XXXVII. A WOODLAND RIDE…

XXXVII. A WOODLAND RIDE

It was only at intervals that the sun’s rays pierced the leafy shade of a long valley in the woods of Dalradern, where Sir Within and his ward were riding. The tall beech-trees, which stood like the columns of a gigantic cathedral, were met and interwoven above so densely, that the light struggled with difficulty through the foliage, and fell in fanciful patches on the smooth turf beneath.

With noiseless tread the horses moved over that even turf, so that, when the riders were not speaking, not a sound broke the stillness, except the rich carol of the blackbird, or the deep-voiced cooing of the wood-pigeon.

Sir Within rode his strong dark-brown short-legged cob, a beast of grave and dignified deportment, never startled nor surprised by the fretful and uneasy performances of the mettlesome animal at his side, and whose natural hot temper was alternately chafed and caressed at the fancy of his rider; for it was her pleasure to be eternally correcting some imaginary fault, or teaching some new accomplishment. Now, it was his neck that wanted plasticity; now, he bore a little too heavily on the hand; now, the off-shoulder was a thought too prominent in his canter; or, more vexatious than these, he would respond to a touch of the spur by a sharp switch of the tail--a breach of good breeding she could not tolerate.

Firmly seated on an animal that defied all sympathy in these mettlesome feats, Sir Within had ample time to admire the exquisite grace with which she rode. It was indeed the very perfection of the accord between horse and rider, which makes the spectator unable to say to which of the two he yields the palm of excellence. No bound nor spring ever took her unawares; and when the animal seemed half mad with excitement, the graceful caress she stooped to bestow appeared to subdue him like a charm.

“Why are you so grave, my dear Gardy? You told me you should be yourself again when that tiresome man was gone, and now he’s off-thank Heaven for it!--but you look so depressed and dispirited as if you had not yet tasted the relief.”

“True, Ma Mie, quite true. I have not quite convinced myself that we are free of him. His son, however, remains, and is to stay till next week.”

“Yes, but how little we see of him. Your kind neighbour, Mr. Grenfell, has him almost every day at dinner.”

“For which I owe him all my gratitude.”

“I take it, Mr. Grenfell invites him to please himself. He is very lonely yonder at the Cottage. He says he has made no acquaintances, and I suppose that even Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle is better than solitude--not that I should think so myself.”

“But you show that too plainly, Ma Mie. There are no feelings we ought so strictly to control, so far as the manifestations go, as our distastes to people in society.”

“I think he hates me.”

“That would be impossible, child. He may be afraid of your wit; he may not like to encounter your repartee; he may feel, and not unreasonably, that he does not stand high in your favour, and this may impart a degree of constraint to his manner.”

“I have not seen the constraint, Sir, but I have the dislike, and it was so perfectly mutual, I was glad of it.”

“Another mistake, Ma Chere, and a great mistake. The people who really like us need no caressing. The blandishments should be all reserved for the doubtful--just as we administer cordials to the weak.”

“I do my best, Sir, but I own I do not approach it with a good grace. Do you really wish me to become a favourite with this young gentleman?”

“Nay, Ma Mie, you go too far. Your nature is like a pendulum, that swings if it be but breathed on. I did not say so much as that. I simply meant, that I should prefer if he were to carry away from us a pleasant impression of his visit. His father and I have had some discussions of a kind I cannot easily forget. In a long life of affairs, I have not met one, no, not one, who carries the virtue of candour to the pitch of my respected relative, or who imparts home truths with a more telling sincerity.”

“Well, Sir, if I understand you aright, I am to captivate Mr. Ladarelle, but not to fall in love with him.”

“Mademoiselle,” said he, gravely, “there was not such a word as love dropped in the entire discussion. I have told you that with the relations which subsist between the elder Mr. Ladarelle and myself it would be as well if a kindlier sentiment connected me with the young man. We shall probably have matters to discuss to which each of us ought to bring all the courtesy in his power.”

“Who cut down the large elm, Gardy?” cried she, suddenly pointing to a clearing in the wood, where a gigantic trunk had just been felled.

“It was I, Ma Chere. I ordered it; intending to make a vista yonder, so that we should see the great tower; but Mr. Ladarelle has stopped me with a protest, and as I abhor a lawsuit, I think I shall submit.”

“Just watch how the Cid will take the timber; he’s glorious oyer a stump!”

“Kate--my dear Kate--it’s too high; don’t do it. Come back, I entreat; I order you to come back!” cried he, as she dashed into the open, and with her horse beautifully in hand, cantered him at the tree. Perhaps it was in the seeming carelessness of her hand--for horses have an instinct rarely deceptive as to the intention of the rider--perhaps a mere caprice, but the Cid swerved as he came up and refused the leap.

The bare thought of such rebellion raised the girl’s temper at once. She wheeled him suddenly round, and rode back about fifty yards, and then facing him once more in the direction of the tree, she dashed towards it in speed.

“I command you--I order you to come back!” screamed Sir Within; but she heeded nothing, heard nothing. The horse, now irritated and snorting with passion, came too close before he rose to the leap, and though he sprung madly into the air, he touched--a mere touch with his fore-leg--and came tumbling over, headforemost, to the opposite side, with his rider beneath him.

Sir Within had covered his eyes with one hand, not to see her take the leap, and he remained thus for a few seconds, waiting to hear her voice and the tramp of her horse as she joined him. At last he removed his hand and looked around. She was not to be seen. He cried her name--he screamed it in his agony.

“This way!” cried she; “I’m not hurt--don’t be frightened--come and help me!”

Dismounting, he made through the tall ferns and the felled branches and soon gained the spot, from which the horse had only now arisen, and stood trembling over the fallen figure of the girl. “Oh, my life--my darling--my heart’s dearest,” cried he, kneeling down beside her; “tell me you are not crushed--not injured!”

“Only stunned, Gardy, nothing more. It was all my own fault. I rode him at speed; he had no time to gather himself, and the martingale----” As she spoke, her voice grew weak, she leaned her head on his shoulder and fainted.

How did the deep woods resound to that poor old man’s prayers and cries for help! He shouted--he screamed--he implored; he offered untold gold to him who should come to his aid. He pledged to give half of all he had in the world to any who should succour her. It was by a caprice of Kate’s that they rode without a groom, and he inveighed against his own folly now for the compliance. Madly mingling self-reproaches with his cries for assistance, he grew at length hoarse and so faint with his efforts, that he could with difficulty sustain her weight. Just then was it that she rallied, and with a playful smile said, “Dear Gardy, just pass your hand over Cid’s knee. I hope it is not touched!”

“What do I care for the horse; are you safe, my own darling--are you not hurt?”

“Not in the least--I think not; my ankle is a little stiff--a mere sprain--no more. This shoulder too---- There, don’t touch it, only help me up. Yes, of course, I mean to mount again--do tell me if his knee is all right?”

“Only think--without help--without a servant--not a creature near us,” muttered he.

“Very dreadful,” said she, with an arch smile; “quite compromising, I declare.”

“Oh, I have no heart for a jest now!” said he, with a heavy sigh, as he assisted her to rise.

“My sweet little horse,” said she, patting him and throwing her arm round his neck. “I did treat you very ill--very ill indeed. It was soft spongy ground, too, and not fair in any way, and you were not in the least to blame. Do you know, Gardy, it was a mere bit of bark that caught his foot; for, after all, it is not above four feet high, is it?”

“I don’t know--I don’t care how high it is. It very nigh cost you your life, and cost me more than I wish to tell;” and he muttered these last words beneath his breath.

“You have never helped me to mount, I think, Gardy! Mind, now, don’t touch Cid’s bridle; he won’t bear it. Just give me a slight lift--that’s it; thanks. Oh, how nice to be on the saddle again. If you wouldn’t think very ill of me, I’d ask a favour?”

“Anything in the whole world, Ma Mie; what is it?”

“Then, like a dear kind Gardy, let me ride him at it again; I’ll do it so quietly--”

“Not for a dukedom--not if you went on your knees to beg it. I declare, you can have but little feeling in your heart to ask it. Nay, I didn’t mean to say that, my sweet child; my head is wandering, and I know not what I say.”

“I hope you’ll not tell of my disaster, Gardy,” said she, as they rode slowly along towards home. “A fall brings one down at once to the level of all the people who do nothing but fall. Don’t smile; I mean simply what I say as applied to matters of horseflesh, not morals, and promise you’ll not tell of me.”

“The doctor must hear of it, certainly.”

“No, Gardy, I’ll have no doctor.”

“I insist upon it--you shall--and you must, Kate. Surely, when I say it is for my happiness, you will not refuse me.”

She made no answer, but passing her reins to her right hand, she laid her left hand over his, and so they rode on without a word on either side.

“Is it not strange that a crush and a tumble over a big tree should make one so very--very happy; but I declare to you, Gardy, I never knew my heart so full of delight as at this moment. Tell me, what’s the meaning of it?”

“Gratitude for your escape, Ma Mie; the thankfulness that even the most thoughtless feel for preservation through danger.”

“No, it’s not that; the sort of ecstacy I feel is something quite different from all this. It has nothing to do with peril, and just as little with gratitude. It has more in it of pride--that’s not the word, but it will do--of pride, then, that you made so much account of me.”

“For a moment I thought I had lost you!” said he, and his voice trembled, and his very cheek shook with emotion as he spoke.

“And would the loss have been a deep sorrow--a very deep sorrow?”

He pressed her hand to his heart, and said in a low voice, “The deepest--the heaviest that could befal me!”

“Was it not worth a fall to learn this?” said she, laughingly.

“Nay, rather will it not teach you to take more care of a life of such consequence to others?”

“Don’t say others, Gardy--say one other, and I am content.” As she said this, she drew her hand hurriedly away, for they were already approaching the great entrance, on the terrace of which Grenfell and young Ladarelle were talking and laughing. “Mind, Sir, not a word of my accident!” And with this she sprang to the ground before he could offer his hand, and, hurrying up the steps, disappeared within the building.

“Won’t you ask Grenfell to stop to dinner, Sir?” whispered Dolly, as Sir Within, after a few cold common-places, was about to pass on.

“Not to-day.”

“But I have half done it already, Sir. It was a great liberty on my part, but I blundered into it.”

“Will you give us your company at dinner to-morrow, Mr. Grenfell?” said Sir Within, without the hesitation of a moment.

Grenfell accepted, and, as Sir Within moved on, turning to Dolly, he said, “Did you remark his agitation--did you notice the embarrassment of his look and manner? Take my word for it, he has made her an offer.”

“Do you know it was passing through my mind the very same thought; for as they turned the angle of the copse yonder, I saw her snatch her hand from him.”

“Come back and dine with me. Common delicacy forbids you to spoil a tête-à-tête.”

“I can’t take the thing as coolly as you do, Grenfell. It’s no laughing matter to me.”

“Don’t laugh then, that’s all. There can be no reason, however, that you should not dine; so step in, and let’s be off.”

“I suspect you are right,” said Dolly, as they drove away. “The old fool has capped his folly. I whispered to him to ask you to dine.”

“I heard you, and I marked the eager way he put it off till tomorrow. His confusion got the better of all his tact, and showed me plainly enough that something had occurred to excite him greatly.”

“She passed in, too, without ever looking up; she never bowed to us--did you notice that?”

“I saw it all, and I said to myself that Master Dolly’s next dealings with Joel will entail heavy sacrifices.”

“It’s not done yet,” said Ladarelle, with an affected boldness.

“No, nor need be for some weeks to come; but let us talk no more of it till we have dined. Vyner sent me his cellar-key this morning, and we’ll see if his old wine cannot suggest some good counsel.”

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XXXVIII. SCHEMING

They sat late over their wine, and telling the servants to go to bed, Grenfell ordered that he should not be called before noon on the next day.

According to custom, his serrant had left his letters by his bedside, and then retired noiselessly, and without disturbing him. It was already late in the afternoon when Grenfell awoke. The first note he opened was a short one from Sir Within, begging to excuse himself from the expected happiness of receiving Mr. Grenfell that day at dinner, as a sudden attack of his old enemy the gout had just laid him up in bed. “If I have only my usual fortune,” added he, “my seizure will be a brief one, and I may soon again reckon on the pleasure of seeing you here.”

The tidings of the illness was corroborated by Grenfell’s valet, who saw the doctor travelling to Dalradern with all the speed of post-horses.

The thought of a courtship that ushered in a fit of the gout was just the sort of drollery that suited Grenfell’s taste, and as he lay he laughed in derision of the old man and his schemes of future happiness. He fancied himself telling the story at his club, and he dwelt on the opportunity it would afford to talk of “Wardle” as his friend--one whose eccentricities he had therefore a perfect right to dish-up for the amusement of all others.

“Take this,” said he, giving the note to his servant, “to Mr. Ladarelle’s room;” and, fancying to himself the varied moods with which that young gentleman would con over the intelligence, he lay back again in his bed.

There was no friendship--there was no reason for any--in the apparent interest he had taken in Ladarelle. It was not of the slightest moment to him which of the two, if either, should marry Kate O’Hara, save as to with whom he should stand best, and be most likely to be well received by in the future. Were she to marry Sir Within, the house would, in all likelihood, be closed to him. The old minister was too well versed in worldly matters not to cut off all the traditions of the past. He’s sure either to introduce her into life under the auspices of some of his own high connexions, or to live totally estranged from all society. “In either case, they are lost to me. Should she be married to Ladarelle, I--as the depositary of all that was secret in the transaction--I must needs have my influence. The house will of necessity be open to me, and I shall make of it what I please.” By this last reflection Grenfell summed up what his experience of life had largely supplied him with--that is, an inordinate liking for those establishments in which a large fortune is allied with something which disqualifies the possessors from taking their rightful position in society. In his estimation, there were no such pleasant houses as those where there was a “screw loose,” either in the conduct, the character, or the antecedents of the owners.

These houses were a sort of asylum for that large nomade population of highly amusing qualities and no characters, the men who had not “done” everything, but “done” everybody, and of women still more dubious. In these houses the style of living was usually splendid. Wit has a sort of natural affinity for good cookery, and Beauty knows all the value of the “costly setting” which splendour confers. Last of all, there was that perfect liberty--the freedom from all the discipline of correcter establishments--which gave to every guest some prerogative of a master. You came as you liked, went as you liked, and very often, too, introduced whom you liked. What more could a man do if he were the rightful owner? Now, Grenfell was free of many such houses, but in none was he supreme. There was not one wherein his authority was dominant and his word a law. This he ambitioned; he craved impatiently for the time he could say to the men in his club, “I’ll take you down with me to Ladarelle’s--I’ll show you some real cock shooting--I’ll give you a day or two at Dalradern.” Would not that be fame--distinction--triumph? Ladarelle, too, was a man made by nature for such a part--careless, extravagant, sensual, fond of amusement, without caring in the least for the characters of those who contributed towards it, and inherently vain and open to the coarsest flattery. With him, therefore, Grenfell anticipated little trouble; with her he was by no means so sure. She puzzled him, and she seemed determined not to afford him any opportunity of knowing more of her. Her avoidance of him was plain and unmistakable.

“Perhaps she fears, perhaps she distrusts me,” thought he. “I’ll take the earliest moment to assure her she need do neither, but may make me her friend implicitly.” He understood a good deal by that same word, which in ordinary life is not imputed to friendship. In fact, by friendship, he--as a great many others do--simply meant conspiracy. Thinking and reflecting in this vein, he lay, when the door opened, and young Ladarelle, in dressing-gown and slippers, entered.

“What’s the meaning of all this, Grenfell?” said he. “My fellow, Fisk, who is just come over, says that Sir Within is perfectly well; he was in the stable-yard this morning at seven o’clock, and that it is the ward, Mademoiselle herself, is ill.”

“He won’t have us at dinner, that’s all I know,” said Grenfell, yawning carelessly.

“He says nothing whatever about me; scarcely civil, I think, considering I am supposed to be his guest.”

“I’ll give you a dinner. You’ll pay me with interest one of these days, when you come to that estate.”

“That I will.”

“Do you know, as I lay here this last hour, I have been plotting out the sort of life a man could cut out for himself in a place like this. You are the sort of fellow to have the very pleasantest house in England.”

“I should like to try.”

“If you try, you’ll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality which first attracted me towards you?”

“What was it?”

“It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who was not infected with a slavish worship of the titled classes. How, being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don’t know; but you have escaped it.”

“You’re right there,” said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the assertion. “You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is a hobby of my governor’s to try and revive it. He offered the present people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I’d rather get into Graham’s than into Parliament.”

“A much harder thing to do!”

“You’re in Graham’s, ain’t you?”

“Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!”

“What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can’t make it out at all that I never met you before?”

“I’m some twelve or fifteen years your senior,” said the other, and a slight twitching of the mouth showed a certain irritation as he spoke; “a few years separates men as essentially as a whole hemisphere.”

“I suppose so.”

“Town life, too, moves in such a routine, that when a man comes to my age, he no more makes a new acquaintance than he acquires a new sensation.”

“And, stranger still,” continued Dolly, with that persistence that pertains to ill breeding, “I never so much as heard of you.”

“I feel ashamed of my obscurity!” said Grenfell, and his pale cheek became mottled with red.

“No, it ain’t that. I meant only to say that I never heard of any Grenfells but the Piccadilly fellows, Cox and Grenfells! ‘None genuine but signed by us.’ Ha, ha, ha!” and Dolly laughed at his drollery, and the other joined in the mirth quite sufficiently not to attract any especial attention. “Not relatives, I presume?” added Dolly, still laughing.

“Delighted if they were!” said Grenfell, with a sickly smile. “I don’t think the dividends would smell of curry powder!”

“That’s what Cecil St. John says: ‘Let the greatest scoundrel in England only leave me his money, and I’ll honour his memory.’ Do you know St. John?”

“One of my most intimate friends.”

“I am dying to know him! Grog Davis says he’s the only man that ever took the wind out of his sails.”

“I’ll have him to dinner when I go up to town, and get you to meet him,” said Grenfell. “It must be on a Sunday, though, for Cecil shuns all others, which he calls dun-days, to distinguish from Sundays.”

“I’d like to wipe off every shilling he owes. I’d like to set a fellow like that clear with the world.”

“I’ll tell him you said so. It will go a very long way towards acquiring his esteem.”

“Well, I declare it’s a thing I’d do, if I had my property. I’ve heard wonderful stories about him.”

“And he could tell you still more wonderful ones himself. He’s one of those men”--here Grenfell’s voice became authoritative and collected--“one of those men who, if he saw himself in such a position as yours, would no more doubt as to what he would do, than he would hesitate taking a fair fence in a fox-hunt.”

“And what would he do in my place?”

“He’d reason out the thing, somewhat in this way: ‘If I suffer the old cove to marry this girl, he’ll either hamper the estate with a heavy settlement, or, mayhap, alienate it altogether. I’ll marry her myself, or, if she’ll not consent, I’ll carry her off. Abduction looks very big in the law-books, but it’s a light offence, except where the woman is intractable.’”

“And, would you carry her off?”

“St. John would, I’ll take my oath on it!”

“And not marry her?”

“That’s as it might be, and if she insisted; for he has three other wives still living.”

“But, is the thing possible?”

“Possible! Why, it’s done every week of the year in Ireland.”

“Ay, but we’re not in Ireland, unfortunately.”

“That’s true; neither are we in France; but it was a French cook dressed that ‘supreme’ we ate yesterday.”

“I see what you mean,” said he, pondering slowly over the other’s words. “You think one might get fellows who understand how this sort of thing is to be done?”

“If I don’t mistake greatly, I know where to-go for the very man you want. In an excursion I once made with Vyner in the west of Ireland, we rambled into a wild district of Donegal, where in a lonely region we chanced on a little inn. It is a flattery to call it an inn. It was a small thatched cabin standing by itself in the midst of the mountains; there was not another habitation, I’m certain, within ten miles of it. The fellow who kept it was as rank a rebel as ever graced the gallows; and made no secret of his treason either, but owned it boldly and impudently. I had more than one discussion with him, and learned that the rascal had all the shrewdness and low cunning that pertains to that class of his countrymen. He had not, however, been well treated by his party, and he was not at all indisposed to betray them if he could see his way to secure his own advantage by it. At all events, it was clear to me, that for a case which required craft, daring, and no interference of scruples of any kind, this fellow was eminently suited; and I have often thought, if I needed a man for an enterprise where the law must be broken, and the penalty incurred a gaol and a long imprisonment, I’d go and look up my friend in Donegal as the man for the occasion--not to say that his house would be the very place to afford a refuge beyond all risk of discovery.”

Ladarelle listened with deep attention throughout, and when Gren-fell had finished, said: “What do you mean by a refuge beyond all discovery?”

“Simply, that for some short time, marry or not, you must be able to baffle pursuit, and for such a purpose I’d back this spot in the wilds of Donegal against the kingdom.”

“Suppose we were to fail?”

“We can’t fail; she goes willingly--or, if not, unwillingly; but failure is out of the question. Your object is, that she should not be Lady Wardle, is it not so?”

“Yes, undoubtedly.”

“And to secure this, it is worth while incurring some risk?”

“Certainly; but I should like to know the extent of that risk.”

“I’m no lawyer, and can’t tell you what class of misdemeanor the law makes it; not to say that the offence is one which differs according to the judge who tries it; but the question to which you will haye to look is this: If the girl be satisfied that she is really married, however grieved the old man may be, he will never disturb that fact. He’ll shut himself up in his castle, and let his beard grow. A great shock at his age lasts for the remainder of life, and he’ll nurse his grief till it lays him in the grave.”

“Then there must be a marriage?”

“Some sort of marriage, Irish or Scotch, they have them of all sorts and complexions; but English law smashes them, just to show these poor Celts in what a barbarism they are living, and that even their most solemn contracts are a farce, if not ratified by us here.”

“So that I could marry again if I wished it?”

