LIII. A NEW HOME…

LIII. A NEW HOME

It was an exquisite scene; one of the very prettiest in Normandie. The old town, with its aged and irregular buildings rising one over the other like hanging gardens; the large expanse of water, clear as a sheet of glass, bright with the early sun, stretching out underneath as far as the eye could see; the hills on the right, with their clustering trees and their winding road, leading to the nestling houses in the village of St. Sauveur; Harfleur opposite, standing as a background to the plain of crystal, with its old castle (or what looks like one) conspicuous, and its gentle mounts green and picturesque; Havre lying next it almost side by side, with its immensity of buildings and its long harbour;--these were what may be called the prominent parts of the canvas, but were you looking at it you might find the minuter points of the filling-in even more interesting. The whole made a magnificent tableau, which, once seen, must rest upon the charmed mind for ever.

The Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, situated at one end of the town, was perhaps the best spot in all Honfleur for admiring this panorama--unless, indeed, you mounted the heights above. Standing in one of the end rooms of this hotel on the second floor, whose windows commanded two sides of view, the town and the water, was a gentleman whom you have met before. You could not have mistaken it for anything but a French room, with its bare floor, its tasty curtains, and its white-covered chairs. The tables had marble tops, hard and ugly, but the piano opposite to the fireplace was of tolerable tone.

It was the best of the two sitting-rooms in the hotel; better than the one on the first floor underneath, because these windows were low and cheerful, and those were high and grim. This room and a chamber into which it opened (whose intervening door could never be got to shut, and if shut couldn't be got to open) looked right over to Harfleur. For the matter of that the room opened into two chambers, but the one was closed up just now, and we have nothing to do with it. Like most French rooms, it seemed made up of doors and windows.

The gentleman standing at the window was Mark Cray. Resident at Honfleur more than a month now, this was the first time he had been called in to see a patient. A traveller had been taken ill at the Cheval Blanc in the middle of the night, had asked if there was an English doctor in the place, and Mark was summoned.

It was rather a serious case, and Mark had not left him yet. The door between the rooms was open, but Mark kept as still as a mouse; for the patient, he hoped, was dropping into a doze. Mark had occupation enough, looking out on the busy scene. It was high tide, and the harbour, close on which the hotel was built, was alive with bustle. Fishing-boats were making ready to go out; fishing-boats were tiding in, bearing their night's haul. The short pier underneath had quite a crowd on it for that early hour; women with shrill tongues, men with gruff ones, who were waiting to tow in a merchant vessel drawing near; idlers only looking on,--their babel of voices came right up to Mark, and had he been rather more familiar with the Norman tongue he might have known what all the gabbling was about. A quiet wedding-party, three men and three women, were taking a walk on the pier, two and two, after the performance of the early ceremony; or perhaps it had been performed the previous day, and this one was the continuance of the holiday,--one never knows; the gala caps on the women's heads--such caps as we may see in pictures--flapped out their extraordinary wings: a sober, middle-aged, well-conducted wedding-party of humble life. They probably came, Mark thought, from some few miles inland, where the water and the boats were not everyday objects, as at Honfleur, for their interest in these seemed intense. Every minute there was something new, as is sure to be the case with a full tide at early morning: now, an entanglement of boats at the entrance of the harbour; now, the snapping of a cord and deafening noise in consequence; and now a flat barge, heavily laden, went rounding off to the Seine, to toil up between its green banks as far as Rouen.

Suddenly a noise as of the waters being cut through arose, and Mark, who was watching the toiling barge and wondering what she was laden with, turned his head to the left. The steamer plying from Havre was coming in--had almost reached the port. She had made a fine passage that morning: not twenty-five minutes yet had passed since she steamed out of Havre. The coming in, and the going out again of these steamers, twice each way in the summer days, is the great event in Honfleur life.

In she came to the harbour, swiftly and steadily, rounded the point under the hotel windows, and moored herself in her place opposite the hotel entrance. Mark Cray changed his window now.

Quitting that at which he had been standing, he quietly opened the one which faced the town and inner harbour, and leaned out to watch the disembarking of the steamer's live freight.

"I wonder how many of them will be coming into the hotel to breakfast," he murmured. "I wish----"

What he was about to wish was never known. A voice from the inner room interrupted him. And it was not by any means a feeble voice, but rather a loud one.

"Mr. Cray!"

Mark hastened in. To his surprise he saw his patient, whom he had left in hope of sleep, out of bed and dressing himself. Mark, as medical attendant, made a strong remonstrance.

"I feel a great deal better," was the answer. "I can't lie any longer. Is not that the boat come in?"

"Yes," said Mark. "But----"

"Well, I told you I must go back by her to Havre, if I possibly could. Necessity has no choice."

Mark could only look his amazement. The boat would go out again almost directly, and the patient stood little chance of having time for breakfast. "You cannot go by this boat," he said. "There'll be another later in the day."

"I can't wait for that. I must be away from Havre by an early train."

"But I--I don't know that I can pronounce you out of danger," remonstrated Mark, hardly able yet to realise the fact that a gentleman, thought to be dying in the night, was dressing himself to go off by a steamer in the morning.

"I know these attacks of mine are bad--dangerous, I suppose, while they last; but once over, I am well, except for weakness. And the long and the short of it is, I must go to Havre by the return boat."

Mark Cray saw that further objection would be useless. The chamber-man (I can't help it if you object to the appellation; the hotel had no women servants) came in with warm water, and the traveller ordered a cup of coffee to be ready by the time he got down. Mark went back to the sitting-room. He would stay and see him on board.

The steamer's first bell had rung when the traveller came forth. Mark caught up his hat and gloves. "I hardly know what I am indebted to you," said the stranger, placing a thin piece of paper in his hand. "Perhaps that will cover it."

It was a hundred-franc note. Mark would have given it tack, badly though he wanted money. It was too much; altogether too much, he exclaimed.

"No," said the stranger. "I don't know what I should have done without you; and you have stayed with me the night. That's being attentive. I was taken ill once before in the night at an hotel in France, where there happened to be an English doctor in the town, and they got him to me. But he was gone again in an hour, and in fact seemed to, resent having been disturbed at all. I didn't pay him more than I was obliged."

"Ah, he had plenty of practice, perhaps," cried Mark, rather too impulsively. "But indeed this is paying me a great deal too much. I don't like to take it."

"Indeed it is not, and I hope you will accept my thanks with it," was the conclusive answer.

Mark Cray saw the traveller on board the boat, watched it move off, turn, and go steaming down the port And then he made the best of his way home, the hundred-franc note in his pocket seeming to be a very fairy of good fortune.

They had come to Honfleur the latter end of April; this was the beginning of June; and poor Mark had not found a single patient yet. Mr. Barker had been there to receive them on their arrival. How Barker contrived to live, or whence his funds came, Mark did not know, but he always seemed flourishing. There are some men who always do seem flourishing, whatever may be their ups and downs. Barker was in Paris now, apparently in high feather, his letters to Mark boasting that he was getting into "something good."

Mark ran all the way home; his lodgings were not far, near the ascent of the Mont Joli. Could scenery have supplied the place of meat and drink, then Mark Cray and his wife might have lived as epicures, for nothing could well be more grandly beautiful than the prospect seen from their windows. But, alas! something besides the eyes requires to be ministered to in this world of wants.

It was a small house with a garden before the door, and was tenanted by a widow lady and her servant. Mark and his wife occupied a small sitting-room in it and a bedchamber above; opening from the sitting-room was a little place about four feet square, which served for kitchen, and was let to them with the rooms. They waited on themselves; it is rare indeed that attendance is furnished with lodgings in France. But madame's servant was complaisant, and lighted their fire and did many other little things.

Caroline was in the bedroom, dressing, when Mark returned;--dressing in that listless, spiritless manner which argues badly for the hope and heart. It was a pity their expectations in regard to Honfleur had been so inordinately raised, for the disappointment was keen, and Caroline perhaps had not strength to do battle with it. She had pictured Honfleur (taking the impression from Barker's letters and Mark's sanguine assumptions) as a very haven of refuge; a panacea for their past woes, a place where the English patients, if not quite as plentiful as blackberries, would at least be sufficient to furnish them with funds to live in comfort. But it had altogether proved a fallacy. The English patients held aloof. In fact, there were no English patients, so far as they could make out. Nobody got ill; or, if they did get ill, they did not come to Mark Cray to be cured. Tribulation in the shape of petty embarrassment was coming upon them, and Caroline began to hate the place. She was weary, sick, sad; half dead with disappointment and ennui.

Unfortunately, there was becoming a reason to suspect that something was radically wrong with Caroline. Not that she thought it yet; still less Mark. Dr. Davenal had surmised that her constitution was unsound.

During the time of their sojourn at Chelsea, where Mr. Dick Davenal came so suddenly upon them, and Mark was accustomed to go out to take the air adorned with blue spectacles and a moustache, Caroline, in undressing herself one night, found--or fancied that she found--a small lump in her side, below the ribs. She thought nothing whatever about it, it was so very small; in fact, it slipped from her memory. Some time afterwards, however, she accidentally touched her side and felt the same lump there again. This was of course sufficient to assure her that it was not fancy, but still she attached no importance to it, and said nothing. But the lump did not go away; it seemed like a little kernel that could be moved bout with the finger; and in the week following their arrival at Honfleur she first spoke of it to Mark. Mark did not pay much attention to it; that is, he did not think there was any cause to pay attention to it; it might proceed from cold, he said, or perhaps she had given herself a knock; he supposed it would go away again. But the lump did not go away, and Caroline had been complaining of it lately.

On this past night--or rather morning--when Mark was at the hotel with the patient to whom he was called, Caroline had been recreating her imagination with speculations upon what the lump was, and what it was likely to come to. Whether this caused her to be more sensitive to the lump than she had been before, or whether the lump was really beginning to make itself more troublesome, certain it was that her fears in regard to it were at length aroused, and she waited impatiently for the return of her husband.

"Mark, this lump gets larger and larger. I am certain of it."

It was her greeting to Mark when he entered and came up to the chamber. She turned her spiritless eyes upon him, and Mark might have noted the sad listlessness of the tone, but that it had become habitual. He made no reply. He was beginning himself to think that the lump got larger.

"And it pains me now,--a sort of dull aching. I wonder if it's coming to anything. Just feel it, Mark."

Mark Cray drew her light cotton dressing-gown tight across the place, and passed his fingers gently over and over it. He was not so utter a tyro in his profession as to be ignorant that the lump might mean mischief. Caroline, with most rapid quickness of apprehension, noted and did not like his silence.

"Mark! what is it? What's going to be the matter with me?"

"Nothing, I hope," replied Mark, speaking readily enough now. "It will go away, I daresay. Perhaps you have been fidgeting with it this morning."

"No, I have not done that. And if the lump meant to go away, why should it get larger? It does get larger, Mark. It seems to me that it has nearly doubled its size in the last week."

"I think it is a little larger," acknowledged Mark, feeling perhaps that he could not get out of the confession. "How long has it pained you?"

"I can't remember. The pain came on so imperceptibly that I hardly know when it first began. What is the lump, Mark?"

"I can't tell."

"You can't tell?"

"I can't tell yet. Sometimes lumps appear and go away again, and never come to anything."

"And if they do come to anything, what is it that they come to?"

"Oh, sometimes one thing and sometimes another," answered Mark lightly.

"Can't you tell me what the things are?" she rejoined, in a peevishly anxious tone.

"Well--boils for one thing; and tumours."

"And what becomes of these tumours?" she quickly rejoined, catching at the word.

"They have to be taken out.

"Is it very painful?"

"Law, no. The pain's a mere nothing."

"And cancers? How do they come?" proceeded Caroline after pause. "With a little lump at first, like this?"

"Cancers don't come there. You need not fear that it's a cancer. Carine, my dear, you must be nervous this morning."

She passed by the remark, hardly hearing it. "But Mark--you say you can't tell yet what it is."

"Neither can I. But I can tell what it is not. I'll get you a little ointment to rub on it, and I make no doubt it will go away."

Caroline was doing her hair at the moment. She had the brush in one hand, the hair in the other; and she paused just as she was, looking fixedly at her husband.

"Mark, if you don't know what it is, perhaps somebody else would know. I wish you'd let me show it to a doctor."

Mark laughed. He really believed she must be getting nervous about it, and perhaps deemed it would be the best plan to treat it lightly. "A French doctor Why, Carine, they are not worth a rush."

"I have heard Uncle Richard say the contrary," she persisted. "That the French, as surgeons, are clever men."

"He meant with the knife, I suppose. Well, Caroline, you can let a Frenchman see the lump if it will afford you any satisfaction. You don't ask me what has kept me out all these hours!" rejoined Mark, changing the topic. "I have had a patient at last."

"Yes, I suppose that. He was very ill, perhaps, and you had to remain with him."

She spoke in the wearied, inert tone that seems to betray an entire absence of interest. When the spirit has been borne down with long-continued disappointment, this weariness becomes a sort of disease. It was very prejudicial now, in a physical point of view, to Caroline Cray.

Mark took out the note. "See how well he paid me!" he cried, holding it to her. "I wish such patients would come to the Cheval Blanc every day!"

The sight aroused her from her apathy. "A hundred-franc note!" she exclaimed with dilating eyes. "O Mark! it is quite a godsend. I shall believe next in Sara Davenal's maxim: that help is sure to turn up in the time of need."

In the time of need! It was a time that had certainly come for them. The surplus of Oswald Cray's twenty pounds, remaining after the expenses of removal were paid, had come to an end, and neither Mark nor his wife had seen their way clear to go on for another week. It was in truth a godsend; more strictly so than Caroline, in her lightness, deemed.

But the money, welcome as it was, did not take the paramount place in her mind today that it might else have done. That was occupied by the lump. Caroline's fears in regard to it could not be allayed, and she insisted upon being taken to a doctor for his opinion, without any delay. Mark made inquiries, and found a Monsieur Le Bleu was considered to be a clever man. He proposed to ask him to call, but Caroline preferred to go to him, her reason being a somewhat whimsical one, as expressed to Mark: "If he has to come to me I shall think I am really ill." Accordingly they went that same afternoon, and the interview, what with Mark Cray's French and the doctor's English, was productive of some temporary difficulty.

They started after their early dinner. M. Le Bleu lived not very far from them, but in the heart of the town, and Mark began by calling him Mr. Blue, sans cérémonie. Mark had learned French at school, and therefore considered himself a French scholar. On the door was a brass plate--"M. Le Bleu, Médecin;" and a young woman in a red petticoat, grey stockings, and sabots, came to the door in answer to the ring.

"Is Mr. Blue at home?" demanded Mark. "Mossier Blue, chez elle?" continued he, tying to be more explanatory, in answer to the girl's puzzled stare.

"O Mark," whispered Caroline, her cheeks flaming at this specimen of French. "Monsieur Le Bleu, est-il chez lui?" she hastily said, turning to the servant.

Monsieur Le Bleu was "chez lui," the girl said to them, and they were admitted. A little middle-aged gentleman in spectacles with no beard or whiskers or moustache, or any other hair to speak of, for that on his head was as closely cut as it could be, short of being shaved, came forward. He asked what he could have the honour of doing for them.

"Speak English, Messeu?" began Mark. "Parle Anglishe?"

"Yas, sare," was the amiable response, as the doctor handed Caroline a seat. "I spack the Anglishe, moi."

"Oh then we shall get on," cried Mark. "Madame here, ma femme, it's for her. I don't think it's much, but she would come. That's my name"--handing in his card.

The Frenchman was a little puzzled by so much English all at once, and relieved himself by looking at the card.

"Ah, c'est ça, Meestare Cr--Cr--Craw," pronounced the doctor, arriving with satisfaction at the name after some stammering. "And Madame what has she?"

"Malade," briefly responded Mark. "Elle a une--une--lump--come in the--the (what's French for side, I wonder?) in the côté. Ici, Messeu," touching himself; "mais il est très petite encore; no larger than a--a--petite pois."

Clearly the gentleman did not understand. Mark had drawn him aside, so that they were speaking apart from Caroline.

"A-t'elle d'enfants, Madame?"

"Oh, oui, oui," responded Mark, at a venture, not catching a syllable of the question, the Frenchman seemed to speak so rapidly.

"Et combien? I ask, sare, how many; and the age of them; the age!" "Three-and-twenty. Vingt-trois."

"Vingt-trois!" echoed the doctor, pushing up his glasses. "Mais, n'est pas possible. I say it not possible, sare, that Madame have twenty-three children."

"Children!" shouted Mark, "I thought you said age. She has not any children; pas d'enfants, Messeu. She found of it before we quitted England--avant nous partons d'Angleterre."

Monsieur Le Bleu tried hard to understand. "Where you say it is, sare, the mal? Est-ce que c'est une blessure?"

"It's here," said Mark, touching him now. "It came of itself--venait tout seule, grande at first comme the tête of an épingle, not much more; à présent larger than a big pea--a petite pois."

The doctor's ear was strained, and a faint light broke upon it. He had enjoyed the pleasure of conversing with English patients before; in fact it was mostly from them that he was enabled to shine in the language.

"Ah, je vois. Pardon, sare, it not a blessure, it a--a--clou--a bouton? I ask, sare, is it a button?"

"It's a lump," returned Mark, staring very much. "A sort of a kernel, you know. Comprends, Messeu?" he questioned, in no hurry, perhaps, to make any worse suggestion.

The doctor gravely nodded; not caring to confess his ignorance. "When did he arrive, sare?"

"When did who arrive?"

"Him--the mal, sare."

"Oh, the lump. Several weeks back--quelques semaines, Messeu. Pas beaucoup de trouble avec; de pain! mais trouve nervous this morning, and--and--thought she'd like a doctor's opinion," concluded Mark, his French completely breaking down.

"Bon," said the surgeon, wishing Mark did not talk English quite so fast. "Madame has not consultayed a docteur donc, encore?"

"Only me," replied Mark. "I'm a doctor myself--docteur moi-même, Messeu."

"Ah, Monsieur est médecin lui-même," cried the doctor, making a succession of bows in his politeness. "That will facilitate our understandings, sare. Has Madame the good--the bonne santé de l'ordinaire?" he continued, coming to a breakdown himself.

"Santé de l'ordinaire!--I wonder what that is," debated Mark within himself. "Vin ordinaire means thin claret, I know. I no comprendre, Messeu," he confessed aloud. "Ma femme eats and drinks everything."

"Is Madame--je ne trouve pas le mot, moi--is she saine, I would ask?"

"San?" repeated the puzzled Mark. "Why, you never mean sane, surely!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "She's as sane as you or I. What on earth put that in your head, Messeu? she doesn't look mad, I hope!"

"I no say mad," disclaimed Messeu. "I ask if she--ah, voilà le mot, quel bonheur!--if she healthy?--if she partake of the good constitution?"

A recollection flashed across Mark Cray's memory of a doubt he had once heard drop from Dr. Davenal as to whether Caroline's constitution was a healthy one. "Elle a porté très bien," was his answer to Monsieur, plunging into his French again. "This mayn't be anything, you know, Messeu."

"I not like these boutons though, sare."

"Which buttons," demanded Mark.

"The buttons you do me the honour to consult for. Je ne les aime pas, soit clou, soit tumeur--n'importe pour l'espèce. In the place you indicate to me it is like to be a tumeur, and she is obstinate."

"Who is, Messeu?" asked Mark, in doubt whether the incomprehensible Frenchman did not allude to his wife's temper.

"She herself," lucidly explained Messeu. "I have held cases that would not terminate themselves at all by anyway, no not for the years."

"Oh, but this is not a case of that sort," said Mark, half resentfully. "A few simple remedies may disperse it."

"Yes, I hope," agreed the doctor. "I would demand of Monsieur if he has tried the sangsues?

"The what?" cried Mark, who had not the remotest idea what sort of a thing "sangsues" could be. "No, I have not tried it."

"J'aime assez la sangsue, moi. She is a useful beast, sare."

Mark nearly groaned, Whatever had "useful beasts" to do with this lump of Caroline's? Useful beasts? "Is it a camel you are talking of?" he asked.

"A camel!" repeated the doctor, staring at Mark. "Pardon, I no understand."

Mark was sure he didn't. "You spoke of useful beasts, Messeu?"

"Yas, they have moche virtue, the sangsues. They do good to Madame; they bite her well."

Mark was never more at sea in his life. Roaming away in search of camels, his home perceptions were perhaps a little obscured in that moment. Bite Madame? What on earth was "sonsues?"

"I speak of the little black beast that long when she full--" pointing to his finger. "You call them litch--litch--"

"Leeches!" interrupted Mark, with a laugh. "I could not understand, moi; Je pensé, Messeu, que vous--vous--speak of wild beasts."

"Yas," said the doctor complacently, "I thought you understand, sare."

"Bon pour Madame, vous dit, Messeu, the sonsues?"

"Je pense que oui. Mais--but I no say trop before the examen of Madame. I would see the hurt, me. I go to your house, sare, and meet Madame without her robe. I go tomorrow at four of the clock after twelve, if that will arrange you."

"So be it," returned Mark, when he had puzzled out the words "Je dis à ma femme que--que--it was of no use for her to call here, herself; you'd want to see her dishabillayed. Je vous merci, Messeu."

And when they were walking home Mark said to his wife how very glad he was to find he had kept up his French.

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LIV. A BELL RINGING OUT AT MIDNIGHT

I wonder whether you remember that most charming weather we had in the October of that same year 1861. The first fortnight of the month was more lovely than can be imagined of October; it was brilliant and warm as summer.

