CXCIX. THE ORPHAN'S FILIAL LOVE…

CXCIX. THE ORPHAN'S FILIAL LOVE

The evening was calm, fresh, and dry: the heavens were covered with stars; and objects were visible at a considerable distance.

A few minutes before the wished-for hour, Katherine, Ellen, and the farmer reached the hill at the foot of which was the place of appointment.

Then Kate left them and proceeded alone, while her two friends hastened by a circuitous route to gain a clump of trees which would enable them to remain concealed within a distance of fifty yards of the spot where Kate was to meet the old woman.

The young girl pursued her way—her heart palpitating with varied emotions,—vague alarm, exalted hope, and all the re-awakened convictions of her orphan state.

She reached the foot of the hill, and in a few minutes beheld a human form emerging, as it were, from the obscurity at a distance—the dim outline gradually defining itself into a positive shape, and at length showing the figure of the old woman whom she had seen in the morning.

"You have done well to obey my summons, Miss," said the hag, as she approached the timid and trembling girl. "But let me look well on your countenance—let me be satisfied that it is indeed Katherine Wilmot."

Then Kate turned towards the moon, and parted the light chesnut hair: which clustered around her countenance; so that a pure flood of silvery lustre streamed on all the features of that sweetly interesting face—a sight too hallowed for the foul-souled harridan to gaze upon!

It was as if the veil of the Holy of Holies, in the Jewish temple, were lifted before some being fresh from the grossest pollutions of the world.

"Yes—I am satisfied!" murmured the hag. "You are Katherine Wilmot—the Katherine whom I saw and recognised this morning. I feared lest your artful friend, Ellen Monroe, less timid than yourself, might have come to play your part."

"Wherefore should you speak ill of Miss Monroe?" inquired Katherine, mildly. "Malicious allusions to my friends will not serve as a passport to my confidence."

"Well, well," said the hag, "we will speak no more on that subject. It was for other purposes that I sought this interview. Tell me, Miss—do you remember your mother?"

"I remember her, with that faint and dim knowledge which consists only of many vague and dubious impressions," replied Kate, in a deeply plaintive tone. "I was but four years of age when God snatched her from me; and it was not until I was old enough to feel her loss, that my memory began to exert itself to the utmost to recall every incident which I could associate with her kindness towards me. For kind she must have been—because every reminiscence which my mind has ever been able to shadow forth concerning her, fills my heart with grateful tenderness and love. Oh! I have sate for hours—in the solitude of my own chamber—endeavouring to fix the volatile ideas which at times flash through my memory in reference to the past,—until I have seemed to connect them in a regular chain;—and then I have fancied that at the end of the vista of years through which my mental glances retrospected, I could define a beautiful but melancholy countenance—the mild blue eyes weeping, and the lips smiling sweetly, over me—the gentle hand smoothing down my hair, and caressing my cheeks,—and all this in a manner so touching, so plaintive, so softly sorrowful, that the picture fills my soul with sad fears lest my mother was not happy! And there have been times, too," continued Kate, tears trickling down her cheeks, "when it appeared to me, that I could remember the fervent tenderness with which my mother clasped me in her arms—fondled me—played with me—did all she could to make me laugh—and then wept bitterly, because my infantine joy was so exuberant! Yes—these and many other things of the same kind have I pondered on and treasured up as holy memories of the past;—and then the dread thought has suddenly flashed to my brain, that I have been merely worshipping the images of my own fond creation. At such times, I have gone down upon my knees—I have prayed that these ideas might really be reflections of the long-gone truth,—bright reflections which had been cast in the mirror of my mind during the days of my infancy! Oh! it would grieve me sadly—it would wring my soul with anguish—it would fill my heart with desolation, were I to be led to the fearful conviction that all those pleasing-painful glimpses of my mother's presence and my mother's love are not the reminiscences of reality, but the creations of a fond and credulous imagination."

"Your memory has not deceived you, Miss," said the old woman. "Your mother fondled and caressed you—smiled and wept over you, in the manner you have described."

"Oh! thank you—thank you for that assurance!" exclaimed Katherine, forgetting, in the enthusiasm of her filial, but orphan, love, all her late repugnance to that old woman: "again, I say, thank you! You know not the consolation you have imparted to me! Oh! were it possible to recall from the tomb that dear mother who fondled and caressed me—smiled and wept over me, I would give all the remainder of my life for one day of her presence here—one day of her love! When I think that she is really gone for ever—that no tears and no prayers can bring her back—ah! it seems as if there were an anguish in my heart which no human sympathy can ever soothe. But you knew my mother, then?" added Kate, suddenly; "you knew her—did you not? Oh! tell me of her: I could never weary of hearing you speak of her."

"Yes—I knew your mother well," was the answer: "I knew her before you were born."

"And was she happy?" demanded Katherine, trembling at the question she thus put, for fear the reply should not be as she would wish it.

"She knew happiness—and she was also acquainted with sorrow," said the hag: "but that is the lot of us all—that is the lot of us all!"

"Poor mother!" murmured the young girl, with a profound sob: "it is then true that, in my infancy, I saw her weep as well as smile! Wherefore was she unhappy? Was she betrayed and neglected? But, oh! I tremble to ask those questions, which—"

"To explain the cause of her sorrows would be to tell you all her history," answered the old woman; "and, ere I can do that, I have some questions to ask you, and—and some conditions to—to propose."

The hag hesitated:—yes, even she, with her soul so hardened in the tan-pits of vice, as to be on all other occasions proof against the dews of sympathy,—even she hesitated, as if softened by the ingenuous and holy outpourings of that young orphan's filial love.

"Speak—say quickly what you require of me," exclaimed Katherine; "and hasten to tell me of my parents—for in your letter you spoke of both my father and my mother."

As Katherine entertained not the slightest recollection of her father, all her thoughts had ever been fixed on the memory of her mother;—but when she coupled the two names together—when she found her lips pronouncing the sacred denominations of father and mother in the same breath, there arose in her soul such varied and overpowering emotions that she dissolved into a violent agony of weeping.

But that efflux of tears relieved the surcharged heart of the orphan; and, composing herself as quickly as she could, she exclaimed, "Speak, good woman—name your conditions: I am rich—and they shall be complied with,—so that you hasten to tell me of my parents!"

"Did your mother leave no papers behind her—no letters—no private documents of any kind?" inquired the old hag.

"Nothing,—nothing save the fragment of a note which she commenced when in a dying state, and which death did not permit her to finish," answered Katherine.

"And that fragment—did it suggest no trace—"

"Stay—I will repeat its contents to you," exclaimed Katherine: "the words are indelibly fixed upon my memory——Oh! how were it possible that I could ever forget them? Those words ran thus:—'Should my own gloomy presages prove true, and the warning of my medical attendant be well founded,—if, in a word, the hand of death be already extended to snatch me away thus in the prime of life, while my darling child is——:' there," continued Katherine, "is a blank, occasioned—alas! by the tears of my poor mother! Two or three lines are thus obliterated; and then appears a short—disjointed—but a most mysterious portion of a sentence, written thus:—'and inform Mr. Markham, whose abode is——.' There's not another word on the paper!" added the orphan.

"Markham—Markham!" repeated the hag, as if sorely troubled by some reminiscence; "she mentioned the name of Markham in the letter she wrote on her death-bed? Young lady, did you ever hear more of that Mr. Markham?"

"Inquiries were instituted at my mother's death," replied Kate; "but the Mr. Markham alluded to in the note could not be discovered. The name—the very name, however, seems to be of good omen to me; for one of that name,—who is now a noble of exalted rank, and the commander of a mighty army in a foreign land,—has been my best friend—my benefactor—my saviour. Yes—it is to Richard Markham——"

"Ah! now I comprehend the cause of your intimacy with Miss Monroe," said the hag, hastily: "she resides with her father at the house of Mr. Richard Markham. And so," she continued in a musing tone,—"and so that same Mr. Richard Markham is your friend—your benefactor?"

"Oh! what should I have been without him?" ejaculated Katherine. "When I was involved in that fearful situation, of which you have no doubt heard, he was the only one who came to me and said, 'I believe you to be innocent!' May heaven ever prosper him for that boundless philanthropy—that noble generosity which induced him to espouse the orphan's cause! Yes—to him I owed the development of my innocence—the unravelling of that terrible web of circumstantial evidence in which I was entangled. He employed an active agent to collect evidence in my favour; and the measures which he adopted led to the results which must be known to you."

"It is, then, as I thought," said the old woman, scarcely able to subdue a chuckle of delight. "You know but little concerning your mother—and nothing relative to your father."

"And it is to receive precious communications on those points that I have met you now," exclaimed Katherine. "Let us lose no more time—my friends will grow uneasy at my prolonged absence! Speak—in the name of heaven, speak on a subject so near and dear to my heart."

"Listen attentively, young miss, to what I am about to say—listen attentively," returned the hag. "Now do not be alarmed at my words: you will see that I am disposed to act well towards you. The man who was with me this morning—," and here the old woman cast a rapid glance around, and lowered her voice to a whisper,—"that man is a bad one, and he knows I am acquainted with all that concerns your parentage. He is avaricious, and desires to turn my knowledge to a good account."

"I understand you," said Katherine: "he requires money. But are you influenced by him?"

"I cannot explain all that, Miss: attend to what I choose to tell you—or may tell you—and you will act wisely," returned the old woman. "He is a desperate man—and I dare not offend him. He wants money; and money he must have—money he must have!"

"How much will satisfy him?" asked Katherine. "And if I procure the sum that he needs, will you then tell me all you know in connexion with my parents?"

"Wait a moment—wait a moment, Miss," said the hag. "I am but a poor—miserable—wretched—oppressed—starving creature myself——"

"Again I understand you," interrupted Katherine, unable to subdue a tone expressive of contempt. "You declare yourself to be the possessor of a secret which nearly and dearly concerns me; and you intend to barter it for gold? But if I meet your demands in all respects,—if I satisfy that man who exercises such influence over you, and if I reward yourself,—what security can you give me that you are really acquainted with those particulars which you offer to communicate? what guarantee can you show that this first concession on my part will not be followed by increased demands on yours?"

"I will convince you of my good faith," was the old woman's ready reply. "Give me wherewithal to satisfy that man; and the reward you intend for me need not be bestowed until I have told you all I know."

"How much will that man require?" asked Katherine, wearied by this mercenary trading in matters which to her appeared so sacred.

"Give him a hundred pounds:—you are rich and can well afford it—for report says that you inherited the fortune of Reginald Tracy," exclaimed the hag.

"And for yourself?" said Kate, impatiently.

"Alack! I am a poor, starving old creature," was the answer; "I am miserable—very miserable! Give me wherewith to make my few remaining days happy—as I shall be able to show you great sources of comfort in the news I have to impart."

"Listen, now, to me," said Kate, after a moment's hesitation. "I will give you that sum of one hundred pounds to enable you to satisfy the man of whom you speak; and, afterwards—if your communications should really and truly prove a source of comfort to me—I will reward you with a liberality surpassing your most sanguine expectations. But, alas! some delay must take place ere I can procure the funds from the solicitor who has my affairs in his charge; and, oh! I shall know no peace until your lips reveal those secrets which are to prove such sources of comfort to me."

There was a temporary pause:—the old woman seemed to be reflecting upon the orphan's words; and the young girl herself was rapidly conjecturing of what nature the promised revelations could be. But how vain were all her attempts to assign a satisfactory solution to that enigma which the hag, like some horrible sphynx, had set before her!

During this prolonged interview the early loveliness of the evening had yielded to one of those sudden variations peculiar to our island-climate at that season of the year:—the sky had become overcast—the moon no longer poured forth a flood of sweet silver lustre to light up the innocent countenance of the maiden, or to mock with its chaste halo the wrinkled expression of the foul hag.

"But perhaps your solicitor may refuse you the advances which you need?" said the old woman at length.

"No: he will not cast an obstacle in the way of aught which is to contribute to my happiness," answered Katherine. "I have seen him but twice, and, inexperienced as I am in the ways of life, I feel confident that he possesses a kind and generous heart. Oh! if Richard—I mean, the Marquis of Estella—were in England now, I should not be compelled to wait many hours in suspense for the want of this money which you require."

"The Marquis of Estella!" exclaimed the hag, in astonishment: "who is he? and what connexion can he have with you?"

"Have you not heard or read the news which have doubtless appeared in all the London journals?" inquired Katherine;—"those glorious news——"

"Alack! dear Miss—I never read a newspaper," said the hag.

"Then you are ignorant that the Richard Markham of whom we have been speaking, is a great noble—a peer of a foreign realm,—that the coronet of a Marquis has been conferred upon him for his gallant deeds——"

"Well-a-day! this world sees strange ups and downs!" interrupted the hag. "Ah! Miss—lose no time in satisfying that man who was with me this morning, and I will tell you a secret that will be well worth all the gold you will have to give for its purchase. But what was that noise? did you not hear something?"

"It seemed to me that there was a rustling along the path," replied Katherine, in a hasty and timid whisper. "Oh! you would not do me any harm—you have not been deceiving me? My God! how cruel would it be to lead the orphan into danger, by the allurements of fond hopes respecting the memory of her parents!"

"Silence, Miss—listen!" said the hag, in a subdued but earnest tone: "I mean you no harm."

Then they both held their breath;—but all was still—not a sound met their ears, save the low murmur of the breeze which had sprung up within the last few minutes.

"It is nothing," observed the old woman. "But why should you mistrust me?"

"Pardon me if I wrong you," returned Kate:—"you are a stranger to me—and, although you may mean to serve me, your proceedings are conducted with so much mystery—so much secrecy—that I must be forgiven if vague suspicions——"

"I know it—I know it," interrupted the old woman; and after a short pause, she added, "Yes—I will ensure your confidence, Miss; and then you will understand my sincerity. That man who was with me this morning discovered your place of abode at my desire. He demanded to be present at our interview but I refused—for reasons of my own. I assured him I would speak to you alone, or not at all. I was therefore compelled, this morning, in his presence, to insist on having none by to overhear the business that made me seek you; and the same reason forced me to stipulate that you should meet me this evening unaccompanied by any of your friends. For if I had permitted one to be present at our interview, then there was no reason to exclude another; and that man might have insisted on being a witness as well as any companion of yours."

"If that be the only reason for this mystery," observed Katherine, considerably relieved by the old woman's explanation, "you cannot object to Miss Monroe accompanying me on the next occasion of our meeting."

"No," answered the old woman; "that may not be, for the man who is to be satisfied with money will watch me at a distance when we meet again. But, afterwards—at any future interview that may be necessary—Miss Monroe may accompany you."

"I understand you," said Kate. "To-morrow evening I will meet you again—here—and at the same hour. I shall then doubtless be prepared to give you the amount necessary to satisfy that man's avarice; and his interference will be disposed of. It will afterwards remain for you to satisfy me—and for me to reward you."

"Agreed, young lady—agreed!" answered the old woman. "We have now no more to say—except," she added, as a sudden thought struck her,—"except that, should the man insist on speaking to you to-morrow evening, you need not tell him that you have any intention of bestowing a separate recompense on me."

"I hope that he will not dare to approach me," said Katherine, indignantly; "and, were he to force his disagreeable presence upon me, I should scarcely permit myself to be catechised by him."

"'Tis well, Miss," returned the hag, apparently well pleased with the resolute manner of the young orphan.

They then separated.

The old woman went one way; and Katherine proceeded direct to the clump of trees where Ellen and the farmer were concealed;—for it was now so dark that there was no fear of the direction she took being observed.

It may be naturally supposed that Ellen and Mr. Bennet were deeply anxious to be made acquainted with the particulars of an interview concerning which they had some few misgivings.

On the return of the trio to the farm-house, they found Mrs. Bennet very uneasy on Kate's account. The appearance of the young maiden reassured the good-hearted woman; and Katherine then gave a detailed account of all that had passed between herself and the hag.

The impression produced was, that there was really a legitimate foundation for the old woman's proceedings, and that she was actually possessed of secrets touching Kate's parentage. The agreement that the recompense was only to be awarded to her after she had made the promised communications, was considered a proof of good faith; and Kate's promise to supply the sum demanded in the first instance to satisfy the avarice of the Resurrection Man, met with the approval of her friends.

"To-morrow, then," said Kate, "I must repair to London, and procure the necessary funds from Mr. Wharton. You will accompany me, Ellen?"

"That journey is not requisite," observed the farmer. "Mr. Wharton would demand an explanation of the business for which the money is intended; and he would only view it with the calm and severe eye of a lawyer. He might even go so far as to insist upon having those persons arrested as extortioners. He might not fully appreciate your filial anxiety, Kate, to risk every chance to know more of the authors of your being. I can well comprehend your feelings; and, after all, the venture is but a hundred pounds—for the old woman is to make her revelations before she receives a recompense. No—you shall say nothing to Mr. Wharton on the subject. I am going to London to-morrow; and on my return I will supply you with the sum required."

It is needless to say that Katherine expressed her gratitude to Mr. Bennet for his goodness; and Ellen readily promised to stay at the farm for a day or two longer, until the pending mysteries should be cleared up. Mr. Bennet moreover undertook to call at Markham Place, with a note from Ellen to relieve Mr. Monroe of any anxiety which he might feel on her account, as her absence from home would be protracted beyond the time originally contemplated.

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CC. A MAIDEN'S LOVE

The two young ladies had now retired to the bed-chamber which Kate occupied at the farm, and which Ellen shared with her during her visit.

The respective characters of those two charming creatures were then incidentally contrasted and powerfully set forth, each in its peculiar phase, by means of occurrences apparently trivial to a degree, but which were nevertheless significant in the eyes of those who closely observed the nature of the human mind.

While Ellen was disrobing herself, she stood, in all the pride of her glorious beauty, before the mirror; in the reflection of which she also arranged her long, luxuriant hair previously to retiring to rest.

But Katherine, in the semi-obscurity of the remotest corner, laid aside her vestment; nor did she once think of approaching the glass.