“Of course you could. Why, scores of fellows about town have gone through that sort of humbug. Don’t you know Lawson--Jim Lawson? Well, he married his sister’s governess before he married Lady Lucy King; and they wanted to make a fuss about it; but it was proved that it was only a lark on his part, though she was quite serious about it; and the priest, too, was only in deacon’s orders, or it was after canonical hours, and it was all irregular, even to the ring on her finger, which Harry Bushe said was copper, and so the Lords smashed it, as they always do these Irish things, and Jimmy married the other woman.”

“I wish there was to be no marriage at all.”

“Perhaps you do; perhaps you’d like it better if old Sir Within would have the politeness to die off and give you no further trouble?”

“Ah, if he would!”

“But, as he won’t--as he is firmly bent not merely on living longer, but actually taking measures to make himself an unpleasant memory when he does go, I suspect you ought to look sharp to your own interests, Master Dolly. But, after all, I find myself pressing like an advocate in a case where the very utmost I ought to do should be to advise as a friend. You know by this time all I think on this matter. It is for you to follow the advice or reject it. Meanwhile, I mean to get up and have a walk before dinner.”

“Just one thing more--as to this Irish fellow you speak of. Would he take all the risks--the legal risks--if he were well paid for it?”

“I think it’s very likely he would. I don’t think he’ll bind himself to go to the drop exactly; but I take it he’ll not boggle about a reasonable term of imprisonment, and perhaps ‘hard labour.’”

“Will you write for him, then?”

“Not without you are fully determined to employ him. If you pledge me your word to this, I will write.”

“If I pay him----”

“No, no, I’ll have none of that! These Irish fellows, even in their most questionable dealings, have a point of honour-sense about them, that makes them very dangerous men to deal with. Let them only suspect any intention of a slight, and their old Spanish blood, I suppose it is, takes fire at once.”

“Let me have a night to think it over.”

“Take a week, take a month, if Sir Within will give it to you. You are your own master, and need not ask for time from any one.”

“I’d like to reflect well on it. It is too serious a thing to do without good consideration.”

“Do so by all means, and begin at once, for I want to ring for my servant and have my bath.”

“I wish you’d have a little more patience; one can’t decide on a thing of this sort in five minutes.”

“Who asks you, my dear fellow--who presses you? I only beg to be allowed to get up and dress myself, and a not very unreasonable request, seeing that it is close on five o’clock, and you have been here since three.”

“Well, I’ll do it, come what may of it. I’ll do it.”

“Take the night to consider it.”

“No, I am resolved on it. I’ll do it.”

“Very well; we are too late for the post to-night, but I’ll write to this man after dinner, and by that time you will have fully made up your mind. Now go, or I’ll begin to regret the day and the hour I ever thought of giving you counsel.”

“You are the most impatient fellow I ever met in my life,” said Ladarelle, as he arose reluctantly, and with unwilling steps sauntered out of the room.

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XXXIX. WITH DOCTORS

On the evening of the same day, Sir Within sat alone in his grand old dining-room. The servants had withdrawn and left him in solitary splendour, for the massive plate glittered on the sideboard, and the blaze of many wax-lights illuminated the three or four great pictures of Rubens’ on the walls, and sparkled over the richly-cut glass that figured amongst the desert, and there, amidst all, sat that old man--pale, wan, and careworn--to all seeming several years older than one short week ago. A small table at his side was littered with letters and law papers; but though he had gone for them to his study, he never noticed them, so deeply was his mind bent on other thoughts. At last he looked at his watch, and then arising, he rang the bell.

“Doctor Price is still above stairs?” said he, in a tone of inquiry.

“Yes, Sir Within.”

“And you are quite certain you told him to come to me before he left the Castle?”

“Yes, Sir Within.”

“That will do,” said he, with a sigh.

Scarcely had the servant closed the door than he re-opened it to announce Doctor Price, a small pock-marked sharp-featured man, with an intensely keen eye, and a thin compressed mouth.

“Well, Doctor, well?” said Sir Within, as he came forward towards him with a manner of great anxiety.

“Well, Sir Within Wardle, it is as I suspected, a case of concussion; there’s no organic mischief--no lesion.”

“What’s a lesion?”

“There is no fracture, nor any pressure, so far as I can detect; but there is very grave injury of another sort. There is concussion of the brain.”

“And is there danger--be frank, Doctor, is there danger?”

“Certainly there is danger; but I would not pronounce it to be imminent danger.”

“London has some men of great eminence, which of them all would you select to consult with on such a case? I am certain that you would wish a consultation.”

“I have no objection to one, Sir Within, and I would name Sir Henry Morland, as the first man in his profession.”

“Then write for him, Sir--write at once. Here, in this room, here”--and he opened a door into a small cabinet--“you will find everything you want.”

“Certainly; I obey your instructions. I will write immediately; but say in what terms. The young lady is your ward--am I to style her by that title or by her name?”

Sir Within blushed, but it was more in anger than shame; the barest approach to any question of Kate’s position jarred upon his feelings like an insinuation, and he fixed a steadfast stare on the Doctor before he replied, to assure himself that there was no covert impertinence in the request. Apparently he was satisfied, for in a calm voice he said, “It will be unnecessary to say more than that his presence is requested by Sir Within Wildrington Wardle at Dalradem Castle, and with all the speed possible.”

While the Doctor was writing, Sir Within walked to and fro with short and hurried steps, his mouth twitched from time to time, and a nervous motion of his fingers betrayed the immense agitation that possessed him, and against which he struggled hard to subdue all outward signs. Had the occasion been a ministerial conference--had the event been one in which a bold front was called for, to cover a weak position, or affront a coming peril--the old envoy would have borne himself well and bravely; no one could have worn an easier look in a trying emergency, or better baffled the searching that would try to detect a secret misgiving. But where was all this subtlety now? Of what did it avail him? He bent before this blow as humbly as a school-girl, and soon even abandoned the attempt to dissimulate, and wrung his hands in passionate sorrow as he went.

“Will that do, then, Sir Within?” asked the Doctor, as he handed him the note he had just written.

“I have not my glass,” said he, hurriedly, while his fingers held it; “but of course it is all right. You will instruct me as to the fee--you will do whatever is necessary, and you will also, I trust, remain here. I wish you not to leave the Castle.”

“Impossible, Sir Within. Sir Godfrey Wynne is very ill, and I have a very anxious case at Glassnwyd.”

“But none of them, I will venture to say, so needful of watching as this. You have just told me how precarious these cases are. Remember, Sir, I have some claims upon you.”

“The very greatest, Sir Within. But for your munificent donation, I should never have been physician to the Wrexham Hospital.”

“I did not mean that,” said Sir Within, flushing scarlet; “I did not allude to that. I spoke of old family claims in your father’s time. Dalradem was always his staunch supporter.”

“I know it well, Sir; but a doctor owes allegiance to the very humblest of those who need him.”

“A doctor, I presume, is bound to accord the patient whatever of his time he can pay for?”

“Not to the detriment of others who are ill, Sir Within.”

“I know of no other than those under this roof, Doctor Price. I insist, therefore, that you remain here.”

“I will return before evening, Sir Within.”

“If you leave this now, Sir, you need not return.”

“Let me entreat you to moderate your warmth, and hear me.”

“Sir, I accept no lessons on the mode in which I should comport myself. My education is not, I would hope, yet to be made in this respect. You stay now, or you never re-cross this threshold.”

“Then I most respectfully take my leave, Sir.”

As he moved towards the door, Sir Within placed himself against it.

“This is conduct, Sir,” cried he, passionately, “for which I was in no way prepared. It is the first time in my life I have been a physician refuse his services to those who had the right to call for, and the ability to requite them. I will not suffer it.”

The Doctor moved his head mournfully, and muttered a few low and indistinct words.

“No, Sir, I want no apologies. I will not listen to excuses!” cried Sir Within, whose cheek was in a flame, and his eye flashing with anger. “I have done my best--my very best--to misunderstand your ‘meaning; I have tried my utmost to persuade myself that this was no intentional slight; but, apparently, Sir, you insist that I should know it, and feel it.”

“You distress me greatly, Sir Within--and all the more, that I really cannot follow you in what you imply.”

“I never imply, Sir--I declare--I assert!” and his voice was, now shrill with passion. “It is no insinuation I make--it is an open declaration--that it is in what scandalous tongues have dared to allege against this young lady’s residence under my roof is the sole pretext you have to refuse your services here. Don’t deny it, Sir; I read it in your confusion half an hour ago. You intend to build a character for high morality on this event. You know this county better than I do, and you are a better judge how far your strict virtue will be remunerative; or perhaps you fancy that I will condescend to an explanation with you.”

“No, no, Sir Within. You are too unjust--quite too unjust in all this.”

The old Baronet never heard the interruption, but went on:

“But, Sir, if I have scorned to make explanations to the first gentry of my neighbourhood, it is not likely I will descend to them for the satisfaction of a village doctor. Go, Sir--go! but at your peril one word to gratify the slanderous temper of your clients; for if I hear that you have dared to insinuate, however faintly--”

The Doctor did not wait for him to finish, but hurried down the stairs, crossed the hall, and hastened to the stable-yard; and in a very few minutes the sharp sound of his horse’s feet on the ground declared that he was off at speed.

Sir Within had sunk into the chair beside the door from which the Doctor had just issued, powerless and overcome. The outburst of passion, what had been but one exit of an overwhelming sorrow, had run its course, and now he sat there wretched and forlorn. Of his late altercation he remembered positively nothing. Something had occurred--something that excited and agitated him. The Doctor had said, or somebody had said, he knew not what; but it shadowed forth a sort of reflection on him--for Heaven knows what; and he wiped the cold perspiration from his brow, and tried to collect himself. At last he arose and rang the bell.

“Will you tell Doctor Price I should like to speak to him,” said he, in his usual bland tone.

“The Doctor is gone, Sir Within; he left the Castle half an hour ago.”

He nodded; and the servant retired. After a little while he rang again.

“Let Doctor Price know I wish to see him before he goes away,” said he, in a faint voice.

“The Doctor left the Castle some time back, Sir Within,” said the man, in some astonishment.

“Ah!--very true--I remember: that will do.” Once more alone, he tried to remember what had just occurred--but he could not; and, with weary steps, he mounted the stairs slowly towards the corridor where the sick chamber stood.

“She is sleeping, Sir Within,” said the nurse, who sat outside the door to enforce silence--“sleeping, but dreaming and wandering on continually; and such strange things, too, she says.”

“What does she talk of, nurse?” said he, scarcely conscious of what he asked.

“She be talking, Sir, of being a-gathering seaweed on the rocks, and crying out to some one to take care--that the tide is gaining fast. ‘It will be soon in on us!’ she cries every moment; ‘make haste, Patsey, or we’ll lose it all?’ And then she’ll wring her hair, as if there was water in it, and tie it up short afterwards on the back of her head. I never see a young lady go on the same way before!”

“Wandering?--mere wandering?” said Sir Within, faintly. “Of course it be, Sir Within; but ain’t it a strange sort of wandering for one bred and brought up as she was?”

“When people rave, they rave,” said Sir Within, curtly. “Yes, Sir, so they does; but people born to every comfort and the like seldom talks of going out to look for firewood, or to bring home the goats from the mountains; and that poor sweet dear there won’t think of anything else.”

“You are a fool, ma’am, or you would never think of attaching importance to what a patient raves about in a fever. I wonder Doctor Price could not have found a more competent person.” And with this rebuke he retraced his steps, and sought his own room.

As he sat there, a servant entered with a note Doctor Price’s servant had just brought. He tore it open impatiently, and read:

“Dear Sir,--I have accidentally heard that Sir Henry Morland will be at Wrexham this evening. If it be your wish to see him at Dalradern, pray inform me by the bearer.

“Very respectfully your Servant,

“Pritchard Price.”

Sir Within at once addressed a most curt and conciliatory note to Doctor Price, requesting to see him and his colleague as soon as would suit his convenience. That there was something for which an apology was needed, he knew; but what it was, how it occurred, or why it occurred, was totally beyond him; his note, however, was polite in every respect, and its conclusion actually friendly. Doctor Price, however, did not make his appearance, but towards midnight a post-chaise drove into the court-yard, and the great town Physician entered the castle. He was a short, stout-built, heavy-browed man, stern, and almost peremptory in his manner, reserving all his mind for his patient, and scarcely condescending to notice the friends of the sick person.

“Who is it?” asked he bluntly of Sir Within, as the old envoy politely handed him a chair.

“My ward, Sir Henry, a young lady not fully seventeen.”

“Humph! I did not know you were married.”

“I am not married, Sir. I was not aware that we were discussing that question.”

“Let me speak with your sister, then?”

“I have no sister, Sir.”

“I don’t care what the relative is--cousin, aunt, grandmother--if not too old.”

“I reject, Sir, I have no female relative here to whom I can refer you. I shall send for my housekeeper, however, who is a most intelligent person;” and he rang the bell hurriedly.

“And this ward--strange thing a ward in the house of an unmarried man--what’s her name?”

“Miss O’Hara.”

“O’Hara! O’Hara! One of the Antrim family?”

“No, Sir; no connexion even.”

“Oh, this is the housekeeper! Show me your patient, and tell me about the case as we go along;” and abruptly returning Sir Within’s salutation, he left the room, and proceeded up-stairs. “Yes, yes,” he muttered, as the housekeeper recounted the symptoms. “Yes; I know all that: but I want to hear how it began. Was there any shock--any accident? None? Mere fatigue--a long ride--over-exertion--a very hot day! Yes, yes, quite common--answers at first collectively, and then goes off raving--that’s enough!”

The rough ungracious man, abrupt of speech, and actually rude in manner, became gentle as a woman as he stole up to the bedside and laid his hand on the hot and burning forehead. She raised her hand, tremulous with fever, and placed it upon his, and said: “Yes; the pain is there!”

“Let us see if we cannot cure it,” said he softly, as he sat down beside the bed.

She turned her large lustrous eyes upon him--brightened as they were in the glow of fever--and stared at him steadfastly and long. He was counting her pulse, and she watched his lips as they faintly stirred, as though she could read her fate in their motion.

“Well?” cried she--“well?”

“Well, you are about to get better, my dear child; the fever is decreasing, and your head freer.”

“Yes,” said she, hurriedly, “the horrid fancies that torment me are passing away, and I can think now. Who are you?” asked she, after a pause.

“I am your doctor.”

“But your name? I never saw you before.”

“I know that! This is my first visit to you. My name is Morland.”

“Morland--Morland--I have read that name in the newspapers. Sir William, or Sir something.”

“Sir Henry Morland.”

“Physician to the King, I declare,” said she, raising herself on one arm to look at him; “and you have come here, all this way, to see me!”

“And very well worth my while it was. It is not every day I chance upon so interesting a patient.”

“How kind you are--how pleasant your voice is; it soothes me to listen to it.”

“But we must not talk any more now, my child.”

“O yes, let us talk, it is so delightful; tell me of all the fine people you see daily. Do you speak to them as kindly as to me, or are you more reserved and distant? Do tell me.”

“I will tell you all about these things another time, when it will be safer for you to hear them. You must have perfect rest and quiet now.”

“It would quiet me far more to listen to you than to let me think on and on, as I have been doing. You are going away already?”

“I cannot help it, my child; I have many others waiting for me to see them.”

“But you wouldn’t hurry away from me in this fashion if I were a great person?”

“Pardon me; you are a very great person to me.”

“How so? Tell me what you mean; do tell me,” cried she; and she started up and caught his hand with both her own. “I must know what that means.”

“Listen to me, my child,” and he spoke in a graver, almost a stern manner; “I can only do the work of my daily life by being very despotic. I have replied to more questions of yours now, than I should have answered to a Royal Highness. Good-by.”

“Good-by!” said she, and pressed his hand to her hot lips. “Good-by; don’t forget me.”

As the Doctor, followed by Mrs. Simcox, left the room, he stood for a moment in the corridor, deep in thought. “Her mind is collected now,” said he, at last; “there is only excitement; there is no aberration.”

“She has those intervals every now and then, Sir, and she’ll speak as sensibly as any one; and, indeed, it’s hard to say when she is not talking rational, for she is odd and strange when she’s well.”

“Yes, I see that; she is no ordinary person.”

“And no later than last night, Sir, when we imagined that she was talking a mere gibberish of her own, our second housemaid, that was in the room, went over and answered her, and there they talked together for more than a quarter of an hour, Sir; and I asked Molly what it was, and she said it was Irish. So, when the girl came into the room this morning, I told her to talk it again; but, would you believe it, Sir, our young lady began to laugh, and asked what the creature meant by that nonsense. She did not know one word, Sir, Molly was saying, any more than ourselves.”

The Doctor nodded assentingly, as though such a case was familiar to him, and passed on. At the foot of the stairs he found Sir Within waiting for him.

“I will talk to Price,” said Sir Henry; “I shall see him to-night, and to-morrow I will take another opportunity of seeing her before I return to town.

“Are you hopeful as to the result?” asked Sir Within, with much anxiety in his look.

“She has youth in her favour,” said he, as he buttoned up his overcoat.

“And you think well of her case, then?”

“I did not say so, Sir; I don’t think any man would go so far; for it will be tedious, and consequently precarious. And there are now and then recoveries that can scarcely be called benefits. How many miles do you call it to Wrexham?”

“You speak of the effects upon the brain--the permanent effects?” said Sir Within, with trembling eagerness.

“Brain or membranes, I don’t think it signifies much which. And Wrexham--how far is it?”

“Your postboy will tell you, Sir; this case is of much more moment to me.”

Sir Henry turned a full steady look on the old envoy, as though he were contemplating an order of being wholly new and strange to him; and then turning to the housekeeper, who still stood at his side, said: “Stop the ice--apply mere cold water; don’t talk to her, and no more Irish--take care of that--no more Irish. Good night, Sir Within;” and stepping hastily down the steps, he entered his carriage and drove away.

“What did he mean by that last direction, no more Irish, Mrs. Simcox?” asked Sir Within.

“La, Sir, it was about a thing that happened last night;” and she recounted the incident, at somewhat greater length than we have given it.

“Send the girl to me,” said Sir Within, as she finished; “let me speak to her in the library.”

The interview lasted about half an hour, and at the end of it Molly was seen to hasten to her room, pack her clothes, and descend to the stable-yard, where a conveyance was in waiting for her.

“This is a hasty way to leave us, Molly,” said one of her fellow-servants, as she mounted the cart.

“It’s my mother that was sick, and sent for me,” said the girl. “Drive on,” added she to the groom, for Sir Within was leaning on the window-sill, overhead, and watching the scene.

Sir Henry arrived the next morning to find Kate worse than he had left her; and, though greatly pressed for time, he remained nigh an hour in consultation with Doctor Price, who had accompanied him. There was more fever, and far more of excitement than on the day before, and she talked incessantly to herself, occasionally giving way to bursts of laughter.

“How grave you both look this morning,” said she, with a derisive smile, as they arose to leave her bedside. “I think I can guess what’s passing in your mind.” Morland shook his head in dissent, and she went on: “Of course you would be reluctant to say it, but the simple truth is, Doctor, you think me very, very ill.”

“So far, you are right,” said he, gently.

“Yes, but you suspect more. You believe that I am dying.”

“You have many things in your favour, my dear child. You have youth, you have strength, and you have what is sometimes worth them both--good courage.”

“You do me justice, Doctor, I have plenty of courage, more even than you know of; and I have another thing,” added she, while her eyes flashed wildly and her lip shook with agitation--“I have no great desire to live!”

“Come, come, young lady,” broke in Price, “it is not at your age that one is weary of the world.”

“I never said I was,” cried she, impatiently; and then, turning from him as though he were not one to understand her aright, she addressed the other. “May I speak to you alone?”

“Certainly; my friend here will have no objection, I’m sure.”

“None whatever,” said Doctor Price, as he moved towards the door.

“And you, Simcox, you must go too; and take Nelly with you.”

“La, Miss----”

“Do as you are told,” said the Doctor, peremptorily.

“And now we are alone, child,” said he, as having closed the door, he returned to the bedside.

“Sit down, sit there,” said she, pointing to the chair, “and wait a moment till I collect myself. I don’t like that man; his voice jars on--there is so much in a voice. Yours, for instance, soothes me.” He smiled kindly on her, and she continued: “I was not always so captious, but illness makes one very fretful. Ain’t it so?”

“Naturally.”

“I must be very ill, then, if irritability be the measure. Do you know”--and here she spoke with immense rapidity, and with a jarring vibration in her voice--“do you know that there are times, mere moments, in which it needs all my self-control not to scream aloud? Yes, I feel as though I would give life itself to cry out--to fling this weary load off my poor heart, and tell all--all!”

“You must be calm, young lady, or I shall think I have done amiss in permitting this interview.”

“Don’t call me young lady. The other, that man I dislike, called me young lady. You must call me Kate.” He only smiled, and she took his hand in her own burning hand, and said, in a coaxing, caressing tone, “Say Kate--Kate!”

“I am very proud that you let me call you Kate.”

“Yes, that’s it; and you say it softly, as it should be spoken. It’s a pretty name, is it not? No, don’t look on me pitifully. If it be even as you fear, there is no cause for sorrow. Answer me one thing,” said she, half sternly, “but answer truly. Shall I die of this? There, there! I do not want any more. You think I shall; but I know better. Ay, Doctor, there’s a keener instinct, stronger than all your skill, and it tell’s me I have years and years before me; years of such trouble, too, it would be a mercy I were taken now!”

“Calm yourself, my child. I like your self-confidence; but be calm.”

“And am I not calm? Count my pulse;” and she bared her arm and held it towards him. “It is a pretty arm? then say so, frankly. What harm can flattery do me now?”

“I must leave you, my dear child. I have a long journey before me, and much hard work at the end of it. I am sorry, very sorry to go. Don’t shake your head, Kate, it is the simple truth.”

“Then why not stay?”

“I have told you, child, that many others are expecting me.”

“Yes, great people, titled people, people of condition, as they are called; as if we, too, had not our condition. Don’t you hate that word? Don’t you hate every vulgar sneer at the low-born?”

“I like your generosity----”

“My generosity!” cried she, with a wild hysteric laugh--“my generosity! Oh, yes; my generosity has a touch of genius in it. It reveals to me the unseen, the untasted! For, what can I know of such people?”