Toiling up the ascent of the Côte de Grace went Mark Cray and his wife on one of these delightful days. The word toiling would be misapplied to you, I hope, for the way is gentle, the ascent easy; but it was toil now to Caroline Cray. The past three or four months had made a great change in her: health and spirits had alike sunk. As the lump got larger--we may as well call it by its familiar name--the body got weaker, and she felt the fatigue of walking now. Mark and the weather's unusual beauty had tempted her out, and they had taken the way through the town to the Cête de Grace.

Winding up the shady road--and the sun was too hot not to make the shade welcome--they gained the top. Caroline sat down at once on a bench that faced the sea: Mark stepped forward to the edge, dangerous enough if unprotected, and looked down. Was any panorama ever more beautiful? It happened to be full tide, as it was that morning when you saw him looking at it before--the same view, from the windows of the Cheval Blanc. But the same view, extended, enlarged, altogether grander, from the height on which he now stood.

Mark Cray took a glass from his pocket--it belonged to Monsieur Le Bleu, with whom they were now passably intimate--one of those small but effective telescopes rather rare to meet with. Adjusting its focus, he swept it round the horizon. He turned it to the right, and saw the women winding up the paths on their way from Honfleur market, their unbecoming borderless caps of everyday wear quite plain to him. Opposite was Harfleur, flickering in the light and shade; underneath him, beyond the cultivated precipice, were the walks by the sea--if you call it sea--the road winding on afar, the bathing establishment with its seats, and its linen spread out to dry. Havre itself looked rather cloudy from local smoke, but its entrance was beautifully clear, and Mark put up his glass again to gaze at it. Vessels, great and small, were rounding the point. A large steamer, which he recognised as the London boat, was turning into it, her steam so full, seemingly so close, that he might have fancied he heard its hiss. A fine sailing vessel was being towed out, to commence her long voyage; she looked like an Indiaman. The steamer plying between Havre and Trouville had reached its midway passage; a little funnelled boat was bearing swiftly on in the direction of Fiquefleur bay; an ugly, black-looking yacht had pointed its nose towards the dangerous bar of Quillebeuf; one of the everlasting flat barges was moving imperceptibly up the Seine; smaller boats and more picturesque were coquetting on the manche, and the Honfleur steamer was coming on quickly, leaving Havre far behind her. Mark extended the glass in the direction of the extreme left, and studied the vessels in the distance. Not a breath seemed to fill their sails. The blue and clear waters of the Seine were not calmer than that sometimes turbulent sea: river, manche, sea, were today still as a lake. A fair scene! none fairer throughout the department of the Calvados.

How familiar the scene had grown to Mark Cray he could tell you now. His days unfortunately were days of idleness, and he, had nothing to do but look at it from some point or other of the heights. Mark's fondly-anticipated patients had not come to him: whether the handful of English stationary at Honfleur preferred Monsieur Le Bleu or one of his compatriots to attend them, or whether they were so disobliging as to keep in perfect health, Mark Cray never clearly ascertained. All he could be sure of was, that he was not summoned. His professional services had been called into requisition but three times, including the stranger at the hotel who gave him the large fee. An English maid-servant had come to him once to have a tooth drawn; she could not speak French, she said, and did not like to go to a chemist's shop for it; Mark drew it, borrowing his friend Monsieur Le Bleu's pincers--or whatever you call the things--and charged her three francs. He said five at first; but she slightly reproached him, said she could have it done in a shop fer one and in fact had but three francs with her. So Mark took the three. The third time he was called in to a gentleman who said he had lived in Honfleur six years and had never been ill yet. He had now got an attack of what he called "La grippe," which Mark interpreted into the gripes, utterly unconscious that la grippe in French means influenza in English. The patient soon got well, despite a little wrong treatment at that; and Mark's remuneration was ten francs. That was all he had earned, this ten francs and the three for the tooth, besides the present made him at the hotel.

How were they to get along? How had they got along? They, poor sufferers, looking to the past, could hardly tell. Barker, who was in Paris still, full of wild hopes as usual, had sent Mark once a hundred-franc note in a letter and a promise of more; a little had come to Caroline from Barbadoes, for she had told of her woes; and so they existed somehow. Mark Cray was by no means one to sit down tamely and starve; any hopeless scheme rather than that; but Mark was caged, as it were, at Honfleur, and did not see how to get away from it, or where to travel to. Under happier auspices that "lump" might not have got so large as it was now getting: had that Great Wheal Bang mine only sent its ore to market instead of getting drowned it might never have shown itself at all; or, at least, not for years.

Mark Cray lowered the glass and turned to speak to his wife, who was seated but three or four yards behind him. Towards her left were those enclosed and accommodating gardens of entertainment, where you might order a dinner and eat it al fresco, or where you might take your own basket of provisions and they would bring you drink from the house, wine, milk, beer, lemonade, or coffee, at choice. Behind her, looking beyond, rose the little Chapelle de Nôtre-Dame-de-Grâce, on whose interior walls were recorded accounts of devoted pilgrims who had toiled on crutches up to the shrine, and whose faith Our Lady had rewarded by an instantaneous cure, whereupon they went down rejoicing, leaving their crutches behind them, a memento of the miracle. On the right was the small building called, surely by courtesy, the Observatoire, where innumerable wonders might be seen for two sous. And on the near plateau close around was many a bench similar to the one occupied by Mrs. Cray; the grass forming a carpet underfoot, the trees a shade overhead. A pleasant spot to rest in on a summer's day; a charming tableau to look upon in silence.

"Won't you come and have a look, Caroline I don't think I ever saw the atmosphere so clear on a brilliant day."

She only shook her head by way of answer: wearily, despondently.

"The boat's coming in," he resumed. "Two minutes more, and she'll pass us. You'll like to see her go by."

"I can't Mark. My side is paining me worse then ever. I must not walk up the hill again."

It was a very obstinate side, as M. Le Bleu would express it, a very persistent, provoking lump, and that renowned practitioner--who was really a skilful man, for all his obscure English--had formed his own opinion upon it. It baffled him and his remedies persistently. Even those highly-regarded bêtes, the sangsues, had tried their best to subdue it--and tried in vain. Evidently the effective remedy was not sangsues. The lump had had its own way all these months. It had been growing larger and larger, giving by degrees more and more pain. Monsieur Le Bleu had once hinted his doubts of a "tumeur fibreuse," and Mark had politely retorted that he was an idiot to fancy such things. What the end of it all was to be--of the disease, of the semi-starvation, of the next to impossibility to go on in Honfleur, and the equal impossibility to get away from it, of Mark Cray's little difficulty with England and the shareholders of the old company--would take a wiser head than either Caroline's or Mark's to tell.

This day has been noticed because it was a sort of turning-point in this persistent malady: not a turning for better but for worse. Whether the walk up the hill injured her--for perhaps she had grown really unfit for it--or whether the disease itself made a sudden leap onwards, certain it was that poor Mrs. Cray never went up the Côte de Grâce again. She walked home with Mark very slowly, and fainted when she got in. Mark did not like her look, and ran off for Monsieur Le Bleu. It was only the fatigue, she said to them: but the next morning she did not rise from her bed.

Several weeks dragged themselves slowly on, Caroline growing worse and weaker. An idea arose to her--it may have almost been called a morbid fancy--that if her uncle Richard were alive and at hand, her cure would be certain and speedy. From him it was natural perhaps that her hopes should stray to other English doctors; not young men such as Mark, but men of note, of experience, of known skill; and a full persuasion took possession of her mind that she had only to go to London to be made well. It grew too strong for any sort of counter-argument or resistance; it became a mania: to remain in Honfleur was to die; to go to England and the English faculty would be cure and life.

Mark would have gratified the wish had it been in his power, but how was he to find the money? But for Barker, they could not have gone on at all. He sent a trifle to Mark from time to time, and they managed to get along with it. Once, when they were at a very low ebb Mark had written a pitiful account of their state to his brother Oswald, and a ten-pound note came back again. Ah what a contrast was this to the prosperity that might have been theirs at Hallingham!

Winter had come now. December was in; its first days were rapidly passing; and so intense had grown Caroline's yearning for home that Monsieur Le Bleu himself said to keep her would be to kill her. "It would only be the passage-money, Mark," she reiterated ten times in a day. "I should go straight to Aunt Bettina's. Angry as she was with us for leaving Hallingham, she'd not refuse to take me in. Mark, Mark! only the passage-money!"

And Mark, thus piteously appealed to, began to think he must do something desperate to get the passage-money. Perhaps he would, if he had only known what. But while Mark was thinking of it help arrived, in the shape of a hundred-franc note from Barker. Things were beginning to look up with him he wrote. Perhaps he meant this as an earnest of it.

"Divide it, Mark," she said, with feverish cheeks. "I know how badly you want it here: but I want it badly too. I want help, I want medical skill; divide it between us: fifty francs will take me over."

And so it was done. How willingly Mark would have given her the whole!--but that was impossible. How willingly he would have gone with her to take care of her on the voyage!--but that was impossible. Mark Cray might not show his face in London. He took her as far as he could, and that was to Havre. On the morning after the arrival of Barker's letter and its inclosure they were off: and so great an effect had the knowledge that she was really going wrought on Caroline, that she seemed to have recovered health and strength in a manner little short of miraculous.

She walked down to the Honfleur boat; she would walk; she was quite well enough to walk, she said. As they turned out of the house the postman was approaching it, selecting a letter from his bundle.

"Pour Madame," he said, giving it to Mark.

It was from Sara: they could see that by the handwriting. Caroline thrust it into her pocket. There was not time for reading letters there; the bell of the starting boat had sounded over the town, and they and the man behind, who was wheeling Caroline's trunk on a barrow, had much ado to catch it. They read the letter going over. It was merely a friendly letter of news, the chief item, of which news was, that they were expecting Captain Davenal and his wife hourly from India.

"Then, Caroline, they won't be able to take you in," was Mark Cray's remark.

"Oh, yes, yes, it can be managed," was her answer, so feverishly and eagerly delivered that Mark suspected she feared he might wish to detain her; and he said no more.

But now, when they reached Havre, Mark discovered that he and Caroline between them had made a very stupid mistake as to the departure of the London boat. He afterwards found that they had inadvertently consulted the list of departures for November, instead of December. There was no London steamer departing from Havre that day.

They stood on what is called the English Quai, Caroline weak, sick, depressed. A check of this kind thrown upon one in her state of health is as very despair. Opposite to them was moored a small English steamer; a board upon her, or which was inscribed "for London," indicating her destination. "I could go by that," she said, feverishly; "Mark, I could go by that."

"I don't think it is a passenger boat," was Mark's reply.

They advanced to the edge of the quai and looked down. Two or three men, apparently English, were taking bales of goods on board by means of a crane. "Is this a passenger boat?" Mark asked them.

"No sir. She's for goods."

The answer was unmistakably English. A stout, middle-aged, respectable-looking man, who was seated across a bar, watching the men and smoking a pipe, looked up and inquired of Mark why he asked.

It was the master of the vessel. They got into conversation with him, and told him their dilemma. He was a kind-hearted man, and he offered to convey the lady to London if she could put up with the accommodation. She was quite welcome to go with them, free of expense, he said, and his wife had come the trip with him this time, so she'd not, as it were, be alone on board. How eagerly Mrs. Cray seized upon the offer, rather than go home again to wait a day or two for the regular boat, I'll leave you to judge.

She went at once on board, and the vessel got out of harbour in the course of the afternoon, the master saying they should make London on the afternoon of the following day. But there's no time to linger over this part, or to give any details of the voyage; it is enough to say that the passage, from unavoidable causes, was an unusually slow one, and they did not reach their destination in the Thames until late in the evening. It was a memorable day for us that; Saturday the 14th of December; a day of sadness irreparable for our land. Not quite yet, however, had the hour of calamity come; and the astounding grief, half paralysing England with its suddenness, had not fully broken upon it.

It was getting on for ten o'clock before Mrs. Cray was able to leave the steamer. To present herself, an unexpected intruder, at Miss Davenal's at midnight was not to be thought of. All the way over she had been revolving the news contained in Sara's letter, of which she had made so light to Mark: should Captain Davenal and his wife have arrived, she did not think there would be room for her; and the untoward lateness of the hour increased her difficulty.

There came a thought flashing into her mind, welcome as a ray of light. "I wonder if Watton could take me in for the night?"

Her kind friends, the captain and his wife--and very kind and hospitable they had been to her--had a cab called, and Mrs. Cray and her trunk were placed in it, a tide-waiter allowing the disembarkment. She was then driven to St. Paul's Churchyard.

Watton came out in a state of wonder. A lady in a cab inquiring for her! Perhaps it was not lessened when she recognised Mrs. Cray: but Mrs. Cray looking so awfully ill, so greatly changed! Watton, always of a demonstrative temper, could not conceal her shock of dismay; and perhaps the woman's words first imparted to Caroline a suspicion of what her real state might be. Always with Mark, he could not detect the ravages in her face as a stranger detected them; and the recent voyage of course added its evil effects to her looks.

"Watton, could you take me in for the night?"

She was too fatigued, too worn and ill to enter upon her demand with introductory circumlocution. Watton only stared in reply. This, coupled with Mrs. Cray's appearance, momentarily took her wits away.

"I could lie on a sofa, or on a blanket put down on the carpet, anywhere just for tonight. I don't like to go on so late to Aunt Bettina's; they do not expect me, and will have gone to bed. And you know what she is, Watton."

"To be sure I can take you in, Miss Caroline," returned Watton, recovering herself partially, and warming to the poor sick girl. "Thirty hours in a steamer! My goodness! And they are horrid things always. I crossed over to Jersey once in my young days, and I shall never forget it. Of course you can't go on to Pimlico tonight. Bring in the trunk, cabman."

The trunk was placed inside the passage, the man paid and dismissed, and Watton was closing the street-door, when it was pushed against. She flung it open with an impatient word, and a gentleman entered. Watton was taken by surprise. "I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure. I thought it was the cabman wanting to stand out for another sixpence."

He passed her with a smile, glanced at Caroline and the trunk, and was making his way up the stairs, when she again addressed him.

"Is there any fresh news, sir?"

"Yes, and it is not good, Mrs. Watton," he replied, turning to speak. "Report says that a telegram has been received from Windsor, stating that there is no hope; that the Prince is rapidly sinking."

His voice was low, his manner subdued; and he raised his hat with unconscious reverence while he gave the answer. Watton lost her breath.

"It may not be true, sir! it may not be true!"

"I trust indeed it is not."

"But, sir, was there not hope this afternoon?"

"According to the report that reached us, there was. Could the Prince only bear up through this one night all would be well."

He passed up the stairs as he spoke. Watton led the way into a sitting-room at the back of the house, and Mrs. Cray followed her in perplexed silence, in eager curiosity, unable to understand the words she had heard.

That great and good Prince, whom England knew too little, and whom to know was to love, was indeed lying in extremis in the castle that had been his many years' home. On that calm, clear, soft December night, when the streets of London were alive with bustle and pleasure, there was a dying bed not many miles away from it, around whose hushed stillness knelt England's sovereign, England's royal children. The gracious and benignant Prince, the faithful consort, the loyal husband, the tender anxious father, was winging his flight away; sinking gradually but surely from those loving arms, those tearful eyes, those yearning prayers, which could not keep him.

London had been shocked that day. Not so shocked as she might have been; for perhaps not one living man within her walls realised to his mind the possibility of the worst. Death!--for him! It was impossible to contemplate it: and from the first duke in the land down to the little pauper boys who sold for a penny the newspapers containing the bulletins none did seriously fear it.

Mrs. Cray listened as one aroused out of a dream. The Prince ill!--ill unto danger! The Prince who had been associated in men's minds as one enshrined in a bright halo of prosperity, in the very sunshine of happiness!--who had looked down from his dizzy height on other men as if he stood above the world! It seemed incredible. Watton gave the details, so far as they were known to the general public; the few days' illness, the apprehensions excited on the Friday, the fluctuating accounts of that same day; the unfavourable news of the morning, the afternoon's opinion of the medical men at Windsor, that if the Prince could only bear up through that one night--the night now entered upon--all would be well. And now the latest tidings were that he was sinking!

Mrs. Cray forgot her own weakness, her fatigue, in these all-absorbing tidings. But it was as impossible for her to believe in the worst for him as it had been for the public. A few minutes of awestruck consternation, and hope reasserted its supremacy in her heart. Nay, not only hope, but a certainty that it "would be well." I honestly believe that such was the prevailing feeling in every breast. It was so hard, it was so hard to look upon the reverse side of the picture.

"We had heard nothing of this at Honfleur!"

"And we can't be said to have heard much of it here until today," was Watton's answer. "It has come upon us with startling suddenness. Oh, if we can but get better tidings in the morning!"

"We shall be sure to do that, Watton," said Caroline, in a low, hopeful tone. "Death surely could not come to him."

Watton made her some tea, and she sat over the fire in the sitting-room while she drank it. She could not eat: generally her appetite was good, but fatigue and excitement had taken it away tonight. She told of her residence in the French town, she hinted slightly at their want of success, and Watton looked grave as she spoke of her side.

"You think the London doctors can cure you, Miss Caroline?"--for the old name came far more familiar to Watton than the new one.

"I did think so," replied Caroline, feeling that the strong conviction of this, which had amounted to a disease in Honfleur, had in some unexplainable manner gone out of her. "I seem not to be sure of it, as I was before I came."

"And shall you make a long stay in London?"

"About a week. I have come for advice only, not to stay to be cured. Aunt Bettina's is no house for me; and perhaps I cannot even stay there at all. Captain Davenal and his wife may have arrived."

She heaved a sigh of weary despondency. Watton urged her to retire; but Caroline felt at rest in the easy chair, and still sat on. It was so long since she had seen a home face, or conversed with a home tongue.

"Who was that gentleman who passed us as I was coming in?" she asked, "he who spoke of the Prince?" And Watton replied that it was Mr. Comyng, a junior partner of the house, and the only one of the partners who resided there.

It wanted scarce a quarter to twelve when Caroline at length went upstairs to a very high bedroom. Whether it was Watton's room, or not Caroline did not know, but it had been made cheery. The curtains and bed were white and pleasant-looking, and a fire sparkled in the grate. Watton would have stayed with her to help her undress, but Caroline preferred to be alone.

When left to herself, she drew aside the window-curtains, and saw that the room faced the front: there stood old St Paul's, grim and formidable, and apparently so close to her that she might have fancied it within a leap. Letting the curtain remain open, she sat down at the fire, before which was drawn a chair as easy as the one downstairs.

She sat with her head pillowed on the high arm, gazing at the blaze, and musing over present events. Their strangely uncertain life at Honfleur, poor Mark's position and poverty, her own malady and the curious manner in which she had lost that eager faith in the result of her journey, her reception on the morrow by Miss Davenal--and with all these thoughts were mingled more prominently the tidings which had greeted her since her entrance.

Unconsciously to herself she dropped into a doze. It was a very foolish thing to do, of course, for she would have been much better in bed; but none of us are wise always. She dozed placidly; and the first thing that in the least aroused her, and that only partially, was the booming out in her ear of a deep-toned bell.

"St. Paul's clock striking twelve," was the supposition that crossed her mind in its state of semi-sleep. But ere many minutes had gone by she became alive to the fact that the striking did not cease, that the strokes of the bell were tolling out fast and loud as--as--a death-bell strikes out.

It has not been the fate of many to hear the bell of St. Paul's Cathedral strike out at midnight. Those who have will never forget it during life. Never, never, will it be forgotten by those few who heard it as it went booming into the air on that still December night, bearing forth its message of woe to the startled hearts of the metropolis.

For a brief moment Mrs. Cray wondered what was the matter. She sprang out of her chair and stood staring at the edifice, as if in mute inquiry of what it meant. And then--when she remembered what had been said that night--and the recollection flashed on her with that heart-sickness that generally accompanies some awful terror--she opened the window and leaned out.

Three or four persons were standing underneath, motionless, still as if they had collected there to gaze at the dark cathedral, to listen to the booming bell. "What is it?" she called out "What does it mean?"

Her voice, raised by excitement to unnatural strength and clearness, was heard distinctly. Those standing below looked up. In one of them she thought she recognised Mr. Comyng. He was standing bare-headed, his hat in his hand, and his solemn answer came up to her in the stillness of the night.

"Prince Albert's gone."

A moment of bewildering suspense, while the mind refused to admit the dreadful truth, and Caroline Cray turned sick and faint. And then the sobbing cry burst from her heart and lips--a cry that was to find its echo from thousands and thousands as the hours went on--

"Oh, the Queen! the Queen! May God help and support the Queen!"

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LV. A DESOLATE NIGHT

Yes, he was gone. Great Britain rose on the Sunday morning to the news, for the telegraphs were at work, and the tidings were carried through the length and breadth of the land. And people did not believe it. It could not be! Why, it seemed but yesterday that he had come over in the flower of youth and promise to wed the fair young Queen! Dead! Prince Albert dead! None of you have forgotten the wide gap in the Litany that Sunday morning; the pale lips of the clergymen, compelled to make it; the quivering, breathless hearts that answered to it. But for the remembrance that God's ways are not as our ways, how many of those startled and grieved hearts would have felt tempted to question the why of the stroke, in their imperfect wisdom.