Whence arose this discrepancy,—this pride on the one hand, and this bashfulness on the other?

It was that Ellen had been placed in those circumstances which had taught her the value and led her to appreciate the extent of her almost matchless charms:—her lovely countenance had served as a copy, and her exquisitely modelled form as a pattern for artists and sculptors;—during her brief dramatic career, she had been the object of unceasing adulation;—and when she forced Greenwood to espouse her, the splendour of her beauty had disarmed him of the resentment which he would otherwise have experienced in being compelled to sacrifice for her all his hopes of a brilliant matrimonial alliance. Hers was the pride of a loveliness which had produced her bread in the hour of her bitter need,—which was perpetuated in great works of art,—which had elicited the heart-felt admiration of many suitors of rank and name,—and which was still in all the freshness of health and youth. Still that pride was never obtrusive—not even conspicuous; for it was attempered by a natural generosity, an innate loftiness of soul which rendered her as adorable for her disposition as she was desirable for her beauty.

Katherine had long languished in a condition which compelled her to retire from observation. While she dwelt with the late executioner, she was glad to be able to shroud herself from public view. She was always neat and cleanly from principle, but not from pride. The germinations of self-complacency had been checked in their nascent state, though not completely obliterated; and now, if they were slightly expanding in the genial atmosphere of the improved circumstances which surrounded her, it was with a legitimate growth, such as no female mind should remain unacquainted with. For a certain degree of proper pride is necessary to woman,—to preserve her self-esteem, and to maintain her soul so happily poised that it may not fall into over-weening confidence on the one side, nor into an awkward and repulsive reserve on the other.

That chamber-scene would have made a fine and deeply interesting subject for the pencil of the artist, who would have delighted to shadow forth the variety of the female character,—here the glorious loveliness of the wife who dared not avow that sacred name,—there the retiring beauty of the young virgin.

But Katherine had not altogether escaped the influence of that blind deity who exercises so important a control over the destinies of us mortals.

How this happened we must leave her to describe in her own artless manner.

"I have been thinking, dear Kate," said Ellen, as she stood combing her long and silky hair, on which a lamp's reflection in the mirror shed a bright glory,—"I have been thinking that this is a dull and lonely place for you. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are very kind and amiable people; but it will not be suitable for one whose worldly prospects are so good as yours, to remain in this solitude. You are literally buried here! I am almost inclined to take you with me to Markham Place for a short time, when the business with that old woman is decided. I am sure Richard would be pleased with such an arrangement."

"I should like to be with you, Ellen," was the reply: "but—for the present—I must remain here," added Katherine, with some little hesitation.

"Oh! no—you must come with me to Markham Place," exclaimed Ellen; "and the change of scene will please you. Besides—I have a secret to tell you, Kate."

"A secret!" repeated the maiden.

"Yes—a secret that will surprise you," continued Ellen. "I shall reveal it to you now; but you must not mention it to any one here—for particular reasons which I cannot explain to you at present. What should you think if I were to tell you that I am married?"

"You!—married!" exclaimed Katherine. "Then why are you still called Miss Monroe?"

"There are certain circumstances which compel me to keep my marriage a secret. When you come to Markham Place—as you must—you will see my father; but never in his presence, nor in that of Richard when he returns home, may you speak of me as a wife. And now do you know why I have told you this? Because, as I am determined that you shall come and pass at least a few days with me you will see my child——"

"Oh! Ellen, are you indeed a mother?" cried Katherine. "Are you not devotedly attached to your child? do you not fondle—play with it?"

"I am never wearied of its little company," answered Ellen. "It is a boy, and named after our mutual benefactor Richard. And now you know my secret. But tell me, Kate, wherefore you wish to remain pent up in this secluded dwelling? Has some happy youth in the neighbourhood touched your heart? You do not answer me. I cannot see you where you are; but I'll wager that you are blushing. Oh! if there be any truth in my suspicion, let it be revelation for revelation. We are friends—and you may confide in me."

"I know not how to answer you, Ellen;—and yet——"

"And yet you have a secret," returned the young wife, laughing; "oh! yes—you have a secret—and you must make me your confidant."

"I am willing to tell you all that relates to this foolish affair," said Katherine; "but that all is very little."

And she hesitated,—suffused with blushes even in the nook whither Ellen's eyes were not directed!

"Nay, continue," exclaimed Ellen. "I perceive that you are about to interest me with the commencement of a charming little love-tale. Seriously speaking, Kate—you will lose nothing by entrusting your secret to one who may be enabled to give you some useful counsel in a matter which is of far greater moment than young persons of our sex are induced to believe?"

"I will conceal nothing from you, Ellen," returned Katherine, in a low and timid tone. "It was only at the commencement of last week that I was rambling in the neighbourhood—on as fine a day as this one has been—when I met a young gentleman, who was crossing the same field as myself, but in an opposite direction. The path was very narrow; and he stood on one side to allow me to pass. I bowed in acknowledgment of his politeness, and he raised his hat. The glance that I threw upon him was of course only momentary; and I passed on. I thought no more of the incident——"

"He is doubtless very handsome," said Ellen, laughing. "All heroes of such romantic adventures are."

"Nay—hear me to the end," continued Katherine; "for since I have begun this silly tale, I may as well terminate it. The following day was fine; and I walked out again—as indeed I always do, when the weather will permit. I was proceeding through the same field——"

"The same field," observed Ellen slily.

"Oh! I can assure you, my dear friend, that you do me an injustice by the suspicion which your words imply," exclaimed Katherine. "I had totally forgotten the trifling incident of the preceding day; but I chose that path,—it was the same which we took this morning,—because it was dry and hard. To my surprise I again met that gentleman; and when he made way as before, to let me pass, he looked at me with an attention not rude, but still earnest. Our eyes met—and I passed hastily on. I felt myself blushing—I knew not why—to the very verge of my forehead. And yet I had done no wrong. I had glanced towards him as I acknowledged his politeness in stepping aside to allow me to pass; and it was by accident—at least on my part—that our eyes thus met. When I became more composed, I was angry at having been annoyed with myself. I then found myself involuntarily reflecting upon the handsome countenance,—for he is handsome, Ellen,—of which I had only so hasty a glimpse. I must admit that I thought of him more than once during the remainder of that day."

"Love at second sight, we must denominate it," observed Ellen, with a smile. "I will hazard a guess that the next day was fine,—for the weather is usually favourable in such circumstances,—and that you unwittingly found yourself rambling in the same path."

"Ah! Ellen, I am afraid that I was wrong—but all happened as you have described," said Kate, in a soft and melancholy tone; "and I obeyed some impulse for which I could not account. I candidly confess that I wondered, as I walked along, whether he would be there again; and when I did not perceive him, I experienced a sentiment of vexation. At length he appeared at the extremity of the field—he drew near—nearer and nearer. I felt ashamed of myself: it suddenly struck me that he must suppose I came thither on purpose to see him again. I never thought so little of myself—no, not even when I was pointed at as the presumed relative of an executioner. I turned abruptly round, and began to retrace my way towards the farm. I reached the low stile on the brow of the hill: at that moment I heard steps behind me. I cannot describe the sensations which I then experienced—a few short seconds of pleasing, painful suspense. Ere a minute had elapsed, the stranger stood by my side; and with a low bow he extended his hand to assist me in crossing the barrier. My head seemed to swim round; and I mechanically gave him my hand. He held it but for an instant as I passed into the next field;—and yet he pressed it gently—very gently;—still he pressed it! I know not whether I bowed or hurried abruptly on—I was so confused!"

"And during the remainder of that day you pondered on the incident," observed Ellen.

"Oh! how well you seem to divine all my thoughts—all my emotions!" exclaimed Katherine.

"Love has the same emblems—the same symbols, throughout the world," answered Ellen; "and it also has the same unvarying worship. Of the true nature of the great God there are many conflicting opinions; and different nations offer up their adoration in different manners. But to that blind deity whom we call Love, there is only one incense—and that is common to all humanity!"

"Then it was not wrong on my part to experience those emotions which I have explained to you?" said Katherine, with the most amiable naïveté.

"Wrong, dearest girl! oh, no!" exclaimed Ellen. "That heart must be a cold—a callous—a worldly-minded one, which never feels those most beautiful and holy of all sympathies! But go on with your narrative, Kate; for I feel convinced that you have seen your handsome lover since the day mentioned."

"I will tell you how we met again," said Katherine. "On the following day I did not stir abroad: I wished to take my usual ramble—but I feared that I should be doing wrong to incur the chance of meeting him again. As I was sitting at the parlour window, he passed. I was so taken by surprise—he appeared so unexpectedly,—ah! no—I am deceiving myself—I am deceiving you;—he came not altogether unexpectedly—for I had found myself wondering more than once whether he would again revisit this neighbourhood. He passed the window, then—as I have said; and I did not turn away until it was too late. He saw me—he seemed pleased: he bowed—and I slightly responded to his salutation. Then I retreated from the window, and did not approach it again during the rest of that day. The next day was wet and gloomy; and I felt persuaded that I should not see him. Will you blame me if I say that I was vexed at this circumstance? would you believe me if I declared that I treated it with indifference? But, ah! my annoyance was soon dissipated:—he passed the house at the same hour as on the preceding day! He was wrapped in a long military cloak; and when he saw me, he bowed with the same courtesy as heretofore;—but methought he smiled, as if with satisfaction at seeing me. And now you will say that I am a vain and foolish girl;—but, dearest Ellen, I an faithfully detailing to you all that occurred, and all the emotions I have experienced."

"Proceed, Katherine," said Ellen. "I become deeply interested in your narrative."

"The next day was fine once more; and I felt indisposed for want of exercise," continued the maiden. "I accordingly walked out—but in another direction. How I trembled at the slightest sound which resembled a footstep! How my heart beat when a bird flew past me! But my alarms—if I can honestly so call them—were without foundation: I beheld not the stranger that day. On the ensuing one I walked out again in the same direction; and, lost in thought, I rambled to a considerable distance. But at length I turned homewards once more; and when in sight of the farm, I suddenly beheld the stranger advancing towards me across a field. He was pursuing no direct path:—my heart beat violently—for something told me that he was coming that way only on my account! In a few moments we met: he bowed—I returned his salutation;—he suddenly took my hand, and pressed it—I hastily withdrew it—and passed rapidly on."

"This mute declaration of love is truly romantic," said Ellen, laughing, as she threw herself, half undressed, into an easy chair, and began to unlace the boots which enclosed her pretty feet.

Katherine had emerged from her nook, and was sitting on the side of the bed which was farthest removed from Ellen; and there, veiling her blushes behind the curtain, the young maiden continued her artless narrative.

"I know not how it was," she said: "but that gentle pressure seemed to remain upon my hand. I can even feel it now, when I think of it. Is not this very foolish, Ellen? But you wish me to tell you every thing; and therefore you must expect to be wearied with my frivolous details. The incident which I have just related made a profound impression upon me. The image of the stranger was constantly present to my memory throughout that day. I fancied that there was something sincere—and yet extremely respectful,—something fervent—and yet quite inoffensive,—in his manner towards me when he seized and pressed my hand. But I have forgotten to give you some idea of his appearance. He is young—tall—slight—and of a dark complexion. He seems to be of a foreign nation. His eyes are black and animated, and on his lip he wears a small moustache. His gait is elegant; and his manners are evidently those of a polished gentleman."

"And his name?" said Ellen. "He has doubtless communicated that?"

"He has never spoken a word to me," answered Katherine, with the most ingenuous seriousness. "We have not exchanged a syllable. I think, indeed, that I have already been sufficiently imprudent in allowing him to touch my hand. Still I could not have prevented him—he took it so suddenly!"

"And you have not exchanged a syllable!" exclaimed Ellen. "But it is as well that matters have remained where they appear to be. I will, however, give you my advice presently. In the meantime, continue your narrative."

"I have little more to say," answered Katherine, with a sigh. "On the following morning I met him once more—that was three days ago; and he accosted me evidently with the intention of speaking. But I hurried on; and he stopped. When I was at some distance, I cast a rapid glance round: he was still standing where I had left him. He saw that I threw that hasty look behind me; for——but, no——I cannot tell you the indiscretion of which he was guilty. It pains me to think of it; and perhaps he himself is conscious of his impropriety, for I have not seen him since."

"What, in heaven's name, did he do?" asked Ellen, surprised by the thoughtful seriousness of her young friend's manner.

"Do you wish me to tell you?" exclaimed Katherine. "Well—I must confess all! He kissed his hand to me."

"Were I not afraid of wounding your feelings, I should laugh immoderately, Kate," said Ellen. "Here was I on the tenter-hooks of expectation—awaiting some truly mortifying disclosure; and I find that the only fault which your swain has committed, is a delicate and mute declaration of his attachment. But to speak seriously once more. If you really entertain any sentiment of interest in behalf of this handsome stranger, you must allow time and circumstances to serve you. These romantic meetings, dear Katherine, are calculated to fill your young heart with hopes which may be cruelly disappointed. If he really experience a tender feeling towards you, he will find means to make it known in a more satisfactory, if not more intelligible manner. Then will be the proper time for your friends to ascertain who he is. For the present I cannot,—as I wish you well,—counsel you to incur the chance of meeting him in that wild way again. I am glad you have imparted this secret to me. It shall be sacred. But, oh! I am too intimately acquainted with the world to treat lightly or neglectfully a matter that may so nearly touch,—that does, perhaps, already to some extent concern,—your happiness; more than ever do I now desire that you should pass a few days with me at Markham Place. If your stranger really wishes to know more of you,—if his views be honourable, and his pretensions feasible, he will soon institute inquiries at the farm regarding you. Mr. Bennet will then know how to act. In the meantime there is no necessity to mention the affair to either him or his wife."

The tender interest of the subject had so completely absorbed all other ideas in the mind of Katherine, that—no longer under the restraint of the extreme bashfulness which had driven her into the obscure part of the chamber in order to lay aside her vesture—she had emerged from the concealment of the curtain, and gradually approached nearer and nearer towards Ellen, while the latter was affectionately offering her counsel.

The scene was now a most touching one.

In the large arm-chair reclined the young wife, her luxuriant hair, not yet arranged for repose, flowing in shining waves over her ivory shoulders, and forming a dark curtain behind her arching neck, the dazzling whiteness and graceful contour of which were thus enhanced with an effect truly enchanting;—while a stray curl of the glossy hair, detached from the mass behind, and more fortunate than its companions, fell on the glowing bosom which was without shame revealed in the sanctity of that chamber.

And, standing meekly before the young wife,—with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks,—was the young virgin,—her white arms supporting the loosened garments over her bosom in that sweet attitude of modesty which so many great masters have loved to delineate in their marble representations of female beauty.

It seemed as if Venus, the Queen of Love, were enthroned in the voluptuous negligence of the boudoir, and had suddenly assumed a demeanour befitting her sovereign sway, while she tutored one of her attendant Graces in some lesson whose importance demanded that unusual seriousness.

"And now, dearest Katherine," added Ellen, after a moment's pause, "I have given you the best advice which my humble capacity allows me to offer; and I think so well of you that I feel convinced of your readiness to follow it."

"I should be unworthy of your good opinion—I should despise myself, were I to hesitate a moment what course to pursue," returned Kate; and, yielding to the generous emotions of friendship, she threw herself on the bosom of her whom she had made the confidant of her young love.

"And you will consent to pass a short time with me at Markham Place?" said Ellen, embracing her affectionately.

"I will follow your counsel in all things, dear Ellen," replied the maiden, weeping from emotions of gratitude and love.

Human nature has no essence more pure,—the world knows nothing more chaste,—heaven has endowed the mortal heart with no feeling more holy, than the nascent affection of a young virgin's soul. The warmest language of the sunny south is too cold to shadow forth even a faint outline of that enthusiastic sentiment. And God has made the richest language poor in the same respect, because the depths of hearts that thrill with love's emotions are too sacred for the common contemplation. The musical voice of Love stirs the source of the sweetest thoughts within the human breast, and steals into the most profound recesses of the soul, touching chords which never vibrated before, and calling into gentle companionship delicious hopes till then unknown!

Yes—the light of a young maiden's first love breaks dimly but beautifully upon her as the silver lustre of a star glimmers through a thickly-woven bower; and the first blush that mantles her cheek, as she feels the primal influence, is faint and pure as that which a rose-leaf might cast upon marble. But how rapidly does that light grow stronger, and that flush deeper,—until the powerful effulgence of the one irradiates every corner of her heart, and the crimson glow of the other suffuses every feature of her countenance.

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CCI. THE HANDSOME STRANGER.—DISAPPOINTMENT

On the ensuing morning Farmer Bennet departed early for London.

After breakfast, Ellen said, with a significant smile: "The weather is fine, Kate: let us take advantage of it. Your country air does me so much good."

Katherine blushed, and then smiled also; but she offered no objection to the proposed walk.

The toilette of the young ladies was soon complete; and they sallied forth on their little excursion.

"Mr. Bennet has promised to call at Markham Place," observed Ellen. "I have written a note to my father, stating that I shall return to-morrow, or next day at latest; and I have intimated my intention of bringing you with me. I most sincerely hope that some fresh tidings have been received from Richard."

"And in that wish I earnestly partake," said Katherine. "But wherefore do you choose this path?" she added in a tremulous tone, and with downcast eyes.

"Because it is the most pleasant," answered Ellen, laughing. "It seems, moreover, that your handsome stranger was determined to seek you in one direction, as well as in another; and if he be in the neighbourhood this morning, rest assured that he will see you—whichever way you may pursue. Love has as many eyes in this respect as Argus. I am with you, dear Kate—you have a companion; and there is no indiscretion in even taking this very path where you have on most occasions met your unknown. Besides, should he be here to-day, I am anxious to catch a glimpse of him. To-morrow or next day you will leave this vicinity of pleasant memories—at least for a time; and——"

"Ellen, Ellen!" murmured Kate, suddenly; and she caught her companion by the arm.

