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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Night and Morning by E. B. Lytton, Vol. 5
+#194 in our series by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
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+Title: Night and Morning, Volume 5
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: January 2006  [EBook #9754]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 9, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, NIGHT AND MORNING, V5 ***
+
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+[See the latest corrected and updated text and html PG Editions
+ of the complete 5 volume set at:
+                   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9755/9755.txt
+         https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9755/9755-h/9755-h.htm]
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+
+
+                           THE WORKS
+
+                              OF
+
+                     EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+                         (LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+                       NIGHT AND MORNING
+
+                            Book V
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+          "Per ambages et ministeria deorum."--PETRONTUS.
+
+         [Through the mysteries and ministerings of the gods.]
+
+Mr. Roger Morton was behind his counter one drizzling, melancholy day.
+Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice mayor of his native town, was a
+thriving man.  He had grown portly and corpulent.  The nightly potations
+of brandy and water, continued year after year with mechanical
+perseverance, had deepened the roses on his cheek.  Mr. Roger Morton was
+never intoxicated--he "only made himself comfortable."  His constitution
+was strong; but, somehow or other, his digestion was not as good as it
+might be.  He was certain that something or other disagreed with him.  He
+left off the joint one day--the pudding another.  Now he avoided
+vegetables as poison--and now he submitted with a sigh to the doctor's
+interdict of his cigar.  Mr. Roger Morton never thought of leaving off
+the brandy and water: and he would have resented as the height of
+impertinent insinuation any hint upon that score to a man of so sober
+and respectable a character.
+
+Mr. Roger Morton was seated--for the last four years, ever since his
+second mayoralty, he had arrogated to himself the dignity of a chair.  He
+received rather than served his customers.  The latter task was left to
+two of his sons.  For Tom, after much cogitation, the profession of an
+apothecary had been selected.  Mrs. Morton observed, that it was a
+genteel business, and Tom had always been a likely lad.  And Mr. Roger
+considered that it would be a great comfort and a great saving to have
+his medical adviser in his own son.
+
+The other two sons and the various attendants of the shop were plying the
+profitable trade, as customer after customer, with umbrellas and in
+pattens, dropped into the tempting shelter--when a man, meanly dressed,
+and who was somewhat past middle age, with a careworn, hungry face,
+entered timidly.  He waited in patience by the crowded counter, elbowed
+by sharp-boned and eager spinsters--and how sharp the elbows of spinsters
+are, no man can tell who has not forced his unwelcome way through the
+agitated groups in a linendraper's shop!--the man, I say, waited
+patiently and sadly, till the smallest of the shopboys turned from a
+lady, who, after much sorting and shading, had finally decided on two
+yards of lilac-coloured penny riband, and asked, in an insinuating
+professional tone,--
+
+"What shall I show you, sir?"
+
+"I wish to speak to Mr. Morton.  Which is he?"
+
+"Mr. Morton is engaged, sir.  I can give you what you want."
+
+"No--it is a matter of business--important business."  The boy eyed the
+napless and dripping hat, the gloveless hands, and the rusty neckcloth of
+the speaker; and said, as he passed his fingers through a profusion of
+light curls "Mr. Morton don't attend much to business himself now; but
+that's he.  Any cravats, sir?"
+
+The man made no answer, but moved where, near the window, and chatting
+with the banker of the town (as the banker tried on a pair of beaver
+gloves), sat still--after due apology for sitting--Mr. Roger Morton.
+
+The alderman lowered his spectacles as he glanced grimly at the lean
+apparition that shaded the spruce banker, and said,--
+
+"Do you want me, friend?"
+
+"Yes, sir, if you please;" and the man took off his shabby hat, and bowed
+low.
+
+"Well, speak out.  No begging petition, I hope?"
+
+"No, sir!  Your nephews--"
+
+The banker turned round, and in his turn eyed the newcomer.  The
+linendraper started back.
+
+"Nephews!" he repeated, with a bewildered look.  "What does the man mean?
+Wait a bit."
+
+"Oh, I've done!"  said the banker, smiling.  "I am glad to find we agree
+so well upon this question: I knew we should.  Our member will never suit
+us if he goes on in this way.  Trade must take care of itself.  Good day
+to You!"
+
+"Nephews!"  repeated Mr. Morton, rising, and beckoning to the man to
+follow him into the back parlour, where Mrs. Morton sat casting up the
+washing bills.
+
+"Now," said the husband, closing the door, "what do you mean, my good
+fellow?"
+
+"Sir, what I wish to ask you is-if you can tell me what has become of--of
+the young Beau--, that is, of your sister's sons.  I understand there
+were two--and I am told that--that they are both dead.  Is it so?"
+
+"What is that to you, friend?"
+
+"An please you, sir, it is a great deal to them!"
+
+"Yes--ha! ha! it is a great deal to everybody whether they are alive or
+dead!"  Mr. Morton, since he had been mayor, now and then had his joke.
+"But really--"
+
+"Roger!" said Mrs. Morton, under her breath--"Roger!"
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"Come this way--I want to speak to you about this bill."  The husband
+approached, and bent over his wife.  "Who's this man?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Depend on it, he has some claim to make-some bills or something.  Don't
+commit yourself--the boys are dead for what we know!"
+
+Mr. Morton hemmed and returned to his visitor.
+
+"To tell you the truth, I am not aware of what has become of the young
+men."
+
+"Then they are not dead--I thought not!"  exclaimed the man, joyously.
+
+"That's more than I can say.  It's many years since I lost sight of the
+only one I ever saw; and they may be both dead for what I know."
+
+"Indeed!" said the man.  "Then you can give me no kind of--of--hint like,
+to find them out?"
+
+"No.  Do they owe you anything?"
+
+"It does not signify  talking now,  sir.  I beg your pardon."
+
+"Stay--who are you?"
+
+"I am a very poor man, sir."
+
+Mr. Morton recoiled.
+
+"Poor!  Oh, very well--very well.  You have done with me now.  Good day--
+good day.  I'm busy."
+
+The stranger pecked for a moment at his hat--turned the handle of the
+door-peered under his grey eyebrows at the portly trader, who, with both
+hands buried in his pockets, his mouth pursed up, like a man about to say
+"No" fidgeted uneasily behind Mrs. Morton's chair.  He sighed, shook his
+head, and vanished.
+
+Mrs. Morton rang the bell-the maid-servant entered.  "Wipe the carpet,
+Jenny;--dirty feet!  Mr. Morton, it's a Brussels!"
+
+"It was not my fault, my dear.  I could not talk about family matters
+before the whole shop.  Do you know, I'd quite forgot those poor boys.
+This unsettles me.  Poor Catherine!  she was so fond of them.  A pretty
+boy that Sidney, too.  What can have become of them?  My heart rebukes
+me.  I wish I had asked the man more."
+
+"More!--why he was just going to beg."
+
+"Beg--yes--very true!"  said Mr. Morton, pausing irresolutely; and then,
+with a hearty tone, he cried out, "And, damme, if he had begged, I could
+afford him a shilling!  I'll go after him."  So saying, he hastened back
+through the shop, but the man was gone--the rain was falling, Mr. Morton
+had his thin shoes on--he blew his nose, and went back to the counter.
+But, there, still rose to his memory the pale face of his dead sister;
+and a voice murmured in his ear, "Brother, where is my child?"
+
+"Pshaw! it is not my fault if he ran away.  Bob, go and get me the county
+paper."
+
+Mr. Morton had again settled himself, and was deep in a trial for murder,
+when another stranger strode haughtily into the shop.  The new-comer,
+wrapped in a pelisse of furs, with a thick moustache, and an eye that
+took in the whole shop, from master to boy, from ceiling to floor, in a
+glance, had the air at once of a foreigner and a soldier.  Every look
+fastened on him, as he paused an instant, and then walking up to the
+alderman, said,--
+
+"Sir, you are doubtless Mr. Morton?"
+
+"At your commands, sir," said Roger, rising involuntarily.
+
+"A word with you, then, on business."
+
+"Business!"  echoed Mr. Morton, turning rather pale, for he began to
+think himself haunted; "anything in my line, sir?  I should be--"
+
+The stranger bent down his tall stature, and hissed into Mr. Morton's
+foreboding ear:
+
+"Your nephews!"
+
+Mr. Morton was literally dumb-stricken.  Yes, he certainly was haunted!
+He stared at this second questioner, and fancied that there was something
+very supernatural and unearthly about him.  He was so tall, and so dark,
+and so stern, and so strange.  Was it the Unspeakable himself come for
+the linendraper?  Nephews again!  The uncle of the babes in the wood
+could hardly have been more startled by the demand!
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Morton at last, recovering his dignity and somewhat
+peevishly,--"sir, I don't know why people should meddle with my family
+affairs.  I don't ask other folks about their nephews.  I have no nephew
+that I know of."
+
+"Permit me to speak to you, alone, for one instant."  Mr. Morton sighed,
+hitched up his trousers, and led the way to the parlour, where Mrs.
+Morton, having finished the washing bills, was now engaged in tying
+certain pieces of bladder round certain pots of preserves.  The eldest
+Miss Morton, a young woman of five or six-and-twenty, who was about to be
+very advantageously married to a young gentleman who dealt in coals and
+played the violin (for N----- was a very musical town), had just joined
+her for the purpose of extorting "The Swiss Boy, with variations," out of
+a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very painful cry under the
+awakening fingers of Miss Margaret Morton.
+
+Mr. Morton threw open the door with a grunt, and the stranger pausing at
+the threshold, the full flood of sound (key C) upon which "the Swiss Boy"
+was swimming along, "kine" and all, for life and death, came splash upon
+him.
+
+"Silence!  can't you?"  cried the father, putting one hand to his ear,
+while with the other he pointed to a chair; and as Mrs. Morton looked up
+from the preserves with that air of indignant suffering with which female
+meekness upbraids a husband's wanton outrage, Mr. Roger added, shrugging
+his shoulders,--
+
+"My nephews again, Mrs. K!"
+
+Miss Margaret turned round, and dropped a courtesy.  Mrs. Morton gently
+let fall a napkin over the preserves, and muttered a sort of salutation,
+as the stranger, taking off his hat, turned to mother and daughter one of
+those noble faces in which Nature has written her grant and warranty of
+the lordship of creation.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, "if I disturb you.  But my business will be short.
+I have come to ask you, sir, frankly, and as one who has a right to ask
+it, what tidings you can give me of Sidney Morton?"
+
+"Sir, I know nothing whatever about him.  He was taken from my house,
+about twelve years since, by his brother.  Myself, and the two Mr.
+Beauforts, and another friend of the family, went in search of them both.
+My search failed."
+
+"And theirs?"
+
+"I understood from Mr. Beaufort that they had not been more successful.
+I have had no communication with those gentlemen since.  But that's
+neither here nor there.  In all probability, the elder of the boys--who,
+I fear, was a sad character--corrupted and ruined his brother; and, by
+this time, Heaven knows what and where they are."
+
+"And no one has inquired of you since--no one has asked the brother of
+Catherine Morton, nay, rather of Catherine Beaufort--where is the child
+intrusted to your care?"
+
+This question, so exactly similar to that which his superstition had rung
+on his own ears, perfectly appalled the worthy alderman.  He staggered
+back-stared at the marked and stern face that lowered upon him--and at
+last cried,--
+
+"For pity's sake, sir, be just!  What could I do for one who left me of
+his own accord?--"
+
+"The day you had beaten him like a dog.  You see, Mr. Morton, I know
+all."
+
+"And what are you?"  said Mr. Morton, recovering his English courage, and
+feeling himself strangely browbeaten in his own house;--"What and who are
+you, that you thus take the liberty to catechise a man of my character
+and respectability?"
+
+"Twice mayor--" began Mrs. Morton.
+
+"Hush, mother!"  whispered Miss Margaret,--"don't work him up."
+
+"I repeat, sir, what are you?"
+
+"What am I?--your nephew!  Who am I?  Before men, I bear a name that I
+have assumed, and not dishonoured--before Heaven I am Philip Beaufort!"
+
+Mrs. Morton dropped down upon her stool.  Margaret murmured "My cousin!"
+in a tone that the ear of the musical coal-merchant might not have
+greatly relished.  And Mr. Morton, after a long pause, came up with a
+frank and manly expression of joy, and said:--
+
+"Then, sir, I thank Heaven, from my heart, that one of my sister's
+children stands alive before me!"
+
+"And now, again, I--I whom you accuse of having corrupted and ruined him
+--him for whom I toiled and worked--him, who was to me, then, as a last
+surviving son to some anxious father--I, from whom he was reft and robbed
+--I ask you again for Sidney--for my brother!"
+
+"And again, I say, that I have no information to give you--that--Stay a
+moment-stay.  You must pardon what I have said of you before you made
+yourself known.  I went but by the accounts I had received from Mr.
+Beaufort.  Let, me speak plainly; that gentleman thought, right or wrong,
+that it would be a great thing to separate your brother from you.  He may
+have found him--it must be so--and kept his name and condition concealed
+from us all, lest you should detect it.  Mrs. M., don't you think so?"
+
+"I'm sure I'm so terrified I don't know what to think," said Mrs. Morton,
+putting her hand to her forehead, and see-sawing herself to and fro upon
+her stool.
+
+"But since they wronged you--since you--you seem so very--very--"
+
+"Very much the gentleman," suggested Miss Margaret.  "Yes, so much the
+gentleman;--well off, too, I should hope, sir,"--and the experienced eye
+of Mr. Morton glanced at the costly sables that lined the pelisse,--
+"there can be no difficulty in your learning from Mr. Beaufort all that
+you wish to know.  And pray, sir, may I ask, did you send any one here
+to-day to make the very inquiry you have made?"
+
+"I?--No.  What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, well--sit down--there may be something in all this that you may
+make out better than I can."
+
+And as Philip obeyed, Mr. Morton, who was really and honestly rejoiced to
+see his sister's son alive and apparently thriving, proceeded to relate
+pretty exactly the conversation he had held with the previous visitor.
+Philip listened earnestly and with attention.  Who could this questioner
+be?  Some one who knew his birth--some one who sought him out?--some one,
+who--Good Heavens! could it be the long-lost witness of the marriage?
+
+As soon as that idea struck him, be started from his seat and entreated
+Morton to accompany him in search of the stranger.  "You know not," he
+said, in a tone impressed with that energy of will in which lay the
+talent of his mind,--"you know not of what importance this may be to my
+prospects--to your sister's fair name.  If it should be the witness
+returned at last!  Who else, of the rank you describe, would be
+interested in such inquiries?  Come!"
+
+"What witness?" said Mrs. Morton, fretfully.  "You don't mean to come
+over us with the old story of the marriage?"
+
+"Shall your wife slander your own sister, sir?  A marriage there was--God
+yet will proclaim the right--and the name of Beaufort shall be yet placed
+on my mother's gravestone.  Come!"
+
+"Here are your shoes and umbrella, pa," cried Miss Margaret, inspired by
+Philip's earnestness.
+
+"My fair cousin, I guess," and as the soldier took her hand, he kissed
+the unreluctant cheek--turned to the door--Mr. Morton placed his arm in
+his, and the next moment they were in the street.
+
+When Catherine, in her meek tones, had said, "Philip Beaufort was my
+husband," Roger Morton had disbelieved her.  And now one word from the
+son, who could, in comparison, know so little of the matter, had almost
+sufficed to convert and to convince the sceptic.  Why was this?
+Because--Man believes the Strong!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+               "--Quid Virtus et quid Sapientia possit
+               Utile proposuit nobis exemplar _Ulssem_." HOR.
+
+          ["He has proposed to us Ulysses as a useful example of how
+          much may be accomplished by Virtue and Wisdom."]
+
+Meanwhile the object of their search, on quitting Mr. Morton's shop, had
+walked slowly and sadly on, through the plashing streets, till he came to
+a public house in the outskirts and on the high road to London.  Here he
+took shelter for a short time, drying himself by the kitchen fire, with
+the license purchased by fourpenny-worth of gin; and having learned that
+the next coach to London would not pass for some hours, he finally
+settled himself in the Ingle, till the guard's horn should arouse him.
+By the same coach that the night before had conveyed Philip to N----, had
+the very man he sought been also a passenger!
+
+The poor fellow was sickly and wearied out: he had settled into a doze,
+when he was suddenly wakened by the wheels of a coach and the trampling
+of horses.  Not knowing how long he had slept, and imagining that the
+vehicle he had awaited was at the door, he ran out.  It was a coach
+coming from London, and the driver was joking with a pretty barmaid who,
+in rather short petticoats, was fielding up to him the customary glass.
+The man, after satisfying himself that his time was not yet come, was
+turning back to the fire, when a head popped itself out of the window,
+and a voice cried,  "Stars and garters!  Will--so that's you!"  At the
+sound of the voice the man halted abruptly, turned very pale, and his
+limbs trembled.  The inside passenger opened the door, jumped out with a
+little carpet-bag in his hand, took forth a long leathern purse from
+which he ostentatiously selected the coins that paid his fare and
+satisfied the coachman, and then, passing his arm through that of the
+acquaintance he had discovered, led him back into the house.
+
+"Will--Will," he whispered, "you have been to the Mortons.  Never moind--
+let's hear all.  Jenny or Dolly, or whatever your sweet praetty name is--
+a private room and a pint of brandy, my dear.  Hot water and lots of the
+grocery.  That's right."
+
+And as soon as the pair found themselves, with the brandy before them, in
+a small parlour with a good fire, the last comer went to the door, shut
+it cautiously, flung his bag under the table, took off his gloves, spread
+himself wider and wider before the fire, until he had entirely excluded
+every ray from his friend, and then suddenly turning so that the back
+might enjoy what the front had gained, he exclaimed.
+
+"Damme, Will, you're a praetty sort of a broather to give me the slip in
+that way.  But in this world every man for his-self!"
+
+"I tell you," said William, with something like decision in his voice,
+"that I will not do any wrong to these young men if they live."
+
+"Who asks you to do a wrong to them?--booby!  Perhaps I may be the best
+friend they may have yet--ay, or you too, though you're the ungratefulest
+whimsicallist sort of a son of a gun that ever I came across.  Come, help
+yourself, and don't roll up your eyes in that way, like a Muggletonian
+asoide of a Fye-Fye!"
+
+Here the speaker paused a moment, and with a graver and more natural tone
+of voice proceeded:
+
+"So you did not believe me when I told you that these brothers were dead,
+and you have been to the Mortons to learn more?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, and what have you learned?"
+
+"Nothing.  Morton declares that he does not know that they are alive, but
+he says also that he does not know that they are dead."
+
+"Indeed," said the other, listening with great attention; "and you really
+think that he does not know anything about them?"
+
+"I do, indeed."
+
+"Hum!  Is he a sort of man who would post down the rhino to help the
+search?"
+
+"He looked as if he had the yellow fever when I said I was poor,"
+returned William, turning round, and trying to catch a glimpse at the
+fire, as he gulped his brandy and water.
+
+"Then I'll be d---d if I run the risk of calling.  I have done some
+things in this town by way of business before now; and though it's a long
+time ago, yet folks don't forget a haundsome man in a hurry--especially
+if he has done 'em!  Now, then, listen to me.  You see, I have given this
+matter all the 'tention in my power.  'If the lads be dead,' said I to
+you, 'it is no use burning one's fingers by holding a candle to bones in
+a coffin.  But Mr. Beaufort need not know they are dead, and we'll see
+what we can get out of him; and if I succeeds, as I think I shall, you
+and I may hold up our heads for the rest of our life.'  Accordingly, as I
+told you, I went to Mr. Beaufort, and--'Gad, I thought we had it all our
+own way.  But since I saw you last, there's been the devil and all.  When
+I called again, Will, I was shown in to an old lord, sharp as a gimblet.
+Hang me, William, if he did not frighten me out of my seven senses!"
+
+Here Captain Smith (the reader has, no doubt, already discovered that the
+speaker was no less a personage) took three or four nervous strides
+across the room, returned to the table, threw himself in a chair, placed
+one foot on one hob, and one on the other, laid his finger on his nose,
+and, with a significant wink, said in a whisper, "Will, he knew I had
+been lagged!  He not only refused to hear all I had to say, but
+threatened to prosecute--persecute, hang, draw, and quarter us both, if
+we ever dared to come out with the truth."
+
+"But what's the good of the truth if the boys are dead?" said William,
+timidly.
+
+The captain, without heeding this question, continued, as he stirred the
+sugar in his glass, "Well, out I sneaked, and as soon as I had got to my
+own door I turned round and saw Sharp the runner on the other side of the
+way--I felt deuced queer.  However, I went in, sat down, and began to
+think.  I saw that it was up with us, so far as the old uns were
+concerned; and it might be worth while to find out if the young uns
+really were dead."
+
+"Then you did not know that after all!  I thought so.  Oh, Jerry!"
+
+"Why, look you, man, it was not our interest to take their side if we
+could make our bargain out of the other.  'Cause why?  You are only one
+witness--you are a good fellow, but poor, and with very shaky nerves,
+Will.  You does not know what them big wigs are when a roan's caged in a
+witness-box--they flank one up, and they flank one down, and they bully
+and bother, till one's like a horse at Astley's dancing on hot iron.  If
+your testimony broke down, why it would be all up with the case, and what
+then would become of us?  Besides," added the captain, with dignified
+candour, "I have been lagged, it's no use denying it; I am back before my
+time.  Inquiries about your respectability would soon bring the bulkies
+about me.  And you would not have poor Jerry sent back to that d---d low
+place on t'other side of the herring-pond, would you?"
+
+"Ah, Jerry!"  said William, kindly placing his hand in his brother's, you
+know I helped you to escape; I left all to come over with you."
+
+"So you did, and you're a good fellow; though as to leaving all, why you
+had got rid of all first.  And when you told me about the marriage, did
+not I say that I saw our way to a snug thing for life?  But to return to
+my story.  There is a danger in going with the youngsters.  But since,
+Will,--since nothing but hard words is to be got on the other side, we'll
+do our duty, and I'll find them out, and do the best I can for us--that
+is, if they be yet above ground.  And now I'll own to you that I think I
+knows that the younger one is alive."
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Yes!  But as he won't come in for anything unless his brother is dead,
+we must have a hunt for the heir.  Now I told you that, many years ago,
+there was a lad with me, who, putting all things together--seeing how the
+Beauforts came after him, and recollecting different things he let out at
+the time--I feel pretty sure is your old master's Hopeful.  I know that
+poor Will Gawtrey gave this lad the address of Old Gregg, a friend of
+mine.  So after watching Sharp off the sly, I went that very night, or
+rather at two in the morning, to Gregg's house, and, after brushing up
+his memory, I found that the lad had been to him, and gone over
+afterwards to Paris in search of Gawtrey, who was then keeping a
+matrimony shop.  As I was not rich enough to go off to Paris in a
+pleasant, gentlemanlike way, I allowed Gregg to put me up to a noice
+quiet little bit of business.  Don't shake your head--all safe--a rural
+affair!  That took some days.  You see it has helped to new rig me," and
+the captain glanced complacently over a very smart suit of clothes.
+"Well, on my return I went to call on you, but you had flown.  I half
+suspected you might have gone to the mother's relations here; and I
+thought, at all events, that I could not do better than go myself and see
+what they knew of the matter.  From what you say I feel I had better now
+let that alone, and go over to Paris at once; leave me alone to find out.
+And faith, what with Sharp and the old lord, the sooner I quit England
+the better."
+
+"And you really think you shall get hold of them after all?  Oh, never
+fear my nerves if I'm once in the right; it's living with you, and seeing
+you do wrong, and hearing you talk wickedly, that makes me tremble."
+
+"Bother!" said the captain, "you need not crow over me.  Stand up, Will;
+there now, look at us two in the glass!  Why, I look ten years younger
+than you do, in spite of all my troubles.  I dress like a gentleman, as I
+am; I have money in my pocket; I put money in yours; without me you'd
+starve.  Look you, you carried over a little fortune to Australia--you
+married--you farmed--you lived honestly, and yet that d---d shilly-shally
+disposition of yours, 'ticed into one speculation to-day, and scared out
+of another to-morrow, ruined you!"
+
+"Jerry! Jerry!" cried William, writhing; "don't--don't."
+
+"But it's all true, and I wants to cure you of preaching.  And then, when
+you were nearly run out, instead of putting a bold face on it, and
+setting your shoulder to the wheel, you gives it up--you sells what you
+have--you bolts over, wife and all, to Boston, because some one tells you
+you can do better in America--you are out of the way when a search is
+made for you--years ago when you could have benefited yourself and your
+master's family without any danger to you or me--nobody can find you;
+'cause why, you could not bear that your old friends in England, or in
+the colony either, should know that you were turned a slave-driver in
+Kentucky.  You kick up a mutiny among the niggers by moaning over them,
+instead of keeping 'em to it--you get kicked out yourself--your wife begs
+you to go back to Australia, where her relations will do something for
+you--you work your passage out, looking as ragged as a colt from grass--
+wife's uncle don't like ragged nephews-in-law--wife dies broken-hearted
+--and you might be breaking stones on the roads with the convicts, if I,
+myself a convict, had not taken compassion on you.  Don't cry, Will, it
+is all for your own good--I hates cant!  Whereas I, my own master from
+eighteen, never stooped to serve any other--have dressed like a
+gentleman--kissed the pretty girls--drove my pheaton--been in all the
+papers as 'the celebrated Dashing Jerry'--never wanted a guinea in my
+pocket, and even when lagged at last, had a pretty little sum in the
+colonial bank to lighten my misfortunes.  I escape,--I bring you over--
+and here I am, supporting you, and in all probability, the one on whom
+depends the fate of one of the first families in the country.  And you
+preaches at me, do you?  Look you, Will;--in this world, honesty's
+nothing without force of character!  And so your health!"
+
+Here the captain emptied the rest of the brandy into his glass, drained
+it at a draught, and, while poor William was wiping his eyes with a
+ragged blue pocket-handkerchief, rang the bell, and asked what coaches
+would pass that way to -----, a seaport town at some distance.  On
+hearing that there was one at six o'clock, the captain ordered the best
+dinner the larder would afford to be got ready as soon as possible; and,
+when they were again alone, thus accosted his brother:--
+
+"Now you go back to town--here are four shiners for you.  Keep quiet--
+don't speak to a soul--don't put your foot in it, that's all I beg, and
+I'll find out whatever there is to be found.  It is damnably out of my
+way embarking at -----, but I had best keep clear of Lunnon.  And I tell
+you what, if these youngsters have hopped the twig, there's another bird
+on the bough that may prove a goldfinch after all--Young Arthur Beaufort:
+I hear he is a wild, expensive chap, and one who can't live without lots
+of money.  Now, it's easy to frighten a man of that sort, and I cha'n't
+have the old lord at his elbow."
+
+"But I tell you, that I only care for my poor master's children."
+
+"Yes; but if they are dead, and by saying they are alive, one can make
+old age comfortable, there's no harm in it--eh?"
+
+"I don't know," said William, irresolutely.  "But certainly it is a hard
+thing to be so poor at my time of life; and so honest a man as I've been,
+too!"
+
+Captain Smith went a little too far when he said that "honesty's nothing
+without force of character."  Still, Honesty has no business to be
+helpless and draggle-tailed;--she must be active and brisk, and make use
+of her wits; or, though she keep clear or the prison, 'tis no very great
+wonder if she fall on the parish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+          "Mitis.--This Macilente, signior, begins to be more sociable on
+          a sudden." _Every Man out of his Humour_.
+
+          "Punt.  Signior, you are sufficiently instructed.
+
+          "Fast.  Who, I, sir?"--Ibid.
+
+After spending the greater part of the day in vain inquiries and a vain
+search, Philip and Mr. Morton returned to the house of the latter.
+
+"And now," said Philip, "all that remains to be done is this: first give
+to the police of the town a detailed description of the man; and
+secondly, let us put an advertisement both in the county journal and in
+some of the London papers, to the effect, that if the person who called
+on you will take the trouble to apply again, either personally or by
+letter, he may obtain the information sought for.  In case he does, I
+will trouble you to direct him to--yes--to Monsieur de Vaudemont,
+according to this address."
+
+"Not to you, then?"
+
+"It is the same thing," replied Philip, drily.  "You have confirmed my
+suspicions, that the Beauforts know some thing of my brother.  What did
+you say of some other friend of the family who assisted in the search?"
+
+"Oh,--a Mr. Spencer! an old acquaintance of your mother's."  Here Mr.
+Morton smiled, but not being encouraged in a joke, went on,  "However,
+that's neither here nor there; he certainly never found out your brother.
+For I have had several letters from him at different times, asking if any
+news had been heard of either of you."
+
+And, indeed, Spencer had taken peculiar pains to deceive the Mortons,
+whose interposition he feared little less than that of the Beauforts.
+
+"Then it can be of no use to apply to him," said Philip, carelessly, not
+having any recollection of the name of Spencer, and therefore attaching
+little importance to the mention of him.
+
+"Certainly,  I should think not.  Depend on it, Mr. Beaufort must know."
+
+"True," said Philip.  "And I have only to thank you for your kindness,
+and return to town."
+
+"But stay with us this day--do--let me feel that we are friends.  I
+assure you poor Sidney's fate has been a load on my mind ever since he
+left.  You shall have the bed he slept in, and over which your mother
+bent when she left him and me for the last time."
+
+These words were said with so much feeling, that the adventurer wrung his
+uncle's hand, and said, "Forgive me, I wronged you--I will be your
+guest."
+
+Mrs. Morton, strange to say, evinced no symptoms of ill-humour at the
+news of the proffered hospitality.  In fact, Miss Margaret had been so
+eloquent in Philip's praise during his absence, that she suffered herself
+to be favourably impressed.  Her daughter, indeed, had obtained a sort of
+ascendency over Mrs. M. and the whole house, ever since she had received
+so excellent an offer.  And, moreover, some people are like dogs--they
+snarl at the ragged and fawn on the well-dressed.  Mrs. Morton did not
+object to a nephew _de facto_, she only objected to a nephew in _forma
+pauperis_.  The evening, therefore, passed more cheerfully than might
+have been anticipated, though Philip found some difficulty in parrying
+the many questions put to him on the past.  He contented himself with
+saying, as briefly as possible, that he had served in a foreign service,
+and acquired what sufficed him for an independence; and then, with the
+ease which a man picks up in the great world, turned the conversation to
+the prospects of the family whose guest he was.  Having listened with due
+attention to Mrs. Morton's eulogies on Tom, who had been sent for, and
+who drank the praises on his own gentility into a very large pair of
+blushing ears,--also, to her self-felicitations on Miss Margaret's
+marriage,--_item_, on the service rendered to the town by Mr. Roger, who
+had repaired the town-hall in his first mayoralty at his own expense,--
+_item_, to a long chronicle of her own genealogy, how she had one cousin
+a clergyman, and how her great-grandfather had been knighted,--_item_, to
+the domestic virtues of all her children,--_item_, to a confused
+explanation of the chastisement inflicted on Sidney, which Philip cut
+short in the middle; he asked, with a smile, what had become of the
+Plaskwiths.  "Oh!"  said Mrs. Morton, "my brother Kit has retired from
+business.  His son-in-law, Mr. Plimmins, has succeeded."
+
+"Oh, then, Plimmins married one of the young ladies?"
+
+"Yes, Jane--she  bad a sad squint!--Tom, there is nothing to laugh at,--
+we are all as God made us,--'Handsome is as handsome does,'--she has had
+three little uns!"
+
+"Do they squint too?"  asked Philip; and Miss Margaret giggled, and Tom
+roared, and the other young men roared too.  Philip had certainly said
+something very witty.
+
+This time Mrs. Morton administered no reproof; but replied pensively
+
+"Natur is very mysterious--they all squint!"
+
+Mr. Morton conducted Philip to his chamber.  There it was, fresh, clean,
+unaltered--the same white curtains, the same honeysuckle paper as when
+Catherine had crept across the threshold.
