck heard with a bursting heart; and his master, giving him a cheering
+tap on the shoulder, left him to find his way into the streets and to
+Becky's abode.
+
+He found, indeed, that the last had already undergone the magic
+transformation which is ever at the command of godlike wealth.  Mrs.
+Mivers, who was naturally prompt and active, had had pleasure in
+executing Percival's commission.  Early in the morning, floors had been
+scrubbed, the windows cleaned, the ventilator fixed; then followed
+porters with chairs and tables, and a wonderful Dutch clock, and new
+bedding, and a bright piece of carpet; and then came two servants
+belonging to Mrs. Mivers to arrange the chattels; and finally, when all
+was nearly completed, the Avatar of Mrs. Mivers herself, to give the last
+finish with her own mittened hands and in her own housewifely apron.
+
+The good lady was still employed in ranging a set of teacups on the
+shelves of the dresser when Beck entered; and his old nurse, in the
+overflow of her gratitude, hobbled up to her foundling and threw her arms
+round his neck.
+
+"That's right!" said Mrs. Mivers, good-humouredly, turning round, and
+wiping the tear from her eye.  "You ought to make much of him, poor lad,-
+-he has turned out a godsend indeed; and, upon my word, he looks very
+respectable in his new clothes.  But what is this,--a child's coral?" as,
+opening a drawer in the dresser, she discovered Beck's treasure.  "Dear
+me, it is a very handsome one; why, these bells look like gold!" and
+suspicion of her protege's honesty for a moment contracted her thoughtful
+brow.  "However on earth did you come by this, Mrs. Becky?"
+
+"Sure and sartin," answered Becky, dropping her mutilated courtesy, "I
+be's glad it be found now, instead of sum days afore, or I might have
+been vicked enough to let it go with the rest to the pop-shop; and I'm
+sure the times out of mind ven that 'ere boy was a h-urchin that I've
+risted the timtashung and said, 'No, Becky Carruthers, that maun't go to
+my h-uncle's!'"
+
+"And why not, my good woman?"
+
+"Lor' love you, marm, if that curril could speak, who knows vot it might
+say,--eh, lad, who knows?  You sees, marm, my good man had not a long
+been dead; I could not a get no vork no vays.  'Becky Carruthers,' says
+I, 'you must go out in the streets a begging!'  I niver thought I should
+a come to that.  But my poor husband, you sees, marm, fell from a
+scaffol',--as good a man as hever--"
+
+"Yes, yes, you told me all that before," said Mrs. Mivers, growing
+impatient, and already diverted from her interest in the coral by a new
+cargo, all bright from the tinman, which, indeed, no less
+instantaneously, absorbed the admiration both of Beck and his nurse.  And
+what with the inspection of these articles, and the comments each
+provoked, the coral rested in peace on the dresser till Mrs. Mivers, when
+just about to renew her inquiries, was startled by the sound of the Dutch
+clock striking four,--a voice which reminded her of the lapse of time and
+her own dinner-hour.  So, with many promises to call again and have a
+good chat with her humble friend,  she took her departure, amidst the
+blessings of Becky, and the less noisy, but not less grateful,
+salutations of Beck.
+
+Very happy was the evening these poor creatures passed together over
+their first cup of tea from the new bright copper kettle and the almost
+forgotten luxury of crumpets, in which their altered circumstances
+permitted them without extravagance to indulge.  In the course of
+conversation Beck communicated how much he had been astonished by
+recognizing the visitor of Grabman, the provoker of the irritable grave-
+stealer, in the familiar companion of his master; and when Becky told him
+how often, in the domestic experience her vocation of charing had
+accumulated, she had heard of the ruin brought on rich young men by
+gamblers and sharpers, Beck promised to himself to keep a sharp eye on
+Grabman's showy acquaintance.  "For master is but a babe, like," said he,
+majestically; "and I'd be cut into mincemeat afore I'd let an 'air on his
+'ead come to 'arm, if so be's h-as 'ow I could perwent it."
+
+We need not say that his nurse confirmed him in these good resolutions.
+
+"And now," said Beck, when the time came for parting, "you'll keep from
+the gin-shop, old 'oman, and not shame the young master?"
+
+"Sartin sure," answered Becky; "it is only ven vun is down in the vorld
+that vun goes to the Ticker-shop.  Now, h-indeed,"--and she looked round
+very proudly,--"I 'as a 'spectable stashion, and I vould n't go for to
+lower it, and let 'em say that Becky Carruthers does not know how to
+conduct herself.  The curril will be safe enuff now; but p'r'aps you had
+best take it yourself, lad."
+
+"Vot should I do vith it?  I've had enuff of the 'sponsibility.  Put it
+up in a 'ankerchiff, and p'r'aps ven master gets married, and 'as a babby
+vots teethin', he vil say, 'Thank ye, Beck, for your curril.' Vould not
+that make us proud, mammy?"
+
+Chuckling heartily at that vision, Beck kissed his nurse, and trying hard
+to keep himself upright, and do credit to the dignity of his cloth,
+returned to his new room over the stables.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT.
+
+And how, O Poet of the sad belief, and eloquence "like ebony, at once
+dark and splendid [It was said of Tertullian that "his style was like
+ebony, dark and splendid"]," how couldst thou, august Lucretius, deem it
+but sweet to behold from the steep the strife of the great sea, or, safe
+from the peril, gaze on the wrath of the battle, or, serene in the
+temples of the wise, look afar on the wanderings of human error?  Is it
+so sweet to survey the ills from which thou art delivered?  Shall not the
+strong law of SYMPATHY find thee out, and thy heart rebuke thy
+philosophy?  Not sweet, indeed, can be man's shelter in self when he says
+to the storm, "I have no bark on the sea;" or to the gods of the battle,
+"I have no son in the slaughter;" when he smiles unmoved upon Woe, and
+murmurs, "Weep on, for these eyes know no tears;" when, unappalled, he
+beholdeth the black deeds of crime, and cries to his conscience, "Thou
+art calm."  Yet solemn is the sight to him who lives in all life,--seeks
+for Nature in the storm, and Providence in the battle; loses self in the
+woe; probes his heart in the crime; and owns no philosophy that sets him
+free from the fetters of man.  Not in vain do we scan all the contrasts
+in the large framework of civilized earth if we note "when the dust
+groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together."  Range, O
+Art, through all space, clasp together in extremes, shake idle wealth
+from its lethargy, and bid States look in hovels where the teacher is
+dumb, and Reason unweeded runs to rot!  Bid haughty Intellect pause in
+its triumph, and doubt if intellect alone can deliver the soul from its
+tempters!  Only that lives uncorrupt which preserves in all seasons the
+human affections in which the breath of God breathes and is.  Go forth to
+the world, O Art, go forth to the innocent, the guilty, the wise, and the
+dull; go forth as the still voice of Fate!  Speak of the insecurity even
+of goodness below; carry on the rapt vision of  suffering Virtue through
+"the doors of the shadows of death;" show the dim revelation symbolled
+forth in the Tragedy of old,--how incomplete is man's destiny, how
+undeveloped is the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally in the
+ribs of the rock, and Oedipus vanish forever in the Grove of the Furies.
+Here below, "the waters are hid with a stone, and the face of the deep is
+frozen;" but above liveth He "who can bind the sweet influence of the
+Pleiades, and loose the bands of Orion."  Go with Fate over the bridge,
+and she vanishes in the land beyond the gulf!  Behold where the Eternal
+demands Eternity for the progress of His creatures and the vindication of
+His justice!
+
+It was past midnight, and Lucretia sat alone in her dreary room; her head
+buried on her bosom, her eyes fixed on the ground, her hands resting on
+her knees,--it was an image of inanimate prostration and decrepitude that
+might have moved compassion to its depth.  The door opened, and Martha
+entered, to assist Madame Dalibard, as usual, to retire to rest. Her
+mistress slowly raised her eyes at the noise of the opening door, and
+those eyes took their searching, penetrating acuteness as they fixed upon
+the florid nor uncomely countenance of the waiting-woman.
+
+In her starched cap, her sober-coloured stuff gown, in her prim, quiet
+manner and a certain sanctified demureness of aspect, there was something
+in the first appearance of this woman that impressed you with the notion
+of respectability, and inspired confidence in those steady good qualities
+which we seek in a trusty servant.  But more closely examined, an
+habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps to disturb,
+his first prepossessions.  The exceeding lowness of the forehead, over
+which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically parted; the severe
+hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed up and constrained; even a
+certain dull cruelty in those light, cold blue eyes,--might have caused
+an uneasy sentiment, almost approaching to fear.  The fat grocer's spoilt
+child instinctively recoiled from her when she entered the shop to make
+her household purchases; the old, gray-whiskered terrier dog at the
+public-house slunk into the tap when she crossed the threshold.
+
+Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into the
+adjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly completed
+before she said abruptly,--
+
+"So you attended Mr. Varney's uncle in his last illness.  Did he suffer
+much?"
+
+"He was a poor creature at best," answered Martha; "but he gave me a deal
+of trouble afore he went.  He was a scranny corpse when I strecked him
+out."
+
+Madame Dalibard shrank from the hands at that moment employed upon
+herself, and said,--
+
+"It was not, then, the first corpse you have laid out for the grave?"
+
+"Not by many."
+
+"And did any of those you so prepared die of the same complaint?"
+
+"I can't say, I'm sure," returned Martha.  "I never inquires how folks
+die; my bizness was to nurse 'em till all was over, and then to sit up.
+As they say in my country, 'Riving Pike wears a hood when the weather
+bodes ill.'"     [If Riving Pike do wear a hood,      The day, be sure,
+will ne'er be good.                     A Lancashire Distich.]
+
+"And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel no fear in the
+dead of the night,--that corpse before you, no fear?"
+
+"Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm.  Oh, he's a clever man!
+What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Martha, with a horrid simplicity.
+
+"You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have heard you
+say,--a sect not unfamiliar to me; a sect to which great crime is very
+rarely known?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be weel [whirlpool]
+deep!"
+
+"You do not believe what they taught you?"
+
+"I did when I was young and silly."
+
+"And what disturbed your belief?"
+
+"Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, was the first I
+ever kep' company with," answered Martha, without a change in her florid
+hue, which seemed fixed in her cheek, as the red in an autumn leaf.
+"After he had ruined me, as the girls say, he told me as how it was all
+sham!"
+
+"You loved him, then?"
+
+"The man was well enough, ma'am, and he behaved handsome and got me a
+husband.  I've known better days."
+
+"You sleep well at night?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, thank you; I loves my bed."
+
+"I have done with you," said Madame Dalibard, stifling a groan, as now,
+placed in her bed, she turned to the wall.  Martha extinguished the
+candle, leaving it on the table by the bed, with a book and a box of
+matches, for Madame Dalibard was a bad sleeper, and often read in the
+night.  She then drew the curtains and went her way.
+
+It might be an hour after Martha had retired to rest that a hand was
+stretched from the bed, that the candle was lighted, and Lucretia
+Dalibard rose; with a sudden movement she threw aside the coverings, and
+stood in her long night-gear on the floor.  Yes, the helpless, paralyzed
+cripple rose, was on her feet,--tall, elastic, erect!  It was as a
+resuscitation from the grave.  Never was change more startling than that
+simple action effected,--not in the form alone, but the whole character
+of the face.  The solitary light streamed upward on a countenance on
+every line of which spoke sinister power and strong resolve.  If you had
+ever seen her before in her false, crippled state, prostrate and
+helpless, and could have seen her then,--those eyes, if haggard still,
+now full of life and vigour; that frame, if spare, towering aloft in
+commanding stature, perfect in its proportions as a Grecian image of
+Nemesis,--your amaze would have merged into terror, so preternatural did
+the transformation appear, so did aspect and bearing contradict the very
+character of her sex, uniting the two elements most formidable in man or
+in fiend,--wickedness and power.
+
+She stood a moment motionless, breathing loud, as if it were a joy to
+breathe free from restraint; and then, lifting the light, and gliding to
+the adjoining room, she unlocked a bureau in the corner, and bent over a
+small casket, which she opened with a secret spring.
+
+Reader, cast back your eye to that passage in this history when Lucretia
+Clavering took down the volume from the niche in the tapestried chamber
+at Laughton, and numbered, in thought, the hours left to her uncle's
+life.  Look back on the ungrateful thought; behold how it has swelled and
+ripened into the guilty deed!  There, in that box, Death guards his
+treasure crypt.  There, all the science of Hades numbers its murderous
+inventions.  As she searched for the ingredients her design had pre-
+selected, something heavier than those small packets she deranged fell to
+the bottom of the box with a low and hollow sound.  She started at the
+noise, and then smiled, in scorn of her momentary fear, as she took up
+the ring that had occasioned the sound,--a ring plain and solid, like
+those used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opal in the
+centre.  What secret could that bauble have in common with its ghastly
+companions in Death's crypt?  This had been found amongst Olivier's
+papers; a note in that precious manuscript, which had given to the hands
+of his successors the keys of the grave, had discovered the mystery of
+its uses.  By the pressure of the hand, at the touch of a concealed
+spring, a barbed point flew forth steeped in venom more deadly than the
+Indian extracts from the bag of the cobar de capello,--a venom to which
+no antidote is known, which no test can detect.  It corrupts the whole
+mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the brain; it rends
+the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion.  But examine the dead,
+and how divine the effect of the cause!  How go back to the records of
+the Borgias, and amidst all the scepticisms of times in which, happily,
+such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero of Machiavel how
+a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe!  Easier and more natural to
+point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen flesh round it,
+and dilate on the danger a rusty nail--nay, a pin--can engender when the
+humours are peccant and the blood is impure!  The fabrication of that
+bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was the masterpiece in the
+science of Dalibard,--a curious and philosophical triumph of research,
+hitherto unused by its inventor and his heirs; for that casket is rich in
+the choice of more gentle materials: but the use yet may come.  As she
+gazed on the ring, there was a complacent and proud expression on
+Lucretia's face.
+
+"Dumb token of Caesar Borgia," she murmured,--"him of the wisest head and
+the boldest hand that ever grasped at empire, whom Machiavel, the
+virtuous, rightly praised as the model of accomplished ambition!  Why
+should I falter in the paths which he trod with his royal step, only
+because my goal is not a throne?  Every circle is as complete in itself,
+whether rounding a globule or a star.  Why groan in the belief that the
+mind defiles itself by the darkness through which it glides on its
+object, or the mire through which it ascends to the hill?  Murderer as he
+was, poisoner, and fratricide, did blood clog his intellect, or crime
+impoverish the luxury of his genius?  Was his verse less melodious [It is
+well known that Caesar Borgia was both a munificent patron and an
+exquisite appreciator of art; well known also are his powers of
+persuasion but the general reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with
+the fact that this terrible criminal was also a poet], or his love of art
+less intense, or his eloquence less persuasive, because he sought to
+remove every barrier, revenge every wrong, crush every foe?"
+
+In the wondrous corruption to which her mind had descended, thus murmured
+Lucretia.  Intellect had been so long made her sole god that the very
+monster of history was lifted to her reverence by his ruthless intellect
+alone,--lifted in that mood of feverish excitement when conscience, often
+less silenced, lay crushed, under the load of the deed to come, into an
+example and a guide.
+
+Though at times, when looking back, oppressed by the blackest despair, no
+remorse of the past ever weakened those nerves when the Hour called up
+its demon, and the Will ruled the rest of the human being as a machine.
+
+She replaced the ring, she reclosed the casket, relocked its depository;
+then passed again into the adjoining chamber.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, and the dim light that stole from the heavens
+(in which the moon was partially overcast) through the casement on the
+staircase rested on a shapeless figure robed in black from head to foot,-
+-a figure so obscure and undefinable in outline, so suited to the gloom
+in its hue, so stealthy and rapid in its movements, that had you started
+from sleep and seen it on your floor, you would perforce have deemed that
+your fancy had befooled you!
+
+Thus darkly, through the darkness, went the Poisoner to her prey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RETROSPECT.
+
+We have now arrived at that stage in this history when it is necessary to
+look back on the interval in Lucretia's life,--between the death of
+Dalibard, and her reintroduction in the second portion of our tale.
+
+One day, without previous notice or warning, Lucretia arrived at William
+Mainwaring's house; she was in the deep weeds of widowhood, and that garb
+of mourning sufficed to add Susan's tenderest commiseration to the warmth
+of her affectionate welcome.  Lucretia appeared to have forgiven the
+past, and to have conquered its more painful recollections; she was
+gentle to Susan, though she rather suffered than returned her caresses;
+she was open and frank to William.  Both felt inexpressibly grateful for
+her visit, the forgiveness it betokened, and the confidence it implied.
+At this time no condition could be more promising and prosperous than
+that of the young banker.  From the first the most active partner in the
+bank, he had now virtually almost monopolized the business.  The senior
+partner was old and infirm; the second had a bucolic turn, and was much
+taken up by the care of a large farm he had recently purchased; so that
+Mainwaring, more and more trusted and honoured, became the sole managing
+administrator of the firm.  Business throve in his able hands; and with
+patient and steady perseverance there was little doubt but that, before
+middle age was attained, his competence would have swelled into a fortune
+sufficient to justify him in realizing the secret dream of his heart,--
+the parliamentary representation of the town, in which he had already
+secured the affection and esteem of the inhabitants.
+
+It was not long before Lucretia detected the ambition William's industry
+but partially concealed; it was not long before, with the ascendency
+natural to her will and her talents, she began to exercise considerable,
+though unconscious, influence over a man in whom a thousand good
+qualities and some great talents were unhappily accompanied by infirm
+purpose and weak resolutions.  The ordinary conversation of Lucretia
+unsettled his mind and inflamed his vanity,--a conversation able,
+aspiring, full both of knowledge drawn from books and of that experience
+of public men which her residence in Paris (whereon, with its new and
+greater Charlemagne, the eyes of the world were turned) had added to her
+acquisitions in the lore of human life.  Nothing more disturbs a mind
+like William Mainwaring's than that species of eloquence which rebukes
+its patience in the present by inflaming all its hopes in the future.
+Lucretia had none of the charming babble of women, none of that tender
+interest in household details, in the minutiae of domestic life, which
+relaxes the intellect while softening the heart.  Hard and vigorous, her
+sentences came forth in eternal appeal to the reason, or address to the
+sterner passions in which love has no share.  Beside this strong thinker,
+poor Susan's sweet talk seemed frivolous and inane.  Her soft hold upon
+Mainwaring loosened.  He ceased to consult her upon business; he began to
+repine that the partner of his lot could have little sympathy with his
+dreams.  More often and more bitterly now did his discontented glance, in
+his way homeward, rove to the rooftops of the rural member for the town;
+more eagerly did he read the parliamentary debates; more heavily did he
+sigh at the thought of eloquence denied a vent, and ambition delayed in
+its career.
+
+When arrived at this state of mind, Lucretia's conversation took a more
+worldly, a more practical turn.  Her knowledge of the speculators of
+Paris instructed her pictures of bold ingenuity creating sudden wealth;
+she spoke of fortunes made in a day,--of parvenus bursting into
+millionnaires; of wealth as the necessary instrument of ambition, as the
+arch ruler of the civilized world.  Never once, be it observed, in these
+temptations, did Lucretia address herself to the heart; the ordinary
+channels of vulgar seduction were disdained by her.  She would not have
+stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured
+it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own
+passionate youth, but leave him with the brand on his brow and the worm
+at his heart,--a scoff and a wreck.
+
+At this time there was in that market-town one of those adventurous,
+speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed
+upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their
+calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the
+dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized
+communities.  Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the
+belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once the rogues
+and fanatics of Mammon.  This person was held to have been fortunate in
+some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought too
+frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a frequent visitor at
+the house.  In him Lucretia saw the very instrument of her design.  She
+led him on to talk of business as a game, of money as a realizer of cent
+per cent; she drew him into details, she praised him, she admired.  In
+his presence she seemed only to hear him; in his absence, musingly, she
+started from silence to exclaim on the acuteness of his genius and the
+accuracy of his figures.  Soon the tempter at Mainwaring's heart gave
+signification to these praises, soon this adventurer became his most
+intimate friend.  Scarcely knowing why, never ascribing the change to her
+sister, poor Susan wept, amazed at Mainwaring's transformation.  No care
+now for the new books from London, or the roses in the garden; the music
+on the instrument was unheeded.  Books, roses, music,--what are those
+trifles to a man thinking upon cent per cent?  Mainwaring's very
+countenance altered; it lost its frank, affectionate beauty: sullen,
+abstracted, morose, it showed that some great care was at the core.  Then
+Lucretia herself began grievingly to notice the change to Susan;
+gradually she altered her tone with regard to the speculator, and hinted
+vague fears, and urged Susan's remonstrance and warning.  As she had
+anticipated, warning and remonstrance came in vain to the man who,
+comparing Lucretia's mental power to Susan's, had learned to despise the
+unlearned, timid sense of the latter.
+
+It is unnecessary to trace this change in Mainwaring step by step, or to
+measure the time which sufficed to dazzle his reason and blind his
+honour.  In the midst of schemes and hopes which the lust of gold now
+pervaded came a thunderbolt.  An anonymous letter to the head partner of
+the bank provoked suspicions that led to minute examination of the
+accounts.  It seemed that sums had been irregularly advanced (upon bills
+drawn by men of straw) to the speculator by Mainwaring; and the
+destination of these sums could be traced to gambling operations in trade
+in which Mainwaring had a private interest and partnership.  So great, as
+we have said, had been the confidence placed in William's abilities and
+honour that the facilities afforded him in the disposal of the joint
+stock far exceeded those usually granted to the partner of a firm, and
+the breach of trust appeared the more flagrant from the extent of the
+confidence misplaced.  Meanwhile, William Mainwaring, though as yet
+unconscious of the proceedings of his partners, was gnawed by anxiety and
+remorse, not unmixed with hope.  He depended upon the result of a bold
+speculation in the purchase of shares in a Canal Company, a bill for
+which was then before parliament, with (as he was led to believe) a
+certainty of success.  The sums he had, on his own responsibility,
+abstracted from the joint account were devoted to this adventure.  But,
+to do him justice, he never dreamed of appropriating the profits
+anticipated to himself.  Though knowing that the bills on which the
+moneys had been advanced were merely nominal deposits, he had confidently
+calculated on the certainty of success for the speculations to which the
+proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward to the moment
+when he might avow what he had done, and justify it by doubling the
+capital withdrawn.  But to his inconceivable horror, the bill of the
+Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought at a premium
+went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the speculator abruptly
+disappeared from the town.  In this crisis he was summoned to meet his
+indignant associates.