"Ah! I understand!—compose yourself, Katherine—compose yourself," was the rapid reply. "It would be improper to betray any emotion. See—he is approaching slowly;—in the name of heaven compose yourself!"

And, in effect, a handsome young man,—with a dark complexion, fine and expressive eyes, and a graceful figure,—was advancing in the opposite direction. But he came slowly, as if anxious to keep some favourite object as long in view as possible!

How the pulse of the maiden's young heart quickened, as she beheld her unknown lover approaching.

And now the handsome stranger came near:—and Katherine drew close to her companion, as the timid fawn relies for protection on the stately deer.

The look of the stranger was cast for a moment upon Ellen; but not the bright glance of her eye—nor the rich colouring of her cheeks, framed as they were in masses of glossy hair—nor that symmetry of swelling bust, delicate waist, and matchless proportions of a finely-moulded form,—not this assemblage of charms induced the stranger to dwell for more than an instant on Katherine's companion. No:—it was to Katherine herself that his eyes reverted with adoring glance; and though he gazed fixedly upon the retiring maiden, yet there was something so respectful in his manner, that it was impossible to take offence at it.

He made way for the two ladies, and raised his hat as they passed.

Katherine returned the salutation without turning her eyes towards him.

"Your stranger is not only handsome," observed Ellen, when they were at such a distance as to incur no danger of being overheard; "but he is also of an appearance so respectable—so superior,——I had almost said noble,——that I cannot for a moment suppose his intentions to be dishonourable. At the same time, why does he not address you? He might, without impropriety, have taken advantage of my presence to speak to you; and, to tell you the truth, it was to afford him such an opportunity that I brought you in this direction."

We need not record the conversation that ensued: the reader does not require to be informed that its principal topic was the love of the young maiden—a theme on which she was naturally pleased to speak, and in the discussion of which Ellen indulged her;—not, however, with the view of fanning the flame of incipient passion; but with the affectionate motive of warning her against the encouragement of hopes which might never be fulfilled.

The walk was prolonged until two o'clock, when the young ladies retraced their steps to the farm. Mr. Bennet had not yet returned from London: dinner was however served up. The fresh air had given Ellen an appetite; but Katherine ate little, and was somewhat pensive.

Indeed, the maiden had sufficient to engage the meditation of her young mind. The evident impression which the handsome stranger had made upon her, and the hope that evening would bring her the much-desired information relative to her parents, divided her thoughts.

But of what nature would the old woman's secrets prove? in what manner were they to be a source of comfort to her? It will be remembered that Smithers had made her acquainted with certain particulars relative to her mother; and the sad inference had been that Katherine was of illegitimate birth. Would the tendency of the old woman's communications be to clear up this mystery in a manner satisfactory to the young maiden? As yet all was doubt and uncertainty; and conjecture was vain!

It was about four o'clock when the farmer made his appearance.

He entered the parlour, where Ellen, Katharine, and Mrs. Bennet were sitting, with a countenance expressive of supreme satisfaction.

"I have glorious news for you, young ladies," he exclaimed; "and, indeed, all who know Mr. Markham——I beg his pardon, the Marquis——must be rejoiced."

"Oh! what of him?" ejaculated Ellen and Kate, as it were in one breath.

"Patience for a moment," said the farmer. "Here is a letter from Mr. Monroe to you, Miss,"—addressing Ellen; "and that will explain every thing yet known of the affair."

Ellen hastily tore open her father's note, and began to read its contents aloud:—

"January 29th, 1841.

"You will be supremely delighted, dearest Ellen, to hear the joyful tidings which I am about to communicate. This morning's newspapers publish a Telegraphic Despatch from Toulon, stating that a grand and decisive battle took place beneath the walls of Montoni on the 23d. Richard was completely victorious. The Austrian army was routed with tremendous loss; the Grand Duke fled; and the capital was delivered. Our dear benefactor is safe. The steamer which conveyed these tidings to Toulon left Montoni in the afternoon of the 24th, at the moment when Richard was entering the city—as the Regent of Castelcicala!

"Nothing more is known at present; but this is enough not only to reassure us all—but to fill our hearts with joy. My blood glows in my veins, old as I am, when I think of Richard's grand achievements. To what a proud height has he raised himself—second only to a sovereign! As I looked forth from the casement ere now, and beheld the two trees on the hill-top, I could not avoid a sorrowful reflection concerning Eugene. What can have become of him? I——"

"Heavens! dearest Ellen, are you ill?" exclaimed Katherine, seeing that her friend suddenly turned ashy pale.

"No, Kate: it is nothing! The abruptness with which we have received these tidings——"

"Yes—you are unwell," persisted Katherine; and she hastened to procure water.

Ellen drank some; and the colour slowly returned to her cheeks.

"I am better now, Kate," she said. "Do you terminate the perusal of my father's letter."

Katherine, perceiving that her friend really seemed to have revived, read the remainder of the note in the following manner:—

"I fear that he will not be enabled to tell so glorious a tale as his younger brother,—even if the appointment be really kept on his part! But enough of that. You speak of bringing Miss Wilmot, to pass a few days at the Place. I entirely approve of the project, if the excellent people with whom she is living, and of whom Richard has spoken to us so highly, be willing to part with her.

"I must not forget to mention that poor Whittingham is nearly crazed with joy at Richard's success. You remember his extravagant but unfeigned manifestation of delight when we received the tidings of the battle of Abrantani and its results. Then the worthy fellow danced and capered madly, exclaiming, 'Master Richard a Markis!' all day long. But when I read him the Telegraphic Despatch this morning, he took his hat and kicked it all round the room,—a new hat too,—until it was battered into a state beyond redemption,—shouting all the time, 'Here's a glorious cataplasm!'—(meaning 'catastrophe,' no doubt):—'Master Richard a Markis, and a Regency! I'll get drunk to-night, sir: I haven't been intoxicated for many a year; but I'll get drunk to-night, in spite of all the Teetotalers in London! Thank God for this glorious cataplasm!' And he rushed out of the room to communicate the news in his own way to Marian. But conceive my surprise when I presently heard the report of fire-arms: I listened—a second report followed—a third—a fourth. I became alarmed, and hastened into the garden. There was Whittingham firing a salute with his old blunderbuss; and Marian's new plaid shawl was floating, by way of a banner, from the summit of a clothes' prop fixed in the ground. Poor Marian did not seem to relish the use to which her Sunday shawl was thus unceremoniously converted; but all the satisfaction she could obtain from Whittingham was, 'It's a glorious cataplasm! Master Richard's a Regency!' And away the old blunderbuss blazed again, until the salute was complete. I do really believe the excellent-hearted old man intends to illuminate the Place this evening; and I shall not interfere with the ebullition of his honest joy.

"I write this long letter while Mr. Bennet partakes of some refreshment.

"Trusting to see you and your young friend to-morrow or next day at latest, I am, dearest Ellen," &c. &c.

It is unnecessary to state that the news from Montoni diffused the most lively joy amongst the party assembled in the parlour of the farm-house.

Ellen speedily recovered her usual flow of excellent spirits, and expressed her sincere satisfaction at that remarkable elevation on the part of Richard which had excited the enthusiasm of her father.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet offered no objection to the proposal that Kate should pay a visit to Markham Place: on the contrary, though grieved to part with her, they considered that change of scene could not do otherwise than benefit her.

And now the appointed hour for the meeting with the old woman drew near; and Mr. Bennet provided Kate with the necessary funds for her purpose.

Shortly before seven, the farmer (provided with a brace of loaded pistols) and Ellen repaired to the same hiding-place which they had occupied on the preceding evening; and, with a beating heart, Katherine hastened to the spot where she expected to encounter one who had promised to reveal secrets so nearly concerning her.

The old woman did not, however, make her appearance.

The minutes passed slowly away—and still she came not.

Katherine's anxiety was intense.

Half an hour had elapsed: still there was no sign of the hag.

The young maiden waited until past eight o'clock; and at length she suddenly perceived two persons advancing towards her at a little distance.

For a moment she felt afraid; but the farmer's voice speedily reassured her.

Ellen and he were alarmed at Katherine's prolonged absence, and had come to seek her.

Finding that the old woman had not made her appearance, they began to view the entire affair with some suspicion; and Kate was compelled to return with them to the farm—a prey to the most cruel disappointment.

"If the old woman was prevented, by any unforeseen circumstance, from meeting you," said the farmer, "she will communicate with you early to-morrow. Perhaps we may be favoured with another visit from her emissary, Mr. Banks; but should he come, I shall take good care that he treats us to a sight of no more model-coffins."

During the remainder of the evening Kate was pensive and melancholy; nor could all Ellen's affectionate endeavours wean her from her sorrowful thoughtfulness.

They retired to rest early; and Katherine rose next morning with the hope of receiving tidings from the old woman.

But hour after hour passed without gratifying her wish.

Ellen purposely delayed their departure for London, to afford a fair opportunity for the arrival of any intelligence which the old woman might forward; but three o'clock came, and still all was blank disappointment and mystery in respect to the affair.

Then Kate herself saw the inutility of tarrying longer; and, having taken an affectionate farewell of Mrs. Bennet, the young ladies were accompanied by the farmer to Hounslow. There they obtained a conveyance for the capital, and Mr. Bennet saw them depart in safety.

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CCII. THE PRINCESS ISABELLA

We must now succinctly record a few incidents which occurred at the mansion of Prince Alberto in the vicinity of Richmond, from the period when Richard bade adieu to Isabella ere his departure for Castelcicala in the month of October, 1840, until the end of January, 1841—that is, up to the date at which we have brought our narrative in the preceding chapter.

The Princess Isabella declared, at her farewell meeting with Richard, that wild hopes and exalted visions filled her imagination when she contemplated the enterprise on which her lover was about to embark. So well did she read the true character of our hero, and so elevated was her opinion of his high qualifications, that she felt persuaded he only required an opportunity to open for himself a grand and brilliant career.

Her boundless affection for Richard Markham aided her not only in fostering these convictions, but also in shadowing forth and defining the elements of a glorious success and rapid rise on the part of one to whom her first and undivided love was given.

But when she tore herself away from his last embrace,—when she breathed the mournful word "Farewell," and then separated from the generous, the high-minded, and handsome young man who possessed her heart,—oh! how acute was the anguish that filled her soul!

For some minutes—when he was no longer in sight—all her golden dreams and glorious visions fled from her imagination;—she strove to recall them, as a drowning person in the dark hour of night struggles to gain the surface of the waters once more to catch another glimpse of the bright stars above;—but hope seemed to have yielded to blank despair.

The Princess, however, possessed a firm mind; and when the primal burst of anguish was over, she wrestled with her gloomy imaginings, until she gradually triumphed over their mournful influence.

Having purposely prolonged her walk homewards, in order to compose herself, Isabella did not re-enter the mansion until she had collected her scattered thoughts and had wiped away the traces of her tears.

Her father had all along discountenanced the expedition to Castelcicala, so far as he was concerned; although he could not do otherwise than wish it success. Indeed, as he himself had intimated to General Grachia, he would no doubt have joined in it, had he been differently situated. It was therefore with feelings of admiration that the Prince had from the first heard of Markham's enthusiasm in the Constitutional cause: and at that period he frequently found himself dwelling attentively upon all the good points in Richard's character which had once made our hero so welcome a guest at the mansion.

As for Isabella's mother, this Princess was more than ever favourable towards Markham; for she saw in his present conduct nothing save a profound devotion to the cause of her illustrious husband, and a laudable ambition to render himself worthy of her daughter's love—that love which was no secret to the parents of the amiable girl!

When Isabella returned to the drawing-room after her interview with Richard, her still melancholy demeanour attracted the notice of her affectionate parents.

"Where have you been, Isabel?" inquired the Prince, eyeing her attentively.

"My dear father," was the instantaneous reply, "I went for my usual walk in the adjacent fields, and I met Mr. Markham."

"Ah!" exclaimed the Prince, a little impatiently.

"I do not pretend that it was accidentally on his part," continued Isabella, in a tone expressive of the pride of truth; "because he is the last person in the world to sanction duplicity of any kind. It was, however, accidental in reference to myself—for I knew not of his intention to seek an interview with me this day."

"But you have met?" said the Prince, in a softening voice, and with a manner which denoted how justly proud he was of the upright mind of his daughter.

"We have met, dear father," answered Isabel, wiping away a tear; "and—we have separated—perhaps," she added in a faltering tone, "never to meet again. Oh! be not angry with him—nor with me, my dearest parents,—especially not with him!"

"No—we are not angry, my child," said the Princess of Castelcicala, hastily. "Indeed, for my part, I wish that Mr. Markham had come to wish us all farewell. But perhaps he will write——"

"I did not refuse his request on that subject," murmured Isabella, casting down her eyes and blushing: "Oh! no—I could not! And now, my dear parents, you know all. If I have done wrong, I am deeply grieved;—but my conscience tells me that I have not outraged the devotion and love that I owe to you."

The Prince made no reply: but the expression of his countenance was not severe; and the Princess of Castelcicala embraced her daughter affectionately.

From that time the mansion contained three anxious hearts; for the exiled family was deeply interested in the results of the expedition to Castelcicala.

Who, then, can depict the disappointment with which the tidings of the fatal affair of Ossore were received, at the end of November, in that dwelling?

The Prince and Princess perceived in the failure of the enterprise a deep blow to their own cause in the Duchy, inasmuch as it was calculated to afford the supporters of the Grand Duke an excuse for heaping opprobrium on the name of Alberto, whom they would point out as the instigator of the invasion;—and Isabella was overwhelmed with grief by the mystery which at that period enveloped the fate of Richard.

Several days of heart-breaking suspense elapsed: the colour forsook the maiden's cheek; and her countenance became expressive of a deep melancholy.

Nor was this terrible uncertainty concerning Richard's fate the only cause of affliction which she was now doomed to experience. Her father was so profoundly affected by the failure of the expedition, and the evils which he believed would result to his own interests in many respects, that he became ill, and was soon unable to leave his bed.

Then how assiduous was the poor girl to her parent, while her own heart was often well-nigh breaking! The Prince grew irritable and impatient, and even reproached his daughter for fretting on account of one who, as he declared, "had helped to hurry the Constitutional cause,—a cause that might have triumphed in time,—to a most ruinous catastrophe." But Isabella bore all this without a murmur; and as her father grew more harsh, her attentions towards him were redoubled. In her mother's kindness and sympathy the afflicted maiden found a consolation; but she could with difficulty bear up against the agony of suspense and alarm which she experienced on account of her lover.

At length,—about a week after the receipt of the fatal tidings connected with the battle of Ossore,—Whittingham called at the mansion, and placed in Isabella's hand a letter from Richard.

"He lives! he lives!" were the maiden's first words of reviving hope; "heaven be thanked—he lives!"

But Isabella's joy was speedily overclouded once more; for she saw, by the guarded manner in which he wrote and by the omission of his signature, that her lover was in danger.

Nevertheless—"where there is life, there is hope," as the proverb says; and, somewhat consoled by his conviction, she was less miserable than before!

And now came another tedious interval of suspense, the wretchedness of which was enhanced by the increasing indisposition of the Prince.

At length—at the expiration of about three weeks—the Princess Isabella received a letter from Signora Viviani, the nature of which, as already known to our readers, was not extremely well calculated to reassure the affectionate girl relative to her lover. It was true that she was informed of Richard's safe arrival at Pinalla, where he was in the society of kind friends; but vague and torturing fears were aroused by the fact that he himself had been unable to write to her.

Again was there a weary interval of silence; but this was suddenly broken in a manner calculated to re-awaken all the bright hopes which Isabella had once entertained relative to the future greatness of Richard Markham. On the 16th of January, the news of the glorious exploit at Estella reached the mansion of the exiled family in England; and inspired the young Princess with the most enthusiastic feelings of admiration towards him whom she loved so fondly, and of whom she had always thought so well.

"Oh! why am I bound to this bed of sickness?" exclaimed the Prince, when Signor Viviani's letter narrating that event was read to him. "Why am I not permitted to hasten to my native country, and take part with that gallant youth! No consideration of policy or delicacy should now restrain me; for the Austrian is in the land, and every true Castelcicalan should draw the sword and fling away the scabbard!"

"Compose yourself, dearest father," said Isabella, enraptured at the manner in which he had spoken of her lover: "excitement will only delay your recovery;—and something tells me that Castelcicala will soon demand your presence!"

But the Prince could not tranquillize his mind: the thraldom of a sick bed had become more intolerable to him than ever; and, although he now ceased to reproach his daughter, his irritability of temper painfully increased.

Three days afterwards letters were received at the mansion announcing Richard's entry into Villabella. Then the colour came back again to the cheeks of the charming Italian maiden; and her eyes shone with all their wonted brilliancy. Forgotten were her recent sorrows—gone was her agonising suspense—banished was the memory of her cruel doubts;—her lover was already a hero—and hope was once more enthroned in her heart.

The Prince now began to perceive the absolute necessity of avoiding the excitement of useless repinings at that illness which still chained him to his bed. Richard's letters told him how the inhabitants of Villabella had shouted the thrilling words "Long live Alberto!"—and the Prince was inspired with hopes the extent of which he did not seek to conceal.

Four days elapsed; and when the postman was again descried by the watchful Isabella advancing through the shrubbery towards the mansion, how quickly beat the hearts of the illustrious exiles!

Yes—there were letters from Castelcicala:—never were sealed documents more quickly torn open! And, oh! what joyous news did they contain—the victory of Piacere!

Isabella's feelings found vent in tears:—she was so happy—that she wept!

"These are indeed glorious tidings!" said the Prince, raising himself upon his pillow; then, after a moment's pause, he exclaimed warmly, "Richard Markham is a hero!"

Ah! how touchingly grateful was the glance which Isabella cast upon her father through her tears, to thank him for that generous sentiment relative to one in whom she felt so deep an interest!

