Found Out, a novel ... 103rd thousand

Front matter

FOUND OUT THE "GREENBACK SERIES" POPULAR 3/6 NOVELS. By WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS. (Crown 8710, Cloth.) Uniform with 4I Found Out." 1. LOUIS DRAVCOTT. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 2. GEOFFREY STIRLING. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 5th Edition. 3. BONNIE KATE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 4. A NEW OTHELLO. By Hon. Iza Duffus Hardy. 2nd Ed. 5. THE MAID OF LONDON BRIDGE. By Somerville Gibnev. 3rd F.dition. 6. EVELINE WELI.WOOD. By Major Norris Paul. 2nd Ed. 7. OLD LATTIMER'S LEGACY. By J. S. Fletcher. 2nd Ed. 8. THAT LITTLE GIRL. Ky Curtis Yorke. 5th Edition. 9. DUDLEY. By Curtis Yorke. 4th Edition. 10. THE WILD RUTHVENS. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 11. THE BROWN PORTMANTEAU, and other Stories. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 12. HUSH! By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 13. ONCE! By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 14.

A ROMANCE OF MODERN LONDON. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 15. HIS HEART TO WIN. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 16. D\RRF,LL CHEVASNEY. By Curtis Yorke. 17. BETWEEN THE SILENCES. By Curtis Yorke. 18. THE PEYTON ROMANCE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 3rd Ed. 19. THE GOLDEN MILESTONE. By Scott Graham. 3rd Ed. 20. A RECORD OF DISCORDS. Bv Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 21. "CHKRRV RIPE !" By Helen Mathers. 8th Edition. 22. STORY OF A SIN. By Helen Mathers. 5th Edition. 23. EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. (Sequel.) By Helen Mathers. 4th Ed. 24. JOCK O' HAZEI.GREEN. By Helen Mathers. 4th Ed. a*. MY LADY GREEN SLEEVES. By Helen M athers. 6th Ed. 26. FOUND OUT. By Helen Mathers. 103rd Thousand. j>7. THE MEDLICOITS. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 28. THE HEART OF A MYSTERY. By T. W. Sjpeight. "\ 20. MAN PROPOSES. By Mrs. A. Phillips. 30.

THE LAST OF THE HADDONS. By Mrs. E. Newman. 31. ALLANSON'S LITTLE WOMAN. By Eastwood Kidson. 32. L1NDS W'S GIRL. By Mrs. Herbert Martin. "J 33. WRONGLY CONDEMNED. By Mrs. Bagot Harte, k Author of "Bianca," &c. } 0: 34. THE THIRTEENTH BRYDAIN. By Margaret Moule, 0 Author of " Wingrove's Ways," 4i Dick's Wife," "Miss « Maidment," ttc. 35. THROUGH ANOTHER MAN'S EYES. By Eleanor Holmes. 36. MRS. WYLDE. By Linda Gardiner. J 37. A PRINCE OF COMO. By E. M. Davy. 2nd Edition. Ready. 38. RUTH FARMER. By Agnes Marchbank. Ready. 39. THE LOVELY MALINCOURT. By Helen Mathers. Reany. 40. A GARRISON ROMANCE. Bv Mrs. Leith Adams. Ready. 41. HARUM SCARUM. By Esme Stuart. Shortly. 42. A BOLT FROM THE BLUE. Bv Scott Graham. Shortly. 43. THE MAN IN THE CHECK SUIT. By F. W. H. Dfi.f. [Shortly. OTHERS IN PREPARATION.

Chapter I

4 ' The love that I hae chosen, I'll therewith he content, The saut sea shall be frozen, Before that I repent. . Repent it shall I never, until the day I dee." THE windows of Mallinger Towers struck out north, south, east, and west, bright shafts of light which announced to all whom it might concern that its master was at home, and about to hold one of those elegant revels with which he occasionally delighted the county. One room alone in all the vast pile threw out no beams upon the darkness, nor did it boast any light within, save what was furnished by some pallid moonbeams that struggled through the upper part of a window from which the shutter had rotted, and so made partly visible the desolation of a spot that seemed to be alike shunned by the eye and foot of man. An indescribable sense of rust and disuse was in the air, unutterably bleak and forlorn looked the long vista of polished boards upon which no scrap of furniture rested, no sign of human occupation or life showed, offering a startling contrast to the lofty walls that were peopled, and panoplied, and most richly set forth by the dead.