Her brows were knitted fast as she uttered the last words, and her lips were drawn tight, as though she spoke under the pressure of some intense constraint.

“There, there!” said he, rising. “I knew all this talking was injurious, and I am much to blame for having permitted it.”

“And you are going?”

“I must; I have no choice in the matter.”

“Well, give me a minute more. Sit down again, and I will not detain you more than a minute or two. When I asked to speak with you alone, Doctor, it was to beg of you to make my will. You need not be afraid that it will take long. I have only one legacy and one heir. Now, mind what I shall say to you. It may happen--I myself think it will happen--that I shall get better of this fever. Much of my raving--what they call my raving--was such wandering as passes through my head any day; so that it may easily be I have never been so ill as I seemed to be, and all the wonderful stories Mrs. Simcox told you in the window last night--my strange fancies about my bare feet bleeding with the sharp stones--no matter, fact or fancy, it was in my head before this. You are attending to me?”

“I am.”

“I was afraid you thought that this explanation was only ‘wandering’ of another sort; but I see you do not. I see you follow me.”

He nodded.

“If, however, your skill be better than my second sight--if I can call it so--I have a task for you to do. When it shall be all over, before I am buried, you will take care but wait, let us do it regularly.” She raised herself on one arm as she spoke, and with the other hand she pointed to a small writing-table at the farther part of the room. “Open that desk, and take out an envelope. It ought to be black-edged for the occasion,” said she, with a sad smile, “but I don’t think it matters much. Yes, that one will do very well. Write now the address I shall give you: Mr. Peter Malone.’ Show it to me--is it large and plain? No; take another. It must be clear, bold writing. I think I ought to write it myself--of course I ought, and I will.”

“All this excitement is wrong.”

“Then don’t prolong it. Give me the pen and that book to write on. I declare it is you that are nervous, Doctor. What makes your hand shake?”

“If I am nervous, it is because I feel much self-reproach for all this--this----”

“This--what?” asked she, smiling. “Do give it a name. I am sure you are not angry at my detaining you. You are too kind and too considerate to reckon minutes against one who may have so few of them; and then, as to this task I impose on you,” and she smiled again--“do confess you never heard of so short a will. There, it is all written now. Read it out, that I may see if it be legible.”

“‘Mr. Peter Malone, to the care of Mr. T. O’Rorke, Vinegar Hill, Cush-ma-Creena, Ireland.’”

“Your pronunciation is not quite faultless, Doctor; but, luckily, you will not be the postman. Mind, now, this is to be posted so soon as all is over. No, no--not as it is. I have not yet enclosed my legacy. Take that scissors you see yonder. Open the shutter--a little more still--yes, that will do. Now come here. Cut off the longest and the brightest lock you can find here,” and she unbound her golden hair, and sent it floating in heavy masses over her shoulders and her back, and even her face. “Don’t spare it. I mean my last legacy to be munificent. There!” said she, taking the long tress from his fingers, “how soft and silky it is--see, too, if it has not that golden radiance the Venetian painters raved about! The old man to whom that envelope is addressed once asked me to give him a lock of my hair; he begged for it very eagerly, as a parting gift, and I refused him. I can give it now--yes, I can give it now! Ask me nothing--I will tell nothing. I thought to have told you all--the whole long, dreary story--but I cannot. There, you are impatient to be away. I release you; only remember, that if I do not die you are to return that paper to me. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly, and will obey you to the letter, my dear child, if you will not give me this tress as my fee for having cured you. Perhaps I have as good a claim to it as that other to whom you would bequeath it.”

“No, no, no!” cried she, impetuously. “You never cared for me, you never could care for me, as he does; but keep it if you will. Good-by, good-by! One instant more. There is another old man to whom I would send a message.”

“Your guardian?”

A scornful curl of her lip and an impatient gesture of her head stopped him.

“Tell Sir Within that I was very grateful to him. He did much to make my life a very happy one, and yet I am so glad to leave it! Speak kindly to him and comfort him; tell him, if you will, that if he would continue to love me, it were best I should die; for if I were to live, Doctor”--and here her eyes grew full and wide, and her gaze steadfast--“if I were to live, I should lose that love.”

The wild look she gave, the strange vibration of her voice, and her words themselves, warned the Doctor that a period of excitement was approaching, and he drew the curtain and moved away.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XL. A SUDDEN REVERSE

“You see it is as well I acted with more forethought, and did not send for our Irish friend,” said Grenfell, as he sat at breakfast with Ladarelle. “We shall probably not want him.”

“I suspect not,” said the other; “the last news of her was unfavourable.”

Grenfell stole a look at the speaker, and, quick as the glance was, it bespoke a mingled aversion and contempt. The men who have arrived at middle age, either to form a poor opinion of their fellows, or to feign it--it is hard exactly to say which--feel a sort of detestation for younger men who entertain the same sentiments. Whether it be that to have reached that cynicism has cost years of patient study and endurance, and that they are indignant at the pretension that would assume to have acquired the knowledge without the labour, or that, and this more probable, they really do not fully trust their own heartlessness--whatever the cause, I can answer for the effect; and that cold, ungenial man now looked upon his younger companion with a sense of little less than disgust.

“So that her death would not shock you?” said Grenfell, as he stirred his tea, without looking up.

“I don’t exactly say that. She’s a fine girl, young, and very good looking.”

“Beautiful.”

“Well, beautiful if you like, though I’ll show scores just as handsome any day in Rotten Row. But the question is, Does she, or does she not, stand between me and a fine estate? You yourself thought that opinion of Palmer’s went against me.”

“No doubt of it. Palmer concurs with the Attorney-General; indeed, he seems astonished that any other view was ever taken, as he says, ‘No provision of a will can override the law.’”

“Which means, that the old cove may marry; and his heir, if he have one, may inherit the property?”

“Just so.”

“And then, in the face of that, you ask me if her life is of such consequence to me?”

“No; I asked if her death would shock you?” “I don’t well know what you mean by being shocked! If there was a suspicion abroad that I had poisoned her, to get her out of the way, then perhaps I might be shocked.”

“Shocked at the imputation, not the consequences?” “I can’t split hairs--I never could. If you want subtle distinctions and fine-drawn differences, you must try elsewhere. What I want to say is simply this: I have no ill will to the girl; I wish no harm to her; but I’d rather she wasn’t there.” “By there, you mean, alive?”

“Well, if there was no other alternative--yes, I do mean that. I’m certain old Wardle would never look out for another, and the great probability is, he’d not trouble us much longer; and, as Tom Scott says, by ‘nobbling’ one horse, you get rid of the whole stable. You look greatly disgusted, are you horrified at my wickedness, Grenfell?”

“No,” said he, slowly. “I have met a fair number of young fellows like you, and who fancied, that to know life they must begin at the lowest of it; the great misfortune was, that they never emerged from it after.”

“That’s severe, I take it,” said Ladarelle, as he lighted a cigarette and began to smoke.

“Feigning virtue will never make a saint,” said Grenfell, rising from the table; “but mock wickedness will always end by making a man a rascal!” He left the room as he spoke, and sauntered out unto the lawn; and now Ladarelle began to commune with himself--what notice he ought to take, if any, of these words. Were they to be considered as a moral sentiment of general application, or were they addressed specially to himself? The context favoured this latter supposition; but then he uttered them as a great truth; he had a trick of that sort of “preaching,” and the moment the word preaching crossed him, his anger was dispelled, for who minded preaching? Who was ever the better or the worse for it? Who ever deemed its denunciations personal?

The entrance of his man, Mr. Fisk, cut short his reflections, for he had sent him over to Dalradern, with his compliments, to ask after Mademoiselle O’Hara.

“Sir Within’s respects, Sir, the young lady is better; passed a good night, and seems much refreshed.”

“Here’s news, Grenfell,” cried Ladarelle, opening the window, and calling out to Grenfell--“here’s news; she has had a good night, and is better.”

Grenfell, however, had just received his letters from the post, and was already too deeply engrossed by one of them to mind him.

“I say, come here, and listen to the bulletin,” cried Ladarelle again; but Grenfell, without deigning the slightest notice to his words, thrust his letters into his pocket and walked hastily away.

The letter he had opened was from Vyner, and even in the first few lines had so far engaged his interest, that, to read it undisturbed, he set out to gain a little summer-house on a small island--a spot to which Ladarelle could not follow, as there was but one boat on the lake.

Having reached his sanctuary, he took forth the epistle, which, from Vyner, was an unusually long one, and began to read. It is not necessary that I should ask the reader’s attention to the whole of it. It opened by an apology for not having written before:

“I am ashamed to think, my dear Grenfell, how many of your questions remain unanswered; but as the Cardinal’s private secretary wrote to express the grief his Eminence felt at being obliged to die instead of dine out, so I must ask your patience for not replying to you, as I was occupied in being ruined. It is a big word, George, but not too big for the fact. When I gave up politics, for want of something to do, I took up speculation. A very clever rascal--I only found out the rascality later--with whom I made acquaintance at Genoa, induced me to make some railroad ventures, which all turned out successes. From these he led me on to others of a larger kind in Sardinia, and ultimately in Morocco. A great London banking firm was associated with the enterprise, which, of course, gave the air of stability to the operations, and as there was nothing unfair--nothing gambling in the scheme--nothing, in fact, that passed the limits of legitimate commercial enterprise, at the same time that there was everything to interest And amuse, I entered into it with all that ardour for which more than once your prudent temperament has rebuked me. I have no patience to go over the story; besides that the catastrophe tells it all. The original tempter--his name is Gennet--has fled, the great bankers have failed, and I am--I have ascertained--engaged to the full amount of all I have in the world--that is, nothing remains to us but my wife’s settlement to live on. A great blow this; I am staggering under it still. It was precisely the sort of misfortune I had thought myself exempt from, because I never cared much about money-getting; I was richer than I really needed to be; but, as the Spanish proverb says, ‘The devil never goes out to fish with only one sort of bait in his boat.’ I imagined I was going to be a great philanthropist. If I was to get lead from the Moors, I was to give them civilisation, culture, Heaven knows what cravings after good things here and hereafter. Don’t laugh, George; I give you my word of honour I believed it. Mr. Ridley Gennet was a great artist, and from the hour he waved his wand over me, I never really awoke ‘till I was beggared.’ Now, I do believe that you yourself, with all the craft you boast of, would not have come scathless out of his hands. These fellows are consummately clever, and in nothing more than in the quick reading of the characters they are placed in contact with. You can answer for it that I never was a gambler. I have played, it is true; but with no zest, no passion for play. That man, however, knew more of me than I did of myself; he detected a sort of combative spirit in my nature, which gives results very much like the love of play. It prompts to a rash self-confidence and a dogged resolution not to be beaten--no matter how heavy the odds against one. I say, he saw this, and he determined to make use of it. There was a time at which, at the loss of about twenty-eight or thirty thousand pounds, I might have freed myself of every liability; and, indeed, I was more than half inclined to do it; but the devil, in this fellow’s shape, hinted something about being poor-spirited and craven-hearted; said something about men who bore reverses ill, and only spread canvas when the wind was all astern; and that, in fact, the people who carried the day in life were exactly those who never would accept defeat. All he said met a ready concurrence from my own heart, and in I went after my thirty thousand, which soon became eighty. Even then I might have escaped--a heavy loser, of course, but not crushed--but he persuaded me that the concern was the finest enterprise in Europe, if emancipated from the influence of two powerful shareholders--men who, since they had joined us, had gone deeply into other speculations, whose prospects would be severely damaged by our success. One of these was La Marque, the Parisian banker, and a great promoter of the ‘Crédit Mobilier;’ the other an English contractor, whose name I may mention one of these days. They were, he said, to be bought out, and then I should stand the representative of four-sixths of the whole scheme. It reads like infatuation now that I go calmly over it; but I acceded. I commissioned Gennet to treat with these gentlemen, and gave him blank bills for the sums. For a while all seemed to go on admirably. La Marque himself wrote to me; he owned that his other engagements had not left him at liberty to develop the resources of our company to their full extent, and confessed that there were certain changes in the management that must lead to great advantage. With, however, what I thought at the time a most scrupulous honour--though I have come to regard it differently--he hinted to me that while Mr. G.’s position in the ‘world of affairs’ was above all reproach, the fact of his conducting a transaction with blank acceptances was totally irregular and unbusiness-like; and he begged that I would give him a regular assurance, in a form which he enclosed, that I authenticated G.’s position, and held myself responsible, not merely commercially, but as a man of honour, for such engagements as he should contract in my name. I made a few trifling alterations in the wording of this document, and sent it back with my signature. On the third day after, the London firm smashed, and on the evening that brought the news, G. bolted, and has not since been heard of.

“Since then, every post from England tells me of the steps at which my ruin advances. M’Kinlay, overwhelmed, I think, by the calamity, acts with less than his usual skill and cleverness, and continues to insist that I must repudiate my pledge to La Marque, whom he calls a confederate of G.’s; and, indeed, declares that if we could but secure that fellow’s person, we should save a large remnant of the property. These are his views; they are not mine. I cannot consent to remedy my folly at the cost of my character; and though I have agreed to the despatch of detectives to hunt Gennet, I will not, by any act, dishonour my signature.

“It is at this stage we are now arrived. Whether I am to be drowned by six inches over my head, or six fathoms, is not, I opine, a matter of much consequence. Lady Vyner knows it all, and bears it--as I knew she would--nobly. Her sister, too, has shown a fine spirit. Of course, we have kept so much as we can of the calamity from Mrs. Courtenay; but she is more cast down than any of us. As for Ada, she sustains us all. I declare I never knew her before; and if it were not that the misfortune is to outlive me, I’d say it was worth being ruined to discover the boundless wealth of that dear girl’s heart.

“I could fill pages with little traits of her thoughtful affection, evincing a nature, too, that actually seemed to need an opportunity to show it was made for higher and better things than to float along in an existence of indulgence.

“You are impatient to hear how practical we can be. Well, you shall. We have given up our grand palazzo, and retired to a little place about twenty miles off, near Chiavari, where we found a small house to suit us. We have sent off all the servants but three. I doubt if we shall keep old Morris; but it would break his heart to discharge him with the others. I have despatched my horses to be sold at Turin. The yacht is already disposed of. Not bad this in four days, besides writing about a hundred and fifty letters, and giving solemn audience to Mr. Pengrove, of the detective force, come out specially to get from me a detailed description of G.’s person, size, dress, accent, and manner. I vow, till I had the happiness of this gentleman’s acquaintance, I never knew by how many traits a human creature could stamp his identity; and the way in which he pushed his inquiries, as to matters utterly beyond the realms of all the disguises in use, perfectly amazed me.

“It was not, perhaps, a very acute question of mine, but it dropped from me half unawares. I asked whether he thought G. had fled to America or Australia? He replied, ‘No, sir; he never had any dealings in those parts. When men bolt, they always follow out some previously-formed train of circumstances; he’ll be somewhere on the African coast--I mean to try Tunis first.’

“You know now, my dear George, more than I really meant to inflict on you of our sad story; but I was, in a measure, forced into some details. First of all, one’s friends ought to be in a position to contradict false rumours, and I take it I shall have my share of them; and secondly, you may be disturbed in your present tenure, for the Cottage as well as the Castle goes to the creditors.

“There is, however, a small business matter in which I must have more than your advice--I want your assistance. You may remember that when, on our Irish tour----”

There comes here a sudden stop in the epistle, but, in a hurried and tremulous hand, it was continued in this wise:

“Another great misfortune! Poor Luttrell’s boy is drowned. My wife has just brought me the news. A despatch boat of the Italian navy has picked up at sea an English sailor on a spar, the last of the crew of the American barque Squashy commanded by a Captain Dodge. They were attacked by pirates when becalmed off the Riff coast, and the Yankee, rather than surrender, blew up the ship. This man remembers nothing beyond his having leaped overboard when he saw the captain make for the magazine. He was, indeed, insensible when picked up, and even yet his mind wanders at times. So far as his memory would serve he has given the names of the crew, and Luttrell’s was amongst them. He said, too, that he saw Luttrell leaning against the tiller-wheel, with his arms folded, and looking quite calm, a moment or two before he jumped over. The Italian steamer returned to the place and cruised for an entire day, in the hope of saving some others, but none were met with, and there is no doubt now that all have perished. I thought only an hour ago that there were few in the world as unfortunate as myself; but what is my loss compared to poor Luttrell’s? If I could possibly leave home now, it would be to go over to Ireland and see him. What is to be done? Can you suggest how the tidings could be best broken to him? Would you undertake the charge yourself? If not, M’Kinlay must do it, though, for every reason, I prefer you. I know, my dear Grenfell, that you shrink from painful tasks, but it is my load that you will bear on this occasion, and it will strengthen you to remember that you are helping a friend in his great hour of need.

“If you are not able to go, and if M’Kinlay should also be unable, forward the enclosed note to Luttrell.

“I have just seen Martin the sailor. He has told us much about young Luttrell, who seems to have been actually beloved on board the ship; his courage, his daring, his coolness, and his unfailing high spirits, made him the idol of the crew; and this fellow declares, that if Luttrell’s advice had been listened to, the ship might have been saved; but the American lost his head; and, swearing that the pirates should never have a timber of her, rushed below with a portfire, and blew her up.

“I am ashamed to send off all the selfish details that fill the first part of this letter. In the presence of such a calamity as poor Luttrell’s, my sorrows are unworthy and contemptible; but who knows when I could have the time or the temper to go over my dreary story again? and so you shall have it as it is.

“I am not able to read over again what I have written, so that I am not sure whether I have answered all your questions. You will, I am sure, however, forgive me much at such a season; for, though I had screwed up my courage to meet my own disasters, I had no reserve of pluck to sustain me against this sad blow of Luttrell’s.

“Do not refuse me, George, this service; believe me, the poor fellow is worthy of all the kindness you can show him. More than ever do I feel the wrong that we have done him, since every misfortune of his life has sprung from it.

“I must finish to catch the post. I enclose you a copy of the deposition of the seaman made before the consul at Genoa, and an extract from the log of St. Genaro, the despatch-boat. If you do go--indeed, in any case--write to me at once, and believe me, meanwhile,

“Your faithful friend,

“Gervais Vyner.

“A hearty letter from Lord B. has just come. He says he has just heard of my smash, and offers me my choice of something at home, or in the Colonies. Time enough to think of this; for the present, we shall have to live on about what my guardian allowed me at Christ-church. Address, La Boschetta, Chiavari.”

With much attention, Grenfell read this letter to the end, and then re-read it, pondering over certain parts as he went. He was certainly grieved as much as he could well be for any misfortune not his own.

He liked Vyner as well as it was in his nature to like any one; not, indeed, for his fine and generous qualities, his manliness, and his rectitude--he liked him simply because Vyner had always stood by him. Vyner had sustained him in a set, which, but for such backing, would not have accepted him. Every real step he had made in life had been through Vyner’s assistance; and he well knew that Vyner’s fall would extend its influence to himself.

Then came other thoughts: “He should have to leave the Cottage, where he had hoped to have remained for the cock shooting at least, perhaps a little longer; for this same Welsh life was a great economy. He was living for ‘half nothing;’ no rent, no servants to pay; horses, a fine garden, a capital cellar, all at his disposal. What, in the name of all foolishness, could make a man with double what he could spend, go and squander the whole in rotten speculations? He says he did not want to be richer! What did he want then? How can men tell such lies to their own hearts? Of course, he intended to be a Rothschild. It was some cursed thirsting after enormous wealth--wealth, that was to be expressed by figures on paper--not felt, not enjoyed, nor lived up to; that was the whole sum and substance of the temptation. Why not have the honesty to say so? As for Luttrell, I only wonder how he can think of him at such a time. I imagine, if I were to awake some fine morning to hear I was a beggar, I should take all the other calamities of the world with a marvellous philosophy. It’s a bore to be drowned, particularly if there was no necessity for it; but the young fellow had the worst of it; and after all, I don’t see that he had a great deal to live for. The island that formed his patrimony would certainly never have seduced me into any inordinate desire to prolong existence. Perhaps I must go there. It is a great annoyance. I hate the journey, and I hate the duty; but to refuse would, in all probability, offend Vyner. It is just the time men are unreasonably thin-skinned, fancying that all the world has turned its back on them, because they have sent off their French cook. Vulgar nonsense! Perhaps Vyner would not take that view; but his women would, I’m certain!”

Now, Mr. Grenfell knew nothing whatever of “the women” in question, and that was the precise reason that he included them in his spiteful censure.

“And then to fancy that his money-seeking was philanthropy! Was there ever delusion like it! Your virtuous people have such a habit of self-esteem; they actually believe the thing must be right, because they do it.”

Grumbling sorely over that “Irish journey,” he sauntered back to the house, in the porch of which Ladarelle was standing, with an open letter in his hand.

“I say,” cried he, “here’s a go! The house of Fletcher and David, one of the oldest in London, smashed!”

“I know it,” said Grenfell, dryly.

“Then you know, perhaps, how your friend, Sir Gervais Vyner, has let them in for nigh a quarter of a million?”

“I know more; for I know that you know nothing of the matter; but, to turn to something that concerns ourselves. I must start by the mail train to-night for Holyhead.”

“Which means, that I must evacuate my quarters. I must say, you give your tenants short notice to quit.”

“Stay, by all means. All I have to say is, that I cannot keep you company. Rickards will take excellent care of you till I come back.”

“Which will be----?”

“I can’t name the day; but I hope it will be an early one.”

“A mysterious journey--eh?”

“No; but one which it is not at all necessary to take an opinion upon.”

“By the way, you wrote the letter to that Irish fellow the other evening--what did you do with it?”

“It is on the writing-table.”

“And I suppose I may make use of it, if I need it?”

“Yes; it’s a matter that other things have driven out of my head; but the letter is yours, if you wish.”

“And you will stand by me, I hope, if I get into a scrape?”

“Don’t count on me. I’m a capricious fellow, and whenever a thing does not come off at once, I never can vouch for the spirit in which I may resume it.”