But to return to Caroline Cray, for the night was not yet over and the bell was ringing out. When the first immediate shock had passed, she quitted the window and leaned her head upon the counterpane. A solemn awe had laid hold of her, and she felt as she had never felt in all her life. Her whole soul seemed to go up in--may I dare to say?--heavenly commune. It was as if heaven had opened--had become very near. I may be mistaken, but I believe this same feeling was experienced by many in the first startling shock. This was so entirely unlike an ordinary death; even of one of our near and dear relatives. Heaven seemed no longer the far-off mysterious place she had been wont to regard it, but a home, a refuge, all near and real. It had opened and taken him in; in his early manhood; in his full usefulness; in England's need; when that wife and royal lady had learned to lean upon him; when his sons and his daughters were growing up around him, some of them at the moment in other lands, out of reach of the loving farewell of his aching heart! with his mission here--it so seemed--only half-fulfilled!--it had taken him in before his time, and gathered him to his rest. He did not seem to have gone entirely away; he was only hidden beyond reach and sight for a little while; that same refuge would open for her, Caroline, and others; a little earlier, a little later, and she and all would follow him. Heavy as the blow was in itself, incapable as she was of understanding it, it yet seemed an earnest of the overruling presence of the living God. Oh, what was the poor world in that night, with the strokes of the death-bell sounding in her ears, compared to that never-ending world above, that heritage on which he had entered!

Fatigue and emotion did their most on Mrs. Cray. In the morning she was unable to get up, and Watton wisely and kindly urged that she should not rise at all that day, but take a good rest, and go on to Miss Davenal's on the morrow. So she lay where she was, and listened to that gloomy death-bell, as it periodically gave forth its sound; and the bursts of tears, in her bodily weakness could not be suppressed, but came forth repeatedly to wet the pillow, as she thought of the widowed Queen, the fatherless children.

The day's rest did her a great deal of good, and she rose on the Monday renovated and refreshed. A wish had come over her that she could see a doctor and learn her fate before she went to her aunt Bettina's. She had not come to town with the intention of consulting any particular surgeon;--indeed she hardly knew the name of one from another. Watton, when sitting with her on the Sunday night, had spoken of a noted surgeon living in Westminster, and Caroline remembered then to have heard Dr. Davenal speak of his skill: and she determined to go to him.

She went up in an early omnibus through the mourning streets. The bells were tolling, the shutters were partially closed, men and women stood in groups to converse, sadness pervading every countenance. The surgeon, Mr. Welch, was at home, but she had to wait her turn to be admitted to him.

He was not in the least like Monsieur Le Bleu, except in one little matter--he wore spectacles. A silent man, who looked more than talked; he bade Mrs. Cray tell her case to him from beginning to end in the best manner she was able, and he never took his spectacles from her face while she was doing so.

What she said necessitated an examination of the side. It could be but a slight one there, dressed as she was, but the surgeon appeared to form a pretty rapid opinion. She inquired whether it was curable, and he replied that he could not say upon so superficial an examination, but he would see her at home, if she would tell him where she lived. In her reply, when she said she had no home in London, it escaped her that her husband was a medical man living in France.

"What part of it?" he inquired.

"At Honfleur."

"Honfleur!" echoed the surgeon in an accent of surprise. "Is there sufficient practice to employ an English medical man at Honfleur? I should not have thought it. I was there a year or two ago."

The consciousness of the truth of what the "practice" was dyed her cheeks with their carmine flush. Her eyelids drooped, her trembling fingers entwined themselves convulsively one within the other, as if there were some sad tale to tell. Her bonnet was untied, and its rich white strings (for Watton had affixed these new ones, and taken off the dirty ones) fell on her velvet cloak, nearly the only good relic left of other days. That grave gentleman of sixty, seated opposite to her, thought he had never seen so lovely a face, with its fragile features, its delicate bloom, and its shrinking expression.

She raised her dark blue violet eyes, their lashes wet. Misfortune had brought to her a strange humility. "There's not much practice yet, sir. It may come with time."

He thought he could discern the whole case. It is that of some who go abroad; a struggle for existence, anxiety of mind and body, privation, and the latent constitutional weakness showing itself at last.

One single word of confidential sympathy, and Caroline burst into tears. Her spirits that morning were strangely low, and she had no power to struggle against emotion.

"I beg your pardon," she murmured apologetically when she could speak. "The fatigue of the long journey--the universal gloom around--I shall be better in a minute."

"Now tell me all about it," said Mr. Welch in a kind tone, when she had recovered. "There's an old saying, you know: 'Tell your whole case to your lawyer and your doctor,' and it is a good injunction. I like my patients to treat me as a friend. I suppose; the practice in Honfleur is worth about five francs every three months, and that you have suffered physically in consequence. Don't hesitate to speak: I can shake hands with your husband: when I was first in practice I had hardly bread to eat."

It was so exceedingly like the real fact, "about five francs every three months," and his manner and tone were so entirely kind and sympathising, that Mrs. Cray made no pretence of denial. The practice was really not enough to starve upon, she acknowledged: none of the English residents at Honfleur ever got ill.

"But why did your husband settle there? Was it his first essay?--his start in life?"

"O no. He was in practice at Hallingham before that, in partnership with Dr. Davenal."

"With Dr. Davenal!"

The repetition of the name, the astonished tone, recalled Mrs. Cray to a sense of her inadvertence. The admission had slipped from her carelessly, in the thoughtlessness of the moment. Mr. Welch saw that there was something behind, and he kept his inquiring eyes fixed upon her. She felt obliged to give some sort of explanation.

"After Dr. Davenal's death my husband gave up the medical profession, and embarked in something else. He thought he should like it better. But it--it---failed: And he went to Honfleur."

Her confusion--which she could not hide--was very palpable: it was confusion as well as distress. All in a moment the name, Cray, struck upon a chord in the surgeon's memory. It was his custom to take down the names of his patients ere he entered upon their cases, and he looked again at the memorandum-book before him. "Cray."

"Your husband is not the Mr. Cray who was connected with the Great Chwddyn Mine!" he exclaimed. "Marcus Cray?"

She was startled to tremor. There was no cause for it, of course the fact of its being known that she was Mark's wife could not result in their taking him. But these unpleasant recognitions do bring a fear with them, startling as it is vague.

"Don't be alarmed," said the surgeon kindly, discerning the exact state of the case. "I do not wish ill to your husband. I was no shareholder in the company. Not but that I felt an inclination for a dip into it, and might have had it, had the thing gone on."

"It was not Mr. Cray's fault," she gasped. "He would have kept the water out had it been in his power: its coming in ruined him. I cannot see--I have never been able to see--why everybody should be so much against him."

"I cannot understand why he need keep away," was the answering remark.

He looked at her inquiringly as he spoke. She shook her head in a helpless sort of manner: she had never clearly understood it either.

"Ah well; I see you don't know much; you young wives rarely do. Did you know Dr. Davenal?"

"He was my uncle," she said. "He brought me up. I was Miss Caroline Davenal."

Another moment of surprise for Mr. Welch. It seemed so impossible for a niece of the good and flourishing physician-surgeon to be so reduced, as he suspected she was--almost homeless, friendless, penniless.

She was struggling with her tears again. With the acknowledgment her memory had gone back to the old home, the old days. She had scarcely believed then there was such a thing as care in the world; now----?

"You will tell me the truth about myself," she said, recovering composure. "I came to England to learn it. Pray don't deceive me. I am a doctor's wife you know, and can bear these shocks," she added, with a poor attempt at a smile. "Besides, I seem to know the fate that is in store for me: since Saturday night I have not felt that I should get well."

There was one moment of hesitation--of indecision. Caroline caught at it all too readily. "I see," she said, "there is no hope."

"I said nothing of the sort," he returned.

"But I am sure you think that there is not. Mr. Cray thought there might be an operation: the French doctor said no."

"I cannot tell you anything decisive now. I will come to you if you will tell me where."

She gave him Miss Davenal's address. "I am so sorry to trouble you; I did not think of that. A few days and I shall go back to France."

"No," replied the surgeon. "You must not think of going back. It would not do."

"But I came. And it has not hurt me."

"You must not return."

He spoke in a tone so quietly grave that Caroline did not like it. Could it be that he knew she would be unable to go back? What would become of Mark? what would become of her? But she could not take up his time longer then.

"Is this right?" she asked timidly, as she laid a sovereign and a shilling on the table.

"It's quite wrong," said he. "Doctors don't prey upon one another. My dear lady, do you think I should take money from Dr. Davenal's niece?--or your husband's wife? Anything that I can possibly do for you I shall be most happy to do--and I am glad you happened to come to me."

She went out of the house. Why it should have been she could not tell, for certainly Mr. Welch's words had not induced it, but the conviction of a fatal termination, which had but dawned upon her before, had taken firm possession of her now. Lost in thought as she walked, she missed the turning by which she had gained the surgeon's house, and, found herself at last in a labyrinth, far away from omnibuses and anything else available.

One directed her this way; one directed her that. Weary, faint, unfit to move another step, she found herself at last in a street whose aspect seemed more familiar; but not until she caught sight of a door-plate, "Bracknell, Street, and Oswald Cray," did she recognise it to be Parliament Street.

The temptation to go in and ask to be allowed to rest was strong upon her, but she did not like to do so, and walked on, longing to sit down on every door-step. A little way further and she met Oswald Cray.

When the physical strength has been taxed beyond its power, especially in a peculiar case such as hers, any little break to it of mental excitement either renovates it for the moment or destroys it utterly. It was the latter case with Caroline.

"Mrs. Cray!" exclaimed Oswald, in surprise. "I did not know you were in London."

She caught hold of something in her faintness. Whether pillar, railings, post, she could not have told. Her brow grew moist, her lips white. Oswald hastened to support her.

"I have lost my way," she gasped, leaning heavily upon him. "I missed it when I came out of the surgeon's, Mr. Welch. I came over from Honfleur on Saturday, Oswald; I came to consult an English doctor. I am dying."

"Dying!" repeated Oswald. "No, no, it is only a little faintness."

"Not this. I shall be better of this directly. It is my side. I'll tell you about it when the faintness has passed. I thought there was no hope for me. I know it now."

He was leading her gently, by slow steps, towards the house. "How is Mark? Is he here too?" he asked.

"Not Mark. He cannot come, you know."

"Is he getting on?"

"Oh, Oswald! getting on! There's no practice; and we have not a penny-piece; and--I--I am dying. Oh, if I had not to die abroad! If Mark could but come to me."

"Where are you staying?" he asked after a pause.

"Watton gave me shelter. It was late when the boat got up, too late to go on to my aunt Bettina's, and I called at Watton's, and asked her to take me in. Oswald!--Oswald!--"

"What?" he asked, for she had dropped her voice, and her utterance seemed to be impeded by emotion.

"I heard the bell toll out for Prince Albert! I was close to it!"

"Ah!"

"Oswald! can you realise the fact that he is dead?"

"Not yet; scarcely yet. It is difficult to believe that he is taken, while we are left. It seems to us, in our finite notions, that there's hardly a man in the realm but could have been better spared. But God knows best."

His tone of pain had changed to reverence. There was no more said until they reached his door. He assisted her upstairs to the old sitting-room, the same sitting-room, with the same plans and charts and signs of work on its table. Oswald was a full partner now. Industry--trustful, patient, persevering, fair-dealing industry--had met with its reward. Did you ever know it fail? I never did.

Mr. Bracknell had virtually retired from the firm, leaving most of its profit to Mr. Street and Oswald Cray. Had Miss Sara Davenal been the daughter of the still-living and flourishing physician, on whom not a cloud rested, as was the case in the years gone by, Oswald could have asked for her hand now, and given her a home that even he would have deemed worthy of her.

Not having her, however, or any other lady, as a wife in prospective, he was content to let the home remain in abeyance, and lived in the old rooms, putting up with the comforts and agreeables Mrs. Benn chose to provide for him. The first thing Caroline did, on being placed on an easy chair, was to faint away. It was the only time she had fainted since the day in October when she walked to the Côte de Grâce. Mark Cray gave fatigue the benefit of the blame then, and it was probably due to the same cause now. When Mrs. Benn came up in answer to Oswald's summons, nothing could well exceed her amazement at seeing a lifeless lady lying in the chair, her bonnet hanging at the back by its strings, her gloves on the ground, and Mr. Oswald Cray rubbing her unconscious hands.

The first thought that occurred to Mrs. Benn was one of wonder how she got there: the second, that it was some stranger who had come to the offices on business, and had been taken ill.

"She's married, at any rate," remarked that lady, as she took up the left hand to chafe it. "But nobody would say so to look in her face. She's like a girl."

"Don't you know her?" returned Oswald, glancing at the woman. "It is Mrs. Cray; my brother's wife."

Mrs. Benn gave a shriek in her surprise. "Her! Why, sir, how she's altered! She looks fit----"

"Hush!" was his interrupting caution, for Caroline began to revive. "Can't we improvise a sofa or mattress, or something of that sort, to place her on?"

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LVI. NO HOPE

In the same house at Pimlico, and in the same attire as of yore, save that the deeper mourning had been exchanged for rich silks, and the black ribbons on the real guipure caps for white or grey, sat Miss Bettina Davenal. She was not altered. She had the same stately presence, the same pale, refined features; she was of a stamp that changes little, and never seems to grow old. Sara had changed more than her aunt, and the earnest, sweet expression, always characteristic of her face, was mingled now with habitual sadness. She wore a robe of soft grey cashmere, its white collar tied with ribbon, and bows of the same ornamenting the lace sleeves shading her delicate wrists.

Miss Bettina stood, grandly courteous; Sara's cheeks were flushed, and she played with a key which had happened to be in her hand as she rose. Oswald Cray had come in unexpectedly, and was telling the story of Caroline; telling it rapidly, before he took the chair offered him. What with the extraordinary nature of the news, and Miss Bettina's inaptitude for hearing, it was a difficult business as usual.

"Come over from Honfleur in a goods-boat, and it didn't get here?" exclaimed Miss Bettina, commenting on what she did hear--for Oswald repeated the particulars Caroline had disclosed to him on her revival. "And where do you say she's lying, sir?"

"In my sitting-room in Parliament Street."

"The boat is?" questioned Miss Bettina, looking at Oswald keenly, as if she thought he had lost his senses. "I beg your pardon Mr. Oswald Cray, I must have misunderstood."

"Caroline is lying there, not the boat. I fear she is very ill. She looks so; and she says she is suffering from some fatal complaint."

"Fatal mistake! I should think so," returned Miss Bettina. "If ever a man made that, it was Mark Cray when he threw up Hallingham. But what's she come for? And why did she go to you instead of to me?"

But Sara had drawn near to Oswald. She had heard the explanation aright, and the words "fatal complaint" frightened her. "Do you know what it is?" she asked. "Is she very ill?"

"She is so ill, if her looks may be trusted, that I should think she cannot live long," he answered. "I came down to you at once. Something must be done with her; we cannot let her go back to Watton's. If you are unable to receive her, I will get a lodging--"

"But we are not unable to receive her," interrupted Sara. "Of course we are not. My aunt--"

"Caroline doubted whether you had room. She has just told me you were expecting Captain Davenal and his wife."

"We are looking for their arrival daily. Perhaps the ship may be in today. But they will not stay with us: Lady Reid expects them there. Did you not know Edward was coming?" she continued, quitting for a moment the subject of Caroline. "His wife's father is dead, and business is bringing them home. She has come into a large fortune."

"Will you let me understand what this matter is?" interposed Miss Bettina.

It recalled them to the present. But to make Miss Bettina understand--or rather hear--was a work not speedily accomplished. She even was aware of it herself.

"I am not myself today, sir," she said to Oswald Cray. "I have not been myself since yesterday morning. When the tidings were brought to me that--that it was all over with that good Prince--I felt as I had never felt in my life before. It is not a common death, Mr. Oswald Cray, or a common loss, even had we been prepared for it. But we were not prepared. That Royal Lady and her children were not prepared; and we can but pray God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, to love and help them."

"Amen!" responded the heart of Oswald.

When there was a real necessity for Miss Bettina Davenal's relenting in her severity, she did relent. She returned with Mr. Oswald Cray, and Sara went with them. On her way she spoke to him about the rise in his prospects, a rumour of which she had heard from Neal.

"Is it true?" she asked, bending forward to catch his answer, as he sat opposite to her in the carriage.

"It is true that my share has been considerably increased. Mr. Bracknell has retired."

"I suppose you will take a house now?"

"I think not," said Oswald. "Single men don't care to set up a house of their own."

"What men don't?"

"Unmarried men."

"Oh," said Miss Bettina. "Do you never intend to marry?"

Oswald laughed. "I have no time to think about it, Miss Bettina."

Miss Bettina did not catch the answer. "Some time ago we had reason given us to think that you were about to marry. Did you change your mind?"

It was a home question. Oswald could have joked it off but for that gentle, conscious, Dent face in the opposite corner. "We have to give up all kinds of fond dreams and visions, you know, Miss Bettina. Youth is very apt to indulge in such: and they mostly turn out vain."

"Turned out vain, did she? I must say I did not think she was in a position worthy of you."

Oswald opened his eyes. "Of whom are you speaking, Miss Davenal?"

"Of you. I was not speaking of any one else."

"But the lady? You alluded to a lady."

"Oh, the lady. You don't want me to tell you her name. You know it well enough. That young Scotch lady whose brother was ill."

He breathed with a feeling of relief. A fear had come over him that his dearest feelings had been exposed to Miss Davenal--perhaps to others. Sara's colour heightened, and she raised her eyes momentarily. They met Oswald's: and she was vexed with herself.

"I shall most likely live a bachelor all my days, Miss Davenal. I believe I shall."

"More unwise of you, Mr. Oswald Cray! Bachelors are to be pitied. They never get a cup of decent tea or a button on their shirts."

"I am independent of buttons; I have set up studs. See," he continued, showing his wrists. "And tea I don't particularly care for."

Miss Bettina thought he was serious. "You'd be happier as a married man, with somebody to take care of your comforts. It is so different with women; they are happiest single--at least, such is my belief--and their comforts are in their own hands."

"The difficulty is to find somebody suitable, Miss Bettina. Especially to us busy men, who have no time to look out."

"True," she answered. But whether she heard or not was another matter. "What's Mark Cray about?" she presently asked, somewhat abruptly. "Doing any more harm?"

"I hear he is not doing any good. There's no practice in Honfleur."

"No politics?"

"Practice."

"Nobody in their senses would have thought there was. Perhaps he expects to get up a mining scheme there, and dazzle the French."

"If he is to do any good for himself, he must come over and get clear of the mining scheme here," observed Oswald.

Miss Davenal nodded her head and drew in her lips. It was not often that she condescended to make the slightest allusion to Mark Cray.

Mrs. Cray was asleep when they entered. She lay on the couch hastily improvised for her, dressed, and covered with a warm counterpane. One hand was under her wan cheek, the other lay outside, white, attenuate, cold. Miss Bettina Davenal took one look; one look only with those keen eyes of hers. It was quite enough, and an exclamation of dismay broke from her lips. Caroline opened her eyes and gazed around in bewilderment.

"Aunt Bettina! Have they brought you to see me? Will you take me in for a day or two until I can go back?"

"I have come for you," said Miss Bettina.

Until I can go back! Poor thing! what had she to go back to? A lodging in a foreign land that they might be turned from at any hour, for the rent could not be paid up; scanty nourishment, care, trouble, almost despair. Only Mark to lean upon, with his wavering instability: his vague chatter of the something that was to "turn up." Better depend upon a reed than upon Mark Cray.

Sara Davenal had drawn back for a moment, that the shock on her own face might be subdued before presenting it to Caroline. Oswald passed round to her.

"Is she dying?" came the frightened whisper.

"Do not be alarmed," he answered. "She looked worse than this when I first brought her in. She has had a good deal of excitement and fatigue these last few days, and that tells upon her appearance."

"Yes--but--do you know there's a look in her face that puts me in mind of papa's. Of papa's as it was the night he died."

It was not often that Sara gave way to emotion. The moisture had gathered on her brow, and her hands were trembling. Oswald gently laid his hand upon her shoulder.

"You are not going to faint, surely, Sara!"

"No, no "--and the slightest possible smile parted her trembling lips. "I used to think I was very brave, but lately--at times--I have found myself a coward. I seem to become afraid at trifles," she continued in a dreamy tone, as if debating the question with herself why it should be so.

"Where's Sara? I thought I saw her."

Sara moved forward at the words. She suppressed all sign of emotion as she stooped over her cousin. Caroline was the one to show it now. She burst into tears and sobbed hysterically.

"If Uncle Richard were but alive! He could cure me."

"Don't, Caroline, don't distress yourself. There are doctors as clever as papa was."

"I kept thinking"--she turned her colourless face to Sara as she spoke--"I kept thinking at Honfleur of Uncle Richard; that if the old days could come back again, and I were at home with him at Hallingham in the old house as it used to be, I should be well soon. The thought kept haunting me. And, Sara, I am sure if my uncle were alive he could cure me. I shall never believe otherwise."

She paused. Sara knew not what reply to make. Miss Davenal did not catch the words, and Oswald leaned on the back of a chair in silence, only looking at her as she lay.

"Why should this conviction have haunted me? Uncle Richard was gone. Mark kept dinning in my ears that there were other doctors as good as Dr. Davenal, and at last I grew to think so too, because they were English. So I came over; I should have had a fever or died if I had not come; and now I see how foolish the hope was, for they can't cure me. Nobody could do it but Uncle Richard."

Miss Bettina had been bending her ear close to the invalid, and caught the sense of the words. "Why do you think nobody can cure you?"

"I feel that they can't. No: Uncle Richard's gone, and there's no chance for me."

They got her ready, Oswald helped her down to the carriage, and she was conveyed home. The only home she would henceforth know in this world. Dorcas stood in the passage, and looked on askance as she entered the house. That the blooming young bride whom she had received into the Abbey at Hallingham little more than two short years before!