Another short interval now occurred; and then fresh letters came, bringing farther tidings of success. The battle of Abrantani was a worthy sequence to that of Piacere!

"Oh! my beloved Isabella," now exclaimed the Prince, pressing her to his heart, "can you forgive me for the reproaches I have so unjustly—so wantonly uttered relative to Richard Markham?"

"Think not of the past, dearest father," answered the maiden: "the present is so full of joy, and hope, and glory, that we should not feel wearied of contemplating it."

"And, whatever may be the result of this contest," observed the Princess of Castelcicala to her husband, "you will always acknowledge that Richard is a hero?"

"He is a young man whom the greatest sovereign in the world might be proud to claim as a son!" ejaculated the Prince, enthusiastically.

Isabella pressed her mother's hand tenderly for having obtained this most welcome avowal.

The health of Prince Alberto now rapidly improved; and in a few days he was enabled to leave the couch to which he had been confined for many weary weeks.

And Isabella—Oh! all the charming carnation tinge had come back to her cheeks; and her eyes were brilliant with the purest rays of happiness and hope. Her fondest dreams—her brightest visions were all but realised: her lover was accomplishing those grand destinies of which her mental vision had caught glimpses ere his departure from England; and the world was already busy with his name. And now, too, was that name ever upon the tongue of her father, who pronounced it with admiration and respect.

A few days after the arrival of the intelligence of the decisive victory of Abrantani, the newspapers acquainted the illustrious Italian family with the fact that the Committee of Government at Montoni had bestowed the title of Marquis of Estella upon the youthful Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of Castelcicala.

Oh! with what joyous feelings—with what ineffable emotions of enthusiasm, did the charming Isabella read aloud to her parents that account of her lover's elevation,—an elevation which, as he himself had felt convinced, must remove one grand obstacle that had hitherto existed in the way of their happiness.

And how did her young heart beat and her bosom heave, when her father exclaimed, in an emphatic tone, "Yes—Richard is now a Marquis, and may take his rank amongst the proudest peers in the universe;—but there is a higher grade which he yet may reach—and it will be a happy day for us all when I shall say to him, 'Receive my daughter as the reward of your achievements, and become a Prince!'"

Isabella threw herself at her father's feet, and pressed to her lips the hand which she also moistened with her tears. She endeavoured to murmur words of gratitude for that most welcome assurance; but her heart was too full—she could only weep!

It was a most touching scene; and, perhaps, never had that exiled family experienced more perfect happiness than on this occasion.

But the sentiment was soon destined to give way to new fears and fresh anxieties. It was well-known that Montoni was besieged by an immense Austrian force; and the English newspapers, in commenting upon the position of the Constitutionalists, declared that though the moral effects of so decisive a victory as that of Abrantani must be very great, there was nevertheless much room to doubt whether the Marquis of Estella would be able to assemble an army sufficiently strong to march to the relief of the capital.

Prince Alberto trembled as he read these observations; because he not only comprehended their justice, but was also well aware that the fate of Castelcicala could be alone decided by a pitched battle between the Austrians and the Constitutionalists.

He endeavoured to conceal his misgivings from his wife and daughter: but they saw what was passing in his mind;—and thus all was still anxiety and hope—uncertainty and fervent aspiration, at the mansion of the Prince.

Thus did a few days pass; and Alberto suffered a slight relapse, in consequence of the nervous state of doubt in which he was plunged.

All his hopes—all his interests—all his prospects were at stake. If the Constitutionalists were successful, a crown awaited him: if the Austrians triumphed, the Grand Duke Angelo had pledged himself to adopt a scion of the imperial family of Vienna as the heir to the throne. Thus Prince Alberto hovered between a glorious elevation or a fatal fall.

The Princess, his wife, entertained sanguine hopes that a campaign so successfully begun, would terminate in triumph; and Isabella called every argument to her aid to convince her father and mother that all must end well! Nevertheless, poor girl! she also had her intervals of doubt and alarm; and many were the tears which she shed in secret as she prayed for the safety of her lover.

And now how eagerly was the arrival of the postman looked for every day; how anxiously was the presence of the newspaper awaited!

At length, on the morning of the 29th of January, all doubts were cleared up—all uncertainties terminated.

The illustrious family was seated at the breakfast table—a mere ceremonious mockery, for they were unable to eat a morsel.

Presently a servant entered, and presented the morning paper to the Prince.

Alberto opened it with a trembling hand: his wife and daughter watched him attentively.

Suddenly he started—his eyes were lighted up with their wonted fires—a flush appeared on his pale cheek—and he exclaimed in a fervent tone, "O God! I thank thee!"

He could say no more: his emotions nearly overpowered him, weakened as he was by a long illness.

Isabella caught the paper as it was falling from his hands. One glance was sufficient: it told her all! For there—conspicuously displayed at the head of a column—was the following glorious announcement:—

"CASTELCICALA.

"TOTAL DEFEAT OF THE AUSTRIANS—DELIVERANCE OF MONTONI.

"The French Government have received the following Telegraphic Despatch from Toulon:—

"'The Castelcicalan steamer Torione has just arrived. The Austrians were completely routed on the 23rd. Montoni is delivered. The Grand Duke has fled. THE MARQUIS OF ESTELLA entered the capital at three o'clock on the 24th. He has been appointed Regent until the arrival of ALBERTO I. The Torione left while the cannon were saluting the presence of the MARQUIS.'"

"Let me be the first to congratulate your Serene Highness on this glorious result!" exclaimed Isabella, falling at the feet of her father, and pressing his hand to her lips.

"No—not on your knees, dearest Isabel!" cried Alberto, now Grand Duke of Castelcicala: "but come to my arms, sweet girl—and you also, beloved companion of my banishment," he added, turning towards his wife, who was nearly overcome by these sudden tidings of joy:—"come to my arms—for we are no longer exiles—we shall once more behold our native land!"

How sweet—how sweet were the caresses which those three illustrious personages now exchanged:—how unalloyed was that happiness which they now experienced!

And when they were enabled to compose their feelings so far as to discourse upon the triumphant result of the Constitutional cause, the name of Richard Markham was not forgotten!

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CCIII. RAVENSWORTH HALL

In the immediate neighbourhood of Kilburn on the gentle acclivity rising towards Wilsden Green, stood a noble mansion in the midst of a spacious park.

Every thing about that vast structure, within and without, denoted aristocratic grandeur combined with exquisite taste.

The adjunction of no modern buildings had spoiled the antique and time-honoured appearance of Ravensworth Hall: the hand of the mason, when repairing the ravages of years, had successfully studied to preserve the effect of the beautiful Elizabethan architecture.

Thus the splendid mansion,—with its numerous gables, its tall chimneys, its picturesque belfry, its immense windows with small diamond-shaped panes, and its ample portals approached by a flight of twenty steps,—seemed well adapted for the residence of a peer who could trace his family back to the epoch of the Conquest, and who preserved as much feudal state and grandeur as modern systems and habits would permit.

It was the 1st of February; and as early as six o'clock on that morning—before it was light—Ravensworth Hall was a scene of bustle and excitement.

Some grand event was evidently about to take place.

The chimneys belonging to the kitchen and servants' offices in the rear of the building, sent forth dense columns of smoke, which seemed to imply that extensive culinary preparations were in progress.

The butler,—a venerable old man with hair as white as snow, but with a stately portliness of form that was scarcely bent by age,—was busy in selecting the choicest wine from the immense stock of which he was the guardian. The female domestics were early employed in preparing the grand apartments of the mansion for the reception of a brilliant company:—windows were cleaned, coverings removed from the velvet cushions of chairs and sofas, heavy hangings and curtains arranged in the nicest folds so as to display the richness of their texture to the best advantage, and China ornaments carefully dusted.

Lord Ravensworth rose earlier than he had done for some weeks; for before the clock struck eight he descended from his dressing-room to a chamber which he denominated his "cabinet."

He was a man of about fifty years of age, and had evidently been very handsome. But his countenance was now colourless, haggard, and painfully indicative of some deeply seated disease which was preying upon his vitals. His eyes were sunken and lustreless: his cheeks were hollow,—and yet seldom had an individual of his age possessed so splendid a set of teeth, the whole of which were perfect. So thin and wasted was his form, that, although he was naturally of a powerful and portly structure, the dressing-gown which he had on hung as loosely about him as if on a skeleton.

And how rapidly had these ravages of an unknown and unaccountable malady worked their terrific influence on a man who had lately appeared to possess that constitutional vigour and robustness of health which predicate a long life!

Three months previously to the time of which we are writing had Lord Ravensworth first experienced a change in his physical energies which began to alarm him. He was then staying, with his young and beautiful wife, to whom he had only then been married half-a-year, at his town-mansion; and when the primal symptoms of his malady appeared,—evidencing themselves in want of appetite, intervals of deep lethargic languor, and an apathetic listlessness in respect to every thing passing around him,—his physicians advised him to essay the bracing air and change of scene of Ravensworth Park. His lordship was, however, unwilling to remove his young wife—the lovely Adeline—from the gaieties of London, at that season when all the fashionable world was returning to the metropolis after the autumnal visits to their country seats or favourite watering-places; and he had accordingly persisted in passing the Christmas holidays at his town-residence.

But he rapidly grew worse:—his appetite totally failed him; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could force himself to take the sustenance necessary to sustain life. He had always been a great smoker; and his only solace now appeared to be his meerschaum. Alone in his own private apartment, he would sit for hours with no other companion than the eternal pipe. He was fond of oriental tobacco, because the Turkish and Persian weeds possessed a peculiar aroma which rendered their use a habit comparatively inoffensive to others. And here we may observe that the only reciprocal attentions which had taken place for years between Lord Ravensworth and his younger brother, the Honourable Gilbert Vernon, consisted in the annual interchange of presents:—thus, as Gilbert had resided in oriental climes, he was in the habit of sending Lord Ravensworth every year a small chest containing the most rare and excellent samples of tobacco grown in Asia Minor and Persia; and in return he received from his elder brother a box filled with all the newest English publications, and a variety of choice articles for the toilette, such as Gilbert could not have procured in the East.

Thus was it that, when the nobleman found a strange and insidious malady growing upon him, he naturally sought relief, both mental and physical, in his favourite recreation; and never had the present of his brother seemed more valuable to him than when he forgot his ailments in the soothing enjoyments of the aromatic Turkish or mildly-flavoured Persian tobacco.

For two months had he been subject to a mysterious and deeply-rooted disease,—which one physician treated as atrophy, and which another honestly confessed he could not comprehend,—when about the beginning of the year, he had yielded to the entreaties of his wife and removed to Ravensworth Hall.

There he appeared to rally for a few days,—taking powerful exercise on horseback and on foot, and indulging but little in the luxury of the meerschaum. One day, however, the weather was so intemperate that he could not stir abroad; and he passed several hours in his "cabinet," with his favourite meerschaum. From that period the apathy which he had to some extent shaken off, returned with increased power: his manner seemed more lethargic and indifferent than it had yet been; and the companionship of his pipe grew more welcome to him than ever. He now spent the greater portion of each day in his cabinet, with positive orders that he was not to be disturbed; and there he enjoyed that baleful comfort which is experienced by the Teryaki, or oriental opium-eaters. Reclining in a capacious arm-chair, with the tube of his meerschaum between his lips, Lord Ravensworth forgot the world without,—remembered not his wife,—thought not of the infant that she bore in her bosom,—and even seemed insensible to the fearful wasting away which his physical strength was rapidly undergoing. He refused to allow his physician to prescribe for him; and though the work of enfeeblement and decay progressed with alarming velocity, he seldom appeared to reflect that he must shortly be numbered with the dead.

It is due to Adeline to state that,—attached to pleasure and gaiety, and fond of society as she was,—she endeavoured to arouse her husband as much as she could from that mortal apathy which, even in her presence, shrouded all his sensibilities as it were in a premature grave. His case presented the remarkable and mysterious anomaly of a man in the noon of lusty-hood, and without any apparent ailment of a specific kind, passing out of existence by a geometrical progression of decay.

Such was the condition of Lord Ravensworth at the period when we introduce our readers to the Hall.

A few words will explain the motive which had induced him to rise at so unusually early an hour on the 1st of February, and which also led him to a temporary, and, alas! very feeble exertion to shake off the torpor of listlessness and the opiate influence of his mortal apathy.

Lady Ravensworth's cousin, the Honourable Miss Maria Augusta Victoria Amelia Hyacintha Villiers, was, in fashionable language, "to be that morning led to the hymeneal altar." This young lady was rich only in her names: she was a portionless orphan; and the cold calculation of her guardian, Lord Rossville (Adeline's father), had induced him to consent to the sacrifice of the poor girl to a suitor whose wealth and title of Baronet were his only recommendations.

Miss Maria Augusta Victoria Amelia Hyacintha Villiers had been residing with her cousin Adeline, ever since the marriage of the latter with Lord Ravensworth; and it was to consummate the sacrifice ere now alluded to that all the grand preparations before mentioned were in progress. Lord and Lady Rossville and Lady Ravensworth all conceived that Lord Ravensworth would be benefited by the excitement attending the assemblage of a marriage party at the Hall; and their expectations appeared to be in some measure justified. His lordship descended at an unusually early hour to his cabinet, and, instead of having recourse to his meerschaum, he summoned the butler, to whom he gave instructions relative to the service of particular wines.

For nearly a month past his lordship had not meddled in any of the affairs of the household; and the venerable servant was overjoyed to think that his noble master was giving unequivocal signs of recovery. This idea seemed to acquire confirmation from the circumstance that the nobleman afterwards returned to his dressing-room without smoking a single pipe, and, aided by his valet, attired himself with unusual precision and care.

"Your lordship is better this morning," observed the valet, deferentially.

"Yes—I am a little better, Quentin," returned the nobleman; "and yet I hardly know that I have ever felt actually ill. Want of appetite is the principal ailment which affects me. It makes me grow thin, you perceive:—but am I so very thin, Quentin?"

"Oh! no, my lord," answered the valet, who belonged to a class that never tell disagreeable truths so long as their wages are regularly paid. "Your lordship is certainly not so stout as your lordship was; but——"

"But what, Quentin?"

"I think—if your lordship would not be offended—that I am acquainted with the cause of that want of appetite, which prevents your lordship from taking proper sustenance."

"Go on, Quentin: I shall not be offended. I know you are a faithful fellow," exclaimed the nobleman. "What do you think is the cause?"

"With your lordship's permission, I should say that smoking too much—" began the valet, timidly.

"Pooh! pooh!—nonsense!" interrupted Lord Ravensworth, impatiently. "I have always been a great smoker: you know I have. I began to smoke when I was only fourteen; and as I was so long a bachelor—during the best years of my life, indeed—I had no reason to curb myself in my favourite recreation. It would be different, perhaps, if I used the filthy tobacco which you buy in England—or if I smoked strong Havannah cigars. But that mild and aromatic plant, which is reared in the East, cannot injure a soul:—a child might smoke it."

"Your lordship knows best," observed the valet, feeling that he was treading on delicate ground. "But I think your lordship has smoked more lately than——"

"I dare say I have," again interrupted the nobleman, with some little petulance. "But the last chest of tobacco which my brother sent me is so much better than all the former ones; and there is such a delightful soothing influence in the samples of Turkish and Persian, that I cannot lay aside my pipe when once I take it up. Let me see! It was only last October—yes, and at the end of October, too—that I received the chest; and I have already made a deep inroad into it."

"Is the Honourable Mr. Vernon still in Turkey, my lord?" inquired the valet.

"Yes: at least, when I heard from him last—that was when he sent me the chest of tobacco in October—he stated in his letter that he should yet remain abroad for two or three years. He seems devoted to the East. But you know, Quentin, that he and I are not upon the very best of terms, although we occasionally correspond and interchange little civilities every now and then. However, I can scarcely blame myself for any coldness that may subsist between us. I have behaved to him as an elder brother ought to a younger one;—and because I would not consent to minister to his extravagant propensities he took umbrage. When I espoused her ladyship last May, I wrote to Mr. Vernon, who was then at Beyrout, acquainting him with that event; and his reply, which accompanied the chest of tobacco in October, was more kind and conciliatory than I could have expected, considering his gloomy and morose character."

"I am glad that he exhibited a proper feeling towards your lordship," said Quentin, by way of making some observation, because his master had paused.

"And so am I," continued the nobleman. "Then I wrote to him again in November, to inform him that Lady Ravensworth was in a way that gave promise of a continuation of our name,—the name of Ravensworth is a very ancient one, Quentin——"

"Yes, my lord. I believe your lordship can trace it back to the invasion of Britain by the Romans?"

"No—not quite that," returned the nobleman; "but to the conquest by William the Norman. However, I wrote to my brother, as I have informed you; and I received no answer. I therefore conclude that he has renewed his travels through Asia-Minor."

The toilet of Lord Ravensworth was now complete; and he hesitated for a moment whether he should repair to his cabinet and take "just one little pipe," or whether he should hasten to the drawing-room at once.

The valet understood what was passing in the nobleman's mind; but as he was really attached to his master, and moreover entertained a belief that the too liberal use of tobacco had reduced him to his present wretched physical condition, he hastened to exclaim, "The company are already assembled, my lord, in the drawing-room; and her ladyship will be quite delighted to see your lordship looking so very well to-day."

Once more Lord Ravensworth, who for a moment was about to relapse into a state of listless apathy, brightened up, and wrestled with the fatal influence that was creeping over him; and in this improved state of mind and body he proceeded to the drawing-room.

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CCIV. THE BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM

A brilliant assembly was collected in the principal saloon of Ravensworth Hall.

Lord Rossville,—a tall, thin, stern-looking man,—and Lady Rossville,—a very short, stout, and affected dame,—were amongst the most conspicuous by rank and station.