“That’s hearty, at all events!”

“No; but it is unmistakable.--Rickards, hurry the cook, if he will let you, and order the carriage for eight o’clock.”

“And posters for me for Dalradern at the same hour,” said Ladarelle. “Grog is worth a score of such fellows!” muttered he below his breath, as he strolled to his room. “Grog would never strike out a plan, and leave a man in the lurch afterwards.”

When they met at dinner, Grenfell took care that the conversation should be as general as possible, never by a chance alluding to any subject of personal interest to either of them; and, as the clock struck eight, and he heard the tramp of the horses on the gravel, he arose and said:

“Don’t forget to say all sorts of things to Sir Within for me, and to Mademoiselle, too, when she is visible. Good-by, and ‘bonne chance!’”

“Good-by! I wish I could have had a few words with you before you started. I wish you would have told me something more definite about the plan. I wish----” What he continued to wish is not on record, for once more Grenfell uttered his good-by, and the next moment he was gone.

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XLI. THE DARK TIDINGS

It was a dull, lowering October day, sky and sea alike lead-coloured, when the boat that bore Grenfell rounded the southern point of Arran, and opened a view of the island in all its extent. His first visit there had not left any favourable impressions of the place, though then he saw it in sunshine, warm-tinted and softened; now all was hard, bleak, and cold, and the ruined Abbey stood out amongst the leafless trees, like the ghost of a civilisation long dead and buried.

“There he is himself, Sir,” said the steersman to Grenfell, as he pointed to a lone rock on the extreme point of a promontory. “You’d think he was paid for sitting there, to watch all the vessels that go north about to America. He can see every craft, big and little, from Belmullet to Craig’s Creek.”

“And does he stay there in bad weather?”

“I never missed him any day I came by, no matter how hard it blew.”

“It’s a dreary look-out.”

“Indeed it is, your honour! more by token, when a man has a comfortable house and a good fire to sit at, as Mr. Luttrell has, if he liked it.”

“Perhaps he thinks it less lonely to sit there than to mope over his hearth by himself. He lives all alone, I believe?”

“He does, Sir; and it’s what he likes best. I took a party of gentlemen over from Westport last summer; they wanted to see the curiosities of the place, and look at the old Abbey, and they sent me up with a civil message, to say what they came for and who they were--one of them was a lord--and what d’ye think, Sir? instead of being glad to see the face of a Christian, and having a bit of chat over what was doing beyond there, he says to me, ‘Barny Moore,’ says he, ‘you want to make a trade,’ says he, ‘of showing me like a wild baste; but I know your landlord, Mr. Creagh, and as sure as my name’s John Luttrell,’ says he, I’ll have you turned out of your holding; so just take your friends and yourself off the way you came!’ And when I told the gentlemen, they took it mighty good humoured, and only said, ‘After all, if a man comes so far as this for quietness, it’s rather hard if he wouldn’t get it;’ and we went off that night. I’m tellin’ your honour this,” added he, in a low, confidential tone, “because, if he asks you what boat you came in, you would say it was Tom M’Caffray’s--that man there in the bow--he’s from Kilrush, and a stranger; for I wouldn’t put it past John Luttrell to do me harm, if I crossed him.”

“But, is he not certain to see you?”

“No, Sir; not if I don’t put myself in his way. Look now, Sir, look, he’s off already?”

“Off! whereto?”

“To the Abbey, Sir, to bar himself in. He saw that the yawl was coming in to anchor, and he’ll not look back now till he’s safe in his own four walls.”

“But I want to speak with him--is it likely he’ll refuse to see me?”

“Just as-like as not. May I never! but he’s running, he’s so afeard we’ll be on shore before he gets in.”

At no time had Grenfell been much in love with his mission; he was still less pleased with it as he stepped on the shingly shore, and turned to make his way over a pathless waste to the Abbey. He walked slowly along, conning over to himself what he had got to do, and how he should do it. “At all events,” thought he, “the more boorish and uncivil the man may be, the less demand will be made on me for courtesy. If he be rude, I can be concise; nor need I have any hesitation in showing him that I never volunteered for this expedition, and only came because Vyner begged me to come.”

He had seen no one since he left the boat, and even now, as he arrived close to the house, no living thing appeared. He walked round on one side. It was the side of the old aisle, and there was no door to be found. He turned to the other, and found his progress interrupted by a low hedge, looking over which he fancied he saw an entrance. He stepped, therefore, over the enclosure; but, by the noise of the smashing twigs a dog was aroused, a wild, wolfish-looking animal, that rushed fiercely at him with a yelping bark. Grenfell stood fast, and prepared to defend himself with a strong stick, when suddenly a harsh voice cried out, “Morrah! come back, Morrah! Don’t strike the dog, Sir, or he’ll tear you to pieces!” And then a tall, thin man, much stooped in the shoulders, and miserably dressed, came forward, and motioned the dog to retire.

“Is he savage?” said Grenfell.

“Not savage enough to keep off intruders, it seems,” was the uncourteous

reply. “Is your business with me, Sir?”

“If I speak to Mr. Luttrell, it is.”

“My name is Luttrell.”

“Mine is Grenfell; but I may be better known as the friend of your old friend, Sir Gervais Vyner.”

“Grenfell--Grenfell! to be sure. I know the name--we all know it,” said Luttrell, with a sort of sneer. “Is Vyner come--is he with you?”

“No, Sir,” said Grenfell, smarting under the sting of what he felt to be an insult. “It is because he could not come that he asked me to see you.”

Luttrell made no reply, but stood waiting for the other to continue.

“I have come on a gloomy errand, Mr. Luttrell, and wish you would prepare yourself to hear very, very sad news.”

“What do you call prepare?” cried Luttrell, in a voice almost a shriek. “I know of nothing that prepares a man for misfortune except its frequency,” muttered he, in a low tone. “What is it? Is it of Harry--of my boy?”

Grenfell nodded.

“Wait,” said Luttrell, pressing his hand over his brow. “Let me go in. No, Sir; I can walk without help.” He grasped the door-post as he spoke, and stumbling onward, clutching the different objects as he went, gained a chair, and sank into it. “Tell me now,” said he, in a faint whisper.

“Be calm, Mr. Luttrell,” said Grenfell, gently. “I have no need to say, take courage.”

Luttrell stared vacantly at him, his lips parted, and his whole expression that of one who was stunned and overcome. “Go on,” said he, in a hoarse whisper--“go on.”

“Compose yourself first,” said Grenfell.

“Is Harry--is he dead?”

Grenfell made a faint motion of his head.

“There--leave me--let me be alone!” said Luttrell, pointing to the door; and his words were spoken in a stern and imperative tone.

Grenfell waited for a few seconds, and then withdrew noiselessly, and strolled out into the open air.

“A dreary mission and a drearier spot!” said he, as he sauntered along, turning his eyes from the mountain, half hid in mist, to the lowering sea. “One would imagine that he who lived here must have little love of life, or little care how others fared in it.” After walking about a mile he sat down on a rock, and began to consider what further remained for him to do. To pass an entire day in such a place was more than he could endure; and, perhaps, more than Luttrell himself would wish. Vyner’s letter and its enclosures would convey all the sorrowful details of the calamity; and, doubtless, Luttrell was a man who would not expose his grief, but give free course to it in secret.

He resolved, therefore, that he would go back to the Abbey, and, with a few lines from himself, enclose these papers to Luttrell, stating that he would not leave the island, which it was his intention to have done that night, if Luttrell desired to see him again, and at the same time adding, that he possessed no other information but such as these documents afforded. This he did, to avoid, if it could be, another interview. In a word, he wanted to finish all that he had to do as speedily as might be, and yet omit nothing that decorum required. He knew how Vyner would question and cross-question him, besides; and he desired, that as he had taken the trouble to come, he should appear to have acquitted himself creditably.

“The room is ready for your honour,” said Molly, as Grenfell appeared again at the door; “and the master said that your honour would order dinner whenever you liked, and excuse himself to-day, by rayson he wasn’t well.”

“Thank you,” said Grenfell; “I will step in and write a few words to your master, and you will bring me the answer here.”

Half a dozen lines sufficed for all he had to say, and, enclosing the other documents, he sat down to await the reply.

In less time than he expected, the door opened. Luttrell himself appeared. Wretched and careworn as he seemed before, a dozen years of suffering could scarcely have made more impress on him than that last hour: clammy sweat covered his brow and cheeks, and his white lips trembled unceasingly; but in nothing was the change greater than in his eye. All its proud defiance was gone; the fierce energy had passed away, and its look was now one of weariness and exhaustion. He sat down in front of Grenfell, and for a minute or so did not speak. At last he said:

“You will wish to get back--to get away from this dreary place; do not remain on my account. Tell Vyner I will try and go over to him. He’s in Wales, isn’t he?”

“No; he is in Italy.”

“In Italy! I cannot go so far,” said he, with a deep sigh.

“I was not willing to obtrude other sorrows in the midst of your own heavier one; but you will hear the news in a day or two, perhaps, that our poor friend Vyner has lost everything he had in the world.”

“Is his daughter dead?” gasped out Luttrell, eagerly.

“No; I spoke of his fortune; his whole estate is gone.”

“That is sad, very sad,” sighed Luttrell; “but not the saddest! One may be poor and hope; one may be sick, almost to the last, and hope; one may be bereft of friends, and yet think that better days will come; but to be childless--to be robbed of that which was to have treasured your memory when you passed away, and think lovingly on you years after you were dust--this is the great, the great affliction!” As he spoke, the large tears rolled down his face, and his lank cheeks trembled. “None will know this better than Vyner,” said he, after a pause.

“You do him no more than justice; he thought little of his own misfortune in presence of yours.”

“It was like him.”

“May I read you his own words?”

“No; it is enough that I know his heart. Go back, and say I thank him. It was thoughtful of him at such a time to remember me; few but himself could have done it!” He paused for a few seconds, and then in a stronger, fuller voice continued: “Tell him to send this sailor to me; he may live here, if he will. At all events, he shall not want, wherever he goes. Vyner will ask you how I bore this blow, Sir. I trust to you to say the strict truth, that I bore it well. Is that not so?” Grenfell bowed his head slightly. “Bore it,” continued Luttrell, “as a man may, who now can defy Fortune, and say, ‘See, you have laid your heaviest load on me, and I do not even stagger under it!’ Remember, Sir, that you tell Vyner that. That I listened to the darkest news a man can hear, and never so much as winced. There is no fever in that hand, Sir; touch it!”

“I had rather that you would not make this effort, Mr. Luttrell. I had far rather tell my friend that your grief was taking the course that nature meant for it.”

“Sir!” said Luttrell, haughtily, “it is not to-day that misfortune and I have made acquaintance. Sorrow has sat at my hearth-stone--my one companion--for many a year! I knew no other guest, and had any other come, I would not have known how to receive him! Look around you and say, is it to such a place as this a man comes if the world has gone well with him?”

“It is not yet too late----”

“Yes, it is, Sir; far too late,” broke in Luttrell, impatiently. “I know my own nature better than you ever knew it. Forgive me, if I am rude. Misery has robbed me of all--even the manners of a gentleman. It would be only a mockery to offer you such hospitality as I have here, but if, before leaving, you would eat something----”

Grenfell made some hurried excuses; he had eaten on board the boat--he was not hungry---and he was impatient to get back in time for the morning mail.

“Of course, no one could wish to tarry here,” said Luttrell. “Tell Vyner I will try and write to him, if not soon, when I can. Good-by, Sir! You have been very kind to me, and I thank you.”

Grenfell shook his cold hand and turned away, more moved, perhaps, than if he had witnessed a greater show of sorrow. Scarcely, however, had he closed the door after him, than a dull, heavy sound startled him. He opened the door softly, and saw that Luttrell had fallen on the ground, and with his hands over his face lay sobbing in all the bitterness of intense grief. Grenfell retired noiselessly and unseen. It was a sorrow that none should witness; and, worldling as he was, he felt it. He stopped twice on his way down to the shore, uncertain whether he ought not to go back, and try to comfort that desolate man. But how comfort him? How speak of hope to one who mocked all hope, and actually seemed to cling to his misery?

“They cry out against the worldling, and rail at his egotism, and the rest of it,” muttered he; “but the selfishness that withdraws from all contact with others, is a hundred times worse! Had that man lived in town, and had his club to stroll down to, the morning papers would have shown him that he was not more unlucky than his fellows, and that a large proportion of his acquaintances carried crape on their hats, whether they had sorrow in their hearts or not.”

It was with a mind relieved that he reached Holyhead the next day, and set out for the Cottage. Vyner had begged him to secure certain papers and letters of his that were there; and for this purpose he turned off on his way to town to visit Dinasllyn for the last time.

“The young gentleman went away the night you left, Sir,” said Rickards, without being questioned; “but he came over this morning to ask if you had returned.”

“What news of the young lady who was so ill at Dalradern?”

“Out of danger, Sir. The London doctor was the saving of her life, Sir; he has ordered her to the sea-side as soon as she is fit to move, and Sir Within sent off Carter yesterday to Milford Haven, to take the handsomest house he can find there, and never think of the cost.”

“Rich men can do these things, Rickards!”

“Yes, Sir. Sir Within and my master haven’t to ask what’s the price when an article strikes their fancy.”

Grenfell looked to see if the remark was intended to explode a mine, or a mere chance shot. The stolid face of the butler reassured him in an instant, and he said, “I shall want candles in the library, and you will call me to-morrow early--say seven.”

When Grenfell had covered the library table with papers and parchments innumerable, title-deeds of centuries old, and grants from the Crown to Vyner’s ancestors in different reigns, he could not restrain a passionate invective against the man who had, out of mere levity, forfeited a noble fortune.

Contemptible as young Ladarelle was--mean, low-lived, and vulgar--the fellow’s ambition to be rich, the desire to have the power that wealth confers, raised him in Grenfell’s esteem above “that weak-minded enthusiast “--so he called him--who must needs beggar himself, because he had nothing to do.

He emptied drawer after drawer, burning, as Vyner had bade him, rolls of letters, parliamentary papers, and such-like, till, in tossing over heaps of rubbish, he came upon a piece of stout card-board, and on turning it about saw the sketch Vyner had made of the Irish peasant child in Donegal. Who was it so like? Surely he knew that expression, the peculiar look of the eyes, sad and thoughtful, and yet defiant? He went over in his mind one after another of those town-bred beauties he had met in the season, when, suddenly, he exclaimed, “What a fool I have been all this time. It is the girl at Dalradern, the ‘ward,’”--here he laughed in derision--“the ‘ward’ of Sir Within Wardle. Ay, and she knew me, too, I could swear. All her evasive answers about Ireland show it.” He turned hastily to Vyner’s letter, and surmised that it was to this very point he was coming, when the news of young Luttrell’s death was brought him. “What can be her position now, and how came she beneath that old man’s roof? With what craft and what boldness she played her game! The girl who has head enough for that, has cleverness to know that I am not a man to be despised. She should have made me her friend at once. Who could counsel her so well, or tell her the shoals and quicksands before her? She ought to have done this, and she shall, too. I will go over to-morrow to Dalradern; I will take her this sketch; we shall see if it will not be a bond of friendship between us.”

When, true to the pledge he had made with himself, he went oyer to Dalradern the next morning, it was to discover that Sir Within and his ward had taken their departure two hours before. The servants were busily engaged in dismantling the rooms, and preparing to close the Castle against all visitors.

To his inquiries, ingenious enough, he could get no satisfactory answer as to the direction they had gone, or to what time their absence might be protracted, and Grenfell, disappointed and baffled, returned to the Cottage to pass his last evening, ere he quitted it for ever.

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XLII. THE SANDS AT SUNSET

Towards the close of a day in the late autumn, when the declining sun was throwing a long column of golden light over the sea, a little group was gathered on the shore at Ostend, the last, it seemed, of all the summer visitors who had repaired there for the season. The group consisted of a young girl, whose attitude, as she lay reclined in a bath-chair, bespoke extreme debility, and an old man who stood at her side, directing her attention, as his gestures indicated, to different objects in the landscape.

Two servants in livery, and a somewhat demurely-dressed maid, stood at a little distance off, in deferential attendance on the others.

Greatly changed, indeed paler and thinner, with dark circles round the eyes, and a faint hectic spot on each cheek, Kate O’Hara looked even more beautiful than ever; the extreme delicacy of every lineament, the faultless regularity of outline, were as conspicuous now, as before was that brightness which she derived from expression. If her eyes had no longer their look of haughty and defiant meaning, they seemed to have acquired a greater depth of colour and an expression of intense softness, and her lips, so ready once to curl into mockery at a moment, now appeared as if they faintly stirred with a smile, as some fancy crossed her.

She was dressed in deep mourning, which heightened still more the statue-like character of her features. What a contrast to this placid loveliness was the careworn, feverish look of the old man at her side! Sir Within had aged by years within a few weeks, and in the anxious expression of his face, and his quick uneasy glances around him, might be read the fretful conflict of hope and fear within him.

While he continued to speak, and describe the features of the scene before them, though she smiled at times, or assented by a slight gesture of the head, her mind was wandering--far, far away--to other thoughts and other places, and her fingers played feverishly with a letter, which she opened and closed up again time after time.

“I am afraid, Ma Mie,” said he, with a tone of half reproach, “that your letter there has usurped all your interest, and my eloquence as Cicerone gone quite for nothing.”

“No, Gardy, I heard you with much pleasure. What did you say that rock was called?”

“That rock, Mademoiselle,” said he, dryly, “is a wreck, and I was vain enough to have believed that my narrative of the incident had moved you.”

“I am so weak, Gardy, so very weak,” said she, plaintively, as she laid her hand on the back of his, “that I follow anything with difficulty.”

“My sweet child, how cruel of me to forget it. Are we lingering too long on these sands?”

“Oh no; let us stay here some time longer. I want to see the sun go down, it is so long since I saw a sunset.”

He drew her shawl around her carefully, and sheltered her with his umbrella against the scarcely breathing wind.

“How kind you are, how good,” said she, softly; and then, with a playful lightness, added, “how courtier-like, too.”

“Why courtier-like, Ma Mie?” said he.

“Is it not like a courtier,” said she, “to treat a peasant-girl as if she were a princess? You would not even ask me when I saw my last sunset, lest I should have to tell you that it was as I stood barefooted on the beach, the tangled seaweed dripping over me.”

“How can you like to pain me by talking of these things?”

“But we must talk of them, Gardy. You know we think of them; and this letter--this letter,” said she, tapping it with her finger impatiently, “must be answered one day.”

“And there is but one answer to give, Kate,” said he, sharply. “I will not consent. He who now assumes the uncle----”

“He is my uncle, Sir,” said she, haughtily. “It is scarcely generous to deny me whatever good blood I can lay claim to.”

“My child, my dear child, if you but knew how I love whatever loves you, you would not have uttered this reproach.”

“My mother’s sister’s husband is surely my uncle,” said she, coldly, and not heeding his protestation. “I never heard that a mésalliance could cancel the ties of kindred.”

“None ever said so, Kate.”

“You said as much, Sir; you said, ‘assumes the uncle!’”

“I meant in a different sense, my dear child. I meant, that he wanted to impose an authority which mere relationship would not give him.”

“Read his letter again, Sir--pray read it.”

“No, my child; it has given me too much pain already.”

“I think you are not just to him, Gardy,” said she caressingly. “May I read it to you? Well, a part of it?”

“Once more, no, Kate. His argument is, that as he is now childless, he has the right to claim your love and affection, to replace what he has lost; that, as your nearest of kin, you cannot refuse him; and that, if you do--mark the insinuation--the reasons will be, perhaps, based on considerations apart from all affection.”

“I think he had the right to say that,” said she, firmly.

“There was one thing, however, he had no right to say,” said the old man, haughtily; “that to continue to reside under my roof was to challenge the opinion of a world never slow to be censorious.”

“And there, again, I think he was not wrong.”

“Then you love me no longer, Kate!” said he, with intense emotion.

“Not love you--not love you! Then, what do I love? Is it nothing to know that every happiness I have I owe to you--that all the enjoyment of a life more bright than a fairy tale, comes from you? That from your generous indulgence I have learned to think mere existence something like ecstasy, and awake each day as to a fête?”

“Say on, dearest, say on; your words thrill through me like a gentle music.”

“He does not offer me these; but he says, ‘Come to what you shall call your home, and never blush to say so.’”

“It is too insolent!”

“He says, ‘As my daughter by adoption, you shall bear my name.’ I am to be a Luttrell--Kate Luttrell of Arran!”

“And for this poor name you would barter all my love, all my affection, all my hope?”

“It is a great and noble name, Sir! There were Lords of Arran called Luttrell in the thirteenth century!”

“You have told me of them,” said he, peevishly.

“Too proud and too haughty to accept titles, Sir.”

“I have a name that the first in the land would not scorn,” said he, in a voice of blended pride and anger; “and my fortune is certainly the equal of a barren rock in the Atlantic.”

“You are not my uncle, Sir,” said she, softly.

“No, Kate; but----” He stopped, the colour fled from his cheek, and he seemed unable to continue. “Has any tender love for you equalled mine?”

“Stop there!” said she, fiercely; “my favour is not put up to auction, and to fall to the highest bidder. When you have said that my uncle is poor, you have said all that can be laid to his charge.” She closed her eyes, and, seeming to speak to herself, murmured: “The poorer, the more need has he of affection.”

“I see it all--all!” said he, bitterly. “You wish to leave me.”

She made no answer, but sat staring vacantly over the sea.

“Better to say so, my child--better to own that this life has ceased to give you pleasure. But if you told me, Kate, that you would like to travel, to see other countries, to mix with the world, and partake of the enjoyments----”

“How--as what?” said she, impatiently. “It was but a few months ago you received some strangers at your house, and have you forgotten how they treated me? And do you believe, Sir, that the world will have more reserve than the guests under your roof? Who is she? is not answered so easily as one may think. It would take blood to wash out the stain of ‘What is she?’”