+
+"Did Sidney ever tell you that his mother placed a ring round his neck
+that night?"  asked Mr. Morton.
+
+"Yes; and the dear boy wept when he said that he had slept too soundly to
+know that she was by his side that last, last time.  The ring--oh, how
+well I remember it! she never put it off till then; and often in the
+fields--for we were wild wanderers together in that day--often when his
+head lay on my shoulder, I felt that ring still resting on his heart, and
+fancied it was a talisman--a blessing.  Well, well-good night to you!"
+And he shut the door on his uncle, and was alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+               "The Man of Law, . . . . . . .
+               And a great suit is like to be between them."
+               BEN JONSON: _Staple of News_.
+
+On arriving in London, Philip went first to the lodging he still kept
+there, and to which his letters were directed; and, among some
+communications from Paris, full of the politics and the hopes of the
+Carlists, he found the following note from Lord Lilburne:--
+
+"DEAR SIR,--When I met you the other day I told you I had been threatened
+with the gout.  The enemy has now taken possession of the field.  I am
+sentenced to regimen and the sofa.  But as it is my rule in life to make
+afflictions as light as possible, so I have asked a few friends to take
+compassion on me, and help me 'to shuffle off this mortal coil' by
+dealing me, if they can, four by honours.  Any time between nine and
+twelve to-night, or to-morrow night, you will find me at home; and if you
+are not better engaged, suppose you dine with me to-day--or rather dine
+opposite to me--and excuse my Spartan broth.  You will meet (besides any
+two or three friends whom an impromptu invitation may find disengaged) my
+sister, with Beaufort and their daughter: they only arrived in town this
+morning, and are kind enough 'to nurse me,' as they call it,--that is to
+say, their cook is taken ill!
+                                      "Yours,
+                                            "LILBURNE
+"Park Lane, Sept. --"
+
+
+"The Beauforts.  Fate favors me--I will go.  The date is for to-day."
+
+He sent off a hasty line to accept the invitation, and finding he had a
+few hours yet to spare, he resolved to employ them in consultation with
+some lawyer as to the chances of ultimately regaining his inheritance--
+a hope which, however wild, he had, since his return to his native shore,
+and especially since he had heard of the strange visit made to Roger
+Morton, permitted himself to indulge.  With this idea he sallied out,
+meaning to consult Liancourt, who, having a large acquaintance among the
+English, seemed the best person to advise him as to the choice of a
+lawyer at once active and honest,--when he suddenly chanced upon that
+gentleman himself.
+
+"This is lucky, my dear Liancourt.  I was just going to your lodgings."
+
+"And I was coming to yours to know if you dine with Lord Lilburne.  He
+told me he had asked you.  I have just left him.  And, by the sofa of
+Mephistopheles, there was the prettiest Margaret you ever beheld."
+
+"Indeed!--Who?"
+
+"He called her his niece; but I should doubt if he had any relation on
+this side the Styx so human as a niece."
+
+"You seem to have no great predilection for our host."
+
+"My dear Vaudemont, between our blunt, soldierly natures, and those wily,
+icy, sneering intellects, there is the antipathy of the dog to the cat."
+
+"Perhaps so on our side, not on his--or why does he invite us?"
+
+"London is empty; there is no one else to ask.  We are new faces, new
+minds to him.  We amuse him more than the hackneyed comrades he has worn
+out.  Besides, he plays--and you, too.  Fie on you!"
+
+"Liancourt, I had two objects in knowing that man, and I pay to the toll
+for the bridge.  When I cease to want the passage, I shall cease to pay
+the toll."
+
+"But the bridge may be a draw-bridge, and the moat is devilish deep
+below.  Without metaphor, that man may ruin you before you know where you
+are."
+
+"Bah! I have my eyes open.  I know how much to spend on the rogue whose
+service I hire as a lackey's; and I know also where to stop.  Liancourt,"
+he added, after a short pause, and in a tone deep with suppressed
+passion, "when I first saw that man, I thought of appealing to his heart
+for one who has a claim on it.  That was a vain hope.  And then there
+came upon me a sterner and deadlier thought--the scheme of the Avenger!
+This Lilburne--this rogue whom the world sets up to worship--ruined, body
+and soul ruined--one whose name the world gibbets with scorn!  Well, I
+thought to avenge that man.  In his own house--amidst you all--I thought
+to detect the sharper, and brand the cheat!"
+
+"You startle me!--It has been whispered, indeed, that Lord Lilburne is
+dangerous,--but skill is dangerous.  To cheat!--an Englishman!--a
+nobleman!--impossible!"
+
+"Whether he do or not," returned Vaudemont, in a calmer tone, "I have
+foregone the vengeance, because he is--"
+
+"Is what?"
+
+"No matter," said Vaudemont aloud, but he added to himself,--"Because he
+is the grandfather of Fanny!"
+
+"You are very enigmatical to-day."
+
+"Patience, Liancourt; I may solve all the riddles that make up my life,
+yet.  Bear with me a little longer.  And now can you help me to a
+lawyer?--a man experienced, indeed, and of repute, but young, active, not
+overladen with business;--I want his zeal and his time, for a hazard that
+your monopolists of clients may not deem worth their devotion."
+
+"I can recommend you, then, the very man you require.  I had a suit some
+years ago at Paris, for which English witnesses were necessary.  My
+_avocat_ employed a solicitor here whose activity in collecting my
+evidence gained my cause.  I will answer for his diligence and his
+honesty."
+
+"His address?"
+
+"Mr. Barlow--somewhere by the Strand--let me see--Essex-yes, Essex
+Street."
+
+"Then good-bye to you for the present.--You dine at Lord Lilburne's too?"
+
+"Yes.  Adieu till then."
+
+Vaudemont was not long before he arrived at Mr. Barlow's; a brass-plate
+announced to him the house.  He was shown at once into a parlour, where
+he saw a man whom lawyers would call young, and spinsters middle-aged--
+viz., about two-and-forty; with a bold, resolute, intelligent
+countenance, and that steady, calm, sagacious eye, which inspires
+at once confidence and esteem.
+
+Vaudemont scanned him with the look of one who has been accustomed to
+judge mankind--as a scholar does books--with rapidity because with
+practice.  He had at first resolved to submit to him the heads of his
+case without mentioning names, and, in fact, he so commenced his
+narrative; but by degrees, as he perceived how much his own earnestness
+arrested and engrossed the interest of his listener, he warmed into
+fuller confidence, and ended by a full disclosure, and a caution as to
+the profoundest secrecy in case, if there were no hope to recover his
+rightful name, he might yet wish to retain, unannoyed by curiosity or
+suspicion, that by which he was not discreditably known.
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Barlow, after assuring him of the most scrupulous
+discretion,--"sir, I have some recollection of the trial instituted by
+your mother, Mrs. Beaufort"--and the slight emphasis he laid on that name
+was the most grateful compliment be could have paid to the truth of
+Philip's recital.  "My impression is, that it was managed in a very
+slovenly manner by her lawyer; and some of his oversights we may repair
+in a suit instituted by yourself.  But it would be absurd to conceal from
+you the great difficulties that beset us--your mother's suit, designed to
+establish her own rights, was far easier than that which you must
+commence--viz., an action for ejectment against a man who has been some
+years in undisturbed possession.  Of course, until the missing witness is
+found out, it would be madness to commence litigation.  And the question,
+then, will be, how far that witness will suffice?  It is true, that one
+witness of a marriage, if the others are dead, is held sufficient by law.
+But I need not add, that that witness must be thoroughly credible.  In
+suits for real property, very little documentary or secondary evidence is
+admitted.  I doubt even whether the certificate of the marriage on which
+--in the loss or destruction of the register--you lay so much stress,
+would be available in itself.  But if an examined copy, it becomes of the
+last importance, for it will then inform us of the name of the person who
+extracted and examined it.  Heaven grant it may not have been the
+clergyman himself who performed the ceremony, and who, you say, is dead;
+if some one else, we should then have a second, no doubt credible and
+most valuable witness.  The document would thus become available as
+proof, and, I think, that we should not fail to establish our case."
+
+"But this certificate, how is it ever to be found?  I told you we had
+searched everywhere in vain."
+
+"True; but you say that your mother always declared that the late Mr.
+Beaufort had so solemnly assured her, even just prior to his decease,
+that it was in existence, that I have no doubt as to the fact.  It may be
+possible, but it is a terrible insinuation to make, that if Mr. Robert
+Beaufort, in examining the papers of the deceased, chanced upon a
+document so important to him, he abstracted or destroyed it.  If this
+should not have been the case (and Mr. Robert Beaufort's moral character
+is unspotted--and we have no right to suppose it), the probability is,
+either that it was intrusted to some third person, or placed in some
+hidden drawer or deposit, the secret of which your father never
+disclosed.  Who has purchased the house you lived in?"
+
+"Fernside?  Lord Lilburne.  Mrs. Robert Beaufort's brother."
+
+"Humph--probably, then, he took the furniture and all.  Sir, this is a
+matter that requires some time for close consideration.  With your leave,
+I will not only insert in the London papers an advertisement to the
+effect that you suggested to Mr. Roger Morton (in case you should have
+made a right conjecture as to the object of the man who applied to him),
+but I will also advertise for the witness himself.  William Smith, you
+say, his name is.  Did the lawyer employed by Mrs. Beaufort send to
+inquire for him in the colony?"
+
+"No; I fear there could not have been time for that.  My mother was so
+anxious and eager, and so convinced of the justice of her case--"
+
+"That's a pity; her lawyer must have been a sad driveller."
+
+"Besides, now I remember, inquiry was made of his relations in England.
+His father, a farmer, was then alive; the answer was that he had
+certainly left Australia.  His last letter, written two years before that
+date, containing a request for money, which the father, himself made a
+bankrupt by reverses, could not give, had stated that he was about to
+seek his fortune elsewhere--since then they had heard nothing of him."
+
+"Ahem!  Well, you will perhaps let me know where any relations of his are
+yet to be found, and I will look up the former suit, and go into the
+whole case without delay.  In the meantime, you do right, sir--if you
+will allow me to say it--not to disclose either your own identity or a
+hint of your intentions.  It is no use putting suspicion on its guard.
+And my search for this certificate must be managed with the greatest
+address.  But, by the way--speaking of identity--there can be no
+difficulty, I hope, in proving yours."
+
+Philip was startled.  "Why, I am greatly altered."
+
+"But probably your beard and moustache may contribute to that change; and
+doubtless, in the village where you lived, there would be many with whom
+you were in sufficient intercourse, and on whose recollection, by
+recalling little anecdotes and circumstances with which no one but
+yourself could be acquainted, your features would force themselves along
+with the moral conviction that the man who spoke to them could be no
+other but Philip Morton--or rather Beaufort."
+
+"You are right; there must be many such.  There was not a cottage in the
+place where I and my dogs were not familiar and half domesticated."
+
+"All's right, so far, then.  But I repeat, we must not be too sanguine.
+Law is not justice--"
+
+"But God is," said Philip; and he left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+          "_Volpone_.  A little in a mist, but not dejected;
+          Never--but still myself."
+                             BEN JONSON: _Volpone_.
+
+          "_Peregrine_.  Am I enough disguised?
+          _Mer_.  Ay.  I warrant you.
+          _Per_.  Save you, fair lady."--Ibid.
+
+It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.  The ill wind that had blown
+gout to Lord Lilburne had blown Lord Lilburne away from the injury he had
+meditated against what he called "the object of his attachment."  How
+completely and entirely, indeed, the state of Lord Lilburne's feelings
+depended on the state of his health, may be seen in the answer he gave to
+his valet, when, the morning after the first attack of the gout, that
+worthy person, by way of cheering his master, proposed to ascertain
+something as to the movements of one with whom Lord Lilburne professed to
+be so violently in love,--"Confound you, Dykeman!" exclaimed the
+invalid,--"why do you trouble me about women when I'm in this condition?
+I don't care if they were all at the bottom of the sea!  Reach me the
+colchicum!  I must keep my mind calm."
+
+Whenever tolerably well, Lord Lilburne was careless of his health; the
+moment he was ill, Lord Lilburne paid himself the greatest possible
+attention.  Though a man of firm nerves, in youth of remarkable daring,
+and still, though no longer rash, of sufficient personal courage, he was
+by no means fond of the thought of death--that is, of his _own_ death.
+Not that he was tormented by any religious apprehensions of the Dread
+Unknown, but simply because the only life of which he had any experience
+seemed to him a peculiarly pleasant thing.  He had a sort of instinctive
+persuasion that John Lord Lilburne would not be better off anywhere else.
+Always disliking solitude, he disliked it more than ever when he was ill,
+and he therefore welcomed the visit of his sister and the gentle hand of
+his pretty niece.  As for Beaufort, he bored the sufferer; and when that
+gentleman, on his arrival, shutting out his wife and daughter, whispered
+to Lilburne, "Any more news of that impostor?"  Lilburne answered
+peevishly, "I never talk about business when I have the gout!  I have set
+Sharp to keep a lookout for him, but he has learned nothing as yet.  And
+now go to your club.  You are a worthy creature, but too solemn for my
+spirits just at this moment.  I have a few people coming to dine with me,
+your wife will do the honors, and--_you_ can come in the evening."
+Though Mr. Robert Beaufort's sense of importance swelled and chafed at
+this very unceremonious _conge_, he forced a smile, and said:--
+
+"Well, it is no wonder you are a little fretful with the gout.  I have
+plenty to do in town, and Mrs. Beaufort and Camilla can come back without
+waiting for me."
+
+"Why, as your cook is ill, and they can't dine at a club, you may as well
+leave them here till I am a little better; not that I care, for I can
+hire a better nurse than either of them."
+
+"My dear Lilburne, don't talk of hiring nurses; certainly, I am too happy
+if they can be of comfort to you."
+
+"No! on second thoughts, you may take back your wife, she's always
+talking of her own complaints, and leave me Camilla: you can't want her
+for a few days."
+
+"Just as you like.  And you really think I have managed as well as I
+could about this young man,--eh?"
+
+"Yes--yes!  And so you go to Beaufort Court in a few days?"
+
+"I propose doing so.  I wish you were well enough to come."
+
+"Um!  Chambers says that it would be a very good air for me--better than
+Fernside; and as to my castle in the north, I would as soon go to
+Siberia.  Well, if I get better, I will pay you a visit, only you always
+have such a stupid set of respectable people about you.  I shock them,
+and they oppress me."
+
+"Why, as I hope soon to see Arthur, I shall make it as agreeable to him
+as I can, and I shall be very much obliged to you if you would invite a
+few of your own friends."
+
+"Well, you are a good fellow, Beaufort, and I will take you at your word;
+and, since one good turn deserves another, I have now no scruples in
+telling you that I feel quite sure that you will have no further
+annoyance from this troublesome witness-monger."
+
+"In that case," said Beaufort, "I may pick up a better match for Camilla!
+Good-bye, my dear Lilburne."
+
+"Form and Ceremony of the world!"  snarled the peer, as the door closed
+on his brother-in-law, "ye make little men very moral, and not a bit the
+better for being so."
+
+It so happened that Vaudemont arrived before any of the other guests that
+day, and during the half hour which Dr. Chambers assigned to his
+illustrious patient, so that, when he entered, there were only Mrs.
+Beaufort and Camilla in the drawing-room.
+
+Vaudemont drew back involuntarily as he recognized in the faded
+countenance of the elder lady, features associated with one of the dark
+passages in his earlier life; but Mrs. Beaufort's gracious smile, and
+urbane, though languid welcome, sufficed to assure him that the
+recognition was not mutual.  He advanced, and again stopped short, as his
+eye fell upon that fair and still childlike form, which had once knelt by
+his side and pleaded, with the orphan, for his brother.  While he spoke
+to her, many recollections, some dark and stern--but those, at least,
+connected with Camilla, soft and gentle-thrilled through his heart.
+Occupied as her own thoughts and feelings necessarily were with Sidney,
+there was something in Vaudemont's appearance--his manner, his voice--
+which forced upon Camilla a strange and undefined interest; and even Mrs.
+Beaufort was roused from her customary apathy, as she glanced at that
+dark and commanding face with something between admiration and fear.
+Vaudemont had scarcely, however, spoken ten words, when some other guests
+were announced, and Lord Lilburne was wheeled in upon his sofa shortly
+afterwards.  Vaudemont continued, however, seated next to Camilla, and
+the embarrassment he had at first felt disappeared.  He possessed, when
+he pleased, that kind of eloquence which belongs to men who have seen
+much and felt deeply, and whose talk has not been frittered down to the
+commonplace jargon of the world.  His very phraseology was distinct and
+peculiar, and he had that rarest of all charms in polished life,
+originality both of thought and of manner.  Camilla blushed, when she
+found at dinner that he placed himself by her side.  That evening De
+Vaudemont excused himself from playing, but the table was easily made
+without him, and still he continued to converse with the daughter of the
+man whom he held as his worst foe.  By degrees, he turned the
+conversation into a channel that might lead him to the knowledge he
+sought.
+
+"It was my fate," said he, "once to become acquainted with an intimate
+friend of the late Mr. Beaufort.  Will you pardon me if I venture to
+fulfil a promise I made to him, and ask you to inform me what has become
+of a--a--that is, of Sidney Morton?"
+
+"Sidney Morton!  I don't even remember the name.  Oh, yes!  I have heard
+it," added Camilla, innocently, and with a candour that showed how little
+she knew of the secrets of the family; "he was one of two poor boys in
+whom my brother felt a deep interest--some relations to my uncle.  Yes--
+yes!  I remember now.  I never knew Sidney, but I once did see his
+brother."
+
+"Indeed! and you remember--"
+
+"Yes! I was very young then.  I scarcely recollect what passed, it was
+all so confused and strange; but, I know that I made papa very angry, and
+I was told never to mention the name of Morton again.  I believe they
+behaved very ill to papa."
+
+"And you never learned--never!--the fate of either--of Sidney?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"But your father must know?"
+
+"I think not; but tell me,"--said Camilla, with girlish and unaffected
+innocence, "I have always felt anxious to know,--what and who were those
+poor boys?"
+
+What and who were they?  So deep, then, was the stain upon their name,
+that the modest mother and the decorous father had never even said to
+that young girl, "They are your cousins--the children of the man in whose
+gold we revel!"
+
+Philip bit his lip, and the spell of Camilla's presence seemed vanished.
+He muttered some inaudible answer, turned away to the card-table, and
+Liancourt took the chair he had left vacant.
+
+"And how does Miss Beaufort like my friend Vaudemont?  I assure you that
+I have seldom seen him so alive to the fascination of female beauty!"
+
+"Oh!" said Camilla, with her silver laugh, "your nation spoils us for our
+own countrymen.  You forget how little we are accustomed to flattery."
+
+"Flattery! what truth could flatter on the lips of an exile?  But you
+don't answer my question--what think you of Vaudemont?  Few are more
+admired.  He is handsome!"
+
+"Is he?" said Camilla, and she glanced at Vaudemont, as he stood at a
+little distance, thoughtful and abstracted.  Every girl forms to herself
+some untold dream of that which she considers fairest.  And Vaudemont had
+not the delicate and faultless beauty of Sidney.  There was nothing that
+corresponded to her ideal in his marked features and lordly shape!  But
+she owned, reluctantly to herself, that she had seldom seen, among the
+trim gallants of everyday life, a form so striking and impressive.  The
+air, indeed, was professional--the most careless glance could detect the
+soldier.  But it seemed the soldier of an elder age or a wilder clime.
+He recalled to her those heads which she had seen in the Beaufort Gallery
+and other Collections yet more celebrated--portraits by Titian of those
+warrior statesman who lived in the old Republics of Italy in a perpetual
+struggle with their kind--images of dark, resolute, earnest men.  Even
+whatever was intellectual in his countenance spoke, as in those
+portraits, of a mind sharpened rather in active than in studious life;--
+intellectual, not from the pale hues, the worn exhaustion, and the sunken
+cheek of the bookman and dreamer, but from its collected and stern
+repose, the calm depth that lay beneath the fire of the eyes, and the
+strong will that spoke in the close full lips, and the high but not
+cloudless forehead.
+
+And, as she gazed, Vaudemont turned round--her eyes fell beneath his, and
+she felt angry with herself that she blushed.  Vaudemont saw the downcast
+eye, he saw the blush, and the attraction of Camilla's presence was
+restored.  He would have approached her, but at that moment Mr. Beaufort
+himself entered, and his thoughts went again into a darker channel.
+
+"Yes," said Liancourt, "you must allow Vaudemont looks what he is--a
+noble fellow and a gallant soldier.  Did you never hear of his battle
+with the tigress?  It made a noise in India.  I must tell it you as I
+have heard it."
+
+And while Laincourt was narrating the adventure, whatever it was, to
+which he referred, the card-table was broken up, and Lord Lilburne, still
+reclining on his sofa, lazily introduced his brother-in-law to such of
+the guests as were strangers to him--Vaudemont among the rest.  Mr.
+Beaufort had never seen Philip Morton more than three times; once at
+Fernside, and the other times by an imperfect light, and when his
+features were convulsed by passion, and his form disfigured by his dress.
+Certainly, therefore, had Robert Beaufort even possessed that faculty of
+memory which is supposed to belong peculiarly to kings and princes, and
+which recalls every face once seen, it might have tasked the gift to the
+utmost to have detected, in the bronzed and decorated foreigner to whom
+he was now presented, the features of the wild and long-lost boy.  But
+still some dim and uneasy presentiment, or some struggling and painful
+effort of recollection, was in his mind, as he spoke to Vaudemont, and
+listened to the cold calm tone of his reply.
+
+"Who do you say that Frenchman is?" he whispered to his brother-in-law,
+as Vaudemont turned away.
+
+"Oh! a cleverish sort of adventurer--a gentleman; he plays.--He has seen
+a good deal of the world--he rather amuses me--different from other
+people.  I think of asking him to join our circle at Beaufort Court."
+
+Mr. Beaufort coughed huskily, but not seeing any reasonable objection to
+the proposal, and afraid of rousing the sleeping hyaena of Lord
+Lilburne's sarcasm, he merely said:--
+
+"Any one you like to invite:" and looking round for some one on whom to
+vent his displeasure, perceived Camilla still listening to Liancourt.  He
+stalked up to her, and as Liancourt, seeing her rise, rose also and moved
+away, he said peevishly, "You will never learn to conduct yourself
+properly; you are to be left here to nurse and comfort your uncle, and
+not to listen to the gibberish of every French adventurer.  Well, Heaven
+be praised, I have a son--girls are a great plague!"
+
+"So they are, Mr. Beaufort," sighed his wife, who had just joined him,
+and who was jealous of the preference Lilburne had given to her daughter.
+
+"And so selfish," added Mrs. Beaufort; "they only care for their own
+amusements, and never mind how uncomfortable their parents are for want
+of them."
+
+"Oh! dear mamma, don't say so--let me go home with you--I'll speak to my
+uncle!"
+
+"Nonsense, child!  Come along, Mr. Beaufort;" and the affectionate
+parents went out arm in arm.  They did not perceive that Vaudemont had
+been standing close behind them; but Camilla, now looking up with tears
+in her eyes, again caught his gaze: he had heard all.
+
+"And they ill-treat her," he muttered: "that divides her from them!--she
+will be left here--I shall see her again."  As he turned to depart,
+Lilburne beckoned to him.
+
+"You do not mean to desert our table?"
+
+"No: but I am not very well to-night--to-morrow, if you will allow me."
+
+"Ay, to-morrow; and if you can spare an hour in the morning it will be a
+charity.  You see," he added in a whisper, "I have a nurse, though I have
+no children.  D'ye think that's love?  Bah! sir--a legacy!  Good night."
+
+"No--no--no!" said Vaudemont to himself, as he walked through the moonlit
+streets.  "No! though my heart burns,--poor murdered felon!--to avenge
+thy wrongs and thy crimes, revenge cannot come from me--he is Fanny's
+grandfather and--Camilla's uncle!"
+
+And Camilla, when that uncle had dismissed her for the night, sat down
+thoughtfully in her own room.  The dark eyes of Vaudemont seemed still to
+shine on her; his voice yet rung in her ear; the wild tales of daring and
+danger with which Liancourt had associated his name yet haunted her
+bewildered fancy--she started, frightened at her own thoughts.  She took
+from her bosom some lines that Sidney had addressed to her, and, as she
+read and re-read, her spirit became calmed to its wonted and faithful
+melancholy.  Vaudemont was forgotten, and the name of Sidney yet murmured
+on her lips, when sleep came to renew the image of the absent one, and
+paint in dreams the fairy land of a happy Future!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+          "Ring on, ye bells--most pleasant is your chime!"
+           WILSON. _Isle of Palms_.
+
+          "O fairy child!  What can I wish for thee?"--Ibid.
+
+Vaudemont remained six days in London without going to H----, and on each
+of those days he paid a visit to Lord Lilburne.  On the seventh day, the
+invalid being much better, though still unable to leave his room, Camilla
+returned to Berkeley Square.  On the same day, Vaudemont went once more
+to see Simon and poor Fanny.
+
+As he approached the door, he heard from the window, partially opened,
+for the day was clear and fine, Fanny's sweet voice.  She was chaunting
+one of the simple songs she had promised to learn by heart; and
+Vaudemont, though but a poor judge of the art, was struck and affected by
+the music of the voice and the earnest depth of the feeling.  He paused
+opposite the window and called her by her name.  Fanny looked forth
+joyously, and ran, as usual, to open the door to him.
+
+"Oh! you have been so long away; but I already know many of the songs:
+they say so much that I always wanted to say!"
+
+Vaudemont smiled, but languidly.
+
+"How strange it is," said Fanny, musingly, "that there should be so much
+in a piece of paper! for, after all," pointing to the open page of her
+book, "this is but a piece of paper--only there is life in it!"
+
+"Ay," said Vaudemont, gloomily, and far from seizing the subtle delicacy
+of Fanny's thought--her mind dwelling upon Poetry, and his upon Law,--
+"ay, and do you know that upon a mere scrap of paper, if I could but find
+it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I care for
+in life?"
+
+"Upon a scrap of paper?  Oh!  how I wish I could find it!  Ah! you look
+as if you thought I should never be wise enough for that!"
+
+Vaudemont, not listening to her, uttered a deep sigh.  Fanny approached
+him timidly.
+
+"Do not sigh, brother,--I can't bear to hear you sigh.  You are changed.
+Have you, too, not been happy?"
+
+"Happy, Fanny! yes, lately very happy--too happy!"
+
+"Happy, have you?  and I--" the girl stopped short--her tone had been
+that of sadness and reproach, and she stopped--why, she knew not, but she
+felt her heart sink within her.  Fanny suffered him to pass her, and he
+went straight to his room.  Her eyes followed him wistfully: it was not
+his habit to leave her thus abruptly.  The family meal of the day was
+over; and it was an hour before Vaudemont descended to the parlour.
+Fanny had put aside the songs; she had no heart to recommence those
+gentle studies that had been so sweet,--they had drawn no pleasure, no
+praise from him.  She was seated idly and listlessly beside the silent
+old man, who every day grew more and more silent still.  She turned her
+head as Vaudemont entered, and her pretty lip pouted as that of a
+neglected child.  But he did not heed it, and the pout vanished, and
+tears rushed to her eyes.
+
+Vaudemont was changed.  His countenance was thoughtful and overcast.  His
+manner abstracted.  He addressed a few words to Simon, and then, seating
+himself by the window, leant his cheek on his hand, and was soon lost in
+reverie.  Fanny, finding that he did not speak, and after stealing many a
+long and earnest glance at his motionless attitude and gloomy brow, rose
+gently, and gliding to him with her light step, said, in a trembling
+voice,--
+
+"Are you in pain, brother?"
+
+"No, pretty one!"
+
+"Then why won't you speak to Fanny?  Will you not walk with her?  Perhaps
+my grandfather will come too."
+
+"Not this evening.  I shall go out; but it will be alone."
+
+"Where?  Has not Fanny been good?  I have not been out since you left.
+us.  And the grave--brother!--I sent Sarah with the flowers--but--"
+
+Vaudemont rose abruptly.  The mention of the grave brought back his
+thoughts from the dreaming channel into which they had flowed.  Fanny,
+whose very childishness had once so soothed him, now disturbed; he felt
+the want of that complete solitude which makes the atmosphere of growing
+passion: he muttered some scarcely audible excuse, and quitted the house.
+Fanny saw him no more that evening.  He did not return till midnight.
+But Fanny did not sleep till she heard his step on the stairs, and his
+chamber door close: and when she did sleep, her dreams were disturbed and
+painful.  The next morning, when they met at breakfast (for Vaudemont did
+not return to London), her eyes were red and heavy, and her cheek pale.
+And, still buried in meditation, Vaudemont's eye, usually so kind and
+watchful, did not detect those signs of a grief that Fanny could not have
+explained.  After breakfast, however, he asked her to walk out; and her
+face brightened as she hastened to put on her bonnet, and take her little
+basket full of fresh flowers which she had already sent Sarah forth to
+purchase.
+
+"Fanny," said Vaudemont, as leaving the house, he saw the basket on her
+arm, "to-day you may place some of those flowers on another tombstone!--
+Poor child, what natural goodness there is in that heart!--what pity
+that--"
+
+He paused.  Fanny looked delightedly in his face.  "You were praising me
+--you!  And what is a pity, brother?"
+
+While she spoke, the sound of the joy-bells was heard near at hand.
+
+"Hark!"  said Vaudemont, forgetting her question--and almost gaily--
+"Hark!--I accept the omen.  It is a marriage peal!"
+
+He quickened his steps, and they reached the churchyard.
+
+There was a crowd already assembled, and Vaudemont and Fanny paused; and,
+leaning over the little gate, looked on.
+
+"Why are these people here, and why does the bell ring so merrily?"
+
+"There is to be a wedding, Fanny."
+
+"I have heard of a wedding very often," said Fanny, with a pretty look of
+puzzlement and doubt, "but I don't know exactly what it means.  Will you
+tell me?--and the bells, too!"
+
+"Yes, Fanny, those bells toll but three times for man!  The first time,
+when he comes into the world; the last time, when he leaves it; the time
+between when he takes to his side a partner in all the sorrows--in all
+the joys that yet remain to him; and who, even when the last bell
+announces his death to this earth, may yet, for ever and ever, be his
+partner in that world to come--that heaven, where they who are as
+innocent as you, Fanny, may hope to live and to love each other in a land
+in which there are no graves!"
+
+"And this bell?"
+
+"Tolls for that partnership--for the wedding!"
+
+"I think I understand you;--and they who are to be wed are happy?"
+
+"Happy, Fanny, if they love, and their love continue.  Oh! conceive the
+happiness to know some one person dearer to you than your own self--some
+one breast into which you can pour every thought, every grief, every joy!
+One person, who, if all the rest of the world were to calumniate or
+forsake you, would never wrong you by a harsh thought or an unjust word,
+--who would cling to you the closer in sickness, in poverty, in care,--
+who would sacrifice all things to you, and for whom you would sacrifice
+all--from whom, except by death, night or day, you must be never divided
+--whose smile is ever at your hearth--who has no tears while you are well
+and happy, and your love the same.  Fanny, such is marriage, if they who
+marry have hearts and souls to feel that there is no bond on earth so
+tender and so sublime.  There is an opposite picture;--I will not draw
+that!  And as it is, Fanny, you cannot understand me!"
+
+He turned away:--and Fanny's tears were falling like rain upon the grass
+below;--he did not see them!  He entered the churchyard; for the bell now
+ceased.  The ceremony was to begin.  He followed the bridal party into
+the church, and Fanny, lowering her veil, crept after him, awed and
+trembling.
+
+They stood, unobserved, at a little distance, and heard the service.
+
+The betrothed were of the middle class of life, young, both comely; and
+their behaviour was such as suited the reverence and sanctity of the
+rite.  Vaudemont stood looking on intently, with his arms folded on his
+breast.  Fanny leant behind him, and apart from all, against one of the
+pews.  And still in her hand, while the priest was solemnising Marriage,
+she held the flowers intended for the Grave.  Even to that MORNING--
+hushed, calm, earliest, with her mysterious and unconjectured heart--her
+shape brought a thought of NIGHT!