For here were whole groups of arms and armour, varying in age from the stone period with its simple knife, axe, and arrow fashioned out of flint, down to those equally simple, but more deadly weapons with which science enables man the more readily to slay his brother. Here were no dummies, no show-pieces bought for their curiosity and beauty ; each portion of armour had been worn, each arm had been used, and a virtuoso would have spent years in the due appreciation of a collection that one nun of taste alone had gathered together, and another man of genius had arranged. If a spy could have cut off his feet, and got a fellow spy to hook him to the wall, then there would be no reason why half a hundred men should not look upon the deserted chamber, and overhear any ghostly secrets that might be flit ting abroad ; but, as it was, no living thing bigger than a rat could have hid itself in the room, or been for a second con cealed from any one who entered.

Flint, bronze, iron, and steel, beautiful were the effects produced by their arrangement ; each sheaf of weapons with its appropriate suit of armour below, however rude and faulty in some instances : but reaching its maximum of perfection in the cuirass of a Roman, so exquisitely moulded to the form that when represented in sculpture, it is hardly possible to distinguish it from the nude figure. Here the moonlight touched an Assyrian's shield and justaucorps, there an axe-head that thrust by a Gaul into the cleft branch of a growing tree, became so firmly a part of the bough, that flint and wood were welded together into a weapon with which he might defy his enemies ; yonder one saw those Grecian arms with whose aim and clamour Homer has filled the earth ; not a nation was left unrepresented, not a missile discovered from former ages was absent from this room, the richest in historic wealth, as it was the most shunned, of the whole house.

And so it happened that miracles of industry, beauty, and splendid memories of bygone heroes, rusted unnoticed, and all the art of the man who had grouped them was lost; and this because a trivial thing enough had happened here twenty years ago — the death of a man by his own hand. Be sure that from beneath many a strangelyfashioned helm the spirit of a brave man looked out and despised him as he fell, though his nearest and dearest may have wept over him as bitterly as if he had been carried home siom a battle in which he had lost himself only to secure victory to his cause. Ay, here a coward had slain himself, and under such cir cumstances that perhaps he would have done worse for him self and his, had he left the room alive. Only from that day forth the fencing-room was closed, and none were known to cross its threshold save the master of the house, who came now and again to practise alone that rapier play in which he had been engaged with his friend, when that friend had slipped the button from his foil, and turning it against his own breast — died.

The master of the house was an adept in the use of arms, and to this extraordinary proficiency might be due the ease, grace, and elegance of all his movements, and that look and gesture of vigorous alertness which the constant use of the foil and broadsword invariably bestow : but of late years he had somewhat neglected the practice, and had not, in fact, entered this room for many months. But what is that faint sound yonder but the click of a closing panel ? And is there not a presence, a step, a flutter as of movement in the deserted place ? What is this tall shape, that shrouded in black steals from the shadow of the wall into the moonbeams, and trembling, palpitating, gazes fearfully around as if in search of it knows not whom, in horror of it knows not what ? It shrinks as it reaches the centre of the room, and looks down as if in search of the blood-stain it knows to be there, then lifts its hand in an attitude of listening to the ghostly tapping of a branch outside the window, then glances over its shoulder to where — see, is not that a rat steal ing towards her?