Sara gave up her room to her as the most commodious one in the house, herself taking the chamber at the back of it, which had been occasionally occupied by Dick and Leo. Caroline looked round the room as she lay in bed, a curious, inquiring sort of gaze in her eyes.

"Have I been in this room before?" she suddenly asked.

She had never been in it. Her visits to Miss Bettina's, during the prosperity in Grosvenor Place, were not sufficiently familiar to allow of her entering the bedrooms. Sara told her she had never yet been in it.

"I seem to know it all; I seem to have seen it before. I suppose it's a sign that I shall die in it."

She spoke dreamily, alluding to a foolish superstition that she had heard in her childhood, and probably had never thought of since. It was not a very promising beginning.

Miss Davenal wrote a line to Mr. Welch, the surgeon, and he called in the evening. Caroline was better then, calm and cheerful. Her spirits had revived in a wonderful manner; but it was in her nature to be subject to these sudden fluctuations.

"Shall I get well?" she asked, when his examination was over.

"I will do what I can for you. The pain I think can be very considerably alleviated."

It was not a satisfactory answer. To most ears it might have savoured of considerate evasion, but it did not to Caroline's. "Must there be an operation?" she resumed.

"No."

She looked up at him from the depths of her violet eyes, pausing before she spoke again. "Monsieur Le Bleu said there must be an operation, if it could be performed. If, he said; he did not seem sure. It was the only chance, he said."

The surgeon met the remark jokingly. "Monsieur Le Bleu's very clever--as he no doubt thinks. I will see you again tomorrow, Mrs. Cray."

"But--stay a moment. Tell me at least by which day I shall be ready to go back. You can put me in the proper way of treatment, and I will pursue it over there."

"Not by any day. You must not think of returning to France."

She looked puzzled: there was a wild expression in her eyes. "Do you mean that I shall not be able to return at all?"

"Yes, I do. I say that you must not venture upon the shores of France again. We can't think of trusting you to the care of that clever French doctor, you know."

And before Caroline had recovered her surprise sufficiently to rejoin, Mr. Welch had left the chamber and was down in the drawing-room with Miss Davenal. She bent her head as she waited for his opinion.

"Do you wish for the truth, ma'am?" he asked.

"Wish for what?" repeated Miss Bettina, putting her hand to her ear.

"The truth."

"Do I wish for the truth?" she retorted, affronted at the question. "Sir, I am the daughter of one surgeon and the sister of another; I don't know to whom the truth may be told if not to me. It is necessary that I should know it."

Mr. Welch gave her the truth: that there was no hope whatever. At least, what he said was equivalent to that.

"And the operation that she talks of?"

"It cannot be performed. The case is not an ordinary one."

Miss Bettina was for a minute silent. "My brother, Dr. Davenal, always said Caroline had no constitution."

"Dr. Davenal was right," returned the surgeon. "Mrs. Cray is one--if I may form a judgment upon so short an acquaintance--who could never, even under the most auspicious surroundings, have lived to grow old."

"I remember a remark he made to me after Caroline's marriage with Mark Cray was fixed--that it was well she should marry a doctor, for she'd need watching. A fine doctor, indeed!" continued Miss Bettina, irascibly, as she recalled Mark's later career. "If my poor brother had but known! I suppose it is all this disgrace that has brought it on!"

"It may have hastened it," said the surgeon. "But this, or some other disease, would inevitably have developed itself sooner or later. The germs were within her."

"And now what can be done for her?"

"Nothing in the world can be done for her, as regards a cure. We must try and alleviate the pain. That she will now grow worse rapidly there's not a doubt. Miss Davenal, she must be kept tranquil."

It was all very well for Mr. Welch to say she must be kept tranquil; but Caroline Cray was one who had had an absolute spirit of her own all her life, and an excitable one. When Miss Bettina went up to her room after the departure of the surgeon she found her in a wild state. Her cheeks were crimson with incipient fever, her eyes glistening. Sara, terrified, was holding her down in bed: begging her to be reasonable.

"I want to go back at once, Aunt Bettina," she exclaimed, throwing out her arms in a sort of frenzy. "He says I can't go back to France, but I will go. What does he know about it, I wonder? I was well enough to come, and I am well enough to go back! Be quiet, Sara! Why do you wish to prevent my speaking? You'll send me back today, won't you, Aunt Bettina?"

"I'll send for a strait waistcoat and put you into that," shrilly cried Miss Bettina in her vexation. "This is a repetition of the childishness of the old days."

"I won't be separated from Mark. Though he has been mistaken and imprudent, he is still my husband. It's a shame that Mr. Welch should want to keep me here! Don't you be so cruel as to side with him, Aunt Bettina."

For once in her life Miss Bettina Davenal lent herself to an evasive compromise. She promised Caroline that she should go back when she was a little stronger, perhaps in two or three days, she said. And it had the desired effect. It soothed away the invalid's dangerous excitement, and she turned round on her pillow and went to sleep quietly.

But as the days went on, and the disease--as the surgeon had foretold--rapidly developed itself, it became plain to Mrs. Cray herself that returning to France was out of the question. And then her tone changed. She no longer prayed in impatient words to be sent: she bewailed in impassioned tones that she must die away from her husband. One day, towards the end of December, it almost seemed that her brain was slightly affected, perhaps from weakness. She started suddenly from the sofa in the drawing-room, where she was reclining, and seized hold of the hands of her aunt in a wild manner.

"O Aunt Bettina! Aunt Bettina! if I had not to go over there to die!"

"Over where?" cried Miss Bettina. "What are you talking of, child?"

"There. Honfleur. If I had not to go! If I could but stop in my own land, among you to the last! It may not be for long!"

Miss Bettina, what with the suddenness of the attack and her own deafness, was bewildered. "I don't hear," she helplessly said.

"They have got two cemeteries, but I'd not like to lie in either," went on Caroline. "Mark won't stop in the town for ever, and there'd be nobody to look at my grave. Aunt, aunt, I can't go over there to die!"

"But you are not going there," returned Miss Bettina, catching the sense of the words. "You must be dreaming, Caroline. You are not going back to Honfleur."

"I must go. I can't die away from Mark. Aunt, listen!" she passionately continued, clasping the wrist of Miss Bettina until that lady felt the pain. "It is one of two things: either I must go to Honfleur, or Mark must come here. I cannot die away from him."

The cry was reiterated until it grew into a wail of agony. She was suffering herself to fall into that excess of nervous agitation so difficult to soothe, so pernicious to the sick frame. Sara came in alarmed, and learned the nature of the excitement. She leaned over the sofa with a soothing whisper.

"Dear Carine! only be quiet: only be comforted! We will manage to get Mark here."

The low tone, the gentle words, seemed partially to allay the storm of the working brain. Caroline turned to Sara.

"What do you say you'll do?"

"Get Mark over to London."

She thought for a moment, and then shook her head and spoke wearily, a wailing plaint in her tone.

"You will never get him over. He is not to be got over. I know Mark better than you, Sara. So long as that miserable Wheal Bang hangs over his head he will not set his foot on English ground. I have heard him say so times upon times since he left these shores, and he will not break his word. He is afraid, you see. O Aunt Bettina!" throwing up her arms again in renewed excitement--"what an awful mistake it was!"

"What was a mistake?" returned Miss Bettina, catching the last word and no other.

"What!" echoed the unhappy invalid in irritation. "The quitting Hallingham; the past altogether. It was giving up the substance for the shadow. If we had but listened to you! If Mark had never heard of the Great Wheal Bang!"

Oh, those ifs, those ifs! how they haunt us through life! How many of us are perpetually giving up the substance for the shadow!

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LVII. DREADFUL TREACHERY

Mr. Mark Cray stood on the little bit of low stony ground that bordered the coast at Honfleur, just outside the entrance of the harbour. Mr. Mark was kicking pebbles into the water. Being in a remarkably miserable and indecisive state of mind, having nothing on earth to do, he had strolled out of his lodgings anywhere that his legs chose to carry him; and there he was, looking into the water on that gloomy winter's evening.

But pray don't fear that he had any ulterior designs of making himself better acquainted with its chilly depths. Men in the extremity of despair have been known to entertain such; Mark Cray never would have dreamt of it. There was an elasticity in Mark's spirit, a shallowness of feeling quite incompatible with that sad state of mind hinted at, and the most prominent question pervading Mark, even now was, how long it would be before something "turned up."

Not but that Mark Cray was miserable enough; in a bodily sense, however, rather than a mental. It was not an agreeable state of things by any means to have no money to go on with; to be wanting it in a hundred odd ways; to be told that if he did not pay up at his lodgings that week he must turn out of them--and the French have an inconvenient way of not allowing you to evade such mandates. It was not pleasant to be reduced to a meal or so a day, and that not a sumptuous one; it was not convenient to be restricted to the pair of boots he had on, and to know that the soles were letting in the wet; it was not cheery to be out of charcoal for the cooking réchauds, or to have but a shovelful of coals left for the parlour; moreover and above all, it was most especially annoying and unbearable not to have had the money to pay for a letter that morning, and which, in consequence of that failure, the inexorable postman had carried away with him.

Mrs. Cray's assertion--that her husband never would be got over to London so long as the formidable Wheal Bang threatened danger--proved to be a correct one. Mark had declined the invitation to go. News had been conveyed to him in an unmistakably impressive manner of the state his wife was in, and an urgent mandate sent that he should join her. Oswald only waited his consent to forward him funds for the journey; and poor Caroline hinted in a few private lines that he could choose a steamer which would not make the port of London until after dark, and could wear his spectacles in landing. All in vain. Mark Cray had somehow contrived to acquire a wholesome terror of the British shores, and to them he would not be enticed.

But--has it ever struck you in your passage through life how wonderfully things work round? Caroline Cray was dying; was wanting her husband to be by her side and see the last of her, as it was only right and natural she should; but he--looking at things as he looked at them--was debarred from going to her; it was--judging as he judged--a simple impossibility that he should go. And this great barrier was turning her mind to frenzy, was making a havoc of her dying hours, and increasing her bodily sufferings in an alarming degree.

It did seem an impossibility. If Mark Cray refused to venture to his own land so long as the Wheal Bang held its rod over him, it was next door to certain that he could not come at all. The Wheal Bang's shareholders would not relax their threats except on the payment of certain claims, and who would be sufficiently philanthropic to pay them? Nobody in the wide world. So there appeared to be no hope of Mark's return; and the knowledge that there was not was entirely taking from Caroline Cray that tranquillity of mind and body which ought if possible to attend the last passage to the tomb: nay, it was keeping her in a state of excitement that was pitiable for herself and for all who beheld her. "If Mark could but come!" was the incessant cry night and day. "I can't die unless Mark comes."

You have heard that beautiful phrase, "Man's extremity is God's opportunity," and though it may strike you as almost irreverent to introduce any matter connected with Mark Cray as an exemplification of it, what came to pass was surely very like a proof of the truth of that phrase. Poor, erring, shallow-pated Mark! even he was remembered, neglectful as he had been of the Great Remembrancer.

While Caroline was lifting her hands to heaven with a vain cry in which there was no trust; while it seemed to all that there was no human feasibility of bringing Mark to England, that feat was accomplished in the easiest and most unexpected manner. Is it too much to say that a Higher Power was at work in answer to that poor woman's despairing cry?--though the human agencies employed were of the least exalted.

Mr. Barker, who was doing something grand and good (good in his sense) in Paris, found it necessary for his own plans to pay a visit to London. And when there, he, to use his own phrase got "dropped upon;" in other words he fell into the still outstretched hands of the Great Wheal Bang. That it was unexpected to himself there's no doubt; for he was one of those men who believe implicitly in their own luck. Once in the mesh, Barker resolved to make the best of it. He had done nothing wrong, nothing that he could be punished for, and he carelessly told them that his only motive in not surrendering beforehand was the bother of having the accounts to go over. Perhaps it really was so.

Mr. Barker's usual luck attended him now. After he was arrested and had been kept in durance for four days, the shareholders released him. The very shareholders themselves released him; the wronged, imitated, angry shareholders! Surely there was some charm in Barker's tongue! He talked them over to the most miraculous degree; and they took him out of prison, somebody going bail for the single debt on which he had been taken. Now that the thing had come to a crisis Barker was as eager as they were to get it to a settlement, and he went to work with a will. A settlement, however, could not be come to without the presence of Mark Cray; Mark and Barker were both made bankrupts, and it was necessary that Mark should come over--or else never come over any shore. So Barker wrote for him.

We left Mark standing on the water's edge. He was all unconscious of these doings at home which so nearly affected him; and he stood there speculating as to what news the letter, refused to him in the morning, contained. By some mischance Barker had neglected fully to prepay it; he had put on a fourpenny stamp, but the letter turned out to be over weight by a hair's breadth, and of course the Honfleur postal authorities declined to give it up.

"What he's doing in London puzzles me," cogitated Mark,--for he had recognised the writing on the letter as Barker's. "He told me he should not show himself there until the bother was over. What took him there now, I wonder?"

He stopped to single out a particularly shiny stone imbedded in the mud, lifted it up with his toe, and kicked it into the water. A little shrimping-boat was making towards him, for it was low tide, laden with its spoils of the day. But it was not very near yet.

"It's well that she should have gone over as she did," he resumed, his thoughts reverting to his wife. "Heaven knows I should like to be with her; but she has all she wants there, and here she'd have nothing. I wish I could be with her! As to their saying--that Welch, or whatever his name is: I don't remember any great light of that name--that she's incurable, I don't believe it. That old Blue said the same, or wanted to say it--such jargon as the fellow talked to be sure!--but Blue's nothing better than an old woman. By the way, I wonder how long Blue intends to stop away! It's fine for these French fellows, taking a holiday when they choose, and leaving their patients to a confrère! I wish he had left me the confrère on the occasion, t'would have been a few francs, at any rate, in my pocket. The French wouldn't have had that, I suppose! their envious laws won't permit an Englishman to practice on them. Oh, if some rich countryman of one's own would but get ill!"

Mark Cray strolled a few steps either way, and halted again in the same place as before; he kicked six stones into the water, one after the other, the seventh was an obstinate one, and would not come out. Dull and dreary did the waves look that evening, under the grey and leaden sky. That's speaking rather metaphorically, you know, for in point of fact there are no waves off Honfleur, except in the stormiest of weather.

That Mark Cray's condition was a forlorn one nobody can dispute. He had no friends or acquaintance in the town; a latent, ever-present consciousness of their straits, their position and its secrets, had caused him and his wife to abstain from making any, And one or two English residents who had shown themselves disposed to be friendly were repulsed at the onset. Not a single person within reach could Mark Cray apply to with the slightest justifiable plea of acquaintanceship and say, Lend me sixteen sous; that I may pay for a letter! Even Monsieur Le Bleu, as you have gathered from his soliloquy, was away. But Mark wished much to get that letter, and he was thinking how he could get it at this very moment as he looked out across the water to the opposite coast, to the dark cloud that hung over Harfleur.

"'Twould be of no use going to the post-office unless I took the money," he soliloquised. "They'd never let me have it without. Stingy old frogs! What's sixteen sous that they can't trust a fellow? Help must come to me soon from some quarter or other; things can't stand in their present plight. That very, letter may have money in it."

Grumbling, however, would not bring him the letter, neither would kicking pebbles into the manche: Mr. Mark Cray grew tired of his pastime, and turned finally away from it. He sauntered through the waste ground underneath the side windows of the hotel, his ears nearly deafened by the noise of the rough boys who were quarrelling in groups over their marbles, made a détour across the bridge, glanced askance at the slip of building grandly designated Bureau des Postes, and turned off towards his home. It was a soft, calm evening in January, gloomy enough overhead, but in the west the sky was clearing, and a solitary star came peeping out, imbedded like a diamond in its grey setting. To a mind less matter-of-fact than Mark Cray's that star might have seemed as a ray of hope; an earnest that skies do not remain gloomy for ever.

Mark turned in at his little garden, and was about to ring gingerly at the house door; as one, not upon the most cordial terms with a frowning landlady, likes to ring; when a voice in the road greeted him.

"Bon soir!"

"Ben soir," returned Mark, supposing it was but the courteous salutation of some chance passer-by, and not troubling himself to turn his head.

"Et madame? quelles nouvelles avez-vous d'elle?"

Mark wheeled round. It was Monsieur Le Bleu.

Mark Cray extended his hand, and his face lighted up. In his desolation even this French doctor was inexpressively welcome.

"I didn't know you were back, Mr. Blue: savais pas que vous retournez, messeu," added he, taking his customary plunge into the mysteries of French.

"I come from return this after-midday," said the surgeon. "I ask, sare, if you have the news from madame?"

"She's worse, and can't come back," said Mark. "Plus malade. Not to be cured at all, they say, which I don't believe; pas croyable; messeu. I don't believe the English médecin understands the case. Non! jamais."

"Do I not say two--three--four months ago, me? I know she not curable I feel sure what it was. You call it 'lump' and 'bouton'--bah! C'est une tumeur fibreuse. I say to you, mon ami, you--tiens! c'est le facteur!"

For the facteur had come up at an irregular hour, and this it was which had caused Monsieur Le Bleu's remark of surprise. The bureau des postes had despatched him to offer the letter a second time to Mark.

"Has monsieur got the money now?" he demanded in quick French, which was a vast deal more intelligible to his French auditor than his English one. "If not, our bureau won't be at the pains to offer the letter a third time, and monsieur must get the letter from the bureau himself if he wants it."

What with the amount of French all at once and the embarrassment of the situation, Mark Cray devoutly wished the postman underneath the waters of the manche. That functionary, however, stood his ground where he was, and apparently had no intention of leaving it. He bent over the gate, the letter in his outstretched hand. Monsieur Le Bleu looked on him with some interest, curious to know why the letter had been refused. He inquired why of Mark, and Mark muttered some unintelligible words in answer, speaking in French so excessively obscure that the surgeon could not understand a syllable.

So he turned for information to the facteur. "Did Monsieur dispute the charge?" he asked.

"Not at all," replied the man. "It was not a dispute as to charge. The English Monsieur had no money. It was a double letter: sixteen sous."

"Ah, no change," said Monsieur Le Bleu, with a delicacy that many might have envied, as he turned his eyes from Mark Cray's downcast face. "It's a general complaint. I never knew the small change so scarce as it is: one can get nothing but gold. Hold, I'll take the letter from you, facteur, and monsieur can repay me when he gets change."

The surgeon handed the sixteen sous to the postman, and gave the letter to Mark. Mark spoke some obscure words about repaying him on the morrow, and broke the seal.

There was still light enough to see, though very obscurely, and Mark Cray's dazed eyes fell on a bank-note for £5. The surgeon had bade him goodnight, and was walking away with the postman: Mark Cray was only half-conscious of their departure. Debt did not affect Mark as it does those ultra-sensitive spirits who can but sink under its ills: nevertheless, he did feel as if an overwhelming weight had been taken from him.

He rang at the bell, loudly now, feeling not so afraid of madame, should she answer it. And he lighted his little lamp and read the letter. Read it almost in disbelief, half doubting whether its good news could indeed be true. For Mr. Barker had written all couleur de rose: and a very deep rose, too.

The Wheal Bang had come to its senses, and the worry was over. He, Barker, was upon confidential terms with all the shareholders, shook hands with them individually thrice a-day. There would be no fuss, no bother; the affairs were being wound up in the most amicable manner, and Mark had better come over without an hour's delay, and help. The sooner they got it done, the sooner they should be free to turn their attention to other matters, and he, Barker, had a glorious thing on hand just now, safe to realise three thousand a-year.

Such were the chief contents of the letter. Whether Barker believed in them fully himself, or whether he had dashed on a little extra colouring as to the simplification of affairs relative to the Great Wheal Bang, cannot be told. It may be that he feared hesitation still on the part of Mark Cray, and wished to get him at once over. In point of fact, Mark's presence was absolutely necessary to the winding-up.

Mark yielded without the slightest hesitation. If Mark Cray had confidence in any one living being, it was Barker. He forthwith set about the arrangements for his departure. It would take more than the five-pound note to clear all that he owed in Honfleur; so he paid madame, and one or two trifles that might have proved productive of a little inconvenience at the time of starting, and got away quietly by the boat to Havre, and thence to London.

But, oh! the treachery of man! When the steamer reached the metropolis, Mark Cray walked boldly ashore in the full glare of day, never so much as shading his eyes from the sun with those charming blue spectacles you have heard of, never shrinking from the gaze of any mortal Londoner. Mark's confidence in the good-fellowship of the Wheal Bang's shareholders was restored, his trust in Barker implicit: if he felt a little timid on any score, it was connected with his clothes, which certainly did not give out quite so elegant a gloss as when they were spick and span new. Mark stood on the quay, after landing, and looked round for Barker, whom he had expected would be there to meet him.

"Cab, sir?"

"No," said Mark.

"I'll wait here a minute or two," decided Mark to himself. "Barker's sure to come. I wrote him word what time we might expect to be in--though we are shamefully late. He can't have been and gone again!"

Somebody came up and touched him on the shoulder. "Mr. Marcus Cray, I believe?"

Mark turned quickly. "Well?" said he to the intruder, a shabby-looking man.

"You are my prisoner, sir."

"What?" cried Mark.

"You are my prisoner, sir," repeated the stranger, making a sign to another man to come closer.

Mark howled and kicked, and for a moment actually fought with his assailants. It was of course a senseless thing to do; but the shock was so sudden. He had felt himself as secure, stepping on those shores, as any grand foreign ambassador could have felt; and now to find himself treacherously pounced upon in this way was beyond everything bitter. No wonder that for the minute Mark was mad.