The old man walked rapidly up and down; he wiped the drops that stood on his brow, and muttered uneasily to himself: “and why not? To whom have I to render an account? Who shall dare to question me? Am I to be turned from my path by a sneer and a sarcasm? Is the ribald gossiping of a club to be of more weight with me than my whole happiness?”

She watched the conflict, and saw every struggle that shook him; she could even mark the vacillating fortunes of the fight--when he conquered, and when he fell back, discomfited and beaten.

“Tell me, Kate,” said he, at last, as he approached her, “is there any condition you can propose by which I may secure myself against desertion?”

“There would be no desertion, Gardy. You could come and see me in my new home. I would do my utmost to hide its poverty. Who knows if my ingenious devices might not amuse you. My uncle, too, might permit me--no, perhaps not that----” said she, stopping, in some confusion.

“What is it he wouldn’t permit, Kate?”

“I don’t know; I was talking to myself, I believe, and I feel weary and feverish too. Gardy, let us not speak more of this now; it oppresses me. And see! there goes down the sun, and I have not enjoyed all its gorgeous colour over the waters.”

“I wish you would tell me what Mr. Luttrell might not permit.”

“He’d not permit me to stay out on the sea-shore till the evening dew had fallen,” said she, laughing. “Tell them to take me back.”

“Yes, darling, we have lingered here too long. It was my fault.”

And now the little procession moved slowly across the sands towards the town; passing through small mean-looking streets, they gained the place where their hotel stood. Groups of idlers were about--townsfolk and a few strangers--who made way for them to pass. Some respectfully enough--the show of rank suffices at times to exact this--others, more venturesome, stared at the beautiful girl, and then looked at the worn and feeble figure who walked beside her. That they were English was plain enough, and was taken as a reason to comment on them without reserve.

Sir Within turned looks of anger and defiance around him; he gave them to understand that he could overhear their insolence, and he sought with his eyes through the crowd to see one--even one--sufficiently like a gentleman, to hold him responsible for the impertinence.

“Neither wife nor daughter, I’ll wager a ‘cent-sous’ piece,” said one, as they passed under the arched doorway.

Sir Within stepped back, when Kate said, suddenly, “I mean to walk up-stairs, give me your arm, Sir;” and as they moved slowly on, she whispered, “How can it be helped, Gardy?” and then, with a laugh, added, “it is a maxim of your own, that it is the unmannerly people take care of the public morals.”

It was a subtle flattery to quote himself, which Sir Within thoroughly appreciated, and as he took leave of her at the door of her room he was almost calm again.

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XLIII. THE INSULT

When Kate had gained her room she locked the door, and throwing off her shawl and bonnet, sat down before the glass; her hair fell heavily down in the rude carelessness with which she flung her bonnet from her, and now, with a faint tinge of colour in her cheek--the flush of a passing excitement--she looked very beautiful.

“So,” said she, smiling at her image, “it is the old story, ‘Qu’en dira le Monde?’ The dear old man was very, very fond. He admired me very much; I pleased him--I amused him--I made his life somewhat brighter than he would have found it rambling amongst his Titians and Peruginos; but, with all that, he couldn’t face the terrible question, What will the world say? Ma foi, Mademoiselle Kate, the confession is not flattering to you! Most people would call me very inexpert that I had not made that grand old place my own before this. I had the field all to myself--no rivalry, no interference--and certainly it was a great opportunity. Perhaps I was too much occupied in enjoying my happiness; perhaps I took no note of time; and, perhaps, if I ever thought at all, I thought I could win the game whenever I liked, and now I awake to discover that there is something that he fears more than he loves me; and that the dear old dowager world, that shakes down reputations with a nod and blasts pretensions with a stare, will declare a strict blockade against the distinguished Sir Within Wardle and that girl--lucky if they do not say, ‘that creature’--he married. Ought he not to have had a spirit above this? Ought he not to have been able to say, ‘I am rich enough to buy this bauble, and if the wearing it gives me pleasure, I can forget your sarcasms? I like the life she can throw around me; which of you all could give such colour to my existence?’ He might have said this, but he did not. He heard me talk of a new home, and a new name, and he would not offer me his own. He saw and felt bitterly, too, how my position compromised me. I took care he should see it, but no thought of separation crossed him, or, if it did, stronger than all was the dread query, ‘Qu’en dira le Monde?’

“There are things one cannot believe possible till they have happened; and, even then, some strange uncertainty pervades the mind that they have not been read aright. This is one of them. No one could have persuaded me this morning that this prize was not mine whenever I cared to claim it. What a fall to my pride! How little must I feel myself, that after all these years of subtle flattery, I might as well have been with the Vyners--living with creatures of my own nature--giving affection and getting it--cultivating the heart in the rich soil of human hopes and fears, and loves, and trials, and not wearing a mask till it had stiffened into my very features. And he refused me--yes, refused me; for there was no maiden bashfulness in the terms of my offer. I said, I go back to be the niece, or I stay to be the wife; and his reply was, ‘Qu’en dira le Monde?’ I suppose he was right--I am sure he was; but I hate him for it--how I hate him!” She arose and walked the room with long and measured steps for a while in silence, and then burst out: “What would I not give to be revenged for this? Some vengeances there are he would feel bitterly. Should he meet me in the world--the great world, for instance--the wife of some one, his equal, see me courted, and feted, and flattered; hear of me at all times and all places, and learn that this ‘Monde’--that is his god--had adopted me amongst his spoiled children, I think I know the dark despair that would gather around him as he muttered to himself, ‘And she might have been mine--she had been mine for the asking--she offered herself;’ ay, he might say so, if he wished to add insult to my memory; ‘and I only replied, “The world would not bear it!” How I hate him! How I hate him! If I cannot be revenged as I wish, I will be revenged as I can. I shall leave him--go at once. He has passed his last of those blissful days, as he loves to call them; and he shall, awake to see his life in all the weariness of desertion. Not a look, nor a sound; not a laugh, not a song to cheer him. With every spot full of memories of me, he shall be haunted by a happiness that will never return to him. I know that in his misery he will ask me to forgive the past and be his wife; and if the alternative were to be the wretchedness I sprung from, I’d go back to it!

“I do not know--in all likelihood I shall never know--what this heart of mine could feel of love, but I know its power of hatred, and so shall Sir Within, though it may cost me dear to buy it.

“Your repentance may come as early as you please, it shall avail you nothing. It may be even now; I almost thought I heard his foot on the stair; and I know not whether I would not rather it came now, or after months of heart-suffering and sorrow. I was slighted--he weighed the beauty that he admired, and the love he thought he had gained, against the mockeries of some score of people whose very faces he has forgotten, and ‘Qu’en dira le Monde’ had more power over him than all my tenderness, all my wit, and all my beauty.

“Is it not strange that, with all his boasted keenness to read people’s natures, he should know so little of mine? To think that I could stand there and see the struggle between his pride of station and what he would call ‘his passion’--that I could tamely wait and see how I was weighed in the balance and found wanting--that I could bear all this unmoved, and then return to my daily life, without an attempt to resent it?

“It is true, till this letter came from my uncle, there was no pressure upon him. None in the wide world was more friendless than myself. His life might have gone on as heretofore, and if a thought of me or of my fate invaded, he might have dismissed it with the excuse that he could mention me in his will; he could have bequeathed me enough to make me a desirable match for the land-steward or the gardener!

“How I bless my Uncle Luttrell for his remembrance of me! It is like a reprieve arriving when the victim was on the scaffold. He shall see with what gladness I accept his offer. If the conditions had been ten times as hard, I would not quarrel with one of them. Now, then, to answer him, and that done, Sir Within, you run no danger of that scandal-loving world you dread so much! For if you came with the offer of all your fortune to my feet, I’d spurn you!”

She opened her writing-desk, and sat down before it. She then took out Luttrell’s letter, and read it carefully over. I must take care that my answer be as calm and as unimpassioned as his own note. He makes no protestation of affection--neither shall I. He says nothing of any pleasure that he anticipates from my companionship--I will be as guarded as himself.” She paused for a moment or two, and then wrote:

“My dear Uncle,--Though your letter found me weak and low, after a severe illness, its purport has given me strength to answer you at once. I accept.

“It would be agreeable to me if I could close this letter with these words, and not impose any further thought of myself upon you; but it is better, perhaps, if I tell you now and for ever that you may discharge your mind of all fears as to what you call the sacrifices I shall have to make. I hope to show you that all the indulgences in which I have lived make no part of my real nature. You have one boon to confer on me worth all that wealth and splendour could offer--your name. By making me a Luttrell, you fill the full measure of my ambition.

“For whatever share of your confidence and affection you may vouchsafe me, I will try to be worthy; but I will not importune for either, but patiently endeavour to deserve them. My life has not hitherto taught many lessons of utility. I hope duty will be a better teacher than self-indulgence. Lastly, have no fears that my presence under your roof will draw closer around you the ties and the claims of those humble people with whom I am connected. I know as little of them as you do. They certainly fill no place in my affection; nor have I the pretence to think I have any share in theirs. One old man alone have I any recollection of--my mother’s father--and if I may judge by the past, he will continue to be more influenced by what tends to my advantage, than what might minister to the indulgence of his own pride. He neither came to see me at Sir Gervais Vyner’s, nor Dalradern; and though I have written to him once or twice, he never sought to impose himself as a burden upon me. Of course, it will be for you to say if this correspondence should be discontinued.

“You will see in these pledges, that I give in all frankness, how much it will be my ambition to be worthy of the noble name you allow me to bear.

“There is no necessity to remit me any money. I have ample means to pay for my journey; and as there are circumstances which I can tell you of more easily than I can write, requiring that I should leave this at once, I will do so immediately after posting the present letter. I will go direct to the hotel you speak of at Holyhead, and remain there till your messenger arrives to meet me.

“You distress me, my dear uncle, when you suggest that I should mention any articles that I might require to be added to your household for my comfort or convenience. Do not forget, I beg, that I was not born to these luxuries, and that they only attach to me as the accidents of a station which I relinquish with delight, when I know that it gives me the right to sign myself,

“Your loving Niece,

“Kate Luttrell.”

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XLIV. THE FLIGHT

The day was just breaking as Kate, carrying a small bundle in her hand, issued noiselessly from the deep porch of the hotel, and hastened to the pier.

The steam-boat was about to start, and she was the last to reach the deck, as the vessel moved off. It was a raw and gusty morning, and the passengers had all sought shelter below, so that she was free to seek a spot to herself unmolested and unobserved.

As she turned her farewell look at the sands, where she had walked on the evening before, she could not believe that one night--one short night--had merely filled the interval. Why, it seemed as if half a lifetime had been crowded into the space. Within those few hours how much had happened! A grand dream of ambition scattered to the winds--a dream that for many a day had filled her whole thoughts, working its way into every crevice of her mind, and so colouring all her fancies that she had not even a caprice untinged by it! To be the mistress of that old feudal castle--to own its vast halls and its tall towers--to gaze on the deep-bosomed woods that stretched for miles away, and feel that they were her own! To know that at last she had gained a station and a position that none dared dispute; “For,” as she would say, “the world may say its worst of that old man’s folly; they may ridicule and deride him. Of me they can but say that I played boldly, and won the great stake I played for.” And now, the game was over, and she had lost! “What a reverse was this! Yesterday, surrounded with wealth, cared for, watched, courted, my slightest wish consulted, how fair the prospect looked! And now, alone, and more friendless than the meanest around me! And was the fault mine? How hard to tell. Was it that I gave him too much of my confidence, or too little? Was my mistake to let him dwell too much on the ways and opinions of that great world that he loved so well? Should I not have tried rather to disparage than exalt it? And should I not have sought to inspire him with a desire for a quiet, tranquil existence--such a life as he might have dreamed to lead in those deep old woods around his home? To the last,” cried she, to herself--“to the last, I never could believe that he would consent to lose me! Perhaps he never thought it would come to this. Perhaps he fancied that I could not face that wretchedness from which I came. Perhaps he might have thought that I myself was not one to relinquish so good a game, and rise from the table at the first reverse. But what a reverse! To be so near the winning-post, and yet lose the race! And how will he bear it? Will he sink under the blow, or will that old pride of blood of which he boasts so much come to his aid and carry him through it? How I wish--oh, what would I not give to see him, as he tears open my last letter, and sees all his presents returned to him! Ah, if he could but feel with what a pang I parted with them! If he but knew the tears the leave-taking cost me! If he but saw me as I took off that necklace I was never to wear again, feeling like one who was laying down her beauty to go forth into the world without a charm, he might, perchance, hope to win me back again. And would that be possible? My heart says no. My heart tells me, that before I can think of a fortune to achieve, there is an insult to avenge. He slighted me--yes, he slighted me! There was a price too high for all my love, and he let me see it. There was his fault--he let me see it! It was my dream for many a year to show the humble folk from whom I came what my ambition and my capacity could make me; and I thought of myself as the proud mistress of Dalradern without a pang for all the misery the victory would cost me. Now the victory has escaped me, and I go back, so far as my own efforts are concerned, defeated! What next--ay, what next?”

As the day wore on, every incident of her ordinary life rose before her. Nine o’clock. It was the hour the carriage came to take her to her bath. She bethought her of all the obsequious attention of her maid, that quiet watchfulness of cunning service, the mindful observance that supplies a want and yet obtrudes no thought of it. The very bustle of her arrival at the bathing-place had its own flattery. The eager attention, the zealous anxiety of the servants, that showed how, in her presence, all others were for the time forgotten. She knew well--is beauty ever deficient in the knowledge?--that many came each morning only to catch a glimpse of her. Her practised eye had taught her, even as she passed, to note what amount of tribute each rendered to her loveliness; and she could mark the wondering veneration here, the almost rapturous gaze of this one, and not unfrequently the jealous depreciation of that other.

Eleven o’clock. She was at breakfast with Sir Within, and he was asking her for all the little events of the morning. And what were these? A bantering narrative of her own triumphs--how well she had looked--how tastefully she was dressed--how spitefully the women had criticised the lovely hat she swam in, and which she gave to some poor girl as she came out of the water--a trifle that had cost some “louis” a few days before.

It was noon--the hour the mail arrived from Brussels--and Sir Within would come to present her with the rich bouquet of rare flowers, despatched each morning from the capital. It was a piece of homage he delighted to pay, and she was wont to accept it with a sort of queen-like condescension. “What a strange life of dreamy indulgence--of enjoyments multiplied too fast to taste--of luxuries so lavished as almost to be a burden--and how unreal it was all!” so thought she, as they drew near the tall chalk cliffs of the English coast, and the deck grew crowded with those who were eagerly impatient to quit their prison-house.

For the first time for a long while did she find herself unnoticed and unattended to; none of that watchful, obsequious attention that used to track her steps was there. Now, people hurried hither and thither, collecting their scattered effects, and preparing to land. Not one to care for her, who only yesterday was waited on like royalty!

“Is this your trunk, Miss?” asked a porter.

“No; this is mine,” said she, pointing to a bundle.

“Shall I carry it for you, my dear?” said a vulgar-looking and over-dressed young fellow, who had put his glass in his eye to stare at her.

She muttered but one word, but that it was enough seemed clear, as his companion said, “I declare I think you deserved it!”

“It has begun already,” said she to herself, as she walked slowly along towards the town. “The bitter conflict with the world, of which I have only heard hitherto, I now must face. By this time he knows it; he knows that he is desolate, and that he shall never see me more. All the misery is not, therefore, mine; nor is mine the greater. I have youth, and can hope; he cannot hope; he can but grieve on to the last. Well, let him go to that world he loves so dearly, and ask it to console him. It will say by its thousand tongues, ‘You have done well, Sir Within. Why should you have allied yourself with a low-born peasant-girl? How could her beauty have reconciled you to her want of refinement, her ignorance, her coarse breeding?’ Ah, what an answer could his heart give, if he but dared to utter it; for he could tell them I was their equal in all their vaunted captivations! Will he have the courage to do this? Or, will he seek comfort in the falsehood that belies me?”

In thoughts like these, ever revolving around herself and her altered fortunes, she journeyed on, and by the third day arrived at Holyhead. The rendezvous was given at a small inn outside the town called “The Kid,” and directions for her reception had been already forwarded there. Two days elapsed before her uncle’s messenger arrived--two days that seemed to extend to as many years! How did her ever-active mind go over in that space all her past life, from the cruel sorrows of her early days, to the pampered existence she had led at Dalradern? She fancied what she might have been, if she had never left her lowly station, but grown up amongst the hardships and privations of her humble condition. She canvassed in her mind the way in which she might have either conformed to that life, or struggled against it. “I cannot believe,” said she, with a saucy laugh, as she stood and looked at herself in the glass, “that these arms were meant to carry sea-wrack, or that these feet were fashioned to clamber shoeless up the rocks! And yet, if destiny had fixed me there, how should I have escaped? I cannot tell, any more than I can tell what is yet before me! And what a fascination there is in this uncertainty! What a wondrous influence has the unknown! How eventful does the slightest action become, when it may lead to that which can determine a life’s fortune! Even now, how much is in my power! I might go back, throw myself at that old man’s feet, and tell him that it was in vain I tried it--I could not leave him. I might kneel there till he raised me, and when he did so, I should be his wife, a titled lady, and mistress of that grand old castle! Could I do this? No: no more than I could go and beg the Vyners to have pity on me and take me back; that my heart clung to the happiness I had learned to feel amongst them; and that I would rather serve them as a menial than live away from them. Better to die than this. And, what will this life at Arran be? This uncle, too, I dread him; and yet, I long to see him. I want to hear him call me by his own name, and acknowledge me as a Luttrell. Oh, if he had but done this before--before I had travelled this weary road of deception and falsehood! Who knows? Who knows?”

“Are you the young lady, Miss, that’s expecting an elderly gentleman?” said the housemaid, entering hastily.

“Where from? How did he come?” cried Elate, eagerly; for her first thought was, it might be Sir Within.

“He came by the Irish packet, Miss.”

“Yes that is quite right. If he asks for Miss Luttrell, you may say I am ready to see him.”

In a minute or two after she had given this order, the girl again opened the door, saying:

“Mr. Coles, Miss;” and introduced a florid, fussy-looking little man, with a manner compounded of courtesy and command.

“You may leave the room, young woman,” said he to the maid; and then, approaching Kate, added, “I have the honour to speak to Miss Luttrell?”

She bowed a quiet assent, and he went on:

“I’m chief managing-clerk of Cane and Co., Miss Luttrell, from whom I received instructions to wait on you here, and accompany you to Westport, where Mr. John Luttrell will have a boat ready for you.”

He delivered this speech with a something half-peremptory, as though he either suspected some amount of resistance to his authority, or imagined that his credentials might be questioned.

“Have you no letter for me, Sir?” asked she, calmly.

“There was a letter from Mr. Luttrell to Mr. George Cane, Miss Luttrell, explaining why he was not himself able to come over and meet you.”

“Was he ill, Sir?”

“No, not exactly ill, Miss Luttrell, though he is never what one can call well.”

“I am astonished he did not write to me,” said she, in a low, thoughtful tone.

“He is not much given to writing, Miss Luttrell, at any time, and of late we have rarely heard from him beyond a line or two. Indeed, with respect to my present journey, all he says is, ‘Send some one in your confidence over to Holyhead by the first packet to inquire for Miss Luttrell, or Miss O’Hara--she may be known by either name--and conduct her to Elridge’s Hotel, Westport. The young lady is to be treated with all consideration.’ These are his words, Miss, and I hope to follow them.”

“It is very kind,” said she slowly, and half to herself.

“It’s a Frenchified sort of phrase, ‘all consideration,’ but I take its meaning to be, with every deference to your wishes--how you would like to travel, and where to stop. Mr. George, however, told me to add, ‘If Miss Luttrell desires to make any purchases, or requires anything in town, she is to have full liberty to obtain it.’ He did not mention to what amount, but of course he intended the exercise of a certain discretion.”

“I want nothing, Sir.”

“That is what Mrs. Coles remarked to me: If the young lady only saw the place she was going to, she’d not think of shopping.”

Kate made no answer.

“Not but, as Mrs. Coles observed, some good substantial winter clothing--that capital stuff they make now for Lower Canada--would be an excellent thing to take. You are aware, Miss, it is a perpetual winter there?”

A short nod, that might mean anything, was all her reply.

“And above all, Miss Luttrell,” continued he, unabashed by her cold manner--“above all, a few books! Mr. L., from what I hear, has none that would suit a young lady’s reading. His studies, it seems, are of an antiquarian order; some say--of course people will say so--he dips a little into magic and the black art.” Perhaps, after all, it was the study most appropriate to the place.

“I suppose it is a lonesome spot?” said she, with a faint sigh, and not well heeding what she said.

“Desolate is the name for it--desolate and deserted! I only know it by the map; but, I declare to you, I’d not pass a week on it to own the fee simple.”

“And yet I am going there of my own free will, Sir,” said she, with a strangely meaning smile.

“That’s exactly what puzzles Mrs. C. and myself,” said he, bluntly; “and, indeed, my wife went so far as to say, ‘Has the dear young creature nobody to tell her what the place is like? Has she no friend to warn her against the life she is going to?’”

“Tell her from me, Sir, that I know it all. I saw it when I was a child, and my memory is a tenacious one. And tell her, too, that bleak and dreary as it is, I look forward to it with a longing desire, as an escape from a world of which, even the very little I have seen, has not enamoured me. And now, Sir, enough of me and my fortunes, let us talk of the road. Whenever you are sufficiently rested to begin your journey, you will find me ready.”

“You’ll stop probably a day in Dublin?”

“Not an hour, Sir, if I can get on. Can we leave this to-night?”

“Yes; I have ordered the carriages to take us to the pier at nine, and a cart for your luggage.”

“My luggage is there, Sir,” said she, pointing to the bundle, and smiling at the astonishment his face betrayed; “and when you tell your wife that, Sir, she will, perhaps, see I am better fitted for Arran than she suspected.”