For it is a woman, and with a stifled cry, she stoops, and with one bare arm sweeps her draperies clear of the floor, then retreats backward to the wall, where beneath a magnificent Mascaron sword that seems in the very act of descending on her head, she cowers and listens with her whole soul ! But there was only the tap, tap of the bough on the pane, the scurrying of invisible armies of rats behind the wainscot, the play of the moonbeams on dinted sword, and battered shield, on helmets that gasped, grinned, showed here a dolphin's head outline, and there a pig's snout, anon a pol-de-fer worn by one of Louis XIV.'s soldiers, and now a Russian's, misshapen, with the face of a gargoyle, and seeming to watch with a male volent leer the shrinking girl whose eyes it had caught. And she was a-cold, a-cold — the very love-warmth within was fail ing her, and the courage that had brought her hither seemed to her superhuman now that in chill blood she reflected upon it, knowing that any moment the panel might unclose to admit her father.

But whence came this icy stream of wind that she suddenly felt play over her, and who was this that having entered by the window, closed it, and replaced the shutters, then came swiftly up the room, holding out impatient arms into which the girl ran as for her very life ? " Oh, Jack, the rats ! " "Oh, Kitty, you. , " They were warm now, and safe. " Imparidised in one another's arms," and then — for surely a young man is a fool who does not put his kisses first, and his words afterwards — he gave neither himself nor her a chance of speech for a full minute, though of course it was the woman who recovered her voice first. " This is very wrong, Jack ! " she said, reproachfully, hiding her head on his shoulder to avoid a new onslaught. "Very," said Jack, "and as delicious as it's wrong. Oh, Kitty, Kitty !

Dearest, sweetest, loveliest, truest, truest Kitty, to think that I have got you here in my arms, and that I have not seen you these two years, and that you love me, and by to-morrow — Oh ! was there ever such a lucky, miserable wretch on earth ? " " Yes," she said, softly, "for I am just such another. Even if you had not been going away to-morrow, I could not meet you again as I am meeting you here to-night." "What?" he said, then put her back, and framing her face in his hands, turned it so as to face the moonlight. " And have you made him a promise ? " " When he brought me from school," she said, gently, " I promised him that I would not write to you, or send you a message, or even speak to you, if by accident I met you out side Mallinger gates, and he said he would make it his business that I should not meet you inside them, and I am breaking the spirit of my agreement by meeting you here to-night."

"So there was an agreement?" said Jack, swiftly. " Yes. That if I made no attempt to see or marry you, I should not on the other hand be asked to marry anyone else — without my consent." "And that no man living shall get," said Jack, fiercely. " But do you mean to say that we are to go on dying of love for each other indefinitely?" " It is only for a year and a half," said Kitty, a smile break ing over all her face. "You would not let me finish the story — my promises of good behaviour were only to last till I was twenty-one! And so you really think I am dying for you, Jack ? " " If you are not, you ought to be," he said, giving her arm a little shake. "Just think of what these two years have been for me, without a word or a sign from you, not even knowing your whereabouts — or that fifty men might not be as crazy to marry you as I am!

" " Oh," said Kitty, with a rueful smile; " there were no men — only masters, you know— and in the holidays there were not even those — only father, who came twice in every year to make sure that you had not found me out ! " " And he made all sure by swearing you to a promise," said Jack, bitterly; "and he has his spies everywhere — that's why I asked you to meet me here to-night, because there isn't a servant in the place that dares put his head inside the door." "But he dares," said Kitty, with a glance of fear at the distance; "and he said, Jack, and that is why I came— at least, partly— that if he caught you here, he would treat you like any other burglar who came clandestinely about his house ! " "Let him catch me first," said Jack, with vigour; then seeing how her head drooped, suddenly snatched her in his strong young arms and so crushed her that she cried out, " Oh, Jack, Jack, my ball-dress !

" He put her down hastily ; he had seen only the black cloak, felt only the milk-white arms round his neck ; but now he found the moonlight insufficient, and wondered that he could have satisfied himself with so pale a glimpse of her. " Let me look at you," he said, and struck a match and held it above her in the one hand, while with the other he unfastened her cloak, masterfully as any bridegroom to whom has willingly come his bride. The clasps yielded, the cloak slipped down, and lay in a heap, while out of it the girl shone like an angel in white, to which a hoar-frost of diamonds had clung as she descended to mother earth. The match went out, but the moonlight did here more lovely service surely as she stood silent before him, and he said slowly : "You are altered, Kitty, and grown." " Am I too tall, Jack ?