+
+The evidence against him was morally damning, if not legally conclusive.
+The unhappy man heard all in the silence of despair.  Crushed and
+bewildered, he attempted no defence.  He asked but an hour to sum up the
+losses of the bank and his own; they amounted within a few hundreds to
+the 10,000 pounds he had brought to the firm, and which, in the absence
+of marriage-settlements, was entirely at his own disposal.  This sum he
+at once resigned to his associates, on condition that they should defray
+from it his personal liabilities.  The money thus repaid, his partners
+naturally relinquished all further inquiry.  They were moved by pity for
+one so gifted and so fallen,--they even offered him a subordinate but
+lucrative situation in the firm in which he had been partner; but
+Mainwaring wanted the patience and resolution to work back the redemption
+of his name,--perhaps, ultimately, of his fortunes.  In the fatal anguish
+of his shame and despair, he fled from the town; his flight confirmed
+forever the rumours against him,--rumours worse than the reality.  It was
+long before he even admitted Susan to the knowledge of the obscure refuge
+he had sought; there, at length, she joined him.  Meanwhile, what did
+Lucretia?  She sold nearly half of her own fortune, constituted
+principally of the moiety of her portion which, at Dalibard's death, had
+passed to herself as survivor, and partly of the share in her deceased
+husband's effects which the French law awarded to her, and with the
+proceeds of this sum she purchased an annuity for her victims.  Was this
+strange generosity the act of mercy, the result of repentance?  No; it
+was one of the not least subtle and delicious refinements of her revenge.
+To know him who had rejected her, the rival who had supplanted, the
+miserable pensioners of her bounty, was dear to her haughty and
+disdainful hate.  The lust of power, ever stronger in her than avarice,
+more than reconciled her to the sacrifice of gold.  Yes, here she, the
+despised, the degraded, had power still; her wrath had ruined the
+fortunes of her victim, blasted the repute, embittered and desolated
+evermore the future,--now her contemptuous charity fed the wretched lives
+that she spared in scorn.  She had no small difficulty, it is true, in
+persuading Susan to accept this sacrifice, and she did so only by
+sustaining her sister's belief that the past could yet be retrieved, that
+Mainwaring's energies could yet rebuild their fortunes, and that as the
+annuity was at any time redeemable, the aid therefore was only temporary.
+With this understanding, Susan, overwhelmed with gratitude, weeping and
+broken-hearted, departed to join the choice of her youth.  As the men
+deputed by the auctioneer to arrange and ticket the furniture for sale
+entered the desolate house, Lucretia then, with the step of a conqueror,
+passed from the threshold.
+
+"Ah!" she murmured, as she paused, and gazed on the walls, "ah, they were
+happy when I first entered those doors,--happy in each other's tranquil
+love; happier still when they deemed I had forgiven the wrong and abjured
+the past!  How honoured was then their home!  How knew I then, for the
+first time, what the home of love can be!  And who had destroyed for me,
+upon all the earth, a home like theirs?  They on whom that home smiled
+with its serene and taunting peace!  I--I, the guest!  I--I, the
+abandoned, the betrayed,--what dark memories were on my soul, what a hell
+boiled within my bosom!  Well might those memories take each a voice to
+accuse them; well, from that hell, might rise the Alecto!  Their lives
+were in my power, my fatal dowry at my command,--rapid death, or slow,
+consuming torture; but to have seen each cheer the other to the grave,
+lighting every downward step with the eyes of love,--vengeance so urged
+would have fallen only on myself!  Ha! deceiver, didst thou plume
+thyself, forsooth, on spotless reputation?  Didst thou stand, me by thy
+side, amongst thy perjured household gods and talk of honour?  Thy home,
+it is reft from thee; thy reputation, it is a, scoff; thine honour, it is
+a ghost that shall haunt thee!  Thy love, can it linger yet?  Shall the
+soft eyes of thy wife not burn into thy heart, and shame turn love into
+loathing?  Wrecks of my vengeance, minions of my bounty, I did well to
+let ye live; I shake the dust from my feet on your threshold.  Live on,
+homeless, hopeless, and childless!  The curse is fulfilled!"
+
+From that hour Lucretia never paused from her career to inquire further
+of her victims; she never entered into communication with either.  They
+knew not her address nor her fate, nor she theirs.  As she had reckoned,
+Mainwaring made no effort to recover himself from his fall.  All the high
+objects that had lured his ambition were gone from him evermore.  No
+place in the State, no authority in the senate, awaits in England the man
+with a blighted name.  For the lesser objects of life he had no heart and
+no care.  They lived in obscurity in a small village in Cornwall till the
+Peace allowed them to remove to France; the rest of their fate is known.
+
+Meanwhile, Lucretia removed to one of those smaller Londons, resorts of
+pleasure and idleness, with which rich England abounds, and in which
+widows of limited income can make poverty seem less plebeian.  And now,
+to all those passions that had hitherto raged within her, a dismal apathy
+succeeded.  It was the great calm in her sea of life.  The winds fell,
+and the sails drooped.  Her vengeance satisfied, that which she had made
+so preternaturally the main object of existence, once fulfilled, left her
+in youth objectless.
+
+She strove at first to take pleasure in the society of the place; but its
+frivolities and pettiness of purpose soon wearied that masculine and
+grasping mind, already made insensible to the often healthful, often
+innocent, excitement of trifles, by the terrible ordeal it had passed.
+Can the touch of the hand, scorched by the burning iron, feel pleasure in
+the softness of silk, or the light down of the cygnet's plume?  She next
+sought such relief as study could afford; and her natural bent of
+thought, and her desire to vindicate her deeds to herself, plunged her
+into the fathomless abyss of metaphysical inquiry with the hope to
+confirm into positive assurance her earlier scepticism,--with the
+atheist's hope to annihilate the soul, and banish the presiding God.  But
+no voice that could satisfy her reason came from those dreary deeps;
+contradiction on contradiction met her in the maze.  Only when, wearied
+with book-lore, she turned her eyes to the visible Nature, and beheld
+everywhere harmony, order, system, contrivance, art, did she start with
+the amaze and awe of instinctive conviction, and the natural religion
+revolted from her cheerless ethics.  Then came one of those sudden
+reactions common with strong passions and exploring minds, but more
+common with women, however manlike, than with men.  Had she lived in
+Italy then, she had become a nun; for in this woman, unlike Varney and
+Dalibard, the conscience could never be utterly silenced.  In her choice
+of evil, she found only torture to her spirit in all the respites
+afforded to the occupations it indulged.  When employed upon ill, remorse
+gave way to the zest of scheming; when the ill was done, remorse came
+with the repose.
+
+It was in this peculiar period of her life that Lucretia, turning
+everywhere, and desperately, for escape from the past, became acquainted
+with some members of one of the most rigid of the sects of Dissent.  At
+first she permitted herself to know and commune with these persons from a
+kind of contemptuous curiosity; she desired to encourage, in
+contemplating them, her experience of the follies of human nature: but in
+that crisis of her mind, in those struggles of her reason, whatever
+showed that which she most yearned to discover,--namely, earnest faith,
+rooted and genuine conviction, whether of annihilation or of immortality,
+a philosophy that might reconcile her to crime by destroying the
+providence of good, or a creed that could hold out the hope of redeeming
+the past and exorcising sin by the mystery of a Divine sacrifice,--had
+over her a power which she had not imagined or divined.  Gradually the
+intense convictions of her new associates disturbed and infected her.
+Their affirmations that as we are born in wrath, so sin is our second
+nature, our mysterious heritage, seemed, to her understanding, willing to
+be blinded, to imply excuses for her past misdeeds.  Their assurances
+that the worst sinner may become the most earnest saint; that through but
+one act of the will, resolute faith, all redemption is to be found,--
+these affirmations and these assurances, which have so often restored the
+guilty and remodelled the human heart, made a salutary, if brief,
+impression upon her.  Nor were the lives of these Dissenters (for the
+most part austerely moral), nor the peace and self-complacency which they
+evidently found in the satisfaction of conscience and fulfilment of duty,
+without an influence over her that for a while both chastened and
+soothed.
+
+Hopeful of such a convert, the good teachers strove hard to confirm the
+seeds springing up from the granite and amidst the weeds; and amongst
+them came one man more eloquent, more seductive, than the rest,--Alfred
+Braddell.  This person, a trader at Liverpool, was one of those strange
+living paradoxes that can rarely be found out of a commercial community.
+He himself had been a convert to the sect, and like most converts, he
+pushed his enthusiasm into the bigotry of the zealot; he saw no salvation
+out of the pale into which he had entered.  But though his belief was
+sincere, it did not genially operate on his practical life; with the most
+scrupulous attention to forms, he had the worldliness and cunning of the
+carnal.  He had abjured the vices of the softer senses, but not that
+which so seldom wars on the decorums of outer life.  He was essentially a
+money-maker,--close, acute, keen, overreaching.  Good works with him were
+indeed as nothing,--faith the all in all.  He was one of the elect, and
+could not fall.  Still, in this man there was all the intensity which
+often characterizes a mind in proportion to the narrowness of its
+compass; that intensity gave fire to his gloomy eloquence, and strength
+to his obstinate will.  He saw Lucretia, and his zeal for her conversion
+soon expanded into love for her person; yet that love was secondary to
+his covetousness.  Though ostensibly in a flourishing business, he was
+greatly distressed for money to carry on operations which swelled beyond
+the reach of his capital; his fingers itched for the sum which Lucretia
+had still at her disposal.  But the seeming sincerity of the man, the
+persuasion of his goodness, his reputation for sanctity, deceived her;
+she believed herself honestly and ardently beloved, and by one who could
+guide her back, if not to happiness, at least to repose.  She herself
+loved him not,--she could love no more.  But it seemed to her a luxury to
+find some one she could trust, she could honour.  If you had probed into
+the recesses of her mind at that time, you would have found that no
+religious belief was there settled,--only the desperate wish to believe;
+only the disturbance of all previous infidelity; only a restless, gnawing
+desire to escape from memory, to emerge from the gulf.  In this troubled,
+impatient disorder of mind and feeling, she hurried into a second
+marriage as fatal as the first.
+
+For a while she bore patiently all the privations of that ascetic
+household, assisted in all those external formalities, centred all her
+intellect within that iron range of existence.  But no grace descended on
+her soul,--no warm ray unlocked the ice of the well.  Then, gradually
+becoming aware of the niggardly meanness, of the harsh, uncharitable
+judgments, of the decorous frauds that, with unconscious hypocrisy, her
+husband concealed beneath the robes of sanctity, a weary disgust stole
+over her,--it stole, it deepened, it increased; it became intolerable
+when she discovered that Braddell had knowingly deceived her as to his
+worldly substance.  In that mood in which she had rushed into these
+ominous nuptials, she had had no thought for vulgar advantages; had
+Braddell been a beggar, she had married him as rashly.  But he, with the
+inability to comprehend a nature like hers,--dim not more to her terrible
+vices than to the sinister grandeur which made their ordinary
+atmosphere,--had descended cunningly to address the avarice he thought as
+potent in others as himself, to enlarge on the worldly prosperity with
+which Providence had blessed him; and now she saw that her dowry alone
+had saved the crippled trader from the bankrupt list. With this revolting
+discovery, with the scorn it produced, vanished all Lucretia's unstable
+visions of reform.  She saw this man a saint amongst his tribe, and would
+not believe in the virtues of his brethren, great and unquestionable as
+they might have been proved to a more dispassionate and humbler inquirer.
+The imposture she detected she deemed universal in the circle in which
+she dwelt; and Satan once more smiled upon the subject he regained.
+Lucretia became a mother; but their child formed no endearing tie between
+the ill-assorted pair,--it rather embittered their discord.  Dimly even
+then, as she bent over the cradle, that vision, which now, in the old
+house at Brompton, haunted her dreams and beckoned her over seas of blood
+into the fancied future, was foreshadowed in the face of her infant son.
+To be born again in that birth, to live only in that life, to aspire as
+man may aspire, in that future man whom she would train to knowledge and
+lead to power,--these were the feelings with which that sombre mother
+gazed upon her babe.  The idea that the low-born, grovelling father had
+the sole right over that son's destiny, had the authority to cabin his
+mind in the walls of form, bind him down to the sordid apprenticeship,
+debased, not dignified, by the solemn mien, roused her indignant wrath;
+she sickened when Braddell touched her child.  All her pride of
+intellect, that had never slept, all her pride of birth, long dormant,
+woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the descendant of her race,
+from the defilement of the father's nurture.  Not long after her
+confinement, she formed a plan for escape; she disappeared from the house
+with her child.  Taking refuge in a cottage, living on the sale of the
+few jewels she possessed, she was for some weeks almost happy.  But
+Braddell, less grieved by the loss than shocked by the scandal, was
+indefatigable in his researches,--he discovered her retreat.  The scene
+between them was terrible.  There was no resisting the power which all
+civilized laws give to the rights of husband and father.  Before this
+man, whom she scorned so unutterably, Lucretia was impotent.  Then all
+the boiling passions long suppressed beneath that command of temper.
+which she owed both to habitual simulation and intense disdain, rushed
+forth.  Then she appalled the impostor with her indignant denunciations
+of his hypocrisy, his meanness, and his guile.  Then, throwing off the
+mask she had worn, she hurled her anathema on his sect, on his faith,
+with the same breath that smote his conscience and left it wordless.  She
+shocked all the notions he sincerely entertained, and he stood awed by
+accusations from a blasphemer whom he dared not rebuke.  His rage broke
+at length from his awe.  Stung, maddened by the scorn of himself, his
+blood fired into juster indignation by her scoff at his creed, he lost
+all self-possession and struck her to the ground.  In the midst of shame
+and dread at disclosure of his violence, which succeeded the act so
+provoked, he was not less relieved than amazed when Lucretia, rising
+slowly, laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "Repent not, it is
+passed; fear not, I will be silent!  Come, you are the stronger,--you
+prevail.  I will follow my child to your home."
+
+In this unexpected submission in one so imperious, Braddell's imperfect
+comprehension of character saw but fear, and his stupidity exulted in his
+triumph.  Lucretia returned with him.  A few days afterwards Braddell
+became ill; the illness increased,--slow, gradual, wearying.  It broke
+his spirit with his health; and then the steadfast imperiousness of
+Lucretia's stern will ruled and subjugated him.  He cowered beneath her
+haughty, searching gaze, he shivered at her sidelong, malignant glance;
+but with this fear came necessarily hate, and this hate, sometimes
+sufficing to vanquish the fear, spitefully evinced itself in thwarting
+her legitimate control over her infant.  He would have it (though he had
+little real love for children) constantly with him, and affected to
+contradict all her own orders to the servants, in the sphere in which
+mothers arrogate most the right.  Only on these occasions sometimes would
+Lucretia lose her grim self-control, and threaten that her child yet
+should be emancipated from his hands, should yet be taught the scorn for
+hypocrites which he had taught herself.  These words sank deep, not only
+in the resentment, but in the conscience, of the husband.  Meanwhile,
+Lucretia scrupled not to evince her disdain of Braddell by markedly
+abstaining from all the ceremonies she had before so rigidly observed.
+The sect grew scandalized.  Braddell did not abstain from making known
+his causes of complaint.  The haughty, imperious woman was condemned in
+the community, and hated in the household.
+
+It was at this time that Walter Ardworth, who was then striving to eke
+out his means by political lectures (which in the earlier part of the
+century found ready audience) in our great towns, came to Liverpool.
+Braddell and Ardworth had been schoolfellows, and even at school embryo
+politicians of congenial notions; and the conversion of the former to one
+of the sects which had grown out of the old creeds, that, under Cromwell,
+had broken the sceptre of the son of Belial and established the
+Commonwealth of Saints, had only strengthened the republican tenets of
+the sour fanatic.  Ardworth called on Braddell, and was startled to find
+in his schoolfellow's wife the niece of his benefactor, Sir Miles St.
+John.  Now, Lucretia had never divulged her true parentage to her
+husband.  In a union so much beneath her birth, she had desired to
+conceal from all her connections the fall of the once-honoured heiress.
+She had descended, in search of peace, to obscurity; but her pride
+revolted from the thought that her low-born husband might boast of her
+connections and parade her descent to his level.  Fortunately, as she
+thought, she received Ardworth before he was admitted to her husband, who
+now, growing feebler and feebler, usually kept his room.  She stooped to
+beseech Ardworth not to reveal her secret; and he, comprehending her
+pride, as a man well-born himself, and pitying her pain, readily gave his
+promise.  At the first interview, Braddell evinced no pleasure in the
+sight of his old schoolfellow.  It was natural enough that one so precise
+should be somewhat revolted by one so careless of all form.  But when
+Lucretia imprudently evinced satisfaction at his surly remarks on his
+visitor; when he perceived that it would please her that he should not
+cultivate the acquaintance offered him,--he was moved, by the spirit of
+contradiction, and the spiteful delight even in frivolous annoyance, to
+conciliate and court the intimacy he had at first disdained: and then, by
+degrees, sympathy in political matters and old recollections of sportive,
+careless boyhood cemented the intimacy into a more familiar bond than the
+sectarian had contracted really with any of his late associates.
+
+Lucretia regarded this growing friendship with great uneasiness; the
+uneasiness increased to alarm when one day, in the presence of Ardworth,
+Braddell, writhing with a sudden spasm, said: "I cannot account for these
+strange seizures; I think verily I am poisoned!" and his dull eye rested
+on Lucretia's pallid brow.  She was unusually thoughtful for some days
+after this remark; and one morning she informed her husband that she had
+received the intelligence that a relation, from whom she had pecuniary
+expectations, was dangerously ill, and requested his permission to visit
+this sick kinsman, who dwelt in a distant county.  Braddell's eyes
+brightened at the thought of her absence; with little further questioning
+he consented; and Lucretia, sure perhaps that the barb was in the side of
+her victim, and reckoning, it may be, on greater freedom from suspicion
+if her husband died in her absence, left the house.  It was, indeed, to
+the neighbourhood of her kindred that she went.  In a private
+conversation with Ardworth, when questioning him of his news of the
+present possessor of Laughton, he had informed her that he had heard
+accidentally that Vernon's two sons (Percival was not then born) were
+sickly; and she went into Hampshire secretly and unknown, to see what
+were really the chances that her son might yet become the lord of her
+lost inheritance.
+
+During this absence, Braddell, now gloomily aware that his days were
+numbered, resolved to put into practice the idea long contemplated, and
+even less favoured by his spite than justified by the genuine convictions
+of his conscience.  Whatever his faults, sincere at least in his
+religious belief, he might well look with dread to the prospect of the
+training and education his son would receive from the hands of a mother
+who had blasphemed his sect and openly proclaimed her infidelity.  By
+will, it is true, he might create a trust, and appoint guardians to his
+child.  But to have lived under the same roof with his wife,--nay, to
+have carried her back to that roof when she had left it,--afforded tacit
+evidence that whatever the disagreement between them, her conduct could
+hardly have merited her exclusion from the privileges of a mother.  The
+guardianship might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's
+indirect contamination, if not her positive control.  Besides, where
+guardians are appointed, money must be left; and Braddell knew that at
+his death his assets would be found insufficient for his debts.  Who
+would be guardian to a penniless infant?  He resolved, therefore, to send
+his child from his roof to some place where, if reared humbly, it might
+at least be brought up in the right faith,--some place which might defy
+the search and be beyond the perversion of the unbelieving mother.  He
+looked round, and discovered no instrument for his purpose that seemed so
+ready as Walter Ardworth; for by this time he had thoroughly excited the
+pity and touched the heart of that good-natured, easy man.  His
+representations of the misconduct of Lucretia were the more implicitly
+believed by one who had always been secretly prepossessed against her;
+who, admitted to household intimacy, was an eye-witness to her hard
+indifference to her husband's sufferings; who saw in her very request not
+to betray her gentle birth, the shame she felt in her election; who
+regarded with indignation her unfeeling desertion of Braddell in his last
+moments, and who, besides all this, had some private misfortunes of his
+own which made him the more ready listener to themes on the faults of
+women; and had already, by mutual confidences, opened the hearts of the
+two ancient schoolfellows to each other's complaints and wrongs.  The
+only other confidant in the refuge selected for the child was a member of
+the same community as Braddell, who kindly undertook to search for a
+pious, godly woman, who, upon such pecuniary considerations as Braddell,
+by robbing his creditors, could afford to bestow, would permanently offer
+to the poor infant a mother's home and a mother's care.  When this woman
+was found, Braddell confided his child to Ardworth, with such a sum as he
+could scrape together for its future maintenance.  And to Ardworth,
+rather than to his fellow-sectarian, this double trust was given, because
+the latter feared scandal and misrepresentation if he should be
+ostensibly mixed up in so equivocal a charge.  Poor and embarrassed as
+Walter Ardworth was, Braddell did not for once misinterpret character
+when he placed the money in his hands; and this because the characters we
+have known in transparent boyhood we have known forever.  Ardworth was
+reckless, and his whole life had been wrecked, his whole nature
+materially degraded, by the want of common thrift and prudence.  His own
+money slipped through his fingers and left him surrounded by creditors,
+whom, rigidly speaking, he thus defrauded; but direct dishonesty was as
+wholly out of the chapter of his vices as if he had been a man of the
+strictest principles and the steadiest honour.