+
+When the ceremony was over--when the bride fell on her mother's breast
+and wept; and then, when turning thence, her eyes met the bridegroom's,
+and the tears were all smiled away--when, in that one rapid interchange
+of looks, spoke all that holy love can speak to love, and with timid
+frankness she placed her hand in his to whom she had just vowed her
+life,--a thrill went through the hearts of those present.  Vaudemont
+sighed heavily.  He heard his sigh echoed; but by one that had in its
+sound no breath of pain; he turned; Fanny had raised her veil; her eyes
+met his, moistened, but bright, soft, and her cheeks were rosy-red.
+Vaudemont recoiled before that gaze, and turned from the church.  The
+persons interested retired to the vestry to sign their names in the
+registry; the crowd dispersed, and Vaudemont and Fanny stood alone in the
+burial-ground.
+
+"Look, Fanny," said the former, pointing to a tomb that stood far from
+his mother's (for those ashes were too hallowed for such a
+neighbourhood).  "Look yonder; it is a new tomb.  Fanny, let us approach
+it.  Can you read what is there inscribed?"
+
+The inscription was simply this:
+
+                               TO W-- G--
+                           MAN SEES THE DEED
+                        GOD THE CIRCUMSTANCE.
+                              JUDGE NOT,
+                         THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED.
+
+"Fanny, this tomb fulfils your pious wish: it is to the memory of him
+whom you called your father.  Whatever was his life here--whatever
+sentence it hath received, Heaven, at least, will not condemn your piety,
+if you honour one who was good to you, and place flowers, however idle,
+even over that grave."
+
+"It is his--my father's--and you have thought of this for me!"  said
+Fanny, taking his hand, and sobbing.  "And I have been thinking that you
+were not so kind to me as you were!"
+
+"Have I not been so kind to you?  Nay, forgive me, I am not happy."
+
+"Not?--you said yesterday you had been too happy."
+
+"To remember happiness is not to be happy, Fanny."
+
+"That's true--and--"
+
+Fanny stopped; and, as she bent over the tomb, musing, Vaudemont, willing
+to leave her undisturbed, and feeling bitterly how little his conscience
+could vindicate, though it might find palliation for, the dark man who
+slept not there--retired a few paces.
+
+At this time the new-married pair, with their witnesses, the clergyman,
+&c., came from the vestry, and crossed the path.  Fanny, as she turned
+from the tomb, saw them, and stood still, looking earnestly at the bride.
+
+"What a lovely face!"  said the mother.  "Is it--yes it is--the poor
+idiot girl."
+
+"Ah!" said the bridegroom, tenderly, "and she, Mary, beautiful as she is,
+she can never make another as happy as you have made me."
+
+Vaudemont heard, and his heart felt sad.  "Poor Fanny!--And yet, but for
+that affliction--I might have loved her, ere I met the fatal face of the
+daughter of my foe!"  And with a deep compassion, an inexpressible and
+holy fondness, he moved to Fanny.
+
+"Come, my child; now let us go home."
+
+"Stay," said Fanny--"you forget."  And she went to strew the flowers
+still left over Catherine's grave.
+
+"Will my mother," thought Vaudemont, "forgive me, if I have other
+thoughts than hate and vengeance for that house which builds its
+greatness over her slandered name?"  He groaned:--and that grave had lost
+its melancholy charm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+               "Of all men, I say,
+               That dare, for 'tis a desperate adventure,
+               Wear on their free necks the yoke of women,
+               Give me a soldier."--_Knight of Malta_.
+
+               "So lightly doth this little boat
+               Upon the scarce-touch'd billows float;
+               So careless doth she seem to be,
+               Thus left by herself on the homeless sea,
+               To lie there with her cheerful sail,
+               Till Heaven shall send some gracious gale."
+               WILSON: _Isle of Palms_.
+
+Vaudemont returned that evening to London, and found at his lodgings a
+note from Lord Lilburne, stating that as his gout was now somewhat
+mitigated, his physician had recommended him to try change of air--that
+Beaufort Court was in one of the western counties, in a genial climate--
+that he was therefore going thither the next day for a short time--that
+he had asked some of Monsieur de Vaudemont's countrymen, and a few other
+friends, to enliven the circle of a dull country-house--that Mr. and Mrs.
+Beaufort would be delighted to see Monsieur de Vaudemont also--and that
+his compliance with their invitation would be a charity to Monsieur de
+Vaudemont's faithful and obliged,  LILBURNE.
+
+The first sensation of Vaudemont on reading this effusion was delight.
+"I shall see _her_," he cried; "I shall be under the same roof!"  But the
+glow faded at once from his cheek;--the roof!--what roof?  Be the guest
+where he held himself the lord!--be the guest of Robert Beaufort!--Was
+that all?  Did he not meditate the deadliest war which civilised life
+admits of--the _War of Law_--war for name, property, that very hearth,
+with all its household gods, against this man--could he receive his
+hospitality?  "And what then!" he exclaimed, as he paced to and fro the
+room,--"because her father wronged me, and because I would claim mine
+own--must I therefore exclude from my thoughts, from my sight, an image
+so fair and gentle;--the one who knelt by my side, an infant, to that
+hard man?--Is hate so noble a passion that it is not to admit one glimpse
+of Love?--_Love_! what word is that?  Let me beware in time!"  He paused
+in fierce self-contest, and, throwing open the window, gasped for air.
+The street in which he lodged was situated in the neighbourhood of St.
+James's; and, at that very moment, as if to defeat all opposition, and to
+close the struggle, Mrs. Beaufort's barouche drove by, Camilla at her
+side.  Mrs. Beaufort, glancing up; languidly bowed; and Camilla herself
+perceived him, and he saw her change colour as she inclined her head.  He
+gazed after them almost breathless, till the carriage disappeared; and
+then reclosing the window, he sat down to collect his thoughts, and again
+to reason with himself.  But still, as he reasoned, he saw ever before
+him that blush and that smile.  At last he sprang up, and a noble and
+bright expression elevated the character of his face,--"Yes, if I enter
+that house, if I eat that man's bread, and drink of his cup, I must
+forego, not justice--not what is due to my mother's name--but whatever
+belongs to hate and vengeance.  If I enter that house--and if Providence
+permit me the means whereby to regain my rights, why she--the innocent
+one--she may be the means of saving her father from ruin, and stand like
+an angel by that boundary where justice runs into revenge!--Besides, is
+it not my duty to discover Sidney?  Here is the only clue I shall
+obtain."  With these thoughts he hesitated no more--he decided he would
+not reject this hospitality, since it might be in his power to pay it
+back ten thousandfold.  "And who knows," he murmured again, "if Heaven,
+in throwing this sweet being in my way, might not have designed to subdue
+and chasten in me the angry passions I have so long fed on?  I have seen
+her,--can I now hate her father?"
+
+He sent off his note accepting the invitation.  When he had done so, was
+he satisfied?  He had taken as noble and as large a view of the duties
+thereby imposed on him as he well could take: but something whispered at
+his heart, "There is weakness in thy generosity--Darest thou love the
+daughter of Robert Beaufort?"  And his heart had no answer to this voice.
+
+The rapidity with which love is ripened depends less upon the actual
+number of years that have passed over the soil in which the seed is cast,
+than upon the freshness of the soil itself.  A young man who lives the
+ordinary life of the world, and who fritters away, rather than exhausts,
+his feelings upon a variety of quick succeeding subjects--the Cynthias of
+the minute--is not apt to form a real passion at the first sight.  Youth
+is inflammable only when the heart is young!
+
+There are certain times of life when, in either sex, the affections are
+prepared, as it were, to be impressed with the first fair face that
+attracts the fancy and delights the eye.  Such times are when the heart
+has been long solitary, and when some interval of idleness and rest
+succeeds to periods of harsher and more turbulent excitement.  It was
+precisely such a period in the life of Vaudemont.  Although his ambition
+had been for many years his dream, and his sword his mistress, yet
+naturally affectionate, and susceptible of strong emotion, he had often
+repined at his lonely lot.  By degrees the boy's fantasy and reverence
+which had wound themselves round the image of Eugenie subsided into that
+gentle and tender melancholy which, perhaps by weakening the strength of
+the sterner thoughts, leaves us inclined rather to receive, than to
+resist, a new attachment;--and on the verge of the sweet Memory trembles
+the sweet Hope.  The suspension of his profession, his schemes, his
+struggles, his career, left his passions unemployed.  Vaudemont was thus
+unconsciously prepared to love.  As we have seen, his first and earliest
+feelings directed themselves to Fanny.  But he had so immediately
+detected the clanger, and so immediately recoiled from nursing those
+thoughts and fancies, without which love dies for want of food, for a
+person to whom he ascribed the affliction of an imbecility which would
+give to such a sentiment all the attributes either of the weakest
+rashness or of dishonour approaching to sacrilege--that the wings of the
+deity were scared away the instant their very shadow fell upon his mind.
+And thus, when Camilla rose upon him his heart was free to receive her
+image.  Her graces, her accomplishments, a certain nameless charm that
+invested her, pleased him even more than her beauty; the recollections
+connected with that first time in which he had ever beheld her, were also
+grateful and endearing; the harshness with which her parents spoke to her
+moved his compassion, and addressed itself to a temper peculiarly alive
+to the generosity that leans towards the weak and the wronged; the
+engaging mixture of mildness and gaiety with which she tended her peevish
+and sneering uncle, convinced him of her better and more enduring
+qualities of disposition and womanly heart.  And even--so strange and
+contradictory are our feelings--the very remembrance that she was
+connected with a family so hateful to him made her own image the more
+bright from the darkness that surrounded it.  For was it not with the
+daughter of his foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight?
+And is not that a common type of us all--as if Passion delighted in
+contradictions?  As the Diver, in Schiller's exquisite ballad, fastened
+upon the rock of coral in the midst of the gloomy sea, so we cling the
+more gratefully to whatever of fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out
+to us in the depths of Hate and Strife.
+
+But, perhaps, Vaudemont would not so suddenly and so utterly have
+rendered himself to a passion that began, already, completely to master
+his strong spirit, if he had not, from Camilla's embarrassment, her
+timidity, her blushes, intoxicated himself with the belief that his
+feelings were not unshared.  And who knows not that such a belief, once
+cherished, ripens our own love to a development in which hours are as
+years?
+
+It was, then, with such emotions as made him almost insensible to every
+thought but the luxury of breathing the same air as his cousin, which
+swept from his mind the Past, the Future--leaving nothing but a joyous,
+a breathless PRESENT on the Face of Time, that he repaired to Beaufort
+Court.  He did not return to H---- before he went, but he wrote to Fanny
+a short and hurried line to explain that he might be absent for some days
+at least, and promised to write again, if he should be detained longer
+than he anticipated.
+
+In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutions which had marked
+the eras in Fanny's moral existence took its date from that last time
+they had walked and conversed together.
+
+The very evening of that day, some hours after Philip was gone, and after
+Simon had retired to rest, Fanny was sitting before the dying fire in the
+little parlour in an attitude of deep and pensive reverie.  The old
+woman-servant, Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved Fanny
+with her whole heart, came into the room as was her wont before going to
+bed, to see that the fire was duly out, and all safe: and as she
+approached the hearth, she started to see Fanny still up.
+
+"Dear heart alive!"  she said; "why, Miss Fanny, you will catch your
+death of cold,-what are you thinking about?"
+
+"Sit down, Sarah; I want to speak to you."  Now, though Fanny was
+exceedingly kind, and attached to Sarah, she was seldom communicative to
+her, or indeed to any one.  It was usually in its own silence and
+darkness that that lovely mind worked out its own doubts.
+
+"Do you, my sweet young lady?  I'm sure anything I can do--" and Sarah
+seated herself in her master's great chair, and drew it close to Fanny.
+There was no light in the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward
+a pale glimmer on the two faces bending over it,--the one so strangely
+beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in its youth and
+innocence,--the other withered, wrinkled, meagre, and astute.  It was
+like the Fairy and the Witch together.
+
+"Well, miss," said the crone, observing that, after a considerable pause,
+Fanny was still silent,--"Well--"
+
+"Sarah, I have seen a wedding!"
+
+"Have you?"  and the old woman laughed.  "Oh! I heard it was to be
+to-day!--young Waldron's wedding!  Yes, they have been long sweethearts."
+
+"Were you ever married, Sarah?"
+
+"Lord bless you,--yes! and a very good husband I had, poor man!  But he's
+dead these many years; and if you had not taken me, I must have gone to
+the workhus."
+
+"He is dead!  Wasn't it very hard to live after that, Sarah?"
+
+"The Lord strengthens the hearts of widders!"  observed Sarah,
+sanctimoniously.
+
+"Did you marry your brother, Sarah?"  said Fanny, playing with the corner
+of her apron.
+
+"My brother!"  exclaimed the old woman, aghast.  "La! miss, you must not
+talk in that way,--it's quite wicked and heathenish!  One must not marry
+one's brother!"
+
+"No!" said Fanny, tremblingly, and turning very pale, even by that light.
+"No!--are you sure of that?"
+
+"It is the wickedest thing even to talk about, my dear young mistress;--
+but you're like a babby unborn!"
+
+Fanny was silent for some moments.  At length she said, unconscious that
+she was speaking aloud, "But he is not my brother, after all!"
+
+"Oh, miss, fie!  Are you letting your pretty head run on the handsome
+gentleman. _You_, too,--dear, dear! I see we're all alike, we poor femel
+creturs!  You! who'd have thought it?  Oh, Miss Fanny!--you'll break your
+heart if you goes for to fancy any such thing."
+
+"Any what thing?"
+
+"Why, that that gentleman will marry you!--I'm sure, tho' he's so simple
+like, he's some great gentleman!  They say his hoss is worth a hundred
+pounds!  Dear, dear! why didn't I ever think of this before?  He must be
+a very wicked man.  I see, now, why he comes here.  I'll speak to him,
+that, I will!--a very wicked man!"
+
+Sarah was startled from her indignation by Fanny's rising suddenly, and
+standing before her in the flickering twilight, almost like a shape
+transformed,--so tall did she seem, so stately, so dignified.
+
+"Is it of him that you are speaking?" said she, in a voice of calm but
+deep resentment--"of him!  If so, Sarah, we two can live no more in the
+same house."
+
+And these words were said with a propriety and collectedness that even,
+through all her terrors, showed at once to Sarah how much they now
+wronged Fanny who had suffered their lips to repeat the parrot-cry of the
+"idiot girl!"
+
+"O! gracious me!--miss--ma'am--I am so sorry--I'd rather bite out my
+tongue than say a word to offend you; it was only my love for you, dear
+innocent creature that you are!" and the honest woman sobbed with real
+passion as she clasped Fanny's hand.  "There have been so many young
+persons, good and harmless, yes, even as you are, ruined.  But you don't
+understand me.  Miss Fanny! hear me; I must try and say what I would say.
+That man, that gentleman--so proud, so well-dressed, so grand-like, will
+never marry you, never--never.  And if ever he says he does love you, and
+you say you love him, and you two don't marry, you will be ruined and
+wicked, and die--die of a broken heart!"
+
+The earnestness of Sarah's manner subdued and almost awed Fanny.  She
+sank down again in her chair, and suffered the old woman to caress and
+weep over her hand for some moments in a silence that concealed the
+darkest and most agitated feelings Fanny's life had hitherto known.  At
+length she said:--
+
+"Why may he not marry me if he loves me?--he is not my brother,--indeed
+he is not!  I'll never call him so again."
+
+"He cannot marry you," said Sarah, resolved, with a sort of rude
+nobleness, to persevere in what she felt to be a duty; "I don't say
+anything about money, because that does not always signify.  But he
+cannot marry you, because--because people who are hedicated one way never
+marry those who are hedicated and brought up in another.  A gentleman of
+that kind requires a wife to know--oh--to know ever so much; and you--"
+
+"Sarah," interrupted Fanny, rising again, but this time with a smile on
+her face, "don't say anything more about it; I forgive you, if you
+promise never to speak unkindly of him again--never--never--never,
+Sarah!"
+
+"But may I just tell him that--that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"That you are so young and innocent, and has no pertector like; and that
+if you were to love him it would be a shame in him--that it would!"
+
+And then (oh, no, Fanny, there was nothing clouded _now_ in your
+reason!)--and then the woman's alarm, the modesty, the instinct, the
+terror came upon her:--
+
+"Never! never! I will not love him, I do not love him, indeed, Sarah.  If
+you speak to him, I will never look you in the face again.  It is all
+past--all, dear Sarah!"
+
+She kissed the old woman; and Sarah, fancying that her sagacity and
+counsel had prevailed, promised all she was asked; so they went up-stairs
+together--friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+               "As the wind
+               Sobs, an uncertain sweetness comes from out
+               The orange-trees.
+
+               Rise up, Olympia.--She sleeps soundly.  Ho!
+               Stirring at last."  BARRY CORNWALL.
+
+The next day, Fanny was seen by Sarah counting the little hoard that she
+had so long and so painfully saved for her benefactor's tomb.  The money
+was no longer wanted for that object.  Fanny had found another; she said
+nothing to Sarah or to Simon.  But there was a strange complacent smile
+upon her lip as she busied herself in her work, that puzzled the old
+woman.  Late at noon came the postman's unwonted knock at the door.  A
+letter!--a letter for Miss Fanny.  A letter!--the first she had ever
+received in her life!  And it was from him!--and it began with "Dear
+Fanny."  Vaudemont had called her "dear Fanny" a hundred times, and the
+expression had become a matter of course.  But "Dear Fanny" seemed so
+very different when it was written.  The letter could not well be
+shorter, nor, all things considered, colder.  But the girl found no fault
+with it.  It began with "Dear Fanny," and it ended with "yours truly."
+"--Yours truly--mine truly--and how kind to write at all!"  Now it so
+happened that Vaudemont, having never merged the art of the penman into
+that rapid scrawl into which people, who are compelled to write hurriedly
+and constantly, degenerate, wrote a remarkably good hand,--bold, clear,
+symmetrical--almost too good a hand for one who was not to make money by
+caligraphy.  And after Fanny had got the words by heart, she stole gently
+to a cupboard and took forth some specimens of her own hand, in the shape
+of house and work memoranda, and extracts which, the better to help her
+memory, she had made from the poem-book Vaudemont had given her.  She
+gravely laid his letter by the side of these specimens, and blushed at
+the contrast; yet, after all, her own writing, though trembling and
+irresolute, was far from a bad or vulgar hand.  But emulation was now
+fairly roused within her.  Vaudemont, pre-occupied by more engrossing
+thoughts, and indeed, forgetting a danger which had seemed so thoroughly
+to have passed away, did not in his letter caution Fanny against going
+out alone.  She remarked this; and having completely recovered her own
+alarm at the attempt that had been made on her liberty, she thought she
+was now released from her promise to guard against a past and imaginary
+peril.  So after dinner she slipped out alone, and went to the mistress
+of the school where she had received her elementary education.  She had
+ever since continued her acquaintance with that lady, who, kindhearted,
+and touched by her situation, often employed her industry, and was far
+from blind to the improvement that had for some time been silently
+working in the mind of her old pupil.
+
+Fanny had a long conversation with this lady, and she brought back a
+bundle of books.  The light might have been seen that night, and many
+nights after, burning long and late from her little window.  And having
+recovered her old freedom of habits, which Simon, poor man, did not
+notice, and which Sarah, thinking that anything was better than moping at
+home, did not remonstrate against, Fanny went out regularly for two
+hours, or sometimes for even a longer period, every evening after old
+Simon had composed himself to the nap that filled up the interval between
+dinner and tea.
+
+In a very short time--a time that with ordinary stimulants would have
+seemed marvellously short--Fanny's handwriting was not the same thing;
+her manner of talking became different; she no longer called herself
+"Fanny" when she spoke; the music of her voice was more quiet and
+settled; her sweet expression of face was more thoughtful; the eyes
+seemed to have deepened in their very colour; she was no longer heard
+chaunting to herself as she tripped along.  The books that she nightly
+fed on had passed into her mind; the poetry that had ever unconsciously
+sported round her young years began now to create poetry in herself.
+Nay, it might almost have seemed as if that restless disorder of the
+intellect, which the dullards had called Idiotcy, had been the wild
+efforts, not of Folly, but of GENIUS seeking to find its path and outlet
+from the cold and dreary solitude to which the circumstances of her early
+life had compelled it.
+
+Days, even weeks, passed--she never spoke of Vaudemont.  And once, when
+Sarah, astonished and bewildered by the change in her young mistress,
+asked:
+
+"When does the gentleman come back?"
+
+Fanny answered, with a mysterious smile, "Not yet, I hope,--not quite
+yet!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+               "Thierry.  I do begin
+               To feel an alteration in my nature,
+               And in his full-sailed confidence a shower
+               Of gentle rain, that falling on the fire
+               Hath quenched it.
+
+               How is my heart divided
+               Between the duty of a son and love!"
+                   BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _Thierry and Theodorat_.
+
+Vaudemont had now been a month at Beaufort Court.  The scene of a
+country-house, with the sports that enliven it, and the accomplishments
+it calls forth, was one in which he was well fitted to shine.  He had
+been an excellent shot as a boy; and though long unused to the fowling-
+piece, had, in India, acquired a deadly precision with the rifle; so that
+a very few days of practice in the stubbles and covers of Beaufort Court
+made his skill the theme of the guests and the admiration of the keepers.
+Hunting began, and--this pursuit, always so strong a passion in the
+active man, and which, to the turbulence and agitation of his half-tamed
+breast, now excited by a kind of frenzy of hope and fear, gave a vent and
+release--was a sport in which he was yet more fitted to excel.  His
+horsemanship, his daring, the stone walls he leaped and the floods
+through which he dashed, furnished his companions with wondering tale and
+comment on their return home.  Mr. Marsden, who, with some other of
+Arthur's early friends, had been invited to Beaufort Court, in order to
+welcome its expected heir, and who retained all the prudence which had
+distinguished him of yore, when having ridden over old Simon he
+dismounted to examine the knees of his horse;--Mr. Marsden, a skilful
+huntsman, who rode the most experienced horses in the world, and who
+generally contrived to be in at the death without having leaped over
+anything higher than a hurdle, suffering the bolder quadruped (in case
+what is called the "knowledge of the country"--that is, the knowledge of
+gaps and gates--failed him) to perform the more dangerous feats alone, as
+he quietly scrambled over or scrambled through upon foot, and remounted
+the well-taught animal when it halted after the exploit, safe and sound;
+--Mr. Marsden declared that he never saw a rider with so little judgment
+as Monsieur de Vaudemont, and that the devil was certainly in him.
+
+This sort of reputation, commonplace and merely physical as it was in
+itself, had a certain effect upon Camilla; it might be an effect of fear.
+I do not say, for I do not know, what her feelings towards Vaudemont
+exactly were.  As the calmest natures are often those the most hurried
+away by their contraries, so, perhaps, he awed and dazzled rather than
+pleased her;--at least, he certainly forced himself on her interest.
+Still she would have started in terror if any one had said to her, "Do
+you love your betrothed less than when you met by that happy lake?"--and
+her heart would have indignantly rebuked the questioner.  The letters of
+her lover were still long and frequent; hers were briefer and more
+subdued.  But then there was constraint in the correspondence--it was
+submitted to her mother.  Whatever might be Vaudemont's manner to Camilla
+whenever occasion threw them alone together, he certainly did not make
+his attentions glaring enough to be remarked.  His eye watched her rather
+than his lip addressed; he kept as much aloof as possible from the rest
+of her family, and his customary bearing was silent even to gloom.  But
+there were moments when he indulged in a fitful exuberance of spirits,
+which had something strained and unnatural.  He had outlived Lord
+Lilburne's short liking; for since he had resolved no longer to keep
+watch on that noble gamester's method of play, he played but little
+himself; and Lord Lilburne saw that he had no chance of ruining him--
+there was, therefore, no longer any reason to like him.  But this was not
+all; when Vaudemont had been at the house somewhat more than two weeks,
+Lilburne, petulant and impatient, whether at his refusals to join the
+card-table, or at the moderation with which, when he did, he confined his
+ill-luck to petty losses, one day limped up to him, as he stood at the
+embrasure of the window, gazing on the wide lands beyond, and said:--
+
+"Vaudemont, you are bolder in hunting, they tell me, than you are at
+whist."
+
+"Honours don't tell against one--over a hedge!"
+
+"What do you mean?"  said Lilburne, rather haughtily.
+
+Vaudemont was, at that moment, in one of those bitter moods when the
+sense of his situation, the sight of the usurper in his home, often swept
+away the gentler thoughts inspired by his fatal passion.  And the tone of
+Lord Lilburne, and his loathing to the man, were too much for his temper.
+
+"Lord Lilburne," he said, and his lip curled, "if you had been born poor,
+you would have made a great fortune--you play luckily."
+
+"How am I to take this, sir?"
+
+"As you please," answered Vaudemont, calmly, but with an eye of fire.
+And he turned away.
+
+Lilburne remained on the spot very thoughtful: "Hum! he suspects me.  I
+cannot quarrel on such ground--the suspicion itself dishonours me--I must
+seek another."
+
+The next day, Lilburne, who was familiar with Mr. Harsden (though the
+latter gentleman never played at the same table), asked that prudent
+person after breakfast if he happened to have his pistols with him.
+
+"Yes; I always take them into the country--one may as well practise when
+one has the opportunity.  Besides, sportsmen are often quarrelsome; and
+if it is known that one shoots well,--it keeps one out of quarrels!"
+
+"Very true," said Lilburne, rather admiringly.  "I have made the same
+remark myself when I was younger.  I have not shot with a pistol for
+since years.  I am well enough now to walk out with the help of a stick.
+Suppose we practise for half-an-hour or so."
+
+"With all my heart," said Mr. Marsden.
+
+The pistols were brought, and they strolled forth;--Lord Lilburne found
+his hand out.
+
+"As I never hunt now," said the peer, and he gnashed his teeth, and
+glanced at his maimed limb; "for though lameness would not prevent my
+keeping my seat, violent exercise hurts my leg; and Brodie says any fresh
+accident might bring on tic douloureux;--and as my gout does not permit
+me to join the shooting parties at present, it would be a kindness in you
+to lend me your pistols--it would while away an hour or so; though, thank
+Heaven, my duelling days are over!"
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Marsden; and the pistols were consigned to Lord
+Lilburne.
+
+Four days from the date, as Mr. Marsden, Vaudemont, and some other
+gentlemen were making for the covers, they came upon Lord Lilburne, who,
+in a part of the park not within sight or sound of the house, was amusing
+himself with Mr. Marsden's pistols, which Dykeman was at hand to load for
+him.
+
+He turned round, not at all disconcerted by the interruption.
+
+"You have no idea how I've improved, Marsden:--just see!"  and he pointed
+to a glove nailed to a tree.  "I've hit that mark twice in five times;
+and every time I have gone straight enough along the line to have killed
+my man."
+
+"Ay, the mark itself does not so much signify," said Mr. Marsden, "at
+least, not in actual duelling--the great thing is to be in the line."
+
+While he spoke, Lord Lilburne's ball went a third time through the glove.
+His cold bright eye turned on Vaudemont, as he said, with a smile,--
+
+"They tell me you shoot well with a fowling-piece, my dear Vaudemont--are
+you equally adroit with a pistol?"
+
+"You may see, if you like; but you take aim, Lord Lilburne; that would be
+of no use in English duelling.  Permit me."
+
+He walked to the glove, and tore from it one of the fingers, which he
+fastened separately to the tree, took the pistol from Dykeman as he
+walked past him, gained the spot whence to fire, turned at once round,
+without apparent aim, and the finger fell to the ground.
+
+Lilburne stood aghast.
+
+"That's wonderful!"  said Marsden; "quite wonderful.  Where the devil did
+you get such a knack?--for it is only knack after all!"
+
+"I lived for many years in a country where the practice was constant,
+where all that belongs to rifle-shooting was a necessary accomplishment--
+a country in which man had often to contend against the wild beast.  In
+civilised states, man himself supplies the place of the wild beast--but
+we don't hunt him!--Lord Lilburne" (and this was added with a smiling and
+disdainful whisper), "you must practise a little more."
+
+But, disregardful of the advice, from that day Lord Lilburne's morning
+occupation was gone.  He thought no longer of a duel with Vaudemont.  As
+soon as the sportsman had left him, he bade Dykeman take up the pistols,
+and walked straight home into the library, where Robert Beaufort, who was
+no sportsman, generally spent his mornings.
+
+He flung himself into an arm-chair, and said, as he stirred the fire with
+unusual vehemence,--
+
+"Beaufort, I'm very sorry I asked you to invite Vaudemont.  He's a very
+ill-bred, disagreeable fellow!"  Beaufort threw down his steward's
+account-book, on which he was employed, and replied,--
+
+"Lilburne, I have never had an easy moment since that man has been in the
+house.  As he was your guest, I did not like to speak before, but don't
+you observe--you must observe--how like he is to the old family
+portraits?  The more I have examined him, the more another resemblance
+grows upon me.  In a word," said Robert, pausing and breathing hard, "if
+his name were not Vaudemont--if his history were not, apparently, so well
+known, I should say--I should swear, that it is Philip Morton who sleeps
+under this roof!"
+
+"Ha!" said Lilburne, with an earnestness that surprised Beaufort, who
+expected to have heard his brother-in-law's sneering sarcasm at his
+fears; "the likeness you speak of to the old portraits did strike me; it
+struck Marsden, too, the other day, as we were passing through the
+picture-gallery; and Marsden remarked it aloud to Vaudemont.  I remember
+now that he changed countenance and made no answer.  Hush! hush! hold
+your tongue, let me think--let me think.  This Philip--yes--yes--I and
+Arthur saw him with--with Gawtrey--in Paris--"
+
+"Gawtrey! was that the name of the rogue he was said to--"
+
+"Yes--yes--yes.  Ah! now I guess the meaning of those looks--those
+words," muttered Lilburne between his teeth.  "This pretension to the
+name of Vaudemont was always apocryphal--the story always but half
+believed--the invention of a woman in love with him--the claim on your
+property is made at the very time he appears in England.  Ha!  Have you a
+newspaper there?  Give it me.  No! 'tis not in this paper.  Ring the bell
+for the file!"
+
+"What's the matter? you terrify me!" gasped out Mr. Beaufort, as he rang
+the bell.
+
+"Why! have you not seen an advertisement repeated several times within
+the last month?"
+
+"I never read advertisements; except in the county paper, if land is to
+be sold."
+
+"Nor I often; but this caught my eye.  John" (here the servant entered),
+"bring the file of the newspapers.  The name of the witness whom Mrs.
+Morton appealed to was Smith, the same name as the captain; what was the
+Christian name?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"Here are the papers--shut the door--and here is the advertisement: 'If
+Mr. William Smith, son of Jeremiah Smith, who formerly rented the farm of
+Shipdale-Bury, under the late Right Hon. Charles Leopold Beaufort (that's
+your uncle), and who emigrated in the year 18-- to Australia, will apply
+to Mr. Barlow, Solicitor, Essex Street, Strand, he will hear of something
+to his advantage.'"
+
+"Good Heavens! why did not you mention this to me before?"
+
+"Because I did not think it of any importance.  In the first place, there
+might be some legacy left to the man, quite distinct from your business.
+Indeed, that was the probable supposition;--or even if connected with the
+claim, such an advertisement might be but a despicable attempt to
+frighten you.  Never mind--don't look so pale--after all, this is a proof
+that the witness is not found--that Captain Smith is neither the Smith,
+nor has discovered where the Smith is!"
+
+"True!" observed Mr. Beaufort: "true--very true!"