"It can't be!" he shrieked; "you have no warrant for this. I am free as air; they wrote me word I was."

"Would you like a cab, sir?" inquired the official civilly, but not deigning to answer. "You can have one if you like. Call one, Jim."

A cab was called; the prisoner was helped into it and driven away--he was too bewildered to know where.

And that's how Mr. Mark Cray was welcomed to London. His rage was great, his sense of injury dreadful.

"Only let me come across Barker!" he foamed. "He shall suffer for this. A man ought to be hung for such treachery."

Mark Cray was, so far, mistaken. Barker was as innocent in the arrest as he was. An accident had prevented his going down to meet the Havre steamer.

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LVIII. THE GALLANT CAPTAIN HOME AGAIN

Captain Davenal and his wife had been expected in England in December--as you have heard; but the time went on, and February was at its close before they arrived. They had been compelled to land at the Cape in consequence of the illness of Mrs. Davenal, and had to remain there some time. She had come into a very large fortune on the death of her father; a considerable portion of it was settled upon her, and the rest, a munificent sum, lapsed to her husband. So Captain Edward Davenal was once more at his ease in this world of changes.

Gay, handsome, free, sunny, it might have been thought that not an hour's care had ever been upon him. No allusion to a certain dark episode of the past escaped his lips when he and his sister met: there were no signs that he so much as remembered such a trouble had ever been. They were the present guests of Lady Reid, and would remain so for a short time: It was Captain Davenal's intention to take a furnished house for a term. His leave of absence was for two years; but they did not care to be stationary in London the whole of the period. Sara was charmed with his wife: a gentle, yielding, pretty thing, looking so young as to be a girl still, and dividing her love between her husband and infant son, a fine young gentleman born at the Cape. A dread fear assailed Sara Davenal's heart as she looked upon her; for that curious matter, touching the young woman who claimed to be connected with Captain Davenal, had never been cleared up. Not since the previous December had Sara once observed her approach the house: but she had twice seen her in conversation with Neal at the end of the street, the last time being the very day of the arrival of Captain Davenal. It was altogether strange in Sara's opinion if the young woman fancied she really had a legal claim of the nature she mentioned on Captain Davenal, why had she not asserted it openly? If she had no such claim, if she were an impostor, for what purpose had she put the claim forth? There had been no demand for silence-money; no attempt at extortion. However it might be, Sara's duty was plain, now Captain Davenal had arrived--to acquaint him with the circumstances.

"I have some papers to give you," Sara whispered to her brother at Lady Reid's, the night of his arrival there.

"Papers? O yes, I suppose so. I shall be with you tomorrow."

So he had not quite forgotten the affair. On the conclusion of the matter with Mr. Alfred King Sara had sealed up certain papers and receipts according to the written directions of Dr. Davenal; and these she waited to put into her brother's hand.

Mrs. Cray was with them still. She had taken to her bedroom entirely now, and was gradually dying. Mark was with her. His difficulty with the Great Wheal Bang's shareholders, and particularly with that one cautious shareholder who had saluted Mark so unpolitely on his landing from Havre, was virtually over: Mark enjoyed liberty of person again, and things were in process of adjustment. Miss Davenal so far overcame her repugnance to Mark as to allow him to be in her house, but it was only in consideration of Caroline's dying state. They could do nothing for her. They painted her clothes with iodine as she lay on the sofa day after day before the chamber fire; it was the only thing that brought any alleviation to the pain.

It happened that Captain Davenal's first visit to the house was paid at an opportune moment, in so far as that his interview with his sister was free from fear of interruption. Miss Davenal had gone to Lady Reid's, to see and welcome the travellers. Neal was in attendance upon her, and Caroline was asleep. Mark Cray was in the City; he had to go there frequently, in connection with the winding-up of the company of the Great Wheal Bang.

Captain Davenal came in, all joyous carelessness, telling Dorcas, who admitted him, that she looked younger and handsomer than ever: and poor Dorcas--who was not young at all, and had never been handsome in her life--felt set up in vanity for a month to come. Sara was in the drawing-room. It was the first time of their being alone, and Captain Davenal held her before him and scanned her face.

"What has made you get so thin?"

"Am I thin?" she returned.

"Dreadfully so. I have been telling Dorcas that she's handsomer than ever, but I can't say the same of you. What is the cause, Sara?"

"I think people do get thin in London," she replied with some evasion. "But let me be rid of my charge, Edward."

She went to her bedroom and brought down Dr. Davenal's desk. To Edward's surprise he saw that it was bound round with a broad tape and sealed. When Sara had placed the papers in the desk, received from Mr. Alfred King, she had immediately sealed up the desk in this manner; a precaution against its being opened.

"What's that for?" exclaimed Captain Davenal, in his quick way, as he recognised the desk and to whom it had belonged. "Did my father leave it so?"

Sara replied by telling him her suspicions of the desk's having been opened; and that she had deemed it well to secure it against any future inroads when once these papers were inclosed in it.

"But who would touch the desk?" he asked. "For what purpose? Was young Dick at home at the time?"

"Dick was not at home. But Dick would not touch a desk. I would not answer for Dick where a jam cupboard is concerned; but in anything of consequence Dick's as honourable as the day. I suspected Neal, Edward."

"Neal!"

"I did. I feel half-ashamed to say so. Do you remember telling me that papa had a suspicion or doubt whether Neal had not visited some of his letters?"

"I remember it. I thought my father was wrong. Neal! Why, Sara, I'd as soon suspect myself."

"Well, I can only tell you the truth--that when I found cause to fear this desk had been surreptitiously opened, my doubts turned to Neal. You see, we have no one about us but him and Dorcas; and Dorcas I am certain is trustworthy. But I admit that it was in consequence of what you told me that I cast any doubt on Neal. However it may have been, I deemed it well to secure the desk afterwards."

She had been opening the desk as she spoke, and she took from it a sealed packet and handed it to Captain Davenal. He opened it at once; glanced over its contents, two or three papers, one by one, and slightly drew in his lips.

"What a shame!" he burst forth.

She did not like to ask questions. She only looked at him.

"That they should have bled my father in this manner. Scoundrels! I was away, therefore the game was in their own hands. Did you read these papers, Sara?"

"I was obliged to read them; to see that they tallied with copies that papa had left. He left written instructions that I should do so."

"To whom was this money paid?"

"To Mr. Alfred King. Don't you see the receipts?"

"I'd walk ten miles before breakfast any morning to see the fellow hung. It's what he'll come to."

"He told me that he and you had once been friends," she said in a half-whisper.

"And so we were. I believed in the fellow: I had no suspicion that he was a villain, and I let him draw me into things from which I could not extricate myself. I was a fool; and I had to pay for it."

In Sara's inmost heart there arose unbidden a rebellious thought: that others had had to pay for it; not Captain Davenal.

"Did it affect my father's health, this business?" he inquired in a low tone.

"I fear it did," she replied, feeling that she could not avoid the confession. "I am sure it affected him mentally. There was a great change in him from that night."

Captain Davenal folded the papers slowly, and pushed them into his waistcoat pocket in his usual careless fashion. "What a fool I was!" he muttered; "and what a rogue was that other!"

"Are they safe there, Edward?"

"Safe enough until I get home. They will be burnt then, except this final receipt. Oh, if my father had but lived! I could at least have repaid him his pecuniary lose. It took all he left behind him I suppose, to satisfy it?"

"Yes; all."

"He told me he feared it would, or nearly all, in the letter he wrote me when he was dying. Did things realise well?"

"No, very badly. There was not enough to satisfy the claim by two hundred pounds. Finally, Aunt Bettina advanced that."

"Does she know of this?" he exclaimed, in a startled tone.

"No, I kept it from her. It was difficult to do, but I contrived it."

"You were a brave girl, my sister! I don't know who would have acted as you have! All this trouble upon you, and never to worry me with it in your letters!--never to ask me for money to help in the need!"

"I thought you had none to give," she simply said.

"True enough: I had none; but most sisters would have asked for it. I shall repay at once Aunt Bettina; I shall repay, more gradually, to you the half of what my father possessed before this trouble was brought by me upon him. What do you say?--my wife's money? Tush, child! Do you know the amount of the fortune we have come into? It will be but a drop of water in the ocean of that amount. If I did not repay it to you, she would."

Sara looked up.

"My wife knows all. I told her every word."

"O Edward! Before your marriage!"

"Not before. I suppose I ought to have done so, but it would have taken a greater amount of moral courage than I possessed. I couldn't risk the losing her. I told her, partially, a short time after our marriage: the full particulars I did not give her until last night."

Last night! Sara was surprised.

"She fell in love with you yesterday, Sara, and I thought well to let her know what you really were--how true you had been to me."

Sara was silent. It was in her nature to be true; and, as she believed, it was in her nature to be able to suffer.

"There were times when I felt tempted to wish I had stayed at home and battled with it," resumed Captain Davenal, after a pause. "But in that case the scandal would probably have gone forth to the world. As it was, no living being knew of it, save you and my father."

"And Mr. Alfred King," she said. Another name also occurred to her, but she did not mention it--that of Oswald Cray.

"Alfred King? Sara, my dear, I don't care to enter into particulars with you, but he was with me in the mess; more morally guilty, though less legally so, than I was. He has never told it, I can answer for, for his own sake."

"He always spoke to me of being only a sort of agent in the affair," she said. "He intimated that the money was due to other parties."

"Was due from himself, then. But it is over and done with: let it drop. And now, Sara, you must allow me to ask you a personal question: are you still engaged to Oswald Cray?"

The demand was so unexpected, the subject so painful, that Sara felt the life-blood leave her heart for her face. "I am not engaged to Oswald Cray," she said in a low tone. "I--I cannot say that I ever was engaged to him."

A pause. "But--surely there was some attachment?"

"A little: in the old days. It is very long ago now. How did you know of it?"

"Oswald Cray himself told me. It was the evening we went up to town together after Caroline's wedding. He knew I was going out immediately with the regiment, and he gave me a hint of how it was between you. Only a hint; nothing more. I suppose--I suppose," more slowly added Captain Davenal, "that this miserable business of mine broke it off. I conclude that when Oswald found at my father's death that you had no money he declined the compact. It's the way of the world."

"Not so. No. I do not think money or the want of it, would have any influence on Oswald Cray. In this case it certainly had not. We had parted before papa died."

"What then was the cause, Sara?"

Should she tell him?--that it was his conduct broke it off? Better not, perhaps; it could do no earthly good and would be only adding pain to pain.

"It is a thing of the past now, Edward; let it remain so. The cause that parted us was one that could not be got over. We are friends still, though we do not often meet. More than that we can never be."

Captain Davenal was sorry to hear it. Thoughtless and imprudent as he was by nature himself, he could not but be aware of the value of Oswald Cray. Such a man would make the happiness--and guard it--of any woman.

"I think I had better mention one fact to you, Edward," she resumed, after some moments given to the matter in her own mind. "You have been assuming that no one was cognisant of that business of yours, except papa, myself, and Mr. Alfred King; but----"

"No other living soul was cognisant of it," interrupted Captain Davenal. "My father's promptitude stopped it."

"Oswald Cray knew of it."

"Impossible!" he said, recovering from a pause of surprise.

"He did indeed. I am not sure that he knew the exact particulars, but he knew a very great deal. I believe--I fancy--that he had gathered even a worse impression of it than the case actually warranted."

Captain Davenal was incredulous. "From whom did he learn it?"

"I cannot tell you. I have always feared that, as he knew it, it must have been known to others."

"I tell you, Sara, that beyond you and my father, and King, nobody in the world knew of it. You are under some mistake. Oswald Cray could not have known of it."

"Nay then, Edward, as it has come so far I will tell you the truth. Oswald Cray did know of it, and it was that, and nothing else, that caused us to part. He--he thought, after that, that I was no fit wife for him," she added in a low tone of pain. "And in truth I was not."

A pause of distress. "Unfit as my sister?"

"Yes. I suppose he feared that the crime might at any time be disclosed to the world."

"But how could he have known it?" reiterated Captain Davenal, the one surprise overwhelming every other emotion in his mind. "King I know would not tell; for his own sake he dared not: and we may be very sure my father did not. He sacrificed himself to retain it a secret."

"That Oswald Cray knew of it I can assure you," she repeated. "He must have known of it as soon--or almost as soon--as we did. From that night that you came down to Hallingham in secret his behaviour changed; and a little later, when a sort of explanation took place between us, he spoke to me of what had come to his knowledge. I know no more."

"Well, it is beyond my comprehension," said Captain Davenal; "it passes belief. Good Heavens! if Oswald Cray knew it, where's my security that others do not? I must look into this."

He was about to go off in impulsive haste, probably to seek Oswald Cray, but Sara detained him. The uncertain doubt, the dread lying most heavy on her heart, was not spoken yet.

"Don't go, Edward. You will regard me as a bird of ill-omen, I fear, but I have something to say to you on a subject as unpleasant as this, though of a totally different nature."

"No crime, I hope," he remarked in a joking tone, as he reseated himself. It was utterly impossible for Edward Davenal to remain sober and serious long.

"It would be a crime--if it were true."

"Well, say on, Sara: I am all attention. I have been guilty of a thousand and one acts of folly in my life; never but of one crime. And that I was drawn into."

Captain Davenal did right to bid her "say on," for she seemed to have no inclination to say anything; or else to be uncertain in what words to clothe it. It was a decidedly unpleasant topic, and her colour went and came.

"I would not mention it, Edward, if I were not obliged; if I did not fear consequences for you now you have come home," she begun. "It has been weighing me down a long, long while, and I have had to bear it, saying nothing----"

"Has some private debt turned up against me?" he cried hastily. "I thought I had not one out in the European world. I'll settle it tomorrow, Sara, whatever it may be."

"It is not debt at all. It is----"

Sara stopped, partly with emotion, partly from her excessive reluctance to approach the topic. Should it prove to be altogether some mistake, a feeling of shame would rest upon her for having whispered it.

"It's what? Why don't you go on?"

"I must go on if I am to tell you," she resumed, rallying her courage. "Did you ever, before you went out--marry anybody?"

"Did I--what?" he returned, looking up with an exceedingly amused expression on his face.

"O Edward, you heard."

"If I heard I did not understand. What do you mean? Why do you ask me so foolish a question?"

"You have not answered it," she continued in a low voice.

Captain Davenal noted for the first time the changing hue of her face, the troubled eye, the shrinking, timid manner. His mood changed to seriousness.

"Sara, what do you mean? Did I marry anybody before I went out, you ask? I neither married anybody, nor promised marriage. I--Halloa! you don't mean that I am about to have a breach of promise brought against me?"

The notion was so amusing to Captain Davenal that he burst into a laugh. Sara shook her head; and when his laugh had subsided she bent her cheek upon her hand, and related to him, calmly and quietly, what had occurred. The Captain was excessively amused: he could not be brought to regard the tale in any other light than as a joke.

"What do you say the lady's name was? Catherine what?"

"Catherine Wentworth."

"Catherine Wentworth?" he deliberated. "I never heard the name before in my life; never knew any one bearing it. Why, Sara, you do not mean to say this has seriously troubled you?"

"It has very seriously troubled me. At times, what with one dread and another, I seemed to have more upon me than I could bear. I had no one to whom I could tell the trouble and the doubt: I dared not write it to you, lest your wife should get hold of the letter."

"And if she had? What then?"

"If she had?" repeated Sara. "Do you forget the charge?"

"It's too laughable for me to forget it. Rose would have laughed at it with me. Sara, my dear, rely upon it this has arisen from some queer mistake."

His open countenance, the utter absence of all symptom of fear, the cool manner in which he treated it, caused Sara to breathe a sigh of relief. Half her doubts had vanished.

"The strange thing is, why she should make the charge--why she should say she was your wife. It was not done to extort money, for she has never asked for a farthing. She said papa knew of the marriage."

"Did she?" was the retort, delivered lightly. "Did she tell all this to you?"

"Not to me. I have never spoken to her; I told you so. What I have learnt, I learnt through Neal."

Captain Davenal paused in reflection. "Who knows but that gentleman may be at the bottom of it?" he said at length. "If he opens desks--I don't say he does, I say if he does--he might get up this tale."

"And his motive?" returned Sara, not agreeing with the proposition.

"Nay, I don't know."

"But Neal did not come forward with the tale. It was in consequence of what I accidentally heard her say that I questioned Neal; and I must do him the justice to declare that it was with very great reluctance he would answer me. I heard Neal tell her, apparently in answer to a question, that there was no doubt Captain Davenal was married; that he had married a Miss Reid, an heiress. She replied that she would have satisfaction, no matter what punishment it brought him (you) to."

"And Neal afterwards assured you that she was Captain Davenal's wife?"

"Neal assured me that she said she was. Neal himself said he did not believe her to be so; he thought there must be some mistake. She declared she had been married to you nearly a twelvemonth before you quitted Europe, and that Dr. Davenal knew of it."

"The story-telling little hussy!"

"Edward, I confess to you that I never so much as thought of its not being true in that first moment! I think fear must have taken possession of me and overpowered my judgment."

"You should have written to me, Sara."

"I have told you why I did not: lest the letter should fall into the hands of your wife. And I believe that a dread of its truth made me shrink from approaching it. That very same day I saw the young person come out of the War Office. I did not know, and don't know, whether it is the proper place to lodge complaints against officers, but I supposed she had been to lodge one against you."

"And you have seen her here since, at the house?"

"Occasionally. She has never been troublesome. She has come, apparently, to say a word or two to Neal. I have never questioned him upon the visits: I have dreaded the subject too much. Only yesterday I saw Neal speaking with her at the corner of the street."

"Well, Sara, I shall sift this."

She lifted her head. "Yes?"

"I shall. It would not have been pleasant had the rumour reached the ears of my wife."

He walked to the window and stood there a moment or two, a flush upon his face, a frown upon his brow. When he turned round again he was laughing.

"Did Aunt Bett hear of this!"

"O no."

"She'd have taken it for granted it was true. Had anybody told her in the old days that I had married sixteen wives, and then set the town on fire with a lighted torch, Aunt Bett would have believed it of me. But, Sara, I am surprised at you."

She glanced at him with a faint smile: not liking to say that the dreadful business, the secret of that past night, which had no doubt helped to send Dr. Davenal to his grave, had, at the time, somewhat shaken her faith in her gallant brother. But for that terrible blow, she had never given a moment's credit to this.

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LIX. THE SERGEANT-MAJOR'S WIFE

Captain Davenal had made light of the matter to his sister. Knowing how unfounded was the charge, the whole thing struck him as being so absurd, so improbable, that his mind could but receive it as a jest. Nevertheless, upon reflection, he saw that it might prove a subject of serious annoyance: such charges, especially if maliciously made and well planned, sometimes cost a world of trouble in their refutation.

He had said it was his intention to sift it. Sara suggested that he should do what she had shrunk from doing--question Neal. Captain Davenal hesitated. If there were any foundation for his suspicion that Mr. Neal might have had something to do with making the charge, it would not perhaps be policy to speak to that gentleman in the present stage of the affair. Better try by some other means to find out who the young woman was, and all about her. It is true that without the help of Neal Captain Davenal did not see his way clear to accomplish this: to seek for an unknown young woman in London, one to whom he had no clue, was something equivalent to that traditional search, the hunting for a needle in a bottle of hay.

"I wonder if Dorcas could tell us anything about her?" he exclaimed, ringing the bell upon impulse, as he did most things. And when Dorcas appeared in answer to it, he plunged into a sea of questions that had only the effect of bewildering her.

"You must know her, Dorcas," interposed Sara. "It is a young woman, rather nice-looking, who has come here occasionally to see Neal. She generally wears large shawls that trail on the ground. Captain Davenal has a reason for wishing to know who she is."

"You must mean Mrs. Wentworth, Miss Sara."

"Mrs. Wentworth! Is that her name?" repeated Sara, feeling a sort of relief that the servant had not said Mrs. Davenal.

"That's her name, Miss. She is an officer's wife, and is in some trouble about him. I believe Neal is her uncle."

Sara looked up. "Neal told my aunt that the young person was not his niece."

"Well, I don't know," said Dorcas; "I think she is his niece: at any rate, I have heard her call him uncle. I heard her call him wide no longer ago than last night, Miss Sara."

"Where was that?" interposed Captain Davenal.

"It was here, sir. She called to see Neal. I was passing downstairs at the time from Mrs. Cray's room, and it seemed to me that there was some dispute occurring between them. She asked Neal to tell her where Captain Davenal was staying, and Neal refused. He said she should not go troubling Captain Davenal."

A pause from all. Sara's face grew troubled again.

"What did she want with me?" asked the captain.

"I don't know, sir," replied Dorcas. "I only heard that much in passing. I was carrying Mrs. Cray's tea-tray down."

"Do you know where she lives, this Mrs. Wentworth?"

"Not at all, sir. I have never known that."

"Edward, she is evidently looking out for you!" exclaimed Sara, as Dorcas retired.

"I hope and trust she is, and that she'll speedily find me," was the retort of Captain Davenal. "Nothing should I like better than to find her. I have a great mind to ask Neal openly what it all is, and insist upon an answer."

There was no opportunity for further conversation then. Mark Cray came in. Captain Davenal did not think him improved in anyway. There was less of openness in his manner than formerly, and he rather appeared to evade Captain Davenal, quitting his presence as soon as he conveniently could. The next to enter was Miss Bettina. It was the first time she had met her nephew, and she was disposed to be cordial. Miss Bettina had gone forth that morning to visit his young wife, entertaining a secret prejudice against her, and she returned home liking her. The little baby had been named Richard, too, and that gratified her.