+
+The child was gone, the father died, Lucretia returned, as we have seen
+in Grabman's letter, to the house of death, to meet suspicion, and cold
+looks, and menial accusations, and an inquest on the dead; but through
+all this the reft tigress mourned her stolen whelp.  As soon as all
+evidence against her was proved legally groundless, and she had leave to
+depart, she searched blindly and frantically for her lost child; but in
+vain.  The utter and penniless destitution in which she was left by her
+husband's decease did not suffice to terminate her maddening chase.  On
+foot she wandered from village to village, and begged her way wherever a
+false clew misled her steps.
+
+At last, in reluctant despair, she resigned the pursuit, and found
+herself one day in the midst of the streets of London, half-famished and
+in rags; and before her suddenly, now grown into vigorous youth,--
+blooming, sleek, and seemingly prosperous,--stood Gabriel Varney.  By her
+voice, as she approached and spoke, he recognized his stepmother; and
+after a short pause of hesitation, he led her to his home.  It is not our
+purpose (for it is not necessary to those passages of their lives from
+which we have selected the thread of our tale) to follow these two, thus
+united, through their general career of spoliation and crime.  Birds of
+prey, they searched in human follies and human errors for their food:
+sometimes severed, sometimes together, their interests remained one.
+Varney profited by the mightier and subtler genius of evil to which he
+had leashed himself; for, caring little for luxuries, and dead to the
+softer senses, she abandoned to him readily the larger share of their
+plunder.  Under a variety of names and disguises, through a succession of
+frauds, some vast and some mean, but chiefly on the Continent, they had
+pursued their course, eluding all danger and baffling all law.
+
+Between three and four years before this period, Varney's uncle, the
+painter, by one of those unexpected caprices of fortune which sometimes
+find heirs to a millionnaire at the weaver's loom or the labourer's
+plough, had suddenly, by the death of a very distant kinsman whom he had
+never seen, come into possession of a small estate, which he sold for
+6,000 pounds.  Retiring from all his profession, he lived as comfortably
+as his shattered constitution permitted upon the interest of this sum;
+and he wrote to his nephew, then at Paris, to communicate the good news
+and offer the hospitality of his hearth.  Varney hastened to London.
+Shortly afterwards a nurse, recommended as an experienced, useful person
+in her profession, by Nicholas Grabman, who in many a tortuous scheme had
+been Gabriel's confederate, was installed in the poor painter's house.
+From that time his infirmities increased.  He died, as his doctor said,
+"by abstaining from the stimulants to which his constitution had been so
+long accustomed;" and Gabriel Varney was summoned to the reading of the
+will.  To his inconceivable disappointment, instead of bequeathing to his
+nephew the free disposal of his 6,000 pounds, that sum was assigned to
+trustees for the benefit of Gabriel and his children yet unborn,--"An
+inducement," said the poor testator, tenderly, "for the boy to marry and
+reform!"  So that the nephew could only enjoy the interest, and had no
+control over the capital.  The interest of 6,000 pounds invested in the
+Bank of England was flocci nauci to the voluptuous spendthrift, Gabriel
+Varney.
+
+Now, these trustees were selected from the painter's earlier and more
+respectable associates, who had dropped him, it is true, in his days of
+beggary and disrepute, but whom the fortune that made him respectable had
+again conciliated.  One of these trustees had lately retired to pass the
+remainder of his days at Boulogne; the other was a hypochondriacal
+valetudinarian,--neither of them, in short, a man of business.  Gabriel
+was left to draw out the interest of the money as it became periodically
+due at the Bank of England.  In a few months the trustee settled at
+Boulogne died; the trust, of course, lapsed to Mr. Stubmore, the
+valetudinarian survivor.  Soon pinched by extravagances, and emboldened
+by the character and helpless state of the surviving trustee, Varney
+forged Mr. Stubmore's signature to an order on the bank to sell out such
+portion of the capital as his wants required.  The impunity of one
+offence begot courage for others, till the whole was well-nigh expended.
+Upon these sums Varney had lived very pleasantly, and he saw with a deep
+sigh the approaching failure of so facile a resource.
+
+In one of the melancholy moods engendered by this reflection, Varney
+happened to be in the very town in France in which the Mainwarings, in
+their later years, had taken refuge, and from which Helen had been
+removed to the roof of Mr. Fielden.  By accident he heard the name, and,
+his curiosity leading to further inquiries, learned that Helen was made
+an heiress by the will of her grandfather.  With this knowledge came a
+thought of the most treacherous, the most miscreant, and the vilest crime
+that even he yet had perpetrated; so black was it that for a while he
+absolutely struggled against it.  But in guilt there seems ever a
+Necessity that urges on, step after step, to the last consummation.
+Varney received a letter to inform him that the last surviving trustee
+was no more, that the trust was therefore now centred in his son and
+heir, that that gentleman was at present very busy in settling his own
+affairs and examining into a very mismanaged property in Devonshire which
+had devolved upon him, but that he hoped in a few months to discharge,
+more efficiently than his father had done, the duties of trustee, and
+that some more profitable investment than the Bank of England would
+probably occur.
+
+This new trustee was known personally to Varney,--a contemporary of his
+own, and in earlier youth a pupil to his uncle.  But, since then, he had
+made way in life, and retired from the profession of art.  This younger
+Stubmore he knew to be a bustling, officious man of business, somewhat
+greedy and covetous, but withal somewhat weak of purpose, good-natured in
+the main, and with a little lukewarm kindness for Gabriel, as a quondam
+fellow-pupil.  That Stubmore would discover the fraud was evident; that
+he would declare it, for his own sake, was evident also; that the bank
+would prosecute, that Varney would be convicted, was no less surely to be
+apprehended.  There was only one chance left to the forger: if he could
+get into his hands, and in time, before Stubmore's bustling interference,
+a sum sufficient to replace what had been fraudulently taken, he might
+easily manage, he thought, to prevent the forgery ever becoming known.
+Nay, if Stubmore, roused into strict personal investigation by the new
+power of attorney which a new investment in the bank would render
+necessary, should ascertain what had occurred, his liabilities being now
+indemnified, and the money replaced, Varney thought he could confidently
+rely on his ci-devant fellow-pupil's assent to wink at the forgery and
+hush up the matter.  But this was his only chance.  How was the money to
+be gained?  He thought of Helen's fortune, and the last scruple gave way
+to the imminence of his peril and the urgency of his fears.
+
+With this decision, he repaired to Lucretia, whose concurrence was
+necessary to his designs.  Long habits of crime had now deepened still
+more the dark and stern colour of that dread woman's sombre nature.  But
+through all that had ground the humanity from her soul, one human
+sentiment, fearfully tainted and adulterated as it was, still struggled
+for life,--the memory of the mother.  It was by this, her least criminal
+emotion, that Varney led her to the worst of her crimes.  He offered to
+sell out the remainder of the trust-money by a fresh act of forgery, to
+devote such proceeds to the search for her lost Vincent; he revived the
+hopes she had long since gloomily relinquished, till she began to
+conceive the discovery easy and certain.  He then brought before her the
+prospect of that son's succession to Laughton: but two lives now between
+him and those broad lands,--those two lives associated with just cause of
+revenge.  Two lives!  Lucretia till then did not know that Susan had left
+a child, that a pledge of those nuptials, to which she imputed all her
+infamy, existed to revive a jealousy never extinguished, appeal to the
+hate that had grown out of her love.  More readily than Varney had
+anticipated, and with fierce exultation, she fell into his horrible
+schemes.
+
+Thus had she returned to England and claimed the guardianship of her
+niece.  Varney engaged a dull house in the suburb, and looking out for a
+servant not likely to upset and betray, found the nurse who had watched
+over his uncle's last illness; but Lucretia, according to her invariable
+practice, rejected all menial accomplices, reposed no confidence in the
+tools of her black deeds.  Feigning an infirmity that would mock all
+suspicion of the hand that mixed the draught, and the step that stole to
+the slumber, she defied the justice of earth, and stood alone under the
+omniscience of Heaven.
+
+Various considerations had delayed the execution of the atrocious deed so
+coldly contemplated.  Lucretia herself drew back, perhaps more daunted by
+conscience than she herself was distinctly aware, and disguising her
+scruples in those yet fouler refinements of hoped revenge which her
+conversations with Varney have betrayed to the reader.  The failure of
+the earlier researches for the lost Vincent, the suspended activity of
+Stubmore, left the more impatient murderer leisure to make the
+acquaintance of St. John, steal into the confidence of Helen, and render
+the insurances on the life of the latter less open to suspicion than if
+effected immediately on her entrance into that shamble-house, and before
+she could be supposed to form that affection for her aunt which made
+probable so tender a forethought.  These causes of delay now vanished,
+the Parcae closed the abrupt woof, and lifted the impending shears.
+
+Lucretia had long since dropped the name of Braddell.  She shrank from
+proclaiming those second spousals, sullied by the degradation to which
+they had exposed her, and the suspicions implied in the inquest on her
+husband, until the hour for acknowledging her son should arrive.  She
+resumed, therefore, the name of Dalibard, and by that we will continue to
+call her.  Nor was Varney uninfluential in dissuading her from
+proclaiming her second marriage till occasion necessitated.  If the son
+were discovered, and proofs of his birth in the keeping of himself and
+his accomplice, his avarice naturally suggested the expediency of
+wringing from that son some pledge of adequate reward on succession to an
+inheritance which they alone could secure to him; out of this fancied
+fund not only Grabman, but his employer, was to be paid.  The concealment
+of the identity between Mrs. Braddell and Madame Dalibard might
+facilitate such an arrangement.  This idea Varney locked as yet in his
+own breast. He did not dare to speak to Lucretia of the bargain he
+ultimately meditated with her son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MR. GRABMAN'S ADVENTURES.
+
+The lackeys in their dress liveries stood at the porch of Laughton as the
+postilions drove rapidly along the road, sweeping through venerable
+groves, tinged with the hues of autumn, up to that stately pile.  From
+the window of the large, cumbrous vehicle which Percival, mindful of
+Madame Dalibard's infirmity, had hired for her special accommodation,
+Lucretia looked keenly.  On the slope of the hill grouped the deer, and
+below, where the lake gleamed, the swan rested on the wave.  Farther on
+to the left, gaunt and stag-headed, rose, living still, from the depth of
+the glen, Guy's memorable oak.  Coming now in sight, though at a
+distance, the gray church-tower emerged from the surrounding masses of
+solemn foliage.  Suddenly the road curves round, and straight before her
+(the rooks cawing above the turrets, the sun reflected from the vanes)
+Lucretia gazes on the halls of Laughton.  And didst thou not, O Guy's
+oak, murmur warning from thine oracular hollows?  And thou who sleepest
+below the church-tower, didst thou not turn, Miles St. John, in thy
+grave, when, with such tender care, the young lord of Laughton bore that
+silent guest across his threshold, and with credulous, moistened eyes,
+welcomed Treason and Murder to his hearth?
+
+There, at the porch, paused Helen, gazing with the rapt eye of the
+poetess on the broad landscape, checkered by the vast shadows cast from
+the setting sun.  There, too, by her side lingered Varney, with an
+artist's eye for the stately scene, till a thought, not of art, changed
+the face of the earth, and the view without mirrored back the Golgotha of
+his soul.
+
+Leave them thus; we must hurry on.
+
+One day a traveller stopped his gig at a public-house in a village in
+Lancashire.  He chucked the rein to the hostler, and in reply to a
+question what oats should be given to the horse, said, "Hay and water;
+the beast is on job."  Then sauntering to the bar, he called for a glass
+of raw brandy for himself; and while the host drew the spirit forth from
+the tap, he asked carelessly if some years ago a woman of the name of
+Joplin had not resided in the village.
+
+"It is strange," said the host, musingly.  "What is strange?"
+
+"Why, we have just had a gent asking the same question.  I have only been
+here nine year come December; but my old hostler was born in the village,
+and never left it.  So the gent had in the hostler, and he is now gone
+into the village to pick up what else he can learn."
+
+This intelligence seemed to surprise and displease the traveller.
+
+"What the deuce!" he muttered; "does Jason mistrust me?  Has he set
+another dog on the scent?  Humph!"  He drained off his brandy, and
+sallied forth to confer with the hostler.
+
+"Well, my friend," said Mr. Grabman,--for the traveller was no other than
+that worthy,--"well, so you remember Mrs. Joplin more than twenty years
+ago, eh?"
+
+"Yees, I guess; more than twenty years since she left the pleck
+[Lancashire and Yorkshire synonym for place]."
+
+"Ah, she seems to have been a restless body.  She had a child with her?"
+
+"Yees, I moind that."
+
+"And I dare say you heard her say the child was not her own,--that she
+was paid well for it, eh?"
+
+"Noa; my missus did not loike me to chaffer much with neighbour Joplin,
+for she was but a bad 'un,--pretty fease, too.  She lived agin the wogh
+[Anglice, wall] yonder, where you see that gent coming out."
+
+"Oho! that is the gent who was asking after Mrs. Joplin?"
+
+"Yes; and he giv' me half-a-croon!" said the clever hostler, holding out
+his hand.
+
+Mr. Grabman, too thoughtful, too jealous of his rival, to take the hint
+at that moment, darted off, as fast as his thin legs could carry him,
+towards the unwelcome interferer in his own business.
+
+Approaching the gentleman,--a tall, powerful-looking young man,--he
+somewhat softened his tone, and mechanically touched his hat as he said,-
+-
+
+"What, sir, are you, too, in search of Mrs. Joplin?"
+
+"Sir, I am," answered the young man, eying Grabman deliberately; "and
+you, I suppose, are the person I have found before me on the same
+search,--first at Liverpool; next at C----, about fifteen miles from that
+town; thirdly, at I----; and now we meet here.  You have had the start of
+me.  What have you learned?"
+
+Mr. Grabman smiled.  "Softly, sir, softly.  May I first ask--since open
+questioning seems the order of the day--whether I have the honour to
+address a brother practitioner,--one of the law, sir, one of the law?"
+
+"I am one of the law."
+
+Mr. Grabman bowed and scowled.
+
+"And may I make bold to ask the name of your client?"
+
+"Certainly you may ask.  Every man has a right to ask what he pleases, in
+a civil way."
+
+"But you'll not answer?  Deep!  Oh, I understand!  Very good.  But I am
+deep too, sir.  You know Mr. Varney, I suppose?"
+
+The gentleman looked surprised.  His bushy brows met over his steady,
+sagacious eyes; but after a moment's pause the expression of his face
+cleared up.
+
+"It is as I thought," he said, half to himself.  "Who else could have had
+an interest in similar inquiries?--Sir," he added, with a quick and
+decided tone, "you are doubtless employed by Mr. Varney on behalf of
+Madame Dalibard and in search of evidence connected with the loss of an
+unhappy infant.  I am on the same quest, and for the same end.  The
+interests of your client are mine.  Two heads are better than one; let us
+unite our ingenuity and endeavours."
+
+"And share the pec, I suppose?" said Grabman, dryly, buttoning up his
+pockets.
+
+"Whatever fee you may expect you will have, anyhow, whether I assist you
+or not.  I expect no fee, for mine is a personal interest, which I serve
+gratuitously; but I can undertake to promise you, on my own part, more
+than the ordinary professional reward for your co-operation."
+
+"Well, sir," said Grabman, mollified, "you speak very much like a
+gentleman.  My feelings were hurt at first, I own.  I am hasty, but I can
+listen to reason.  Will you walk back with me to the house you have just
+left?  And suppose we then turn in and have a chop together, and compare
+notes."
+
+"Willingly," answered the tall stranger, and the two inquisitors amicably
+joined company.  The result of their inquiries was not, however, very
+satisfactory.  No one knew whither Mrs. Joplin had gone, though all
+agreed it was in company with a man of bad character and vagrant habits;
+all agreed, too, in the vague recollection of the child, and some
+remembered that it was dressed in clothes finer than would have been
+natural to an infant legally and filially appertaining to Mrs. Joplin.
+One old woman remembered that on her reproaching Mrs. Joplin for some act
+of great cruelty to the poor babe, she replied that it was not her flesh
+and blood, and that if she had not expected more than she had got, she
+would never have undertaken the charge.  On comparing the information
+gleaned at the previous places of their research, they found an entire
+agreement as to the character personally borne by Mrs. Joplin.  At the
+village to which their inquiry had been first directed, she was known as
+a respectable, precise young woman, one of a small congregation of rigid
+Dissenters.  She had married a member of the sect, and borne him a child,
+which died two weeks after birth.  She was then seen nursing another
+infant, though how she came by it none knew.  Shortly after this, her
+husband, a journeyman carpenter of good repute, died; but to the surprise
+of the neighbours, Mrs. Joplin continued to live as comfortably as
+before, and seemed not to miss the wages of her husband,--nay, she rather
+now, as if before kept back by the prudence of the deceased, launched
+into a less thrifty mode of life, and a gayety of dress at variance both
+with the mourning her recent loss should have imposed, and the austere
+tenets of her sect.  This indecorum excited angry curiosity, and drew
+down stern remonstrance.  Mrs. Joplin, in apparent disgust at this
+intermeddling with her affairs, withdrew from the village to a small
+town, about twenty miles distant, and there set up a shop.  But her moral
+lapse became now confirmed; her life was notoriously abandoned, and her
+house the resort of all the reprobates of the place.  Whether her means
+began to be exhausted, or the scandal she provoked attracted the notice
+of the magistrates and imposed a check on her course, was not very
+certain, but she sold off her goods suddenly, and was next tracked to the
+village in which Mr. Grabman met his new coadjutor; and there, though her
+conduct was less flagrant, and her expenses less reckless, she made but a
+very unfavourable impression, which was confirmed by her flight with an
+itinerant hawker of the lowest possible character.  Seated over their
+port wine, the two gentlemen compared their experiences, and consulted on
+the best mode of remending the broken thread of their research; when Mr.
+Grabman said coolly, "But, after all, I think it most likely that we are
+not on the right scent.  This bantling may not be the one we search for."
+
+"Be not misled by that doubt.  To arrive at the evidence we desire, we
+must still track this wretched woman."
+
+"You are certain of that?"
+
+"Certain."
+
+"Hem!  Did you ever hear of a Mr. Walter Ardworth?"
+
+"Yes, what of him?"
+
+"Why, he can best tell us where to look for the child."
+
+"I am sure he would counsel as I do."
+
+"You know him, then?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"What, he lives still?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Can you bring me across him?"
+
+"If necessary."
+
+"And that young man, who goes by his name, brought up by Mr. Fielden?"
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Is he not the son of Mr. Braddell?"
+
+The stranger was silent, and, shading his face with his hand, seemed
+buried in thought.  He then rose, took up his candle, and said quietly,--
+
+"Sir, I wish you good-evening.  I have letters to write in my own room.
+I will consider by to-morrow, if you stay till then, whether we can
+really aid each other further, or whether we should pursue our researches
+separately."  With these words he closed the door; and Mr. Grabman
+remained baffled and bewildered.
+
+However, he too had a letter to write; so, calling for pen, ink, and
+paper, and a pint of brandy, he indited his complaints and his news to
+Varney.
+
+"Jason, (he began) are you playing me false?  Have you set another man on
+the track with a view to bilk me of my promised fee?  Explain, or I throw
+up the business."
+
+Herewith, Mr. Grabman gave a minute description of the stranger, and
+related pretty accurately what had passed between that gentleman and
+himself.  He then added the progress of his own inquiries, and renewed,
+as peremptorily as he dared, his demand for candour and plain dealing.
+Now, it so happened that in stumbling upstairs to bed, Mr. Grabman passed
+the room in which his mysterious fellow-seeker was lodged, and as is the
+usage in hotels, a pair of boots stood outside the door, to be cleaned
+betimes in the morning.  Though somewhat drunk, Grabman still preserved
+the rays of his habitual astuteness.  A clever and a natural idea shot
+across his brain, illuminating the fumes of the brandy; he stooped, and
+while one hand on the wall steadied his footing, with the other he fished
+up a boot, and peering within, saw legibly written: "John Ardworth, Esq.,
+Gray's Inn."  At that sight he felt what a philosopher feels at the
+sudden elucidation of a troublesome problem.  Downstairs again tottered
+Grabman, re-opened his letter, and wrote,--
+
+"P.S.--I have wronged you, Jason, by my suspicions; never mind,--
+jubilate!  This interloper who made me so jealous, who think you it is?
+Why, young Ardworth himself,--that is, the lad who goes by such name.
+Now, is it not clear?  Of course no one else has such interest in
+learning his birth as the lost child himself,--here he is!  If old
+Ardworth lives (as he says), old Ardworth has set him to work on his own
+business.  But then, that Fielden,--rather a puzzler that!  Yet--no.  Now
+I understand,--old Ardworth gave the boy to Mrs. Joplin, and took it away
+from her again when he went to the parson's.  Now, certainly, it may be
+quite necessary to prove,--first, that the boy he took from Mr.
+Braddell's he gave to Mrs. Joplin; secondly, that the boy he left with
+Mr. Fielden was the same that he took again from that woman: therefore,
+the necessity of finding out Mother Joplin, an essential witness.  Q. E.
+D., Master Jason!"