Lady Ravensworth seemed as beautiful as Lydia Hutchinson had described her; and, as she was rather pale and delicate in consequence of being in an "interesting situation," she was really a being who might be termed, without any poetical exaggeration, sweetly fascinating. But no one who there beheld the elegant and proud peeress, doing the honours of her splendid mansion to a circle of noble guests, would have imagined that, when plain Miss Adeline Enfield, she had played the wanton at so tender an age, and given birth to a child in a miserable garret!

The Honourable Miss Maria Augusta Victoria Amelia Hyacintha Villiers was a beautiful, but timid and retiring, girl of seventeen;—and as she now appeared in the virginal white which custom had compelled her to assume for the consummation of a sacrifice which she felt—Oh! how keenly felt,—it was easy for a benevolent eye to perceive that she was a victim to cold calculation, and not a happy bride about to accompany to the altar one whom she loved.

But there were no benevolent eyes there:—there seldom are in fashionable life and in such cases. The expression of blank despair which marked the countenance of the young bride was regarded only as the token of maidenly reserve and bashfulness.

Not that she loved another: no—her heart was entirely her own;—but she was about to be given to a man whom she abhorred.

"Why did she not remonstrate with her guardian?" asks the innocent reader. Remonstrate with a stanch Tory and High-Church-supporting peer like Lord Rossville? Ridiculous! He who believed that the people are mere machines formed to toil for the aristocracy, was not likely to listen with even common patience to the remonstrances of a young maiden for whom he believed he had arranged a splendid destiny.

"But, then, poor Maria might have opened her heart to Lady Rossville?" says that self-same innocent reader. Equally ridiculous! A mother who had intrigued so well as to foist her own daughter upon an elderly noble like Lord Ravensworth, and who imagined that matrimony was nothing more nor less in respect to young ladies than "catching at the first rich man who offered himself," was very far from being the proper person at whose hands the orphan and portionless Maria could obtain a reprieve of the death-sentence which had been pronounced upon her heart.

In high life how many matrimonial connexions are based on the calculations of sordid interest, instead of the sympathies of the soul! And then the hoary peer or the decrepid nabob is surprised that his young wife proves unfaithful to his bed, and declaims against the profligacy of her conduct in yielding to the temptations of a deeply-seated love for another—a love which was perhaps engendered before the ignominious sacrifice of her person to the sexagenarian husband was ever thought of!

But to return to the drawing-room at Ravensworth Hall.

Amongst the select party assembled, we must especially mention the Honourable Miss Wigmore and the Honourable Miss Helena Sophia Alexandrina Wigmore—the bridesmaids, who looked as if they had much rather have been principal instead of secondary actresses in the matrimonial ceremony. There also was the newly-appointed Bishop of the Carribbee Islands—solemn in lawn sleeves, and pompous in the display of his episcopal importance. Lounging near the chair of a very pretty girl, with whom he was conversing, stood Count Swindeliski—a refugee who sported enormous whiskers, who had found his way into fashionable society no one exactly knew how, and who had the extraordinary but not altogether uncommon knack of living at the rate of five thousand a-year—upon nothing! Then there were several Members of Parliament who had collected together near a window, and were disputing with all their talent whether there ought to be a duty of one halfpenny or three-farthings per hundred on foreign brick-bats. Near an open piano was gathered a group of very young ladies, engaged in an edifying discussion on the character of some other very young lady who was not present. Conversing with Lord Rossville was the owner of half a county, who could return six Members to Parliament with the greatest ease, but could not for the life of him return a sensible answer to even the plainest question. Standing apart from all the rest, was a young country clergyman, who kept turning up the whites of his eyes as if in a constant agony of some kind or another—but really because he was in the presence of a Bishop, although the said Bishop never once cast his reverend eyes that way. Then there was the Dowager Countess of Brazenphace, who had "got off" seven out of nine red-haired daughters, and had brought the two remaining single ones with her just to see if they could not make an impression somewhere or another. There also was the celebrated German philosopher Baron Torkemdef, who had written a work in fourteen quarto volumes to prove that there is no such thing as matter—that we do not really exist—but that we ourselves and every thing else are mere ideas. This learned man was, as might be supposed, a very valuable acquisition to a bridal party. Seated next to Lady Rossville was the Honourable Mrs. Berrymenny, who had seen five husbands consigned to the tomb, and was looking out for a sixth. It was, however, probable that she was doomed to look long enough, inasmuch as she had no fortune, and had already reached the comfortable age of fifty-three. Lastly, there was the elegant and accomplished Miss Blewstocken, who was known to have written a volume of poems which had an excellent circulation (amongst the butter-shops), and who was suspected of having perpetrated a novel.

These are all the stars whom it is worth while to signalise amidst a galaxy of some fifty personages.

The bridegroom had not yet arrived: he was expected to make his appearance at about half-past eight.

When Lord Ravensworth entered the room, every one who had not lately seen him was shocked at the dreadful change which had taken place in him; but of course the guests, one and all, assured him that they had never seen him look so well before.

Adeline sighed deeply—for she could not help thinking that it was a miserable mockery for a gaunt and almost fleshless skeleton thus to deck itself out in an apparel befitting a bridal:—moreover, the idea that if her yet unborn offspring should prove a girl, the broad lands and noble Hall of Ravensworth would pass away to another, was ever uppermost in her mind.

To conceal her emotions, she hastened to the side of poor Maria Villiers, to whom she said, "It is very strange that the lady's-maid whom you have hired did not come last evening, as promised."

"It is, indeed, very annoying," observed Maria, whose sorrows were, however, too deep to permit her mind to be even ruffled by that trifling source of vexation.

"But never mind," continued Lady Ravensworth, in a whisper; "you shall take my maid Flora with you, and I will either find another at my leisure, or keep the one whom you have engaged, should she make her appearance after you have left."

"This is very kind of you, Adeline," said Maria, mechanically.

"I am afraid you did not manage well in your first essay in choosing dependants, dear Maria," observed Lady Ravensworth. "You were attracted by the advertisement in the Morning Herald; whereas I never should think of taking a lady's-maid who advertises. Then, as you yourself told me, you went to some out-of-the-way place in the City for the young woman's character."

"Oh! I was perfectly satisfied, Adeline," interrupted Maria, to whom this conversation appeared trivial in the extreme on an occasion so fraught with solemnity to herself.

Lady Ravensworth was about to make some reply, when Lord Rossville, who had been standing at the window for the last few moments, exclaimed, "Here's the bridegroom!"

A cold shudder passed over Maria's frame; and it seemed as if her heart had been suddenly swathed in ice.

She alone retained her place: all the other persons present hurried to the window.

And, sure enough, the bridegroom was in view; and a very funny view it was. Perched upon the back of an enormous bright bay horse, the "happy man" never appeared more miserable in his life. He was tugging at the reins with all his might; but the huge animal galloped furiously along in spite of the efforts made to restrain its speed. The bridegroom's feet were thrust as far as they could go into the stirrups: his hat was rammed tight down over his eyes, to prevent it from blowing away;—his form was bent, or rather crouched up, like that of a monkey;—with his right hand he held fast by the horse's mane;—and with his left he continued tugging at the bit and bradoon. The poor animal itself seemed to wonder, like John Gilpin's steed, what sort of a thing it had got upon its back; for its eyes glared, and its nostrils dilated with affright: while its whole body was covered with a greasy perspiration, and white flakes of foam kept falling from its mouth.

In this manner did the bridegroom rush madly, but with involuntary speed, through the spacious Park towards the Hall. At a short distance behind him rode another cavalier, who managed his horse well, and amused himself by maintaining a succession of shouts and hurrahs after the bridegroom, whereby that unfortunate individual's steed was only affrighted all the more. A third person on horseback appeared at a greater distance still; but this was the bridegroom's servant.

"A most un-christianlike and decidedly unhallowed manner for a bridegroom to comport himself," said the Bishop of the Carribbee Islands, as he contemplated this ludicrous display of horsemanship.

"It certainly is strange," observed Lord Rossville. "But perhaps our young friend is anxious to display his skill——"

"No such a ting, milor—no such a ting!" ejaculated Count Swindeliski, caressing his whiskers. "Dat young gentelman's von great homebogue; and if me was dere, me hit him some kick for his pain."

"Ah! he doesn't ride so well as my poor dear fourth," said Mrs. Berrymenny, with a profound sigh, as she thus alluded to one of her husbands.

"It's all vanity and vexation of spirit," observed the young clergyman, glancing deferentially towards the Bishop.

"No, sir—it is not, sir," said the Bishop sternly: "it is sheer bad riding, sir—and nothing else."

The Right Reverend Father in God had been a fox-hunter in his time.

"For my part," cried a Member of Parliament, "I move that we repair to the young gentleman's assistance."

"And I beg to second the motion," said another Member.

"Ah! by heaven, that's serious!" ejaculated Lord Rossville, turning abruptly away from the window.

And so it seemed; for the horse suddenly stopped near the entrance of the mansion, and pitched the bridegroom clean over its head into a clump of evergreens.

All the ladies who beheld this catastrophe screamed aloud.

But at the very next moment he rose from his ignominious position, and with difficulty removing his battered hat from over his eyes, saluted the company assembled at the windows of the drawing-room.

"It's noting at all," said Baron Torkemdef: "he only tink himself hurted—you only tink dat a horse what did seem to run way wid him:—it all de idea—all de fancy."

Then, while Lord Rossville and others hastened to meet the bridegroom and assure themselves that he was not hurt, Baron Torkemdef caught hold of the great county landowner by the button-hole, and began to expatiate upon the folly of yielding to sensations of pain and other afflictions, as not only those sensations but also we ourselves were only so many unsubstantial ideas.

Meantime, poor Maria Villiers had remained in a sort of listless reverie in her seat; and it was only when Lady Ravensworth assured her that the bridegroom had sustained no injury, that she learnt he had been in any peril at all.

In ten minutes the door opened, and Lord Rossville returned to the room, ushering in the bridegroom, who had been cleansed in the meantime from the effects of his fall, and who endeavoured to put a smiling face upon the matter, although still terribly disconcerted.

Then Lady Adeline advanced to meet him, and said in a most gracious tone, "We have been painfully excited on your account, Sir Cherry Bounce."

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CCV. THE BREAKFAST

Yes—it was to this individual that Maria Villiers was to be sacrificed:—it was to him that the cold and selfish policy of Lord Rossville was about to consign a beautiful, an artless, and an amiable girl.

Sir Cherry's mother had paid the debt of nature about a year previously; and the young baronet found himself the possessor of an immense fortune.

Lord Rossville only looked upon his orphan niece Maria as an encumbrance while she remained single, or as a means of increasing the wealth (and in his idea, the strength) of the family when she married. Sir Cherry had met her in the brilliant sphere of the West-End society: he had courted her; and, the moment Lord and Lady Rossville observed his attentions, they commanded her to receive them with favour. She—poor timid, friendless girl!—was half persuaded into the idea that the match was really to her advantage, and half bullied (for we can actually use no other term) into an acquiescence in the views of her guardian.

Thus she had not dared to utter a negative when the effeminate and insipid baronet had solicited her hand; and, her silence being taken for a ready consent, the preliminaries were hurried on, without any further reference to the inclinations or wishes of the victim!

"We have been painfully excited on your account, Sir Cherry Bounce," said Lady Ravensworth, advancing to receive the bridegroom.

"The twuth wath that my fwiend Thmilackth inthithted on my widing the new horth I bought yethterday," exclaimed the baronet; "and ath he don't theem to be veway well bwoken in, the wethult wath that I nearly got a bwoken head."

"I never saw such a Guy on a horse before—strike me!" ejaculated Major Smilax Dapper, who had followed his friend into the room. "He would keep in advance of me the whole way; and although I called after him to rein in—strike him!—he would not listen to me."

"It wath that thouting and hoowaying that fwightened my horth," observed Sir Cherry, casting a sulky look towards Smilax.

"At all events you are not hurt—and that is the essential," said Lord Rossville.

"Hurted! no—of course de good gentleman's not hurted," exclaimed Baron Torkemdef: "it noting at all but de idea—de fancy. You know vare well, sare, dat you not really exist—dat you only tink you do exist——"

Sir Cherry Bounce, to whom these words were addressed, cast so ludicrous a look of surprise mingled with dismay upon the philosopher, that Major Smilax Dapper burst into an immoderate fit of laughter; so that Baron Torkemdef was for a moment disconcerted.

Lord Rossville seized this opportunity to lead Sir Cherry Bounce towards Miss Villiers, who received her intended husband with a manner which to the superficial observer might appear excessive bashfulness, but which to the penetrating eye was the expression of blank—dumb—soul-crushing despair.

"I was just as timid with my first as Maria is," whispered Mrs. Berrymenny to the Countess of Brazenphace: "with my second I was a leetle more gay;—with my third——"

"Dear Mrs. Berrymenny," interrupted the Countess, impatiently; "pray do not talk of your seconds and thirds, when here are my two youngest daughters who haven't even yet got their firsts."

Two footmen, in gorgeous liveries, now entered the room and threw open a pair of folding-doors, thus revealing an inner apartment where the nuptial ceremony was to take place by special license.

Then Sir Cherry Bounce took Maria's hand, and led her slowly into the next room, the Honourable Misses Wigmore attending her in the capacity of bridemaids.

The remainder of the company followed in procession.

And now the Bishop takes his place near the table, and opens the book.

The ceremony begins.

Pale as marble, and almost insensible to what is passing around her, Maria Villiers hears a sort of droning mumbling, but cannot distinguish the words.

And yet the Bishop read the prayers in a clear, distinct, and impressive manner.

One of the bridemaids whispered in Maria's ear; and the young victim mechanically repeated the answer thus prompted.

But she was scarcely aware of the tenour of what she had said: every moment the scene became less comprehensible to her mind—and she was on the point of uttering a wild cry, so alarming was the confusion of her thoughts, when there was a sudden movement amongst the assembly—warm lips touched her forehead for a moment and were instantly withdrawn—and then her ears rang with the congratulations of her friends!

The chaos of her ideas was immediately dispelled; and the appalling truth broke suddenly on her.

The ceremony was over—and she was a wife:—upon her marble brow the kiss of a husband had been imprinted.

By one of those strange efforts of which the soul is sometimes capable, when "the worst" has arrived and "the bitterness of death" has passed, Maria recovered her presence of mind, and even smiled faintly in acknowledgment of the congratulations which she received.

"Dat young lady seem vare happy now," whispered the German philosopher to Mrs. Berrymenny; "but it all noting more dan de idea. We all idea—dat reverend Bischop—dis room—dat book what he was read in—every ting!"

"Do you mean to persuade me, sir," asked Mrs. Berrymenny, with an indignant glance at Baron Torkemdef, "that it is all mere fancy on my part that I have had five husbands? If so, sir, all I can say is that I should like to have a sixth opportunity of putting your theory to the test."

And with these words the widow of five experiments of the marriage-state joined the procession which was now on its way to the breakfast-room.

The table in this apartment was spread with all the delicacies which were calculated to tempt the appetite even of satiety.

Sir Cherry thought it necessary to whisper some soft nonsense in the ears of his bride, as he conducted her to a seat; and Maria turned upon him a vacant glance of surprise;—then, suddenly recollecting the relation in which she stood towards him, her head drooped upon her bosom, and she made no reply.

"Cherry," whispered Major Dapper, "you are not half lively enough—blow you! You look like a fool—but I suppose you can't help it."

"Hold your tongue, Thmilackth," returned Sir Cherry, colouring to such an extent that the deep red was visible beneath his light hair. "You than't tweat me like a child any more."

And now began the bustle of the breakfast-table, and the excitement of the scene appeared to produce the most beneficial effects upon Lord Ravensworth, who did the honours of the table, conjointly with Adeline, in a manner indicative of more gaiety and spirit than he had exhibited for some time.

"Lord Ravensworth is certainly improving," said the Countess of Brazenphace apart to Mrs. Berrymenny.

"My second used to deceive me in the same manner," was the reply, also delivered in an under tone. "He was always dying—and always getting better, for at least three years before he went off altogether. My fourth——"

"Oh! you have told me all about him before," hastily interrupted the Countess, who was alarmed lest the widow should inflict upon her a narrative of oft-experienced tediousness.

"Dat vare excellent bird—how you call him? Peasant—ah!" observed Baron Torkemdef to the young clergyman, who, like a child, saw, heard, but said nothing. "But after all it no use for to praise one ting or to blame anoder—'cause dem each de idea—de fancy. Dere really no table—no peasant—no wine—no peoples: it all de imagination."

And while the philosopher went on expatiating in this manner, the viands disappeared from his plate and the wine from the decanter near him with a marvellous rapidity; so that the young clergyman could not help muttering to himself, "I wonder whether the Baron's appetite is an idea also."

"Seraphina," whispered the Countess of Brazenphace to one of her daughters, "if you look so much at Count Swindeliski, I shall be very angry. He has got no money, and is not a match for you. There is the Member for Buyemup-cum-Rhino sitting on your right, and he is a wealthy bachelor."

"But, dear mamma," returned Miss Seraphina, also in a whisper, "he is at least sixty."

"So much the better," was the prompt reply: "he is the easier to catch. Now mind your p's and q's, Miss."

This maternal advice was duly attended to; and, by the time he had tossed off his third glass of champagne, the Member for Buyemup-cum-Rhino had grown very tenderly maudlin towards the red-haired young husband-hunter.

"Miss Blewstocken, dear," cried the elder Miss Wigmore, "have you composed nothing appropriate for the present occasion?—no sweet little poem in your own fascinating style?"

"Oh! dear Miss Wigmore, how unkind!" said the literary young lady, in an affected and languishing manner. "I could not have believed it of you—to appeal to me before so many! If I have told you in confidence, or if it be indeed generally known that 'The Poetic Nosegay' was written by me—and if it had a very large circulation—I do not think it is fair to expect——"

"Ah! Miss Blewstocken," exclaimed Miss Wigmore, "we are all aware that your pen is seldom idle."