Albeit the daily life of Mr. Coles gave little scope to the faculty, he was by nature of an inquiring disposition, not to add that he well knew to what a rigid cross-examination he would be subjected on his return to his wife, not merely as to the look, manner, and mien of the young lady, but as to what account she gave of herself, where she came from, and, more important still, why she came.

It was his fancy, too, to imagine that he was especially adroit in extracting confidences; a belief, be it observed, very generally held by people whose palpable and pushing curiosity invariably revolts a stranger, and disposes him to extreme reserve.

As they walked the deck of the steamer together, then, with a calm sea and a stilly night, he deemed the moment favourable to open his investigations.

“Ah, yes!” said he, as though addressing some interlocutor within his own bosom--“ah, yes! she will indeed feel it a terrible contrast. None of the pleasures, none of the habits of her former life; none of the joys of the family, and none of the endearments of a home!”

“Of whom were you speaking, Sir?” asked she, with a faint smile.

“Dear me I dear me I what a man I am! That’s a habit my wife has been trying to break me of these fifteen years, Miss Luttrell; as she says: ‘Coles, take care that you never commit a murder, or you’re sure to tell it to the first person you meet.’ And so is it when anything occurs to engage my deepest interest--my strongest sympathy; it’s no use; do what I will, out it will come in spite of me.”

“And I, Sir,” said she, with a slow and measured utterance, “am exactly the reverse. I no more think of speaking my thoughts aloud, than I should dream of imparting my family secrets, if I had any, to the first stranger whose impertinent curiosity might dispose him to penetrate them.”

“Indeed!” cried he, reddening with shame.

“Quite true, I assure you, Sir; and now I will wish you a goodnight, for it grows chilly here.”

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XLV. ON ARRAN

Kate was awoke from a deep sleep by the noise of the boat coming to anchor. She started up, and looked around her, unable for several seconds to recal where she was. Behind the little land-locked bay the tall mountains rose, wild and fanciful, on every side; the dark sky studded with stars above, and the still darker sea beneath, still and waveless; and then the shore, where lights moved rapidly hither and thither; making up a picture strangely interesting to one to whom that lone rock was to be a home, that dreary spot in the wild ocean her whole world.

There were a great many people on the shore awaiting her, partly out of curiosity, in part out of respect, and Molly Ryan had come down to say that his honour was not well enough to meet her, but he hoped in the morning he would be able. “You’re to be the same as himself here,” he says; “and every word you say is to be minded as if it was his own.”

“I almost think I remember you; your face, and your voice too, seem to me as though I knew them before.”

“So you may, Miss. You saw me here at the mistress’s wake, but don’t let on to the master, for he doesn’t like that any of us should think you was ever here afore. This is the path here, Miss; it’s a rough bit for your tender feet.”

“Have we much farther to go, Molly? I am rather tired to-day.”

“No, Miss; a few minutes more will bring us to the Abbey; but sure we’d send for a chair and carry you----”

“No, no; on no account. It is only to-night I feel fatigued. My uncle’s illness is nothing serious, I hope?”

“‘Tis more grief than sickness, Miss. It’s sorrow is killin’ him. Any one that saw him last year wouldn’t know him now; his hair is white as snow, and his voice is weak as a child’s. Here we are now--here’s the gate. It isn’t much of a garden, nobody minds it; and yonder, where you see the light, that’s his honour’s room, beside the big tower there, and you are to have the two rooms that my mistress lived in.” And, still speaking, she led the way through a low arched passage into a small clean-looking chamber, within which lay another with a neatly-arranged bed, and a few attempts at comfortable furniture. “We did our best, Miss, Sam and myself,” said Molly; “but we hadn’t much time, for we only knew you was coming on Tuesday night.”

“It is all yery nice and clean, Molly. Your name is Molly, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Miss,” said she, curtseying, and deeply gratified.

“I want nothing better!” said Kate, as she sat down on the bed and took off her bonnet.

“If you don’t need me now, Miss, I’ll go and bring you your tea; it’s all ready in the kitchen.”

“Very well, Molly; leave it for me in the outer room, and I’ll take it when I am inclined.”

Molly saw that she desired to be alone, and withdrew without a word; and Kate, now free of all restraint, buried her face in the pillow and wept bitterly. Never, till the very spot was before her--till the dark shadows of the rugged rocks crossed her path, and the wild solitude of the dreary island appealed to her, by the poor appearance of the people, their savage looks, and their destitution--never till then had she fully realised to her mind all the force of the step she had taken. “What have I done! What have I done!” sobbed she, hysterically, over and over. “Why have I left all that makes life an ecstasy to come and drag out an existence of misery and gloom! Is this the fruit of all my ambition? Is this the prize for which I have left myself, without one affection or one sentiment, sacrificing all to that station I had set before me as a goal? I’ll not bear it. I’ll not endure it. Time enough to come here when my hopes are bankrupt, and my fortune shipwrecked. I have youth--and, better, I have beauty. Shall I stay here till a blight has fallen on both? Why, the very misery I came from as a child was less dreary and desolate than this! There was at least companionship there! There was sympathy, for there was fellow-suffering. But here! what is there here, but a tomb in which life is to waste out, and the creature feel himself the corpse before he dies?” She started up and looked around her, turning her eyes from one object to the other in the room. “And it is for this splendour, for all this costly magnificence, I am to surrender the love of those humble people, who, after all, loved me for myself! It was of me they thought, for me they prayed, for my success they implored the saints; and it is for this”--and she gazed contemptuously on the lowly decorations of the chamber--“I am to give them up for ever, and refuse even to see them! The proud old Sir Within never proposed so hard a bargain! He did not dare to tell me I should deny my own. To be sure,” cried she, with a scornful laugh, “I was forgetting a material part of the price. I am a Luttrell--Kate Lnttrell of Arran--and I shall be one day, perhaps, mistress of this grand ancestral seat, the Abbey of St. Finbar! Would that I could share the grandeur with them at once, and lie down there in that old aisle as dreamless as my noble kinsfolk!”

In alternate bursts of sorrow oyer the past, and scornful ridicule of the present, she passed the greater part of the night; and at last, exhausted and weary with the conflict, she leaned her head on the side of her bed, and, kneeling as she was, fell off to sleep. When she awoke, it was bright day, the sea-breeze playing softly through a honeysuckle that covered the open window, filled the room with a pleasant perfume, and cooled her heated brow. She looked out on the scarcely ruffled bay, and saw the fishing-boats standing out to sea, while on the shore all were busy launching or stowing away tackle; the very children aiding where they could, carrying down baskets, or such small gear as their strength could master. It was life, and movement, and cheerfulness too--for so the voices sounded in the thin morning air--not a tone of complaint, not one utterance that indicated discontent, and the very cheer which accompanied the sliding craft as she rushed down to the sea seemed to come from hearts that were above repining. The scene was better to her than all her self-arguings. There they were, the very class she sprang from; the men and women like her own nearest kindred; the very children recalling the days when she played barefooted on the beach, and chased the retiring waves back into the sea. They were there, toiling ever on, no hope of any day of better fortune, no thought of any other rest than the last long sleep of all, and why should she complain? That late life of luxury and splendour was not without its drawbacks. The incessant watchfulness it exacted, lest in some unguarded moment she should forget the part she was playing--and part it was--the ever-present need of that insidious flattery by which she maintained her influence over Sir Within, and, above all, the dread of her humble origin being discovered, and becoming the table-talk of the servants’-hall. These were a heavy price to pay for a life of luxurious indulgence.

“Here, at least,” cried she, “I shall be real. I am the niece and the adopted daughter of the lord of the soil; none can gainsay or deny me; a Luttrell of Arran, I can assert myself against the world; poverty is only an infliction when side by side with affluence; we are the great and the rich here! Let me only forget the past, and this life can be enjoyable enough. I used to fancy, long ago, as I walked the garden alone at Dinasllyn, that no condition of life would ever find me unprepared to meet. Here is a case to prove my theory, and now to be an Arran islander.”

As she said, she began to arrange her room, and place the different articles in it more to her own taste. Her care was to make her little chamber as comfortable as she could. She was rather an adept in this sort of achievement--at least, she thought she could impart to a room a character distinctly her own, giving it its “cachet” of homeliness, or comfort, or elegance, or simplicity, as she wished it. The noise of her preparations brought Molly to her aid, and she despatched the amazed countrywoman to bring her an armful of the purple heath that covered the mountain near, and as many wild flowers as she could find.

“To-morrow, Molly,” said she, “I will go in search of them myself, but to-day I must put things to rights here. Now, Molly,” said she, as they both were busied in filling two large jugs with the best flowers they could find, “remember that I’m an old maid.”

“Lawk, Miss, indeed you arn’t!”

“Well, never mind, I mean to be just as particular, just as severe as one; and remember, that wherever I put a table, or a chest of drawers, or even a cup with a flower in it, you must never displace it. No matter how careless I may seem, leave everything here as you find it.”

“That’s the master’s own way, Miss; his honour would go mad if I touched a book he was readin’.”

It was a very pleasant flattery that the poor woman thus unconsciously insinuated, nor could anything have been more in time, for Kate was longing to identify herself with the Luttrells, to be one of them in their ways, and their very prejudices.

Scarcely had Molly left the room than a light tap came to the door, and a weak voice asked:

“May I come in?”

Kate hastened to open it, but she was anticipated, and her uncle slowly entered, and stood before her.

“My dear, dear uncle,” cried she, taking his hand, and pressing it to her lips.

He pressed her in his arms, and kissed her forehead twice, and then, with a hand on either shoulder, held her for a moment at arms’ length, while he looked at her. Hers was not a nature to flinch under such a scrutiny, and yet she blushed at last under the steadiness of his gaze.

“Let us sit down,” said he, at length; and he handed her to a seat with much courtesy. “Had I seen you, Miss Luttrell----”

“Oh, Sir, say Kate--call me Kate,” cried she, eagerly.

“Had I seen you before, Kate,” continued he--and there was a touch of feeling as he spoke the name--“I do not think I could have dared to ask you to come here!”

“Oh, dear uncle! have I so disappointed you?”

“You have amazed me, Kate. I was not prepared to see you as you are. I speak not of your beauty, my child; I was prepared for that. It is your air, your bearing, that look, that reminds me of long, long ago. It is years since I saw a lady, my dear Kate, and the sight of you has brought up memories I had believed were dead and buried.”

“Then I do not displease you, uncle?”

“I am angry with myself, child. I should never have brought you to this barbarism.”

“You have given me a home, Sir,” said she, fondly; but he only sighed, and she went on: “A home and a name!”

“A name! Yes,” said he, proudly, “a name that well befits you, but a home--how unworthy of you! What ignorance in me not to know that you would be like this!” And again he gazed at her with intense admiration. “But see, my child, to what this life of grovelling monotony conduces. Because I had not seen you and heard your voice, I could not picture to my poor besotted mind that, besides beauty, you should have that gracefulness the world deems higher than even beauty. Nay, Kate, I am no flatterer; and, moreover, I will not speak of this again.”

“I will try to make you satisfied that you did well to send for me, Sir,” said she, meekly; and her heart felt almost bursting with delight at the words of praise she had just heard.

“How did you induce them to part with you?” asked he, calmly.

“I gave no choice in the matter, Sir. I showed your letter to Sir Within Wardle, and he would not hear of my leaving. I tried to discuss the matter, and he only grew impatient. I hinted at what your letter had vaguely insinuated--a certain awkwardness in my position--and this made him downright angry. We parted, and I went to my room. Once alone, I took counsel with myself. The result was, that I wrote that letter which you received, and I came away the same morning I wrote it.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, Sir, alone.”

“And without a leave-taking?”

“Even so, Sir. It was the only way in which I could have come, and I had made up my mind to it.”.

“Here was something of the Luttrell there!” said he, turning his eyes full upon her features, which now had caught an expression of calm and resolute meaning. “You will become the name, Kate!”

“It shall be my endeavour, Sir.”

“And yet,” added he, after a pause, “you were very happy there. Tell me the sort of life you used to lead.”

“One day will serve for all, uncle; they were exactly alike. My mornings were all my own. If my masters came, I studied, or I dismissed them as I pleased; if I felt indisposed to read, I sung; if I did not like music, I drew; if I did not care for drawing landscape, I caricatured my master, and made a doggrel poem on his indignation. In a word, I trifled over the day till luncheon. After that I rode in the woods, alone if I could, sometimes with Sir Within; often I had time to do both. Then came dressing--a long affair--for I was expected to be fine enough for company each day, though we saw no one. After that, most wearisome of all the day, came dinner--two hours and a half---services of which we never ate; wines we did not care to drink, but all repeated regularly; a solemn mock banquet, my guardian--so I called him--loved immensely, and would have prolonged, if he but knew how, till midnight. Evening brought our one guest, a French Abbé, with whom I sung or played chess till I could engage Sir Within and himself in a discussion about Mirabeau or St. Just, when I would slip away and be free. Then, if the night were moonlit, I would drive out in the Park, or have a row on the Lake; if dark, I would have the conservatory lighted, set the fountains a playing, and drive the gardener distracted by ‘awakening’ all his drowsy plants. In a word, I could do what I pleased, and I pleased to do whatever struck me at the moment. I ordered all that I liked from Town--books, dress, objects of art, prints--and was just as weary of them all before I saw them as after they had palled upon me. It was a life of intense indulgence, and I’m not sure, if one could but fight off occasional ennui, that it wasn’t the happiest thing could be made of existence, for it was very dreamy withal, very full of innumerable futures, all rose-coloured, all beautiful.”

“And what are you to make of this?” asked Luttrell, almost sternly, as he moved his arm around to indicate the new realm about her. “Here there is no luxury, no wealth, none of the refinement that comes of wealth, not one of the resources that fill the time of cultivated leisure; all is hardship, privation, self-denial. Go abroad, too, beyond the walls of this poor old ruin, and it will be to witness misery and destitution greater still.”

“I am going to try if I shall not like the real conflict better than the mock combat,” said she, calmly.

“What a change will be your life here, my poor child--what a change! Let it not, however, be worse than it need be. So far as this poor place will permit, be your own mistress--live in your own fashion--keep your own hours--come to me only when you like, never from any sense of duty. I am too inured to solitude to want companionship, though I can be grateful when it is offered me. I have a few books--some of them may interest you; my pursuits, too--what once were my pursuits!” said he, with a sigh, “might amuse you. At all events,” added he, rising, “try--try if you can bear it; it need not be your prison if you cannot!”

He again kissed her forehead, and, motioning a good-by with his hand, moved slowly away.

“Perhaps I shall acquit myself better than he thinks,” said she to herself. “Perhaps--who knows if I may not find some place or thing to interest me here? It is very grand ‘savagery,’ and if one wanted to test their powers of defying the world in every shape, this is the spot. What is this you have brought me to eat, Molly?”

“It’s a bit of fried skate, Miss, and I’m sorry it’s no better, but the potatoes is beautiful.”

“Then let me have them, and some milk. No milk--is that so?”

“There’s only one cow, Miss, on the island, and she’s only milked in the evening; but St. Finbar’s Well is the finest water ever was tasted.”

“To your good health, then, and St. Finbar’s!” said she, lifting a goblet to her lips. “You are right, Molly; it is ice-cold and delicious!” And now, as she began her meal, she went on inquiring which of the men about the place would be most likely as a gardener, what things could be got to grow, on which side came the worst winds, and where any shelter could be found. “Perhaps I shall have to take to fishing, Molly,” said she, laughing, “for something I must do.”

“You could make the nets, anyhow, Miss,” said Molly, in admiration of the white and graceful hands, and thinking what ought to be their most congenial labour.

“I can row a boat well, Molly,” said Kate, proudly.

“Whatever you’d do, you’d do well, God bless you!” cried the other; for in that hearty delight in beauty, so natural to the Irish peasant nature, she imagined her to be perfection, and the honest creature turned, ere she left the room, to give her a look of admiration little short of rapture.

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XLVI. THE STRANGER AT THE WELL

Before a couple of weeks passed over, Kate had contrived to divide her days so regularly, to establish for herself a certain routine of little duties, that the time slipped by--as time ever will do in monotony--unfelt. The season was the autumn, and the wild hills and mountains were gorgeous in all the brilliant colour of the ever varied heaths. In the little clefts and valleys, too, where shelter favoured, foxgloves and purple mallows grew with a rare luxuriance, while on every side was met the arbutus, its crimson berries hanging in festoons over rock and crag. The sudden, unexpected sight of the sea, penetrating by many a fissure, as it were, between the mountains, gave unceasing interest to the wild landscape, and over the pathless moors that she strayed, not a living thing to be seen, was the sense of being the first wayfarer who had ever trod these wastes.

As Kate wandered whole days alone, over and over again came the doubt across her, which was it--the brilliant past, with all its splendour and luxury, or the solitary present--was the dream? Surely they could not both be real! Was the bygone a fancy built out of some gorgeous fragments of things read, heard, or imagined, or was this--this actual scene around her--a vision that was to move past, and leave her to awake to all her former splendour?

Great as the revulsion was to her former life, it was in nothing greater than in the difference between her uncle’s cold, sad, distant manner, for so after the first meeting had it become, and the ever watchful anxiety, the courteous attention to her slightest wish, of Sir Within.

She never ceased canvassing with herself how he had borne her desertion; whether he had sunk under it into a hopeless despondency, or called upon his pride to sustain him above any show of indignation. Reading it as the world must read it, there never was such ingratitude; but then the world could never know the provocation, nor ever know by what personal sacrifice she had avenged the slight passed upon her. “My story,” said she, “can never be told; his, he may tell how it suite him.”

At moments, a sort of romantic exaltation and a sense of freedom would make her believe that she had done well to exchange the splendid bondage of the past for the untrammelled liberty of the present; and then, at other times, the terrible contrast would so overcome her, that she would sit and cry as if her heart was breaking.

“Would my ‘old Gardy’ pity or exult over me if he saw me now? What would he, who would not suffer me to tread on an uncarpeted step, say if he saw me alone, and poorly clad, clambering up these rugged cliffs to reach some point, where, for an instant, I may forget myself? Surely he would not triumph over my fall!

“Such a life as this is meant to expiate great crimes. Men are sent to wild and desolate islands in the ocean, to wear out days of hopeless misery, because they have warred against their fellows. But what have I done? whom have I injured? Others had friends to love and to guide them; I had none. The very worst that can be alleged against me is, that I was rash and headstrong--too prone to resent; and what has it cost me!

“My uncle said, indeed, this need not be my prison if I could not endure its privations. But what did that mean--what alternative did he point to? Was it that I was to go lower still, and fall back upon all the wretchedness I sprang from? That, never! The barren glory of calling myself a Luttrell may be a sorry price for forfeited luxury and splendour; but I have it, and I will hold it. I am a Luttrell now, and one day, perhaps, these dreary hills shall own me their mistress.”

In some such thoughts as these, crossed and recrossed by regrets and half-shadowed hopes, she was returning one night to the Abbey, when Molly met her. There was such evident anxiety and eagerness in the woman’s face, that Kate quickly asked her:

“What is it? What has happened?”

“Nothing, Miss, nothing at all. ‘Tis only a man is come. He’s down at the Holy Well, and wants to speak to you.”

“Who is he? What is he?”

“I never seen him before, Miss, but he comes from beyant there”--she motioned towards the main land of Ireland--“and says that you know him well.”

“Have you told my uncle of him?”

“No, Miss, for the man said I was to tell no living soul but yourself, and to tell you quick too, for he was in a hurry, and wanted to get away with the evening’s tide, and his boat was more than a mile off.”

“Molly Byan,” said the girl, calmly, almost sternly, “you heard the orders that my uncle gave. You heard him tell me that I was not to see, nor speak to, nor hold any intercourse with any of those belonging to my mother’s family. Is this man one of them?”

“No, Miss. ‘Tis what I asked him. ‘Tis the very first question I put to him. And he said, ‘I’m no more to them than you are, Mrs. Ryan,’ says he; ‘and what’s more,’ says he, ‘if it’s any comfort to you to know it, I don’t even come from this part of Ireland; so you may make yourself easy about that,’ says he. I was puttin’ more questions to him, and he stopped me, and said, ‘You’re just wasting precious time,’ says he, ‘and if she comes back and finds it too late’--‘she meant yourself Miss--’ she won’t forgive you in a hurry for what you’ve done, for I can’t come here again.’”

“You are sure and certain that he was not one of those I spoke of?”

“I know them all well, Miss--barrin’ the three that was transported--and he’s not any of them I ever saw before.”

“But he might exactly be one of those who was transported, and certainly if I knew that I’d not see him.”

“He swore to me he wasn’t, Miss; and, what’s more, he said that what he came about wasn’t his own business at all, but concerned you. That’s his whistle now--he gave, one awhile ago--and he said, ‘When I give three,’ says he, ‘I’m gone, for i’ll not lose the tide, whether she comes or not.’”

“Go back to the house, Molly. I’ll go down and speak to him.”

“Wouldn’t you let me follow you, Miss, to be near in case of anything?”

“No, Molly. I’m not a coward; and I know, besides, that no man who meant harm to me would ever come ever here to attempt it.”

“At any rate, he’d never go back again!” said the woman, fiercely. “Don’t be long, Miss, or I’ll be uneasy.”

Kate now turned aside, and hastened down a little steep path which led to the Holy Well. The well itself was a sort of shrine built over a little spring, and shaded by a clump of dwindled oak-trees--almost the only ones in the island. As Kate drew nigh, she saw a man walking up and down beneath the trees, with the quick short step that implied impatience. It was her gift never to forget a face, and in one glance she recognised one she had not seen for years--O’Rorke of Vinegar Hill.

“I thought you’d never come;” cried he, as she descended the steps that led down to the well. “I have been waiting here about an hour!”

He held out his hand to shake hands with her, but she drew back, and crossing her shawl in front of her, showed that she declined this greeting.

“Are you too proud to shake hands with me?” asked he, insolently.

“Whatever you have to say to me can be said just as well without.”

“What if I wouldn’t say it, then, Kitty O’Hara? What if I was to go back the way I came, and leave you to rue the day you insulted me? Do you know, young woman, that it wasn’t on my own account I came here, that it was to serve others?”