" she said, looking up at him proudly, and thinking that never had girl so brave a wooer as this blue eyed, sunny-haired young soldier of six feet, for a sight of whom her heart had ached so bitterly during the past two years. "Am /too tali, Kitty?" he said, catching that tender glow of love and pride in him, in her eyes. 41 You — you are Jack." " And you," he said, " oh, there is no name for you, but Kitty — just Kitty — and you shall be that to no other man living so long as I am above earth," and he crushed her once more in an embrace that took her breath away, and in its despair startled her with a foreboding of coming evil. " What is it, Jack ? " she whispered. '' We are true as death to one another — and the year and a half will soon be up — and if I can wait that little time, cannot you ?

" "You may have to wait too long," he said, "for we are ordered abroad on active service, and every day expect to get orders to sail. It was with the utmost difficulty I got here to night — contriving the whole plan of seeing you on my way — but I have seen you, Kitty, and come what may, we have had this one half-hour together." She shivered a little as if she felt the loss of her cloak, then slipped out of his arms to stoop and find it ; but her eyes were dim, and it was Jack's hand that drew it about her, slowly and grudgingly hiding from his eyes the exquisite shape that half a hundred men's eyes would be privileged to gaze on that night. As he fastened the clasps beneath her chin, their eyes met, and one gentle hand stole out and rested like a snowflake on his breast. "Jack," she said, "I could brave anything now that I have seen you, and if you do not come back, I shall remember you."

And then she kissed him, for the first time perhaps in her life of her own free will, and moved as if to leave him. He could not stay her, he knew that those precious minutes, cal culated by him like a miser, were up, and that if after the dressing-bell, an hour was her own, the ringing of the dinner one must summon her to the room which held her father, possibly already suspicious of her absence. " Good-bye, Jack ! " " Good-bye ! " Even the Russian helm seemed to grin with less malevo lence as it looked down upon the kiss that might be the very last in which the two pairs of beautiful young lips would meet.

Chapter II

44 And when he came to that castle, They were sat down to dine, A score o' nobles there he saw. Sat drinkin' at the wine." MALLINGER DASHWOOD happened to be the only person in the white drawing-room when his daughter entered it, and he came to meet her with as cold and polished a courtesy as if she had been his guest. She met him in his own spirit ; and seen side by side the resemblance between father and daughter was very striking, for both were hazel-eyed and brown-haired, both had that stag like carriage of the head, and perfect symmetry of limb that marked them out as uncommon in a crowd, and dwarfed all other men and women to insignificance beside them — though here the likeness ceased, for in heart and expression there could not be found a greater contrast than between Mallinger and Katharine Dashwood.

"Your dress is in excellent taste," he said, his cold eyes scanning her from head to foot. " You have dropped the schoolgirl, and yet you do not flaunt the heiress ; but surely that is a tear upon your cheek ? Allow me " — and he removed it — " I would advise you in future to confine them to your pillow ; they are out of place in a ball-room." " Like my heart," said his daughter, as the door opened, and a lady came fluttering in, whose attire seemed to consist of a sew cerulean clouds, loosely clasped together with pearls. "Ah ! Mrs. Vivien ! " sa'd her host, as he went to meet her, "you bring us summer skies — and this is my daughter fresh from school, and dancing to-night at her first ball." Mrs. Vivien opened her blue eyes with some astonishment, and as they slowly travelled up to the crown of Katharine's stately head, they said, as if she had spoken, "Too tall !