"It is really quite provoking to find oneself known to Fame," said the literary lady, with increasing affectation of manner, and in a drawling, insipid tone. "I wish I had never written at all:—not that I have ever been induced to acknowledge the authorship of that novel which was so successful last year—'The Royal Fiddlestick,' I mean. No:—but the time may come——"

And here the literary lady shook her head in so mysterious a way that if she intended to be incomprehensible, she certainly was most successful in the endeavour.

"Who is that lady?" inquired the Bishop of Lord Rossville.

"Miss Blewstocken, the celebrated authoress," was the reply.

"Oh!" said the Bishop, in a dry laconic way, which proved that, however celebrated Miss Blewstocken might be, the trumpet of her renown had never sounded in his ears before.

"Talk of de poetry and de novel," exclaimed the German Baron, "what are all dem to de researches of de philosoph? Was your lordship ever read my von grand vork on de 'Ideality of de Universe?'"

"I cannot say that I have ever read it, sir," answered the Bishop, with a frown. "I have heard of it, sir—and I consider its doctrines to be opposed to the Bible, sir. I believe it is in fourteen large volumes, sir? Well, sir—then all I have to observe upon it is that so many quartos are themselves too substantial to be a mere idea."

"But dey are von idea!" exclaimed the Baron, angrily. "Dey do not really exist, milor—in spite of what your lordship shall say. Every ting is de idea—we be ourselves all de walking, moving idea: dere no such ting as joy—no such ting as pain—dey mere sensation—"

At this moment the learned philosopher started from his seat with a yell of agony, and began stamping on the floor in a furious manner.

The fact was that while he was gesticulating in order to bestow additional emphasis on the enunciation of his principles, his hand, raised in the air, came in contact with a cup of coffee which a domestic was about to place before the young clergyman; and the scalding fluid was poured forth on the bald head and down the back of the philosopher.

"Pray do not mind it, sir," said the Bishop, drily: "it is merely an idea."

"Yes—it de idea, no doubt!" ejaculated Baron Torkemdef, as he wiped his head with his pocket-handkerchief, while the domestic murmured an apology and slunk away: "but de idea was come in de unpleasant shape—dat noting against my doctrine—tousand devils, how him do burn!"

And, particularly disconcerted, the learned man sank back into his seat, where he consoled himself with a renewed application to the decanter near him.

Meantime Count Swindeliski was rendering himself very amiable to the Honourable Miss Helena Sophia Alexandrina Wigmore, next to whom he sate.

"Poland, then, must be a very beautiful country?" said the young lady, duly impressed by a most graphic description which the Count had just terminated.

"It vare fine—vare fine," returned the fascinating foreigner. "De ancestral castle of the Swindeliskis vare grand—touch de clouds—so long dat when you do stand at de von end you shall not see de oder—so wide dat horses shall always be kept saddled for to cross de court. My father was keep tree tousand dependants: me not choose for to spend de revenue in dat vay—me only may keep von tousand."

"And can you prefer England to your own beautiful country?" inquired Miss Helena Wigmore.

"Me shall not prefare England," answered the Count: "me shall choose wife of de English ladies—dey vare beautiful—vare fine—vare clevare. Den me take my wife to Poland, where she shall be von vare great lady indeed."

And, as he spoke, he threw a tender glance at his fair companion.

But Miss Helena Sophia Alexandrina Wigmore knew full well that every word the Count uttered concerning his fortune and castle was false. She was, however, too polite not to seem to believe him; and she was, moreover, pleased at engrossing the attentions of the handsomest man in the room. She therefore permitted herself to flirt a little with him; especially as her mother was not present to control her actions; but, like all young ladies in fashionable circles, she was too astute and wary to entertain the least idea of a more serious connexion.

The breakfast was now over; a carriage and four drove up to the front of the mansion; and the hour of departure had arrived for the "happy couple."

Maria withdrew for a few moments in company with Lady Ravensworth and the two bridemaids and when she returned she was dressed for travelling.

"Happy fellow!" whispered Major Dapper to his friend; "blow you!"

"Fooleth Thmilackth!" returned Sir Cherry Bounce. "But I am weally veway happy—ekthepth that curthed wide on the fatht twotting horth. Good bye: I thall wite to you in a few dayth."

The farewells were all said; and Maria resigned her hand to him who was about to bear her away from the Hall.

She wept not—she sighed not: but despair was written on her marble visage—though none present could read that sombre and melancholy language.

"I have directed Flora to accompany you," whispered Lady Ravensworth; "and you can keep her altogether, if you choose. Should the young woman whom you have hired, make her appearance, I will retain her, and give her a trial. But what is her name? I had forgotten to ask you."

Maria gave an answer; but there was such a bustle in the room at the moment and such a confused din of many voices, that the name escaped Adeline's ears.

Sir Cherry at the same instant led Maria towards the stairs; and in a few minutes the carriage, containing the newly-married pair, was rolling away from Ravensworth Hall on its journey to Cherry Park in Essex.

"I wish I was bound on a similar trip with a sixth," thought Mrs. Berrymenny, as she watched from the window the departure of the carriage.

"I wish I could get off my eighth and ninth as easily as the Rossvilles have done with Maria," thought the Countess of Brazenphace. "But I am afraid that the member for Buyemup-cum-Rhino will not bite."

"I wish I had not eulogised the single state in my poems," thought Miss Blewstocken, with a profound sigh.

"Me wish me shall soon find de agreeable lady dat will make me de von happiest of men," said Count Swindeliski to Miss Helena Sophia Alexandrina Wigmore.

"After all," said Baron Torkemdef, who had recovered his equanimity, by dint of frequent libations, "de marriage only de idea—de fancy, like any oder ting. Dat handsome chariot do not actually exist—it only de idea; and dat loving pair what shall sit in it are only idea as well. All is idea—me an idea—and dat Lord Bischop wid de lawn-sleeves only an idea."

"Where is Lord Ravensworth?" inquired Adeline of a domestic.

"His lordship felt suddenly unwell a few moments ago, my lady, and has retired to his cabinet."

"Ah! a reaction—a recurrence to the meerschaum!" murmured Lady Ravensworth, a cloud passing over her brow.

"Please your ladyship," said the servant, "a young woman has just arrived from London. She says that she was hired by Miss Villiers—I beg pardon Lady Bounce—and that an accident to the vehicle in which she came to the Hall has delayed her."

"Oh! she is to remain with me," returned Adeline. "Tell her that I will take her into my service on the same terms that were arranged between her and Lady Bounce. She is to replace Flora."

"Very good, my lady;"—and the servant was about to retire.

"One moment, William," said Adeline, beckoning him back. "Did this young woman mention her name—for as yet I am really ignorant of it?"

"Yes, my lady," answered the domestic: "her name is Lydia Hutchinson."

And the servant withdrew.

"Lydia Hutchinson!" murmured Lady Ravensworth, turning deadly pale, and tottering to a seat.

"Are you unwell, Adeline?" inquired Lady Rossville, approaching her daughter.

"No—a sudden indisposition—it is nothing!" replied Adeline; and she hastened from the room.

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

Chapter CCVI

THE PATRICIAN LADY AND THE UNFORTUNATE WOMAN.

Lady Ravensworth retired to her boudoir; and, throwing herself upon a voluptuous ottoman, she burst into a flood of tears.

The wife of one of England's wealthiest nobles,—mistress of a splendid mansion and numerous household,—young, beautiful, and admired,—with a coronet upon her brow, and all the luxuries and pleasures of the world at her command,—this haughty and high-born lady now trembled at the idea—now shrunk from the thought—of meeting an obscure young woman who was forced to accept a menial place in order to earn her daily bread!

It was a strange coincidence that thus brought Lydia Hutchinson beneath the roof of Lady Ravensworth, whom the young woman was very far from suspecting to be that same Adeline Enfield who had been her companion—nay, her tutoress—in the initiative of wantonness and dishonour.

Mrs. Chichester had manifested a sisterly kindness towards the unfortunate Lydia; and, instead of shrinking in disgust, as so many others would have done, from the young woman who had been urged by stern necessity to ply a loathsome trade, she had endeavoured, by the most delicate attentions, to reclaim the mind of society's outcast from the dark ocean of despair in which it was so profoundly plunged.

The reader has doubtless seen that Lydia Hutchinson had never courted vice for vice's sake. She was not naturally of a depraved nor lascivious disposition. Circumstances—amongst which must be reckoned the treachery exercised by Lord Dunstable to accomplish her seduction, and the accident which threw the poor creature upon the tender mercies of Mrs. Harpy,—had conspired,—fearfully conspired, to brand her with infamy, and to drag her through the filth and mire of the various phases which characterise the downward path of a career of prostitution. Necessity had made her what she was!

Mrs. Chichester comprehended all this; and she was not one of those who believe that there is no sincere penitence—no reformation for the lost one. She longed to afford Lydia an opportunity of entering on a course of virtue and propriety. She would have willingly afforded the poor creature a permanent asylum, as a matter of charity, and even to insure a companion to cheer her own species of semi-widowed loneliness; but she was well aware that eleemosynary aid of such a kind, by retaining its object in a condition of idleness and of dependence, was of a most demoralising nature. She wished to give Lydia an opportunity of retrieving her character in her own estimation, and of regaining a proper confidence in herself; and she resolved that no excess of indulgence, nor extreme of charity, on her part, should permit the young woman to live in an indolence that might unfit her for any occupation in case of ultimate necessity, and that would thus fling her back upon the last and only resource—a recurrence to the walks of ignominy and crime. To reclaim and reinstate, as it were the unfortunate Lydia Hutchinson, was Viola Chichester's aim; and the object of this humane solicitude was deeply anxious to second, by her own conduct, the intentions of her generous benefactress.

As time wore on, Lydia improved greatly in mental condition and personal appearance: her thoughts became settled and composed, and her form resumed much of the freshness which had characterised her youth. She speedily began to express a desire to exert herself in some honest employment to gain her livelihood;—she also felt that indolence and dependence, even in the presence of the best moral examples, produce a vitiated frame of mind;—and she revolted from the mere idea of a relapse into the horrible path from which a friendly hand had redeemed her, as the most appalling catastrophe that her imagination could conceive.

Mrs. Chichester felt so persuaded of Lydia's firmness of purpose in pursuing a career of rectitude, that she resolved to take a step which only the extreme urgency of the case and a settled conviction of the young woman's inclination to do well, could justify. This was to obtain her a situation in some family. Lydia was overjoyed at the proposal. An advertisement was accordingly inserted in a newspaper; and a few days brought many written answers. Miss Villiers—now Lady Bounce—called personally, and was so pleased with Lydia's manner that she put no special questions to Mrs. Chichester.

Viola, however, addressed Miss Villiers thus:—"The young woman who now stands before you has been unfortunate—very unfortunate; and hers has been the fate of the unfortunate. She is most anxious to eat the bread of industry and honesty. I am persuaded that a kind hand stretched out to aid her in this desire, will raise her to happiness, and ensure her lasting gratitude."

Miss Villiers was a young lady of an excellent heart: she did not completely understand all that Mrs. Chichester meant; but she comprehended enough to render her willing to assist a fellow-creature who sought to earn her livelihood honourably, and who seemed to possess the necessary qualifications for the employment desired. Thus the bargain was hastily concluded; and when Miss Villiers desired Lydia to join her on a certain day at Ravensworth Hall, the young woman entertained not the least idea that her school friend Adeline Enfield was Lady Ravensworth, the mistress of that lordly habitation.

We will now return to Adeline, whom we left weeping in her boudoir.

The presence of Lydia in that house was indeed enough to alarm and embarrass her. Not that she precisely feared exposure at Lydia's hands in respect to the past—especially as it would be so easy to deny any derogatory statement of the kind. But Adeline felt that she should now possess a dependant before whom her dignity and self-confidence would ever be overwhelmed by the weight of that dread secret of which Lydia's bosom was the depository. Such a prospect was most galling—most humiliating—most degrading to the mind of the haughty peeress.

"But of what avail are tears?" said Adeline, suddenly. "The danger is here—the evil is before me. We must meet:—it were better that I should see her at once! Doubtless she is unaware in whose abode she is now a menial!"

Adeline wiped her eyes, rang the bell, and reseating herself, assumed as composed a manner as possible under the circumstances.

In a few moments she heard footsteps approaching.

"This is my lady's apartment," said the housekeeper in the passage.

"Thank you," replied another voice.

Oh! how Adeline's heart beat,—the well-remembered tones of Lydia Hutchinson had just met her ears.

Then she heard the retreating sounds of the housekeeper's footsteps; and there was a gentle knock at the door of their boudoir.

"Come in," said Adeline, in a half-stifling voice.

The door opened, and Lydia Hutchinson entered the room.

Lady Ravensworth's countenance was averted towards the fire; and it was not until she heard the door close that she turned towards Lydia, who was in a state of trembling anxiety, mingled with curiosity, as to what might be the disposition of her mistress.

But no pen can describe the astonishment of the young woman, when by that pale but beautiful countenance, which was now suddenly turned towards her, she recognised her whom she had so much reason never to forget.

Staggering towards the mantel for support, and with her eyes fixed almost wildly upon her mistress, she exclaimed, "Miss Enfield! Is it indeed you?"

"I am Lady Ravensworth," was the somewhat haughty answer.

"Oh! now I understand it all!" cried Lydia, an expression of sincere gratitude animating her countenance, while she clasped her hands fervently together: "you have taken compassion on me at length,—you discovered where I was residing,—you sent some friend to engage me as if for herself,—and you were determined to surprise me by this proof of your goodness—this token of your kind remembrance of me!"

"No," returned Adeline: "accident alone has brought you into my service: and you must well understand that I am not over well pleased with the coincidence. In a word, name the sum that will satisfy you for the loss of a good place—and take your departure. You can leave to me the invention of some proper excuse——"

"Is it possible?" ejaculated Lydia; "this cold—heartless—ungrateful reception——"

"Do you recollect to whom you are speaking?" demanded Adeline, the colour mounting to her cheeks.

"Oh! yes,—I know that full well—too well," said Lydia, again clasping her hands, and casting her eyes upwards, as if in appeal to heaven against the ingratitude of the world. "I stand in the presence of one to save whose good fame I sacrificed my own—to shield whom from the finger of scorn and reproach, I allowed myself to be made a victim! Yes, proud lady of Ravensworth—so many years have not elapsed since, in my cold and cheerless garret, in the depth of a winter night, you gave birth——"

"Silence, Lydia!" ejaculated Adeline, her lips quivering, and the colour coming and going on her cheeks with rapid alternations. "Let us not refer to the past. The present——"

"No," interrupted Lydia, in a solemn tone: "you can not—you shall not deter me from talking of the past. For you, lady, are so highly exalted above myself, that it is almost impossible for you to shape the least—the faintest—the most remote idea of the depth of misery into which I have been plunged. And yet I pant—I long—I feel a burning desire to make you comprehend all I have suffered;—because to my acquaintance with you—to my fatal connexion with you at the seminary—may be traced all the sorrows—the profound, ineffable woes—the degradations—the terrible afflictions that have since marked my career!"

"I will not hear more;—I cannot permit you thus to insult—to upbraid me," faltered Lady Ravensworth, her bosom agitated with the most cruel emotions.

"Oh! I have longed for this opportunity to meet you face to face, and tell you all I have suffered, and all I now feel!" exclaimed Lydia; "and it is not likely that I will abandon so favourable an occasion. No—you have triumphed over me long enough: you have used me as a tool when it suited your convenience—and you spurned me when I had ceased to be useful. Though maintaining your own outward respectability, honour, and good name upon the wreck of mine, you dare to treat me with the blackest ingratitude! Lady Ravensworth, I said that all I have endured was traceable to you! When I first met you at the Kensington seminary, I was pure, artless, innocent:—you were already initiated in the secrets of intrigue—you were even then, at that tender age, a wanton in your heart."

"Lydia—Miss Hutchinson! Oh! my God!" exclaimed Adeline, covering her face with her hands.

"Yes—you were already trembling on the verge of dishonour—you were courting seduction and all its consequences!" continued the unfortunate woman, upbraiding that proud peeress with a remorselessness, a bitterness, and a feeling of delighted vengeance that made her language the more terrible and its effect more overwhelming. "I even remember still—oh! how well I remember—that you were the first who opened my eyes to the existence of female frailty. Yes—I, who went to that school as a teacher, was taught by a pupil! And merciful heavens! what did you teach me? You led me on step by step in the path of duplicity and dishonour: you made me the companion of your own amours; and we became victims to our seducers on the same day!"

"Oh! spare me—spare me!" moaned Adeline. "My God! if we were overheard! I should be lost—ruined—undone!"

"Rest tranquil on that head:—it does not suit my present purposes to betray you—and I will explain my reason shortly. In the meantime," continued Lydia Hutchinson, "I must recall to your recollection all those circumstances which led me to sacrifice myself to save you."

"No—no: I remember everything. Say no more, Lydia," cried Lady Ravensworth. "Tell me what you require—what I can do for you! Will you have money? or——"

"Peace!—silence!" said Lydia, eyeing the patrician lady with a glance of ineffable scorn. "Oh!" she added, almost wildly, "I have sold myself for gold;—but never—never may that occur again; either bodily or morally! Your ladyship declares you remember all that has ever passed between us? Then does your ingratitude become infinitely the more vile and contemptible. For when you lay writhing in the agonies of maternity, I was there,—there in that cold and cheerless garret,—to minister unto you! And when the lifeless form of your babe was discovered concealed amongst my clothes—in my room—and in my box,—I did not turn to the school-mistress and say, 'It is not mine: it is Miss Adeline Enfield's!'—When, too, I saw that you were so weak, so feeble, and so suffering that the cold night air would kill you, I took your child, and, like a thief, I stole away from the house to sink the corpse in a distant pool. For you had said to me, 'Keep my secret, dearest Lydia: the honour of a noble family depends upon your prudence!'—My prudence! Oh! no:—the honour of your family depended on the sacrifice of mine! And I did sacrifice my family to save you;—for to all that I did for you may be traced the broken heart of my poor father and the assassination of my brother by the hand of the duellist!"