+
+It was not till the sun had been some hours risen that Mr. Grabman
+imitated that luminary's example.  When he did so, he found, somewhat to
+his chagrin, that John Ardworth had long been gone.  In fact, whatever
+the motive that had led the latter on the search, he had succeeded in
+gleaning from Grabman all that that person could communicate, and their
+interview had inspired him with such disgust of the attorney, and so
+small an opinion of the value of his co-operation (in which last belief,
+perhaps, he was mistaken), that he had resolved to continue his inquiries
+alone, and had already, in his early morning's walk through the village,
+ascertained that the man with whom Mrs. Joplin had quitted the place had
+some time after been sentenced to six months' imprisonment in the county
+jail.  Possibly the prison authorities might know something to lead to
+his discovery, and through him the news of his paramour might be gained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+MORE OF MRS. JOPLIN.
+
+One day, at the hour of noon, the court boasting the tall residence of
+Mr. Grabman was startled from the quiet usually reigning there at broad
+daylight by the appearance of two men, evidently no inhabitants of the
+place.  The squalid, ill-favoured denizens lounging before the doors
+stared hard, and at the fuller view of one of the men, most of them
+retreated hastily within.  Then, in those houses, you might have heard a
+murmur of consternation and alarm.  The ferret was in the burrow,--a Bow-
+Street officer in the court!  The two men paused, looked round, and
+stopping before the dingy towerlike house, selected the bell which
+appealed to the inmates of the ground-floor, to the left.  At that
+summons Bill the cracksman imprudently presented a full view of his
+countenance through his barred window; he drew it back with astonishing
+celerity, but not in time to escape the eye of the Bow-Street runner.
+
+"Open the door, Bill,--there's nothing to fear; I have no summons against
+you, 'pon honour.  You know I never deceive.  Why should I?  Open the
+door, I say."
+
+No answer.
+
+The officer tapped with his cane at the foul window.
+
+"Bill, there's a gentleman who comes to you for information, and he will
+pay for it handsomely."
+
+Bill again appeared at the casement, and peeped forth very cautiously
+through the bars.
+
+"Bless my vitals, Mr. R----, and it is you, is it?  What were you saying
+about paying handsomely?"
+
+"That your evidence is wanted,--not against a pal, man.  It will hurt no
+one, and put at least five guineas in your pocket."
+
+"Ten guineas," said the Bow-Street officer's companion.  "You be's a man
+of honour, Mr. R----!" said Bill, emphatically; "and I scorns to doubt
+you, so here goes."
+
+With that he withdrew from the window, and in another minute or so the
+door was opened, and Bill, with a superb bow, asked his visitors into his
+room.
+
+In the interval, leisure had been given to the cracksman to remove all
+trace of the wonted educational employment of his hopeful children.  The
+urchins were seated on the floor playing at push-pin; and the Bow-Street
+officer benignly patted a pair of curly heads as he passed them, drew a
+chair to the table, and wiping his forehead, sat down, quite at home.
+Bill then deliberately seated himself, and unbuttoning his waistcoat,
+permitted the butt-ends of a brace of pistols to be seen by his guests.
+Mr. R----'s companion seemed very unmoved by this significant action.  He
+bent one inquiring, steady look on the cracksman, which, as Bill
+afterwards said, went through him "like a gimlet through a penny," and
+taking out a purse, through the network of which the sovereigns gleamed
+pleasantly, placed it on the table and said,--
+
+"This purse is yours if you will tell me what has become of a woman named
+Joplin, with whom you left the village of ----, in Lancashire, in the
+year 18--."
+
+"And," put in Mr. R----, "the gentleman wants to know, with no view of
+harming the woman.  It will be to her own advantage to inform us where
+she is."
+
+"'Pon honour again?" said Bill.
+
+"'Pon honour!"
+
+"Well, then, I has a heart in my buzzom, and if so be I can do a good
+turn to the 'oman wot I has loved and kep' company with, why not?"
+
+"Why not, indeed?" said Mr. R----.  "And as we want to learn, not only
+what has become of Mrs. Joplin, but what she did with the child she
+carried off from ----, begin at the beginning and tell us all you know."
+
+Bill mused.  "How much is there in the pus?"
+
+"Eighteen sovereigns."
+
+"Make it twenty--you nod--twenty then?  A bargain!  Now I'll go on right
+ahead.  You see as how, some months arter we--that is, Peggy Joplin and
+self--left ----, I was put in quod in Lancaster jail; so I lost sight of
+the blowen.  When I got out and came to Lunnun, it was a matter of seven
+year afore, all of a sudding, I came bang up agin her,--at the corner of
+Common Garden.  'Why, Bill!' says she.  'Why, Peggy!' says I; and we
+bussed each other like winky.  'Shall us come together agin?' says she.
+'Why, no,' says I; 'I has a wife wots a good 'un, and gets her bread by
+setting up as a widder with seven small childern.  By the by, Peg, what's
+a come of your brat?' for as you says, sir, Peg had a child put out to
+her to nurse.  Lor', how she cuffed it!  'The brat!' says she, laughing
+like mad, 'oh, I got rid o' that when you were in jail, Bill.'  'As how?'
+says I.  'Why, there was a woman begging agin St. Poll's churchyard; so I
+purtended to see a frind at a distance: "'Old the babby a moment," says
+I, puffing and panting, "while I ketches my friend yonder."  So she 'olds
+the brat, and I never sees it agin; and there's an ind of the bother!'
+'But won't they ever ax for the child,--them as giv' it you?'  'Oh, no,'
+says Peg, 'they left it too long for that, and all the tin was agone; and
+one mouth is hard enough to feed in these days,--let by other folks'
+bantlings.'  'Well,' says I, 'where do you hang out?  I'll pop in, in a
+friendly way.'  So she tells me,--som'ere in Lambeth,--I forgets
+hexactly; and many's the good piece of work we ha' done togither."
+
+"And where is she now?" asked Mr. R----'s companion.
+
+"I doesn't know purcisely, but I can com' at her.  You see, when my poor
+wife died, four year com' Chris'mas, and left me with as fine a famuly,
+though I says it, as h-old King Georgy himself walked afore, with his
+gold-'eaded cane, on the terris at Vindsor,--all heights and all h-ages
+to the babby in arms (for the little 'un there warn't above a year old,
+and had been a brought up upon spoon-meat, with a dash o' blueruin to
+make him slim and ginteel); as for the bigger 'uns wot you don't see,
+they be doin' well in forin parts, Mr. R----!"
+
+Mr. R. smiled significantly.
+
+Bill resumed.  "Where was I?  Oh, when my wife died, I wanted sum 'un to
+take care of the childern, so I takes Peg into the 'ous.  But Lor'! how
+she larrupped 'em,--she has a cruel  heart, has n't she, Bob?  Bob is a
+'cute child,  Mr. R----.  Just as I was a thinking of turning her out
+neck an' crop, a gemman what lodges aloft, wot be a laryer, and wot had
+just saved my nick, Mr. R----, by proving a h-alibi, said, 'That's a tidy
+body, your Peg!' (for you see he was often a wisiting here, an' h-indeed,
+sin' then, he has taken our third floor, No. 9); 'I've been a speakin' to
+her, and I find she has been a nuss to the sick.  I has a frind wots a h-
+uncle that's ill: can you spare her, Bill, to attind him?' That I can,'
+says I; 'anything to obleedge.'  So Peg packs off, bag and baggidge."
+
+"And what was the sick gentleman's name?" asked Mr. R----'s companion.
+
+"It was one Mr. Warney,--a painter, wot lived at Clap'am.  Since thin
+I've lost sight of Peg; for we had 'igh words about the childern, and she
+was a spiteful 'oman.  But you can larn where she be at Mr. Warney's, if
+so be he's still above ground."
+
+"And did this woman still go by the name of Joplin?"
+
+Bill grinned: "She warn't such a spooney as that,--that name was in your
+black books too much, Mr. R----, for a 'spectable nuss for sick bodies;
+no, she was then called Martha Skeggs, what was her own mother's name
+afore marriage.  Anything more, gemman?"
+
+"I am satisfied," said the younger visitor, rising; "there is the purse,
+and Mr. R---- will bring you ten sovereigns in addition.  Good-day to
+you."
+
+Bill, with superabundant bows and flourishes, showed his visitors out,
+and then, in high glee, he began to romp with his children; and the whole
+family circle was in a state of uproarious enjoyment when the door flew
+open, and in entered Grabman, his brief-bag in hand, dust-soiled and
+unshaven.
+
+"Aha, neighbour! your servant, your servant; just come back!  Always so
+merry; for the life of me, I couldn't help looking in!  Dear me, Bill,
+why, you're in luck!" and Mr. Grabman pointed to a pile of sovereigns
+which Bill had emptied from the purse to count over and weigh on the tip
+of his forefinger.
+
+"Yes," said Bill, sweeping the gold into his corduroy pocket; "and who do
+you think brought me these shiners?  Why, who but old Peggy, the 'oman
+wot you put out at Clapham."
+
+"Well, never mind Peggy, now, Bill; I want to ask you what you have done
+with Margaret Joplin, whom, sly seducer that you are, you carried off
+from--"
+
+"Why, man, Peggy be Joplin, and Joplin be Peggy!  And it's for that piece
+of noos that I got all them pretty new picters of his Majesty Bill,--my
+namesake, God bliss 'im!"
+
+"D--n," exclaimed Grabman, aghast; "the young chap's spoiling my game
+again!" And seizing up his brief-bag, he darted out of the house, in the
+hope to arrive at least at Clapham before his competitors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+BECK'S DISCOVERY.
+
+Under the cedar-trees at Laughton sat that accursed and abhorrent being
+who sat there, young, impassioned, hopeful, as Lucretia Clavering,--under
+the old cedar-trees, which, save that their vast branches cast an
+imperceptibly broader shade over the mossy sward, the irrevocable winters
+had left the same.  Where, through the nether boughs the autumn sunbeams
+came aslant, the windows, enriched by many a haughty scutcheon, shone
+brightly against the western rays.  From the flower-beds in the quaint
+garden near at hand, the fresh yet tranquil air wafted faint perfumes
+from the lingering heliotrope and fading rose.  The peacock perched
+dozily on the heavy balustrade; the blithe robin hopped busily along the
+sun-track on the lawn; in the distance the tinkling bells of the flock,
+the plaining low of some wandering heifer, while breaking the silence,
+seemed still to blend with the repose.  All images around lent themselves
+to complete that picture of stately calm which is the character of those
+old mansion-houses, which owner after owner has loved and heeded, leaving
+to them the graces of antiquity, guarding them from the desolation of
+decay.
+
+Alone sat Lucretia under the cedar-trees, and her heart made dismal
+contrast to the noble tranquillity that breathed around.  From whatever
+softening or repentant emotions which the scene of her youth might first
+have awakened; from whatever of less unholy anguish which memory might
+have caused when she first, once more, sat under those remembered boughs,
+and, as a voice from a former world, some faint whisper of youthful love
+sighed across the waste and ashes of her devastated soul,--from all such
+rekindled humanities in the past she had now, with gloomy power, wrenched
+herself away.  Crime such as hers admits not long the sentiment that
+softens remorse of gentler error.  If there wakes one moment from the
+past the warning and melancholy ghost, soon from that abyss rises the
+Fury with the lifted scourge, and hunts on the frantic footsteps towards
+the future.  In the future, the haggard intellect of crime must live,
+must involve itself mechanically in webs and meshes, and lose past and
+present in the welcome atmosphere of darkness.
+
+Thus while Lucretia sat, and her eyes rested upon the halls of her youth,
+her mind overleaped the gulf that yet yawned between her and the object
+on which she was bent.  Already, in fancy, that home was hers again, its
+present possessor swept away, the interloping race of Vernon ending in
+one of those abrupt lines familiar to genealogists, which branch out
+busily from the main tree, as if all pith and sap were monopolized by
+them, continue for a single generation, and then shrink into a printer's
+bracket with the formal laconism, "Died without issue."  Back, then, in
+the pedigree would turn the eye of some curious descendant, and see the
+race continue in the posterity of Lucretia Clavering.
+
+With all her ineffable vices, mere cupidity had not, as we have often
+seen, been a main characteristic of this fearful woman; and in her design
+to endow, by the most determined guilt, her son with the heritage of her
+ancestors, she had hitherto looked but little to mere mercenary
+advantages for herself: but now, in the sight of that venerable and broad
+domain, a covetousness, absolute in itself, broke forth.  Could she have
+gained it for her own use rather than her son's, she would have felt a
+greater zest in her ruthless purpose.  She looked upon the scene as a
+deposed monarch upon his usurped realm,--it was her right.  The early
+sense of possession in that inheritance returned to her.
+
+Reluctantly would she even yield her claims to her child.  Here, too, in
+this atmosphere she tasted once more what had long been lost to her,--the
+luxury of that dignified respect which surrounds the well-born.  Here she
+ceased to be the suspected adventuress, the friendless outcast, the needy
+wrestler with hostile fortune, the skulking enemy of the law.  She rose
+at once, and without effort, to her original state,--the honoured
+daughter of an illustrious house.  The homeliest welcome that greeted her
+from some aged but unforgotten villager, the salutation of homage, the
+bated breath of humble reverence,--even trifles like these were dear to
+her, and made her the more resolute to retain them.  In her calm,
+relentless onward vision she saw herself enshrined in those halls, ruling
+in the delegated authority of her son, safe evermore from prying
+suspicion and degrading need and miserable guilt for miserable objects.
+Here, but one great crime, and she resumed the majesty of her youth!
+While thus dwelling on the future, her eye did not even turn from those
+sunlit towers to the forms below, and more immediately inviting its
+survey.  On the very spot where, at the opening of this tale, sat Sir
+Miles St. John sharing his attention between his dogs and his guest, sat
+now Helen Mainwaring; against the balustrade where had lounged Charles
+Vernon, leaned Percival St. John; and in the same place where he had
+stationed himself that eventful evening, to distort, in his malignant
+sketch, the features of his father, Gabriel Varney, with almost the same
+smile of irony upon his lips, was engaged in transferring to his canvas a
+more faithful likeness of the heir's intended bride.  Helen's
+countenance, indeed, exhibited comparatively but little of the ravages
+which the pernicious aliment, administered so noiselessly, made upon the
+frame.  The girl's eye, it is true, had sunk, and there was a languid
+heaviness in its look; but the contour of the cheek was so naturally
+rounded, and the features so delicately fine, that the fall of the
+muscles was less evident; and the bright, warm hue of the complexion, and
+the pearly sparkle of the teeth, still gave a fallacious freshness to the
+aspect.  But as yet the poisoners had forborne those ingredients which
+invade the springs of life, resorting only to such as undermine the
+health and prepare the way to unsuspected graves.  Out of the infernal
+variety of the materials at their command, they had selected a mixture
+which works by sustaining perpetual fever; which gives little pain,
+little suffering, beyond that of lassitude and thirst; which wastes like
+consumption, and yet puzzles the physician, by betraying few or none of
+its ordinary symptoms.  But the disorder as yet was not incurable,--its
+progress would gradually cease with the discontinuance of the venom.
+
+Although October was far advanced, the day was as mild and warm as
+August.  But Percival, who had been watching Helen's countenance with the
+anxiety of love and fear, now proposed that the sitting should be
+adjourned.  The sun was declining, and it was certainly no longer safe
+for Helen to be exposed to the air without exercise.  He proposed that
+they should walk through the garden, and Helen, rising cheerfully, placed
+her hand on his arm.  But she had scarcely descended the steps of the
+terrace when she stopped short and breathed hard and painfully.  The
+spasm was soon over, and walking slowly on, they passed Lucretia with a
+brief word or two, and were soon out of sight amongst the cedars.
+
+"Lean more on my arm, Helen," said Percival.  "How strange it is that the
+change of air has done so little for you, and our country doctor still
+less!  I should feel miserable indeed if Simmons, whom my mother always
+considered very clever, did not assure me that there was no ground for
+alarm,--that these symptoms were only nervous.  Cheer up, Helen; sweet
+love, cheer up!"
+
+Helen raised her face and strove to smile; but the tears stood in her
+eyes.  "It would be hard to die now, Percival!" she said falteringly.
+
+"To die--oh, Helen!  No; we must not stay here longer,--the air is
+certainly too keen for you.  Perhaps your aunt will go to Italy.  Why not
+all go there, and seek my mother?  And she will nurse you, Helen, and-
+and--"  He could not trust his voice farther.
+
+Helen pressed his arm tenderly.  "Forgive me, dear Percival, it is but at
+moments that I feel so despondent; now, again, it is past.  Ah, I so long
+to see your mother!  When shall you hear from her?  Are you not too
+sanguine?  Do you really feel sure she will consent to so lowly a
+choice?"
+
+"Never doubt her affection, her appreciation of you," answered Percival,
+gladly, and hoping that Helen's natural anxiety might be the latent cause
+of her dejected spirits; "often, when talking of the future, under these
+very cedars, my mother has said: 'You have no cause to marry for
+ambition,--marry only for your happiness.'  She never had a daughter: in
+return for all her love, I shall give her that blessing."
+
+Thus talking, the lovers rambled on till the sun set, and then, returning
+to the house, they found that Varney and Madame Dalibard had preceded
+them.  That evening Helen's spirits rose to their natural buoyancy, and
+Percival's heart was once more set at ease by her silvery laugh.
+
+When, at their usual early hour, the rest of the family retired to sleep,
+Percival remained in the drawing-room to write again, and at length, to
+Lady Mary and Captain Greville.  While thus engaged, his valet entered to
+say that Beck, who had been out since the early morning, in search of a
+horse that had strayed from one of the pastures, had just returned with
+the animal, who had wandered nearly as far as Southampton.
+
+"I am glad to hear it," said Percival, abstractedly, and continuing his
+letter.
+
+The valet still lingered.  Percival looked up in surprise.  "If you
+please, sir, you said you particularly wished to see Beck when he came
+back."
+
+"I--oh, true!  Tell him to wait; I will speak to him by and by.  You need
+not sit up for me; let Beck attend to the bell."
+
+The valet withdrew.  Percival continued his letter, and filled page after
+page and sheet after sheet; and when at length the letters, not
+containing a tithe of what he wished to convey, were brought to a close,
+he fell into a revery that lasted till the candles burned low, and the
+clock from the turret tolled one.  Starting up in surprise at the lapse
+of time, Percival then, for the first time, remembered Beck, and rang the
+bell.
+
+The ci-devant sweeper, in his smart livery, appeared at the door.
+
+"Beck, my poor fellow, I am ashamed to have kept you waiting so long; but
+I received a letter this morning which relates to you.  Let me see,--I
+left it in my study upstairs.  Ah, you'll never find the way; follow me,-
+-I have some questions to put to you."
+
+"Nothin' agin my carakter, I hopes, your honour," said Beck, timidly.
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Noos of the mattris, then?" exclaimed Beck, joyfully.
+
+"Nor that either," answered Percival, laughing, as he lighted the chamber
+candlestick, and, followed by Beck, ascended the grand staircase to a
+small room which, as it adjoined his sleeping apartment, he had
+habitually used as his morning writing-room and study.
+
+Percival had, indeed, received that day a letter which had occasioned him
+much surprise; it was from John Ardworth, and ran thus:--
+
+MY DEAR PERCIVAL,--It seems that you have taken into your service a young
+man known only by the name of Beck.  Is he now with you at Laughton?  If
+so, pray retain him, and suffer him to be in readiness to come to me at a
+day's notice if wanted, though it is probable enough that I may rather
+come to you.  At present, strange as it may seem to you, I am detained in
+London by business connected with that important personage.  Will you ask
+him carelessly, as it were, in the mean while; the following questions:--
+
+First, how did he become possessed of a certain child's coral which he
+left at the house of one Becky Carruthers, in Cole's Building?
+
+Secondly, is he aware of any mark on his arm,--if so, will he describe
+it?
+
+Thirdly, how long has he known the said Becky Carruthers?
+
+Fourthly, does he believe her to be honest and truthful?
+
+Take a memorandum of his answers, and send it to me.  I am pretty well
+aware of what they are likely to be; but I desire you to put the
+questions, that I may judge if there be any discrepancy between his
+statement and that of Mrs. Carruthers.  I have much to tell you, and am
+eager to receive your kind congratulations upon an event that has given
+me more happiness than the fugitive success of my little book.  Tenderest
+regards to Helen; and hoping soon to see you,           Ever
+affectionately yours.
+
+P.S.--Say not a word of the contents of this letter to Madame Dalibard,
+Helen, or to any one except Beck.  Caution him to the same discretion.
+If you can't trust to his silence, send him to town.
+
+When the post brought this letter, Beck was already gone on his errand,
+and after puzzling himself with vague conjectures, Percival's mind had
+been naturally too absorbed with his anxieties for Helen to recur much to
+the subject.
+
+Now, refreshing his memory with the contents of the letter, he drew pen
+and ink before him, put the questions seriatim, noted down the answers as
+desired, and smiling at Beck's frightened curiosity to know who could
+possibly care about such matters, and feeling confident (from that very
+fright) of his discretion, dismissed the groom to his repose.
+
+Beck had never been in that part of the house before; and when he got
+into the corridor he became bewildered, and knew not which turn to take,
+the right or the left.  He had no candle with him; but the moon came
+clear through a high and wide skylight: the light, however, gave him no
+guide.  While pausing, much perplexed, and not sure that he should even
+know again the door of the room he had just quitted, if venturing to
+apply to his young master for a clew through such a labyrinth, he was
+inexpressibly startled and appalled by a sudden apparition.  A door at
+one end of the corridor opened noiselessly, and a figure, at first
+scarcely distinguishable, for it was robed from head to foot in a black,
+shapeless garb, scarcely giving even the outline of the human form, stole
+forth.  Beck rubbed his eyes and crept mechanically close within the
+recess of one of the doors that communicated with the passage.  The
+figure advanced a few steps towards him; and what words can describe his
+astonishment when he beheld thus erect, and in full possession of
+physical power and motion, the palsied cripple whose chair he had often
+seen wheeled into the garden, and whose unhappy state was the common
+topic of comment in the servants' hall!  Yes, the moon from above shone
+full upon that face which never, once seen, could be forgotten.  And it
+seemed more than mortally stern and pale, contrasted with the sable of
+the strange garb, and beheld by that mournful light.  Had a ghost,
+indeed, risen from the dead, it could scarcely have appalled him more.