" but in her heart she thought, "Too young, too fresh !" "And so your cousin could not come," said Mr. Dashwood. as he left her to meet half-a-dozen people who now came in, followed so quickly by others that in a few minutes the twenty or so of dinner guests were assembled, and the women were taking languid stock of one another, and all the men were looking at Katharine. Now there showed one uncommon feature in this company, that there was not a single plain or uninteresting person in it; for Dashwood asked his guests to please himself, and was him self entertained by the beauty, wit, and agreeability with which he furnished his house for the time being. It was his habit to send with each invitation a printed menu of the proposed guests, so that all such awkward accidents as the meeting of a lady with a former admirer, or of a gentleman with a lady who was only vice-regent of his affections, were entirely averted; and an invitation from royalty was not coveted so eagerly as one that carried its cachet of beauty to every woman who received it.

The men might be wi's if they pleased, so might the women ; but intellect without good looks was rigorously excluded, perhaps because so large a portion of the wit was furnished by the master of the house himself. The men of the county came eagerly when invited by Dashwood — came to look, to sigh, to get a whole liberal education from the contemplation of such charms as they had never dreamed of; and the best-looking women of the county, however seldom asked, came aho, only to retire with secret tears, and a deadly hatred for the milliners who had betrayed them. They had no stones to sling at the heads of these smart people, who all spoke affectionately of their absent lords, and to every one of whom had befallen that accident from which even the most fashionable fine lady is not exempt — viz., a baby; they did not know their inner lives, but could only gauge them by the perfection of their clothes, which they found immortal.

" Do we wait for any one ? " said Lady Becky Selvvyn, looking up at her host, " and we are all so hungry ! " " Mr. B is not here," said Dashwood, " we will give him one minnte more of grace — in which I may smell your roses," he added, and stooped to the yellow cluster that adorned the breast of her white velvet gown. 44 Mr. B and Mr. Velasquez," announced the butler from the door, and Mallinger Dashwood looked up to see the great man approaching, with a far younger and taller man beside him, at sight of whom he started violently, and put out his hand as if to wave him back, but the next moment he had met and welcomed the pair. " My secretary, Mr. Velasquez," the great man said; though if he had introduced him as one of his secretaries, he would have spoken nearer the truth. But when the host moved to introduce the two men to his daughter, it was the turn of Mr. Velasquez to start, to change colour, as his hand touched hers, while something looked at her out of his black eyes that she never forgot, and never understood until — until — - " Dinner is served," said the butler; and the great man, on the tiptoe of ecstasy at having so many pretty souls on which to gaze, offered Katharine his arm, and strutted out with her, resolved that queen and country notwithstanding, he would throw statesmanship to the dogs, and remain here a whole week.

Mr. Velasquez fell to the lot of Mrs. Vivien, and proved himself unusually quiet for a young man of such extraordinary personal attractions. To the richness, colour, and grace given by Southern blood, he united the splendid stature and build of the best style of Englishman ; his manners and gestures too were thoroughly British, but not so the sadness of his eyes, and a curious quietude of features, that to close observers suggested a volcano of slumbering passion beneath. " A brown beauty," said Mrs. Vivien, her eyes following his to Katharine, who sat opposite her father at the middle of the long oval table. " No, a hazel one, I think," he said, " she is so extremely fair. She is Mr. Dashwood's only daughter ? " " Yes, and his heiress, if she marries with his consent. But he is evidently in no hurry, for there is not a man here he would accept as a son-in-law."

" No," said Mr. Velasquez, looking round, " they all seem more or less attached." " I have never met you in society," said Mrs. Vivien, flashing a pair of scornful turquoise eyes on the insensibility of his black velvet ones, " so how do you know how we live — nous antres 1 " " Private secretaries have opportunities," he said ; then paused and looked, as if by accident, at a man opposite who was regarding Mrs. Vivien's animated manner with very decided dissatisfaction. " Ah ! poor Noll ! " she said, lightly, " but he is beginning to tire me. Mallinger made a mistake in asking us here together. It is our future admirers, not our present ones, who should be asked to meet us ! " "Is there a single husband here, par hazard?" said Mr. Velasquez, looking round. But Mrs. Vivien at that moment made Noll, otherwise Lord Oliver, happy by turning her back upon Mr. Velasquez and concerning herself solely with her dinner.