“They chose a bad messenger if they thought you’d be a welcome one.”

“May I never see glory if I’m not tempted to turn away and leave you without telling one word I come for. Where’s John Luttrell? for I think I’ll tell it to himself.”

“My uncle is at the Abbey, if you want him!”

“Your uncle!” said he, jeeringly. “Why wasn’t he your uncle when you were up at Cush-ma-Creena, without a shoe, to your foot, or enough rags to cover you well? You were bare up to this, when I saw you last.” And he put his hand to his knee.

“It was a national costume!” said she, with a quiet laugh, “and a patriot like Mr. O’Rorke should not find fault with it.”

“Be gorra, it was your own self said that! and it was a lie they tould when they said you were altered!” And almost as if by magic the fellow’s ill-temper gave way, and he laughed heartily. “Listen to me now, Miss O’Hara, or Miss Luttrell, or whatever you call yourself.”

“My name is Luttrell,” said she, calmly.

“Well, Luttrell, then; it’s the same to me. As I told you already, I came here more on your account than my own; and here’s what brought me. You know that lodge, or cottage, or whatever they call it, that Vyner built up here in the glen? Well, there’s creditors of his now wanting to get possession of it.”

“Creditors of Sir Gervais Vyner? Impossible!”

“Possible, or impossible, it’s true, that I can vouch for, for I saw the bailiffs that came down with the notices. At any rate, your old grandfather thought that after Vyner himself he had the best right to the house and the bit of land, for Vyner told him one day that he’d settle it on you for a marriage portion, and there was others by when he said it, so your grandfather went up and told Tom Crowe, the attorney, how it was, and Tom said, ‘Keep it open, Malone,’ says he--‘keep it open till we see what’s to be done in it. Don’t let the other creditors get a hold of the place till I get an opinion for you.’ And on that, old Peter goes back and gets a few boys together, and they go down to the glen just in time to see the sub-sheriff, Barty Lambert, riding up the lawn, with six or eight men after him. The minute Lambert saw your grandfather, he cried out, ‘Here’s Peter “the Smasher;” save yourselves, boys!’ And he rode his horse at a wall, jumped it, and made off as hard as he could. Two of the others followed, but the rest stood their ground. Old Peter then stepped out, and ordered them to lay down their arms, and give up the writ, and whatever other papers they had. Some were for this, and some against; and Peter, wanting to finish the business at once, stepped up to Joe Maher, the sub-sheriff’s man, and said: ‘Joe,’ says he, ‘I made you ate a process once before, wax and all, and maybe I’d have to do the same now. Give it up this minute, or------’ Just then Maher drew out a pistol, but before he could level it old Peter was in on him, and they grappled each other, and a terrible struggle it was, for the others never interfered, but left them to fight it out fair! At last the pistol went off, and the ball passed through old Peter’s cheek; but if it did, it didn’t prevent him getting over Joe’s breast as he fell, and beating his head against the ground, till he rolled over him himself out of weakness and fatigue; and when Peter came to himself--Maher didn’t, for he was dead!”

“Dead!” exclaimed she--“murdered!”

“Not a bit murdered, but killed fair! Anyhow, the others ran away, and old Peter, as soon as he was able, made off too, and got into the mountains, and now the police is after him, and a reward of fifty pounds offered for him, as if he was a wild beast. British law and justice, my darling; the beautiful code of laws that was made to civilise Ireland four centuries ago, and hasn’t done much to talk about up to this!”

“This is a very dreadful story,” said she, after some time of silence. “And what is to become of this poor old man?”

“That depends on you, Miss Kate--Luttrell,” added he, after a brief struggle with himself.

“On me? How can it depend upon me?”

“Here’s how it is, then. If they catch Peter, what between the character he has already, and what’s known of his sons, they’ll make short work of it he’ll ‘swing,’ as sure as you are there this minute. So there’s nothing for it but to get him away to America by any of the ships coming round from the north, and it would be easy enough for him to get on board; but what’s not so easy, Miss Kate, is to pay his passage. He hasn’t one shilling in the world. The boys got together last night, and all they could make up was eleven and fourpence; there it is, and a pawn ticket for an old pistol, that nobody would give half-a-crown for----”

“But what can I do?” broke she in, passionately. “What can I do?”

“Help him with a few pounds. Give it or lend it; but let him have enough to make his escape, and not go to the ‘drop’ for want of a little help.”

“There is not one belonging to him poorer than me,” began she. “Why do you shake your head? Do you disbelieve me?”

“I do; that’s just it.”

“Shall I swear it--shall I take my oath to you, that except the trifle that remains to me of what I had to pay my journey here, I have not one farthing in the world?”

“Then what’s the fine story of the great castle where you were living, and the grand clothes and the jewels you used to wear? Do you mean to tell me that you left them all behind, when you came away?”

“It is true. I did so.”

“And came off with nothing?”

She nodded, and he stared at her, partly in astonishment, and partly with some show of admiration; for even to his nature this conduct of hers displayed a degree of character that might be capable of great sacrifices.

“And so,” said he, after a pause, “you can do nothing for him?”

“What can I do?” asked she, almost imploringly.

“I’ll tell you,” said he, calmly. “Go up to John Lnttrell, and say, My grandfather is hiding from the police; they have a warrant out against him, and if he’s taken he’s sure to be condemned; and we know what mercy a Malone will meet at the assizes of Donegal. Tell him--it’s just the one thing he’ll care for--that it wouldn’t be pleasant for him to be summoned as a witness to character, and have to declare in open court that he married the prisoner’s daughter. Say a ten-pound note, or even five, is a cheap price to pay for escaping all this disgrace and shame; and tell him, besides, when old Peter goes, you’ve seen the last of the family. He’ll think a good deal of that, I promise you----”

“Stop,” said she, boldly. “You know nothing of the temper of the man you talk of; but it is enough that I tell you he has got no money. Listen to me, O’Rorke. It was but yesterday he sent off a little ornament his wife nsed to wear to have it sold, to pay a county rate they were threatening to distrain for----”

“Where did you get all your law?” said he, jeeringly; but, not heeding the gibe, she went on, “I would have offered him the few shillings I had, but I was ashamed and afraid.”

“How much is it?”

“A little more than two pounds. You shall have it; but remember, I can do no more. I have nothing I could sell--not a ring, nor a brooch; not even a pin.”

“It’s better than nothing,” muttered he, surlily, below his breath. “Let me have it.”

“It is up at the Abbey. Wait, and I’ll fetch it. I’ll not be an instant.” And before he could answer she was gone. In less time than seemed possible she was back again, breathless and agitated. “Here it is,” said she, placing the money in his hand. “If you should see him, tell him how grieved I am to be of such little service to him, and give him this silk handkerchief; tell him I used to wear it round my neck, and that I sent a kiss to him in it--poor fellow! I almost wish I was with him,” muttered she, as she turned away her head, for the hot tears filled her eyes--she felt weak and sick.

“I’m afraid this will do little good,” said O’Rorke, looking at the money in his open palm.

“And yet I can do no more!” said she, with deep sorrow.

“Wouldn’t you venture to tell your uncle how it is? Sure he might see that the disgrace, if this old man is caught and brought to trial, will spread to himself?”

“I dare not--I will not,” said she, firmly.

“Then I suppose the story is true, though old Peter wouldn’t believe it, that John Luttrell made you sign a paper never to see nor speak to one of your own again?”

“I signed no paper, Sir, nor ever was asked to sign any. What pledges I have given my uncle are not to be discussed with you.”

“Well, you don’t deny it, that’s clear.”

“Have you anything more that you wish to say to me?” asked she, controlling every show of temper.

“No--not a word,” said he, turning to go away. “Only, if I see old Peter--it’s not unlike that I may--he’ll be asking me how tall you are, and how you’re looking. Will you just come out from under the shade of that tree and let me have a fair look at you?”

Kate took off her bonnet and threw her shawl from her, and stood forward with an air as composed and assured as might be.

“Shall I tell you what I’ll say to him?” said O’Rorke, with an impudent half grin on his face.

“You need not, Sir. It has no interest whatever for me. Good-by!” She took up her shawl as she spoke, and walked slowly away.

O’Rorke looked after her; the mocking expression of his features changed to a look of almost hatred, and he muttered some angry words between his teeth. “I read you right, Miss Katty, when you weren’t much higher than my knee. I read you right! You may have plenty in love with you, but by my conscience you’ll never have Tim O’Rorke.”

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XLVII. HOW KATE WAS TASKED

For several days after this scene, Kate thought of nothing but her old grandfather, whether he still wandered an outcast through the wild mountains of Donegal, or had succeeded in making his escape to America. At moments her anxieties became so intense, from fears lest she herself might prove blamable if his escape could not be effected, that she was almost resolved to go to her uncle and reveal all to him. Luttrell’s manner had, however, been unusually cold and reserved for some time back, and she had not courage to take this step. Indeed, whole days would now pass with nothing but a mere greeting between them, and at length, one entire day went over without her seeing him at all. It was said that he was very busy, had received a number of letters by the post, and was engaged a great part of the night in answering them. On the morning that followed this day, Kate was preparing the little basket in which she carried her luncheon with her to the hills, whenever she meditated a longer excursion than usual, when her uncle entered hastily, and with evident signs of agitation in his face.

“I have had disagreeable tidings, Kate,” said he, with a forced calm of manner and voice. “I would have kept them from you if I could, but it is not possible. Some weeks ago there was a resistance to the sheriff by a party of country people, led on by that old man--no stranger to such conflicts--Malone. There was a fight, and a man, the sheriff’s bailiff, was killed. There was no doubt who killed him. It was Malone. He made his escape, however, into West Donegal, waiting, as it was supposed, till, by some ship passing--North about--he could reach America. The police, however, got possession of his plan, secured a revenue-cutter, and, lying in wait, arrested him in the very act of getting on board. Another struggle ensued here, and Malone fought with such desperation, that one of the men is badly wounded, and another drowned, for the small boat was upset in the conflict, and it is said that, had not Malone’s arm been broke by a pistol-shot, he might yet have escaped by swimming around the ship, which was in full trim to have made sail when he should get on board. They captured him, however, and he is now in gaol; he will be tried at the next assizes, and of his fate there can be no doubt.”

“Condemned?” said she, in a low roice.

“Yes,” he continued, “that he must be executed is also clear. The very name he bears is an indictment against him. The fellow, however, is full of the impression that everything he has done was in self-defence; he maintains that he merely resisted a personal attack, and he has the madness, in the face of all the convictions that have befallen his family, to declare that he belongs to a most irreproachable set of people, long known and respected in this neighbourhood, and he has the daring effrontery--here in my hand is the letter that conveys it--to require that I should come forward to vouch for his character and acknowledge the relationship between us. Nor is this all,” added he, in a voice husky with passion; “he demands--it is no prayer, no entreaty--he demands from me a sum sufficient to defray the costs of his defence. He asserts that though he himself is ready to take his chance, and, if need be, brave the worst the law can do to him, it might not suit Luttrell of Arran to sit under a two hours’ cross-examination, and have his whole life laid bare for the amusement of the world. You cannot, without knowing the man, believe how seriously these threats are uttered; he is the most recklessly daring fellow I ever knew, and I can well conceive what questions he will suggest to his counsel to put to me if I once appear on the table. To-night I am to give my answer. The man he sends over here to receive it is the most offensive messenger he could have found had he searched Europe from one end to the other. He is a fellow named O’Rorke, who once before placed me in a position almost similar to what I am now threatened with, and drove me to seek the shelter of this desolate spot. On that occasion, however, I escaped the indignity of personal exposure, and of that open shame that rise now before me. The demand is precise and clear. Twenty pounds down, fifty on the day before the trial comes on, and my name to a bill for fifty more if the jury bring in a verdict of not guilty. For this he pledges himself--these are his words--‘never to be any longer a charge to me nor mine.’ I am well aware that the letter I hold here is not his own, for he cannot write, but I can trace through certain expressions--and, above all, certain repetitions--phrases inserted at his instance.” “Am I spoken of, Sir? Does he allude to me at all?” “Never; not once. Indeed, he even says, ‘I hope that whatever you decide to do in this business will be your honour’s own mind and nobody else’s, for I write this in confidence between man and man, and only want Yes or No between us.’”

“And what will you do, Sir? Have you come to any resolve?” “Yes, I have made up my mind as to what is to be done immediately. I have examined my agent’s accounts, and I find that by the eighth of next month I shall have to my credit about seventy pounds. The assizes are fixed for the twelfth. I will give an order for half of this sum at once. Cane will pay it, I have no doubt, when he sees my necessity. I will also engage to pay the remainder on the eighth, the day I shall receive it; but on one condition, Kate--only one condition--which is, that no matter what course the defence may take, I am not to be summoned as a witness. No one knows better than Malone himself how valueless would any testimony of mine be to him; he knows, besides, what detriment it would be to him if I should be cross-examined; the man’s character will not bear sifting, and he is insane to provoke it. If, however, he should persist--and such is the fellow’s nature that it is likely he will--in his own plan, we must leave this.”

“Leave this! And for where, Sir?”

“How can I tell? I only know that I mean to save myself from this shame at any cost. A few days would carry us over to Holland or to France. In either of these I should be safe. I have written to my agent, and consented to all his conditions as to the sale of a certain small estate I possess in Mayo. We must seek out a new banishment, Kate. You will say it can scarcely be drearier than the old one; but you don’t know, you could not know how sorrow endears a spot, and ties it to the heart of him who lives only to mourn! These rugged cliffs, these pathless moors, these barren hills, and sea-lashed promontories, have been my friends for years--the only friends who have never changed to me. Let me now, however, think only of the present. This man is to be here to-night. It is more than likely he will be able to answer me at once, and declare whether Malone will accept my conditions.”

“What think you, uncle, if I were to speak with him? Might it not be possible I could make some terms which you wouldn’t have patience to treat about?”

“I thought of that, too, Kate, but the man is one of a class you have not met for many a year. It is not that he is not a gentleman, but he is not a peasant. You cannot appeal to him on the claim of honour, and as little on the plea of generosity. He is a cold, harsh, unfeeling fellow, distrustful and false. How could you deal with such a man?”

“A woman will always deal better with a man like this than a fellow-man, if only from the fact that he will be less on his guard before her, and more disposed to think little of her intelligence. Let me try it, uncle.”

“You have half persuaded me; but still, Kate, what terms could you propose that I cannot offer myself?”

“True, Sir; but I could press them in a way that your pride might not stoop to, and so let me try.”

He paused to consider, and she went on:

“Yes, dear uncle, trust the whole of this negotiation to me; it will be a task far too painful for you. Let me speak to him. Remember that the links that bind me to the class he belongs to have only been loosened a year or two back. I have a closer view of such men’s natures than you could ever have, and in recognising this he will be franker with me.”

“If you really think----”

“I think and I know it, uncle.”

“Take this then, Kate,” said he, handing her his purse. “It is all the ready money I have. It may help you to deal with him, Kate. I have told you everything. Do the best you can for us.” These words he muttered as if to himself, and then turned away and left the room.

Kate spread the money on the table before her, and sat down, supporting her head between her hands, and gazing steadfastly at the pieces. “To think,” said she, bitterly--“to think that a few more or a few less of these shall tilt the scale of our fortune, and decide not alone whether we be happy or wretched, but whether we hold a high head in life or stand in a felon’s dock! And what scores of them have I not squandered in foolish wastefulness!--sums that any one of them now might rescue this poor old man from a dreadful fate; and set him at liberty. Has not my whole life been just as spendthrift--have I not wasted every gift I possessed, and ended just where I begun?”

“The master sent me,” cried Molly, entering, “to say that there’s a boat comin’ in now, and, maybe, one you know would be aboord of her.”

“Very well, Molly. If a stranger should land and ask for his honour or myself, show him in here.”

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XLVIII. HOW THE TASK TRIED HER

Kate dressed herself with more than usual care--simply, indeed, but with a degree of attention to becomingness that was truly remarkable. Twice did she alter the arrangement of her hair, and more than once did she try what coloured ribbon would best suit the style she had chosen. A man might have passed without notice the little details by which she heightened the charms that were nature to her, but a woman would quickly have detected small traits of coquetry in the loose falling curls that fell upon her neck, and the open sleeve that displayed her finely-turned arm; nor would the sprig of dark purple heath she wore in her bosom have escaped the critical eye, well knowing how its sombre colouring “brought out” the transparent brilliancy of the fair skin beneath it.

She had but completed her studied but simple toilet, when Molly ushered into the room “The strange man, Miss, that wants to see the master.”

“And that is only to see the mistress, I’m told,” added Mr. O’Rorke, as he seated himself, and laid his hat on the floor beside him. It was then that Kate entered, and as the fellow arose to greet her, his looks of admiring wonder sufficiently told what success had waited on her efforts.

“My uncle is not well enough to see you,” said she, as she sat down, “but he has told me everything that he would say, and I have ventured to assure him that, as you and I are somewhat old friends, we should soon come to an understanding together; the more, as we can have but the same wish in the object before us.”

“May I never! but you’re grown an elegant woman,” cried O’Rorke. “‘Tisn’t out of flattery I say it, but I don’t think there’s your equal in Dublin.”

“I’m very proud of your approval,” said she, with a faint smile, but with the most perfect composure.

“And it’s honest--all honest,” added he. “It isn’t as if you was made up with paint, and false hair, and fine lace, and stiff silk. There you are, as simple as the turnpike man’s daughter, and, by the harp of old Ireland, I’ll back you against any beauty in St. James’s this day.”

“My dear Mr. O’Rorke, it’s not quite fair to turn my head in this fashion. Don’t forget that these are the sort of things I’m not accustomed to hear in this place.”

“By my conscience, then, you’ll hear them in many another place before you die. Listen to me now, Miss Luttrell. It’s a shame and a scandal to them that could help it that you’re not at the Court of France this day. I’m talking good sense when I say you’d make a sensation there such as they never knew since that old blaguard Louis the Fourteenth gathered all the beauties in the world round him instead of pictures and statues. More by token, he wasn’t wrong; flesh and blood beats white marble and canvas easily.”

“I suspect I see what sort of a king Mr. O’Rorke would have been!” said she, archly.

“Liberty, first of all, darling,” said he, recalled by the personal appeal to the stock theme of his life; “‘tis the birthright of the man as he steps on his native earth; ‘tis the first whisper of the human heart, whether in the frozen regions of eternal snow, or the sun-scorched plains of the tropics. ‘Tis for sacred liberty our fathers fought for seven centuries, and we’ll fight seven more.

Erin go Bragh is a nation’s cry, ‘Tis millions that sing it in chorus, And to that tone, before we die, We’ll chase the Saxon before us.

“Oh dear! oh dear!” cried he, wiping his brow. “Why did you set me off so? I took an oath on Saturday last that I’d think of nothing but old Peter till the trial was over, and here I am talking of Erin’s woes just as if I was at Burgh Quay, and O’Connell in the chair.”

“Let us talk of Peter, then. I am longing to hear of him.”

“It’s a short story. They caught him at sea, in an open boat; he was making for a brig bound for Newfoundland. They caught him, but they had a fight for it, and they got the worst of it, too. Old Peter wasn’t a man to be taken with his arms crossed. But it was all the worse, for Tom Crowe says the last business will go harder with him than the first, and Tom says what’s true. They’d rather hang Peter Malone than any other ten men in the west of Ireland. This is the fifth time they’ve had him in the dock; but to be sure he had a fine bar the last trial. He had Daniel O’Connell and Dick Sheil.”

“And who will defend him now?” asked she, eagerly.

“That’s what your Uncle Luttrell must answer, Miss Kate; he is the only one can reply to that question.”

“Listen to me now attentively, and I will explain to you my uncle’s position; a very few words will suffice, and you are not a man to require more than are necessary. He has by great effort and at heavy sacrifice got a small sum of money----”

“What do you call a small sum?” broke he in. “Is it a hundred?”

“No; not fifty!”

A long whistle was O’Rorke’s reply, as he arose and took up his hat.

“You had better hear me out,” said she, calmly. “This sum I have here--it is thirty-five pounds; he empowers me to place it in your hands to-day, with the promise of as much more the day before the assizes open.”

“And why not at once? Why not now?”

“You shall hear. He desires and demands, in return for this aid, that he be not summoned as a witness on the trial. To call him would be a needless exposure--a mere valueless cruelty.”

“It would not,” cried the other, fiercely. “It’s not at this time of day any one has to know the effect of putting a gentleman in the witness-box, when it is a poor labouring man is in the dock. Let John Luttrell come into court, and, after sitting beside the Chief Baron on the Bench, get up on the table and take his oath that he has known Peter Malone, the prisoner, for more than twenty years, as a hardworking, quiet, decent man, trying to bring up his family respectably, and, indeed, with such a desire to better their condition in life, that he, John Luttrell of Arran, was not ashamed to make one of that same Peter Malone’s daughters his wife, so well brought up, so well educated were they----”

“Stop! this cannot be. I tell you it is impossible.”

“And why is it impossible? Is it true what I’m saying? Was Peter Malone’s daughter John Hamilton Luttrell’s wife or not? There’s the whole question. And what sort of a man or a gentleman is he that is ashamed to own his wife?”

“Do not speak so loud; and now listen to me. My uncle, for his own good reasons, will not face the exposure of a public trial and the insolence of the Crown lawyers, who would not hesitate to rake up long buried accusations against him, and revive sorrows which even in their decay embitter his life. He will not endure this, and he is right.”

“Right to deny a man his chance of life!”

“You know well--none better--how little my uncle’s testimony could serve this poor man. His case is too serious for that.”