+Madame Dalibard did not see the involuntary spy; for the recess in which
+he had crept was on that side of the wall on which the moon's shadow was
+cast. With a quick step she turned into another room, opposite that which
+she had quitted, the door of which stood ajar, and vanished noiselessly
+as she had appeared.
+
+Taught suspicion by his earlier acquaintance with the "night-side" of
+human nature, Beck had good cause for it here.  This detection of an
+imposture most familiar to his experience,--that of a pretended cripple;
+the hour of the night; the evil expression on the face of the deceitful
+guest; Madame Dalibard's familiar intimacy and near connection with
+Varney,--Varney, the visitor to Grabman, who received no visitors but
+those who desire, not to go to law, but to escape from its penalties;
+Varney, who had dared to brave the resurrection man in his den, and who
+seemed so fearlessly at home in abodes where nought but poverty could
+protect the honest; Varney now, with that strange woman, an inmate of a
+house in which the master was so young, so inexperienced, so liable to be
+duped by his own generous nature,--all these ideas, vaguely combined,
+inspired Beck with as vague a terror.  Surely something, he knew not
+what, was about to be perpetrated against his benefactor,--some scheme of
+villany which it was his duty to detect.  He breathed hard, formed his
+resolves, and stealing on tiptoe, followed the shadowy form of the
+poisoner through the half-opened doorway.  The shutters of the room of
+which he thus crossed the threshold were not closed,--the moon shone in
+bright and still.  He kept his body behind the door, peeping in with
+straining, fearful stare.  He saw Madame Dalibard standing beside a bed
+round which the curtains were closed,--standing for a moment or so
+motionless, and as if in the act of listening, with one hand on a table
+beside the bed.  He then saw her take from the folds of her dress
+something white and glittering, and pour from it what appeared to him but
+a drop or two, cautiously, slowly, into a phial on the table, from which
+she withdrew the stopper; that done, she left the phial where she had
+found it, again paused a moment, and turned towards the door.  Beck
+retreated hastily to his former hiding-place, and gained it in time.
+Again the shadowy form passed him, and again the white face in the white
+moonlight froze his blood with its fell and horrible expression.  He
+remained cowering and shrinking against the wall for some time, striving
+to collect his wits, and considering what he should do.  His first
+thought was to go at once and inform St. John of what he had witnessed.
+But the poor have a proverbial dread of deposing aught against a
+superior.  Madame Dalibard would deny his tale, the guest would be
+believed against the menial,--he would be but dismissed with ignominy.
+At that idea, he left his hiding-place, and crept along the corridor, in
+the hope of finding some passage at the end which might lead to the
+offices.  But when he arrived at the other extremity, he was only met by
+great folding-doors, which evidently communicated with the state
+apartments; he must retrace his steps.  He did so; and when he came to
+the door which Madame Dalibard had entered, and which still stood ajar,
+he had recovered some courage, and with courage, curiosity seized him.
+For what purpose could the strange woman seek that room at night thus
+feloniously?  What could she have poured, and with such stealthy caution,
+into the phial?  Naturally and suddenly the idea of poison flashed across
+him.  Tales of such crime (as, indeed, of all crime) had necessarily
+often thrilled the ear of the vagrant fellow-lodger with burglars and
+outlaws.  But poison to whom?  Could it be meant for his benefactor?
+Could St. John sleep in that room?  Why not?  The woman had sought the
+chamber before her young host had retired to rest, and mingled her potion
+with some medicinal draught.  All fear vanished before the notion of
+danger to his employer.  He stole at once through the doorway, and
+noiselessly approached the table on which yet lay the phial.  His hand
+closed on it firmly.  He resolved to carry it away, and consider next
+morning what next to do.  At all events, it might contain some proof to
+back his tale and justify his suspicions.  When he came once more into
+the corridor, he made a quick rush onwards, and luckily arrived at the
+staircase.  There the blood-red stains reflected on the stone floors from
+the blazoned casements daunted him little less than the sight at which
+his hair still bristled.  He scarcely drew breath till he had got into
+his own little crib, in the wing set apart for the stable-men, when, at
+length, he fell into broken and agitated sleep,--the visions of all that
+had successively disturbed him waking, united confusedly, as in one
+picture of gloom and terror.  He thought that he was in his old loft in
+St. Giles's, that the Gravestealer was wrestling with Varney for his
+body, while he himself, lying powerless on his pallet, fancied he should
+be safe as long as he could retain, as a talisman, his child's coral,
+which he clasped to his heart.  Suddenly, in that black, shapeless garb,
+in which he had beheld her, Madame Dalibard bent over him with her stern,
+colourless face, and wrenched from him his charm.  Then, ceasing his
+struggle with his horrible antagonist, Varney laughed aloud, and the
+Gravestealer seized him in his deadly arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER.
+
+When Beck woke the next morning, and gradually recalled all that had so
+startled and appalled him the previous night, the grateful creature felt,
+less by the process of reason than by a brute instinct, that in the
+mysterious resuscitation and nocturnal wanderings of the pretended
+paralytic, some danger menaced his master; he became anxious to learn
+whether it was really St. John's room Madame Dalibard stealthily visited.
+A bright idea struck him; and in the course of the day, at an hour when
+the family were out of doors, he contrived to coax the good-natured
+valet, who had taken him under his special protection, to show him over
+the house.  He had heard the other servants say there was such a power of
+fine things that a peep into the rooms was as good as a show, and the
+valet felt pride in being cicerone even to Beck.  After having stared
+sufficiently at the banquet-hall and the drawing-room, the armour, the
+busts, and the pictures, and listened, open-mouthed, to his guide's
+critical observations, Beck was led up the great stairs into the old
+family picture-gallery, and into Sir Miles's ancient room at the end,
+which had been left undisturbed, with the bed still in the angle; on
+returning thence, Beck found himself in the corridor which communicated
+with the principal bedrooms, in which he had lost himself the night
+before.
+
+"And vot room be that vith the littul vite 'ead h-over the door?" asked
+Beck, pointing to the chamber from which Madame Dalibard had emerged.
+
+"That white head, Master Beck, is Floorer the goddess; but a heathen like
+you knows nothing about goddesses.  Floorer has a half-moon in her hair,
+you see, which shows that the idolatrous Turks worship her; for the
+Turkish flag is a half-moon, as I have seen at Constantinople.  I have
+travelled, Beck."
+
+"And vot room be it?  Is it the master's?" persisted Beck.
+
+"No, the pretty young lady, Miss Mainwaring, has it at present.  There is
+nothing to see in it.  But that one opposite," and the valet advanced to
+the door through which Madame Dalibard had disappeared,--"that is
+curious; and as Madame is out, we may just take a peep."  He opened the
+door gently, and Beck looked in.  "This, which is called the turret-
+chamber, was Madame's when she was a girl, I have heard old Bessy say; so
+Master pops her there now.  For my part, I'd rather sleep in your little
+crib than have those great gruff-looking figures staring at me by the
+firelight, and shaking their heads with every wind on a winter's night."
+And the valet took a pinch of snuff as he drew Beck's attention to the
+faded tapestry on the walls.  As they spoke, the draught between the door
+and the window caused the gloomy arras to wave with a life-like motion;
+and to those more superstitious than romantic, the chamber had certainly
+no inviting aspect.
+
+"I never sees these old tapestry rooms," said the valet, "without
+thinking of the story of the lady who, coming from a ball and taking off
+her jewels, happened to look up, and saw an eye in one of the figures
+which she felt sure was no peeper in worsted."
+
+"Vot vos it, then?" asked Beck, timidly lifting up the hangings, and
+noticing that there was a considerable space between them and the wall,
+which was filled up in part by closets and wardrobes set into the walls,
+with intervals more than deep enough for the hiding-place of a man.
+
+"Why," answered the valet, "it was a thief.  He had come for the jewels;
+but the lady had the presence of mind to say aloud, as if to herself,
+that she had forgotten something, slipped out of the room, locked the
+door, called up the servants, and the thief--who was no less a person
+than the under-butler--was nabbed."
+
+"And the French 'oman sleeps 'ere?" said Beck, musingly.
+
+"French 'oman!  Master Beck, nothing's so vulgar as these nicknames in a
+first-rate sitivation.  It is all very well when one lives with
+skinflints, but with such a master as our'n, respect's the go.  Besides,
+Madame is not a French 'oman; she is one of the family,--and as old a
+family it is, too, as e'er a lord's in the three kingdoms.  But come,
+your curiosity is satisfied now, and you must trot back to your horses."
+
+As Beck returned to the stables, his mind yet more misgave him as to the
+criminal designs of his master's visitor.  It was from Helen's room that
+the false cripple had walked, and the ill health of the poor young lady
+was a general subject of compassionate comment.  But Madame Dalibard was
+Helen's relation: from what motive could she harbour an evil thought
+against her own niece?  But still, if those drops were poured into the
+healing draught for good, why so secretly?  Once more he revolved the
+idea of speaking to St. John: an accident dissuaded him from this
+intention,--the only proof to back his tale was the mysterious phial he
+had carried away; but unluckily, forgetting that it was in his pocket, at
+a time when he flung off his coat to groom one of the horses, the bottle
+struck against the corn-bin and broke; all the contents were spilt.  This
+incident made him suspend his intention, and wait till he could obtain
+some fresh evidence of evil intentions.  The day passed without any other
+noticeable occurrence.  The doctor called, found Helen somewhat better,
+and ascribed it to his medicines, especially to the effect of his tonic
+draught the first thing in the morning.  Helen smiled.  "Nay, Doctor,"
+said she, "this morning, at least, it was forgotten.  I did not find it
+by my bedside.  Don't tell my aunt; she would be so angry."  The doctor
+looked rather discomposed.
+
+"Well," said he, soon recovering his good humour, "since you are
+certainly better to-day without the draught, discontinue it also to-
+morrow.  I will make an alteration for the day after."  So that night
+Madame Dalibard visited in vain her niece's chamber: Helen had a
+reprieve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE SHADES ON THE DIAL.
+
+The following morning was indeed eventful to the family at Laughton; and
+as if conscious of what it brought forth, it rose dreary and sunless.
+One heavy mist covered all the landscape, and a raw, drizzling rain fell
+pattering through the yellow leaves.
+
+Madame Dalibard, pleading her infirmities, rarely left her room before
+noon, and Varney professed himself very irregular in his hours of rising;
+the breakfast, therefore, afforded no social assembly to the family, but
+each took that meal in the solitude of his or her own chamber.  Percival,
+in whom all habits partook of the healthfulness and simplicity of his
+character, rose habitually early, and that day, in spite of the weather,
+walked forth betimes to meet the person charged with the letters from the
+post. He had done so for the last three or four days, impatient to hear
+from his mother, and calculating that it was full time to receive the
+expected answer to his confession and his prayer.  He met the messenger
+at the bottom of the park, not far from Guy's Oak.  This day he was not
+disappointed.  The letter-bag contained three letters for himself,--two
+with the foreign postmark, the third in Ardworth's hand.  It contained
+also a letter for Madame Dalibard, and two for Varney.
+
+Leaving the messenger to take these last to the Hall, Percival, with his
+own prizes, plunged into the hollow of the glen before him, and, seating
+himself at the foot of Guy's Oak, through the vast branches of which the
+rain scarcely came, and only in single, mournful drops, he opened first
+the letter in his mother's hand, and read as follows:--
+
+MY DEAR, DEAR SON,--How can I express to you the alarm your letter has
+given to me!  So these, then, are the new relations you have discovered!
+I fondly imagined that you were alluding to some of my own family, and
+conjecturing who, amongst my many cousins, could have so captivated your
+attention.  These the new relations,--Lucretia Dalibard, Helen
+Mainwaring!  Percival, do you not know ----  No, you cannot know that
+Helen Mainwaring is the daughter of a disgraced man, of one who (more
+than suspected of fraud in the bank in which he was a partner) left his
+country, condemned even by his own father.  If you doubt this, you have
+but to inquire at ----, not ten miles from Laughton, where the elder
+Mainwaring resided.  Ask there what became of William Mainwaring.  And
+Lucretia, you do not know that the dying prayer of her uncle, Sir Miles
+St. John, was that she might never enter the house he bequeathed to your
+father.  Not till after my poor Charles's death did I know the exact
+cause for Sir Miles's displeasure, though confident it was just; but then
+amongst his papers I found the ungrateful letter which betrayed thoughts
+so dark and passions so unwomanly that I blushed for my sex to read it.
+Could it be possible that that poor old man's prayers were unheeded, that
+that treacherous step could ever cross your threshold, that that cruel
+eye, which read with such barbarous joy the ravages of death on a
+benefactor's face, could rest on the hearth by which your frank, truthful
+countenance has so often smiled away my tears, I should feel indeed as if
+a thunder-cloud hung over the roof.  No, if you marry the niece, the aunt
+must be banished from your house.  Good heavens! and it is the daughter
+of William Mainwaring, the niece and ward of Lucretia Dalibard, to whom
+you have given your faithful affection, whom you single from the world as
+your wife!  Oh, my son,--my beloved, my sole surviving child,--do not
+think that I blame you, that my heart does not bleed while I write thus;
+but I implore you on my knees to pause at least, to suspend this
+intercourse till I myself can reach England.  And what then?  Why, then,
+Percival, I promise, on my part, that I will see your Helen with
+unprejudiced eyes, that I will put away from me, as far as possible, all
+visions of disappointed pride,--the remembrance of faults not her own,--
+and if she be as you say and think, I will take her to my heart and call
+her 'Daughter.' Are you satisfied?  If so, come to me,--come at once, and
+take comfort from your mother's lip.  How I long to be with you while you
+read this; how I tremble at the pain I so rudely give you!  But my poor
+sister still chains me here, I dare not leave her, lest I should lose her
+last sigh.  Come then, come; we will console each other.           Your
+fond (how fond!) and sorrowing mother,                              MARY
+ST. JOHN. SORRENTO, October 3, 1831.
+
+P.S.--You see by this address that we have left Pisa for this place,
+recommended by our physician; hence an unhappy delay of some days in my
+reply.  Ah, Percival, how sleepless will be my pillow till I hear from
+you!
+
+Long, very long, was it before St. John, mute and overwhelmed with the
+sudden shock of his anguish, opened his other letters.  The first was
+from Captain Greville.
+
+What trap have you fallen into, foolish boy?  That you would get into
+some silly scrape or another, was natural enough.  But a scrape for life,
+sir,--that is serious!  But--God bless you for your candour, my Percival;
+you have written to us in time--you are old-fashioned enough to think
+that a mother's consent is necessary to a young man's union; and you have
+left it in our power to save you yet.  It is not every boyish fancy that
+proves to be true love.  But enough of this preaching; I shall do better
+than write scolding letters,--I shall come and scold you in person.  My
+servant is at this very moment packing my portmanteau, the laquais-de-
+place is gone to Naples for my passport.  Almost as soon as you receive
+this I shall be with you; and if I am a day or two later than the mail,
+be patient: do not commit yourself further.  Break your heart if you
+please, but don't implicate your honour.  I shall come at once to Curzon
+Street.  Adieu!                               H. GREVILLE.
+
+Ardworth's letter was shorter than the others,--fortunately so, for
+otherwise it had been unread:--
+
+If I do not come to you myself the day after you receive this, dear
+Percival,--which, indeed, is most probable,--I shall send you my proxy,
+in one whom, for my sake, I know that you will kindly welcome.  He will
+undertake my task, and clear up all the mysteries with which, I trust, my
+correspondence has thoroughly bewildered your lively imagination.
+                   Yours ever,                                 JOHN
+ARDWORTH. GRAY'S INN.
+
+Little indeed did Percival's imagination busy itself with the mysteries
+of Ardworth's correspondence.  His mind scarcely took in the sense of the
+words over which his eye mechanically wandered.
+
+And the letter which narrated the visit of Madame Dalibard to the house
+thus solemnly interdicted to her step was on its way to his mother,--nay,
+by this time would almost have reached her!  Greville was on the road,--
+nay, as his tutor's letter had been forwarded from London, might perhaps
+be in Curzon Street that day.  How desirable to see him before he could
+reach Laughton, to prepare him for Madame Dalibard's visit, for Helen's
+illness, explain the position in which he was involved, and conciliate
+the old soldier's rough, kind heart to his love and his distress.
+
+He did not dread the meeting with Greville,--he yearned for it.  He
+needed an adviser, a confidant, a friend.  To dismiss abruptly his guests
+from his house,--impossible; to abandon Helen because of her father's
+crime or her aunt's fault (whatever that last might be, and no clear
+detail of it was given),--that never entered his thoughts!  Pure and
+unsullied, the starry face of Helen shone the holier for the cloud around
+it.  An inexpressible and chivalrous compassion mingled with his love and
+confirmed his faith.  She, poor child, to suffer for the deeds of
+others,--no.  What availed his power as man, and dignity as gentleman, if
+they could not wrap in their own shelter the one by whom such shelter was
+now doubly needed?  Thus, amidst all his emotions, firm and resolved at
+least on one point, and beginning already to recover the hope of his
+sanguine nature, from his reliance on his mother's love, on the promises
+that softened her disclosures and warnings, and on his conviction that
+Helen had only to be seen for every scruple to give way, Percival
+wandered back towards the house, and coming abruptly on the terrace, he
+encountered Varney, who was leaning motionless against the balustrades,
+with an open letter in his hand.  Varney was deadly pale, and there was
+the trace of some recent and gloomy agitation in the relaxed muscles of
+his cheeks, usually so firmly rounded.  But Percival did not heed his
+appearance as he took him gravely by the arm, and leading him into the
+garden, said, after a painful pause,--
+
+"Varney, I am about to ask you two questions, which your close connection
+with Madame Dalibard may enable you to answer, but in which, from obvious
+motives, I must demand the strictest confidence.  You will not hint to
+her or to Helen what I am about to say?"
+
+Varney stared uneasily on Percival's serious countenance, and gave the
+promise required.
+
+"First, then, for what offence was Madame Dalibard expelled her uncle's
+house,--this house of Laughton?
+
+"Secondly, what is the crime with which Mr. Mainwaring, Helen's father,
+is charged?"
+
+"With regard to the first," said Varney, recovering his composure, "I
+thought I had already told you that Sir Miles was a proud man, and that
+in consequence of discovering a girlish flirtation between his niece
+Lucretia (now Madame Dalibard) and Mainwaring, who afterwards jilted her
+for Helen's mother, he altered his will; 'expelled her his house' is too
+harsh a phrase.  This is all I know.  With regard to the second question,
+no crime was ever brought home to William Mainwaring; he was suspected of
+dealing improperly with the funds of the bank, and he repaid the alleged
+deficit by the sacrifice of all he possessed."
+
+"This is the truth?" exclaimed Percival, joyfully.
+
+"The plain truth, I believe; but why these questions at this moment?  Ah,
+you too, I see, have had letters,--I understand.  Lady Mary gives these
+reasons for withholding her consent."
+
+"Her consent is not withheld," answered Percival; "but shall I own it?
+Remember, I have your promise not to wound and offend Madame Dalibard by
+the disclosure: my mother does refer to the subjects I have alluded to,
+and Captain Greville, my old friend and tutor, is on his way to England;
+perhaps to-morrow he may arrive at Laughton."
+
+"Ha!" said Varney, startled, "to-morrow!  And what sort of a man is this
+Captain Greville?"
+
+"The best man possible for such a case as mine,--kind-hearted, yet cool,
+sagacious; the finest observer, the quickest judge of character,--nothing
+escapes him.  Oh, one interview will suffice to show him all Helen's
+innocent and matchless excellence."
+
+"To-morrow! this man comes to-morrow!"
+
+"All that I fear is,--for he is rather rough and blunt in his manner,--
+all that I fear is his first surprise, and, dare I say displeasure, at
+seeing this poor Madame Dalibard, whose faults, I fear, were graver than
+you suppose, at the house from which her uncle--to whom, indeed, I owe
+this inheritance--"
+
+"I see, I see!" interrupted Varney, quickly.  "And Madame Dalibard is the
+most susceptible of women,--so well-born and so poor, so gifted and so
+helpless; it is natural.  Can you not write, and put off this Captain
+Greville for a few days,--until, indeed, I can find some excuse for
+terminating our visit?"
+
+"But my letter may be hardly in time to reach him; he may be in town to-
+day."
+
+"Go then to town at once; you can be back late at night, or at least to-
+morrow.  Anything better than wounding the pride of a woman on whom,
+after all, you must depend for free and open intercourse with Helen."
+
+"That is exactly what I thought of; but what excuse--"
+
+"Excuse,--a thousand!  Every man coming of age into such a property has
+business with his lawyers.  Or why not say simply that you want to meet a
+friend of yours who has just left your mother in Italy?  In short, any
+excuse suffices, and none can be offensive."
+
+"I will order my carriage instantly."
+
+"Right!" exclaimed Varney; and his eye followed the receding form of
+Percival with a mixture of fierce exultation and anxious fear.  Then,
+turning towards the window of the turret-chamber in which Madame Dalibard
+reposed, and seeing it still closed, he muttered an impatient oath; but
+even while he did so, the shutters were slowly opened, and a footman,
+stepping from the porch, approached Varney with a message that Madame
+Dalibard would see him in five minutes, if he would then have the
+goodness to ascend to her room.
+
+Before that time was well expired, Varney was in the chamber.  Madame
+Dalibard was up and in her chair; and the unwonted joy which her
+countenance evinced was in strong contrast with the sombre shade upon her
+son-in-law's brow, and the nervous quiver of his lip.