Chapter III

" Shyning was the painted ha' Wi' gladsum torches bricht Full twenty gowden dames sate there And ilk ane by a knicht : Wi' music cheer To please the ear, When bewtie pleased the sicht." THE host and the private secretary did not approach each other until the gentlemen left the dinner for the ball room, and then it was at once visible that they were the t\h> handsomest men in it, though a difference of five-and-twenty years lay between them. Their rapprochement was in so far curious that each waited for the other to speak, and over the eyes of both an invisible curtain seemed suddenly drawn, leaving them blank of specu lation, or even natural inquiry as they looked at each other. " You remind me of some one I once knew, Mr. Velasquez," said his host, after a moment or two of silence, in which there was yet no hesitation.

" A lady ? " said Velasquez, " A lady. She lived in this neighbourhood for many years " " And her name ? " said Velasquez, his sombre eyes rayless as pools of ink. 44 Mrs. Fitzhugh, the wife of my friend." "I have heard the story," said Mr. Velasquez; and then B Mr. Dashwood's duties took him away, and in a few minutes the dance had begun. Perhaps those present numbered a hundred souls, all told — all pleasant to the eye, all bent on dancing the old year out and the new year in, and all as heathenishly oblivious to the sins of the past year, as they were ready to commit them over again in the coming one. All save two persons, one of whom was dancing with Katharine ; for seeing him quite alone, she had asked if she should find him a partner? Whereupon he had taken her, and Mallinger Dashwood had smiled, then at the first opportunity asked Mr. B where he had picked up his secretary.

He found the great man happy, his eagle eye roving from charm to charm, and wishing that like the census he could embrace them all, and only in the interval of his spasms of admiration could be extracted any information as to Mr. Velasquez. "Yes — yes, a handsome fellow — and I know that you like handsome fellows ; but look at that woman's back — and this one's shoulders— and there's an arm ! where did I pick him up ? Oh ! he's a protegee of my wife — and he does light work for me — his parents are dead — look at that goddess in amber ! Introduce me, for Heaven's sake — and if her husband isn't a peer, I'll make him one ! " 44 But she must make you happy first," said Mr. Dashwood with a slight smile, as he moved away ; and having effected the introduction, glanced cynically around on an assemblage out of which he would only have owned one as daughter, and not one as wife.

Not that there was a woman present that the most tight-laced dowager in society could have presumed to flout, or refuse to introduce to her young daughters. No reckless Mænad flung her arms aloft here, no Bacchanal with roving glances swam in the dance ; the only difference between this ball-room (apart from its planning) and any other in the county, lay in the loveliness of the women, and the perfection of their adorning; but this seemed a great deal to the handsome outsiders present that night. Perhaps the room helped them — for Mallinger Dashwood had too keen a perception of the beauty of a woman's skin to offer it a light background, and so gave it a foil in a wainscot ing of black oak to the height of twenty feet ; but set the wax lights somewhat low, leaving such curious eyes as could raise themselves so high, to follow the friskings of those gods or goddesses who, whether on the upper walls or ceiling, seemed never to have frisked enough for their own and lovers' content.

Few men lifted their eyes so high, the flesh and blood charms below contented them so well; but to-night a girl looked up, and her partner's eyes followed, for already it seemed natural to him to note her every word and glance, just as he and she seemed the only pair possible to each other out of the whole room. The women said, with a sneer, that she danced with him because, save her father, there was not another man present by whom her stature would not look uncouth ; but Katharine had scarcely noticed her partner's looks, she had only felt drawn to him by one of those curious instincts of natural affinity, of like towards like, that reveals itself when two persons meet in the midst of surroundings that in each of them equally arouse mis trust or fear. "The ceiling is beautiful," said Mr. Velasquez, "but the room above it must be more beautiful still."