+
+"Humph!" said Lord Lilburne, who was still rapidly glancing over the
+file--"Here is another advertisement which I never saw before: this
+looks suspicious: 'If the person who called on the -- of September, on
+Mr. Morton, linendraper, &c., of N----, will renew his application
+personally or by letter, he may now obtain the information he sought
+for.'"
+
+"Morton!--the woman's brother! their uncle! it is too clear!"
+
+"But what brings this man, if he be really Philip Morton, what brings him
+here!--to spy or to threaten?"
+
+"I will get him out of the house this day."
+
+"No--no; turn the watch upon himself.  I see now; he is attracted by your
+daughter; sound her quietly; don't tell her to discourage his
+confidences; find out if he ever speaks of these Mortons.  Ha! I
+recollect--he has spoken to me of the Mortons, but vaguely--I forget
+what.  Humph! this is a man of spirit and daring--watch him, I say,--
+watch him!  When does Arthur came back?"
+
+"He has been travelling so slowly, for he still complains of his health,
+and has had relapses; but he ought to be in Paris this week, perhaps he
+is there now.  Good Heavens! he must not meet this man!"
+
+"Do what I tell you! get out all from your daughter.  Never fear: he can
+do nothing against you except by law.  But if he really like Camilla--"
+
+"He!--Philip Morton--the adventurer--the--"
+
+"He is the eldest son: remember you thought even of accepting the second.
+He--nay find the witness--he may win his suit; if he likes Camilla, there
+may be a compromise."
+
+Mr. Beaufort felt as if turned to ice.
+
+"You think him likely to win this infamous suit, then?"  he faltered.
+
+"Did not you guard against the possibility by securing the brother?  More
+worth while to do it with this man.  Hark ye! the politics of private are
+like those of public life,--when the state can't crush a demagogue, it
+should entice him over.  If you can ruin this dog" (and Lilburne stamped
+his foot fiercely, forgetful of the gout), "ruin him! hang him!  If you
+can't" (and here with a wry face he caressed the injured foot), "if you
+can't ('sdeath, what a twinge!), and he can ruin you,--bring him into the
+family, and make his secret ours!  I must go and lie down--I have
+overexcited myself."
+
+In great perplexity Beaufort repaired at once to Camilla.  His nervous
+agitation betrayed itself, though he smiled a ghastly smile, and intended
+to be exceeding cool and collected.  His questions, which confused and
+alarmed her, soon drew out the fact that the very first time Vaudemont
+had been introduced to her he had spoken of the Mortons; and that he had
+often afterwards alluded to the subject, and seemed at first strongly
+impressed with the notion that the younger brother was under Beaufort's
+protection; though at last he appeared reluctantly convinced of the
+contrary.  Robert, however agitated, preserved at least enough of his
+natural slyness not to let out that he suspected Vaudemont to be Philip
+Morton himself, for he feared lest his daughter should betray that
+suspicion to its object.
+
+"But," he said, with a look meant to win confidence, "I dare say he knows
+these young men.  I should like myself to know more about them.  Learn
+all you can, and tell me, and, I say--I say, Camilla,--he! he! he!--you
+have made a conquest, you little flirt, you!  Did he, this Vaudemont,
+ever say how much he admired you?"
+
+"He!--never!" said Camilla, blushing, and then turning pale.
+
+"But he looks it.  Ah! you say nothing, then.  Well, well, don't
+discourage him; that is to say,--yes, don't discourage him.  Talk to him
+as much as you can,--ask him about his own early life.  I've a particular
+wish to know--'tis of great importance to me."
+
+"But, my dear father," said Camilla, trembling and thoroughly bewildered,
+"I fear this man,--I fear--I fear--"
+
+Was she going to add, "I fear myself?"  I know not; but she stopped
+short, and burst into tears.
+
+"Hang these girls!"  muttered Mr. Beaufort, "always crying when they
+ought to be of use to one.  Go down, dry your eyes, do as I tell you,--
+get all you can from him.  Fear him!--yes, I dare say she does!"
+muttered the poor man, as he closed the door.
+
+From that time what wonder that Camilla's manner to Vaudemont was yet
+more embarrassed than ever: what wonder that he put his own heart's
+interpretation on that confusion.  Beaufort took care to thrust her more
+often than before in his way; he suddenly affected a creeping, fawning
+civility to Vaudemont; he was sure he was fond of music; what did he
+think of that new air Camilla was so fond of?  He must be a judge of
+scenery, he who had seen so much: there were beautiful landscapes in the
+neighbourhood, and, if he would forego his sports, Camilla drew prettily,
+had an eye for that sort of thing, and was so fond of riding.
+
+Vaudemont was astonished at this change, but his delight was greater than
+the astonishment.  He began to perceive that his identity was suspected;
+perhaps Beaufort, more generous than he had deemed him, meant to repay
+every early wrong or harshness by one inestimable blessing.  The generous
+interpret motives in extremes--ever too enthusiastic or too severe.
+Vaudemont felt as if he had wronged the wronger; he began to conquer even
+his dislike to Robert Beaufort.  For some days he was thus thrown much
+with Camilla; the questions her father forced her to put to him, uttered
+tremulously and fearfully, seemed to him proof of her interest in his
+fate.  His feelings to Camilla, so sudden in their growth--so ripened and
+so favoured by the Sub-Ruler of the world--CIRCUMSTANCE--might not,
+perhaps, have the depth and the calm completeness of that, One True Love,
+of which there are many counterfeits,--and which in Man, at least,
+possibly requires the touch and mellowness, if not of time, at least of
+many memories--of perfect and tried conviction of the faith, the worth,
+the value and the beauty of the heart to which it clings;--but those
+feelings were, nevertheless, strong, ardent, and intense.  He believed
+himself beloved--he was in Elysium.  But he did not yet declare the
+passion that beamed in his eyes.  No! he would not yet claim the hand of
+Camilla Beaufort, for he imagined the time would soon come when he could
+claim it, not as the inferior or the suppliant, but as the lord of her
+father's fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     "Here's something got amongst us!"--_Knight of Malta_.
+
+Two or three nights after his memorable conversation with Robert
+Beaufort, as Lord Lilburne was undressing, he said to his valet:
+
+"Dykeman, I am getting well."
+
+"Indeed, my lord, I never saw your lordship look better."
+
+"There you lie.  I looked better last year--I looked better the year
+before--and I looked better and better every year back to the age of
+twenty-one!  But I'm not talking of looks, no man with money wants looks.
+I am talking of feelings.  I feel better.  The gout is almost gone.  I
+have been quiet now for a month--that's a long time--time wasted when, at
+my age, I have so little time to waste.  Besides, as you know, I am very
+much in love!"
+
+"In love, my lord?  I thought that you told me never to speak of--"
+
+"Blockhead! what the deuce was the good of speaking about it when I was
+wrapped in flannels!  I am never in love when I am ill--who is?  I am
+well now, or nearly so; and I've had things to vex me--things to make
+this place very disagreeable; I shall go to town, and before this day
+week, perhaps, that charming face may enliven the solitude of Fernside.
+I shall look to it myself now.  I see you're going to say something.
+Spare yourself the trouble! nothing ever goes wrong if I myself take it
+in hand."
+
+The next day Lord Lilburne, who, in truth, felt himself uncomfortable and
+_gene_ in the presence of Vaudemont; who had won as much as the guests at
+Beaufort Court seemed inclined to lose; and who made it the rule of his
+life to consult his own pleasure and amusement before anything else, sent
+for his post-horses, and informed his brother-in-law of his departure.
+
+"And you leave me alone with this man just when I am convinced that he is
+the person we suspected!  My dear Lilburne, do stay till he goes."
+
+"Impossible!  I am between fifty and sixty--every moment is precious at
+that time of life.  Besides, I've said all I can say; rest quiet--act on
+the defensive--entangle this cursed Vaudemont, or Morton, or whoever he
+be, in the mesh of your daughter's charms, and then get rid of him, not
+before.  This can do no harm, let the matter turn out how it will.  Read
+the papers; and send for Blackwell if you want advice on any, new
+advertisements.  I don't see that anything more is to be done at present.
+You can write to me; I shall be at Park Lane or Fernside.  Take care of
+yourself.  You're a lucky fellow--you never have the gout!  Good-bye."
+
+And in half an hour Lord Lilburne was on the road to London.
+
+The departure of Lilburne was a signal to many others, especially and
+naturally to those he himself had invited.  He had not announced to such
+visitors his intention of going till his carriage was at the door.  This
+might be delicacy or carelessness, just as people chose to take it: and
+how they did take it, Lord Lilburne, much too selfish to be well-bred,
+did not care a rush.  The next day half at least of the guests were gone;
+and even Mr. Marsden, who had been specially invited on Arthur's account,
+announced that he should go after dinner! he always travelled by night--
+he slept well on the road--a day was not lost by it.
+
+"And it is so long since you saw Arthur," said Mr. Beaufort, in
+remonstrance, "and I expect him every day."
+
+"Very sorry--best fellow in the world--but the fact is, that I am not
+very well myself.  I want a little sea air; I shall go to Dover or
+Brighton.  But I suppose you will have the house full again about
+Christmas; in that case I shall be delighted to repeat my visit."
+
+The fact was, that Mr. Marsden, without Lilburne's intellect on the one
+hand, or vices on the other, was, like that noble sensualist, one of the
+broken pieces of the great looking-glass "SELF."  He was noticed in
+society as always haunting the places where Lilburne played at cards,
+carefully choosing some other table, and as carefully betting upon
+Lilburne's side.  The card-tables were now broken up; Vaudemont's
+superiority in shooting, and the manner in which he engrossed the talk of
+the sportsmen, displeased him.  He was bored--he wanted to be off-and off
+he went.  Vaudemont felt that the time was come for him to depart, too;
+Robert Beaufort--who felt in his society the painful fascination of the
+bird with the boa, who hated to see him there, and dreaded to see him
+depart, who had not yet extracted all the confirmation of his persuasions
+that he required, for Vaudemont easily enough parried the artless
+questions of Camilla--pressed him to stay with so eager a hospitality,
+and made Camilla herself falter out, against her will, and even against
+her remonstrances--(she never before had dared to remonstrate with either
+father or mother),--"Could not you stay a few days longer?"--that
+Vaudemont was too contented to yield to his own inclinations; and so for
+some little time longer he continued to move before the eyes of Mr.
+Beaufort--stern, sinister, silent, mysterious--like one of the family
+pictures stepped down from its frame.  Vaudemont wrote, however, to
+Fanny, to excuse his delay; and anxious to hear from her as to her own
+and Simon's health, bade her direct her letter to his lodging in London
+(of which he gave her the address), whence, if he still continued to
+defer his departure, it would be forwarded to him.  He did not do this,
+however, till he had been at Beaufort Court several days after Lilburne's
+departure, and till, in fact, two days before the eventful one which
+closed his visit.
+
+The party, now greatly diminished; were at breakfast, when the servant
+entered, as usual, with the letter-bag.  Mr. Beaufort, who was always
+important and pompous in the small ceremonials of life, unlocked the
+precious deposit with slow dignity, drew forth the newspapers, which he
+threw on the table, and which the gentlemen of the party eagerly seized;
+then, diving out one by one, jerked first a letter to Camilla, next a
+letter to Vaudemont, and, thirdly, seized a letter for himself.
+
+"I beg that there may be no ceremony, Monsieur de Vaudemont: pray excuse
+me and follow my example: I see this letter is from my son;" and he broke
+the seal.
+
+The letter ran thus:
+
+"MY DEAR FATHER,--Almost as soon as you receive this, I shall be with
+you.  Ill as I am, I can have no peace till I see and consult you.  The
+most startling--the most painful intelligence has just been conveyed to
+me.  It is of a nature not to bear any but personal communication.
+
+                    "Your affectionate son,
+                                         "ARTHUR BEAUFORT.
+"Boulogne.
+
+"P.S.--This will go by the same packet-boat that I shall take myself, and
+can only reach you a few hours before I arrive."
+
+
+Mr. Beaufort's trembling hand dropped the letter--he grasped the elbow of
+the chair to save himself from falling.  It was clear!--the same visitor
+who had persecuted himself had now sought his son!  He grew sick, his son
+might have heard the witness--might be convinced.  His son himself now
+appeared to him as a foe--for the father dreaded the son's honour!  He
+glanced furtively round the table, till his eye rested on Vaudemont, and
+his terror was redoubled, for Vaudemont's face, usually so calm, was
+animated to an extraordinary degree, as he now lifted it from the letter
+he had just read.  Their eyes met.  Robert Beaufort looked on him as a
+prisoner at the bar looks on the accusing counsel, when he first
+commences his harangue.
+
+"Mr. Beaufort," said the guest, "the letter you have given me summons me
+to London on important business, and immediately.  Suffer me to send for
+horses at your earliest convenience."
+
+"What's the matter?" said the feeble and seldom heard voice of Mrs.
+Beaufort.  "What's the matter, Robert?--is Arthur coming?"
+
+"He comes to-day," said the father, with a deep sigh; and Vaudemont, at
+that moment rising from his half-finished breakfast, with a bow that
+included the group, and with a glance that lingered on Camilla, as she
+bent over her own unopened letter (a letter from Winandermere, the seal
+of which she dared not yet to break), quitted the room.  He hastened to
+his own chamber, and strode to and fro with a stately step--the step of
+the Master--then, taking forth the letter, he again hurried over its
+contents.  They ran thus:
+
+DEAR, Sir,--At last the missing witness has applied to me.  He proves to
+be, as you conjectured, the same person who had called on Mr. Roger
+Morton; but as there are some circumstances on which I wish to take your
+instructions without a moment's delay, I shall leave London by the mail,
+and wait you at D---- (at the principal inn), which is, I understand,
+twenty miles on the high road from Beaufort Court.
+
+                        "I have the honor to be, sir,
+                                    "Yours, &c.,
+                                           "JOHN BARLOW.
+
+
+Vaudemont was yet lost in the emotions that this letter aroused, when
+they came to announce that his chaise was arrived.  As he went down the
+stairs he met Camilla, who was on the way to her own room.
+
+"Miss Beaufort," said he, in a low and tremulous voice, "in wishing you
+farewell I may not now say more.  I leave you, and, strange to say, I do
+not regret it, for I go upon an errand that may entitle me to return
+again, and speak those thoughts which are uppermost in my soul even at
+this moment."
+
+He raised her hand to his lips as he spoke, and at that moment Mr.
+Beaufort looked from the door of his own room, and cried, "Camilla."  She
+was too glad to escape.  Philip gazed after her light form for an
+instant, and then hurried down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+          "_Longueville_.--What! are you married, Beaufort?
+          _Beaufort_.--Ay, as fast
+          As words, and hands, and hearts, and priest,
+          Could make us."--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _Noble Gentleman_.
+
+In the parlour of the inn at D------ sat Mr. John Barlow.  He had just
+finished his breakfast, and was writing letters and looking over papers
+connected with his various business--when the door was thrown open, and a
+gentleman entered abruptly.
+
+"Mr. Beaufort," said the lawyer rising, "Mr. Philip Beaufort--for such I
+now feel you are by right--though," he added, with his usual formal and
+quiet smile, "not yet by law; and much--very much, remains to be done to
+make the law and the right the same;--I congratulate you on having
+something at last to work on.  I had begun to despair of finding our
+witness, after a month's advertising; and had commenced other
+investigations, of which I will speak to you presently, when yesterday,
+on my return to town from an errand on your business, I had the pleasure
+of a visit from William Smith himself.--My dear sir, do not yet be too
+sanguine.--It seems that this poor fellow, having known misfortune, was
+in America when the first fruitless inquiries were made.  Long after this
+he returned to the colony, and there met with a brother, who, as I drew
+from him, was a convict.  He helped the brother to escape.  They both
+came to England.  William learned from a distant relation, who lent him
+some little money, of the inquiry that had been set on foot for him;
+consulted his brother, who desired him to leave all to his management.
+The brother afterwards assured him that you and Mr. Sidney were both
+dead; and it seems (for the witness is simple enough to allow me to
+extract all) this same brother then went to Mr. Beaufort to hold out the
+threat of a lawsuit, and to offer the sale of the evidence yet
+existing--"
+
+"And Mr. Beaufort?"
+
+"I am happy to say, seems to have spurned the offer.  Meanwhile William,
+incredulous of his brother's report, proceeded to N----, learned nothing
+from Mr. Morton, met his brother again--and the brother (confessing that
+he had deceived him in the assertion that you and Mr. Sidney were dead)
+told him that he had known you in earlier life, and set out to Paris to
+seek you--"
+
+"Known me?--To Paris?"
+
+"More of this presently.  William returned to town, living hardly and
+penuriously on the little his brother bestowed on him, too melancholy and
+too poor for the luxury of a newspaper, and never saw our advertisement,
+till, as luck would have it, his money was out; he had heard nothing
+further of his brother, and he went for new assistance to the same
+relation who had before aided him.  This relation, to his surprise,
+received the poor man very kindly, lent him what he wanted, and then
+asked him if he had not seen our advertisement.  The newspaper shown him.
+contained both the advertisements--that relating to Mr. Morton's visitor,
+that containing his own name.  He coupled them both together--called on
+me at once.  I was from town on your business.  He returned to his own
+home; the next morning (yesterday morning) came a letter from his
+brother, which I obtained from him at last, and with promises that no
+harm should happen to the writer on account of it."
+
+Vaudemont took the letter and read as follows:
+
+"DEAR WILLIAM,--No go about the youngster I went after: all researches in
+vane.  Paris develish expensive.  Never mind, I have sene the other--the
+young B--; different sort of fellow from his father--very ill--frightened
+out of his wits--will go off to the governor, take me with him as far as
+Bullone.  I think we shall settel it now.  Mind as I saide before, don't
+put your foot in it.  I send you a Nap in the Seele--all I can spare.
+
+                         "Yours,
+                                   "JEREMIAH SMITH.
+
+"Direct to me, Monsieur Smith--always a safe name--Ship Inn, Bullone."
+
+
+"Jeremiah--Smith--Jeremiah!"
+
+"Do you know the name then?"  said Mr. Barlow.  "Well; the poor man owns
+that he was frightened at his brother--that he wished to do what is
+right--that he feared his brother would not let him--that your father was
+very kind to him--and so he came off at once to me; and I was very
+luckily at home to assure him that the heir was alive, and prepared to
+assert his rights.  Now then, Mr. Beaufort, we have the witness, but will
+that suffice us?  I fear not.  Will the jury believe him with no other
+testimony at his back?  Consider!--When he was gone I put myself in
+communication with some officers at Bow Street about this brother of his
+--a most notorious character, commonly called in the police slang Dashing
+Jerry--"
+
+"Ah!  Well, proceed!"
+
+"Your one witness, then, is a very poor, penniless man, his brother a
+rogue, a convict: this witness, too, is the most timid, fluctuating,
+irresolute fellow I ever saw; I should tremble for his testimony against
+a sharp, bullying lawyer.  And that, sir, is all at present we have to
+look to."
+
+"I see--I see.  It is dangerous--it is hazardous.  But truth is truth;
+justice--justice!  I will run the risk."
+
+"Pardon me, if I ask, did you ever know this brother?--were you ever
+absolutely acquainted with him--in the same house?"
+
+"Many years since--years of early hardship and trial--I was acquainted
+with him--what then?"
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," and the lawyer looked grave.  "Do you not see
+that if this witness is browbeat--is disbelieved, and if it be shown that
+you, the claimant, was--forgive my saying it--intimate with a brother of
+such a character, why the whole thing might be made to look like perjury
+and conspiracy.  If we stop here it is an ugly business!"
+
+"And is this all you have to say to me?  The witness is found--the only
+surviving witness--the only proof I ever shall or ever can obtain, and
+you seek to terrify me--me too--from using the means for redress
+Providence itself vouchsafes me--Sir, I will not hear you!"
+
+"Mr. Beaufort, you are impatient--it is natural.  But if we go to law--
+that is, should I have anything to do with it, wait--wait till your case
+is good.  And hear me yet.  This is not the only proof--this is not the
+only witness; you forget that there was an examined copy of the register;
+we may yet find that copy, and the person who copied it may yet be alive
+to attest it.  Occupied with this thought, and weary of waiting the
+result of our advertisement, I resolved to go into the neighbourhood of
+Fernside; luckily, there was a gentleman's seat to be sold in the
+village.  I made the survey of this place my apparent business.  After
+going over the house, I appeared anxious to see how far some alterations
+could be made--alterations to render it more like Lord Lilburne's villa.
+This led me to request a sight of that villa--a crown to the housekeeper
+got me admittance.  The housekeeper had lived with your father, and been
+retained by his lordship.  I soon, therefore, knew which were the rooms
+the late Mr. Beaufort had principally occupied; shown into his study,
+where it was probable he would keep his papers, I inquired if it were the
+same furniture (which seemed likely enough from its age and fashion) as
+in your father's time: it was so; Lord Lilburne had bought the house just
+as it stood, and, save a few additions in the drawing-room, the general
+equipment of the villa remained unaltered.  You look impatient!--I'm
+coming to the point.  My eye fell upon an old-fashioned bureau--"
+
+"But we searched every drawer in that bureau!"
+
+"Any secret drawers?"
+
+"Secret drawers!  No!  there were no secret drawers that I ever heard
+of!"
+
+Mr. Barlow rubbed his hands and mused a moment.
+
+"I was struck with that bureau; for any father had had one like it.  It
+is not English--it is of Dutch manufacture."
+
+"Yes, I have heard that my father bought it at a sale, three or four
+years after his marriage."
+
+"I learned this from the housekeeper, who was flattered by my admiring
+it.  I could not find out from her at what sale it had been purchased,
+but it was in the neighbourhood she was sure.  I had now a date to go
+upon; I learned, by careless inquiries, what sales near Fernside had
+taken place in a certain year.  A gentleman had died at that date whose
+furniture was sold by auction.  With great difficulty, I found that his
+widow was still alive, living far up the country: I paid her a visit;
+and, not to fatigue you with too long an account, I have only to say that
+she not only assured me that she perfectly remembered the bureau, but
+that it had secret drawers and wells, very curiously contrived; nay, she
+showed me the very catalogue in which the said receptacles are noticed in
+capitals, to arrest the eye of the bidder, and increase the price of the
+bidding.  That your father should never have revealed where he stowed
+this document is natural enough, during the life of his uncle; his own
+life was not spared long enough to give him much opportunity to explain
+afterwards, but I feel perfectly persuaded in my mind--that unless Mr.
+Robert Beaufort discovered that paper amongst the others he examined--in
+one of those drawers will be found all we want to substantiate your
+claims.  This is the more likely from your father never mentioning, even
+to your mother apparently, the secret receptacles in the bureau.  Why
+else such mystery?  The probability is that he received the document
+either just before or at the time he purchased the bureau, or that he
+bought it for that very purpose: and, having once deposited the paper in
+a place he deemed secure from curiosity--accident, carelessness, policy,
+perhaps, rather shame itself (pardon me) for the doubt of your mother's
+discretion, that his secrecy seemed to imply, kept him from ever alluding
+to the circumstance, even when the intimacy of after years made him more
+assured of your mother's self-sacrificing devotion to his interests.  At
+his uncle's death he thought to repair all!"
+
+"And how, if that be true--if that Heaven which has delivered me hitherto
+from so many dangers, has, in the very secrecy of my poor father, saved
+my birthright front the gripe of the usurper--how, I say, is---"
+
+"The bureau to pass into our possession?  That is the difficulty.  But we
+must contrive it somehow, if all else fail us; meanwhile, as I now feel
+sure that there has been a copy of that register made, I wish to know
+whether I should not immediately cross the country into Wales, and see if
+I can find any person in the neighbourhood of A-----  who did examine the
+copy taken: for, mark you, the said copy is only of importance as leading
+to the testimony of the actual witness who took it."
+
+"Sir," said Vaudemont, heartily shaking Mr. Barlow by the hand, "forgive
+my first petulance.  I see in you the very man I desired and wanted--your
+acuteness surprises and encourages me.  Go to Wales, and God speed you!"
+
+"Very well!--in five minutes I shall be off.  Meanwhile, see the witness
+yourself; the sight of his benefactor's son will do more to keep him
+steady than anything else.  There's his address, and take care not to
+give him money.  And now I will order my chaise--the matter begins to
+look worth expense.  Oh! I forgot to say that Monsieur Liancourt called
+on you yesterday about his own affairs.  He wishes much to consult you.
+I told him you would probably be this evening in town, and he said he
+would wait you at your lodging."
+
+"Yes--I will lose not a moment in going to London, and visiting our
+witness.  And he saw my mother at the altar!  My poor mother--Ah, how
+could my father have doubted her!"  and as he spoke, he blushed for the
+first time with shame at that father's memory.  He could not yet conceive
+that one so frank, one usually so bold and open, could for years have
+preserved from the woman who had sacrificed all to him, a secret to her
+so important!  That was, in fact, the only blot on his father's honour--
+a foul and grave blot it was.  Heavily had the punishment fallen on those
+whom the father loved best!  Alas, Philip had not yet learned what
+terrible corrupters are the Hope and the Fear of immense Wealthy, even to
+men reputed the most honourable, if they have been reared and pampered in
+the belief that wealth is the Arch blessing of life.  Rightly considered,
+in Philip Beaufort's solitary meanness lay the vast moral of this world's
+darkest truth!
+
+Mr. Barlow was gone.  Philip was about to enter his own chaise, when a
+dormeuse-and-four drove up to the inn-door to change horses.  A young man
+was reclining, at his length, in the carriage, wrapped in cloaks, and
+with a ghastly paleness--the paleness of long and deep disease upon his
+cheeks.  He turned his dim eye with, perhaps, a glance of the sick man's
+envy on that strong and athletic, form, majestic with health and vigour,
+as it stood beside the more humble vehicle.  Philip did not, however,
+notice the new arrival; he sprang into the chaise, it rattled on, and
+thus, unconsciously, Arthur Beaufort and his cousin had again met.  To
+which was now the Night--to which the Morning?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+          "_Bakam_.  Let my men guard the walls.
+          _Syana_.  And mine the temple."--_The Island Princess_.
+
+While thus eventfully the days and the weeks had passed for Philip, no
+less eventfully, so far as the inner life is concerned, had they glided
+away for Fanny.  She had feasted in quiet and delighted thought on the
+consciousness that she was improving--that she was growing worthier of
+him--that he would perceive it on his return.  Her manner was more
+thoughtful, more collected--less childish, in short, than it had been.
+And yet, with all the stir and flutter of the aroused intellect, the
+charm of her strange innocence was not scared away.  She rejoiced in the
+ancient liberty she had regained of going out and coming back when she
+pleased; and as the weather was too cold ever to tempt Simon from his
+fireside, except, perhaps, for half-an-hour in the forenoon, so the hours
+of dusk, when he least missed her, were those which she chiefly
+appropriated for stealing away to the good school-mistress, and growing
+wiser and wiser every day in the ways of God and the learning of His
+creatures.  The schoolmistress was not a brilliant woman.  Nor was it
+accomplishments of which Fanny stood in need, so much as the opening of
+her thoughts and mind by profitable books and rational conversation.
+Beautiful as were all her natural feelings, the schoolmistress had now
+little difficulty in educating feelings up to the dignity of principles.
+
+At last, hitherto patient under the absence of one never absent from her
+heart, Fanny received from him the letter he had addressed to her two
+days before he quitted Beaufort Court;--another letter--a second letter--
+a letter to excuse himself for not coming before--a letter that gave her
+an address that asked for a reply.  It was a morning of unequalled
+delight approaching to transport.  And then the excitement of answering
+the letter--the pride of showing how she was improved, what an excellent
+hand she now wrote!  She shut herself up in her room: she did not go out
+that day.  She placed the paper before her, and, to her astonishment, all
+that she had to say vanished from her mind at once.  How was she even to
+begin?  She had always hitherto called him "Brother."  Ever since her
+conversation with Sarah she felt that she could not call him that name
+again for the world--no, never!  But what should she call him--what could
+she call him?  He signed himself "Philip."  She knew that was his name.
+She thought it a musical name to utter, but to write it!  No! some
+instinct she could not account for seemed to whisper that it was
+improper--presumptuous, to call him "Dear Philip."  Had Burns's songs--
+the songs that unthinkingly he had put into her hand, and told her to
+read--songs that comprise the most beautiful love-poems in the world--had
+they helped to teach her some of the secrets of her own heart?  And had
+timidity come with knowledge?  Who shall say--who guess what passed
+within her?  Nor did Fanny herself, perhaps, know her own feelings: but
+write the words "Dear Philip" she could not.  And the whole of that day,
+though she thought of nothing else, she could not even get through the
+first line to her satisfaction.  The next morning she sat down again.  It
+would be so unkind if she did not answer immediately: she must answer.
+She placed his letter before her--she resolutely began.  But copy after
+copy was made and torn.  And Simon wanted her--and Sarah wanted her--and
+there were bills to be paid; and dinner was over before her task was
+really begun.  But after dinner she began in good earnest.
+
+"How kind in you to write to me" (the difficulty of any name was
+dispensed with by adopting none), "and to wish to know about my dear
+grandfather!  He is much the same, but hardly ever walks out now, and I
+have had a good deal of time to myself.  I think something will surprise
+you, and make you smile, as you used to do at first, when you come back.
+You must not be angry with me that I have gone out by myself very often
+--every day, indeed.  I have been so safe.  Nobody has ever offered to be
+rude again to Fanny" (the word "Fanny" was carefully scratched out with
+a penknife, and me substituted).  "But you shall know all when you come.
+And are you sure you are well--quite--quite well?  Do you never have the
+headaches you complained of sometimes?  Do say this?  Do you walk out-
+every day?  Is there any pretty churchyard near you now?  Whom do you
+walk with?
+
+"I have been so happy in putting the flowers on the two graves.  But I
+still give yours the prettiest, though the other is so dear to me.  I
+feel sad when I come to the last, but not when I look at the one I have
+looked at so long.  Oh, how good you were!  But you don't like me to
+thank you."
+
+"This is very stupid!" cried Fanny, suddenly throwing down her pen; "and
+I don't think I am improved at it;" and she half cried with vexation.
+Suddenly a bright idea crossed her.  In the little parlour where the
+schoolmistress privately received her, she had seen among the books, and
+thought at the time how useful it might be to her if ever she had to
+write to Philip, a little volume entitled, _The Complete Letter Writer_.
+She knew by the title-page that it contained models for every description
+of letter--no doubt it would contain the precise thing that would suit
+the present occasion.  She started up at the notion.  She would go--she
+could be back to finish the letter before post-time.  She put on her
+bonnet--left the letter, in her haste, open on the table--and just
+looking into the parlour in her way to the street door, to convince
+herself that Simon was asleep, and the wire-guard was on the fire, she
+hurried to the kind schoolmistress.
+
+One of the fogs that in autumn gather sullenly over London and its
+suburbs covered the declining day with premature dimness.  It grew darker
+and darker as she proceeded, but she reached the house in safety.  She
+spent a quarter of an hour in timidly consulting her friend about all
+kinds of letters except the identical one that she intended to write, and
+having had it strongly impressed on her mind that if the letter was to a
+gentleman at all genteel, she ought to begin "Dear Sir," and end with "I
+have the honour to remain;" and that he would be everlastingly offended
+if she did not in the address affix "Esquire" to his name (_that_, was a
+great discovery),--she carried off the precious volume, and quitted the
+house.  There was a wall that, bounding the demesnes of the school, ran
+for some short distance into the main street.  The increasing fog, here,
+faintly struggled against the glimmer of a single lamp at some little
+distance.  Just in this spot, her eye was caught by a dark object in the
+road, which she could scarcely perceive to be a carriage, when her hand
+was seized, and a voice said in her ear:--
+
+"Ah!  you will not be so cruel to me, I hope, as you were to my
+messenger!  I have come myself for you."
+
+She turned in great alarm, but the darkness prevented her recognising the
+face of him who thus accosted her.  "Let me go!"  she cried,--"let me
+go!"
+
+"Hush! hush!  No--no.  Come with me.  You shall have a house--carriage--
+servants!  You shall wear silk gowns and jewels!  You shall be a great
+lady!"