+
+"Gabriel," she said, as he drew near to her, "my son is found!"
+
+"I know it," he answered petulantly.  "You!  From whom?"
+
+"From Grabman."
+
+"And I from a still better authority,--from Walter Ardworth himself.  He
+lives; he will restore my child!"  She extended a letter while she spoke.
+He, in return, gave her, not that still crumpled in his hand, but one
+which he drew from his breast. These letters severally occupied both,
+begun and finished almost in the same moment.
+
+That from Grabman ran thus:--
+
+DEAR JASON,--Toss up your hat and cry 'hip, hip!'  At last, from person
+to person, I have tracked the lost Vincent Braddell.  He lives still!  We
+can maintain his identity in any court of law.  Scarce in time for the
+post, I have not a moment for further particulars.  I shall employ the
+next two days in reducing all the evidence to a regular digest, which I
+will despatch to you.  Meanwhile, prepare, as soon as may be, to put me
+in possession of my fee,--5000 pounds; and my expedition merits something
+more.                               Yours,
+                                             NICHOLAS GRABMAN.
+
+The letter from Ardworth was no less positive:--
+
+MADAM,--In obedience to the commands of a dying friend, I took charge of
+his infant and concealed its existence from his mother,--yourself.  On
+returning to England, I need not say that I was not unmindful of my
+trust. Your son lives; and after mature reflection I have resolved to
+restore him to your arms.  In this I have been decided by what I have
+heard, from one whom I can trust, of your altered habits, your decorous
+life, your melancholy infirmities, and the generous protection you have
+given to the orphan of my poor cousin Susan, my old friend Mainwaring.
+Alfred Braddell himself, if it be permitted to him to look down and read
+my motives, will pardon me, I venture to feel assured, this departure
+from his injunctions.  Whatever the faults which displeased him, they
+have been amply chastised.  And your son, grown to man, can no longer be
+endangered by example, in tending the couch, or soothing the repentance
+of his mother.
+
+These words are severe; but you will pardon them in him who gives you
+back your child.  I shall venture to wait on you in person, with such
+proofs as may satisfy you as to the identity of your son.  I count on
+arriving at Laughton to-morrow.  Meanwhile, I simply sign myself by a
+name in which you will recognize the kinsman to one branch of your
+family, and the friend of your dead husband.
+                                            J. WALTER ARDWORTH.
+
+CRAVEN HOTEL, October, 1831.
+
+
+"Well, and are you not rejoiced?" said Lucretia, gazing surprised on
+Varney's sullen and unsympathizing face.
+
+"No! because time presses; because, even while discovering your son, you
+may fail in securing his heritage; because, in the midst of your triumph,
+I see Newgate opening to myself.  Look you, I too have had my news,--less
+pleasing than yours.  This Stubmore (curse him!) writes me word that he
+shall certainly be in town next month at farthest, and that he meditates,
+immediately on his arrival, transferring the legacy from the Bank of
+England to an excellent mortgage of which he has heard.  Were it not for
+this scheme of ours, nothing would be left for me but flight and exile."
+
+"A month,--that is a long time.  Do you think, now that my son is found,
+and that son like John Ardworth (for there can be no doubt that my
+surmise was right), with genius to make station the pedestal to the power
+I dreamed of in my youth, but which my sex forbade me to attain,--do you
+think I will keep him a month from his inheritance?  Before the month is
+out, you shall replace what you have taken, and buy your trustee's
+silence, if need be, either from the sums you have insured, or from the
+rents of Laughton."
+
+"Lucretia," said Varney, whose fresh colours had grown livid, "what is to
+be done must be done at once.  Percival St. John has heard from his
+mother.  Attend."  And Varney rapidly related the questions St. John had
+put to him, the dreaded arrival of Captain Greville, the danger of so
+keen an observer, the necessity, at all events, of abridging their visit,
+the urgency of hastening the catastrophe to its close.
+
+Lucretia listened in ominous and steadfast silence.
+
+"But," she said at last, "you have persuaded St. John to give this man
+the meeting in London,--to put off his visit for the time.  St. John will
+return to us to-morrow.  Well, and if he finds his Helen is no more!  Two
+nights ago I, for the first time, mingled in the morning draught that
+which has no antidote and no cure.  This night two drops more, and St.
+John will return to find that Death is in the house before him.  And then
+for himself,--the sole remaining barrier between my son and this
+inheritance,--for himself, why, grief sometimes kills suddenly; and there
+be drugs whose effect simulates the death-stroke of grief."
+
+"Yet, yet, this rapidity, if necessary, is perilous.  Nothing in Helen's
+state forbodes sudden death by natural means.  The strangeness of two
+deaths, both so young; Greville in England, if not here,--hastening down
+to examine, to inquire.  With such prepossessions against you, there must
+be an inquest."
+
+"Well, and what can be discovered?  It was I who shrank before,--it is I
+who now urge despatch.  I feel as in my proper home in these halls.  I
+would not leave them again but to my grave.  I stand on the hearth of my
+youth; I fight for my rights and my son's!  Perish those who oppose me!"
+
+A fell energy and power were in the aspect of the murderess as she thus
+spoke; and while her determination awed the inferior villany of Varney,
+it served somewhat to mitigate his fears.
+
+As in more detail they began to arrange their execrable plans, Percival,
+while the horses were being harnessed to take him to the nearest post-
+town, sought Helen, and found her in the little chamber which he had
+described and appropriated as her own, when his fond fancy had sketched
+the fair outline of the future.
+
+This room had been originally fitted up for the private devotions of the
+Roman Catholic wife of an ancestor in the reign of Charles II; and in a
+recess, half veiled by a curtain, there still stood that holy symbol
+which, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, no one sincerely penetrated
+with the solemn pathos of sacred history can behold unmoved,--the Cross
+of the Divine Agony.  Before this holy symbol Helen stood in earnest
+reverence.  She did not kneel (for the forms of the religion in which she
+had been reared were opposed to that posture of worship before the graven
+image), but you could see in that countenance, eloquent at once with the
+enthusiasm and the meekness of piety, that the soul was filled with the
+memories and the hopes which, age after age, have consoled the sufferer
+and inspired the martyr.  The soul knelt to the idea, if the knee bowed
+not to the image, embracing the tender grandeur of the sacrifice and the
+vast inheritance opened to faith in the redemption.
+
+The young man held his breath while he gazed.  He was moved, and he was
+awed.  Slowly Helen turned towards him, and, smiling sweetly, held out to
+him her hand.  They seated themselves in silence in the depth of the
+overhanging casement; and the mournful character of the scene without,
+where dimly, through the misty rains, gloomed the dark foliage of the
+cedars, made them insensibly draw closer to each other in the instinct of
+love when the world frowns around it.  Percival wanted the courage to say
+that he had come to take farewell, though but for a day, and Helen spoke
+first.
+
+"I cannot guess why it is, Percival, but I am startled at the change I
+feel in myself--no, not in health, dear Percival; I mean in mind--during
+the last few months,--since, indeed, we have known each other.  I
+remember so well the morning in which my aunt's letter arrived at the
+dear vicarage.  We were returning from the village fair, and my good
+guardian was smiling at my notions of the world.  I was then so giddy and
+light and thoughtless, everything presented itself to me in such gay
+colours, I scarcely believed in sorrow.  And now I feel as if I were
+awakened to a truer sense of nature,--of the ends of our being here; I
+seem to know that life is a grave and solemn thing.  Yet I am not less
+happy, Percival.  No, I think rather that I knew not true happiness till
+I knew you.  I have read somewhere that the slave is gay in his holiday
+from toil; if you free him, if you educate him, the gayety vanishes, and
+he cares no more for the dance under the palm-tree.  But is he less
+happy?  So it is with me!"
+
+"My sweet Helen, I would rather have one gay smile of old, the arch,
+careless laugh which came so naturally from those rosy lips, than hear
+you talk of happiness with that quiver in your voice,--those tears in
+your eyes."
+
+"Yet gayety," said Helen, thoughtfully, and in the strain of her pure,
+truthful poetry of soul, "is only the light impression of the present
+moment,--the play of the mere spirits; and happiness seems a forethought
+of the future, spreading on, far and broad, over all time and space."
+
+"And you live, then, in the future at last; you have no misgivings now,
+my Helen?  Well, that comforts me.  Say it, Helen,--say the future will
+be ours!"
+
+"It will, it will,--forever and forever," said Helen, earnestly; and her
+eyes involuntarily rested on the Cross.
+
+In his younger spirit and less imaginative nature Percival did not
+comprehend the depth of sadness implied in Helen's answer; taking it
+literally, he felt as if a load were lifted from his heart, and kissing
+with rapture the hand he held, he exclaimed: "Yes, this shall soon, oh,
+soon be mine!  I fear nothing while you hope.  You cannot guess how those
+words have cheered me; for I am leaving you, though but for a few hours,
+and I shall repeat those words, for they will ring in my ear, in my
+heart, till we meet again."
+
+"Leaving me!" said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on his hand
+tightening.  Poor child, she felt mysteriously a sentiment of protection
+in his presence.
+
+"But at most for a day.  My old tutor, of whom we have so often
+conversed, is on his way to England,--perhaps even now in London.  He has
+some wrong impressions against your aunt; his manner is blunt and rough.
+It is necessary that I should see him before he comes hither,--you know
+how susceptible is your aunt's pride,--just to prepare him for meeting
+her.  You understand?"
+
+"What impressions against my aunt?  Does he even know her?" asked Helen.
+And if such a sentiment as suspicion could cross that candid innocence of
+mind, that sentiment towards this stern relation whose arms had never
+embraced her, whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was
+as a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.
+
+"It is because he has never known her that he does her wrong.  Some old
+story of her indiscretion as a girl, of her uncle's displeasure,--what
+matters now?" said Percival, shrinking sensitively from one disclosure
+that might wound Helen in her kinswoman.  "Meanwhile, dearest, you will
+be prudent,--you will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and
+amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to improve
+these old halls when they and their unworthy master are your own.  God
+bless you, God guard you, Helen!"
+
+He rose, and with that loyal chivalry of love which felt respect the more
+for the careless guardianship to which his Helen was intrusted, he
+refrained from that parting kiss which their pure courtship warranted,
+for which his lip yearned.  But as he lingered, an irresistible impulse
+moved Helen's heart.  Mechanically she opened her arms, and her head sank
+upon his shoulder.  In that embrace they remained some moments silent,
+and an angel might unreprovingly have heard their hearts beat through the
+stillness.
+
+At length Percival tore himself from those arms which relaxed their
+imploring hold reluctantly; she heard his hurried step descend the
+stairs, and in a moment more the roll of the wheels in the court without;
+a dreary sense, as of some utter desertion, some everlasting bereavement,
+chilled and appalled her.  She stood motionless, as if turned to stone,
+on the floor; suddenly the touch of something warm on her hand, a
+plaining whine, awoke her attention; Percival's favourite dog missed his
+master, and had slunk for refuge to her.  The dread sentiment of
+loneliness vanished in that humble companionship; and seating herself on
+the ground, she took the dog in her arms, and bending over it, wept in
+silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST.
+
+The reader will doubtless have observed the consummate art with which the
+poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her prey.  The design conceived from
+afar, and executed with elaborate stealth, defied every chance of
+detection against which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard.
+Grant even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the death
+they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of
+chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto
+baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of
+the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not one
+suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death.  The
+medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her
+hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.
+The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had assumed,
+forbade all notion even of her power of movement.  Only in the dead of
+night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was
+sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might
+sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of light
+struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish from the
+general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the colourless and
+tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania (Tufania water) was
+wholly without taste or colour] in the morning draught, meant to bring
+strength and healing.  Grant that the draught was untouched, that it was
+examined by the surgeon, that the fell admixture could be detected,
+suspicion would wander anywhere rather than to that crippled and helpless
+kinswoman who could not rise from her bed without aid.
+
+But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the serpent were
+to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey.
+
+Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her resolves by
+the discovery of her son, and her impatience to endow him with her
+forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from the face of Helen that day; on
+the excuse of illness, she kept her room, and admitted only Varney, who
+stole in from time to time, with creeping step and haggard countenance,
+to sustain her courage or his own.  And every time he entered, he found
+Lucretia sitting with Walter Ardworth's open letter in her hand, and
+turning with a preternatural excitement that seemed almost like
+aberration of mind, from the grim and horrid topic which he invited, to
+thoughts of wealth and power and triumph and exulting prophecies of the
+fame her son should achieve.  He looked but on the blackness of the gulf,
+and shuddered; her vision overleaped it, and smiled on the misty palaces
+her fancy built beyond.
+
+Late in the evening, before she retired to rest, Helen knocked gently at
+her aunt's door.  A voice, quick and startled, bade her enter; she came
+in, with her sweet, caressing look, and took Lucretia's hand, which
+struggled from the clasp.  Bending over that haggard brow, she said
+simply, yet to Lucretia's ear the voice seemed that of command, "Let me
+kiss you this night!" and her lips pressed that brow.  The murderess
+shuddered, and closed her eyes; when she opened them, the angel visitor
+was gone.
+
+Night deepened and deepened into those hours from the first of which we
+number the morn, though night still is at her full.  Moonbeam and
+starbeam came through the casements shyly and fairylike as on that night
+when the murderess was young and crimeless, in deed, if not in thought,--
+that night when, in the book of Leechcraft, she meted out the hours in
+which the life of her benefactor might still interpose between her
+passion and its end.  Along the stairs, through the hall, marched the
+armies of light, noiseless and still and clear as the judgments of God
+amidst the darkness and shadow of mortal destinies.  In one chamber
+alone, the folds, curtained close, forbade all but a single ray; that ray
+came direct as the stream from a lantern; as the beam reflected back from
+an eye,--as an eye it seemed watchful and steadfast through the dark; it
+shot along the floor,--it fell at the foot of the bed.
+
+Suddenly, in the exceeding hush, there was a strange and ghastly sound,--
+it was the howl of a dog!  Helen started from her sleep.  Percival's dog
+had followed her into her room; it had coiled itself, grateful for the
+kindness, at the foot of the bed.  Now it was on the pillow, she felt its
+heart beat against her hand,--it was trembling; its hairs bristled up,
+and the howl changed into a shrill bark of terror and wrath.  Alarmed,
+she looked round; quickly between her and that ray from the crevice a
+shapeless darkness passed, and was gone, so undistinguishable, so without
+outline, that it had no likeness of any living form; like a cloud, like a
+thought, like an omen, it came in gloom, and it vanished.
+
+Helen was seized with a superstitious terror; the dog continued to
+tremble and growl low.  All once more was still; the dog sighed itself to
+rest. The stillness, the solitude, the glimmer of the moon,--all
+contributed yet more to appall the enfeebled nerves of the listening,
+shrinking girl.  At length she buried her face under the clothes, and
+towards daybreak fell into a broken, feverish sleep, haunted with
+threatening dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE MESSENGER SPEEDS.
+
+Towards the afternoon of the following day, an elderly gentleman was
+seated in the coffee-room of an hotel at Southampton, engaged in writing
+a letter, while the waiter in attendance was employed on the wires that
+fettered the petulant spirit contained in a bottle of Schweppe's soda-
+water.  There was something in the aspect of the old gentleman, and in
+the very tone of his voice, that inspired respect, and the waiter had
+cleared the other tables of their latest newspapers to place before him.
+He had only just arrived by the packet from Havre, and even the
+newspapers had not been to him that primary attraction they generally
+constitute to the Englishman returning to his bustling native land,
+which, somewhat to his surprise, has contrived to go on tolerably well
+during his absence.
+
+We use our privilege of looking over his shoulder while he writes:--
+
+Here I am, then, dear Lady Mary, at Southampton, and within an easy drive
+of the old Hall.  A file of Galignani's journals, which I found on the
+road between Marseilles and Paris, informed me, under the head of
+"fashionable movements," that Percival St. John, Esquire, was gone to his
+seat at Laughton.  According to my customary tactics of marching at once
+to the seat of action, I therefore made direct for Havre, instead of
+crossing from Calais, and I suppose I shall find our young gentleman
+engaged in the slaughter of hares and partridges.  You see it is a good
+sign that he can leave London.  Keep up your spirits, my dear friend.  If
+Perce has been really duped and taken in,--as all you mothers are so apt
+to fancy,--rely upon an old soldier to defeat the enemy and expose the
+ruse.  But if, after all, the girl is such as he describes and believes,-
+-innocent, artless, and worthy his affection,--oh, then I range myself,
+with your own good heart, upon his side.  Never will I run the risk of
+unsettling a man's whole character for life by wantonly interfering with
+his affections.  But there we are agreed.
+
+In a few hours I shall be with our dear boy, and his whole heart will
+come out clear and candid as when it beat under his midshipman's true-
+blue.  In a day or two I shall make him take me to town, to introduce me
+to the whole nest of them.  Then I shall report progress.  Adieu, till
+then!  Kind regards to your poor sister.  I think we shall have a mild
+winter.  Not one warning twinge as yet of the old rheumatism.  Ever your
+devoted old friend and preux chevalier,
+                                        H. GREVILLE.
+
+The captain had completed his letter, sipped his soda-water, and was
+affixing to his communication his seal, when he heard the rattle of a
+post-chaise without.  Fancying it was the one he had ordered, he went to
+the open window which looked on the street; but the chaise contained
+travellers, only halting to change horses.  Somewhat to his surprise, and
+a little to his chagrin,--for the captain did not count on finding
+company at the Hall,--he heard one of the travellers in the chaise ask
+the distance to Laughton.  The countenance of the questioner was not
+familiar to him.  But leaving the worthy captain to question the
+landlord, without any satisfactory information, and to hasten the chaise
+for himself, we accompany the travellers on their way to Laughton.  There
+were but two,--the proper complement of a post-chaise,--and they were
+both of the ruder sex.  The elder of the two was a man of middle age, but
+whom the wear and tear of active life had evidently advanced towards the
+state called elderly.  But there was still abundant life in his quick,
+dark eye; and that mercurial youthfulness of character which in some
+happy constitutions seems to defy years and sorrow, evinced itself in a
+rapid play of countenance and as much gesticulation as the narrow
+confines of the vehicle and the position of a traveller will permit.  The
+younger man, far more grave in aspect and quiet in manner, leaned back in
+the corner with folded arms, and listened with respectful attention to
+his companion.
+
+"Certainly, Dr. Johnson is right,--great happiness in an English post-
+chaise properly driven; more exhilarating than a palanquin.  'Post
+equitem sedet atra cura,'--true only of such scrubby hacks as old Horace
+could have known.  Black Care does not sit behind English posters, eh, my
+boy?"  As he spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of
+the vehicle, and twice put it up again.
+
+"Yet," he resumed, without noticing the brief, good-humoured reply of his
+companion,--"yet this is an anxious business enough that we are about.  I
+don't feel quite easy in my conscience.  Poor Braddell's injunctions were
+very strict, and I disobey them.  It is on your responsibility, John!"
+
+"I take it without hesitation.  All the motives for so stern a severance
+must have ceased, and is it not a sufficient punishment to find in that
+hoped-for son a--"
+
+"Poor woman!" interrupted the elder gentleman, in whom we begin to
+recognize the soi-disant Mr. Tomkins; "true, indeed, too true.  How well
+I remember the impression Lucretia Clavering first produced on me; and to
+think of her now as a miserable cripple!  By Jove, you are right, sir!
+Drive on, post-boy, quick, quick!"
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+The elder gentleman abruptly put his hand upon his companion's arm.
+
+"What consummate acuteness; what patient research you have shown!  What
+could I have done in this business without you?  How often had that
+garrulous Mrs. Mivers bored me with Becky Carruthers, and the coral, and
+St. Paul's, and not a suspicion came across me,--a word was sufficient
+for you.  And then to track this unfeeling old Joplin from place to place
+till you find her absolutely a servant under the very roof of Mrs.
+Braddell herself!  Wonderful!  Ah, boy, you will be an honour to the law
+and to your country.  And what a hard-hearted rascal you must think me to
+have deserted you so long."
+
+"My dear father," said John Ardworth, tenderly, "your love now
+recompenses me for all.  And ought I not rather to rejoice not to have
+known the tale of a mother's shame until I could half forget it on a
+father's breast?"
+
+"John," said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I ought to wear
+sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother.  When I think
+what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded
+money-matters ('irritamenta malorum,' indeed!), I have only one
+consolation,--that my patient, noble son is free from my vice.  You would
+not believe what a well-principled, honourable fellow I was at your age;
+and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend William Mainwaring one day at
+Laughton (I remember it now) 'Trust me with anything else but half-a-
+guinea!' Why, sir, it was that fault that threw me into low company,--
+that brought me in contact with my innkeeper's daughter at Limerick.  I
+fell in love, and I married (for, with all my faults, I was never a
+seducer, John).  I did not own my marriage; why should I?--my relatives
+had cut me already.  You were born, and, hunted poor devil as I was, I
+forgot all by your cradle.  Then, in the midst of my troubles, that
+ungrateful woman deserted me; then I was led to believe that it was not
+my own son whom I had kissed and blessed.  Ah, but for that thought
+should I have left you as I did?  And even in infancy, you had the
+features only of your mother.  Then, when the death of the adulteress set
+me free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again and had new
+ties, my heart grew still harder to you.  I excused myself by knowing
+that at least you were cared for, and trained to good by a better guide
+than I.  But when, by so strange a hazard, the very priest who had
+confessed your mother on her deathbed (she was a Catholic) came to India,
+and (for he had known me at Limerick) recognized my altered person, and
+obeying his penitent's last injunctions, assured me that you were my
+son,--oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to England on the wings
+of remorse!  Love you, boy!  I have left at Madras three children, young
+and fair, by a woman now in heaven, who never wronged me, and, by my
+soul, John Ardworth, you are dearer to me than all!"