A short while later, and Captain Davenal and his sister stood in the presence of this very young woman, Catherine Wentworth. In a room in Lady Reid's house, when they reached it--for Sara walked home with him--she was waiting. She had gone there inquiring for Captain Davenal, and upon being told Captain Davenal was out, she asked to be allowed to wait for him.

The sequel of this episode is so very matter-of-fact, so devoid of romance, that some of you, my readers, may think it might have been as well never to have introduced it. But in that case what would become of the closing history of Neal? It was quite necessary, if that gentleman was to have a faithful biographer.

Sara Davenal sat, the white strings of her bonnet untied, wiping the drops of moisture from her relieved brow. So intense was the relief that when the first few moments of thankfulness were past, she looked back with a feeling of anger that her mind's peace, for long long months, should have been disturbed so unnecessarily.

They were talking fast, this young woman and Captain Davenal. She had gone to Miss Davenal's house over and over again to inquire after him; she had handed Neal more than one letter to forward to him to India; she had been at the house the previous night, demanding to know where the captain was staying, and saying that she would see him; and she had this morning found out his address at Lady Reid's, and had waited until he came in.

But all for an innocent and legitimate purpose. Mrs. Wentworth--and she was Mrs. Wentworth--had never seen Captain Davenal in her life before; had never pretended that she had; she was only seeking him now to get from him some information of her real husband, Sergeant-Major Wentworth, of Captain Davenal's regiment.

One train of thought leads to another. Captain Davenal remembered now to have heard that the sergeant-major, a very respectable man, had voluntarily separated himself from his wife, and left her behind him in England when their regiment sailed for India, in consequence of some misconduct on her part. He stood there face to face with the young woman, trying to reconcile this plain statement of facts with the account of past assertions related to him by Sara.

"You are Sergeant-Major Wentworth's wife, you say," observed Captain Davenal, regarding her narrowly, watching every word that fell from her lips. If there had been any conspiracy between her and Neal to undermine his sister's peace, he felt that he should like to punish both of them. Sara had had enough of real troubles to bear, without having false ones brought upon her.

"Yes, I am," she replied. She had a wonderfully pretty face, now that it could be seen without her veil, and her manners were pleasing--nay, ladylike. But still there was the look of general untidiness about her that Sara had noticed before, though she did not wear a shawl today, but a black cloth mantle, cut in the mode.

"May I ask if you ever allowed it to be understood that you were anybody else's wife?" rejoined Captain Davenal, putting the question in the most convenient form he could, and in a half-jesting tone.

"Anybody else's wife?" she repeated, as if not understanding.

"Ay; mine, for instance?"

"Why, of course I never did. I don't know what you mean, sir."

"Does Neal know you are Sergeant-Major Wentworth's wife?"

"O dear, yes. I have done nothing a long while but beseech of him to write to you, sir, and ask if you would speak in my behalf to Wentworth, and make him allow me more, or else let me go out to him in India."

Sara interposed. It might not be wise in her, but she could not help herself: "I once accidentally heard a conversation of yours with Neal. You were speaking of this gentleman, Captain Davenal; it was the very day that we had heard news of his marriage with Miss Reid. I remember you said something to the effect that you would have satisfaction, cost what punishment it would to him. Did you allude to your husband?"

"Yes, I did," the girl replied. "And I hope he will be punished yet. I remember the time too. I had had a letter that morning from one of the women who went with the regiment, a soldier's wife. She spoke of my husband in it in a way that vexed me; and she said, amidst other news, that their Captain--Captain Davenal--had just got married. The letter put me up to think that perhaps Captain Davenal could do some good for me with my husband, and I came off at once to Neal and asked him. Neal said he should not trouble Captain Davenal with anything of the sort; and the answer made me angry, and I reminded Mr. Neal that I could say one or two things about him that might not be pleasant if I chose to be ill-natured; and at last he promised to send a letter for me to Captain Davenal, enclosed in one from himself, if I liked to write and state the case. I remember quite well saying that I would have satisfaction somehow, no matter what the punishment to Wentworth. Did my letters ever reach you, sir? I wrote two or three."

"Never."

"Like enough Neal never sent them," she exclaimed with an angry toss. "He said he did; and I have been always asking him whether he received no answer for me."

"Is Neal your uncle, Mrs. Wentworth?"

"I call him so sometimes, sir, when I want to be pleasant with him, but in point of fact he is no real relation. My step-mother is his sister; and that makes him a sort of uncle-in-law."

"And you have not--excuse my pressing the question, Mrs. Wentworth, but I have a reason for it--given Neal reason to suppose that you were ever married to any one except Sergeant-Major Wentworth?" resumed Captain Davenal.

"Never in my life, sir," she replied, and her accent of truth was unmistakable. "Say to Neal that I was married to anybody else! What for? It would be childish to say it; he knows quite well that I was married to Serjeant Wentworth. He was not serjeant-major then."

The falsehood then had been Neal's! Captain Davenal glanced at Sara. But the sergeant's wife spoke again.

"Could you interest yourself for me with Wentworth, sir?"

"Ah, I don't know. It is a ticklish thing, you see, to interfere between man and wife," added the captain, a jesting smile upon his lips. "What is your grievance against Wentworth?"

Mrs. Wentworth entered on her grievances; a whole catalogue. She required that her husband should send for her to be with him in India, or else that he should make her a better allowance, so that she could live "as a lady." She knew he got plenty of prize-money she said, for she had been told so; and she finished up with stating that she had been to the War Office, and to half-a-dozen other offices to complain of him, and could get no redress.

"Well," said Captain Davenal, "I'll tell you what I'll do: will write to your husband--a man for whom I have great respect,--and inquire his version of the quarrel between you. We should always hear both sides of a question, you know, Mrs. Wentworth. When I get his answer, you shall hear from me. To be candid with you, I must say that I don't think Wentworth is one to allow of much interference. He has good judgment, and he likes to exercise it. But I will write to him."

"And you'll promise to see me again, sir, in spite of Neal? What his objection was, I don't know, but he did all he could to prevent my seeing you."

"I don't think you need fear Neal's prevention for the future in regard to seeing me," said Captain Davenal, in a significant tone, as he civilly bowed out Mrs. Wentworth.

"Well, Sara, and what do you think of Neal now?"

"I can't understand it; I can't understand why he should have said it, or what his motive was," slowly replied Sara. "Oh, if he only knew the cruel days and nights it caused me to pass. Shall you tell Aunt Bettina of Neal's falsity?"

"Tell her!" repeated Captain Davenal. "Do you think I can allow her and you to be any longer under the same roof with a villain such as Neal?"

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LX. LIGHT

Not to Miss Bettina, however, did Captain Davenal at once take his way, but to Parliament Street. The revelation of Sara that morning--that the one dark episode in his own past history had been known to Oswald Cray--was troubling Edward Davenal's mind far more than any sense of the inconvenience wrought by Mr. Neal.

They stood together in Oswald's sitting-room, the doors closed. A few words of greeting on both sides, and then the captain plunged wholesale, without any ceremony or preparation, into the object which had brought him.

"I have come to ask you a question," he began, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper. "How did you become acquainted with that miserable business of mine?"

"With what miserable business?" returned Oswald, in surprise.

"Don't you recall what I mean? That affair that swamped me. Or, I'm sure I may better say, swamped my father. The--the--those bills, you know."

Oswald did not know in the least. And said so.

"Hang it, Cray," exclaimed the captain, "why force a man to speak out? Those forged bills that I put into circulation, and couldn't get back again."

"I protest I do not know what you are talking of," returned Oswald. "I don't understand what it is you would ask me."

"I only ask how you became acquainted with the affair."

"I never was acquainted with the affair: with any affair such as you allude to," persisted Oswald. "I am not acquainted with it now."

"Do you mean to say that you did not become cognisant of that dreadful trouble I got into before leaving England?--The signing of those bills?"

"I never heard of it in my life. I never heard, or knew, that you were in any trouble whatever."

Captain Davenal sat staring at Oswald. How reconcile this denial with Sara's positive assurance of an hour ago? "You are telling me truth?" he cried, with a perplexed air.

"Entire truth," said Oswald. "Why should I not?"

"What then could Sara mean?" debated Captain Davenal aloud. "She tells me that you did know of it."

"Sara tells you so?"

"She does. She says that--I don't see that I need scruple to speak," broke off Captain Davenal, "it's all over and done with, I suppose--Sara says it was your knowledge of the affair that caused the breaking off of the engagement between yourself and her."

Oswald Cray was silent. A doubt crossed him of whether the gallant captain could have received some sabre-cut or sunstroke in India which had affected his brain. Captain Davenal noted his puzzled look, and strove to be more explanatory.

"When you and I were returning to town from Hallingham the night of Caroline's wedding, you hinted that there existed an attachment or engagement between you and Sara. For the first time I spoke of this to Sara this morning. She admitted that something of the kind had existed, but said it was over; and I saw that the subject was painful--one she wished to avoid. So I dropped it. Afterwards, in speaking of this worse business of mine, I observed that it had been known to three people only: my father, Alfred King, and Sara; but Sara interrupted me, saying that it was known to Oswald Cray. I disputed the fact; I said it could not have been known to you, but she persisted in her assertion, and finally confessed that it was in consequence of its coming to your knowledge that you broke off the engagement to her, deeming she was not worthy, as my sister, to become your wife. Pardon me yet a moment while I state that I am not here to question the decision; I don't wish to enter upon it at all, except to say that many would have done as you did, after what I, her brother, had been guilty of. All that is apart from the business, and I am only telling you how it came out. Sara assures me that it was the sole cause of breaking off the engagement, and that you must have known of it almost as soon as--as my father knew. Now, I want you to tell me, Mr. Oswald Cray, how and whence that affair came to your knowledge. Have I made myself clear?"

"Perfectly clear, so far as explanation goes; but it is nothing but obscurity to me, for all that. In the first place, allow me to repeat to you that I never knew before now that you were in any trouble whatever. This is my first intimation of it."

"And was it not that knowledge that caused you and Sara to part?"

"It was not. How could it have been when I assure you I did not possess the knowledge? A--a great trouble, of which I would prefer not to speak, did lead to the parting, but it was entirely unconnected with you."

"Well, this is Greek," returned Captain Davenal. "There was no other trouble connected with the family, except mine. I suppose you mean that it was connected with them?"

"Yes."

"With which of them? There was no scapegoat in it except me."

"It was connected with Dr. Davenal," said Oswald reluctantly. "I cannot say more."

"With my father? Nonsense, if you mean anything wrong. A more upright man never breathed. Fancy him sending forth bad bills!"

"I could not fancy him doing so," replied Oswald. "The matter had nothing to do with money."

"I'll lay all I am worth it had to do with me, with my business," impulsively spoke Captain Davenal. "I will tell you how it was----"

"Nay, it is not worth while," was Oswald Cray's interruption, as he thought how very different a thing was Lady Oswald's unhappy death from the topics under discussion. "Believe me, you had not, and could not have had, anything to do with the real question."

"But I'll tell you, now I have begun. I and my choice friend, as I thought him then,"--Captain Davenal spoke with scornful bitterness,--"got into an awful mess together, and could not get out of it. No matter whether it was gambling or horse-racing, or what not; money we were compelled to have. King assured me on his honour that in three weeks' time he should be in the possession of several thousand pounds, if we could only stave off exposure until then, and in an evil hour I yielded to his persuasion and wrote my father's name. The suggestion was King's, the persuasion was King's, the full assurance that all would be well was King's. I don't say this in extenuation of myself; the guilt and madness of yielding were all mine. Well, the days went on, and when the time came, and the thing was on the point of exploding, King had not got the thousands he had counted on: moreover, I found that his expectation of getting them had been from the first very vague indeed, and we had a desperate quarrel. The sneak turned round; threatened me with exposure, with ruin, and I had to go down and confess the truth to my father. He saved me--saved me at the sacrifice of all he had, and, I fear, of his life."

There was a pause. Oswald had grown strangely interested. Captain Davenal continued.

"I shall never forget the effect it had upon him--never, never. I speak only of the hour of the communication; I never saw him after that. I told him there might be trouble with these bills, to get them at all; that even with the money in hand to redeem them I was not sure the consequences could be averted from me. I saw the change pass over his face; the grey, scared look; and it did not quit it again."

"Where did you see him?"

"At Hallingham. I went down at some peril, after leave had been refused me at headquarters, getting to Hallingham about eleven o'clock on a Sunday night. I stayed an hour or so with my father in his study, and then went back to the station again, for I had to be at my post on duty the following morning. No one at home knew of my visit. I tapped at my father's study window and he let me in. Before I left, I asked to see Sara. I knew quite well, though they did not, that I should not go down again, and I did not care to leave for years without saying a word to her, so my father fetched her down from her room. We did not tell her the particulars, only that I had been doing something wrong, was in danger, and that my visit to Hallingham must be kept quiet. My poor father! I remember his asking in a burst of feeling what he had done that all this trouble should fall upon him. Another great trouble had befallen him that night in the death of Lady Oswald."

"Yes?" said Oswald with a calm manner but a beating heart. His thoughts were in that long past night, and Neal's description of it.

"It was very dreadful," resumed Captain Davenal, alluding to the matter of Lady Oswald. "My father was sadly cut up. Mark Cray had killed her through administering the chloroform."

Oswald felt his heart stand still, his face flush with a burning heat. He moved nearer to Captain Davenal: but his voice was quiet still.

"Did you say Mark administered the chloroform?"

"It was Mark. Yes. My father said he had especially forbidden Mark Cray to give her chloroform. Mark in the course of the day had proposed doing it, but the doctor warned him that chloroform would not do for Lady Oswald. When all was ready, he (my father) had to carry Lady Oswald's maid from the chamber in a fainting-fit, and when he got back to it he found Mark had administered the chloroform, which he had taken with him to the house surreptitiously, and was commencing the operation. The doctor said he could not make out Mark Cray that night. He was beginning the operation in so unskilful, so unsurgeon-like a manner, that my father had to push him away as he would have pushed a child, and perform it himself. But they could not recover Lady Oswald."

Oswald made no remark. He felt as one stunned.

"It struck me as being a most shocking thing," continued Captain Davenal. "I remarked to my father that it seemed like murder, and he said Yes, he supposed the world would call it such."

"But why did not Dr. Davenal declare the truth--that it was Mark who had given the chloroform?" interrupted Oswald. "Why suffer himself to rest under the imputation?"

"What imputation? There was no imputation to lie under. All the world supposed the chloroform had been rightly and properly administered, according to the best judgment of both of them."

True; true. Oswald Cray had been speaking in accordance with his own private knowledge, not with publicly-known facts.

"My father kept the secret for Mark Cray's sake. If it went forth to the world, he said it would blight Mark's professional career for life. He told me the facts, but he intended to keep them from all others, and he warned me not to divulge them. I never did. I am not sure that I should feel justified in telling even you now, but that Mark is no longer in his profession. My poor father made the remark that they were two heavy secrets for his breast to keep, mine and Mark Cray's."

The murmur of the words fell upon Oswald's ear, but he was as one who heard them not. A weighty amount of self-reproach was rising up within him. Captain Davenal talked on, and then hastened away, for he had Mr. Neal to settle with yet, leaving Oswald alone.

The scales, so long obscuring Oswald Cray's eyes, had fallen from them, and he saw the past in its true colours. The one wondering question that seemed to press upon him now was, how he could ever have doubted Dr. Davenal. Above his own self-reproach; above the bitter feeling of repentance for the wrong he had dealt out to her whom he best loved on earth; above his regrets for the late years wasted in a miserable illusion; was his remorse for having so misjudged that good man, misjudged him even to his grave. He saw it all now: how, when he questioned Dr. Davenal about his motives for administering the fatal medicine, he had taken the odium upon himself for Mark's sake: not even to him, his brother, would he, in his loving-kindness, betray Mark.

Never had the pride, the self-esteem, of Oswald Cray received a blow like unto this. He had plumed himself on his superiority; he had cast off Dr. Davenal as one unworthy of him; he had dared, in his self-sufficiency, to cast off Sara. Her father was a man of suspicion, and therefore she was no fit mate for him! Whereas, Oswald now learnt that it was his own brother who was the offender: Dr. Davenal and his daughter were the victims. The full value, the Christian conduct of that good man was patent to him now; the patient endurance of Sara became clear to him.

He lifted his hat and wiped the moisture from his brow, as he walked through the streets, all these considerations doing battle in his brain. The winter's day was cold, but Oswald's brow was hot; hot with inward fever. He was on his way to Miss Davenal's, to seek a conference with his half-brother: there were one or two questions he would put to him. He had taken his hat and come out the moment Captain Davenal left him: business and all else gave way before this.

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LXI. THE BARGAIN SEALED

Mark Cray sat in his wife's sick-room. Mark Cray found it (between ourselves) rather tiresome to sit in his wife's sick-room: and Mark was very apt to doze asleep at his post. Mark was asleep now. He was dreaming a charming dream of greatness--in which some grand scheme of Barker's had succeeded, and he and that gentleman were sailing about the atmosphere in a triumphal car of gold, looking down with complacency on the poor toiling mortals in the world below--when Dorcas came in with a whisper, and aroused him. Mr. Oswald Cray was in the dining-parlour waiting to see him, she said: and Mark, after a stare at the girl, descended, pushing back his clustering hair, which had disarranged itself in his sleep.

Oswald was standing near the fire. He turned to Mark and spoke in a quiet tone.

"I have a question to ask you, Mark. It relates to the past. Who----"

"Oh, never mind the past," interrupted Mark, with a half-testy, half-careless sort of manner. "I'm sure there's enough worry in the present without going back to that of the past. I wish that horrid mine had been sunk a thousand fathoms deep before I had had anything to do with it. I daresay I shall pay you back some time!"

"It is not about the mine I wish to speak to you, or of payment either," calmly rejoined Oswald. "But, Mark, I want the truth from you--the truth, mind--upon another subject. It was you, was it not, who gave the chloroform to Lady Oswald?"

Mark made no reply, either truthful or otherwise. The question was so exceedingly unlike any he had expected that he only stared.

"It was supposed, I know, at the time to have been administered by Dr. Davenal. But I have reason to believe that it was administered by yourself during his temporary absence from the chamber, and against his sanction. Was it so, Mark?"

"I suppose you heard this from the doctor himself at the time?" was Mark Cray's remark. "I remember you were worriting over it."

"I beg you to answer my question, Mark. What you say shall go no further."

"Well, yes, it was so," said Mark; "though I'm sure I can't think why you want to bring up the thing now. I did give her the chloroform, but I gave it for the best. As I was to perform the operation I thought I had a right to exercise my own judgment, which was opposed to the doctor's. I was very sorry for the result, but I did it for the best."

"I wish you had told me the truth at the time, Mark. You suffered me to believe that the chloroform was given by Dr. Davenal."

"And what difference did it make to you which of us gave it?" was Mark Cray's reply, not an unnatural one. "You may guess that it was a thing I did not care to speak of. So long as it was assumed we gave the chloroform conjointly, in accordance with ordinary practice and our best judgment, nobody could say a word; but if it had been disclosed that I gave it by myself, on my own responsibility and against the doctor's opinion, I should have had the whole town carping at me."

Oswald had nothing further to say. He could not tell the bitter truth--that this miserable misapprehension had wrecked his hopes of happiness, had been making an ice-bolt of his heart in the intervening years.

Mark escaped, and returned to his wife's room, there to endeavour to drop into his golden dreams again, from which he seemed to have been aroused for no earthly use whatever. And Oswald stayed on in the hope of seeing Sara.

Not only in the dining-parlour of Miss Davenal's house was there a conference being held at that hour, but also in the drawing-room above: and but for the all-absorbing nature of his own thoughts Oswald Cray had not failed to hear the sounds. Captain Davenal had got Neal there, before his aunt. And Mr. Neal was slipping out of all accusations as smoothly as an eel.

The group was noticeable. Miss Davenal in her chair, upright and angry, only partially understanding the cause of the commotion; Captain Davenal standing, open and impetuous, talking very fast; Neal full of repose and self-possession, all his wits in full play; and Sara sitting apart in silence, her cheek bent upon her hand. Captain Davenal charged Neal with treachery, general and particular. Neal had his plausible answer ready to meet it all.

The interview was drawing to an end, and little satisfaction had been derived from it. Poor Miss Davenal's ears were in a mazed condition: desks, letters, inventions to Sara touching a Mrs. Wentworth, and a hundred other charges, jumbling hopelessly upon them, nothing being clear. Neal denied everything.

"You did tell Miss Sara Davenal that the young woman was my wife," cried Captain Davenal, indignantly.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Neal, respectfully. "I said I felt quite sure she was not; that there must be some mistake. Miss Sara perhaps will remember that such was my opinion."

"At any rate, you said the young woman made the charge," persisted Captain Davenal, irritated at the assured coolness.

"I did, sir. I understood the young woman to make it. She----"

"But she never did make it," interrupted Captain Davenal.

Neal shrugged his shoulders in submissive superciliousness, meant for Mrs. Wentworth. "It may suit the young woman's purpose to say so now, sir. I fear she is not very strict in her adherence to truth; but she certainly did make it at the time. However, sir, I am quite willing to take the blame upon myself, to allow that I misunderstood her."

"Why, you have not the face to tell me that you have gone on believing it?"

"O dear no, sir. I was very soon afterwards convinced that the thing was a mistake altogether."

"And pray, why had you not the honesty to say so to Miss Sara Davenal?"