+
+As these various temptations succeeded in rapid course each new struggle
+of Fanny, a voice from the coach-box said in a low tone,--
+
+"Take care, my lord, I see somebody coming--perhaps a policeman!"
+
+Fanny heard the caution, and screamed for rescue.
+
+"Is it so?" muttered the molester.  And suddenly Fanny felt her voice
+checked--her head mantled--her light form lifted from the ground.  She
+clung--she struggled it was in vain.  It was the affair of a moment: she
+felt herself borne into the carriage--the door closed--the stranger was
+by her side, and his voice said:--
+
+"Drive on, Dykeman.  Fast!  fast!"
+
+Two or three minutes, which seemed to her terror as ages, elapsed, when
+the gag and the mantle were gently removed, and the same voice (she still
+could not see her companion) said in a very mild tone:--
+
+"Do not alarm yourself; there is no cause,--indeed there is not.  I would
+not have adopted this plan had there been any other--any gentler one.
+But I could not call at your own house--I knew no other where to meet
+you.
+
+"This was the only course left to me--indeed it was.  I made myself
+acquainted with your movements.  Do not blame me, then, for prying into
+your footsteps.  I watched for you all last night-you did not come out.
+I was in despair.  At last I find you.  Do not be so terrified: I will
+not even touch your hand if you do not wish it."
+
+As he spoke, however, he attempted to touch it, and was repulsed with an
+energy that rather disconcerted him.  The poor girl recoiled from him
+into the farthest corner of that prison in speechless horror--in the
+darkest confusion of ideas.  She did not weep--she did not sob--but her
+trembling seemed to shake the very carriage.  The man continued to
+address, to expostulate, to pray, to soothe.
+
+His manner was respectful.  His protestations that he would not harm her
+for the world were endless.
+
+"Only just see the home I can give you; for two days--for one day.  Only
+just hear how rich I can make you and your grandfather, and then if you
+wish to leave me, you shall."
+
+More, much more, to this effect, did he continue to pour forth, without
+extracting any sound from Fanny but gasps as for breath, and now and then
+a low murmur:
+
+"Let me go, let me go!  My grandfather, my blind grandfather!"
+
+And finally tears came to her relief, and she sobbed with a passion that
+alarmed, and perhaps even touched her companion, cynical and icy as he
+was.  Meanwhile the carriage seemed to fly.  Fast as two horses,
+thorough-bred, and almost at full speed, could go, they were whirled
+along, till about an hour, or even less, from the time in which she had
+been thus captured, the carriage stopped.
+
+"Are we here already?"  said the man, putting his head out of the window.
+"Do then as I told you.  Not to the front door; to my study."
+
+In two minutes more the carriage halted again, before a building which
+looked white and ghostlike through the mist.  The driver dismounted,
+opened with a latch-key a window-door, entered for a moment to light the
+candles in a solitary room from a fire that blazed on the hearth,
+reappeared, and opened the carriage-door.  It was with a difficulty for
+which they were scarcely prepared that they were enabled to get Fanny
+from the carriage.  No soft words, no whispered prayers could draw her
+forth; and it was with no trifling address, for her companion sought to
+be as gentle as the force necessary to employ would allow, that he
+disengaged her hands from the window-frame, the lining, the cushions, to
+which they clung;  and at last bore her into the house.  The driver
+closed the window again as he retreated, and they were alone.  Fanny then
+cast a wild, scarce conscious glance over the apartment.  It was small
+and simply furnished.  Opposite to her was an old-fashioned bureau, one
+of those quaint, elaborate monuments of Dutch ingenuity, which, during
+the present century, the audacious spirit of curiosity-vendors has
+transplanted from their native receptacles, to contrast, with grotesque
+strangeness, the neat handiwork of Gillow and Seddon.  It had a
+physiognomy and character of its own--this fantastic foreigner!  Inlaid
+with mosaics, depicting landscapes and animals; graceless in form and
+fashion, but still picturesque, and winning admiration, when more closely
+observed, from the patient defiance of all rules of taste which had
+formed its cumbrous parts into one profusely ornamented and eccentric
+whole.  It was the more noticeable from its total want of harmony with
+the other appurtenances of the room, which bespoke the tastes of the
+plain English squire.  Prints of horses and hunts, fishing-rods and
+fowling-pieces, carefully suspended, decorated the walls.  Not, however,
+on this notable stranger from the sluggish land rested the eye of Fanny.
+That, in her hurried survey, was arrested only by a portrait placed over
+the bureau--the portrait of a female in the bloom of life; a face so
+fair, a brow so candid, and eyes so pure, a lip so rich in youth and joy
+--that as her look lingered on the features Fanny felt comforted, felt as
+if some living protectress were there.  The fire burned bright and
+merrily; a table, spread as for dinner, was drawn near it.  To any other
+eye but Fanny's the place would have seemed a picture of English comfort.
+At last her looks rested on her companion.  He had thrown himself, with a
+long sigh, partly of fatigue, partly of satisfaction, on one of the
+chairs, and was contemplating her as she thus stood and gazed, with an
+expression of mingled curiosity and admiration; she recognised at once
+her first, her only persecutor.  She recoiled, and covered her face with
+her hands.  The man approached her:--
+
+"Do not hate me, Fanny,--do not turn away.  Believe me, though I have
+acted thus violently, here all violence will cease.  I love you, but I
+will not be satisfied till you love me in return.  I am not young, and I
+am not handsome, but I am rich and great, and I can make those whom I
+love happy,--so happy, Fanny!"
+
+But Fanny had turned away, and was now busily employed in trying to
+re-open the door at which she had entered.  Failing in this, she suddenly
+darted away, opened the inner door, and rushed into the passage with a
+loud cry.  Her persecutor stifled an oath, and sprung after and arrested
+her.  He now spoke sternly, and with a smile and a frown at once:--
+
+"This is folly;--come back, or you will repent it!  I have promised you,
+as a gentleman--as a nobleman, if you know what that is--to respect you.
+But neither will I myself be trifled with nor insulted.  There must be no
+screams!"
+
+His look and his voice awed Fanny in spite of her bewilderment and her
+loathing, and she suffered herself passively to be drawn into the room.
+He closed and bolted the door.  She threw herself on the ground in one
+corner, and moaned low but piteously.  He looked at her musingly for some
+moments, as he stood by the fire, and at last went to the door, opened
+it, and called "Harriet" in a low voice.  Presently a young woman, of
+about thirty, appeared, neatly but plainly dressed, and of a countenance
+that, if not very winning, might certainly be called very handsome.  He
+drew her aside for a few moments, and a whispered conference was
+exchanged.  He then walked gravely up to Fanny "My young friend," said
+he, "I see my presence is too much for you this evening.  This young
+woman will attend you--will get you all you want.  She can tell you, too,
+that I am not the terrible sort of person you seem to suppose.  I shall
+see you to-morrow."  So saying, he turned on his heel and walked out.
+
+Fanny felt something like liberty, something like joy, again.  She rose,
+and looked so pleadingly, so earnestly, so intently into the woman's
+face, that Harriet turned away her bold eyes abashed; and at this moment
+Dykeman himself looked into the room.
+
+"You are to bring us in dinner here yourself, uncle; and then go to my
+lord in the drawing-room."
+
+Dykeman looked pleased, and vanished.  Then Harriet came up and took
+Fanny's hand, and said, kindly,--
+
+"Don't be frightened.  I assure you, half the girls in London would give
+I don't know what to be in your place.  My lord never will force you to
+do anything you don't like--it's not his way; and he's the kindest and
+best man,--and so rich; he does not know what to do with his money!"
+
+To all this Fanny made but one answer,--she threw herself suddenly upon
+the woman's breast, and sobbed out: "My grandfather is blind, he cannot
+do without me--he will die--die.  Have you nobody you love, too?  Let me
+go--let me out!  What can they want with me?--I never did harm to any
+one."
+
+"And no one will harm you;--I swear it!"  said Harriet, earnestly.  "I
+see you don't know my lord.  But here's the dinner; come, and take a bit
+of something, and a glass of wine."
+
+Fanny could not touch anything except a glass of water, and that nearly
+choked her.  But at last, as she recovered her senses, the absence of her
+tormentor--the presence of a woman--the solemn assurances of Harriet
+that, if she did not like to stay there, after a day or two, she should
+go back, tranquillised her in some measure.  She did not heed the artful
+and lengthened eulogiums that the she-tempter then proceeded to pour
+forth upon the virtues, and the love, and the generosity, and, above all,
+the money of my lord.  She only kept repeating to herself, "I shall go
+back in a day or two."  At length, Harriet, having eaten and drunk as
+much as she could by her single self, and growing wearied with efforts
+from which so little resulted, proposed to Fanny to retire to rest.  She
+opened a door to the right of the fireplace, and lighted her up a winding
+staircase to a pretty and comfortable chamber, where she offered to help
+her to undress.  Fanny's complete innocence, and her utter ignorance of
+the precise nature of the danger that awaited her, though she fancied it
+must be very great and very awful, prevented her quite comprehending all
+that Harriet meant to convey by her solemn assurances that she should not
+be disturbed.  But she understood, at least, that she was not to see her
+hateful gaoler till the next morning; and when Harriet, wishing her "good
+night," showed her a bolt to her door, she was less terrified at the
+thought of being alone in that strange place.  She listened till
+Harriet's footsteps had died away, and then, with a beating heart, tried
+to open the door; it was locked from without.  She sighed heavily.  The
+window?--alas! when she had removed the shutter, there was another one
+barred from without, which precluded all hope there; she had no help for
+it but to bolt her door, stand forlorn and amazed at her own condition,
+and, at last, falling on her knees, to pray, in her own simple fashion,
+which since her recent visits to the schoolmistress had become more
+intelligent and earnest, to Him from whom no bolts and no bars can
+exclude the voice of the human heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+          "In te omnis domus inclinata recumbit."--VIRGIL.
+
+            [On thee the whole house rests confidingly.]
+
+Lord Lilburne, seated before a tray in the drawing-room, was finishing
+his own solitary dinner, and Dykeman was standing close behind him,
+nervous and agitated.  The confidence of many years between the master
+and the servant--the peculiar mind of Lilburne, which excluded him from
+all friendship with his own equals--had established between the two the
+kind of intimacy so common with the noble and the valet of the old French
+_regime_, and indeed, in much Lilburne more resembled the men of that day
+and land, than he did the nobler and statelier being which belongs to our
+own.  But to the end of time, whatever is at once vicious, polished, and
+intellectual, will have a common likeness.
+
+"But, my lord," said Dykeman, "just reflect.  This girl is so well known
+in the place; she will be sure to be missed; and if any violence is done
+to her, it's a capital crime, my lord--a capital crime.  I know they
+can't hang a great lord like you, but all concerned in it may----"
+
+Lord Lilburne interrupted the speaker by, "Give me some wine and hold
+your tongue!"  Then, when he had emptied his glass, he drew himself
+nearer to the fire, warmed his hands, mused a moment, and turned round to
+his confidant:--
+
+"Dykeman," said he, "though you're an ass and a coward, and you don't
+deserve that I should be so condescending, I will relieve your fears at
+once.  I know the law better than you can, for my whole life has been
+spent in doing exactly as I please, without ever putting myself in the
+power of LAW, which interferes with the pleasures of other men.  You are
+right in saying violence would be a capital crime.  Now the difference
+between vice and crime is this: Vice is what parsons write sermons
+against, Crime is what we make laws against.  I never committed a crime
+in all my life,--at an age between fifty and sixty--I am not going to
+begin.  Vices are safe things; I may have my vices like other men: but
+crimes are dangerous things--illegal things--things to be carefully
+avoided.  Look you" (and here the speaker, fixing his puzzled listener
+with his eye, broke into a grin of sublime mockery), "let me suppose you
+to be the World--that cringing valet of valets, the WORLD!  I should say
+to you this, 'My dear World, you and I understand each other well,--we
+are made for each other,--I never come in your way, nor you in mine.  If
+I get drunk every day in my own room, that's vice, you can't touch me; if
+I take an extra glass for the first time in my life, and knock down the
+watchman, that's a crime which, if I am rich, costs me one pound--perhaps
+five pounds; if I am poor, sends me to the treadmill.  If I break the
+hearts of five hundred old fathers, by buying with gold or flattery the
+embraces of five hundred young daughters, that's vice,--your servant, Mr.
+World!  If one termagant wench scratches my face, makes a noise, and goes
+brazen-faced to the Old Bailey to swear to her shame, why that's crime,
+and my friend, Mr. World, pulls a hemp-rope out of his pocket.'  Now, do
+you understand?  Yes, I repeat," he added, with a change of voice, "I
+never committed a crime in my life,--I have never even been accused of
+one,--never had an action of _crim. con._--of seduction against me.  I
+know how to manage such matters better.  I was forced to carry off this
+girl, because I had no other means of courting her.  To court her is all
+I mean to do now.  I am perfectly aware that an action for violence, as
+you call it, would be the more disagreeable, because of the very weakness
+of intellect which the girl is said to possess, and of which report I
+don't believe a word.  I shall most certainly avoid even the remotest
+appearance that could be so construed.  It is for that reason that no one
+in the house shall attend the girl except yourself and your niece.  Your
+niece I can depend on, I know; I have been kind to her; I have got her a
+good husband; I shall get her husband a good place;--I shall be godfather
+to her first child.  To be sure, the other servants will know there's a
+lady in the house, but to that they are accustomed; I don't set up for a
+Joseph.  They need know no more, unless you choose to blab it out.  Well,
+then, supposing that at the end of a few days, more or less, without any
+rudeness on my part, a young woman, after seeing a few jewels, and fine
+dresses, and a pretty house, and being made very comfortable, and being
+convinced that her grandfather shall be taken care of without her slaving
+herself to death, chooses of her own accord to live with me, where's the
+crime, and who can interfere with it?"
+
+"Certainly, my lord, that alters the case," said Dykeman, considerably
+relieved.  "But still," he added, anxiously, "if the inquiry is made,--if
+before all this is settled, it is found out where she is?"
+
+"Why then no harm will be done--no violence will be committed.  Her
+grandfather,--drivelling and a miser, you say--can be appeased by a
+little money, and it will be nobody's business, and no case can be made
+of it.  Tush! man!  I always look before I leap!  People in this world
+are not so charitable as you suppose.  What more natural than that a poor
+and pretty girl--not as wise as Queen Elizabeth--should be tempted to pay
+a visit to a rich lover!
+
+"All they can say of the lover is, that he is a very gay man or a very bad
+man, and that's saying nothing new of me.  But don't think it will be
+found out.  Just get me that stool; this has been a very troublesome
+piece of business--rather tried me.  I am not so young as I was.  Yes,
+Dykeman, something which that Frenchman Vaudemont, or Vautrien, or
+whatever his name is, said to me once, has a certain degree of truth.
+I felt it in the last fit of the gout, when my pretty niece was smoothing
+my pillows.  A nurse, as we grow older, may be of use to one.  I wish to
+make this girl like me, or be grateful to me.  I am meditating a longer
+and more serious attachment than usual,--a companion!"
+
+"A companion, my lord, in that poor creature!--so ignorant--so
+uneducated!"
+
+"So much the better.  This world palls upon me," said Lilburne, almost
+gloomily.  "I grow sick of the miserable quackeries--of the piteous
+conceits that men, women, and children call 'knowledge,'  I wish to catch
+a glimpse of nature before I die.  This creature interests me, and that
+is something in this life.  Clear those things away, and leave me."
+
+"Ay!" muttered Lilburne, as he bent over the fire alone, "when I first
+heard that that girl was the granddaughter of Simon Gawtrey, and,
+therefore, the child of the man whom I am to thank that I am a cripple,
+I felt as if love to her were a part of that hate which I owe to him; a
+segment in the circle of my vengeance.  But now, poor child!
+
+"I forget all this.  I feel for her, not passion, but what I never felt
+before, affection.  I feel that if I had such a child, I could understand
+what men mean when they talk of the tenderness of a father.  I have not
+one impure thought for that girl--not one.  But I would give thousands if
+she could love me.  Strange! strange! in all this I do not recognise
+myself!"
+
+Lord Lilburne retired to rest betimes that night; he slept sound; rose
+refreshed at an earlier hour than usual; and what he considered a fit of
+vapours of the previous night was passed away.  He looked with eagerness
+to an interview with Fanny.  Proud of his intellect, pleased in any of
+those sinister exercises of it which the code and habits of his life so
+long permitted to him, he regarded the conquest of his fair adversary
+with the interest of a scientific game.  Harriet went to Fanny's room to
+prepare her to receive her host; and Lord Lilburne now resolved to make
+his own visit the less unwelcome by reserving for his especial gift some
+showy, if not valuable, trinkets, which for similar purposes never failed
+the depositories of the villa he had purchased for his pleasures.  He,
+recollected that these gewgaws were placed in the bureau in the study; in
+which, as having a lock of foreign and intricate workmanship, he usually
+kept whatever might tempt cupidity in those frequent absences when the
+house was left guarded but by two women servants.  Finding that Fanny had
+not yet quitted her own chamber, while Harriet went up to attend and
+reason with her, he himself limped into the study below, unlocked the
+bureau, and was searching in the drawers, when he heard the voice of
+Fanny above, raised a little as if in remonstrance or entreaty; and he
+paused to listen.  He could not, however, distinguish what was said; and
+in the meanwhile, without attending much to what he was about, his bands
+were still employed in opening and shutting the drawers, passing through
+the pigeon-holes, and feeling for a topaz brooch, which he thought could
+not fail of pleasing the unsophisticated eyes of Fanny.  One of the
+recesses was deeper than the rest; he fancied the brooch was there; he
+stretched his hand into the recess; and, as the room was partially
+darkened by the lower shutters from without, which were still unclosed to
+prevent any attempted escape of his captive, he had only the sense of
+touch to depend on; not finding the brooch, he stretched on till he came
+to the extremity of the recess, and was suddenly sensible of a sharp
+pain; the flesh seemed caught as in a trap; he drew back his finger with
+sudden force and a half-suppressed exclamation, and he perceived the
+bottom or floor of the pigeon-hole recede, as if sliding back.  His
+curiosity was aroused; he again felt warily and cautiously, and
+discovered a very slight inequality and roughness at the extremity of the
+recess.  He was aware instantly that there was some secret spring; he
+pressed with some force on the spot, and he felt the board give way; he
+pushed it back towards him, and it slid suddenly with a whirring noise,
+and left a cavity below exposed to his sight.  He peered in, and drew
+forth a paper; he opened it at first carelessly, for he was still trying
+to listen to Fanny.  His eye ran rapidly over a few preliminary lines
+till it rested on what follows:
+
+"Marriage.  The year 18--
+
+"No. 83, page 21.
+
+"Philip Beaufort, of this parish of A-----, and Catherine Morton, of the
+parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, London, were married in this church by
+banns, this 12th day of November, in the year one thousand eight hundred
+and ----' by me,
+                                      "CALEB PRICE, Vicar.
+
+"This marriage was solemnised between us,
+                                      "PHILIP BEAUFORT.
+                                      "CATHERINE MORTON.
+
+"In the presence of
+                                      "DAVID APREECE.
+                                      "WILLIAM SMITH.
+
+"The above is a true copy taken from the registry of marriages, in A-----
+parish, this 19th day of March, 18--, by me,
+                                "MORGAN JONES, Curate of C-------."
+
+
+     [This is according to the form customary at the date at which the
+     copy was made.  There has since been an alteration.]
+
+
+Lord Lilburne again cast his eye over the lines prefixed to this
+startling document, which, being those written at Caleb's desire, by Mr.
+Jones to Philip Beaufort, we need not here transcribe to the reader.  At
+that instant Harriet descended the stairs, and came into the room; she
+crept up on tiptoe to Lilburne, and whispered,--
+
+"She is coming down, I think; she does not know you are here."
+
+"Very well--go!"  said Lord Lilburne.  And scarce had Harriet left the
+room, when a carriage drove furiously to the door, and Robert Beaufort
+rushed into the study.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+     "Gone, and none know it.
+
+     How now?--What news, what hopes and steps discovered!"
+     BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _The Pilgrim_.
+
+When Philip arrived at his lodgings in town it was very late, but he
+still found Liancourt waiting the chance of his arrival.  The Frenchman
+was full of his own schemes and projects.  He was a man of high repute
+and connections; negotiations for his recall to Paris had been entered
+into; he was divided between a Quixotic loyalty and a rational prudence;
+he brought his doubts to Vaudemont.  Occupied as he was with thoughts of
+so important and personal a nature, Philip could yet listen patiently to
+his friend, and weigh with him the pros and cons.  And after having
+mutually agreed that loyalty and prudence would both be best consulted by
+waiting a little, to see if the nation, as the Carlists yet fondly
+trusted, would soon, after its first fever, offer once more the throne
+and the purple to the descendant of St. Louis, Liancourt, as he lighted
+his cigar to walk home, said, "A thousand thanks to you, my dear friend:
+and how have you enjoyed yourself in your visit?  I am not surprised or
+jealous that Lilburne did not invite me, as I do not play at cards, and
+as I have said some sharp things to him!"
+
+"I fancy I shall have the same disqualifications for another invitation,"
+said Vaudemont, with a severe smile.  "I may have much to disclose to you
+in a few days.  At present my news is still unripe.  And have you seen
+anything of Lilburne?  He left us some days since.  Is he in London?"
+"Yes; I was riding with our friend Henri, who wished to try a new horse
+off the stones, a little way into the country yesterday.  We went through
+------ and H----.  Pretty places, those.  Do you know them?"
+
+"Yes; I know H----."
+
+"And just at dusk, as we were spurring back to town, whom should I see
+walking on the path of the high-road but Lord Lilburne himself!  I could
+hardly believe my eyes.  I stopped, and, after asking him about you, I
+could not help expressing my surprise to see him on foot at such a place.
+You know the man's sneer.  'A Frenchman so gallant as Monsieur de
+Liancourt,' said he, 'need not be surprised at much greater miracles; the
+iron moves to the magnet: I have a little adventure here.  Pardon me if I
+ask you to ride on.'  Of course I wished him good day; and a little
+farther up the road I saw a dark plain chariot, no coronet, no arms, no
+footman only the man on the box, but the beauty of the horses assured me
+it must belong to Lilburne.  Can you conceive such absurdity in a man of
+that age--and a very clever fellow too?  Yet, how is it that one does not
+ridicule it in Lilburne, as one would in another man between fifty and
+sixty?"
+
+"Because one does not ridicule,--one loathes-him."
+
+"No; that's not it.  The fact is that one can't fancy Lilburne old.  His
+manner is young--his eye is young.  I never saw any one with so much
+vitality.  'The bad heart and the good digestion'--the twin secrets for
+wearing well, eh!"
+
+"Where did you meet him--not near H----?"
+
+"Yes; close by.  Why?  Have you any adventure there too?  Nay, forgive
+me; it was but a jest.  Good night!"
+
+Vaudemont fell into an uneasy reverie: he could not divine exactly why
+he should be alarmed; but he was alarmed at Lilburne being in the
+neighbourhood of H----.  It was the foot of the profane violating the
+sanctuary.  An undefined thrill shot through him, as his mind coupled
+together the associations of Lilburne and Fanny; but there was no ground
+for forebodings.  Fanny did not stir out alone.  An adventure, too--pooh!
+Lord Lilburne must be awaiting a willing and voluntary appointment, most
+probably from some one of the fair but decorous frailties of London.
+Lord Lilburne's more recent conquests were said to be among those of his
+own rank; suburbs are useful for such assignations.  Any other thought
+was too horrible to be contemplated.  He glanced to the clock; it was
+three in the morning.  He would go to H---- early, even before he sought
+out Mr. William Smith.  With that resolution, and even his hardy frame
+worn out by the excitement of the day, he threw himself on his bed and
+fell asleep.
+
+He did not wake till near nine, and had just dressed, and hurried over
+his abstemious breakfast, when the servant of the house came to tell him
+that an old woman, apparently in great agitation, wished to see him.  His
+head was still full of witnesses and lawsuits; and he was vaguely
+expecting some visitor connected with his primary objects, when Sarah
+broke into the room.  She cast a hurried, suspicious look round her, and
+then throwing herself on her knees to him, "Oh!" she cried, "if you have
+taken that poor young thing away, God forgive you.  Let her come back
+again. It shall be all hushed up.  Don't ruin her! don't, that's a dear
+good gentleman!"
+
+"Speak plainly, woman--what do you mean?"  cried Philip, turning pale.
+
+A very few words sufficed for an explanation: Fanny's disappearance the
+previous night; the alarm of Sarah at her non-return; the apathy of old
+Simon, who did not comprehend what had happened, and quietly went to bed;
+the search Sarah had made during half the night; the intelligence she had
+picked up, that the policeman, going his rounds, had heard a female
+shriek near the school; but that all he could perceive through the mist
+was a carriage driving rapidly past him; Sarah's suspicions of Vaudemont
+confirmed in the morning, when, entering Fanny's room, she perceived the
+poor girl's unfinished letter with his own, the clue to his address that
+the letter gave her; all this, ere she well understood what she herself
+was talking about,--Vaudemont's alarm seized, and the reflection of a
+moment construed: the carriage; Lilburne seen lurking in the
+neighbourhood the previous day; the former attempt;--all flashed on him
+with an intolerable glare.  While Sarah was yet speaking, he rushed from
+the house, he flew to Lord Lilburne's in Park Lane; he composed his
+manner, he inquired calmly.  His lordship had slept from home; he was,
+they believed, at Fernside: Fernside!  H---- was on the direct way to
+that villa.  Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since he heard the story
+ere he was on the road, with such speed as the promise of a guinea a mile
+could extract from the spurs of a young post-boy applied to the flanks of
+London post-horses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+                    "Ex humili magna ad fastigia rerum
+                    Extollit."--JUVENAL.
+
+               [Fortune raises men from low estate to the very
+               summit of prosperity.]
+
+When Harriet had quitted Fanny, the waiting-woman, craftily wishing to
+lure her into Lilburne's presence, had told her that the room below was
+empty; and the captive's mind naturally and instantly seized on the
+thought of escape.  After a brief breathing pause, she crept noiselessly
+down the stairs, and gently opened the door; and at the very instant she
+did so, Robert Beaufort entered from the other door; she drew back in
+terror, when, what was her astonishment in hearing a name uttered that
+spell-bound her--the last name she could have expected to hear; for
+Lilburne, the instant he saw Beaufort, pale, haggard, agitated, rush into
+the room, and bang the door after him, could only suppose that something
+of extraordinary moment had occurred with regard to the dreaded guest,
+and cried:
+
+"You come about Vaudemont!  Something has happened about Vaudemont!
+about Philip!  What is it?  Calm yourself."
+
+Fanny, as the name was thus abruptly uttered, actually thrust her face
+through the door; but she again drew back, and, all her senses
+preternaturally quickened at that name, while she held the door almost
+closed, listened with her whole soul in her ears.
+
+The faces of both the men were turned from her, and her partial entry had
+not been perceived.
+
+"Yes," said Robert Beaufort, leaning his weight, as if ready to sink to
+the ground, upon Lilburne's shoulder, "Yes; Vaudemont, or Philip, for
+they are one,--yes, it is about that man I have come to consult you.
+Arthur has arrived."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And Arthur has seen the wretch who visited us, and the rascal's manner
+has so imposed on him, so convinced him that Philip is the heir to all
+our property, that he has come over-ill, ill--I fear" (added Beaufort, in
+a hollow voice), "dying, to--to--"
+
+"To guard against their machinations?"
+
+"No, no, no--to say that if such be the case, neither honour nor
+conscience will allow us to resist his rights.  He is so obstinate in
+this matter; his nerves so ill bear reasoning and contradiction, that I
+know not what to do--"
+
+"Take breath-go on."
+
+"Well, it seems that this man found out Arthur almost as soon as my son
+arrived at Paris--that he has persuaded Arthur that he has it in his
+power to prove the marriage--that he pretended to be very impatient for a
+decision--that Arthur, in order to gain time to see me, affected
+irresolution--took him to Boulogne, for the rascal does not dare to
+return to England--left him there; and now comes back, my own son, as my
+worst enemy, to conspire against me for my property!  I could not have
+kept my temper if I had stayed.  But that's not all--that's not the
+worst: Vaudemont left me suddenly in the morning on the receipt of a
+letter.  In taking leave of Camilla he let fall hints which fill me with
+fear.  Well, I inquired his movements as I came along; he had stopped at
+D----, had been closeted for above an hour with a man whose name the
+landlord of the inn knew, for it was on his carpet-bag--the name was
+Barlow.  You remember the advertisements!  Good Heavens! what is to be
+done?  I would not do anything unhandsome or dishonest.  But there never
+was a marriage.  I never will believe there was a marriage--never!"
+
+"There was a marriage, Robert Beaufort," said Lord Lilburne, almost
+enjoying the torture he was about to inflict; "and I hold here a paper
+that Philip Vaudemont--for so we will yet call him--would give his right
+hand to clutch for a moment.  I have but just found it in a secret cavity
+in that bureau.  Robert, on this paper may depend the fate, the fortune,
+the prosperity, the greatness of Philip Vaudemont;--or his poverty, his
+exile, his ruin.  See!"
+
+Robert Beaufort glanced over the paper held out to him--dropped it on the
+floor--and staggered to a seat.  Lilburne coolly replaced the document in
+the bureau, and, limping to his brother-in-law, said with a smile,--
+
+"But the paper is in my possession--I will not destroy it.  No; I have no
+right to destroy it.  Besides, it would be a crime; but if I give it to
+you, you can do with it as you please."
+
+"O Lilburne, spare me--spare me.  I meant to be an honest man.  I--I--"
+And Robert Beaufort sobbed.  Lilburne looked at him in scornful surprise.
+
+"Do not fear that I shall ever think worse of you; and who else will know
+it?  Do not fear me.  No;--I, too, have reasons to hate and to fear this
+Philip Vaudemont; for Vaudemont shall be his name, and not Beaufort, in
+spite of fifty such scraps of paper!  He has known a man--my worst foe--
+he has secrets of mine--of my past-perhaps of my present:  but I laugh at
+his knowledge while he is a wandering adventurer;--I should tremble at
+that knowledge if he could thunder it out to the world as Philip Beaufort
+of Beaufort Court!  There, I am candid with you.  Now hear my plan.
+Prove to Arthur that his visitor is a convicted felon, by sending the
+officers of justice after him instantly--off with him again to the
+Settlements.  Defy a single witness--entrap Vaudemont back to France and
+prove him (I think I will prove him such--I think so--with a little money
+and a little pains)--prove him the accomplice of William Gawtrey, a
+coiner and a murderer!  Pshaw! take yon paper.  Do with it as you will--
+keep it-give it to Arthur--let Philip Vaudemont have it, and Philip
+Vaudemont will be rich and great, the happiest man between earth and
+paradise!  On the other hand, come and tell me that you have lost it, or
+that I never gave you such a paper, or that no such paper ever existed;
+and Philip Vaudemont may live a pauper, and die, perhaps, a slave at the
+galleys!  Lose it, I say,--lose it,--and advise with me upon the rest."
+
+Horror-struck, bewildered, the weak man gazed upon the calm face of the
+Master-villain, as the scholar of the old fables might have gazed on the
+fiend who put before him worldly prosperity here and the loss of his soul
+hereafter.  He had never hitherto regarded Lilburne in his true light.
+He was appalled by the black heart that lay bare before him.
+
+"I can't destroy it--I can't," he faltered out; "and if I did, out of
+love for Arthur,--don't talk of galleys,--of vengeance--I--I--"
+
+"The arrears of the rents you have enjoyed will send you to gaol for your
+life.  No, no; _don't_ destroy the paper."