+
+The father's head drooped on his son's breast as he spoke; then, dashing
+away his tears, he resumed,--
+
+"Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to find for his son
+the same guardianship as that to which I intrusted my own?  But his
+bigotry besotted him; a clergyman of the High Church,--that was worse
+than an atheist. I had no choice left to me but the roof of that she-
+hypocrite.  Yet I ought to have come to England when I heard of the
+child's loss, braved duns and all; but I was money-making, money-making,-
+-retribution for money-wasting; and--well, it's no use repenting!  And--
+and there is the lodge, the park, the old trees!  Poor Sir Miles!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE SPY FLIES.
+
+Meanwhile at Laughton there was confusion and alarm.  Helen had found
+herself more than usually unwell in the morning; towards noon, the maid
+who attended her informed Madame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor
+young lady had much fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent for.
+Madame Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed her
+chair to be wheeled into her niece's room, in order herself to judge of
+Helen's state.  The maid, sure that the doctor would be summoned,
+hastened to the stables, and seeing Beck, instructed him to saddle one of
+the horses and to await further orders.  Beck kept her a few moments
+talking while he saddled his horse, and then followed her into the house,
+observing that it would save time if he were close at hand.
+
+"That is quite true," said the maid, "and you may as well wait in the
+corridor.  Madame may wish to speak to you herself, and give you her own
+message or note to the doctor."
+
+Beck, full of gloomy suspicions, gladly obeyed, and while the maid
+entered the sick-chamber, stood anxiously without.  Presently Varney
+passed him, and knocked at Helen's door; the maid half-opened it.
+
+"How is Miss Mainwaring?" said he, eagerly.
+
+"I fear she is worse, sir; but Madame Dalibard does not think there is
+any danger."
+
+"No danger!  I am glad; but pray ask Madame Dalibard to let me see her
+for a few moments in her own room.  If she come out, I will wheel her
+chair to it.  Whether there is danger or not, we had better send for
+other advice than this country doctor, who has perhaps mistaken the case;
+tell her I am very uneasy, and beg her to join me immediately."
+
+"I think you are quite right, sir," said the maid, closing the door.
+
+Varney then, turning round for the first time, noticed Beck, and said
+roughly,--
+
+"What do you do here?  Wait below till you are sent for."
+
+Beck pulled his forelock, and retreated back, not in the direction of the
+principal staircase, but towards that used by the servants, and which his
+researches into the topography of the mansion had now made known to him.
+To gain these back stairs he had to pass Lucretia's room; the door stood
+ajar; Varney's face was turned from him.  Beck breathed hard, looked
+round, then crept within, and in a moment was behind the folds of the
+tapestry.
+
+Soon the chair in which sat Madame Dalibard was drawn by Varney himself
+into the room.
+
+Shutting the door with care, and turning the key, Gabriel said, with low,
+suppressed passion,--
+
+"Well; your mind seems wandering,--speak!"
+
+"It is strange," said Lucretia, in hollow tones, "can Nature turn
+accomplice, and befriend us here?"
+
+"Nature! did you not last night administer the--"
+
+"No," interrupted Lucretia.  "No; she came into the room, she kissed me
+here,--on the brow that even then was meditating murder.  The kiss
+burned; it burns still,--it eats into the brain like remorse.  But I did
+not yield; I read again her false father's protestation of love; I read
+again the letter announcing the discovery of my son, and remorse lay
+still.  I went forth as before, I stole into her chamber, I had the fatal
+crystal in my hand--"
+
+"Well, well!"
+
+"And suddenly there came the fearful howl of a dog, and the dog's fierce
+eyes glared on me.  I paused, I trembled; Helen started, woke, called
+aloud.  I turned and fled.  The poison was not given."
+
+Varney ground his teeth.  "But this illness!  Ha! the effect, perhaps, of
+the drops administered two nights ago."
+
+"No; this illness has no symptoms like those the poison should bequeath,-
+-it is but natural fever, a shock on the nerves; she told me she had been
+wakened by the dog's howl, and seen a dark form, like a thing from the
+grave, creeping along the floor.  But she is really ill; send for the
+physician; there is nothing in her illness to betray the hand of man.  Be
+it as it may,--that kiss still burns; I will stir in this no more.  Do
+what you will yourself!"
+
+"Fool, fool!" exclaimed Varney, almost rudely grasping her arm.
+"Remember how much we have yet to prepare for, how much to do,--and the
+time so short!  Percival's return,--perhaps this Greville's arrival.
+Give me the drugs; I will mix them for her in the potion the physician
+sends.  And when Percival returns,--his Helen dead or dying,--I will
+attend on him!  Silent still?  Recall your son!  Soon you will clasp him
+in your arms as a beggar, or as the lord of Laughton!"
+
+Lucretia shuddered, but did not rise; she drew forth a ring of keys from
+her bosom, and pointed towards a secretary.  Varney snatched the keys,
+unlocked the secretary, seized the fatal casket, and sat down quietly
+before it.
+
+When the dire selections were made, and secreted about his person, Varney
+rose, approached the fire, and blew the wood embers to a blaze.
+
+"And now," he said, with his icy irony of smile, "we may dismiss these
+useful instruments,--perhaps forever.  Though Walter Ardworth, in
+restoring your son, leaves us dependent on that son's filial affection,
+and I may have, therefore, little to hope for from the succession, to
+secure which I have risked and am again to risk my life, I yet trust to
+that influence which you never fail to obtain over others.  I take it for
+granted that when these halls are Vincent Braddell's, we shall have no
+need of gold, nor of these pale alchemies.  Perish, then, the mute
+witnesses of our acts, the elements we have bowed to our will!  No poison
+shall be found in our hoards!  Fire, consume your consuming children!"
+
+As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the casket, and set
+his heel upon the logs.  A bluish flame shot up, breaking into countless
+sparks, and then died.
+
+Lucretia watched him without speaking.
+
+In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something hard beneath his
+tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring which has before been described
+as amongst the ghastly treasures of the casket, and which had rolled on
+the floor almost to Lucretia's feet, as he had emptied the contents on
+the hearth.
+
+"This, at least, need tell no tales," said he; "a pity to destroy so rare
+a piece of workmanship,--one, too, which we never can replace!"
+
+"Ay," said Lucretia, abstractedly; "and if detection comes, it may secure
+a refuge from the gibbet.  Give me the ring."
+
+"A refuge more terrible than the detection," said Varney,--"beware of
+such a thought," as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring on
+her finger.
+
+"And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,--to compose your
+countenance and your thoughts.  I will send for the physician."
+
+Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he
+withdrew.
+
+So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the
+unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at what
+he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible that he
+could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to rescue his
+beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the fate hovering
+nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall to the
+threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes still
+downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door.  At that very moment
+Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their eyes
+met: his were fascinated as the bird's by the snake's.  At the sight, all
+her craft, her intellect, returned.  With a glance, she comprehended the
+terrible danger that awaited her.  Before he was aware of her movement,
+she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in his ear.
+
+"Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are--"
+
+Beck did not suffer her to proceed.  With the violence rather of fear
+than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him still,
+and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness of the
+blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and fierceness.
+He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did so, she
+placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm that had
+smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had fastened into
+the flesh.  This but exasperated him to new efforts.  He extricated
+himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed into a smile of
+scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay before the threshold,
+he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped.  No thought had he of
+tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human shambles, of denouncing
+Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master, warn, and shield him,--
+that was the sole thought which crossed his confused, bewildered brain.
+
+It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned, half-
+senseless, lay upon those floors,--for besides the violence of her fall,
+the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony of
+apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of
+detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,--when Varney
+entered.
+
+"They tell me she sleeps," he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before
+he saw the prostrate form at his very feet.  But Varney's step, Varney's
+voice, had awakened Lucretia's reason to consciousness and the sense of
+peril.  Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had
+passed.
+
+"Fly, fly!" she gasped, as she concluded.  "Fly, to detain, to secrete,
+this man somewhere for the next few hours.  Silence him but till then; I
+have done the rest!" and her finger pointed to the fatal ring.  Varney
+waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the
+stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale
+elsewhere.  The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word,
+but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road.  Varney ordered
+the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he sprang
+on his back,--
+
+"I, too, must go towards Southampton.  The poor young lady!  I must
+prepare your master,--he is on his road back to us;" and the last word
+was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the
+horse's hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.
+
+As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more
+rapidly than the animal he bestrode,--sped from fear to hope, hope to
+assurance.  Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,--incoherent,
+improbable as the tale would be,--who would believe it?  How easy to meet
+tale by tale!  The man must own that he was secreted behind the
+tapestry,--wherefore but to rob?  Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had
+coined this wretched fable.  And the spy, too, could not live through the
+day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed,
+and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy.  Tush! his
+tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium.  Still, it was
+well to track him where he went,--delay him, if possible; and Varney's
+spurs plunged deep and deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately
+scoured the horse.  He passed the lodge; he was on the road; a chaise and
+pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim "Varney!" he saw not the
+wondering face of John Ardworth; bending over the tossing mane, he was
+deaf, he was blind, to all without and around.  A milestone glides by,
+another, and a third.  Ha! his eyes can see now.  The object of his chase
+is before him,--he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the horse
+and the rider, spurring fast, like himself.  They descend the hill, horse
+and horseman, and are snatched from his sight.  Up the steep strains the
+pursuer.  He is at the summit.  He sees the fugitive before him, almost
+within hearing.  Beck has slackened his steed; he seems swaying to and
+fro in the saddle.  Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work in his veins.
+Varney looks round,--not another soul is in sight; a deep wood skirts the
+road.  Place and time seem to favour; Beck has reined in his horse,--he
+bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall.  Varney utters a half-
+suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his reins, and spurs on, when suddenly-
+-by the curve of the road, hid before--another chaise comes in sight,
+close where Beck had wearily halted.
+
+The chaise stops; Varney pulls in, and draws aside to the hedgerow.  Some
+one within the vehicle is speaking to the fugitive!  May it not be St.
+John himself?  To his rage and his terror, he sees Beck painfully
+dismount from his horse, sees him totter to the door of the chaise, sees
+a servant leap from the box and help him up the step, sees him enter.  It
+must be Percival on his return,--Percival, to whom he tells that story of
+horror!  Varney's brute-like courage forsook him; his heart was appalled.
+In one of those panics so common with that boldness which is but animal,
+his sole thought became that of escape.  He turned his horse's head to
+the fence, forced his way desperately through the barrier, made into the
+wood, and sat there, cowering and listening, till in another minute he
+heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop hard down the hill
+towards the park.
+
+The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the
+lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One.  What observer of Nature knows
+not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast?  Not the
+solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but a shrill
+wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish.  Varney shuddered,
+as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim.  Through briers
+and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs, he plunged
+deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main path cut
+through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless whither, till
+he had reached a small town, about ten miles from Laughton, where he
+resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their tone, and he could
+more calmly calculate the chances of safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON.
+
+It seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent and present, that
+that very danger served to restore to Lucretia Dalibard her faculties,
+which during the earlier day had been steeped in a kind of dreary stupor.
+The absolute necessity of playing out her execrable part with all
+suitable and consistent hypocrisy, braced her into iron.  But the
+disguise she assumed was a supernatural effort, it stretched to cracking
+every fibre of the brain; it seemed almost to herself as if, her object
+once gained, either life or consciousness could hold out no more.
+
+A chaise stopped at the porch; two gentlemen descended.  The elder paused
+irresolutely, and at length, taking out a card, inscribed "Mr. Walter
+Ardworth," said, "If Madame Dalibard can be spoken to for a moment, will
+you give her this card?"
+
+The footman hesitatingly stared at the card, and then invited the
+gentleman into the hall while he took up the message.  Not long had the
+visitor to wait, pacing the dark oak floors and gazing on the faded
+banners, before the servant reappeared: Madame Dalibard would see him.
+He followed his guide up the stairs, while his young companion turned
+from the hall, and seated himself musingly on one of the benches on the
+deserted terrace.
+
+Grasping the arms of her chair with both hands, her eyes fixed eagerly on
+his face, Lucretia Dalibard awaited the welcome visitor.
+
+Prepared as he had been for change, Walter was startled by the ghastly
+alteration in Lucretia's features, increased as it was at that moment by
+all the emotions which raged within.  He sank into the chair placed for
+him opposite Lucretia, and clearing his throat, said falteringly,--
+
+"I grieve indeed, Madame, that my visit, intended to bring but joy,
+should chance thus inopportunely.  The servant informed me as we came up
+the stairs that your niece was ill; and I sympathize with your natural
+anxiety,--Susan's only child, too; poor Susan!"
+
+"Sir," said Lucretia, impatiently, "these moments are precious.  Sir,
+sir, my son,--my son!" and her eyes glanced to the door.  "You have
+brought with you a companion,--does he wait without?  My son!"
+
+"Madame, give me a moment's patience.  I will be brief, and compress what
+in other moments might be a long narrative into a few sentences."
+
+Rapidly then Walter Ardworth passed over the details, unnecessary now to
+repeat to the reader,--the injunctions of Braddell, the delivery of the
+child to the woman selected by his fellow-sectarian (who, it seemed, by
+John Ardworth's recent inquiries, was afterwards expelled the community,
+and who, there was reason to believe, had been the first seducer of the
+woman thus recommended).  No clew to the child's parentage had been given
+to the woman with the sum intrusted for his maintenance, which sum had
+perhaps been the main cause of her reckless progress to infamy and ruin.
+The narrator passed lightly over the neglect and cruelty of the nurse, to
+her abandonment of the child when the money was exhausted.  Fortunately
+she had overlooked the coral round its neck.  By that coral, and by the
+initials V. B., which Ardworth had had the precaution to have burned into
+the child's wrist, the lost son had been discovered; the nurse herself
+(found in the person of Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's own servant) had been
+confronted with the woman to whom she gave the child, and recognized at
+once.  Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her the confession which
+completed the evidence.
+
+"In this discovery," concluded Ardworth, "the person I employed met your
+own agent, and the last links in the chain they traced together.  But to
+that person--to his zeal and intelligence--you owe the happiness I trust
+to give you.  He sympathized with me the more that he knew you
+personally, felt for your sorrows, and had a lingering belief that you
+supposed him to be the child you yearned for.  Madame, thank my son for
+the restoration of your own!"
+
+Without sound, Lucretia had listened to these details, though her
+countenance changed fearfully as the narrator proceeded.  But now she
+groaned aloud and in agony.
+
+"Nay, Madame," said Ardworth, feelingly, and in some surprise, "surely
+the discovery of your son should create gladder emotions!  Though,
+indeed, you will be prepared to find that the poor youth so reared wants
+education and refinement, I have heard enough to convince me that his
+dispositions are good and his heart grateful.  Judge of this yourself; he
+is in these walls, he is--"
+
+"Abandoned by a harlot,--reared by a beggar!  My son!" interrupted
+Lucretia, in broken sentences.  "Well, sir, have you discharged your
+task!  Well have you replaced a mother!"  Before Ardworth could reply,
+loud and rapid steps were heard in the corridor, and a voice, cracked,
+indistinct, but vehement.  The door was thrown open, and, half-supported
+by Captain Greville, half dragging him along, his features convulsed,
+whether by pain or passion, the spy upon Lucretia's secrets, the
+denouncer of her crime, tottered to the threshold.  Pointing to where she
+sat with his long, lean arm, Beck exclaimed, "Seize her!  I 'cuse her,
+face to face, of the murder of her niece,--of--of I told you, sir--I told
+you--"
+
+"Madame," said Captain Greville, "you stand charged by this witness with
+the most terrible of human crimes.  I judge you not.  Your niece, I
+rejoice to bear, yet lives.  Pray God that her death be not traced to
+those kindred hands!"  Turning her eyes from one to the other with a
+wandering stare, Lucretia Dalibard remained silent.  But there was still
+scorn on her lip, and defiance on her brow.  At last she said slowly, and
+to Ardworth,--
+
+"Where is my son?  You say he is within these walls.  Call him forth to
+protect his mother!  Give me at least my son,--my son!"
+
+Her last words were drowned by a fresh burst of fury from her denouncer.
+In all the coarsest invective his education could supply, in all the
+hideous vulgarities of his untutored dialect, in that uncurbed
+licentiousness of tone, look, and manner which passion, once aroused,
+gives to the dregs and scum of the populace, Beck poured forth his
+frightful charges, his frantic execrations.  In vain Captain Greville
+strove to check him; in vain Walter Ardworth sought to draw him from the
+room.  But while the poor wretch--maddening not more with the
+consciousness of the crime than with the excitement of the poison in his
+blood--thus raved and stormed, a terrible suspicion crossed Walter
+Ardworth; mechanically,--as his grasp was on the accuser's arm,--he bared
+the sleeve, and on the wrist were the dark-blue letters burned into the
+skin and bearing witness to his identity with the lost Vincent Braddell.
+
+"Hold, hold!" he exclaimed then; "hold, unhappy man!--it is your mother
+whom you denounce!"
+
+Lucretia sprang up erect; her eyes seemed starting from her head.  She
+caught at the arm pointed towards her in wrath and menace, and there,
+amidst those letters that proclaimed her son, was the small puncture,
+surrounded by a livid circle, that announced her victim.  In the same
+instant she discovered her child in the man who was calling down upon her
+head the hatred of Earth and the justice of Heaven, and knew herself his
+murderess!
+
+She dropped the arm, and sank back on the chair; and whether the poison
+had now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in so
+frail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low,
+suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a step or
+so, the blood gushed from his mouth over Lucretia's robe; his head
+drooped an instant, and, falling, rested first upon her lap, then struck
+heavily upon the floor.  The two men bent over him and raised him in
+their arms; his eyes opened and closed, his throat rattled, and as he
+fell back into their arms a corpse, a laugh rose close at hand,--it rang
+through the walls, it was heard near and afar, above and below; not an
+ear in that house that heard it not.  In that laugh fled forever, till
+the Judgment-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the reason
+of the murderess-mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN.
+
+Varney's self-commune restored to him his constitutional audacity.  He
+returned to Laughton towards the evening, and held a long conference with
+Greville.  Fortunately for him, perhaps, and happily for all, Helen had
+lost all more dangerous symptoms; and the physician, who was in the
+house, saw in her state nothing not easily to be accounted for by natural
+causes.  Percival had arrived, had seen Helen,--no wonder she was better!
+Both from him and from Helen, Madame Dalibard's fearful condition was for
+the present concealed.  Ardworth's story, and the fact of Beck's identity
+with Vincent Braddell, were also reserved for a later occasion.  The tale
+which Beck had poured into the ear of Greville (when, recognizing the St.
+John livery, the captain stopped his chaise to inquire if Percival were
+at the Hall, and when thrilled by the hideous import of his broken reply,
+that gentleman had caused him to enter the vehicle to explain himself
+further), Varney, with his wonted art and address, contrived to strip of
+all probable semblance.  Evidently the poor lad had been already
+delirious; his story must be deemed the nightmare of his disordered
+reason.  Varney insisted upon surgical examination as to the cause of his
+death.  The membranes of the brain were found surcharged with blood, as
+in cases of great mental excitement; the slight puncture in the wrist,
+ascribed to the prick of a rusty nail, provoked no suspicion.  If some
+doubts remained still in Greville's acute mind, he was not eager to
+express, still less to act upon them.  Helen was declared to be out of
+danger; Percival was safe,--why affix by minute inquiry into the alleged
+guilt of Madame Dalibard (already so awfully affected by the death of her
+son and by the loss of her reason) so foul a stain on the honoured family
+of St. John?  But Greville was naturally anxious to free the house as
+soon as possible both of Varney and that ominous Lucretia, whose sojourn
+under its roof seemed accursed.  He therefore readily assented when
+Varney proposed, as his obvious and personal duty, to take charge of his
+mother-in-law, and remove her to London for immediate advice.
+
+At the dead of the black-clouded night, no moon and no stars, the son of
+Olivier Dalibard bore away the form of the once-formidable Lucretia,--the
+form, for the mind was gone; that teeming, restless, and fertile
+intellect, which had carried along the projects with the preterhuman
+energies of the fiend, was hurled into night and chaos.  Manacled and
+bound, for at times her paroxysms were terrible, and all partook of the
+destructive and murderous character which her faculties, when present,
+had betrayed, she was placed in the vehicle by the shrinking side of her
+accomplice.
+
+Long before he arrived in London, Varney had got rid of his fearful
+companion.  His chaise had stopped at the iron gates of a large building
+somewhat out of the main road, and the doors of the madhouse closed on
+Lucretia Dalibard.
+
+Varney then hastened to Dover, with intention of flight into France; he
+was just about to step into the vessel, when he was tapped rudely on the
+shoulder, and a determined voice said, "Mr. Gabriel Varney, you are my
+prisoner!"
+
+"For what?  Some paltry debt?" said Varney, haughtily.
+
+"For forgery on the Bank of England!"
+
+Varney's hand plunged into his vest. The officer seized it in time, and
+wrested the blade from his grasp.  Once arrested for an offence it was
+impossible to disprove, although the very smallest of which his
+conscience might charge him, Varney sank into the blackest despair.
+Though he had often boasted, not only to others, but to his own vain
+breast, of the easy courage with which, when life ceased to yield
+enjoyment, he could dismiss it by the act of his own will; though he had
+possessed himself of Lucretia's murderous ring, and death, if fearful,
+was therefore at his command,--self-destruction was the last thought that
+occurred to him; that morbid excitability of fancy which, whether in his
+art or in his deeds, had led him to strange delight in horror, now served
+but to haunt him with the images of death in those ghastliest shapes
+familiar to them who look only into the bottom of the charnel, and see
+but the rat and the worm and the loathsome agencies of corruption.  It
+was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was the abject
+clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul,--that still slept within
+him, too noble an agency for one so debased,--but the gross physical
+terror.  As the fear of the tiger, once aroused, is more paralyzing than
+that of the deer, proportioned to the savageness of a disposition to
+which fear is a novelty, so the very boldness of Varney, coming only from
+the perfection of the nervous organization, and unsupported by one moral
+sentiment, once struck down, was corrupted into the vilest cowardice.