"I'm sure I should have been happy to say so, sir, had I possessed the least idea that it would have been welcome. But after the first blush, the matter appeared to be so very absurd that I never supposed Miss Sara would give to it a second thought. If my silence has caused any uneasiness, I can only say how deeply I regret it."

"Who is the young woman?" helplessly cried Miss Bettina. "And pray, Neal, how came it, if you had anything of the sort to say, that you did not say it to me? I am the proper person to hear these things; a young lady is not."

Neal advanced a step to his mistress and spoke in his low clear tone. "It was not my intention to speak to Miss Sara Davenal at all, ma'am, or to you either; I should not have thought of doing such a thing; but I could not help myself when Miss Sara questioned me upon the point."

All that was reasonable and feasible, and Miss Davenal nodded her head in approbation; but her nephew the captain got in a passion, and insisted that he should be discharged there and then.

Neal was quite ready to go, he said, civilly courteous, if his mistress saw fit to inflict upon him so severe a step. He was unconscious of having done anything to merit it. Perhaps she would be pleased to particularise his offence.

"He is a villain, aunt," broke forth the captain intemperately, before Miss Bettina could speak. "I believe he has been one ever since my father took him into the house. He has opened letters and unlocked desks, and altogether played the part of deceit. He shall go."

Neal interrupted, humbly begging the captain's pardon. He could most truthfully assure his mistress that he had done nothing of the sort; he had never opened a letter in the house, except his own; had never touched a desk, but to dust it. If Captain Davenal could mention any other distinct charge, he should be glad, as it would allow him an opportunity of refutation. No. His conscience acquitted him. He should quit the house, if he did have to quit it, with a clear character, and he thought his mistress would acknowledge that he deserved one. In the one little point concerning Mrs. Wentworth he might have been in error: first, in too readily giving ear to what she said; next, in not having spoken to Miss Sara to set the doubt at rest in her mind. They were mistakes certainly, and he greatly regretted them.

"Neal," said the captain, too hot-headed to maintain his dignity, "I'd a hundred times rather be an open villain than a sneak. Why, you know you have been nothing but a spy from the very moment you entered the house. Aunt Bettina, listen! Before the regiment went away I got into a little trouble, upon which I found it necessary to consult my father, and I went----"

"A little what?" asked Miss Bettina.

"Trouble. A little difficulty."

"Oh, ah, yes," said Miss Bettina. "You were always getting into it."

"Not such as that," thought the captain. "Well, I had to go down to Hallingham," he continued aloud, as he bent to her. "I did not care that any of you should know it, and I got down one night unexpected by my father. I was with him in his study for some time, and went back so as to be at duty the next morning. Would you believe"--pointing his finger at Neal--"that yon honest fellow was a spy upon the interview?"

Mr. Neal was a little taken by surprise, and Sara looked up astonished. But the man was not one to lose his impassability.

"He was at the window, looking and listening: not, I believe, that he could see and hear very much. And he afterwards went abroad and told of the interview: told that his master had a secret visitor at night. You little thought, Mr. Neal, that the visitor was myself, or that I should ever bring it home to you."

Neal, all unconscious innocence, gazed straight forward into Captain Davenal's face. "I have not the least idea what it is that you are speaking of, sir. My recollection does not serve me upon the point."

"O yes, it does," said Captain Davenal. "A subtle nature such as yours cannot forget so easily. Happily he to whom you carried the tale of the evening was a trustworthy man: he kept his own counsel, and told you Dr. Davenal's visitors were no business of his or of yours. I speak of Mr. Oswald Cray."

"Mr. Oswald Cray!" repeated Neal, plunging into reflection. "On my honour, sir, I have not the least idea of what it is you mean. A visitor at night to my late master in his study? Stay, I do remember something of it. I--yes--I was outside, taking a mouthful of fresh air preparatory to retiring to rest, and I saw some one--a stranger I took him to be--come stealthily in at the gate, and he was afterwards shut in with my master. I'm sure sir, I beg your pardon, even at this distance of time, if I was mistaken. I feared he might be a suspicious character, and I think I did go to the window, anxious for my master's personal safety. I could not have supposed it was you, sir."

Was it possible to take Neal at a disadvantage? It did not seem so.

"And it was anxiety for your master's personal safety that caused you afterwards to recount this to Mr. Oswald Cray? Eh?"

"Does Mr. Oswald Cray say I recounted it to him, sir?" inquired Neal, probably not feeling sure of his ground just here.

"That's my business," said Captain Davenal, while Sara looked round at Neal. "You did recount it to him."

"All I can say, sir, is, that if I did, I must have had some good motive in it. I cannot charge my memory after this lapse of time. Were I in any anxiety touching my master, Mr. Oswald Cray was probably the gentleman I should carry it to, seeing he was a friend of the family. I have--I think--some faint remembrance that I did speak to Mr. Oswald Cray of that mysterious visitor," slowly added Neal, looking fixedly up in the air, as if he were tying to descry the sun through a fog. "It's very likely that I did, sir, not being at ease myself upon the point."

Captain Davenal was losing patience. It seemed impossible to bring anything home to Neal with any sort of satisfaction. At the close of the captain's interview with Oswald Cray, the latter had mentioned-- but not in any ill-feeling to Neal--that that functionary had spoken to him of the night interview at Dr. Davenal's; had said he was outside the window at the time. Oswald had not said more; he deemed it well not to do so; but Captain Davenal had become at once convinced that it was but one of Neal's prying tricks. He turned to Miss Davenal.

"Aunt Bettina, this is waste of time. In nearly the last interview I ever had with my father he told me he had doubts of Neal. He feared the man was carrying on a game of deceit. I know he has been doing it all along. Will you discharge him?"

"I can't understand it at all," returned Miss Bettina.

"I'll enlighten you one of these days, when you are not very deaf, and we can have a quiet half-hour together. Sara, what do you say?"

Sara rose from her seat, her cheek flushing, her voice firm. "Neal must leave, Aunt Bettina," she said, bending down to the deaf ear. "Edward is quite right."

Miss Bettina looked at them all in succession. Had she believed the accusations she would have discharged Neal on the spot, but she doubted them. She had thought there was not so faithful a servant in the world. And he looked so immaculate as he stood there!

"I don't go out of the house this night until he has left it, Aunt Bettina," resumed the captain.

"This night!" echoed Miss Bettina, catching the words. "I can't let Neal go without warning, leaving us without a servant. Who is to wait upon us?"

"You shall have my servant, aunt; one I have brought home with me----"

"No," said Miss Bettina, resolute in the cause of justice. "Neal, I will not part with you in that hasty manner. I cannot judge yet between you and Captain Davenal. That you must leave is obvious; but you shall have the proper month's warning."

Neal stepped up, all suavity. "I beg your pardon, ma'am; you are very kind, but I could not think of remaining a day to cause unpleasantness in the family. I had better go at once. I have my feelings, ma'am, although I am but a dependant. My conscience tells me that I have served you faithfully."

"I think you have, Neal."

"I have indeed, ma'am, and I hope it will be remembered in my character."

"Don't send to me for one," impetuously broke out Captain Davenal. "And now, Neal, the sooner you are out of the house the better. I shall keep my word: to see you away from it ere I quit it myself."

Neal bowed; he could but be ever the respectful servant: and retired. Miss Davenal was bewildered. What with parting with Neal, what with being left with nobody to replace him, she could not gather her senses. Captain Davenal sat down. First of all promising her that the servant he spoke of should be in the house before night, to remain with her until she was suited with one, he next began to enlarge upon Neal's delinquencies, and try to make her comprehend them.

Sara silently left the room. It was altogether a painful subject, and she did not care to hear more of it now. She went down into the dining-parlour, her movements slow and quiet; since Mrs. Cray's increased danger noise had been avoided in the house as much as possible. Some one was standing up by the mantelpiece, his back towards her; in the dusk of the room--for evening was drawing on--Sara took it to be Mark; and yet she thought she had heard Mark's step in his wife's chamber now, as she came downstairs. This gentleman was taller, too! He turned suddenly round, and the fire threw its light on the face of Oswald Cray.

She stood a moment in surprise, and then went up to him, holding out her hand as to any ordinary visitor, and saying a word of apology that he should have been left there unannounced. A strange expression, an expression of deprecation, almost of humility, sat on his features, and he did not touch the offered hand.

"I waited to see you," he said. "I came here to see Mark, who has been with me."

He stopped suddenly. His manner, his looks, were altogether strange. Sara thought something must have happened.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "You look as if you had some great care upon you."

"And so I have. That care that arises from shame and repentance; from finding that we have been upon the mistaken road of wrong; been treading it for years."

She sat down, quietly, timidly, looking to him for an elucidation, half-frightened at his emotion.

"I wish to have an explanation with you, Sara. I want--if it be possible--forgiveness. And I don't know how to enter upon the one or to sue for the other."

She had rarely seen him otherwise than calmly self-possessed. Generally, especially of late years, he was cold almost to a fault. And now he was as one blazing with an inward fire: his lips were scarlet, his brow was flushed, his voice quite hoarse with emotion.

"In the years gone by, I--I--threw you up, Sara. While I loved you better than anything on earth, knowing that you were the only one upon it who could ever awaken the passion within me, did I live to centuries, I voluntarily resigned you. That night in the Abbey graveyard at Hallingham, when we accidentally met--you have not forgotten it--I told you that I could not marry you; that you were not fit to be my wife----Hush! it was equivalent to it Sara, how can I stand now before you and confess that I was altogether under an error; that in my pride, my blindness, I had taken up a false view of things, and was acting upon it? Can you see my shame, my repentance, as I say it to you?"

"I don't understand you," she gasped, utterly bewildered.

"Will you so far pardon me--will you so far trust me after all that has occurred--as to give me this one single word of explanation? To whom did you attribute the cause of my acting in the way I did? Whose ill-conduct was it, as you supposed, that had raised the barrier between us?"

She hesitated, not perhaps caring to reply.

"I have had an interview today with Captain Davenal," he resumed, in a low tone. "He has given me the details of the unhappy business he was drawn into--the forged bills: I am, so far, in his entire confidence. Will that help you to answer me?"

"It was that," she said.

"That alone?"

"That alone. There was nothing else."

"Well, Sara, can you believe me when I tell you that I never heard of that business until today?--That Captain Davenal had nothing whatever to do with my course of action?"

Indeed she looked as though she could not believe him. What else then? she asked. Who had? Under what impression had he acted?

"Ah, there lies my shame! Sara, I dared--I dared to attribute ill-conduct to another," he cried with emotion. "In my pride and folly, in my mind's delusion, I presumed to set myself up for a judge over one who in goodness might have crushed me to nothing. I shall never get over the remorse during life."

"You--did not--attribute ill-conduct of any sort to me?" she said with white lips.

"To you! To you whom I have ever believed to be one of the best and truest women upon earth!--whom I have regarded through it all with an amount of respect unutterable! No, no. But the question serves me right."

She laid her hands one over the other as she sat, striving to keep her feelings under control. Praise from him was all too sweet yet.

"O do me justice so far, Sara! While I gave you up I knew that to my heart and judgment none were like unto you for goodness: I knew that if my obstinate pride, my spirit of self-sufficiency, did but allow me to marry you, you would be the greatest treasure man ever took to himself. Can you tolerate me while I dare openly to say these things?--can you believe that I am pouring them forth in my humiliation? I have loved you deeply and fervently; I shall love you always; but even that love has scarcely equalled my admiration and my respect."

"But who else, then, could have had any counteracting influence?" she returned, after a while.

"I dare not tell you."

"There was only Edward. I had no other brother. No one else could have done anything to bring shame upon----oh, surely you cannot mean papa!" she broke off, the improbable idea flashing over her.

"Don't ask me, Sara! In mercy to myself."

"Papa who was so good?" she reiterated, paying no heed to his words in her wonder. "He was so just, so kind, so honourable! I think if ever there was a good man on earth who tried to do as God would have him, it was papa. It is impossible you could suspect anything wrong in him!"

"My object in waiting to see you this evening was, first, to make my confession; secondly, to ask you to be more just, more merciful than I have been, and to forgive me," he rejoined in a low tone. "I must add another petition yet, Sara; that you would generously allow this one point to remain as it is between us."

"But I think you ought to tell me," she urged. "Did you indeed suspect papa?"

"Yes."

"But of what?"

"Ah, don't press me further, Sara, for I cannot tell you. A singular accident led me to doubt Dr. Davenal's conduct--honour--I hardly know what to call it--and there followed on this a chain of circumstances so apparently corroborative of the doubt that I thought I had no resource but to believe. I believed, and I acted upon the belief: I judged him harshly; I treated him coldly; I gave up you, my dearest hope and object in life; and this day only have my eyes been opened, and to my shame I learn that the whole thing, as regarded him, was a delusion. Will you--will you generously let my confession rest here?"

"Papa would not have done as Edward did," she whispered.

"No, no, it was not anything of that nature. Money and money matters had nothing to do with it. It was an entirely different thing. I am so ashamed of myself that I cannot bear to speak of this further. Surely I have said enough. It was a mistake, a misapprehension altogether: and the greatest act of kindness you can do me now is to let it rest here."

She sat gazing at him with questioning eyes, nearly lost in wonder.

"Yes, the impression under which I acted was a false one. There existed no cause whatever for my estranging myself from you. But for my own unpardonable credulity I need never have given you up: and the past years of anguish--and I know they have been full of anguish to both of us--ought not to have had place. I was misled by an unfortunate chain of events: and nothing remains to me but shame and repentance."

There ensued a silence. Sara was standing on the hearth-rug now, and he took his elbow from the mantelpiece, where it had been resting, and moved a step towards her.

"Can I ever hope for your forgiveness?"

"It seems to me that I have nothing to forgive," she answered, in a low voice. "If circumstances misled you, you could not be blamed for acting upon them, according to your belief."

"Sara!"--he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and his voice shook with the intensity of its emotion--"may I dare to hope that you will let me in my future life strive to atone for this?"

"How atone for it?" she faltered.

"Will you generously look over the past folly?--will you suffer it to be between us as it used to be?--will you be my wife at last?"

She trembled as she stood, the conscious light of love mantling in her cheek and in her drooping eye. Mr. Oswald Cray held her before him, waiting and watching for the answer, his lips parted with suspense.

"My brother's crime remains still," she whispered. "A memento of the past."

"Your brother's crime! Should you be punished for that?--for him? And what of my brother?" he continued, the revelation of the day imparting to his tone a whole world of remorse, of self-condemning repentance. "What disgrace has not my brother brought to me? O Sara; should the ill wrought by these ties part us? It never ought to have done so. Let us stand alone, henceforth, you and I, independent of the world! Don't try me too greatly! don't punish me, as in justice you might!"

For a moment her eyes looked straight into his with a loving, earnest glance, and then dropped again. "I will be your wife, Oswald," she simply said. "I have never tried to forget you, for I knew I could not."

And as if relief from the tension of suspense were too great for entire silence, a faint sound of emotion broke from Oswald Cray. And he bent to take from her lips that kiss, left upon them so long ago in the garden-parlour of the old house at Hallingham.

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LXII. "FINANCE," THIS TIME

An afternoon in March. The sun was drawing towards its setting amidst gorgeous clouds, and the red light, illumining the western sky, threw its rays into an invalid's chamber, and lighted it up with a warm hue.

Something else was drawing towards its setting; and that was the feeble life of the chamber's chief occupant. It was a good-sized pleasant room: the bed at the end farthest from the window; the middle space devoted to the comfort of the invalid, a table with some books upon its handsome cover, a sofa, easy chairs, velvet footstools, and a few pretty ornaments to amuse the eye.

On the sofa, by the side of the fire, a coverlid of the lightest and softest texture thrown gently over her, lay the invalid, her hands white and attenuated, her face drawn and wan. But there was a strange beauty in the face yet; in the eyes with their violet depths, in the exquisite features shaded by the mass of silky hair. You do not fail to recognise Mrs. Cray. Just now the eyes were closed, and she was dozing peacefully.

At the opposite end of the hearth-rug, sitting restlessly in an easy chair, was Mark. Of late Mark had been rather prone to be as still and idle as his wife: the inert life wearied him, it chafed its spirit; but there was no escape from it at present, and Mark Cray had perforce resigned himself to it, as an imprisoned bird resigns itself in time to its cage. Mark's future prospects were uncommonly vague: in fact they were as yet bounded by the old expectation-anchor, the "something" that was to "turn up." Any time in the past few weeks his wife's death might have been expected, and Mark had yielded to the idleness of the circumstances, and been tranquil. Mr. Barker was away in Paris, and did not write; the Wheal Bang affairs were going on to a comfortable conclusion, and Mark was letting the future take care of itself. Strolling out for short walks; giving a quarter of an hour to the "Times;" wandering for a few minutes into the sitting-rooms and the presence of Miss Bettina, and lounging back in the easy chairs by the side of his wife--thus had Mark's recent days been passed.

But on this afternoon all was changed, and Mark's forced quiescence had given place to a fidgety restlessness, very characteristic of the old times. The post had just brought a letter from Mr. Barker--some accident or contrary weather having delayed the arrival of the French mail--and Mark Cray upon reading it felt exalted into the seventh heaven.

Barker had succeeded! He had brought out a company in Paris connected with finance; the great work he had been striving for so long. In three weeks' time from that date it would all be in full operation, and if Mrs. Cray were sufficiently well to be left, and Mark came over to Paris, he could instantly step into a post in the Company at a salary of eight hundred a-year to begin with. In about six months' time, according to moderate computation, the thing would be in full swing, and the profits inaugurated certainly at not less than six thousand per annum; the half of which splendid income should be Mark's. Such was Mr. Barker's news.

Can you wonder at Mark's restlessness? At his brightened eye, his flushed face, as he sits there in the chair, bolt upright, his hand raised incessantly to push back his hair? He glances across at Caroline--whom he really loves very much still--and thinks what a pity it is that all this good fortune should have delayed itself until now. Had it come too late for her? Mark Cray in his sanguine fashion actually asks himself the question, medical man though he is. For the last two or three days Caroline had seemed so much better! only on this very morning she had told Mark she felt as if she were getting well again.

Mark moved his restless legs and contrived to knock down the fire-shovel. The noise awoke Caroline. She stirred, and turned her opening eyes on her husband.

"What was that? Did anybody come in, Mark?"

"I threw over one of the fire-irons. I am sorry it disturbed you. They are always sticking out, tiresome things! It's not a proper fender for a bedroom. Caroline, I have had a letter from Barker," he continued, rising in excitement and standing before her on the hearth-rug. "It's the most glorious news! The thing's realised at last."

"What thing?" asked Caroline, feebly, after a pause of bewilderment.

"The thing he has had on hand so long, the great scheme he has been working for. O Carine, I wish you could get better! There's eight hundred a year waiting for me in Paris; and there'll be an income of at least three thousand before six months are over. Three thousand for my share, you know. I'm sure you would like living in Paris."

She did not answer. Nothing was heard save the quick gasps of the panting breath, the result of excessive weakness, or--of--something else coming very near. Mark was struck with some change in her aspect, and bent down to her.

"Don't you feel so well, Carine?"

"I--feel--weary," was all she answered, her voice ominously low.

"Where's Sara, I wonder?" said Mark. "I'll go and send her to you. You want some beef-tea, or something, I daresay."

Mark went down the stairs, meeting Sara on them. In the drawing-room, with Miss Bettina, was Oswald Cray, who had just come in. He was a frequent visitor now.

The half-brothers shook hands, coldly enough. They were civil to each other always, but there could never be cordiality between them. Not because of the past; but because they were so essentially different in mind, in judgment, and in conduct.

"My luck has turned at last, Oswald," exclaimed Mark impulsively.

"In what way?" asked Oswald, who was leaning over the back of a chair while he talked to Miss Bettina.

"I have just had a letter from Barker," answered Mark, running his hand through his hair with his restless fingers. "I told you what a great scheme he had got on hand in Paris, but you turned the cold shoulder on it. Well, it's bearing fruit at last."

"Oh," said Oswald, evincing a desire, if his tone and manner might be judged by, to turn the cold shoulder on it still, metaphorically speaking. "How is your wife this afternoon?" he continued, passing to a different subject.

"She has been so much better the last few days that one might almost be tempted to hope she'd get well again," rejoined Mark, volubly. "She seems tired now--low, I thought. Sara's just gone up to her. What a shame it is that things turn out so cross-grained and contrary!"

The concluding sentence, delivered with marked acumen, reached the ear of Miss Bettina. She looked up from her knitting to scan Mark.

"If Barker's luck had only been realised six months ago, what a thing it would have been!" he went on. "Caroline might have got better, instead of worse. In the enjoyment of luxuries in a home of her own, renewed wealth and position in prospective, with the pure air of the balmy French capital, there's no knowing what benefit she might not have derived. And now it comes too late! I shall ever regret it for her sake."

"Regret what?" sharply interposed Miss Bettina.

Mark replied by giving a summary of Barker's luck. Miss Bettina paused, knitting-needles in hand, her keen grey eyes fixed on Mark, as she tried to understand him.

"Barker in luck!" she repeated, catching some of the words and the general sense. "Has he come into an estate in the moon? Don't be a simpleton, Mark Cray."

Mark Cray felt exasperated. Nothing angered him so much as for people to pretend to see these enchanting prospects with different eyes from his own. He had always been convinced it was done only to vex him. Poor Mark! He turned to Oswald, and began expatiating upon the good fortune that was drawing so near; and Oswald saw that it was of no use to try to stop him. The fever-mania had again taken hold of Mark.

"What is the scheme, do you say?" asked Oswald, just as he would have asked anything of a child; and perhaps it was not altogether his fault that a sound of mockery was discernible in his tone.