+
+Beaufort rose with a desperate effort; he moved to the bureau.  Fanny's
+heart was on her lips;--of this long conference she had understood only
+the one broad point on which Lilburne had insisted with an emphasis that
+could have enlightened an infant; and he looked on Beaufort as an infant
+then--_On that paper rested Philip Vaudemont's fate--happiness if saved,
+ruin if destroyed; Philip--her Philip!_  And Philip himself had said to
+her once--when had she ever forgotten his words? and now how those words
+flashed across her--Philip himself had said to her once, "Upon a scrap of
+paper, if I could but find it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole
+happiness, all that I care for in life."--Robert Beaufort moved to the
+bureau--he seized the document--he looked over it again, hurriedly, and
+ere Lilburne, who by no means wished to have it destroyed in his own
+presence, was aware of his intention--he hastened with tottering steps to
+the hearth-averted his eyes, and cast it on the fire.  At that instant
+something white--he scarce knew what, it seemed to him as a spirit, as a
+ghost--darted by him, and snatched the paper, as yet uninjured, from the
+embers!  There was a pause for the hundredth part of a moment:--a
+gurgling sound of astonishment and horror from Beaufort--an exclamation
+from Lilburne--a laugh from Fanny, as, her eyes flashing light, with a
+proud dilation of stature, with the paper clasped tightly to her bosom,
+she turned her looks of triumph from one to the other.  The two men were
+both too amazed, at the instant, for rapid measures.  But Lilburne,
+recovering himself first, hastened to her; she eluded his grasp--she made
+towards the door to the passage; when Lilburne, seriously alarmed, seized
+her arm;--
+
+"Foolish child!--give me that paper!"
+
+"Never but with my life!"  And Fanny's cry for help rang through the
+house.
+
+"Then--" the speech died on his lips, for at that instant a rapid stride
+was heard without--a momentary scuffle--voices in altercation;--the door
+gave way as if a battering ram had forced it;--not so much thrown forward
+as actually hurled into the room, the body of Dykeman fell heavily, like
+a dead man's, at the very feet of Lord Lilburne--and Philip Vaudemont
+stood in the doorway!
+
+The grasp of Lilburne on Fanny's arm relaxed, and the girl, with one
+bound, sprung to Philip's breast.  "Here, here!" she cried, "take it--
+take it!" and she thrust the paper into his hand.  "Don't let them have
+it--read it--see it--never mind me!"  But Philip, though his hand
+unconsciously closed on the precious document, did mind Fanny; and in
+that moment her cause was the only one in the world to him.
+
+"Foul villain!" he said, as he strode to Lilburne, while Fanny still
+clung to his breast: "Speak!--speak!--is--she--is she?--man--man, speak!
+--you know what I would say!--She is the child of your own daughter--the
+grandchild of that Mary whom you dishonoured--the child of the woman whom
+William Gawtrey saved from pollution!  Before he died, Gawtrey commended
+her to my care!--O God of Heaven!--speak!--I am not too late!"
+
+The manner, the words, the face of Philip left Lilburne terror-stricken
+with conviction.  But the man's crafty ability, debased as it was,
+triumphed even over remorse for the dread guilt meditated,--over
+gratitude for the dread guilt spared.  He glanced at Beaufort--at
+Dykeman, who now, slowly recovering, gazed at him with eyes that seemed
+starting from their sockets; and lastly fixed his look on Philip himself.
+There were three witnesses--presence of mind was his great attribute.
+
+"And if, Monsieur de Vaudemont, I knew, or, at least, had the firmest
+persuasion that Fanny was my grandchild, what then?  Why else should she
+be here?--Pooh, sir!  I am an old man."
+
+Philip recoiled a step in wonder; his plain sense was baffled by the calm
+lie.  He looked down at Fanny, who, comprehending nothing of what was
+spoken, for all her faculties, even her very sense of sight and hearing,
+were absorbed in her impatient anxiety for him, cried out:
+
+"No harm has come to Fanny--none: only frightened.  Read!--Read!--Save
+that paper!--You know what you once said about a mere scrap of paper!
+Come away! Come!"
+
+He did now cast his eyes on the paper he held.  That was an awful moment
+for Robert Beaufort--even for Lilburne!  To snatch the fatal document
+from that gripe!  They would as soon have snatched it from a tiger!  He
+lifted his eyes--they rested on his mother's picture!  Her lips smiled on
+him!  He turned to Beaufort in a state of emotion too exulting, too blest
+for vulgar vengeance--for vulgar triumph--almost for words.
+
+"Look yonder, Robert Beaufort--look!"  and he pointed to the picture.
+"Her name is spotless!  I stand again beneath a roof that was my
+father's,--the Heir of Beaufort!  We shall meet before the justice of our
+country.  For you, Lord Lilburne, I will believe you: it is too horrible
+to doubt even your intentions.  If wrong had chanced to her, I would have
+rent you where you stand, limb from limb.  And thank her",--(for Lilburne
+recovered at this language the daring of his youth, before calculation,
+indolence, and excess had dulled the edge of his nerves; and, unawed by
+the height, and manhood, and strength of his menacer, stalked haughtily
+up to him)--"and thank your relationship to her," said Philip, sinking
+his voice into a whisper, "that I do not brand you as a pilferer and a
+cheat!  Hush, knave!--hush, pupil of George Gawtrey!--there are no duels
+for me but with men of honour!"
+
+Lilburne now turned white, and the big word stuck in his throat.  In
+another instant Fanny and her guardian had quitted the house.
+
+"Dykeman," said Lord Lilburne after a long silence, "I shall ask you
+another time how you came to admit that impertinent person.  At present,
+go and order breakfast for Mr. Beaufort."
+
+As soon as Dykeman, more astounded, perhaps, by his lord's coolness than
+even by the preceding circumstances, had left the study, Lilburne came up
+to Beaufort,--who seemed absolutely stricken as if by palsy,--and
+touching him impatiently and rudely, said,--
+
+"'Sdeath, man!--rouse yourself!  There is not a moment to be lost!  I
+have already decided on what you are to do.  This paper is not worth a
+rush, unless the curate who examined it will depose to that fact.  He is
+a curate--a Welsh curate;--you are yet Mr. Beaufort, a rich and a great
+man.  The curate, properly managed, may depose to the contrary; and then
+we will indict them all for forgery and conspiracy.  At the worst, you
+can, no doubt, get the parson to forget all about it--to stay away.  His
+address was on the certificate:
+
+"--C-----.  Go yourself into Wales without an instant's delay-- Then,
+having arranged with Mr. Jones, hurry back, cross to Boulogne, and buy
+this convict and his witnesses, buy them!  That, now, is the only thing.
+Quick! quick!--quick!  Zounds, man!  if it were my affair, my estate, I
+would not care a pin for that fragment of paper; I should rather rejoice
+at it.  I see how it could be turned against them!  Go!"
+
+"No, no; I am not equal to it!  Will you manage it? will you?  Half my
+estate!--all!  Take it: but save--"
+
+"Tut!"  interrupted Lord Lilburne, in great disdain.  "I am as rich as I
+want to be.  Money does not bribe me.  I manage this!  I!  Lord Lilburne.
+I!  Why, if found out, it is subornation of witnesses.  It is exposure--
+it is dishonour--it is ruin.  What then?  You should take the risk--for
+you must meet ruin if you do not.  I cannot.  I have nothing to gain!"
+
+"I dare not!-I dare not!"  murmured Beaufort, quite spirit-broken.
+"Subornation, dishonour, exposure!--and I, so respectable--my character!
+--and my son against me, too!--my son, in whom I lived again!  No, no;
+let them take all!  Let them take it!  Ha!  ha!  let them take it!  Good-
+day to you."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"I shall consult Mr. Blackwell, and I'll let you know."  And Beaufort
+walked tremulously back to his carriage.  "Go to his lawyer!"  growled
+Lilburne.  "Yes, if his lawyer can help him to defraud men lawfully,
+he'll defraud them fast enough.  That will be the respectable way of
+doing it!  Um!--This may be an ugly business for me--the paper found
+here--if the girl can depose to what she heard, and she must have heard
+something.--No, I think the laws of real property will hardly allow her
+evidence; and if they do--Um!--My granddaughter--is it possible!--And
+Gawtrey rescued her mother, my child, from her own mother's vices!  I
+thought my liking to that girl different from any other I have ever felt:
+it was pure--it _was!_--it was pity--affection.  And I must never see her
+again--must forget the whole thing!  And I sin growing old--and I am
+childless--and alone!"  He paused, almost with a groan: and then the
+expression of his face changing to rage, he cried out, "The man
+threatened me, and I was a coward!  What to do?--Nothing!  The defensive
+is my line.  I shall play no more.--I attack no one.  Who will accuse
+Lord Lilburne?  Still, Robert is a fool.  I must not leave him to
+himself.  Ho! there!  Dykeman!--the carriage!  I shall go to London."
+
+Fortunate, no doubt, it was for Philip that Mr. Beaufort was not Lord
+Lilburne.  For all history teaches us--public and private history--
+conquerors--statesmen--sharp hypocrites and brave designers--yes, they
+all teach us how mighty one man of great intellect and no scruple is
+against the justice of millions!  The One Man moves--the Mass is inert.
+Justice sits on a throne.  Roguery never rests,--Activity is the lever of
+Archimedes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+          "Quam inulta injusta ac prava fiunt moribus."--TULL.
+
+          [How many unjust and vicious actions are perpetrated
+          under the name of morals.]
+
+                         "Volat ambiguis
+                         Mobilis alis Hera."--SENECA.
+
+                 [The hour flies moving with doubtful wings.]
+
+
+Mr. Robert Beaufort sought Mr. Blackwell, and long, rambling, and
+disjointed was his narrative.  Mr. Blackwell, after some consideration,
+proposed to _set about doing_ the very things that Lilburne had proposed
+at once to do.  But the lawyer expressed himself legally and covertly, so
+that it did not seem to the sober sense of Mr. Beaufort at all the same
+plan.  He was not the least alarmed at what Mr. Blackwell proposed,
+though so shocked at what Lilburne dictated.  Blackwell would go the next
+day into Wales--he would find out Mr. Jones--he would sound him!  Nothing
+was more common with people of the nicest honour, than just to get a
+witness out of the way!  Done in election petitions, for instance, every
+day.
+
+"True," said Mr. Beaufort, much relieved.
+
+Then, after having done that, Mr. Blackwell would return to town, and
+cross over to Boulogne to see this very impudent person whom Arthur
+(young men were so apt to be taken in!) had actually believed.  He had no
+doubt he could settle it all.  Robert Beaufort returned to Berkeley
+Square actually in spirits.  There he found Lilburne, who, on reflection,
+seeing that Blackwell was at all events more up to the business than his
+brother, assented to the propriety of the arrangement.
+
+Mr. Blackwell accordingly did set off the next day. _That next_ day,
+perhaps, made all the difference.  Within two hours from his gaining the
+document so important, Philip, without any subtler exertion of intellect
+than the decision of a plain, bold sense, had already forestalled both
+the peer and the lawyer.  He had sent down Mr. Barlow's head clerk to his
+master in Wales with the document, and a short account of the manner in
+which it had been discovered.  And fortunate, indeed, was it that the
+copy had been found; for all the inquiries of Mr. Barlow at A---- had
+failed, and probably would have failed, without such a clue, in fastening
+upon any one probable person to have officiated as Caleb Price's
+amanuensis.  The sixteen hours' start Mr. Barlow gained over Blackwell
+enabled the former to see Mr. Jones--to show him his own handwriting--
+to get a written and witnessed attestation from which the curate, however
+poor, and however tempted, could never well have escaped (even had he
+been dishonest, which he was not), of his perfect recollection of the
+fact of making an extract from the registry at Caleb's desire, though he
+owned he had quite forgotten the names he extracted till they were again
+placed before him.  Barlow took care to arouse Mr. Jones's interest in
+the case--quitted Wales--hastened over to Boulogne--saw Captain Smith,
+and without bribes, without threats, but by plainly proving to that
+worthy person that he could not return to England nor see his brother
+without being immediately arrested; that his brother's evidence was
+already pledged on the side of truth; and that by the acquisition of new
+testimony there could be no doubt that the suit would be successful--he
+diverted the captain from all disposition towards perfidy, convinced him
+on which side his interest lay, and saw him return to Paris, where very
+shortly afterwards he disappeared for ever from this world, being forced
+into a duel, much against his will (with a Frenchman whom he had
+attempted to defraud), and shot through the lungs.  Thus verifying a
+favourite maxim of Lord Lilburne's, viz. that it does not do, in the long
+run, for little men to play the Great Game!
+
+On the same day that Blackwell returned, frustrated in his half-and-half
+attempts to corrupt Mr. Jones, and not having been able even to discover
+Mr. Smith, Mr. Robert Beaufort received a notice of an Action for
+Ejectment to be brought by Philip Beaufort at the next Assizes.  And, to
+add to his afflictions, Arthur, whom he had hitherto endeavoured to amuse
+by a sort of ambiguous shilly-shally correspondence,  became so
+alarmingly worse, that  his mother brought him up to town for advice.
+Lord Lilburne was, of course, sent for; and on learning all, his counsel
+was prompt.
+
+"I told you before that this man loves your daughter.  See if you can
+effect a compromise.  The lawsuit will be ugly, and probably ruinous.  He
+has a right to claim six years' arrears--that is above L100,000.  Make
+yourself his father-in-law, and me his uncle-in-law; and, since we can't
+kill the wasp, we may at least soften the venom of his sting."
+
+Beaufort, still perplexed, irresolute, sought his son; and, for the first
+time, spoke to him frankly--that is, frankly for Robert Beaufort!  He
+owned that the copy of the register had been found by Lilburne in a
+secret drawer.  He made the best of the story Lilburne himself furnished
+him with (adhering, of course, to the assertion uttered or insinuated to
+Philip) in regard to Fanny's abduction and interposition; he said nothing
+of his attempt to destroy the paper.  Why should he?  By admitting the
+copy in court--if so advised--he could get rid of Fanny's evidence
+altogether; even without such concession, her evidence might possibly be
+objected to or eluded.  He confessed that he feared the witness who
+copied the register and the witness to the marriage were alive.  And then
+he talked pathetically of his desire to do what was right, his dread of
+slander and misinterpretation.  He said nothing of Sidney, and his belief
+that Sidney and Charles Spencer were the same; because, if his daughter
+were to be the instrument for effecting a compromise, it was clear that
+her engagement with Spencer must be cancelled and concealed.  And luckily
+Arthur's illness and Camilla's timidity, joined now to her father's
+injunctions not to excite Arthur in his present state with any additional
+causes of anxiety, prevented the confidence that might otherwise have
+ensued between the brother and sister.  And Camilla, indeed, had no heart
+for such a conference.  How, when she looked on Arthur's glassy eye, and
+listened to his hectic cough, could she talk to him of love and marriage?
+As to the automaton, Mrs. Beaufort, Robert made sure of her discretion.
+
+Arthur listened attentively to his father's communication; and the result
+of that interview was the following letter from Arthur to his cousin:
+
+"I write to you without fear of misconstruction; for I write to you
+unknown to all my family, and I am the only one of them who can have no
+personal interest in the struggle about to take place between my father
+and yourself.  Before the law can decide between you, I shall be in my
+grave.  I write this from the Bed of Death.  Philip, I write this--I, who
+stood beside a deathbed more sacred to you than mine--I, who received
+your mother's last sigh.  And with that sigh there was a smile that
+lasted when the sigh was gone: for I promised to befriend her children.
+Heaven knows how anxiously I sought to fulfil that solemn vow!  Feeble
+and sick myself, I followed you and your brother with no aim, no prayer,
+but this,--to embrace you and say, 'Accept a new brother in me.'  I spare
+you the humiliation, for it is yours, not mine, of recalling what passed
+between us when at last we met.  Yet, I still sought to save, at least,
+Sidney,--more especially confided to my care by his dying mother.  He
+mysteriously eluded our search; but we had reason, by a letter received
+from some unknown hand, to believe him saved and provided for.  Again I
+met you at Paris.  I saw you were poor.  Judging from your associate, I
+might with justice think you depraved.  Mindful of your declaration never
+to accept bounty from a Beaufort, and remembering with natural resentment
+the outrage I had before received from you, I judged it vain to seek and
+remonstrate with you, but I did not judge it vain to aid.  I sent you,
+anonymously, what at least would suffice, if absolute poverty had
+subjected you to evil courses, to rescue you from them it your heart were
+so disposed.  Perhaps that sum, trifling as it was, may have smoothed
+your path and assisted your career.  And why tell you all this now?  To
+dissuade from asserting rights you conceive to be just?--Heaven forbid!
+If justice is with you, so also is the duty due to your mother's name.
+But simply for this: that in asserting such rights, you content yourself
+with justice, not revenge--that in righting yourself, you do not wrong
+others.  If the law should decide for you, the arrears you could demand
+would leave my father and sister beggars.  This may be law--it would not
+be justice; for my father solemnly believed himself, and had every
+apparent probability in his favour, the true heir of the wealth that
+devolved upon him.  This is not all.  There may be circumstances
+connected with the discovery of a certain document that, if authentic,
+and I do not presume to question it, may decide the contest so far as it
+rests on truth; circumstances which might seem to bear hard upon my
+father's good name and faith.  I do not know sufficiently of law to say
+how far these could be publicly urged, or, if urged, exaggerated and
+tortured by an advocate's calumnious ingenuity.  But again, I say
+justice, and not revenge!  And with this I conclude, inclosing to you
+these lines, written in your own hand, and leaving you the arbiter of
+their value.
+                          "ARTHUR BEAUFORT."
+
+The lines inclosed were these, a second time placed before the reader
+
+     "I cannot guess who you are.  They say that you call yourself a
+     relation; that must be some mistake.  I knew not that my poor mother
+     had relations so kind.  But, whoever you be, you soothed her last
+     hours--she died in your arms; and if ever-years, long years, hence--
+     we should chance to meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my
+     blood, and my life, and my heart, and my soul, all are slaves to
+     your will!  If you be really of her kindred I commend to you my
+     brother; he is at ---- with Mr. Morton.  If you can serve him, my
+     mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian angel.  As for me, I
+     ask no help from any one; I go into the world, and will carve out my
+     own way.  So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from
+     others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now, if your
+     kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's grave.
+                                             PHILIP."
+
+
+This letter was sent to the only address of Monsieur de Vaudemont which
+the Beauforts knew, viz., his apartments in town, and he did not receive
+it the day it was sent.
+
+Meanwhile Arthur Beaufort's malady continued to gain ground rapidly.
+His father, absorbed in his own more selfish fears (though, at the first
+sight of Arthur, overcome by the alteration of his appearance), had
+ceased to consider his illness fatal.  In fact, his affection for Arthur
+was rather one of pride than love: long absence had weakened the ties of
+early custom.  He prized him as an heir rather than treasured him as a
+son.  It almost seemed that as the Heritage was in danger, so the Heir
+became less dear: this was only because he was less thought of.  Poor
+Mrs. Beaufort, yet but partially acquainted with the terrors of her
+husband, still clung to hope for Arthur.  Her affection for him brought
+out from the depths of her cold and insignificant character qualities
+that had never before been apparent.  She watched--she nursed--she tended
+him.  The fine lady was gone; nothing but the mother was left behind.
+
+With a delicate constitution, and with an easy temper, which yielded to
+the influence of companions inferior to himself, except in bodily vigour
+and more sturdy will, Arthur Beaufort had been ruined by prosperity.
+His talents and acquirements, if not first-rate, at least far above
+mediocrity, had only served to refine his tastes, not to strengthen his
+mind.  His amiable impulses, his charming disposition and sweet temper,
+had only served to make him the dupe of the parasites that feasted on the
+lavish heir.  His heart, frittered away in the usual round of light
+intrigues and hollow pleasures, had become too sated and exhausted for
+the redeeming blessings of a deep and a noble love.  He had so lived for
+Pleasure that he had never known Happiness.  His frame broke by excesses
+in which his better nature never took delight, he came home--to hear of
+ruin and to die!
+
+It was evening in the sick-room.  Arthur had risen from the bed to which,
+for some days, he had voluntarily taken, and was stretched on the sofa
+before the fire.  Camilla was leaning over him, keeping in the shade,
+that he might not see the tears which she could not suppress.  His mother
+had been endeavouring to amuse him, as she would have amused herself, by
+reading aloud one of the light novels of the hour; novels that paint the
+life of the higher classes as one gorgeous holyday.
+
+"My dear mother," said the patient querulously, "I have no interest in
+these false descriptions of the life I have led.  I know that life's
+worth.  Ah! had I been trained to some employment, some profession! had
+I--well--it is weak to repine.  Mother, tell me, you have seen Mons. de
+Vaudemont: is he strong and healthy?"
+
+"Yes; too much so.  He has not your elegance, dear Arthur."
+
+"And do you admire him, Camilla?  Has no other caught your heart or your
+fancy?"
+
+"My dear Arthur," interrupted Mrs. Beaufort, "you forget that Camilla is
+scarcely out; and of course a young girl's affections, if she's well
+brought up, are regulated by the experience of her parents.  It is time
+to take the medicine: it certainly agrees with you; you have more colour
+to-day, my dear, dear son."
+
+While Mrs. Beaufort was pouring out the medicine, the door gently opened,
+and Mr. Robert Beaufort appeared; behind him there rose a taller and a
+statelier form, but one which seemed more bent, more humbled, more
+agitated.  Beaufort advanced.  Camilla looked up and turned pale.  The
+visitor escaped from Mr. Beaufort's grasp on his arm; he came forward,
+trembling, he fell on his knees beside Arthur, and seizing his hand, bent
+over, it in silence.  But silence so stormy! silence more impressive than
+all words his breast heaved, his whole frame shook.  Arthur guessed at
+once whom he saw, and bent down gently as if to raise his visitor.
+
+"Oh! Arthur! Arthur!"  then cried Philip; "forgive me!  My mother's
+comforter--my cousin--my brother!  Oh! brother, forgive me!"
+
+And as he half rose, Arthur stretched out his arms, and Philip clasped
+him to his breast.
+
+It is in vain to describe the different feelings that agitated those who
+beheld; the selfish congratulations of Robert, mingled with a better and
+purer feeling; the stupor of the mother; the emotions that she herself
+could not unravel, which rooted Camilla to the spot.
+
+"You own me, then,--you own me!" cried Philip.  "You accept the
+brotherhood that my mad passions once rejected!  And you, too--you,
+Camilla--you who once knelt by my side, under this very roof--do you
+remember me now?  Oh, Arthur!  that letter--that letter!--yes, indeed,
+that aid which I ascribed to any one--rather than to you--made the date
+of a fairer fortune.  I may have owed to that aid the very fate that has
+preserved me till now; the very name which I have not discredited.  No,
+no; do not think you can ask me a favour; you can but claim your due.
+Brother! my dear brother!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+     "_Warwick_.--Exceeding well! his cares are now all over."
+     --_Henry IV_.
+
+The excitement of this interview soon overpowering Arthur, Philip, in
+quitting the room with Mr. Beaufort, asked a conference with that
+gentleman; and they went into the very parlour from which the rich man
+had once threatened to expel the haggard suppliant.  Philip glanced round
+the room, and the whole scene came again before him.  After a pause, he
+thus began,--
+
+"Mr. Beaufort, let the Past be forgotten.  We may have need of mutual
+forgiveness, and I, who have so wronged your noble son, am willing to
+suppose that I misjudged you.  I cannot, it is true, forego this
+lawsuit."
+
+Mr. Beaufort's face fell.
+
+"I have no right to do so.  I am the trustee of my father's honour and my
+mother's name: I must vindicate both: I cannot forego this lawsuit.  But
+when I once bowed myself to enter your house--then only with a hope,
+where now I have the certainty of obtaining my heritage--it was with the
+resolve to bury in oblivion every sentiment that would transgress the
+most temperate justice.  Now, I will do more.  If the law decide against
+me, we are as we were; if with me--listen: I will leave you the lands of
+Beaufort, for your life and your son's.  I ask but for me and for mine
+such a deduction from your wealth as will enable me, should my brother be
+yet living, to provide for him; and (if you approve the choice, which out
+of all earth I would desire to make) to give whatever belongs to more
+refined or graceful existence than I myself care for,--to her whom I
+would call my wife.  Robert Beaufort, in this room I once asked you to
+restore to me the only being I then loved: I am now again your suppliant;
+and this time you have it in your power to grant my prayer.  Let Arthur
+be, in truth, my brother: give me, if I prove myself, as I feel assured,
+entitled to hold the name my father bore, give me your daughter as my
+wife; give me Camilla, and I will not envy you the lands I am willing for
+myself to resign; and if they pass to any children, those children will
+be your daughter's!"
+
+The first impulse of Mr. Beaufort was to grasp the hand held out to him;
+to pour forth an incoherent torrent of praise and protestation, of
+assurances that he could not hear of such generosity, that what was right
+was right, that he should be proud of such a son-in-law, and much more in
+the same key.  And in the midst of this, it suddenly occurred to Mr.
+Beaufort, that if Philip's case were really as good as he said it was, he
+could not talk so coolly of resigning the property it would secure him
+for the term of a life (Mr. Beaufort thought of his own) so uncommonly
+good, to say nothing of Arthur's.  At this notion, he thought it best not
+to commit himself too far; drew in as artfully as he could, until he
+could consult Lord Lilburne and his lawyer; and recollecting also that
+he had a great deal to manage with respect to Camilla and her prior
+attachment, he began to talk of his distress for Arthur, of the necessity
+of waiting a little before Camilla was spoken to, while so agitated about
+her brother, of the exceedingly strong case which his lawyer advised him
+he possessed--not but what he would rather rest the matter on justice
+than law--and that if the law should be with him, he would not the less
+(provided he did not force his daughter's inclinations, of which, indeed,
+he had no fear) be most happy to bestow her hand on his brother's nephew,
+with such a portion as would be most handsome to all parties.
+
+It often happens to us in this world, that when we come with our heart in
+our hands to some person or other,--when we pour out some generous burst
+of feeling so enthusiastic and self-sacrificing, that a bystander would
+call us fool and Quixote;--it often, I say, happens to us, to find our
+warm self suddenly thrown back upon our cold self; to discover that we
+are utterly uncomprehended, and that the swine who would have munched up
+the acorn does not know what to make of the pearl.  That sudden ice which
+then freezes over us, that supreme disgust and despair almost of the
+whole world, which for the moment we confound with the one worldling--
+they who have felt, may reasonably ascribe to Philip.  He listened to Mr.
+Beaufort in utter and contemptuous silence, and then replied only,--
+
+"Sir, at all events this is a question for law to decide.  If it decide
+as you think, it is for you to act; if as I think, it is for me.  Till
+then I will speak to you no more of your daughter, or my intentions.
+Meanwhile, all I ask is the liberty to visit your son.  I would not be
+banished from his sick-room!"
+
+"My dear nephew!" cried Mr. Beaufort, again alarmed, "consider this house
+as your home."
+
+Philip bowed and retreated to the door, followed obsequiously by his
+uncle.
+
+It chanced that both Lord Lilburne and Mr. Blackwell were of the same
+mind as to the course advisable for Mr. Beaufort now to pursue.  Lord
+Lilburne was not only anxious to exchange a hostile litigation for an
+amicable lawsuit, but he was really eager to put the seal of relationship
+upon any secret with regard to himself that a man who might inherit
+L20,000. a year--a dead shot, and a bold tongue--might think fit to
+disclose.  This made him more earnest than he otherwise might have been
+in advice as to other people's affairs.  He spoke to Beaufort as a man of
+the world--to Blackwell as a lawyer.
+
+"Pin the man down to his generosity," said Lilburne, "before he gets the
+property.  Possession makes a great change in a man's value of money.
+After all, you can't enjoy the property when you're dead: he gives it
+next to Arthur, who is not married; and if anything happen to Arthur,
+poor fellow, why, in devolving on your daughter's husband and children,
+it goes in the right line.  Pin him down at once: get credit with the
+world for the most noble and disinterested conduct, by letting your
+counsel state that the instant you discovered the lost document you
+wished to throw no obstacle in the way of proving the marriage, and that
+the only thing to consider is, if the marriage be proved; if so, you will
+be the first to rejoice, &c.  &c.  You know all that sort of humbug as
+well as any man!"
+
+Mr. Blackwell suggested the same advice, though in different words--
+after taking the opinions of three eminent members of the bar; those
+opinions, indeed, were not all alike--one was adverse to Mr. Robert
+Beaufort's chance of success, one was doubtful of it, the third
+maintained that he had nothing to fear from the action--except, possibly,
+the ill-natured construction of the world.  Mr. Robert Beaufort disliked
+the idea of the world's ill-nature, almost as much as he did that of
+losing his property.  And when even this last and more encouraging
+authority, learning privately from Mr. Blackwell that Arthur's illness
+was of a nature to terminate fatally, observed, "that a compromise with a
+claimant, who was at all events Mr. Beaufort's nephew, by which Mr.
+Beaufort could secure the enjoyment of the estates to himself for life,
+and to his son for life also, should not (whatever his probabilities of
+legal success) be hastily rejected--unless he had a peculiar affection
+for a very distant relation--who, failing Mr. Beaufort's male issue and
+Philip's claim, would be heir-at-law, but whose rights would cease if
+Arthur liked to cut off the entail,"
+
+Mr. Beaufort at once decided.  He had a personal dislike to that distant
+heir-at-law; he had a strong desire to retain the esteem of the world; he
+had an innate conviction of the justice of Philip's claim; he had a
+remorseful recollection of his brother's generous kindness to himself; he
+preferred to have for his heir, in case of Arthur's decease, a nephew who
+would marry his daughter, than a remote kinsman.  And should, after all,
+the lawsuit fail to prove Philip's right, he was not sorry to have the
+estate in his own power by Arthur's act in cutting off the entail.
+Brief; all these reasons decided him.  He saw Philip--he spoke to Arthur
+--and all the preliminaries, as suggested above, were arranged between
+the parties.  The entail was cut off, and Arthur secretly prevailed upon
+his father, to whom, for the present, the fee-simple thus belonged, to
+make a will, by which he bequeathed the estates to Philip, without
+reference to the question of his legitimacy.  Mr. Beaufort felt his
+conscience greatly eased after this action--which, too, he could always
+retract if he pleased; and henceforth the lawsuit became but a matter of
+form, so far as the property it involved was concerned.
+
+While these negotiations went on, Arthur continued gradually to decline.
+Philip was with him always.  The sufferer took a strange liking to this
+long-dreaded relation, this man of iron frame and thews.  In Philip there
+was so much of life, that Arthur almost felt as if in his presence itself
+there was an antagonism to death.  And Camilla saw thus her cousin, day
+by day, hour by hour, in that sick chamber, lending himself, with the
+gentle tenderness of a woman, to soften the pang, to arouse the
+weariness, to cheer the dejection.  Philip never spoke to her of love: in
+such a scene that had been impossible.  She overcame in their mutual
+cares the embarrassment she had before felt in his presence; whatever her
+other feelings, she could not, at least, but be grateful to one so tender
+to her brother.  Three letters of Charles Spencer's had been, in the
+afflictions of the house, only answered by a brief line.  She now took
+the occasion of a momentary and delusive amelioration in Arthur's disease
+to write to him more at length.  She was carrying, as usual, the letter
+to her mother, when Mr. Beaufort met her, and took the letter from her
+hand.  He looked embarrassed for a moment, and bade her follow him into
+his study.  It was then that Camilla learned, for the first time,
+distinctly, the claims and rights of her cousin; then she learned also at
+what price those rights were to be enforced with the least possible
+injury to her father.  Mr. Beaufort naturally put the case before her in
+the strongest point of the dilemma.  He was to be ruined--utterly ruined;
+a pauper, a beggar, if Camilla did not save him.  The master of his fate
+demanded his daughter's hand.  Habitually subservient to even a whim of
+her parents, this intelligence, the entreaty, the command with which it
+was accompanied, overwhelmed her.  She answered but by tears; and Mr.