+With his audacity, his shrewdness forsook him.  Advised by his lawyer to
+plead guilty, he obeyed, and the sentence of transportation for life gave
+him at first a feeling of reprieve; but when his imagination began to
+picture, in the darkness of his cell, all the true tortures of that
+penalty,--not so much, perhaps, to the uneducated peasant-felon, inured
+to toil, and familiarized with coarse companionship, as to one pampered
+like himself by all soft and half-womanly indulgences,--the shaven hair,
+the convict's dress, the rigorous privation, the drudging toil, the
+exile, seemed as grim as the grave.  In the dotage of faculties smitten
+into drivelling, he wrote to the Home Office, offering to disclose
+secrets connected with crimes that had hitherto escaped or baffled
+justice, on condition that his sentence might be repealed, or mitigated
+into the gentler forms of ordinary transportation.  No answer was
+returned to him, but his letter provoked research.  Circumstances
+connected with his uncle's death, and with various other dark passages in
+his life, sealed against him all hope of a more merciful sentence; and
+when some acquaintances, whom his art had made for him, and who, while
+grieving for his crime, saw in it some excuses (ignorant of his feller
+deeds), sought to intercede in his behalf, the reply of the Home Office
+was obvious: "He is a fortunate man to have been tried and condemned for
+his least offence."  Not one indulgence that could distinguish him from
+the most execrable ruffian condemned to the same sentence was conceded.
+
+The idea of the gibbet lost all its horror.  Here was a gibbet for every
+hour.  No hope,--no escape.  Already that Future Doom which comprehends
+the "Forever" opened upon him black and fathomless.  The hour-glass was
+broken up, the hand of the timepiece was arrested.  The Beyond stretched
+before him without limit, without goal,--on into Annihilation or into
+Hell.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.
+
+Stand, O Man! upon the hill-top in the stillness of the evening hour, and
+gaze, not with joyous, but with contented eyes, upon the beautiful world
+around thee.  See where the mists, soft and dim, rise over the green
+meadows, through which the rivulet steals its way.  See where, broadest
+and stillest, the wave expands to the full smile of the setting sun, and
+the willow that trembles on the breeze, and the oak that stands firm in
+the storm, are reflected back, peaceful both, from the clear glass of the
+tides.  See where, begirt by the gold of the harvests, and backed by the
+pomp of a thousand groves, the roofs of the town bask, noiseless, in the
+calm glow of the sky.  Not a sound from those abodes floats in discord to
+thine ear; only from the church-tower, soaring high above the rest,
+perhaps faintly heard through the stillness, swells the note of the holy
+bell.  Along the mead low skims the swallow,--on the wave the silver
+circlet, breaking into spray, shows the sport of the fish.  See the
+Earth, how serene, though all eloquent of activity and life!  See the
+Heavens, how benign, though dark clouds, by yon mountain, blend the
+purple with the gold!  Gaze contented, for Good is around thee,--not
+joyous, for Evil is the shadow of Good!  Let thy soul pierce through the
+veil of the senses, and thy sight plunge deeper than the surface which
+gives delight to thine eye.  Below the glass of that river, the pike
+darts on his prey; the circle in the wave, the soft plash amongst the
+reeds, are but signs of Destroyer and Victim.  In the ivy round the oak
+by the margin, the owl hungers for the night, which shall give its beak
+and its talons living food for its young; and the spray of the willow
+trembles with the wing of the redbreast, whose bright eye sees the worm
+on the sod.  Canst thou count too, O Man! all the cares, all the sins,
+that those noiseless rooftops conceal?  With every curl of that smoke to
+the sky, a human thought soars as dark, a human hope melts as briefly.
+And the bell from the church-tower, that to thy ear gives but music,
+perhaps knolls for the dead.  The swallow but chases the moth, and the
+cloud, that deepens the glory of the heaven and the sweet shadows on the
+earth, nurses but the thunder that shall rend the grove, and the storm
+that shall devastate the harvests.  Not with fear, not with doubt,
+recognize, O Mortal, the presence of Evil in the world.  [Not, indeed,
+that the evil here narrated is the ordinary evil of the world,--the
+lesson it inculcates would be lost if so construed,--but that the mystery
+of evil, whatever its degree, only increases the necessity of faith in
+the vindication of the contrivance which requires infinity for its range,
+and eternity for its consummation.  It is in the existence of evil that
+man finds his duties, and his soul its progress.]  Hush thy heart in the
+humbleness of awe, that its mirror may reflect as serenely the shadow as
+the light.  Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze on the landscape, if
+thy soul puts no check on the dull delight of the senses.  Two wings only
+raise thee to the summit of Truth, where the Cherub shall comfort the
+sorrow, where the Seraph shall enlighten the joy.  Dark as ebon spreads
+the one wing, white as snow gleams the other,--mournful as thy reason
+when it descends into the deep; exulting as thy faith when it springs to
+the day-star.
+
+Beck sleeps in the churchyard of Laughton.  He had lived to frustrate the
+monstrous design intended to benefit himself, and to become the
+instrument, while the victim, of the dread Eumenides.  That done, his
+life passed with the crimes that had gathered around, out of the sight of
+mortals.  Helen slowly regained her health in the atmosphere of love and
+happiness; and Lady Mary soon learned to forget the fault of the father
+in the virtues of the child.  Married to Percival, Helen fulfilled the
+destinies of woman's genius, in calling forth into action man's earnest
+duties.  She breathed into Percival's warm, beneficent heart her own more
+steadfast and divine intelligence.  Like him she grew ambitious, by her
+he became distinguished.  While I write, fair children play under the
+cedars of Laughton.  And the husband tells the daughters to resemble
+their mother; and the wife's highest praise to the boys is: "You have
+spoken truth, or done good, like your father."
+
+John Ardworth has not paused in his career, nor belied the promise of his
+youth.  Though the elder Ardworth, partly by his own exertions, partly by
+his second marriage with the daughter of the French merchant (through
+whose agency he had corresponded with Fielden), had realized a moderate
+fortune, it but sufficed for his own wants and for the children of his
+later nuptials, upon whom the bulk of it was settled.  Hence, happily
+perhaps for himself and others, the easy circumstances of his father
+allowed to John Ardworth no exemption from labour.  His success in the
+single episode from active life to literature did not intoxicate or
+mislead him.  He knew that his real element was not in the field of
+letters, but in the world of men.  Not undervaluing the noble destinies
+of the author, he felt that those destinies, if realized to the utmost,
+demanded powers other than his own, and that man is only true to his
+genius when the genius is at home in his career.  He would not renounce
+for a brief celebrity distant and solid fame.  He continued for a few
+years in patience and privation and confident self-reliance to drudge on,
+till the occupation for the intellect fed by restraint, and the learning
+accumulated by study, came and found the whole man developed and
+prepared.  Then he rose rapidly from step to step; then, still retaining
+his high enthusiasm, he enlarged his sphere of action from the cold
+practice of law into those vast social improvements which law, rightly
+regarded, should lead and vivify and create.  Then, and long before the
+twenty years he had imposed on his probation had expired, he gazed again
+upon the senate and the abbey, and saw the doors of the one open to his
+resolute tread, and anticipated the glorious sepulchre which heart and
+brain should win him in the other.  John Ardworth has never married.
+When Percival rebukes him for his celibacy, his lip quivers slightly, and
+he applies himself with more dogged earnestness to his studies or his
+career.  But he never complains that his lot is lonely or his affections
+void.  For him who aspires, and for him who loves, life may lead through
+the thorns, but it never stops in the desert.
+
+On the minor personages involved in this history, there is little need to
+dwell.  Mr. Fielden, thanks to St. John, has obtained a much better
+living in the rectory of Laughton, but has found new sources of pleasant
+trouble for himself in seeking to drill into the mind of Percival's
+eldest son the elements of Euclid, and the principles of Latin syntax.
+
+We may feel satisfied that the Miverses will go on much the same while
+trade enriches without refining, and while, nevertheless, right feelings
+in the common paths of duty may unite charitable emotions with graceless
+language.
+
+We may rest assured that the poor widow who had reared the lost son of
+Lucretia received from the bounty of Percival all that could comfort her
+for his death.
+
+We have no need to track the dull crimes of Martha, or the quick, cunning
+vices of Grabman, to their inevitable goals, in the hospital or the
+prison, the dunghill or the gibbet.
+
+Of the elder Ardworth our parting notice may be less brief.  We first saw
+him in sanguine and generous youth, with higher principles and clearer
+insight into honour than William Mainwaring.  We have seen him next a
+spendthrift and a fugitive, his principles debased and his honour dimmed.
+He presents to us no uncommon example of the corruption engendered by
+that vulgar self-indulgence which mortgages the morrow for the pleasures
+of to-day.  No Deity presides where Prudence is absent.  Man, a world in
+himself, requires for the development of his faculties patience, and for
+the balance of his actions, order.  Even where he had deemed himself most
+oppressively made the martyr,--namely, in the profession of mere
+political opinions,--Walter Ardworth had but followed out into theory the
+restless, uncalculating impatience which had brought adversity on his
+manhood, and, despite his constitutional cheerfulness, shadowed his age
+with remorse.  The death of the child committed to his charge long
+(perhaps to the last) embittered his pride in the son whom, without merit
+of his own, Providence had spared to a brighter fate.  But for the faults
+which had banished him his country, and the habits which had seared his
+sense of duty, could that child have been so abandoned, and have so
+perished?
+
+It remains only to cast our glance over the punishments which befell the
+sensual villany of Varney, the intellectual corruption of his fell
+stepmother.
+
+These two persons had made a very trade of those crimes to which man's
+law awards death.  They had said in their hearts that they would dare the
+crime, but elude the penalty.  By wonderful subtlety, craft, and
+dexterity, which reduced guilt to a science, Providence seemed, as in
+disdain of the vulgar instruments of common retribution, to concede to
+them that which they had schemed for,--escape from the rope and gibbet.
+Varney, saved from detection of his darker and more inexpiable crimes,
+punished only for the least one, retained what had seemed to him the
+master boon,--life.  Safer still from the law, no mortal eye had plumbed
+the profound night of Lucretia's awful guilt.  Murderess of husband and
+son, the blinded law bade her go unscathed, unsuspected.  Direct, as from
+heaven, without a cloud, fell the thunderbolt.  Is the life they have
+saved worth the prizing?  Doth the chalice, unspilt on the ground, not
+return to the hand?  Is the sudden pang of the hangman more fearful than
+the doom which they breathe and bear?  Look, and judge.
+
+Behold that dark ship on the waters!  Its burdens are not of Ormus and
+Tyre.  No goodly merchandise doth it waft over the wave, no blessing
+cleaves to its sails; freighted with terror and with guilt, with remorse
+and despair, or, more ghastly than either, the sullen apathy of souls
+hardened into stone, it carries the dregs and offal of the old world to
+populate the new.  On a bench in that ship sit side by side two men,
+companions assigned to each other.  Pale, abject, cowering, all the
+bravery rent from his garb, all the gay insolence vanished from his
+brow,--can that hollow-eyed, haggard wretch be the same man whose senses
+opened on every joy, whose nerves mocked at every peril?  But beside him,
+with a grin of vile glee on his features, all muscle and brawn in the
+form, all malice, at once spiteful and dull, in the heavy eye, sits his
+fit comrade, the Gravestealer!  At the first glance each had recognized
+each, and the prophecy and the vision rushed back upon the daintier
+convict.  If he seek to escape from him, the Gravestealer claims him as a
+prey; he threatens him with his eye as a slave; he kicks him with his
+hoof as they sit, and laughs at the writhings of the pain.  Carry on your
+gaze from the ship, hear the cry from the masthead, see the land arise
+from the waste,--a land without hope.  At first, despite the rigour of
+the Home Office, the education and intelligence of Varney have their
+price,--the sole crime for which he is convicted is not of the darkest.
+He escapes from that hideous comrade; he can teach as a schoolmaster,--
+let his brain work, not his hands.  But the most irredeemable of convicts
+are ever those of nurture and birth and culture better than the ruffian
+rest. You may enlighten the clod, but the meteor still must feed on the
+marsh; and the pride and the vanity work where the crime itself seems to
+lose its occasion.  Ever avid, ever grasping, he falls, step by step, in
+the foul sink, and the colony sees in Gabriel Varney its most pestilent
+rogue.  Arch-convict amidst convicts, doubly lost amongst the damned,
+they banish him to the sternest of the penal settlements; they send him
+forth with the vilest to break stones upon the roads.  Shrivelled and
+bowed and old prematurely, see that sharp face peering forth amongst that
+gang, scarcely human, see him cringe to the lash of the scornful
+overseer, see the pairs chained together, night and day!  Ho, ho! his
+comrade hath found him again,--the Artist and the Gravestealer leashed
+together!  Conceive that fancy so nurtured by habit, those tastes, so
+womanized by indulgence,--the one suggesting the very horrors that are
+not; the other revolting at all toil as a torture.
+
+But intellect, not all gone, though hourly dying heavily down to the
+level of the brute, yet schemes for delivery and escape.  Let the plot
+ripen, and the heart bound; break his chain, set him free, send him forth
+to the wilderness.  Hark, the whoop of the wild men!  See those things
+that ape our species dance and gibber round the famishing, hunted wretch.
+Hark, how he shrieks at the torture!  How they tear and they pinch and
+they burn and they rend him!  They, too, spare his life,--it is charmed.
+A Caliban amidst Calibans, they heap him with their burdens, and feed him
+on their offal.  Let him live; he loved life for himself; he has cheated
+the gibbet,--LET HIM LIVE!  Let him watch, let him once more escape; all
+naked and mangled, let him wander back to the huts of his gang.  Lo,
+where he kneels, the foul tears streaming down, and cries aloud: "I have
+broken all your laws, I will tell you all my crimes; I ask but one
+sentence,--hang me up; let me die!"  And from the gang groan many voices:
+"Hang us up; let us die!" The overseer turns on his heel, and Gabriel
+Varney again is chained to the laughing Gravestealer.
+
+You enter those gates so jealously guarded, you pass, with a quick beat
+of the heart, by those groups on the lawn, though they are harmless; you
+follow your guide through those passages; where the open doors will
+permit, you see the emperor brandish his sceptre of straw, hear the
+speculator counting his millions, sigh where the maiden sits smiling the
+return of her shipwrecked lover, or gravely shake the head and hurry on
+where the fanatic raves his Apocalypse, and reigns in judgment on the
+world; you pass by strong gates into corridors gloomier and more remote.
+Nearer and nearer you hear the yell and the oath and blaspheming curse;
+you are in the heart of the madhouse, where they chain those at once
+cureless and dangerous,--who have but sense enough left them to smite and
+to throttle and to murder.  Your guide opens that door, massive as a
+wall; you see (as we, who narrate, have seen her) Lucretia Dalibard,--a
+grisly, squalid, ferocious mockery of a human being, more appalling and
+more fallen than Dante ever fabled in his spectres, than Swift ever
+scoffed in his Yahoos!  Only, where all other feature seems to have lost
+its stamp of humanity, still burns with unquenchable fever the red,
+devouring eye.  That eye never seems to sleep, or in sleep, the lid never
+closes over it.  As you shrink from its light, it seems to you as if the
+mind, that had lost coherence and harmony, still retained latent and
+incommunicable consciousness as its curse.  For days, for weeks, that
+awful maniac will preserve obstinate, unbroken silence; but as the eye
+never closes, so the hands never rest,--they open and grasp, as if at
+some palpable object on which they close, vicelike, as a bird's talons on
+its prey; sometimes they wander over that brow, where the furrows seem
+torn as the thunder scars, as if to wipe from it a stain, or charm from
+it a pang; sometimes they gather up the hem of that sordid robe, and
+seem, for hours together, striving to rub from it a soil.  Then, out from
+prolonged silence, without cause or warning, will ring, peal after peal
+(till the frame, exhausted with the effort sinks senseless into stupor),
+the frightful laugh.  But speech, intelligible and coherent, those lips
+rarely yield.  There are times, indeed, when the attendants are persuaded
+that her mind in part returns to her; and those times experience has
+taught them to watch with peculiar caution.  The crisis evinces itself by
+a change in the manner,--by a quick apprehension of all that is said; by
+a straining, anxious look at the dismal walls; by a soft, fawning
+docility; by murmured complaints of the chains that fetter; and (though,
+as we have said, but very rarely) by prayers, that seem rational, for
+greater ease and freedom.
+
+In the earlier time of her dread captivity, perhaps when it was believed
+at the asylum that she was a patient of condition, with friends who cared
+for her state, and would liberally reward her cure, they in those moments
+relaxed her confinement, and sought the gentler remedies their art
+employs; but then invariably, and, it was said, with a cunning that
+surpassed all the proverbial astuteness of the mad, she turned this
+indulgence to the most deadly uses,--she crept to the pallet of some
+adjacent sufferer weaker than herself, and the shrieks that brought the
+attendants into the cell scarcely saved the intended victim from her
+hands.  It seemed, in those imperfectly lucid intervals, as if the reason
+only returned to guide her to destroy,--only to animate the broken
+mechanism into the beast of prey.
+
+Years have now passed since her entrance within those walls.  He who
+placed her there never had returned.  He had given a false name,--no clew
+to him was obtained; the gold he had left was but the quarter's pay.
+When Varney had been first apprehended, Percival requested the younger
+Ardworth to seek the forger in prison, and to question him as to Madame
+Dalibard; but Varney was then so apprehensive that, even if still insane,
+her very ravings might betray his share in her crimes, or still more, if
+she recovered, that the remembrance of her son's murder would awaken the
+repentance and the confession of crushed despair, that the wretch had
+judged it wiser to say that his accomplice was no more,--that her
+insanity had already terminated in death.  The place of her confinement
+thus continued a secret locked in his own breast. Egotist to the last,
+she was henceforth dead to him,--why not to the world?  Thus the partner
+of her crimes had cut off her sole resource, in the compassion of her
+unconscious kindred; thus the gates of the living world were shut to her
+evermore.  Still, in a kind of compassion, or as an object of
+experiment,--as a subject to be dealt with unscrupulously in that living
+dissection-hall,--her grim jailers did not grudge her an asylum.  But,
+year after year, the attendance was more slovenly, the treatment more
+harsh; and strange to say, while the features were scarcely recognizable,
+while the form underwent all the change which the shape suffers when mind
+deserts it, that prodigious vitality which belonged to the temperament
+still survived.  No signs of decay are yet visible.  Death, as if
+spurning the carcass, stands inexorably afar off.  Baffler of man's law,
+thou, too, hast escaped with life!  Not for thee is the sentence, "Blood
+for blood!" Thou livest, thou mayst pass the extremest boundaries of age.
+Live on, to wipe the blood from thy robe,--LIVE ON!
+
+Not for the coarse object of creating an idle terror, not for the shock
+upon the nerves and the thrill of the grosser interest which the
+narrative of crime creates, has this book been compiled from the facts
+and materials afforded to the author.  When the great German poet
+describes, in not the least noble of his lyrics, the sudden apparition of
+some "Monster Fate" in the circles of careless Joy, he assigns to him who
+teaches the world, through parable or song, the right to invoke the
+spectre.  It is well to be awakened at times from the easy commonplace
+that surrounds our habitual life; to cast broad and steady and patient
+light on the darker secrets of the heart,--on the vaults and caverns of
+the social state over which we build the market-place and the palace.  We
+recover from the dread and the awe and the half-incredulous wonder, to
+set closer watch upon our inner and hidden selves.  In him who cultivates
+only the reason, and suffers the heart and the spirit to lie waste and
+dead, who schemes and constructs, and revolves round the axle of self,
+unwarmed by the affections, unpoised by the attraction of right, lies the
+germ Fate might ripen into the guilt of Olivier Dalibard.  Let him who
+but lives through the senses, spreads the wings of the fancy in the gaudy
+glare of enjoyment corrupted, avid to seize, and impatient to toil, whose
+faculties are curbed but to the range of physical perception, whose very
+courage is but the strength of the nerves, who develops but the animal as
+he stifles the man,--let him gaze on the villany of Varney, and startle
+to see some magnified shadow of himself thrown dimly on the glass!  Let
+those who, with powers to command and passions to wing the powers, would
+sweep without scruple from the aim to the end, who, trampling beneath
+their footprint of iron the humanities that bloom up in their path, would
+march to success with the proud stride of the destroyer, hear, in the
+laugh of yon maniac murderess, the glee of the fiend they have wooed to
+their own souls!  Guard well, O Heir of Eternity, the portal of sin,--the
+thought!  From the thought to the deed, the subtler thy brain and the
+bolder thy courage, the briefer and straighter is the way.  Read these
+pages in disdain of self-commune,--they shall revolt thee, not instruct;
+read them, looking steadfastly within,--and how humble soever the art of
+the narrator, the facts he narrates, like all history, shall teach by
+example.  Every human act, good or ill, is an angel to guide or to warn;
+and the deeds of the worst have messages from Heaven to the listening
+hearts of the best. Amidst the glens in the Apennine, in the lone wastes
+of Calabria, the sign of the cross marks the spot where a deed of
+violence has been done; on all that pass by the road, the symbol has
+varying effect: sometimes it startles the conscience, sometimes it
+invokes the devotion; the robber drops the blade, the priest counts the
+rosary.  So is it with the record of crime; and in the witness of Guilt,
+Man is thrilled with the whisper of Religion.
+
+           Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
+           The fatal shadows that walk by us still.
+                            FLETCHER.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCRETIA, LYTTON, COMPLETE ***
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