"It's connected with finance."

"Oh!" said Oswald.

"It is the grandest thing that has been brought before the public for many a year," continued Mark, his voice impressive, his light eyes sparkling. "The very greatest--"

"Grander than the Great Wheal Bang?" inopportunely interposed Miss Bettina, Mark's earnest tones having enabled her to hear better than usual.

"A hundred times grander," returned Mark, his mind too completely absorbed in the contemplation of the grandeur to detect the irony. "That is, better, you know, Miss Bettina. The mine was very good; but of course there was a risk attending that, from water or other causes, and the result unfortunately realised it. This is different. Once the company is formed, and the shares are taken, it can't fail. Barker and I went through the thing together over and over again when he was in London; we had it all down before us in black and white. We allowed for every possible risk and contingency, and we proved that the thing could not fail, if once organised."

Oswald listened quietly. Miss Bettina had lost the thread again.

"The job was to organise the thing," resumed Mark. "It could not be done without money, and Barker--to speak the truth--found a difficulty in getting that. The money market was tight here, and men don't care to speculate when money's not plentiful. He also required the co-operation of some French capitalist, who would put his name to it--some good man on the Bourse, and that was hard to get. Those Frenchmen are all so narrow-minded, fight so shy. He knows two or three good Englishmen in Paris who were willing to go into it, and who helped Barker immensely with advice and introductions, and that; but they had no funds at command. However, it's all accomplished now. Barker has fought his way through impediments, and surmounted them. The company's formed, the preliminary arrangements are successfully carried out, and fortune is at hand."

"What's at hand?" asked Miss Bettina.

"Fortune," repeated Mark. "I shall take one of those nice little boxes in the Champs Elysées. Some of them are charming. Or perhaps only part of one if--if Carine--O dear! it is hard for her that this luck did not fall in a year ago! I wonder," broke off Mark, passing to another phase of his future visions, "I wonder whether, if it were possible to get Caroline over to Paris now, the change might benefit her?"

"You think of residing in Paris?" said Oswald.

"Of course I do. Paris will be the centre of operations. Barker wants me over there at once; and the minute I join him I begin to draw at the rate of eight hundred a-year. Just to go on with, you know, until the money falls in."

"Mark," said Oswald, after a pause, "will it be of any use my saying a word of warning to you?"

"On what subject?" returned Mark, looking up with surprise.

"On this subject. It seems to me that you are falling into another delusion; that the--"

"No, it will not be of any use," burst forth Mark in strange excitement "I might have known beforehand that you'd turn out my enemy upon the point. If gold and diamonds were dropping down in a shower from the skies you'd not stretch forth your hand to catch them. There's a mist before your eyes, Oswald, that prevents you seeing these things in their proper aspect."

He began to pace the room as he spoke, chafing considerably Why was it that these little hints of warning awoke the irritation of Mark's spirit? Could there be an undercurrent of doubt in his mind whether Oswald was right and he wrong? However it might be, one thing was certain--that no warning, let it come from whom it would, could do any good with Mark.

As he turned to face them again, Sara entered. An expression of alarm was on her face, and she closed the door before speaking. She had come to say that Caroline appeared worse; altogether different from usual.

Mark ran up the stairs; Miss Bettina put down her knitting to follow. Sara turned to Oswald Cray.

"She knows you are here, Oswald, and would like to see you. She wants to bid you goodbye. I think her saying that alarmed me more than anything."

Caroline was on the sofa as before. Very quiet, save for her panting breath. Her white hands lay listless, her face, dreadfully worn though it was, was calm, tranquil. She looked at them one by one, and slightly raised her hand as Oswald entered. He bent down to her, taking it in his.

"Thank you for all," she whispered.

The change in her countenance struck them. It so far frightened Mark as to take from him his self-possession. He pushed Oswald away.

"O Carine, what is it? You cannot be going to die! You must not die, now that all this good luck is coming upon me!"

She glanced up at him, her eyes wide open, as if she scarcely understood.

"There's the most beautiful home getting ready for you in Paris Carine," he resumed, his voice sounding as if he were on the verge of tears. "We'll live in the Champ Elysées; it is the loveliest spot, and you can't fail to grow better there, if we can only get your disease to turn. O Carine! don't leave me just when I am able to surround you with wealth and luxury again! This will be a greater and a surer thing than the Great Wheal Bang."

"Don't, Mark! I am going to a better home."

"But I can't let you go until I have atoned for the past! I----"

"Hush, hush!" she interrupted. "O Mark! if you only knew how welcome it is to me! I am going to be at peace after all the turmoil. I am going to rest."

"Do you want to go?" pursued Mark, half-resentfully. "Don't you care to get well?"

"I have not cared to get well since I came to England. That is, I have not thought I should," she returned between the gasps of her laboured breath. "When I heard the bell toll out for Prince Albert, I asked who was I that I should be spared when he was taken? The next world has seemed very near to me since then. As if the doors of it had been brought down to earth, and stood always open."

That the death of the Prince, brought so palpably, as may be said, before her, had taken a great hold on the mind of Mrs. Cray there was no doubt. Several times during her later weeks of illness she had alluded to it. Her principal feeling in relation to it appeared to be that of gratitude. Not gratitude for his death; there was only sorrow for that; but for the strange impression it had left upon her own mind, the vista of the Hereafter. For the good and great prince to be taken suddenly from the earthly duties so much needing him was only an earnest, had one been wanting, that he had entered upon a better and higher sphere. It seemed that he had but been removed a step; a step on the road towards heaven; and it most certainly in a measure had the effect of reconciling her to her own removal, of tranquillising her weary heart, of bringing her thoughts and feelings into that state most fitting to prepare for it. Often and often had she awoke from a deep sleep, starting suddenly up and calling out, "I thought I heard St. Paul's bell again?"

"I wish the Great Wheal Bang had been in the sea!" gloomily exclaimed Mark Cray, who was no more calculated for a scene such as this than a child, and had little more control over his tongue. "But for that mine turning out as it did your illness might never have come on."

"Don't regret it, Mark," she feebly said. "God's hand was in it all. I look back and trace it. But for the trouble brought to me then, I might never have been reconciled to go. It is so merciful! God has weaned me from the world before removing me from it."

Mark Cray drew a little back and stood gazing at his wife a gloomy helpless sort of expression on his countenance as his right hand nervously pushed back his hair. Oswald was at the head of the sofa, Sara near to him, and Miss Bettina was at the far end of the room, looking after some comforting medicine drops. Thus there was a clear space before the sofa, and the red light from the fire played on Caroline's wasted features. That she was dying--dying suddenly, as may be said--there could be no doubt.

"If things had not turned out so crossly!" began Mark again. "I knew I should redeem the misfortunes of that Wheal Bang. I always told you I should extricate myself, Caroline."

"We shall all be extricated from our misfortunes here," came from her dying lips. "A few years more or less of toil, and strife, and daily care, and then redemption comes. Not the redemption that we work. O Mark, if you could see things as I now see them! When we are on the threshold of the next world our eyes are opened to the poor value of this. Its worst cares have been but petty trials, its greatest heartache was not worth the pang. They were but hillocks that we had to pass in our journey upwards, and God was always leading us. If we could but trust to Him! If we did but learn to resign our hands implicitly to his and be led as little children!"

Mark Cray felt somewhat awed. He began to doubt whether it were exactly the time and place to pour forth regrets after the misfortunes of the Great Wheal Bang, or enlarge on the future glories opening to him in the French capital.

"It is so much better for me to be at rest! God is taking me to the place where change and sickness cannot enter. I shall see Uncle Richard: I shall see poor Richard who went before him: I shall see papa and mamma, whom I have nearly forgotten. We all go, some sooner, some later. This world lasts but a little minute; that one is the home, the gathering-place. Mark, dear Mark! the troubles here are of so little moment; they are only trifling hindrances through which we must bear on to Eternity. Oh, trust God! They are all sent by him."

There occurred an interruption. Mr. Welch, who had not been able to call before that day, came in, and the solemn feeling that had been stealing over those in the chamber gave place to the ordinary routine of everyday event.

"Before the morning," the surgeon said when he left, in answer to a grave question put to him by Miss Bettina.

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LXIII. SIX MONTHS LATER

The first scenes of this story were laid in Hallingham, and it is only well that it should close there. Well or not, it cannot be helped; for the chief personages you have met in its course were now gathered in that town.

Caroline died in March, and this was the beginning of October; so you see several months have gone on in the year. The cold ungenial summer of 1862 had come to an end, and the Great Exhibition, characteristic of the year, was drawing to an end also. Ah! how we plan, and plot, and work, and a higher hand mars it! A higher wisdom than ours looks on, and overrules, and changes all things! The one brave, earnest spirit, who had worked with all the energy of his true heart to bring about and perfect that exhibition, was alone not spared to see its fruition. Was there a single heart, of all the multitudes that flocked to it, that was not weighed down with a latent sense of the something wanting, and of the exhibition's failure?--of its failure in a general point of view, and of our own short-seeing helplessness? The gilt had been taken off the gingerbread.

In the Abbey at Hallingham, settled in it, as she hoped, for life, was Miss Bettina. With the death of Mrs. Cray all necessity for Miss Davenal's remaining in London had ceased. In point of fact, it may be said to have ceased from the time Mark Cray and his wife went into Normandie; but she had stayed on. Very much disliking London, Miss Davenal made arrangements for leaving it as soon as she could do so with convenience, and in June had come back to Hallingham. Some difficulty arose about a residence; Miss Davenal was not one who could be put anywhere. She possessed some houses of her own in the town, good ones, but they were let. Oswald Cray it was who directed her attention to the Abbey. It had never been occupied since Mark's short tenancy of it; and at last, after some few alterations had been made in it, to the increase of its indoor comfort, Miss Davenal took it on a lease and entered into possession.

So far as human foresight may anticipate in this world of changes, she had settled down for life. The great barn of a drawing-room had been made into two apartments--handsome both, and of good proportions; the one was the drawing-room still, the other was Miss Davenal's bedchamber. A quiet, tranquil life she might expect to live here with her two handmaidens, Watton and Dorcas.

For Watton had settled down also after her rovings, and come back to Hallingham. Watton had not lightly or capriciously resigned her superior situation in London; but ever since the past winter, Watton had been ailing. She tried three or four doctors; she took, as she said, quarts of physic; but Watton could not get strong. There was no particular disorder, and she came at length to the conclusion that it must be London that disagreed with her; and she gave notice co quit her place. So she was installed once more upper maid to Miss Davenal, and seemed since the change to have got well all one way.

She would have more to do than she had in the old days at the doctor's, for there was no Neal now. Miss Davenal declined to try another manservant, probably from a conviction that she should never replace the services of that finished and invaluable domestic. Miss Davenal was by no means convinced of the treachery attributed to him by Captain Davenal, and at odd moments was apt to look upon the charge as emanating solely from the gallant captain's fanciful imagination.

Neal himself was flourishing. Considering the precaution he took to keep himself right with the world, there was not much probability that he would ever be otherwise. Neal had entered on a situation with one of her Majesty's ministers; his lordship's own personal attendant. It was to be hoped there'd be no opportunity afforded him of getting at any of the state secrets! Ah, how many of these rogues are there, besides Neal, filling confidential posts in the world! Will it be so to the end of their career? Will it be so with Neal? I sometimes wonder.

The Abbey was gay just now, in this same month of October, for Miss Davenal was entertaining a party in it. Sara had left it a fortnight past with Oswald Cray; and Captain Davenal, who had come down to give her away, had remained since, with his wife, on a visit to Miss Davenal. He called her Aunt Bett still: but she was more cordial with him than she used to be, for she had learnt really to love the sweet young wife. She was in the habit of assuring him that Rose was a greater treasure than he deserved; and in that he did not contradict her.

Two other visitors at the abbey were Dick and Leo. Poor Leo could not recover his health; Mrs. Keen grew timid about him, and it was decided that he should go back to his native place, Barbadoes, for a short while, and see what that would do. His father and mother felt persuaded it would effect wonders, and of course they thought nobody could take care of him as they could; so Leo was on the point of sailing. Mr. Dick, tolerated in the capacity of visitor as a necessary evil for his brother's sake, had come home to Sara's wedding, and was allowed to remain still, to see the last of Leo. Dick found the Michaelmas holidays delightful. What with getting inside the jam-closets, and making raids on sundry neighbouring gardens where the pears and apples grew too abundantly, and teasing Captain Davenal's son and heir--a noisy young gentleman, who promised to be another wicked Dick--and taking stealthy rides on the tops of the railway engines (lying out all tempting on the opposite side to the pears and apples) Mr. Dick found the time pass charmingly. Captain Davenal took him out shooting now and then, by way of a treat. One day that the captain was otherwise engaged, the gun disappeared, and Dick also; and Miss Bettina went all but into a real fit, expecting nothing less than to see him brought home with his head shot off. Dick, however, reappeared with his head on, and a pheasant and a partridge in his hand, which he had shot and brought home in open triumph, defying the game-laws. Miss Bettina wondered how long it would be before Dick came to the gallows.

There was one more visitor at the Abbey. And that was Mark Cray. Mark, however, had been there but for a day or two, not for the wedding. He had come to bear off Leo Davenal: for the compagnon de voyage and protector of Leo to the West Indies was to be no other than Mark.

Mark Cray was down in feather. Dreadfully so. After his wife's death Mark had made his way to Paris, to enter upon the brilliant career he supposed to be in readiness for him. Not quite ready, however, he found when he got there; some trifling preliminaries had to be completed yet. Mark thought nothing of the check: he was sanguine: Barker was sanguine; it was only a little delay: and Mark amused himself most agreeably, looking at the houses in the Champs Elysées, against the time came that he should require to fix upon one.

Mark's friends in England heard nothing of him until the middle of the summer; and then Mark himself appeared among them uncommonly crestfallen. That something was wrong, appeared evident. Mark gave little explanation, but news was gathered from other sources. It appeared that Mr. Barker's grand project, with "finance" for its basis, had come to grief. At the very hour of its (expected) fruition the thing had in some ingenious manner dropped through, and thereby entailed some temporary inconvenience, not to say embarrassment, on its two warm supporters, Barker and Mark. Of course it was entirely undeserved; a most cruel stroke of adverse, ill-natured fate; but nevertheless both of them had to bow to it. Mark Cray came over to England; and Barker was compelled to go into ignoble hiding, nobody but himself knew where, while he smoothed his ruffled plumes, and gathered his forces for a fresh campaign.

Reposing in quiet was all very well for Barker, who appeared to have some perpetual fund to draw upon somewhere: though, in point of fact, the man had not a penny in the world, and how he managed to get along in his tumbles down from luck, he alone could tell: but it was not well for Mark Cray. Mark had not the plead genius of Barker--or whatever you may please to call it--the talent of extracting funds from some quarter or other for daily wants. If Mark was not "in luck," Mark stood a chance of starving. When Mark went back to London he had no home, no money, it may be said no friends; and, but for his meeting Captain Davenal one day accidentally, Mark could not, that he saw, have gone on at all. Later, some real luck did come to Mark. His late wife's friends--who had never been made acquainted with the grand expectations of the great Paris scheme--wrote to tell Mark that through the unexpected death of one of the medical men in Barbadoes, an excellent practice might be secured by him if he chose to go out and step into it.

Be you very sure, Mark Cray did not hesitate. Hating the profession though he did, feeling an innate conviction within himself that he was ill-qualified for it, he yet decided to embrace it again as his calling and occupation in life. When it comes to starving with a man, there's not much choice. So the decision was made, and Mark Cray was going out immediately to Barbadoes, and was to take charge of Leopold Davenal.

Once before you saw Miss Davenal waiting in that Abbey for the return of a bridegroom and bride from their wedding-tour. She was so waiting in like manner now. Oswald Cray and his wife had stopped at Thorndyke for a day or two on their return, as they were now about to stop at Hallingham, on their way to their new home in London.

Not as the guests of Sir Philip Oswald. Sir Philip had gone to that place where visiting is not; and Sir Henry was the master of Thorndyke. He had wanted Oswald and Sara to stay the whole of their holiday there; but they had preferred a greater change.

Miss Davenal sat in her drawing-room. The October sun was getting low, but still the expected guests had not arrived. Near to Miss Davenal, nursing a dancing baby that would not be coaxed to stillness, was a pretty, gentle woman--Mrs. Davenal. Leo stood at the window, looking out, and Mark Cray sat in a distant chair, restless, and pushing back his hair as usual. Mark did not altogether relish the expected presence of his half-brother but there was no help for it. They had not met since Mark went off to Paris in the spring, largely telling Oswald that his debt to him would be paid with interest ere the year was out.

"Is not that a carriage, Leo?"

"No, Aunt Bettina, it's a baker's cart going by."

Miss Davenal caught enough of the reply to know that it was not what she asked after. "Where's Richard?" she presently said.

"I saw him over there on an engine just now," was Leo's answer, pointing towards the station.

"He'll be brought home on one some day, blown up. Rose, my dear, that baby is tiring you. Let Leo ring for the nurse."

Mrs. Davenal laughed, and was about to say that the baby did not tire her and she would rather keep him, when Dick burst in.

"It's coming down the road; it will be here in a minute. Look, Aunt Bett!"

He dashed across the room to the window as he spoke. Example is contagious, and they all followed him. One of the Thorndyke carriages was drawing up to the door. Excitable Dick quitted the window and flew down again.

They were soon in the room. Sara, with her sweet face at rest now, and Oswald behind her. A few moments given to greeting, and Sara had taken the baby, and Oswald was shaking hands with his brother.

"I had no idea we should find you here, Mark."

Mark answered something which nobody could catch, and Captain Davenal came in.

"Is Henry Oswald with you?"

"No," said Oswald. "He will be in Hallingham tomorrow. He sadly wanted us to stay longer with him, Miss Bettina, and go on straight to London from Thorndyke. What would you have said to that?"

"Thank you," said Miss Davenal, hearing it was impossible to say what. "I shall be happy to see him."

"Have you seen your old friends, Mark?" asked Oswald; "have you been out much?"

"I have not been out at all, and I have seen none of them," responded Mark, gloomily. "I don't want to see them."

"How's Mr. Barker? Have you heard from him lately?"

"I heard the day before I came here," replied Mark, a shade of brightness rising to his countenance. "Barker has all the luck of it in this world. He is in something good again."

"Again!" repeated Oswald, suppressing his strong inclination to laugh.

"So he writes me word. It's something he has taken in hand and is going to perfect. If it comes to anything I shall return from Barbadoes and join him."

"Oh," said Oswald. "Well, Mark, I hope you will have a pleasant voyage out there, and that you will find your journey all you can wish."

Dinner would soon be ready, and Sara was shown to her room. It overlooked the Abbey graveyard. She took off her bonnet and stood there, lost in many reminiscences of the past, in the changes that time had wrought, in the uncertain contemplation of the future. What would be poor Mark Cray's future? Would he abide at Barbadoes, applying himself as well as his abilities allowed him to the pursuit of his legitimate profession?--or would his unstable, weak mind be dazzled with these illegitimate and delusive speculations to the end, until they engulfed him?

How strangely, how wonderfully had they been brought through changes and their accompanying trials! In this very room, where she now stood, Oswald had been born. The poor little boy, sent adrift as may be said without a home, motherless, as good as fatherless, had worked out his own way in the world, striving always to make a friend of God. Ah, when did it ever fail? It is the only sure help in life.

And what had her own later troubles been; her cares, anxieties, sorrows? Looking back, Sara saw great cause to reproach herself: why had she so given way to despair? It is true that she had never, in a certain sense, a degree, lost her trust in God: but she had not believed there could be this bright ending. A little ray of the setting sun was reflected on the tombstone formerly noticed; it fell on the significant inscription, "Buried in misery." Sara wondered whether he, the unhappy tenant, had never learned to abide in God.

So absorbed was she in thought that she did not notice any one had come into the room, until a hand was laid upon her shoulder. It was her husband's. He put some letters down in the broad, old-fashioned window-seat.

"They have been sent on to me here from the office," he explained, as Sara glanced at them. "Business letters, all. In one there's a bit of gossip, though: in Allister's."

"Is one of them from Allister?"

"Yes. Jane's going to be married. They have met with some Scotch gentleman out there, an old acquaintance of Jane's, and things are settled. Frank says his tongue is broad Scotch, and he can't understand half he says. Jane does, however, so it's all right."

A smile played upon Sara lips, as she thought of the past jealousy. She might tell her husband of it some time. "Does Mr. Allister keep well!" she asked.

"He has been quite well ever since he went there: he says very strong. I hope it has set him up for life. What were you thinking of so deeply, Sara, that you did not hear me come in?"

"At the moment, I was thinking of that evening when you and I met there, in the graveyard," she answered, pointing down to it. "What a miserable evening it was!"

"Don't dwell on it, love. I cannot, without a pang of shame."

"Nay, but it is pleasant to look back upon it now, Oswald. It is pleasant to contrast that time with this."

He shook his head with a sort of shiver, and relapsed into silence, his hand thrown round her.

"Oswald," she resumed in a low tone, "won't you tell me what your suspicion was?"

"I will tell you some time, Sara; not now. Oh, my wife, my wife, how much is there in the past for many of us to repent of!" he continued in what seemed an uncontrollable impulse. "And it is only through God's mercy that we do repent."

She laid her head upon his shoulder and let it rest there. Its safe abiding-place, so long as the world, for them, should last.

Only through God's mercy. My friends, may it be shed on us all throughout our pilgrimage in this chequered life, and ever abide with us unto the end! Fare you well.

THE END.

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