+Beaufort, assured of her submission, left her, to consider of the tone of
+the letter he himself should write to Mr. Spencer.  He had sat down to
+this very task when he was summoned to Arthur's room.  His son was
+suddenly taken worse: spasms that threatened immediate danger convulsed
+and exhausted him, and when these were allayed, he continued for three
+days so feeble that Mr. Beaufort, his eyes now thoroughly opened to the
+loss that awaited him, had no thoughts even for worldly interests.
+
+On the night of the third day, Philip, Robert Beaufort, his wife, his
+daughter, were grouped round the death-bed of Arthur.  The sufferer had
+just wakened from sleep, and he motioned to Philip to raise him.  Mr.
+Beaufort started, as by the dim light he saw his son in the arms of
+Catherine's! and another Chamber of Death seemed, shadow-like, to replace
+the one before him.  Words, long since uttered, knelled in his ear:
+"There shall be a death-bed yet beside which you shall see the spectre of
+her, now so calm, rising for retribution from the grave!"  His blood
+froze, his hair stood erect; he cast a hurried, shrinking glance round
+the twilight of the darkened room: and with a feeble cry covered his
+white face with his trembling hands!  But on Arthur's lips there was a
+serene smile; he turned his eyes from Philip to Camilla, and murmured,
+"She will repay you!"  A pause, and the mother's shriek rang through the
+room!  Robert Beaufort raised his face from his hands.  His son was dead!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+               "_Jul_.  And what reward do you propose?
+
+               It must be my love."--_The Double Marriage_.
+
+While these events, dark, hurried, and stormy, had befallen the family of
+his betrothed, Sidney lead continued his calm life by the banks of the
+lovely lake.  After a few weeks, his confidence in Camilla's fidelity
+overbore all his apprehensions and forebodings.  Her letters, though
+constrained by the inspection to which they were submitted, gave him
+inexpressible consolation and delight.  He began, however, early to fancy
+that there was a change in their tone.  The letters seemed to shun the
+one subject to which all others were as nought; they turned rather upon
+the guests assembled at Beaufort Court; and why I know not,--for there
+was nothing in them to authorise jealousy--the brief words devoted to
+Monsieur de Vaudemont filled him with uneasy and terrible suspicion.  He
+gave vent to these feelings, as fully as he dared do, under the knowledge
+that his letter would be seen; and Camilla never again even mentioned the
+name of Vaudemont.  Then there was a long pause; then her brother's
+arrival and illness were announced; then, at intervals, but a few hurried
+lines; then a complete, long, dreadful silence, and lastly, with a deep
+black border and a solemn black seal, came the following letter from Mr.
+Beaufort:
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--I have the unutterable grief to announce to you and your
+worthy uncle the irreparable loss I have sustained in the death of my
+only son.  It is a month to day since he departed this life.  He died,
+sir, as a Christian should die--humbly, penitently--exaggerating the few
+faults of his short life, but--(and here the writer's hypocrisy, though
+so natural to him--was it, that he knew not that he was hypocritical?--
+fairly gave way before the real and human anguish, for which there is no
+dictionary!) but I cannot pursue this theme!
+
+"Slowly now awakening to the duties yet left me to discharge, I cannot
+but be sensible of the material difference in the prospects of my
+remaining child.  Miss Beaufort is now the heiress to an ancient name and
+a large fortune.  She subscribes with me to the necessity of consulting
+those new considerations which so melancholy an event forces upon her
+mind.  The little fancy--or liking--(the acquaintance was too short for
+more) that might naturally spring up between two amiable young persons
+thrown together in the country, must be banished from our thoughts.  As a
+friend, I shall be always happy to hear of your welfare; and should you
+ever think of a profession in which I can serve you, you may command my
+utmost interest and exertions.  I know, my young friend, what you will
+feel at first, and how disposed you will be to call me mercenary and
+selfish.  Heaven knows if that be really my character!  But at your age,
+impressions are easily effaced; and any experienced friend of the world
+will assure you that, in the altered circumstances of the case, I have no
+option.  All intercourse and correspondence, of course, cease with this
+letter,--until, at least, we may all meet, with no sentiments but those
+of friendship and esteem.  I desire my compliments to your worthy uncle,
+in which Mrs. and Miss Beaufort join; and I am sure you will be happy to
+hear that my wife and daughter, though still in great affliction, have
+suffered less in health than I could have ventured to anticipate.
+
+"Believe me, dear Sir,
+"Yours sincerely,
+"ROBERT BEAUFORT.
+
+"To C. SPENCER, Esq., Jun."
+
+
+When Sidney received this letter, he was with Mr. Spencer, and the latter
+read it over the young man's shoulder, on which he leant affectionately.
+When they came to the concluding words, Sidney turned round with a vacant
+look and a hollow smile.  "You see, sir," he said, "you see---"
+
+"My boy--my son--you bear this as you ought.  Contempt will soon
+efface--"
+
+Sidney started to his feet, and his whole countenance was changed.
+
+"Contempt--yes, for him!  But for her--she knows it not--she is no party
+to this--I cannot believe it--I will not!  I--I----" and he rushed out of
+the room.  He was absent till nightfall, and when he returned, he
+endeavoured to appear calm--but it was in vain.
+
+The next day brought him a letter from Camilla, written unknown to her
+parents,--short, it is true (confirming the sentence of separation
+contained in her father's), and imploring him not to reply to it,--but
+still so full of gentle and of sorrowful feeling, so evidently worded in
+the wish to soften the anguish she inflicted, that it did more than
+soothe--it even administered hope.
+
+Now when Mr. Robert Beaufort had recovered the ordinary tone of his mind
+sufficiently to indite the letter Sidney had just read, he had become
+fully sensible of the necessity of concluding the marriage between Philip
+and Camilla before the publicity of the lawsuit.  The action for the
+ejectment could not take place before the ensuing March or April.  He
+would waive the ordinary etiquette of time and mourning to arrange all
+before.  Indeed, he lived in hourly fear lest Philip should discover that
+he had a rival in his brother, and break off the marriage, with its
+contingent advantages.  The first announcement of such a suit in the
+newspapers might reach the Spencers; and if the young man were, as he
+doubted not, Sidney Beaufort, would necessarily bring him forward, and
+ensure the dreaded explanation.  Thus apprehensive and ever scheming,
+Robert Beaufort spoke to Philip so much, and with such apparent feeling,
+of his wish to gratify, at the earliest possible period, the last wish of
+his son, in the union now arranged--he spoke, with such seeming
+consideration and good sense, of the avoidance of all scandal and
+misinterpretation in the suit itself, which suit a previous marriage
+between the claimant and his daughter would show at once to be of so
+amicable a nature,--that Philip, ardently in love as he was, could not
+but assent to any hastening of his expected happiness compatible with
+decorum.  As to any previous publicity by way of newspaper comment, he
+agreed with Mr. Beaufort in deprecating it.  But then came the question,
+What name was he to bear in the interval?
+
+"As to that," said Philip, somewhat proudly, "when, after my mother's
+suit in her own behalf, I persuaded her not to bear the name of Beaufort,
+though her due--and for my own part, I prized her own modest name, which
+under such dark appearances was in reality spotless--as much as the
+loftier one which you bear and my father bore;--so I shall not resume the
+name the law denies me till the law restores it to me.  Law alone can
+efface the wrong which law has done me."
+
+Mr. Beaufort was pleased with this reasoning (erroneous though it was),
+and he now hoped that all would be safely arranged.
+
+That a girl so situated as Camilla, and of a character not energetic or
+profound, but submissive, dutiful, and timid, should yield to the
+arguments of her father, the desire of her dying brother--that she should
+not dare to refuse to become the instrument of peace to a divided family,
+the saving sacrifice to her father's endangered fortunes--that, in fine,
+when, nearly a month after Arthur's death, her father, leading her into
+the room, where Philip waited her footstep with a beating heart, placed
+her hand in his--and Philip falling on his knees said, "May I hope to
+retain this hand for life?"--she should falter out such words as he might
+construe into not reluctant acquiescence; that all this should happen is
+so natural that the reader is already prepared for it.  But still she
+thought with bitter and remorseful feelings of him thus deliberately and
+faithlessly renounced.  She felt how deeply he had loved her--she knew
+how fearful would be his grief.  She looked sad and thoughtful; but her
+brother's death was sufficient in Philip's eyes to account for that.
+The praises and gratitude of her father, to whom she suddenly seemed to
+become an object of even greater pride and affection than ever Arthur had
+been--the comfort of a generous heart, that takes pleasure in the very
+sacrifice it makes--the acquittal of her conscience as to the motives of
+her conduct--began, however, to produce their effect.  Nor, as she had
+lately seen more of Philip, could she be insensible of his attachment--of
+his many noble qualities--of the pride which most women might have felt
+in his addresses, when his rank was once made clear; and as she had ever
+been of a character more regulated by duty than passion, so one who could
+have seen what was passing in her mind would have had little fear for
+Philip's future happiness in her keeping--little fear but that, when once
+married to him, her affections would have gone along with her duties; and
+that if the first love were yet recalled, it would be with a sigh due
+rather to some romantic recollection than some continued regret.  Few of
+either sex are ever united to their first love; yet married people jog
+on, and call each other "my dear" and "my darling" all the same.  It
+might be, it is true, that Philip would be scarcely loved with the
+intenseness with which he loved; but if Camilla's feelings were capable
+of corresponding to the ardent and impassioned ones of that strong and
+vehement nature--such feelings were not yet developed in her.  The heart
+of the woman might still be half concealed in the vale of the virgin
+innocence.  Philip himself was satisfied--he believed that he was
+beloved: for it is the property of love, in a large and noble heart, to
+reflect itself, and to see its own image in the eyes on which it looks.
+As the Poet gives ideal beauty and excellence to some ordinary child of
+Eve, worshipping less the being that is than the being he imagines and
+conceives--so Love, which makes us all poets for a while, throws its own
+divine light over a heart perhaps really cold; and becomes dazzled into
+the joy of a false belief by the very lustre with which it surrounds its
+object.
+
+The more, however, Camilla saw of Philip, the more (gradually overcoming
+her former mysterious and superstitious awe of him) she grew familiarised
+to his peculiar cast of character and thought, so the more she began to
+distrust her father's assertion, that he had insisted on her hand as a
+price--a bargain--an equivalent for the sacrifice of a dire revenge.  And
+with this thought came another.  Was she worthy of this man?--was she not
+deceiving him?  Ought she not to say, at least, that she had known a
+previous attachment, however determined she might be to subdue it?  Often
+the desire for this just and honourable confession trembled on her lips,
+and as often was it checked by some chance circumstance or some maiden
+fear.  Despite their connection, there was not yet between them that
+delicious intimacy which ought to accompany the affiance of two hearts
+and souls.  The gloom of the house; the restraint on the very language of
+love imposed by a death so recent and so deplored, accounted in much for
+this reserve.  And for the rest, Robert Beaufort prudently left them very
+few and very brief opportunities to be alone.
+
+In the meantime, Philip (now persuaded that the Beauforts were ignorant
+of his brother's fate) had set Mr. Barlow's activity in search of Sidney;
+and his painful anxiety to discover one so dear and so mysteriously lost
+was the only cause of uneasiness apparent in the brightening Future.
+While these researches, hitherto fruitless, were being made, it so
+happened, as London began now to refill, and gossip began now to revive,
+that a report got abroad, no one knew how (probably from the servants)
+that Monsieur de Vaudemont, a distinguished French officer, was shortly
+to lead the daughter and sole heiress of Robert Beaufort, Esq., M.P., to
+the hymeneal altar; and that report very quickly found its way into the
+London papers: from the London papers it spread to the provincial--it
+reached the eyes of Sidney in his now gloomy and despairing solitude.
+The day that he read it he disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+          "_Jul_.  .  .  .  Good lady, love him!
+          You have a noble and an honest gentleman.
+          I ever found him so.
+          Love him no less than I have done, and serve him,
+          And Heaven shall bless you--you shall bless my ashes."
+          BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _The Double Marriage_.
+
+We have been too long absent from Fanny; it is time to return to her.
+The delight she experienced when Philip made her understand all the
+benefits, the blessings, that her courage, nay, her intellect, had
+bestowed upon him, the blushing ecstasy with which she heard (as they
+returned to H----, the eventful morning of her deliverance, side by side,
+her hand clasped in his, and often pressed to his grateful lips) his
+praises, his thanks, his fear for her safety, his joy at regaining her--
+all this amounted to a bliss, which, till then, she could not have
+conceived that life was capable of bestowing.  And when he left her at
+H----, to hurry to his lawyer's with the recovered document, it was but
+for an hour.  He returned, and did not quit her for several days.  And in
+that time he became sensible of her astonishing, and, to him, it seemed
+miraculous, improvement in all that renders Mind the equal to Mind;
+miraculous, for he guessed not the Influence that makes miracles its
+commonplace.  And now he listened attentively to her when she conversed;
+he read with her (though reading was never much in his vocation), his
+unfastidious ear was charmed with her voice, when it sang those simple
+songs; and his manner (impressed alike by gratitude for the signal
+service rendered to him, and by the discovery that Fanny was no longer a
+child, whether in mind or years), though not less gentle than before, was
+less familiar, less superior, more respectful, and more earnest.  It was
+a change which raised her in her own self-esteem.  Ah, those were rosy
+days for Fanny!
+
+A less sagacious judge of character than Lilburne would have formed
+doubts perhaps of the nature of Philip's interest in Fanny.  But he
+comprehended at once the fraternal interest which a man like Philip might
+well take in a creature like Fanny, if commended to his care by a
+protector whose doom was so awful as that which had ingulfed the life of
+William Gawtrey.  Lilburne had some thoughts at first of claiming her,
+but as he had no power to compel her residence with him, he did not wish,
+on consideration, to come again in contact with Philip upon ground so
+full of humbling recollections as that still overshadowed by the images
+of Gawtrey and Mary.  He contented himself with writing an artful letter
+to Simon, stating that from Fanny's residence with Mr. Gawtrey, and from
+her likeness to her mother, whom he had only seen as a child, he had
+conjectured the relationship she bore to himself; and having obtained
+other evidence of that fact (he did not say what or where), he had not
+scrupled to remove her to his roof, meaning to explain all to Mr. Simon
+Gawtrey the next day.  This letter was accompanied by one from a lawyer,
+informing Simon Gawtrey that Lord Lilburne would pay L200. a year, in
+quarterly payments, to his order; and that he was requested to add, that
+when the young lady he had so benevolently reared came of age, or
+married, an adequate provision would be made for her.  Simon's mind
+blazed up at this last intelligence, when read to him, though he neither
+comprehended nor sought to know why Lord Lilburne should be so generous,
+or what that noble person's letter to himself was intended to convey.
+For two days, he seemed restored to vigorous sense; but when he had once
+clutched the first payment made in advance, the touch of the money seemed
+to numb him back to his lethargy: the excitement of desire died in the
+dull sense of possession.
+
+And just at that time Fanny's happiness came to a close.  Philip received
+Arthur Beaufort's letter; and now ensued long and frequent absences; and
+on his return, for about an hour or so at a time, he spoke of sorrow and
+death; and the books were closed and the songs silenced.  All fear for
+Fanny's safety was, of course, over; all necessity for her work; their
+little establishment was increased.  She never stirred out without Sarah;
+yet she would rather that there had been some danger on her account for
+him to guard against, or some trial that his smile might soothe.  His
+prolonged absences began to prey upon her--the books ceased to interest--
+no study filled up the dreary gap--her step grew listless-her cheek pale
+--she was sensible at last that his presence had become necessary to her
+very life.  One day, he came to the house earlier than usual, and with a
+much happier and serener expression of countenance than he had worn of
+late.
+
+Simon was dozing in his chair, with his old dog, now scarce vigorous
+enough to bark, curled up at his feet.  Neither man nor dog was more as a
+witness to what was spoken than the leathern chair, or the hearth-rug, on
+which they severally reposed.
+
+There was something which, in actual life, greatly contributed to the
+interest of Fanny's strange lot, but which, in narration, I feel I cannot
+make sufficiently clear to the reader.  And this was her connection and
+residence with that old man.  Her character forming, as his was
+completely gone; here, the blank becoming filled--there, the page fading
+to a blank.  It was the tatter, total Deathliness-in-Life of Simon, that,
+while so impressive to see, renders it impossible to bring him before the
+reader in his full force of contrast to the young Psyche.  He seldom
+spoke--often, not from morning till night; he now seldom stirred.  It is
+in vain to describe the indescribable: let the reader draw the picture
+for himself.  And whenever (as I sometimes think he will, after he has
+closed this book) he conjures up the idea he attaches to the name of its
+heroine, let him see before her, as she glides through the humble room--
+as she listens to the voice of him she loves--as she sits musing by the
+window, with the church spire just visible--as day by day the soul
+brightens and expands within her--still let the reader see within the
+same walls, greyhaired, blind, dull to all feeling, frozen to all life,
+that stony image of Time and Death!  Perhaps then he may understand why
+they who beheld the real and living Fanny blooming under that chill and
+mass of shadow, felt that her grace, her simplicity, her charming beauty,
+were raised by the contrast, till they grew associated with thoughts and
+images, mysterious and profound, belonging not more to the lovely than to
+the sublime.
+
+So there sat the old man; and Philip, though aware of his presence,
+speaking as if he were alone with Fanny, after touching on more casual
+topics, thus addressed her:
+
+"My true and my dear friend, it is to you that I shall owe, not only my
+rights and fortune, but the vindication of my mother's memory.  You have
+not only placed flowers upon that gravestone, but it is owing to you,
+under Providence, that it will be inscribed at last with the Name which
+refutes all calumny.  Young and innocent as you now are, my gentle and
+beloved benefactress, you cannot as yet know what a blessing it will be
+to me to engrave that Name upon that simple stone.  Hereafter, when you
+yourself are a wife, a mother, you will comprehend the service you have
+rendered to the living and the dead!"
+
+He stopped--struggling with the rush of emotions that overflowed his
+heart.  Alas, THE DEAD! what service can we render to them?--what availed
+it now, either to the dust below, or to the immortality above, that the
+fools and knaves of this world should mention the Catherine whose life
+was gone, whose ears were deaf, with more or less respect?  There is in
+calumny that poison that, even when the character throws off the slander,
+the heart remains diseased beneath the effect.  They say that truth comes
+sooner or later; but it seldom comes before the soul, passing from agony
+to contempt, has grown callous to men's judgments.  Calumniate a human
+being in youth--adulate that being in age;--what has been the interval?
+Will the adulation atone either for the torture, or the hardness which
+the torture leaves at last?  And if, as in Catherine's case (a case, how
+common!), the truth come too late--if the tomb is closed--if the heart
+you have wrung can be wrung no more--why the truth is as valueless as the
+epitaph on a forgotten Name!  Some such conviction of the hollowness of
+his own words, when he spoke of service to the dead, smote upon Philip's
+heart, and stopped the flow of his words.
+
+Fanny, conscious only of his praise, his thanks, and the tender affection
+of his voice, stood still silent-her eyes downcast, her breast heaving.
+
+Philip resumed:
+
+"And now, Fanny, my honoured sister, I would thank you for more, were it
+possible, even than this.  I shall owe to you not only name and fortune,
+but happiness.  It is from the rights to which you have assisted me, and
+which will shortly be made clear, that I am able to demand a hand I have
+so long coveted--the hand of one as dear to me as you are.  In a word,
+the time has, this day, been fixed, when I shall have a home to offer to
+you and to this old man--when I can present to you a sister who will
+prize you as I do: for I love you so dearly--I owe you so much--that even
+that home would lose half its smiles if you were not there.  Do you
+understand me, Fanny?  The sister I speak of will be my wife!"
+
+The poor girl who heard this speech of most cruel tenderness did not
+fall, or faint, or evince any outward emotion, except in a deadly
+paleness.  She seemed like one turned to stone.  Her very breath forsook
+her for some moments, and then came back with a long deep sigh.  She laid
+her hand lightly on his arm, and said calmly:
+
+"Yes--I understand.  We once saw a wedding.  You are to be married--I
+shall see yours!"
+
+"You shall; and, later, perhaps, I may see your own."
+
+"I have a brother.  Ah!  if I could but find him--younger than I am--
+beautiful almost as you!"
+
+"You will be happy," said Fanny, still calmly.
+
+"I have long placed my hopes of happiness in such a union!  Stay, where
+are you going?"
+
+"To pray for you," said Fanny, with a smile, in which there was something
+of the old vacancy, as she walked gently from the room.  Philip followed
+her with moistened eyes.  Her manner might have deceived one more vain.
+He soon after quitted the house, and returned to town.
+
+Three hours after, Sarah found Fanny stretched on the floor of her own
+room--so still--so white--that, for some moments, the old woman thought
+life was gone.  She recovered, however, by degrees; and, after putting
+her hands to her eyes, and muttering some moments, seemed much as usual,
+except that she was more silent, and that her lips remained colourless,
+and her hands cold like stone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+     "_Vec_.  Ye see what follows.
+     _Duke_.  O gentle sir! this shape again!"--_The Chances_.
+
+That evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London.  It is the nature of
+solitude to make passions calm on the surface--agitated in the deeps.
+Sidney had placed his whole existence in one object.  When the letter
+arrived that told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible of
+the terrible and dismal blank--the "void abyss"--to which all his future
+was suddenly changed, than roused to vehement and turbulent emotion.  But
+Camilla's letter had, as we have seen, raised his courage and animated
+his heart.  To the idea of her faith he still clung with the instinct of
+hope in the midst of despair.  The tidings that she was absolutely
+betrothed to another, and in so short a time since her rejection of him,
+let loose from all restraint his darker and more tempestuous passions.
+In a state of mind bordering upon frenzy, he hurried to London--to seek
+her--to see her; with what intent--what hope, if hope there were--he
+himself could scarcely tell.  But what man who has loved with fervour and
+trust will be contented to receive the sentence of eternal separation
+except from the very lips of the one thus worshipped and thus foresworn?
+
+The day had been intensely cold.  Towards evening the snow fell fast and
+heavily.  Sidney had not, since a child, been before in London; and the
+immense City, covered with a wintry and icy mist, through which the
+hurrying passengers and the slow-moving vehicles passed, spectre-like,
+along the dismal and slippery streets-opened to the stranger no
+hospitable arms.  He knew not a step of the way--he was pushed to and
+fro--his scarce intelligible questions impatiently answered--the snow
+covered him--the frost pierced to his veins.  At length a man, more
+kindly than the rest, seeing that he was a stranger to London, procured
+him a hackney-coach, and directed the driver to the distant quarter of
+Berkeley Square.  The snow balled under the hoofs of the horses--the
+groaning vehicle proceeded at the pace of a hearse.  At length, and after
+a period of such suspense, and such emotion, as Sidney never in after-
+life could recall without a shudder, the coach stopped--the benumbed
+driver heavily descended--the sound of the knocker knelled loud through
+the muffled air--and the light from Mr. Beaufort's hall glared full upon
+the dizzy eyes of the visitor.  He pushed aside the porter, and sprang
+into the hall.  Luckily, one of the footmen who had attended Mrs.
+Beaufort to the Lakes recognised him; and, in answer to his breathless
+inquiry, said,--
+
+"Why, indeed, Mr. Spencer, Miss Beaufort is at home--up-stairs in the
+drawing-room, with master and mistress, and Monsieur de Vaudemont; but--"
+
+Sidney waited no more.  He bounded up the stairs--he opened the first
+door that presented itself to him, and burst, unannounced and unlooked-
+for, upon the eyes of the group seated within.  He saw not the terrified
+start of Mr. Robert Beaufort--he heeded not the faint, nervous
+exclamation of the mother--he caught not the dark and wondering glace of
+the stranger seated beside Camilla--he saw but Camilla herself, and in a
+moment he was at her feet.
+
+"Camilla, I am here!--I, who love you so--I, who have nothing in the
+world but you!  I am here--to learn from you, and you alone, if I am
+indeed abandoned--if you are indeed to be another's!"
+
+He had dashed his hat from his brow as he sprang forward; his long fair
+hair, damp with the snows, fell disordered over his forehead; his eyes
+were fixed, as for life and death, upon the pale face and trembling lips
+of Camilla.  Robert Beaufort, in great alarm, and well aware of the
+fierce temper of Philip, anticipative of some rash and violent impulse,
+turned his glance upon his destined son-in-law.  But there was no angry
+pride in the countenance he there beheld.  Philip had risen, but his
+frame was bent--his knees knocked together--his lips were parted--his
+eyes were staring full upon the face of the kneeling man.
+
+Suddenly Camilla, sharing her father's fear, herself half rose, and with
+an unconscious pathos, stretched one hand, as if to shelter, over
+Sidney's head, and looked to Philip.  Sidney's eyes followed hers.  He
+sprang to his feet.
+
+"What, then, it is true!  And this is the man for whom I am abandoned!
+But unless you--you, with your own lips, tell me that you love me no
+more--that you love another--I will not yield you but with life."
+
+He stalked sternly and impetuously up to Philip, who recoiled as his
+rival advanced.  The characters of the two men seemed suddenly changed.
+The timid dreamer seemed dilated into the fearless soldier.  The soldier
+seemed shrinking--quailing-into nameless terror.  Sidney grasped that
+strong arm, as Philip still retreated, with his slight and delicate
+fingers, grasped it with violence and menace; and frowning into the face
+from which the swarthy blood was scared away, said, in a hollow whisper:
+
+"Do you hear me?  Do you comprehend me?  I say that she shall not be
+forced into a marriage at which I yet believe her heart rebels.  My claim
+is holier than yours.  Renounce her, or win her but with my blood."
+
+Philip did not apparently hear the words thus addressed to him.  His
+whole senses seemed absorbed in the one sense of sight.  He continued to
+gaze upon the speaker, till his eye dropped on the hand that yet griped
+his arm.  And as he thus looked, he uttered an inarticulate cry.  He
+caught the hand in his own, and pointed to a ring on the finger, but
+remained speechless.  Mr. Beaufort approached, and began some stammered
+words of soothing to Sidney, but Philip motioned him to be silent, and,
+at last, as if by a violent effort, gasped forth, not to Sidney, but to
+Beaufort,--
+
+"His name?--his name?"
+
+"It is Mr. Spencer--Mr. Charles Spencer," cried Beaufort.  "Listen to me,
+I will explain all--I--"
+
+"Hush, hush! cried Philip; and turning to Sidney, he put his hand on his
+shoulder, and looking him full in the face, said,--
+
+"Have you not known another name?  Are you not--yes, it is so--it is--it
+is!  Follow me--follow!"
+
+And still retaining his grasp, and leading Sidney, who was now subdued,
+awed, and a prey to new and wild suspicions, he moved on gently, stride
+by stride--his eyes fixed on that fair face--his lips muttering-till the
+closing door shut both forms from the eyes of the three there left.
+
+It was the adjoining room into which Philip led his rival.  It was lit
+but by a small reading-lamp, and the bright, steady blaze of the fire;
+and by this light they both continued to gaze on each other, as if
+spellbound, in complete silence.  At last Philip, by an irresistible
+impulse, fell upon Sidney's bosom, and, clasping him with convulsive
+energy, gasped out:
+
+"Sidney!--Sidney!--my mother's son!"
+
+"What!"  exclaimed Sidney, struggling from the embrace, and at last
+freeing himself; "it is you, then!--you, my own brother!  You, who have
+been hitherto the thorn in my path, the cloud in my fate!  You, who are
+now come to make me a wretch for life!  I love that woman, and you tear
+her from me!  You, who subjected my infancy to hardship, and, but for
+Providence, might have degraded my youth, by your example, into shame and
+guilt!"
+
+"Forbear!--forbear!" cried Philip, with a voice so shrill in its agony,
+that it smote the hearts of those in the adjoining chamber like the
+shriek of some despairing soul.  They looked at each other, but not one
+had the courage to break upon the interview.
+
+Sidney himself was appalled by the sound.  He threw himself on a seat,
+and, overcome by passions so new to him, by excitement so strange, hid
+his face, and sobbed as a child.
+
+Philip walked rapidly to and fro the room for some moments; at length he
+paused opposite to Sidney, and said, with the deep calmness of a wronged
+and goaded spirit:
+
+"Sidney Beaufort, hear me!  When my mother died she confided you to my
+care, my love, and my protection.  In the last lines that her hand
+traced, she bade me think less of myself than of you; to be to you as a
+father as well as brother.  The hour that I read that letter I fell on my
+knees, and vowed that I would fulfil that injunction--that I would
+sacrifice my very self, if I could give fortune or happiness to you.  And
+this not for your sake alone, Sidney; no! but as my mother--our wronged,
+our belied, our broken-hearted mother!--O Sidney, Sidney! have you no
+tears for her, too?"  He passed his hand over his own eyes for a moment,
+and resumed: "But as our mother, in that last letter, said to me, 'let my
+love pass into your breast for him,' so, Sidney, so, in all that I could
+do for you, I fancied that my mother's smile looked down upon me, and
+that in serving you it was my mother whom I obeyed.  Perhaps, hereafter,
+Sidney, when we talk over that period of my earlier life when I worked
+for you, when the degradation you speak of (there was no crime in it!)--
+was borne cheerfully for your sake, and yours the holiday though mine the
+task--perhaps, hereafter, you will do me more justice.  You left me, or
+were reft from me, and I gave all the little fortune that my mother had
+bequeathed us, to get some tidings from you.  I received your letter--
+that bitter letter--and I cared not then that I was a beggar, since I was
+alone.  You talk of what I have cost you--you talk! and you now ask me
+to--to--Merciful Heaven! let me understand you--do you love Camilla?
+Does she love you?  Speak--speak--explain--what, new agony awaits me?"
+
+It was then that Sidney, affected and humbled, amidst all his more
+selfish sorrows, by his brother's language and manner, related, as
+succinctly as he could, the history of his affection for Camilla, the
+circumstances of their engagement, and ended by placing before him the
+letter he had received from Mr. Beaufort.
+
+In spite of all his efforts for self-control, Philip's anguish was so
+great, so visible, that Sidney, after looking at his working features,
+his trembling hands, for a moment, felt all the earlier parts of his
+nature melt in a flow of generous sympathy and remorse.  He flung himself
+on the breast from which he had shrunk before, and cried,--
+
+"Brother, brother! forgive me; I see how I have wronged you.  If she has
+forgotten me, if she love you, take her and be happy!"
+
+Philip returned his embrace, but without warmth, and then moved away;
+and, again, in great disorder, paced the room.  His brother only heard
+disjointed exclamations that seemed to escape him unawares: "They said
+she loved me!  Heaven give me strength!  Mother--mother! let me fulfil my
+vow!  Oh, that I had died ere this!"  He stopped at last, and the large
+dews rolled down his forehead.  "Sidney!" said he, "there is a mystery
+here that I comprehend not.  But my mind now is very confused.  If she
+loves you--if!--is it possible for a woman to love two?  Well, well, I go
+to solve the riddle: wait here!"
+
+He vanished into the next room, and for nearly half an hour Sidney was
+alone.  He heard through the partition murmured voices; he caught more
+clearly the sound of Camilla's sobs.  The particulars of that interview
+between Philip and Camilla, alone at first (afterwards Mr. Robert
+Beaufort was re-admitted), Philip never disclosed, nor could Sidney
+himself ever obtain a clear account from Camilla, who could not recall
+it, even years after, without great emotion.  But at last the door was
+opened, and Philip entered, leading Camilla by the hand.  His face was
+calm, and there was a smile on his lips; a greater dignity than even.
+that habitual to him was diffused over his whole person.  Camilla was
+holding her handkerchief to her eyes and weeping passionately.  Mr.
+Beaufort followed them with a mortified and slinking air.
+
+"Sidney," said Philip, "it is past.  All is arranged.  I yield to your
+earlier, and therefore better, claim.  Mr. Beaufort consents to your
+union.  He will tell you, at some fitter time, that our birthright is at
+last made clear, and that there is no blot on the name we shall hereafter
+bear.  Sidney, embrace your bride!"