"Oh! spare me—spare me!" again exclaimed Lady Ravensworth. "I have been very ungrateful—very unkind; but now, Lydia, I will endeavour to compensate you for all that has passed."

"One being alone can so compensate me, lady," said Miss Hutchinson in a solemn tone; "and that being is God! No human power can give me back my poor father or my much-loved brother: no human agency can obliterate from my mind those infamies and degradations to which I have been subject. What amount of gold can reward me for days of starvation and nights of painful wanderings amidst the creatures of crime, without a place to repose my aching, shivering limbs? And sometimes, amidst the overwhelming crowd of sorrows that so often drove me to the river's bank, or made me pause on the threshold of the chemist's-shop where poison was to be procured,—I saw, from time to time, your name mentioned in the newspapers. Oh! what memories did those occasions recall! On the very day that you were presented at Court, I had not a crust to eat! And twice on that day did I seek the river's brink, whence I turned away again—afraid of changing even the horrible certainties of this life's sufferings for the more appalling uncertainties of another world."

"Lydia—Lydia, you are killing me!" exclaimed Lady Ravensworth. "Pity me—if not for myself, for the sake of the innocent child which I bear in my bosom. Tell me what I can do for you—what you require——"

"My views are soon explained," interrupted Lydia. "I demand permission to remain in the service of your ladyship."

"Oh! no—no: impossible!" said Adeline, in an imploring tone.

"It must be as I say," observed Lydia, coolly.

"Insolent menial!" ejaculated Lady Ravensworth, losing all command over herself. "Leave me—quit this house—go——"

"Do you dare me?" said Miss Hutchinson. "I assured your ladyship ere now that it did not suit my present plans to expose you; because I seek to remain in your service. But, if you essay again to triumph over me—to spurn me from your presence—I will, remorselessly and fearlessly, proclaim the past."

"And who will believe you?" cried Adeline, trembling with mingled alarm and rage: "who will believe you? The whole world will denounce you as an impostress. Nay—more: I will punish you—yes, I will punish you for your insolence! I will declare that you have attempted to extort money from me by means of the most diabolical threats——"

"Think not that I am to be intimidated by your ladyship's miserable subterfuges," interrupted Lydia, who grew if possible more cold and contemptuous in her manner in proportion as the proud patrician became excited and indignant. "Are there no witnesses to speak to collateral faces? Could Cholmondeley and Dunstable prove nothing against you?"

"They would not raise their voices against a noble lady's fame," said Adeline, impatiently.

"They would speak the truth when placed on their oaths in a court of justice," exclaimed Lydia, confidently; "for it is to a court of justice that your ladyship threatens to drag me. And now, proud peeress, I dare you to the public investigation! Throw open the door—summon your domestics—send me to a gaol!—but the day of fair and searching scrutiny must come—and I should await in confidence the reply that a British judge and a British jury would give to the vile calumny of even a lady so highly exalted as yourself!"

"Enough!" cried Adeline, now almost purple with rage, and every vein on her forehead swollen almost to bursting. "I accept your challenge—for I well know that I can rely upon the honour of Lord Dunstable and Colonel Cholmondeley. Yes—yes: they would sooner perjure themselves than attaint the honour of a peeress!"

"There is one other consideration, then," said Lydia, still completely unruffled: "and perhaps the ingenuity of your ladyship will devise a means of frustrating that test also."

"To what do you allude?" demanded Adeline.

"I mean that when you summon your domestics to drag me to a gaol on a charge of extortion," replied Lydia, contemptuously, "that moment do I proclaim the history of the past! Then will medical experience speedily prove whether Lady Ravensworth now bears her first child in her bosom!"

Adeline uttered a faint shriek, and fell back upon the sofa, overwhelmed by this dread menace.

That shriek was accompanied by a low moan that seemed to come from the passage outside.

Lydia hastened towards the door; but ere she had half crossed the room, it was thrown violently open, and Lord Ravensworth entered the boudoir.

"My husband!" screamed Adeline, in a frantic tone: then, flinging herself on her knees before him, she cried, "Mercy! mercy!"

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Chapter CCVII

THE HUSBAND, THE WIFE, AND THE UNFORTUNATE WOMAN.

"Mercy! mercy!" were the words that burst from the lips of the affrighted lady, ere she paused to reflect whether the preceding conversation had been overheard or not.

"Rise," said Lord Ravensworth, his quivering lip, flashing eye, hectic cheek, heaving chest, and clenched hand denoting a more powerful excitement than he had experienced for a long, long time. "Rise, madam: this is a subject which cannot be disposed of in passionate ejaculations;—it requires a calmer deliberation—for the honour of two noble families is now at stake!"

"Then you know all!" cried Adeline, in an agonising tone, as she embraced her husband's knees.

"Yes—I overheard enough to enable me to comprehend the whole truth," returned the nobleman, who for the time being seemed to have altogether thrown off the apathetic lethargy which had characterised him lately with such few intermissions.

Then, as he was yet speaking, he forcibly raised his wife from her suppliant position, and placed her upon the ottoman.

Taking a chair near her, he pointed to another, and, glancing towards Lydia, said in a tone rather mournful than angry, "Young woman, be seated."

Lydia obeyed mechanically; for she herself was alarmed at the serious turn which the affair had taken.

"Adeline," said the nobleman, after a short pause, during which he evidently endeavoured to compose his feelings as much as possible, "before we enter upon this sad topic, I must in justice to myself observe that I did not seek your chamber to play the eaves-dropper. I felt unwell in the drawing-room ere now, and I retired to my own cabinet to solace myself in the usual manner with the meerschaum. But it struck me that I had been better during all the early part of the morning than for some weeks past; and, after a long struggle with myself, I resolved to renounce the pipe. On my return to the drawing-room, I heard that you were suddenly indisposed; and I came hither to inquire after you. But at the moment I reached your door, I overheard words which struck me as with a thunderbolt. Then I listened—and overheard much—too much!"

"And now you hate—you despise me!" cried Adeline, wildly: "you will thrust me forth from your dwelling—you will cover me with shame! No—no," she added hysterically, "death—death before such a fate!"

"Calm yourself, Adeline," said Lord Ravensworth, who evidently suppressed his own feelings with great difficulty: "I before observed that there is the honour of two families to preserve—that of Rossville and of Ravensworth. Give me your Bible."

"My Bible!" exclaimed Adeline, in astonishment mingled with alarm.

"Yes—your Bible. Where is it?"

"There—there!" said Adeline in a faint tone—for she was at a loss to divine the meaning or intention of her husband; and that mysterious uncertainty filled her with vague fears.

Lydia rose, and taking the Bible from a small book-case to which Lady Ravensworth pointed, handed it to the nobleman.

"Will you swear, Adeline," he said, in a solemn and impressive tone,—"will you swear upon this volume which contains the Word of God, that the child you now bear in your bosom is mine, and that since your marriage you have never forgotten the fidelity due to a husband? Will you swear this, Adeline?"

"I will—I will!" she exclaimed, in almost a joyful tone, as if she were satisfied that her conjugal faith should be put to such a test.

"Swear, then," said Lord Ravensworth; "and invoke God to cast you dead—dead this minute at my feet—if you swear falsely."

"I do—I do!" cried Lady Ravensworth: then, taking the holy volume in her hand, she said in a calmer and more measured tone, "I swear, as I hope for future salvation, that I have never been unfaithful, even in thought, to my marriage vow, and that the child I bear in my bosom is my husband's. This I swear by every thing sacred and holy; and if I have sworn falsely, may the great God cast me dead at your feet."

She then kissed the book.

There was a solemn pause:—Lady Ravensworth was now perhaps the most composed of the three, for she saw that her husband was satisfied in all that concerned his own honour since the day he had led her to the altar.

As for Lydia—she was overawed and even alarmed at that imposing ceremony of a husband administering an oath to his wife; and Lord Ravensworth remained for some moments absorbed in deep thought.

"Yes," he suddenly exclaimed, as if continuing aloud the thread of his silent thoughts,—"the honour of two families must be preserved! And, after all,—perhaps I am rightly served! A man of my years should have sought a partner of a fitting age; but it is the fault—the error—the curse of elderly men to believe that their rank and wealth warrant them in seeking some young girl who may thus become as it were a victim. Then mothers take advantage of that longing to obtain a wife of comparatively tender years; and those worldly-minded parents——"

"My lord—my lord, spare my feelings!" ejaculated Adeline, now painfully excited. "My mother knew not of her daughter's frailty——"

"Well—enough on that head!" said Lord Ravensworth, somewhat impatiently. "The past cannot be recalled: let us secure the honour of the future. You have erred in your girlhood, Adeline! and there," he added, indicating Lydia, "is one who knows that sad secret. You have been ungrateful to her—by her accusations and your acknowledgment; and she holds you in her power. Not you alone:—but she holds your family and mine—for an exposure would create a scandal that must redound upon us all!"

"I have no wish to avail myself of the possession of that secret for such an object," said Lydia. "I have two motives for desiring to remain at least a year in her ladyship's service."

"Never!" cried Adeline, emphatically. "It is you who have made all this mischief!"

"Silence, Adeline," said Lord Ravensworth, sternly; then, turning towards Lydia, he added, "Young woman, proceed—and speak frankly."

"I stated that I had two objects to serve in being anxious to remain in her ladyship's service for one year," continued Lydia. "In the first place, I have been so unfortunate—so very, very miserable, that I wish to earn my livelihood by servitude; and it is my hope to remain here until her ladyship can conscientiously give me such a character as will ensure me a good situation elsewhere."

"That is naturally understood," observed Lord Ravensworth. "What is your second motive?"

"My second motive!" repeated Lydia, with the least accent of bitterness: "oh! that I will explain to her ladyship in private—and she will be satisfied!"

"Now listen to me," said the nobleman. "Lady Ravensworth dislikes the idea that you should remain here. I will give you the means of settling yourself comfortably for life, if you will leave forthwith, and promise solemnly to preserve that fatal secret which you possess."

"My lord," answered Lydia, respectfully but firmly, "I return you my most sincere thanks for that bounteous offer which I am compelled to decline. Were I to accept your lordship's conditions, my aims would not be answered. In respect to my first object, I have determined to earn a character that may to some extent retrieve the past;—for, as your lordship must have gathered from the conversation which you overheard, I have been unfortunate—very unfortunate!"

"Merciful heavens!" exclaimed Adeline; "how can I retain you in my service? You have belonged to a class—oh! no—it is impossible—impossible!"

"I do not wish to insult your feelings, young woman," said Lord Ravensworth; "especially since you manifest so praiseworthy a desire to retrieve your character. But you must perceive the impossibility, as her ladyship observes, of retaining you in our service. You might be known—recognised——"

"I understand your lordship," interrupted Lydia, bitterly; "I might be recognised as an unhappy creature who had once earned a livelihood by parading the public streets. That is scarcely probable:—I am much changed since then. The kindness of an excellent lady has enabled me to recruit my strength and to recover a healthy appearance. Yes—I must be altered; for your lordship does not perceive in me the poor miserable starving wretch who some few months since accosted her ladyship in Saint James's Street."

"Ah! I recollect," exclaimed the nobleman, as the incident flashed to his mind. "I only observed you for a moment on that occasion; but still—so miserable was your appearance—it made an impression on my mind. Yes—you are indeed changed! Nevertheless, those who saw you in an unhappy career, before you became so reduced as you were on the occasion which you have mentioned, might recognise you. And—pardon my frankness, young woman; but the subject admits not of the measurement of words—what would be thought of me—of my wife—of all the other members of my household——"

"If I were seen in your establishment, your lordship would add," exclaimed Lydia. "I admit the truth of all your lordship states: still my wish to remain a member of that establishment is unchanged. For—as your lordship may have ere now gathered from our conversation—it was her ladyship who first placed me in those paths which led to my ruin; and it must be her ladyship who shall aid me in earning an honourable character once more."

"But this punishment is too severe!" exclaimed Adeline, almost wringing her hands; for she perceived how completely the honour of two families was in Lydia's power.

"Consider, I implore you, the position of my wife," said the nobleman: "in a few weeks she will become a mother!"

"My lord, her ladyship never had any consideration for me, from the first moment that I ceased to be useful to her," returned Lydia, with inexorable firmness; "and I cannot consent to sacrifice what I consider to be my own interests to her ladyship's wishes now."

Then Lydia Hutchinson rose, as if to intimate that her determination was unchangeable; and that obscure girl was enabled to dictate her own terms to the noble peer and the proud peeress.

"It must be so, then—it must be so," said Lord Ravensworth, with a vexation of manner which he could not conceal. "You shall have an apartment in my establishment and handsome wages:—all I exact is that you do not force your attentions on her ladyship save when she demands them."

"If I remain here, it must be in the capacity of her ladyship's principal attendant," returned Lydia: "otherwise I could not fairly earn a good character in the eyes of the other dependants of your lordship."

"Perdition! young woman," exclaimed the nobleman; "you demand too much!"

"More than I will ever concede," added Lady Ravensworth, unable to restrain a glance of malignity and desperate hate towards Lydia Hutchinson.

"Then your lordship will permit me to take my departure," said she, calmly; and she moved towards the door.

"My God! she will reveal every thing!" almost shrieked Lady Ravensworth.

"Yes—every thing," said Lydia, returning the look which Adeline had cast on her a few moments before.

"Stay, young woman—this may not be!" ejaculated Lord Ravensworth. "You exercise your power with a fearful despotism."

"The world has been a fearful despot towards me, my lord," was the firm but calm reply.

"And with your tyranny in this respect you will kill my wife—kill my yet unborn child!" exclaimed the nobleman, rising from his seat and pacing the room in a state of desperate excitement. "But the honour of the Rossvilles and the Ravensworths must be preserved—at any sacrifice—at any risk!—Yes—though you bring misery into this house, here must you remain—since such is your inflexible will. Were an exposure to take place, the consequences—my God! would be awful—crushing! The finger of ridicule and scorn would point at me—the elderly man who espoused the young and beautiful girl, and who was so proud that he had won her for a wife! And then—should the child of which she is so soon to become a mother, prove a son—although the law would recognise him as the heir to my name and fortune, yet the scandalous world would throw doubts, perhaps, on his legitimacy. Ah! the thought is maddening! And my brother—my brother too——"

Lord Ravensworth checked himself in the midst of those musings, into the audible expression of which the agitation of his mind had hurried him:—he checked himself, for the convulsive sobs which came from his wife's lips suddenly reminded him that every word he was uttering pierced like a dagger into her soul.

"Oh! God have mercy upon me!" she exclaimed, in a voice scarcely audible through the convulsions of her grief: "how dearly—dearly am I now paying for the errors of my youth!"

"Does that sight not move you, woman?" muttered the nobleman between his grinding teeth, as he accosted Lydia, and pointed to the lamentable condition of his wife.

"My lord, I lost all by serving the interests of her who is now Lady Ravensworth; and it is time that I should think only of my own."

This reply was given with a frigid—stern—and inexorable calmness, that struck despair to the heart of the unhappy nobleman and his still more wretched wife.

"Then be it all as you say—be it all as you wish, despotic woman!" cried Lord Ravensworth. "Remain here—command us all—drive us to despair—for our honour is unhappily in your remorseless hands."

With these words, the nobleman rushed from the room in a state bordering on distraction.

A few minutes of profound silence elapsed.

Lydia remained standing near the mantel, gazing with joyful triumph on Adeline, whose head was buried in her hands, and whose bosom gave vent to convulsive sobs.

Suddenly Lady Ravensworth looked up, and gazed wildly around her.

"He is gone—and you are still there!" she said, in a low and hoarse voice. "Now we are alone together—and doubtless I am to look upon you as one determined to drive me to despair. What other motive had you for insisting upon remaining here?"

"Lady, I will now explain myself," returned Lydia, speaking slowly and solemnly. "It pierced me to the heart to cause so much grief to that good nobleman, of whom you are so utterly unworthy; but for you I have no kind consideration—no mercy. Adeline, I hate you—I loathe you—I detest you!"

"Merciful heavens!" exclaimed Lady Ravensworth: "and you are to be constantly about my person!"

"Yes: and my second motive for remaining here to enjoy that privilege," continued Lydia, bitterly, "is vengeance!"

"Vengeance!" repeated Adeline, recoiling as it were from the terrible word, and clasping her hands franticly together.

"Vengeance—vengeance!" continued Lydia Hutchinson. "Before the rest of the world I shall appear the humble and respectful dependant—yes, even in the presence of your husband. But when alone with you, I shall prove a very demon, whose weapons are galling reproaches, ignominies, insults, and indignities."

"Oh! this is terrible!" cried Adeline, as if her senses were leaving her. "You cannot be such a fiend."

"I can—I will!" returned Lydia. "Have I not undergone enough to make me so? And all was occasioned by you! When I was your wretched tool, you promised me the affection of a sister; and how did you fulfil your pledge? You came to me at a house where I was a governess, and whence I was anxious to remove from the importunities of the master; and there you threw off the mask. I then saw the hollowness of your soul. My father died of a broken heart, and my brother perished in a duel, in consequence of my iniquity. But who had made me criminal? You! I called upon you at Rossville House at a time when a little sympathy on your part might have still saved me; for I should have felt that I had one friend still left. But you scorned me—you even menaced me; and I then warned you that I was absolved from all motives of secrecy on your account. Your black ingratitude drove me to despair; and I immediately afterwards fell to the lowest grade in the social sphere—that of a prostitute! Yes—for I need use no nice language with you. All the miseries I endured in my wretched career I charge upon your head. And ere now you menaced me again: you threatened to accuse me falsely of a crime that would render me amenable to the criminal tribunals of the country. It only required that to fill the cup of your base ingratitude to the very brim. And think you that your malignant—your spiteful glances,—your looks of bitter, burning hate,—were lost upon me? No—you would doubtless assassinate me, if you dared! Oh! I have long detested you—long loathed your very name! But, never—never, until we met in this room ere now, did I believe that my hatred against you was so virulent as it is. And never—never until this hour did I appreciate the sweets of vengeance. At present I can revel in those feelings:—I can wreak upon you—and I will—that revenge which my own miseries and the death of those whom I held dear have excited in my heart! Your ladyship now knows the terms of our connexion, for one year; and at the expiration of that period you will be glad—Oh! too glad to rid yourself of me by giving me a character that will never fail to procure for me a place in future."