“I won’t go over that again,” said he, impatiently. “I haven’t any time to throw away in arguments. If you put the whole seventy pounds down on the table it wouldn’t do! No, it would not. It will take thirty, to begin with, to get Billy Sloane out of the country, and he it is the Crown relies on for the first charge; he saw old Peter strike the bailiff first. M’Nulty is the cheapest of the ‘silk gowns,’ and he won’t come under fifty, and a retainer of ten more. The Westport Star wants ten pounds to put in the article threatening the jury, if they don’t bring in a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ because, as Mr. Potter says, ‘Word it as carefully as you like, it’s a contempt of Court, and may send me for a year to gaol.’ Make money of that, Miss Kitty. Thirty and fifty is eighty, and ten more, ninety, and ten to the newspaper is a hundred; and after that there’s the costs to Tom Crowe, and the expenses of the case, not to speak of the daily livin’ in the gaol, that’s something terrible. There’s not a pint of sperite doesn’t cost three shillings!”

“But if we have no more?--if we have given every farthing we can raise?”

“‘Tis a nice confession for an estated gentleman, for the man that writes himself Luttrell of Arran, that, to save his father, or father-in-law, from the death of a felon, he could only scrape together seventy pounds!”

“You have only to look around you, and see how we are living, to see that it is the truth.”

“Many a miser that won’t give himself bread passes the night counting over his guineas.”

“He is no miser, Sir,” said she, indignantly, for all her self-control failed her at this point. “If he were not a generous gentleman, he would never have made the proposal I have now told you of.”

“Tell the generous gentleman, then, to keep his money, young lady,” and he laid a sarcastic emphasis on the word. “Tell him I’ll not touch a shilling of it. And I’ll tell you more that you may tell him; say that he’ll want it all, to buy himself a new suit of clothes to make a decent appearance when he’s summoned to come forward at the trial.”

“You’d no more dare to utter this insolence to his face, than you’d brave the anger of his people here when they heard he was insulted; and take my word for it, Tim O’Rorke, I’m only hesitating this moment whether I’ll not tell them.”

As she spoke, she flung wide the window, and looked out upon the shore beneath, where some thirty wild islanders were listlessly lounging and waiting for the tide to ebb.

O’Rorke grew lividly pale at a threat so significant. If there was anything that had a greater terror for him than another, it was a popular vengeance.

“Well, Sir, do you like the prospect from this window?” asked she. “Come here, and tell me if it is not interesting.”

“It’s wild enough, if you mean that,” said he, with a forced effort to seem calm.

“Tim O’Rorke,” said she, laying her hand on his arm, and looking at him with an expression of kindly meaning, “it is not in their trouble that friends should fall out. I know what affection you have for my poor old grandfather----”

“So, then, you own him?” cried he, scoffingly.

“When did I disown him?”

“Maybe not; but it’s the first time since I entered this room that you called him by that name.”

She flushed up; but after a moment, repressing her anger, she said:

“Let us think only of him whose life is in peril. What do you advise?--what do you wish?”

“I have no more to say, Miss Kate. I have told you what the defence will cost, I have told you that we have nobody to look to but yourselves, and you have just told me that it’s a broken reed we’re leaning on, and now I don’t think there’s much more to be said by either of us.”

She leaned her forehead against the wall, and seemed deeply lost in thought.

“I mustn’t lose the tide, any way,” said he, taking up his hat and stick, and laying them on the table. “I may as well put old Peter out of pain, for anxiety is the greatest of all pain, and tell him that John Luttrell won’t help him.”

“Not will not--say that he cannot help him!”

“‘Tis little difference it makes whether it’s the will or the way is wanting when a drowning man cries out, and nobody gives him a hand. And yet,” added he, “it will be hard to persuade old Peter that his daughter’s husband could be so cold hearted. I’m thinking you ought to write a line or two with your own hand, and say that it was no fault of mine that I didn’t bring better news back with me.”

She made him no answer, and, after a pause, he went on:

“There’s his money, Miss--give it back to him; much good may it do him. He has the comfort of thinking, that if he didn’t get a fortune with his wife, her relations never cost him much, either.” He moved away towards the door. “Good-by, Miss Kate. Tell your uncle that Peter’s case is the third on the list, and he’ll be time enough if he leaves home on the 9th--that will be Tuesday week.”

She turned hastily round, and overtook him as he laid his hand on the lock of the door:

“One word--only one word more, O’Rorke!” cried she, impassionedly.

“I have told you faithfully what my uncle charged me with. I swear to you, before Heaven, I do not know of any help he can offer except this. Now, if there is any way that you can think of to serve this poor old man, say so, and I swear to you again, if it depends on me, I’ll do it!”

“Would it be too late to write to Vyner?” asked he, half doggedly.

“Utterly. He is in Italy. Besides, my uncle tells me he is in some great trouble himself about money.”

“What of that other--I forget his name--where you were living last?”

“Sir Within Wardle. Impossible!--impossible!”

“And why?”

“I cannot tell you. But I may say this, that I’d rather beg in the street than I’d stoop to ask him.”

“Isn’t he rich?”

“Immensely rich.”

“And he is generous and free of his money, you always said?”

“I never heard of one more so.”

“There’s the two things we want--money, and the man that will give it. Sit down there, and write these lines to him: ‘My grandfather is to be tried this assizes on a charge of wilful murder. I have no money to pay for his defence. Will you help me?’”

“Oh no, no! I could not!--I could not!” cried she, covering her face with both her hands.

“Why, it’s only this minute you were ready to swear to me that you’d do anything in the world to save him, and now that I’ve hit on this, you cry out, ‘No--no!’ as if I was proposing something to shame and disgrace you.”

“Shame and disgrace, indeed!” burst she out, as a sickly colour came over her, and she looked like one recovering after a fainting-fit.

“Well, I’m no judge of these things,” muttered he, “but I’d like to know what it is that would be harder to feel than the sight of an old man of eighty-two going to the gallows!”

She gave a sharp cry, and held her head with both hands, as if some sudden sharp pang shot through her: “Do not--do not, Tim O’Rorke I I can’t bear it!” she screamed out, in a voice of wild, harsh meaning.

“I’ll never ask you again,” said he, slowly; “but maybe the day will come when you’ll be sorry that I did not! Good-by.”

She made no answer, but sat with her face hid in her hands, and turned towards the wall.

“Good-by, Miss Kate,” repeated he once more; and, opening the door slowly, he went out, and closed it after him. <

She never stirred nor raised her head, till, by a rustling sound of the branches at the window, she was startled, and looked up. It was O’Rorke, who was leaning on the sill of the window, and looking in.

“Would you give me a scrap of something you were wearing--a bit of ribbon, or the like, I know you’re not fond of cutting off your hair--to give the old man? He’d rather have it than a crown jewel----”

“Take this!” cried she, snatching up a scissors, and cutting off the long and silky lock that fell in a curl upon her neck; and, turning to the table, she folded it neatly in a piece of paper. She took up her pen, too, but the thought that he could not read deterred her; for what she would have written she could not bear that other eyes than his own should trace, and she sat thinking for some minutes, when suddenly, through what train of thought impelled it is not easy to say, she cried out, “Yes, I will do it! Come back--wait a moment--or, better still, leave me to myself an instant, and I shall be ready.”

He left the window, and she sat down at the table. Without a moment’s hesitation or reflection she wrote thus:

“St. Finbar’s, Arran.

“Sir,--I make no attempt to deprecate your anger, or palliate the wrong I have done you. My offence is one that only a free pardon could coyer, and I do not dare to entreat for this. It is for something more, and less than forgiveness, I have now to ask you.

“My grandfather, a man of eighty, is in gaol, about to be tried on a charge of felony; he declares his innocence, but, having no means to pay counsel, despairs of establishing the fact. My uncle cannot help him; will you?

“When I think of the time that I had not to speak a wish till I saw it gratified, I sicken over the ingratitude which drives me to approach you as a suppliant, while I promise never again to address you.

“The bearer of the present note will take charge of your answer, should you deign to reply to your unhappy, because unworthy,

“Kate Luttrell.”

“Are you ready with the letter?” asked O’Rorke, as he leaned his arms on the window-sill and looked into the room.

“Yes,” said she, folding and addressing it. “You will set out immediately, and deliver this into the hands of Sir Within Wardle, at Dalradern Castle. It is about fourteen miles from Wrexham. Mind! into his own hands, for I am not sure how or by whom he may now be surrounded. As little can I guess what sort of a reply he may give; he may reject my entreaty; he may even refuse to answer it. He would have every right to do either. Let it be your care to note him closely as he reads my letter, and mark what effect it produces. I shall question you, when you come back, on the minutest details of your meeting--of all that he says, of his manner, of his looks; whether he speaks of me, and how. You know well, few better, how to acquit yourself in such a scene, and be sure that you address your sharpest wits to it. If he be ill and cannot write, tell him that he may trust you with a verbal answer. I have not said so in my note, but you may, and he will believe you; he reads men quickly, and he will see that you are in my confidence. If he asks you about me and my life here, answer freely whatever your own judgment prompts; he may question you about the place I live in, tell him what it is like.”

“Don’t give me any more directions, if you don’t want me to forget some of them; only tell me one thing. If he asks me as to what amount might be required for the defence, am I to say the highest figure or the lowest?”

“You are to adhere to the strict truth, O’Rorke, and for this reason, if for no other, that you will be in the presence of a man well accustomed to deal with craftier men than yourself, and that all your attempts at deception would go for nothing.”

“And if he says, ‘Why don’t Mr. Luttrell come forward to help one of his own near relations?’”

“He will not ask this.”

“And why wouldn’t he?”

“Because he is a gentleman, Sir.”

“Oh, that’s the reason,” said O’Rorke, sneeringly. “Well, I think by this time I know as much about him as I am likely to do till I see him, so I’ll be going.”

“Have you any money for this journey?”

“Of course I haven’t. I suppose I’ll need five pounds to come and go.”

“Take ten,” said she, pushing the notes towards him. “I will try and settle matters with my uncle later.”

“By St. Peter! you ought to have been born a lady with a fine estate,” cried he, rapturously. “You have a grand way of doing things, anyhow!”

She smiled at the flattery; it was not at all displeasing to her, and she held out her hand to him as she said “Good-by.”

“You’ll see me here by Saturday next, if I’m alive.”

“May it be with good news,” said she, waving a good-by. “My love to old grandfather.” Scarcely was the last word uttered, when Luttrell opened the door stealthily, and peeped in.

“How long this interview has lasted, Kate,” said he; “what have you done?”

“You must wait till next Saturday, uncle, for my answer, and I hope it will content you.”

“Why not tell me now?”

“Because I could not tell you enough, Sir.”

“I am not wont to be treated as a child whose fortunes are to be in the keeping of others!” said he, sternly. “When Saturday comes, it may be to hear that which I cannot approve of--which I will not accept.”

“Yes, Sir, you will,” said she, calmly. “You charged me to do my best, and when I shall have done so you will not discredit me.”

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XLIX. MR. O’RORKE ABROAD

Albeit Mr. O’Rorke had no partiality for the Saxon, he did not dislike his English tour. It was an occasion for much enjoyment in the present, with a prospect of considerable expatiation over in the future. He travelled--and it is a mode which occasionally enhances the enjoyments of travel--at another’s expense; and he indulged in many little luxuries not known to his daily life.

It was towards the close of a glorious day, mellow in all the richness of autumn, that he first caught sight of the great massive towers and battlemented walls of Dalradern Castle. The setting sun had just fallen on the windows, and the vast frontage was illuminated with a golden glory that relieved the stern severity of the heavy masonry, and gave warmth and colour to its cold and stately feudalism.

“And she left this for that rock--that miserable rock in the ocean,” cried he. “What could possess her to do it? She was no fool, that was clear enough. It was no fool could have made herself what she was; and what else than folly could make any one exchange that princely place for the wild and dreary desolation of Arran? There’s more in this than one sees on the surface,” thought O’Rorke. “It’s not in human nature to believe that she did not enjoy the grand life such a house must supply--the very aspect of it suggested everything that wealth could compass, and it could not be that she did not attach herself to its enjoyments. No; there must have been a reason, or something that she thought was a reason, for it. Ay, and that same reason, whatever it was, must have been the source of her great unwillingness to address Sir Within. She left him in anger, that’s plain enough; and about what could it be? Had she wearied him? Had her temper, or her caprice, or her extravagance, tired out his patience? Was it that the self-indulgence of the spoiled child had at last revolted the very spirit that had spoiled her? or was it”--and, to O’Rorke’s thinking, this seemed not improbable--“Sir Within had made her some proposals, not merely offensive to her dignity, but an outrage to her ambition? If I know you, Miss Katty,” said he, aloud, “you never lived in that grand house without dreaming of the time you’d be the mistress of it. And what made you give up the game? That’s what I’d like to know, and it’s what I’ll try to find out before I leave this.”

As he drew nearer the castle, the stately grandeur of the place impressed him still more. Never had he seen such magnificent timber--never before had he witnessed that marvellous order and propriety which give even to a vast park all the elegance of a garden. The clumps of flowery shrubs, in spots that few would probably ever visit--rare trees in out-of-the-way places--seemed to show what immense resources existed where so much that was valuable could be squandered uncared for.

One of the keepers, by whom he was accompanied from the gate-lodge, discoursed to him freely as they went along, telling of the hundreds of acres enclosed within the demesne, the extensive gardens and pleasure-grounds, to keep which in order required quite a regiment of labourers, “and all,” as the man added, “for an old man that sits all day at a window, and only comes out of an evening to take the air on a terrace. Never sees any one, nor goes anywhere; and won’t even dine with his young relation, Mr. Ladarelle, who is down here for the shooting.”

O’Rorke skirmished cautiously, of course, to ascertain whether the man could tell him anything of Kate, but he found that he had only lately entered the service, and never heard of her. He had heard, however, that Sir Within was greatly changed of late; some heavy blow, of what sort he knew not, had befallen him, and he now neither rode out nor drove, did not care to enter the garden, and, in fact, seemed weary of his life, and indifferent to everything.

“There he is now, on the terrace, taking his evening walk. I mustn’t go any farther with you; but when you pass the two large oaks yonder, you’ll see the great entrance, ring the bell, and some one will come to you.”

O’Rorke went on his way, but had not gone far when he was overtaken by a servant in livery, who, bare-headed and almost breathless from running, demanded angrily “What he was doing there?”

“I have a letter for your master that I wish to deliver at once,” replied he, firmly.

“Give it here, and wait for your answer round there, by the stables.”

“No such thing, my smart fellow; I am to deliver my letter into your master’s hand, and I will give it to no other.”

“You’re more likely, then, to take it back with you,” said the other, jeeringly, and turned away.

“Tell your master that my letter comes from Ireland,” cried O’Rorke after him, “and that it is one won’t brook delay.” But whether the fellow heard him or not, he could not say.

In less time, however, than he believed it possible for the man to have given his message, came a demure-looking man in black from the castle, who beckoned him to come forward.

“Are you the bearer of a letter from Ireland?” asked he.

“Yes. It is to be given to Sir Within Wardle’s own hand.”

“Come along with me, then.”

O’Rorke was too much excited by the thought of the presence he was about to stand in, to note more than generally the spacious hall and the immense marble stairs that led from it. The lofty corridor, whose windows of stained glass threw a rose-coloured glow over walls and pavement, together with the rich perfume of flowers, made his head feel confused and addled.

As the servant ushered him on the terrace, he whispered, “Go forward,” and then retired. O’Rorke advanced to where Sir Within was now seated, one arm leaning on the table beside him.

“You said you came from Ireland,” asked he, in a weak voice; “is it from Arran?”

“It is, Sir.”

“Thank Heaven!” muttered he to himself. “Give me your letter. Go down yonder”--and he pointed to the extreme end of the terrace--“I shall call you when I want you.”

When O’Rorke reached the end of the terrace, he turned a cautious, furtive look towards the old man, who still sat with the unopened letter in his hand, and did not move. At last he broke the seal, but such seemed the agitation of his feelings that he could scarcely read it, for he twice laid it on the table and hid his face between his hands. Suddenly he looked up and beckoned O’Rorke towards him, and said:

“Tell me, my good man, do you know the contents of this letter?”

“I know what it’s about, Sir.”

“Were you with her when she wrote it?”

“I was.”

“Was it of her own will--at the suggestion of her own thoughts? I mean, did she write this willingly, and without a struggle?”

“That she didn’t! She wrote it just because that without it her old grandfather wouldn’t have even a chance for his life! She wrote it, crying bitterly all the time, and sobbing as if her heart was breaking.”

The old man turned away his head, but with his hand motioned to the other to cease speaking. Either O’Rorke, however, did not understand the gesture, or he unheeded it. He went on:

“‘I’d rather,’ says she, ‘see my right hand cut off, than see it write these lines,’ says she.”

“There! there!” burst in Sir Within, “that will do--that is enough--say no more of this!”

But O’Rorke, intent on finding out what had been the relations between them, and why they had been severed, in spite of all admonition, continued:

“‘Sure, Miss Kate,” says I, “it is not one that was once so kind and so generous to you will see you in trouble for a trifle like this, for of course it would be a trifle to your honour!’”

“And yet she felt it a humiliation to ask me,” said he, despondingly.

“She did, indeed! ‘For,’ says she, ‘he may refuse me.’”

“No, no; she never thought that; she knew me better than to believe it.”

“Well, indeed, Sir, it was what I thought myself, and I said in my own mind, ‘It’s more ashamed she is than afeard.’”

“Ashamed of what?” cried Sir Within, passionately. “What has shame to do with it?”

The subtle peasant saw through what a channel the misconception came, and, still bent on tracing out the mysterious tie between them, said:

“After all, Sir, for a young lady, and a handsome one too, to ask a great favour of a gentleman not belonging to her, kith or kin, is a thing that bad tongues would make the worst of if they got hold of it.”

Sir Within’s sallow cheek flushed up, and in a broken voice he said:

“Bad tongues are only tyrants to those who cannot brave them. Miss Kate Luttrell is not of their number. You shall soon see if these same bad tongues have any terrors for me.”

“I’m a poor man, but I wasn’t so always,” said O’Rorke, “and I know well that it was slander and lying crushed me.”

The diversion was intended to have awakened some curiosity as to his former condition, but Sir Within was perfectly indifferent on the subject. All the interest the messenger had in his eyes came from the fact that he came from her, that he had seen her, and was near her when she wrote.

“This island--I only know it by the map,” said Sir Within, trying to talk in an easy, unconcerned strain--“it is very poor, I believe?”

“You might say wretched, and be nearer the mark.” “Is it celebrated for sport? Is the shooting or the fishing the great attraction?”

“There’s no shooting, nor any fishing but the deep sea fishery; and more men are lost in that than there are fortunes made of it.”

“And what could have induced Mr. Luttrell to take up his abode in such a spot?”

“The same thing that sends men off to America, and Australia, and New Zealand; the same thing that makes a man eat black bread when he can’t get white; the same thing that---But what’s the use of telling you about the symptoms, when you never so much as heard of the disease?”

“Miss Luttrell’s life must be a very lonely one,” said Sir “Within, with every effort to talk in a tone of unconcern.

“‘Tis the wonder of wonders how she bears it. I asked the woman that lives with them how she passed her time and what she did, and she said, ‘She takes up everything for a week or ten days, and goes at it as if her life depended on it.’ One time it was gathering plants, and sprigs of heath, and moss, and the like--even seaweed she’d bring home--going after them up crags and cliffs that a goat couldn’t climb. Then she’d give up that and take to gardening, and work all day long; then it was making fishing-nets; then it was keeping a school, and teaching the fishermen’s children; she even tried to teach them to sing, till a sudden thought struck her that they ought to have a lifeboat on the island, and she sat to writing to all the people that she could think of to send a plan of one, meaning, I suppose”--here he grinned--“to make it herself afterwards.”

Sir Within listened eagerly to’ all this, and then asked:

“And her uncle--does he aid her in these projects?”

“He! It’s little he troubles himself about her! Why, it’s often three days that they don’t even meet! They never take their meals together. It’s a wonder of kindness from him the day that he’ll tap the window of her room with his knuckles and say ‘Good morning,’ and when she’d get up to open the window to answer him, he’d be gone!”

“How desolate---how dreary!” muttered the old man. “Does this wearisome life prey upon her? Is she altered in appearance--thinner or paler?”

“I’ll tell you how she looks, and there’s not a man in Ireland understands a woman’s face better than him before you, and here’s what it means in three words. It means scorn for a world that could let the like of her wither and waste on that lonely rock, for it’s not alone beauty she has, but she has grace and elegance, and a way of charming about her that’s more than beauty, and there’s a something in her voice--what it is I don’t know, but it goes on thrilling into you after she has done speaking, till you just feel that a spell was working in you, and making you a slave.”

“And you have felt this?” said the old man, as though involuntarily demanding an avowal that would have set the seal of confirmation on her magic.

And the cunning Celt felt all the force of the sarcasm, while it did not suit his purpose to confess it. And yet it needed great self-control to suppress his rising anger, and keep him from declaring that in a matter of sentiment, or on a question of female captivation, he, Tim O’Rorke, Patriot, Martyr, and Paddy as he was, yielded to no man.

“Would you kindly ring that bell beside you, Mr.--Mr.----”

“O’Rorke, Sir.”

“Mr. O’Rorke, I am diffident about my pronunciation of Irish names,” added the old diplomatist, cautiously veiling the sin of his forgetfulness. A servant speedily appeared, and Sir Within ordered him to take every care for “this gentleman’s accommodation.” “I shall be able to prepare my reply to this letter to-night, Mr. O’Rorke, and you will be free to leave this at any hour that may suit you in the morning.”

O’Rorke retired from the presence, well satisfied with himself, and with the way he had acquitted himself.

“Would you like to have the papers, Sir, or would you prefer seeing the gallery, while supper is getting ready?” asked the obsequious servant.

“I’ll take a look at your pictures. I have a few myself,” said Mr. O’Rorke; which was perfectly true, though they were not in the first taste as objects of art, being certain coloured prints of Hempenstall, the walking gallows, the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and a few similar subjects from the year ‘98, in which, certes, the countenances bestowed on the Royalists essentially distinguished them in the most crowded mêlées from all honest patriots.

Leaving Mr. O’Rorke, then, to examine at his leisure Sir Within’s varied treasures, we make no excuse to our reader for not recording the criticism he passed upon them.

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