+
+Amazed, delighted, and still half incredulous, Sidney seized and kissed
+the hand of Camilla; and as he then drew her to his breast, she said, as
+she pointed to Philip:--
+
+"Oh! if you do love me as you say, see in him the generous, the noble--"
+Fresh sobs broke off her speech; but as Sidney sought again to take her
+hand, she whispered, with a touching and womanly sentiment, "Ah! respect
+him: see!--" and Sidney, looking then at his brother, saw, that though he
+still attempted to smile, his lip writhed, and his features were drawn
+together, as one whose frame is wrung by torture, but who struggles not
+to groan.
+
+He flew to Philip, who, grasping his hand, held him back, and said,--
+
+"I have fulfilled my vow!  I have given you up the only blessing my life
+has known.  Enough, you are happy, and I shall be so too, when God
+pleases to soften this blow.  And now you must not wonder or blame me,
+if, though so lately found, I leave you for a while.  Do me one kindness,
+--you, Sidney--you, Mr. Beaufort.  Let the marriage take place at
+H----, in the village church by which my mother sleeps;  let it be
+delayed till the suit is terminated: by that time I shall hope to meet
+you all--to meet you, Camilla, as I ought to meet my brother's wife; till
+then, my presence will not sadden your happiness.  Do not seek to see me;
+do not expect to hear from me.  Hist! be silent, all of you; my heart is
+yet bruised and sore.  O THOU," and here, deepening his voice, he raised
+his arms, "Thou who hast preserved my youth from such snares and such
+peril, who hast guided my steps from the abyss to which they wandered,
+and beneath whose hand I now bow, grateful if chastened, receive this
+offering, and bless that union!  Fare ye well."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+          "Heaven's airs amid the harpstrings dwell;
+          And we wish they ne'er may fade;
+          They cease; and the soul is a silent cell,
+          Where music never played.
+          Dream follows dream through the long night-hours."
+          WILSON: _The Past, a poem_.
+
+The self-command which Philip had obtained for a while deserted him when
+he was without the house.  His mind felt broken up into chaos; he hurried
+on, mechanically, on foot; he passed street upon street, now solitary and
+deserted, as the lamps gleamed upon the thick snow.  The city was left
+behind him.  He paused not, till, breathless, and exhausted in spirit if
+not in frame, he reached the churchyard where Catherine's dust reposed.
+The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay deep over the graves; the
+yew-trees, clad in their white shrouds, gleamed ghost-like through the
+dimness.  Upon the rail that fenced the tomb yet hung a wreath that
+Fanny's hand had placed there.  But the flowers were hid; it was a wreath
+of snow!  Through the intervals of the huge and still clouds, there
+gleamed a few melancholy stars.  The very calm of the holy spot seemed
+unutterably sad.  The Death of the year overhung the Death of man.  And
+as Philip bent over the tomb, within and without all was ICE and NIGHT!
+
+For hours he remained on that spot, alone with his grief and absorbed in
+his prayer.  Long past midnight Fanny heard his step on the stairs, and
+the door of his chamber close with unwonted violence.  She heard, too,
+for some time, his heavy tread on the floor, till suddenly all was
+silent.  The next morning, when, at the usual hour, Sarah entered to
+unclose the shutters and light the fire, she was startled by wild
+exclamations and wilder laughter.  The fever had mounted to the brain--
+he was delirious.
+
+For several weeks Philip Beaufort was in imminent danger; for a
+considerable part of that time he was unconscious; and when the peril was
+past, his recovery was slow and gradual.  It was the only illness to
+which his vigorous frame had ever been subjected: and the fever had
+perhaps exhausted him more than it might have done one in whose
+constitution the disease had encountered less resistance.  His brother;
+imagining he had gone abroad, was unacquainted with his danger.  None
+tended his sick-bed save the hireling nurse, the feed physician, and the
+unpurchasable heart of the only being to whom the wealth and rank of the
+Heir of Beaufort Court were as nothing.  Here was reserved for him Fate's
+crowning lesson, in the vanity of those human wishes which anchor in gold
+and power.  For how many years had the exile and the outcast pined
+indignantly for his birthright?--Lo! it was won: and with it came the
+crushed heart and the smitten frame.  As he slowly recovered sense and
+reasoning, these thoughts struck him forcibly.  He felt as if he were
+rightly punished in having disdained, during his earlier youth, the
+enjoyments within his reach.  Was there nothing in the glorious health
+--the unconquerable hope--the heart, if wrung, and chafed, and sorely
+tried, free at least from the direst anguish of the passions,
+disappointed and jealous love?  Though now certain, if spared to the
+future, to be rich, powerful, righted in name and honour, might he not
+from that sick-bed envy his earlier past?  even when with his brother
+orphan he wandered through the solitary fields, and felt with what
+energies we are gifted when we have something to protect; or when, loving
+and beloved, he saw life smile out to him in the eyes of Eugenie; or
+when, after that melancholy loss, he wrestled boldly, and breast to
+breast with Fortune, in a far land, for honour and independence?  There
+is something in severe illness, especially if it be in violent contrast
+to the usual strength of the body, which has often the most salutary
+effect upon the mind; which often, by the affliction of the frame,
+roughly wins us from the too morbid pains of the heart! which makes us
+feel that, in mere LIFE, enjoyed as the robust enjoy it, God's Great
+Principle of Good breathes and moves.  We rise thus from the sick-bed
+softened and humbled, and more disposed to look around us for such
+blessings as we may yet command.
+
+The return of Philip, his danger, the necessity of exertion, of tending
+him, had roused Fanny from a state which might otherwise have been
+permanently dangerous to the intellect so lately ripened within her.
+With what patience, with what fortitude, with what unutterable thought
+and devotion, she fulfilled that best and holiest woman's duty--let the
+man whose struggle with life and death has been blessed with the vigil
+that wakes and saves, imagine to himself.  And in all her anxiety and
+terror, she had glimpses of a happiness which it seemed to her almost
+criminal to acknowledge.  For, even in his delirium, her voice seemed to
+have some soothing influence over him, and he was calmer while she was
+by.  And when at last he was conscious, her face was the first he saw,
+and her name the first which his lips uttered.  As then he grew gradually
+stronger, and the bed was deserted for the sofa, he took more than the
+old pleasure in hearing her read to him; which she did with a feeling
+that lecturers cannot teach.  And once, in a pause from this occupation,
+he spoke to her frankly,--he sketched his past history--his last
+sacrifice.  And Fanny, as she wept, learned that he was no more
+another's!
+
+It has been said that this man, naturally of an active and impatient
+temperament, had been little accustomed to seek those resources which are
+found in books.  But somehow in that sick chamber--it was Fanny's voice--
+the voice of her over whose mind he had once so haughtily lamented, that
+taught him how much of aid and solace the Herd of Men derive from the
+Everlasting Genius of the Few.
+
+Gradually, and interval by interval, moment by moment, thus drawn
+together, all thought beyond shut out (for, however crushing for the time
+the blow that had stricken Philip from health and reason, he was not that
+slave to a guilty fancy, that he could voluntarily indulge--that he would
+not earnestly seek to shun--all sentiments 'chat yet turned with unholy
+yearning towards the betrothed of his brother);--gradually, I say, and
+slowly, came those progressive and delicious epochs which mark a
+revolution in the affections:--unspeakable gratitude, brotherly
+tenderness, the united strength of compassion and respect that he had
+felt for Fanny seemed, as he gained health, to mellow into feelings yet
+more exquisite and deep.  He could no longer delude himself with a vain
+and imperious belief that it was a defective mind that his heart
+protected; he began again to be sensible to the rare beauty of that
+tender face--more lovely, perhaps, for the paleness that had replaced its
+bloom.  The fancy that he had so imperiously checked before--before he
+saw Camilla, returned to him, and neither pride nor honour had now the
+right to chase the soft wings away.  One evening, fancying himself alone,
+he fell into a profound reverie; he awoke with a start, and the
+exclamation, "was it true love that I ever felt for Camilla, or a
+passion, a frenzy, a delusion?"
+
+His exclamation was answered by a sound that seemed both of joy and
+grief.  He looked up, and saw Fanny before him; the light of the moon,
+just risen, fell full on her form, but her hands were clasped before her
+face; he heard her sob.
+
+"Fanny, dear Fanny!"  he cried, and sought to throw himself from the sofa
+to her feet.  But she drew herself away, and fled from the chamber silent
+as a dream.
+
+Philip rose, and, for the first time since his illness, walked, but with
+feeble steps, to and fro the room.  With what different emotions from
+those in which last, in fierce and intolerable agony, he had paced that
+narrow boundary!  Returning health crept through his veins--a serene, a
+kindly, a celestial joy circumfused his heart.  Had the time yet come
+when the old Florimel had melted into snow; when the new and the true
+one, with its warm life, its tender beauty, its maiden wealth of love,
+had risen before his hopes?  He paused before the window; the spot within
+seemed so confined, the night without so calm and lovely, that he forgot
+his still-clinging malady, and unclosed the casement: the air came soft
+and fresh upon his temples, and the church-tower and spire, for the first
+time, did not seem to him to rise in gloom against the heavens.  Even the
+gravestone of Catherine, half in moonlight, half in shadow, appeared to
+him to wear a smile.  His mother's memory was become linked with the
+living Fanny.
+
+"Thou art vindicated--thy Sidney is happy," he murmured: "to her the
+thanks!"
+
+Fair hopes, and soft thoughts busy within him, he remained at the
+casement till the increasing chill warned him of the danger he incurred.
+
+The next day, when the physician visited him, he found the fever had
+returned.  For many days, Philip was again in danger--dull, unconscious
+even of the step and voice of Fanny.
+
+He woke at last as from a long and profound sleep; woke so refreshed, so
+revived, that he felt at once that some great crisis had been passed, and
+that at length he had struggled back to the sunny shores of Life.
+
+By his bedside sat Liancourt, who, long alarmed at his disappearance, had
+at last contrived, with the help of Mr. Barlow, to trace him to Gawtrey's
+house, and had for several days taken share in the vigils of poor Fanny.
+
+While he was yet explaining all this to Philip, and congratulating
+him on his evident recovery, the physician entered to confirm the
+congratulation.  In a few days the invalid was able to quit his room, and
+nothing but change of air seemed necessary for his convalescence.  It was
+then that Liancourt, who had for two days seemed impatient to unburden
+himself of some communication, thus addressed him:--
+
+"My--My dear friend, I have learned now your story from Barlow, who
+called several times during your relapse; and who is the more anxious
+about you, as the time for the decision of your case now draws near.  The
+sooner you quit this house the better."
+
+"Quit this house! and why?  Is there not one in this house to whom I owe
+my fortune and my life?"
+
+"Yes; and for that reason I say, 'Go hence:' it is the only return you
+can make her."
+
+"Pshaw!--speak intelligibly."
+
+"I  will,"  said Liancourt,  gravely.  "I have been a watcher with her by
+your sick-bed, and I know what you must feel already:--nay, I must
+confess that even the old servant has ventured to speak to me.  You have
+inspired that poor girl with feelings dangerous to her peace."
+
+"Ha!" cried Philip, with such joy that Liancourt frowned, and said,
+"Hitherto I have believed you too honourable to--"
+
+"So you think she loves me?" interrupted Philip.  "Yes; what then?  You,
+the heir of Beaufort Court, of a rental of L20,000. a year,--of an
+historical name,--you cannot marry this poor girl?"
+
+"Well!--I will consider what you say, and, at all events, I will leave
+the house to attend the result of the trial.  Let us talk no more on the
+subject now."
+
+Philip had the penetration to perceive that Liancourt, who was greatly
+moved by the beauty, the innocence, and the unprotected position of
+Fanny, had not confined caution to himself; that with his characteristic
+well-meaning bluntness, and with the license of a man somewhat advanced
+in years, he had spoken to Fanny herself: for Fanny now seemed to shun
+Philip,--her eyes were heavy, her manner was embarrassed.  He saw the
+change, but it did not grieve him; he hailed the omens which he drew from
+it.
+
+And at last he and Liancourt went.  He was absent three weeks, during
+which time the formality of the friendly lawsuit was decided in the
+plaintiff's favour; and the public were in ecstasies at the noble and
+sublime conduct of Mr. Robert Beaufort: who, the moment he had discovered
+a document which he might so easily have buried for ever in oblivion,
+voluntarily agreed to dispossess himself of estates he had so long
+enjoyed, preferring conscience to lucre.  Some persons observed that it
+was reported that Mr. Philip Beaufort had also been generous--that he had
+agreed to give up the estates for his uncle's life, and was only in the
+meanwhile to receive a fourth of the revenues.  But the universal comment
+was, "He could not have done less!"  Mr. Robert Beaufort was, as Lord
+Lilburne had once observed, a man who was born, made, and reared to be
+spoken well of by the world; and it was a comfort to him now, poor man,
+to feel that his character was so highly estimated.  If Philip should
+live to the age of one hundred, he will never become so respectable and
+popular a man with the crowd as his worthy uncle.  But does it much
+matter?  Philip returned to H---- the eve before the day fixed for the
+marriage of his brother and Camilla.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+          From Night, Sunshine and Day arose--HES
+
+The sun of early May shone cheerfully over the quiet suburb of H----.
+In the thoroughfares life was astir.  It was the hour of noon--the hour
+at which commerce is busy, and streets are full.  The old retired trader,
+eying wistfully the rolling coach or the oft-pausing omnibus, was
+breathing the fresh and scented air in the broadest and most crowded
+road, from which, afar in the distance, rose the spires of the
+metropolis.  The boy let loose from the day-school was hurrying home to
+dinner, his satchel on his back: the ballad-singer was sending her
+cracked whine through the obscurer alleys, where the baker's boy, with
+puddings on his tray, and the smart maid-servant, despatched for porter,
+paused to listen.  And round the shops where cheap shawls and cottons
+tempted the female eye, many a loitering girl detained her impatient
+mother, and eyed the tickets and calculated her hard-gained savings for
+the Sunday gear.  And in the corners of the streets steamed the itinerant
+kitchens of the piemen, and rose the sharp cry, "All hot! all hot!"  in
+the ear of infant and ragged hunger.  And amidst them all rolled on some
+lazy coach of ancient merchant or withered maiden, unconscious of any
+life but that creeping through their own languid veins.  And before the
+house in which Catherine died, there loitered many stragglers, gossips,
+of the hamlet, subscribers to the news-room hard by, to guess, and
+speculate, and wonder why, from the church behind, there rose the merry
+peal of the marriage-bell!
+
+At length along the broad road leading from the great city, there were
+seen rapidly advancing three carriages of a very different fashion from
+those familiar to the suburb.  On they came; swiftly they whirled round
+the angle that conducted to the church; the hoofs of the gay steeds
+ringing cheerily on the ground; the white favours of the servants
+gleaming in the sun.  Happy is the bride the sun shines on!  And when the
+carriages had thus vanished, the scattered groups melted into one crowd,
+and took their way to the church.  They stood idling without in the
+burial-ground; many of them round the fence that guarded from their
+footsteps Catherine's lonely grave.  All in nature was glad,
+exhilarating, and yet serene; a genial freshness breathed through the
+soft air; not a cloud was to be seen in the smiling azure; even the old
+dark yews seemed happy in their everlasting verdure.  The bell ceased,
+and then even the crowd grew silent; and not a sound was heard in that
+solemn spot to whose demesnes are consecrated alike the Birth, the
+Marriage, and the Death.
+
+At length there came forth from the church door the goodly form of a rosy
+beadle.  Approaching the groups, he whispered the better-dressed and
+commanded the ragged, remonstrated with the old and lifted his cane
+against the young; and the result of all was, that the churchyard, not
+without many a murmur and expostulation, was cleared, and the crowd fell
+back in the space behind the gates of the principal entrance, where they
+swayed and gaped and chattered round the carriages, which were to bear
+away the bridal party.
+
+Within the church, as the ceremony was now concluded, Philip Beaufort
+conducted, hand-in-hand, silently along the aisle, his brother's wife.
+
+Leaning on his stick, his cold sneer upon his thin lip, Lord Lilburne
+limped, step by step, with the pair, though a little apart from them,
+glancing from moment to moment at the face of Philip Beaufort, where he
+had hoped to read a grief that he could not detect.  Lord Lilburne had
+carefully refrained from an interview with Philip till that day, and he
+now only came to the wedding as a surgeon goes to an hospital, to examine
+a disease he had been told would be great and sore: he was disappointed.
+Close behind followed Sidney, radiant with joy, and bloom, and beauty;
+and his kind guardian, the tears rolling down his eyes, murmured
+blessings as he looked upon him.  Mrs. Beaufort had declined attending
+the ceremony--her nerves were too weak--but, behind, at a longer
+interval, came Robert Beaufort, sober, staid, collected as ever to
+outward seeming; but a close observer might have seen that his eye had
+lost its habitual complacent cunning, that his step was more heavy, his
+stoop more joyless.  About his air there was a some thing crestfallen.
+The consciousness of acres had passed away from his portly presence.
+He was no longer a possessor, but a pensioner.  The rich man, who had
+decided as he pleased on the happiness of others, was a cipher; he had
+ceased to have any interest in anything.  What to him the marriage of
+his daughter now?  Her children would not be the heirs of Beaufort.  As
+Camilla kindly turned round, and through happy tears waited for his
+approach, to clasp his hand, he forced a smile, but it was sickly and
+piteous.  He longed to creep away, and be alone.
+
+"My father!"  said Camilla, in her sweet low voice; and she extricated
+herself from Philip, and threw herself on his breast.
+
+"She is a good child," said Robert Beaufort vacantly, and, turning his
+dry eyes to the group, he caught instinctively at his customary
+commonplaces;--"and a good child, Mr. Sidney, makes a good wife!"
+
+The clergyman bowed as if the compliment were addressed to himself: he
+was the only man there whom Robert Beaufort could now deceive.
+
+"My sister," said Philip Beaufort, as once more leaning on his arm, they
+paused before the church door, "may Sidney love and prize you as--as I
+would have done; and believe me, both of you, I have no regret, no
+memory, that wounds me now."
+
+He dropped the hand, and motioned to her father to load her to the
+carriage.  Then winding his arm into Sidney's, he said,--
+
+"Wait till they are gone: I have one word yet with you.  Go on,
+gentlemen."
+
+The clergyman bowed, and walked through the churchyard.  But Lilburne,
+pausing and surveying Philip Beaufort, said to him, whisperingly,--
+
+"And so much for feeling--the folly!  So much for generosity--the
+delusion!  Happy man!"
+
+"I am thoroughly happy, Lord Lilburne."
+
+"Are you?--Then, it was neither feeling nor generosity; and we were taken
+in!  Good day."  With that he limped slowly to the gate.
+
+Philip answered not the sarcasm even by a look.  For at that moment a
+loud shout was set up by the mob without--they had caught a glimpse of
+the bride.
+
+"Come, Sidney, this way."  he said; "I must not detain you long."
+
+Arm in arm they passed out of the church, and turned to the spot hard by,
+where the flowers smiled up to them from the stone on their mother's
+grave.
+
+The old inscription had been effaced, and the name of CATHERINE BEAUFORT
+was placed upon the stone.  "Brother," said Philip, "do not forget this
+grave: years hence, when children play around your own hearth.  Observe,
+the name of Catherine Beaufort is fresher on the stone than the dates of
+birth and death--the name was only inscribed there to-day--your wedding-
+day.  Brother, by this grave we are now indeed united."
+
+"Oh, Philip!" cried Sidney, in deep emotion, clasping the hand stretched
+out to him; "I feel, I feel how noble, how great you are--that you have
+sacrificed more than I dreamed of--"
+
+"Hush!" said Philip, with a smile.  "No talk of this.  I am happier than
+you deem me.  Go back now--she waits you."
+
+"And you?--leave you!--alone!"
+
+"Not alone," said Philip, pointing to the grave.
+
+Scarce had he spoken when, from the gate, came the shrill, clear voice of
+Lord Lilburne,--
+
+"We wait for Mr. Sidney Beaufort."
+
+Sidney passed his hand over his eyes, wrung the hand of his brother once
+more, and in a moment was by Camilla's side.
+
+Another shout--the whirl of the wheels--the trampling of feet--the
+distant hum and murmur--and all was still.  The clerk returned to lock
+up the church--he did not observe where Philip stood in the shadow of the
+wall--and went home to talk of the gay wedding, and inquire at what hour
+the funeral of the young woman; his next-door neighbour, would take place
+the next day.
+
+It might be a quarter of an hour after Philip was thus left--nor had he
+moved from the spot--when he felt his sleeve pulled gently.  He turned
+round and saw before him the wistful face of Fanny!
+
+"So you would not come to the wedding?"  said he.
+
+"No.  But I fancied you might be here alone--and sad."
+
+"And you will not even wear the dress I gave you?"
+
+"Another time.  Tell me, are you unhappy?"
+
+"Unhappy, Fanny!  No; look around.  The very burial-ground has a smile.
+See the laburnums clustering over the wall, listen to the birds on the
+dark yews above, and yonder see even the butterfly has settled upon her
+grave!
+
+"I am not unhappy."  As he thus spoke he looked at her earnestly, and
+taking both her hands in his, drew her gently towards him, and continued:
+"Fanny, do you remember, that, leaning over that gate, I once spoke to
+you of the happiness of marriage where two hearts are united?  Nay,
+Fanny, nay, I must go on.  It was here in this spot,--it was here that
+I first saw you on my return to England.  I came to seek the dead, and
+I have thought since, it was my mother's guardian spirit that drew me
+hither to find you--the living!  And often afterwards, Fanny, you would
+come with me here, when, blinded and dull as I was, I came to brood and
+to repine, insensible of the treasures even then perhaps within my reach.
+But, best as it was: the ordeal through which I have passed has made me
+more grateful for the prize I now dare to hope for.  On this grave your
+hand daily renewed the flowers.  By this grave, the link between the Time
+and the Eternity, whose lessons we have read together, will you consent
+to record our vows?  Fanny, dearest, fairest, tenderest, best, I love
+you, and at last as alone you should be loved!--I woo you as my wife!
+Mine, not for a season, but for ever--for ever, even when these graves
+are open, and the World shrivels like a scroll.  Do you understand me?--
+do you heed me?--or have I dreamed that that--"
+
+He stopped short--a dismay seized him at her silence.  Had he been
+mistaken in his divine belief!--the fear was momentary: for Fanny, who
+had recoiled as he spoke, now placing her hands to her temples, gazing on
+him, breathlessly and with lips apart, as if, indeed, with great effort
+and struggle her modest spirit conceived the possibility of the happiness
+that broke upon it, advanced timidly, her face suffused in blushes; and,
+looking into his eyes, as if she would read into his very soul, said,
+with an accent, the intenseness of which showed that her whole fate hung
+on his answer,--
+
+"But this is pity?--they have told you that I--in short, you are
+generous--you--you--Oh, deceive me not!  Do you love her still?--Can you
+--do you love the humble, foolish Fanny?"
+
+"As God shall judge me, sweet one, I am sincere!  I have survived a
+passion--never so deep, so tender, so entire as that I now feel for you!
+And, oh, Fanny, hear this true confession.  It was you--you to whom my
+heart turned before I saw Camilla!--against that impulse I struggled in
+the blindness of a haughty error!"
+
+Fanny uttered a low and suppressed cry of delight and rapture.  Philip
+passionately continued,--
+
+"Fanny, make blessed the life you have saved.  Fate destined us for each
+other.  Fate for me has ripened your sweet mind.  Fate for you has
+softened this rugged heart.  We may have yet much to bear and much to
+learn.  We will console and teach each other!"
+
+He drew her to his breast as he spoke--drew her trembling, blushing,
+confused, but no more reluctant; and there, by the GRAVE that had been
+so memorable a scene in their common history, were murmured those vows in
+which all this world knows of human happiness is treasured and recorded--
+love that takes the sting from grief, and faith that gives eternity to
+love.  All silent, yet all serene around them!  Above, the heaven,--at
+their feet, the grave:--For the love, the grave!--for the faith, the
+heaven!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+               "A labore reclinat otium."--HORAT.
+
+               [Leisure unbends itself from labour.]
+
+I feel that there is some justice in the affection the general reader
+entertains for the old-fashioned and now somewhat obsolete custom, of
+giving to him, at the close of a work, the latest news of those who
+sought his acquaintance through its progress.
+
+The weak but well-meaning Smith, no more oppressed by the evil
+influence of his brother, has continued to pass his days in comfort and
+respectability on the income settled on him by Philip Beaufort.  Mr. and
+Mrs. Roger Morton still live, and have just resigned their business to
+their eldest son; retiring themselves to a small villa adjoining the town
+in which they had made their fortune.  Mrs. Morton is very apt, when she
+goes out to tea, to talk of her dear deceased sister-in-law, the late
+Mrs. Beaufort, and of her own remarkable kindness to her nephew when a
+little boy.  She observes that, in fact, the young men owe everything to
+Mr. Roger and herself; and, indeed, though Sidney was never of a grateful
+disposition, and has not been near her since, yet the elder brother, the
+Mr. Beaufort, always evinces his respect to them by the yearly present of
+a fat buck.  She then comments on the ups and downs of life; and observes
+that it is a pity her son Tom preferred the medical profession to the
+church.  Their cousin, Mr. Beaufort, has two livings.  To all this Mr.
+Roger says nothing, except an occasional "Thank Heaven, I want no man's
+help!  I am as well to do as my neighbours.  But that's neither here nor
+there."
+
+There are some readers--they who do not thoroughly consider the truths of
+this life--who will yet ask, "But how is Lord Lilburne punished?"
+Punished?--ay, and indeed, how?  The world, and not the poet, must answer
+that question.  Crime is punished from without.  If Vice is punished, it
+must be from within.  The Lilburnes of this hollow world are not to be
+pelted with the soft roses of poetical justice.  They who ask why he is
+not punished may be the first to doff the hat to the equipage in which my
+lord lolls through the streets!  The only offence he habitually committed
+of a nature to bring the penalties of detection, he renounced the moment
+he perceived there was clanger of discovery! he gambled no more after
+Philip's hint.  He was one of those, some years after, most bitter upon
+a certain nobleman charged with unfair play--one of those who took the
+accusation as proved; and whose authority settled all disputes thereon.
+
+But, if no thunderbolt falls on Lord Lilburne's head--if he is fated
+still to eat, and drink, and to die on his bed, he may yet taste the
+ashes of the Dead Sea fruit which his hands have culled.  He is grown
+old.  His infirmities increase upon him; his sole resources of pleasure
+--the senses--are dried up.  For him there is no longer savour in the
+viands, or sparkle in the wine,--man delights him not, nor woman neither.
+He is alone with Old Age, and in the sight of Death.
+
+With the exception of Simon, who died in his chair not many days after
+Sidney's marriage, Robert Beaufort is the only one among the more
+important agents left at the last scene of this history who has passed
+from our mortal stage.
+
+After the marriage of his daughter he for some time moped and drooped.
+But Philip learned from Mr. Blackwell of the will that Robert had made
+previously to the lawsuit; and by which, had the lawsuit failed, his
+rights would yet have been preserved to him.  Deeply moved by a
+generosity he could not have expected from his uncle, and not pausing
+to inquire too closely how far it was to be traced to the influence of
+Arthur, Philip so warmly expressed his gratitude, and so surrounded Mr.
+Beaufort with affectionate attentions, that the poor man began to recover
+his self-respect,--began even to regard the nephew he had so long
+dreaded, as a son,--to forgive him for not marrying Camilla.  And,
+perhaps, to his astonishment, an act in his life for which the customs of
+the world (that never favour natural ties not previously sanctioned by
+the legal) would have rather censured than praised, became his
+consolation; and the memory he was most proud to recall.  He gradually
+recovered his spirits; he was very fond of looking over that will: he
+carefully preserved it: he even flattered himself that it was necessary
+to preserve Philip from all possible litigation hereafter; for if the
+estates were not legally Philip's, why, then, they were his to dispose of
+as he pleased.  He was never more happy than when his successor was by
+his side; and was certainly a more cheerful and, I doubt not, a better
+man--during the few years in which he survived the law-suit--than ever he
+had been before.  He died--still member for the county, and still quoted
+as a pattern to county members--in Philip's arms; and on his lips there
+was a smile that even Lilburne would have called sincere.
+
+Mrs. Beaufort, after her husband's death, established herself in London;
+and could never be persuaded to visit Beaufort Court.  She took a
+companion, who more than replaced, in her eyes, the absence of Camilla.
+
+And Camilla-Spencer-Sidney.  They live still by the gentle Lake, happy in
+their own serene joys and graceful leisure; shunning alike ambition and
+its trials, action and its sharp vicissitudes; envying no one, covetous
+of nothing; making around them, in the working world, something of the
+old pastoral and golden holiday.  If Camilla had at one time wavered in
+her allegiance to Sidney, her good and simple heart has long since been
+entirely regained by his devotion; and, as might be expected from her
+disposition, she loved him better after marriage than before.
+
+Philip had gone through severer trials than Sidney.  But, had their
+earlier fates been reversed, and that spirit, in youth so haughty and
+self-willed, been lapped in ease and luxury, would Philip now be a better
+or a happier man?  Perhaps, too, for a less tranquil existence than his
+brother, Philip yet may be reserved; but, in proportion to the uses of
+our destiny, do we repose or toil: he who never knows pain knows but the
+half of pleasure.  The lot of whatever is most noble on the earth below
+falls not amidst the rosy Gardels of the Epicurean.  We may envy the man
+who enjoys and rests; but the smile of Heaven settles rather on the front
+of him who labours and aspires.
+
+And did Philip ever regret the circumstances that had given him Fanny for
+the partner of his life?  To some who take their notions of the Ideal
+from the conventional rules of romance, rather than from their own
+perceptions of what is true, this narrative would have been more pleasing
+had Philip never loved but Fanny.  But all that had led to that love had
+only served to render it more enduring and concentred.  Man's strongest
+and worthiest affection is his last--is the one that unites and embodies
+all his past dreams of what is excellent--the one from which Hope springs
+out the brighter from former disappointments--the one in which the
+MEMORIES are the most tender and the most abundant--the one which,
+replacing all others, nothing hereafter can replace.
+
+                     .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+And now ere the scene closes, and the audience, whom perhaps the actors
+may have interested for a while, disperse, to forget amidst the pursuits
+of actual life the Shadows that have amused an hour, or beguiled a care,
+let the curtain fall on one happy picture:--
+
+It is some years after the marriage of Philip and Fanny.  It is a summer
+morning.  In a small old-fashioned room at Beaufort Court, with its
+casements open to the gardens, stood Philip, having just entered; and
+near the window sat Fanny, his boy by her side.  She was at the mother's
+hardest task--the first lessons to the first-born child; and as the boy
+looked up at her sweet earnest face with a smile of intelligence on his
+own, you might have seen at a glance how well understood were the teacher
+and the pupil.  Yes: whatever might have been wanting in the Virgin to
+the full development of mind, the cares of the mother had supplied.  When
+a being was born to lean on her alone--dependent on her providence for
+life--then hour after hour, step after step, in the progress of infant
+destinies, had the reason of the mother grown in the child's growth,
+adapting itself to each want that it must foresee, and taking its
+perfectness and completion from the breath of the New Love!
+
+The child caught sight of Philip and rushed to embrace him.
+
+"See!" whispered Fanny, as she also hung upon him, and strange
+recollections of her own mysterious childhood crowded upon her,--"See,"
+whispered she, with a blush half of shame and half of pride, "the poor
+idiot girl is the teacher of your child!"
+
+"And," answered Philip, "whether for child or mother, what teacher is
+like Love?"
+
+Thus saying, he took the boy into his arms; and, as he bent over those
+rosy cheeks, Fanny saw, from the movement of his lips and the moisture in
+his eyes, that he blessed God.  He looked upon the mother's face, he
+glanced round on the flowers and foliage of the luxurious summer, and
+again he blessed God: And without and within, it was Light and MORNING!
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, NIGHT AND MORNING, V5 ***
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