With these words Lydia Hutchinson left the room.

Lady Ravensworth sank back in convulsions of anguish upon the ottoman.

And Lord Ravensworth,—who throughout the morning had experienced so much lightness of heart and mental calmness that he resolved to wrestle in future with that apathy and gloom which drove him to his pipe,—had shut himself up in his private cabinet, to seek solace once more in the fatal attractions of the oriental tobacco.

Thus had the presence of Lydia Hutchinson,—once despised, scorned, and trampled on,—brought desolation and misery into that lordly dwelling.

O Adeline, Adeline! thou wast now taught a bitter lesson illustrative of the terrible consequences of ingratitude!

The aristocracy conceives that it may insult the democracy with impunity. The high-born and the wealthy never stop to consider, when they put an affront upon the lowly and the poor, whether a day of retribution may not sooner or later come. The peer cannot see the necessity of conciliating the peasant: the daughter of the nobility knows not the use of making a friend of the daughter of the people.

But the meanest thing that crawls upon the earth may some day be in a position to avenge the injuries it has received from a powerful oppressor; and the mightiest lord or the noblest lady may be placed in that situation when even the friendship of the humblest son or the most obscure daughter of industry would be welcome as the drop of water to the lost wanderer of the desert.

Yes! Most solemnly do I proclaim to you, O suffering millions of these islands, that ye shall not always languish beneath the yoke of your oppressors! Individually ye shall each see the day when your tyrant shall crouch at your feet; and as a mass ye shall triumph over that proud oligarchy which now grinds you to the dust!

That day—that great day cannot be far distant; and then shall ye rise—not to wreak a savage vengeance on those who have so long coerced you, but to prove to them that ye know how to exercise a mercy which they never manifested towards you;—ye shall rise, not to convulse the State with a disastrous civil war, nor to hurry the nation on to the deplorable catastrophe of social anarchy, confusion, and bloodshed;—but ye shall rise to vindicate usurped rights, and to recover delegated and misused power, that ye may triumphantly assert the aristocracy of mind, and the aristocracy of virtue!

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Chapter CCVIII

THE RESURRECTION MAN'S HOUSE IN GLOBE TOWN.

Return we to the house of the Resurrection Man in Globe Town,—that house where we have already seen such diabolical mischief concocted, and much of which was actually perpetrated,—that house where the gloomy subterraneans had echoed to the moans of Viola Chichester!

It was about seven o'clock in the evening, when the Resurrection Man suddenly emerged from that very same cell in which Viola had once been confined.

He held a lantern in his hand; and the feeble rays glanced upon a countenance convulsed and distorted with deep, malignant rage.

On the threshold of the dungeon he paused for a moment; and turning towards the interior of that living tomb, he growled in a savage tone, "By all the powers of hell! I'll find means to cure you of this obstinacy."

A hoarse and stifled moan was the only answer.

"Then try another night of it!" exclaimed the Resurrection Man.

And he closed the door violently.

The heavy bolt grated upon the ears of another victim to the remorseless cruelty of this fiend-like miscreant!

Muttering maledictions to himself, the Resurrection Man slowly left the subterranean, and extinguishing his lantern, secured the doors of the lower part of his dwelling.

As he was about to ascend the steep staircase leading to the upper floor, a person in the street called after him in a low and tremulous tone, "Mr. Tidkins! Mr. Tidkins! is that you?"

"Rather so," replied the Resurrection Man, who had immediately recognised the voice; "walk up, Mr. Tomlinson."

"I—I—if you have no objection," stammered the stock-broker, who evidently had some cause of alarm, "I would much prefer—that is, I should like to speak to you down here; because my time is precious—and——"

"And you are afraid to trust yourself with me," added the Resurrection Man, gruffly. "Why, what an infernal fool you must be! I don't suppose that you've come with your pockets full of gold: and, if you haven't, you certainly ain't worth robbing and murdering. So, walk up, I say—and no more of this gammon. Shut the door, and bolt it after you."

The stock-broker did not like to offer any farther objection, so deep was his dread of irritating a man of whom he entertained a vague and horrible apprehension.

He accordingly closed the door, and followed Tidkins up the precipitate steps to the back room on the first floor: for the Resurrection Man had converted this one into his parlour, to avoid the necessity of having a light in the front chamber, the windows of which looked upon the street—the miscreant being compelled to adopt as many precautions as possible to prevent his numerous enemies from discovering a trace of his whereabouts.

"Sit down, and don't be afraid, Mr. Tomlinson," said Tidkins. "There, sir—draw near the fire; and here's brandy, rum, or gin, if you like to take any thing."

"Nothing, I thank you," faltered the stock-broker, casting a hurried glance of alarm around him as he sank upon a chair. "You wrote to desire me to call this evening—at seven o'clock—or I might repent——"

"Yes—and so you would repent the consequences," added the Resurrection Man. "But, as you have come, it is all right. I dare say you thought I had forgotten you: you were deceived, you see; for I never lose sight of old friends. When I want to use them, I am sure to find them out again."

"And what can I do for you, Mr. Tidkins?" asked the stock-broker, in a tremulous tone; for he felt a desperate alarm lest the Resurrection Man should have discovered the one secret which he had taken so much pains to conceal—the secret of the abode of old Michael Martin.

"I have but two wants in the world at any time," answered the Resurrection Man, lighting his pipe: "money most often—vengeance now and then. But it is money that I want of you."

"Money—money!" murmured Tomlinson: "do you think I am made of money? I have had hard struggles—losses—expenses——"

"I dare say you have," observed the Resurrection Man, drily. "I do not mean to be hard upon you; but something I must have. You see, I have got a little amount put by—how obtained is neither here nor there; and I want to scrape together as much as I can, so that in a few months, when I have settled the different matters I have on hand, I may leave England for America, or some such place; and then you will never hear of me any more."

"That will be a great blessing," thought Tomlinson; but he did not say so.

"And under all circumstances, you must help me to make up the sum I want," added the Resurrection Man.

"You are too hard upon me, Mr. Tidkins," said Tomlinson. "If I had employed you on any business, it would be different: but——"

"But if you have a secret that I have found out, and that's worth keeping?" exclaimed Tidkins, significantly.

"Oh! then it is as I feared!" murmured Tomlinson, pressing his feverish hand to his forehead, through which a sudden pain seemed to shoot, producing a sensation as of tightness on the brain. "Surely this man must be Satan himself, who comes at intervals to goad the wicked to desperation for their sins!"

"What's that you say about Satan?" asked Tidkins.

"Nothing—nothing," replied the stock-broker, hastily: "I was only thinking to myself that Satan took a delight in persecuting me."

"I know nothing about that," observed the Resurrection Man. "All I care for is the cash that you will have the goodness to bring me down to-morrow evening at this same hour."

A sudden idea struck Tomlinson. Was the Resurrection Man really acquainted with Martin's present place of abode? or was he endeavouring to extort money merely upon the strength of his knowledge, some time previously obtained (as our readers will remember), that the old clerk, though generally believed to have absconded, had actually remained concealed in London?

"But wherefore should you press me in this way?" said the stock-broker. "Did I not satisfy your demands on a former occasion?"

"And have I not kept my pledge?" cried Tidkins. "Has a word ever escaped my lips to do you an injury? Why, there is still a reward of three thousand pounds to be got——"

"No—no," interrupted Tomlinson; "you are wrong. My affairs are all wound up in respect to the bank—and a dividend has been paid."

"A precious small one, I'll be bound," observed Tidkins. "However,—reward or no reward,—it wouldn't place you in a very comfortable situation if I was to take a policeman with me, and just call at a particular house in Thomas Street, where an old gentleman named Nelson——"

"Enough!" cried Tomlinson: "I see you know all. My God! when shall I be released from this peril? when shall I know a moment's comfort?"

"When you've brought me down a couple of hundred pounds to-morrow night," answered the Resurrection Man, knocking out the ashes from his pipe. "And, then—if you like to make it worth my while—I tell you what I'll do for you."

"What?" asked the stock-broker, gasping for breath.

"I'll entice the old fellow down here, and either lock him up in one of my cells, or else settle his hash in such a way that he shall only be fit to sell to the surgeons," returned the Resurrection Man, fixing his snake-like eyes on the stock-broker's countenance, as if to ascertain the precise impression which this proposal made.

"Monster!" ejaculated Tomlinson, shrinking from the bare idea of such an atrocity—for he was more or less attached to Michael Martin, in consequence of the immense sacrifice which the old man had made on his account: "no—never will I imbrue my hands with blood, nor suborn another to play the assassin's part for me! To-morrow evening you shall receive the amount you demand; and heaven grant that all connexion between us may cease."

"Be it so," observed the Resurrection Man, coolly, as he brewed himself a glass of grog.

"You have nothing more to say to me?" asked Tomlinson, rising to depart.

The reply was a negative; and the stock-broker hurried away from a dwelling where crime seemed to proclaim its presence trumpet-tongued,—where every look that eyes shot forth, and every word that lips uttered, and every thought that brains conceived—all, all appeared to feel the noxious atmosphere of blackest turpitude.

In a house where a person has lately died, every thing seems to exhale a sickly odour as of a corpse; and if you touch the wall with your finger, you feel a clammy and fetid moisture which makes your blood run cold within you. So was it with the dwelling of the Resurrection Man: the taint of crime impregnated the very atmosphere; and Tomlinson shook himself when he gained the open air, as if he could thus throw off some pestilential influence which had seized hold of him.

Tomlinson had not left the house many minutes, when a low, but peculiar knock at the door brought the Resurrection Man down to answer the summons.

"Who is it?" he demanded, ere he opened.

"Me," growled a voice which Tidkins immediately recognised to be that of the Lully Prig.

This individual was forthwith admitted; and when the two villains were seated by the fire in the back room, the Resurrection Man asked "What news?"

"Just as you wished," was the reply. "I called at the chandlery shop in Pitfield Street, Hoxton, and axed for a nounce of bakker. The woman served me; and I soon see that she was alone. Then says I, 'If so be no one's within 'earing, I want a word with you.'—She looked frightened, but said nothing wotsomever.—'All I have to tell you is just this,' says I: 'Tony Tidkins knows where you be and all about you. But he says, says he, that if you take no notice of him in case you sees him, and says nothing to nobody in case you 'ears of him, he'll leave you alone.'—Lor! how she did turn pale and tremble when I mentioned your name; and she seemed so glad when I told her that you wouldn't do her no harm, if so be she didn't try to do you none.—'If he won't come near me, I'll never even breathe his name,' she says.—'And you'll never utter a word about the crib in Globe Town,' says I.—'Never, never,' says she.—'Well, then,' says I, 'all will go on well; and you can sleep as sound in your bed as if there wasn't such a man as Tony Tidkins in the world. But if so be you peaches, or says a word,' says I, 'that may get Tony into trouble, he's got plenty of friends as will awenge him, and the fust is me.'—So she swore eyes and limbs, she'd keep all close; and in that way I left her."

"So far, so good," observed the Resurrection Man. "She's frightened, and will keep a close tongue. That's all I want. When I have finished the different things I have in hand, and don't care about staying in London any longer, I will punish her for what she did to me. But my revenge will keep for the present. Now, what about Crankey Jem?"

"He still lives in the court in Drury Lane, and stays at home all day," answered the Lully Prig. "But at night he goes out for some hours, and I can't find out where. For three evenin's follering I watched him; and every time I missed him at last somehow or another."

"Which way did he go?" demanded the Resurrection Man.

"Different ways—but always up one street and down another—now here, then there, as if he hadn't no partickler motive, but merely went out a walkin' for the fun of it."

"I tell you what it is, Lully," said the Resurrection Man, gloomily, "you're not so wide awake as I am. That fellow has some object in wandering about zigzag and crosswise in that manner. He has got a scent of me; and he's following it up. But at the same time he's afraid that I may have a scent of him; and so he dodges about. It's as clear as day-light—'cause it's just what I should do."

"And you're a downy cove enough, Tony," observed the Lully Prig; "although I do think arter all you've let that damned parley-woo French feller do us about them Bank notes."

"It's very strange the Buffer doesn't return," said the Resurrection Man. "I'd take my davy that he wouldn't chouse us out of our reglars. But time will show. Now look here, Lully,—as you've made that same remark a dozen times since the thing took place,—and just see how the matter stood. We got four thousand pounds clear——"

"Yes—a thousand a-piece," said the Lully Prig, assentingly: "and a precious jolly catch it was."

"Well," continued the Resurrection Man, "the Bank notes were of no more use to us than so much waste paper, because Greenwood was sure to stop them the moment he got back to London: at least I should think so. Now when that French fellow Lafleur offered to let you, me, the Buffer, and Long Bob share the gold, and he would go to France to smash the notes at the money-changer's that he told us about in Paris, and then take his thousand beyond his fifth share of the produce of the notes, it was the best thing we could do to accept his proposal—particularly as he said that any one of us might go with him."

"But if he sticks to the whole sixteen thousand pounds, what a deuced good pull he has over us," observed the Lully Prig.

"So he has," said the Resurrection Man; "and again I tell you that if he hadn't offered to go to France and change the notes, we must have destroyed them in the very chalk-pit where we divided the swag. They were no use to us—but a great danger. It was better to trust to the chance of Lafleur doing the thing that's right; and if he don't, the Buffer will drop down on him, in spite of all the guilloteens[32] and Johnny-darmies[33] in France."

"Well, we won't quarrel about it, Tony," said the Lully Prig. "You and the Buffer let me in for a good thing; and I ought not to grumble. You see, I've follered your advice, and kept the blunt in a safe place, without wasting it as Long Bob is doing. He's never been sober since the thing took place."

"Where is he now?" asked the Resurrection Man.

"Oh! he's knocking about at all the flash cribs, spending his tin as fast as he can," answered the Lully Prig.

"Don't let him know of this place of mine for the world," said Tidkins. "A drunken chap like that isn't to be trusted in any shape. I only hope he won't wag his tongue too free about the business that put all the money into his pocket."

"Not he!" cried the Lully Prig: "he's as close as the door of Newgate about them kind of things, even when he's as drunk as a pig. But I don't want to have nothing more to do with him; I'll stick to you and the Buffer; and when you've settled all the things you say you have in hand, we'll be off to Americky."

"So we will, Lully. But this fellow Crankey Jem annoys me. You must go on watching him. Or p'rhaps it would be better to get the Bully Grand to set some of his Forty Thieves after him?" added the Resurrection Man.

"No—no," cried the Lully Prig, whose pride was somewhat hurt at this suggestion, which seemed to cast a doubt upon his own skill and ability in performing the service required: "leave him in my hands, and I'll find out what dodge he's upon sooner or later."

Scarcely were these words uttered, when a knock at the front door fell on the ears of the two villains.

The Resurrection Man descended; and, to the usual inquiry ere the door was opened, the well-known voice of the Buffer answered, "It is me."

"Well—what luck?" demanded the Resurrection Man, hastily—his avarice prompting the question even before his accomplice in iniquity had scarcely time to utter a reply to the first query.

"Sold—regularly sold—done brown!" returned the Buffer, closing and bolting the door behind him.

"Damnation!" cried the Resurrection Man, who, now that the faint hope of obtaining a further share of the plunder of Greenwood's tin-case was annihilated, manifested a fiercer rage than would have been expected after his cool reasoning with the Lully Prig upon the special point.

"You may well swear, Tony," said the Buffer, sulkily, as he ascended the stairs; "for we never was so completely done in all our lives. That snivelling Mounseer was one too many for us."

"Ah! I see how it is," observed the Lully Prig, when the two men entered the room where he had remained; "and I can't say it's more than I expected. But how did he do it?"

"Why, he gave me the slip at last," answered the Buffer, pouring himself out half a tumbler of raw spirit, which he drank without winking, just as if it were so much water. "You see, he kept me humbugging about in Paris week after week, always saying that it wasn't prudent to begin smashing the notes yet awhile; and I stuck to him like a leech. I shan't make a long story on it now—I'm too vexed: all I'll tell you at present is that four days ago he gave me the slip; and so I twigged that it was all gammon. He'd done us brown—that was wery clear;—and so I come back."

We shall leave the three villains to discuss this disappointment, together with divers other matters interesting to themselves, and continue the thread of our narrative in another quarter.

It is, however, as well to observe that all these comings and goings at the house of the Resurrection Man were watched by an individual, who for several nights had been lurking about that neighbourhood for the purpose, but who had exercised so much caution that he was never perceived by any one of the gang.

This person was Crankey Jem.

-----

Footnote 32:

Guillotines.

Footnote 33:

Gendarmes.

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CCIX. ALDERMAN SNIFF.—TOMLINSON AND GREENWOOD

It was eleven o'clock in the forenoon of the day following the incidents just related.

The scene is Mr. Tomlinson's office in Tokenhouse Yard.

The stock-broker was seated at his desk. His manner was nervous, and his countenance expressive of anxiety: he had, indeed, passed a sleepless night—for he saw in the conduct of the Resurrection Man the renewal of a system of extortion which was not likely to cease so long as there was a secret to be hushed up.

The careful aspect of the stock-broker was not, however, noticed by Mr. Alderman Sniff, who was lounging against the mantel, with his back to the fire, and expatiating on his own success in life—a favourite subject with this civic functionary, who considered "success" to be nothing more nor less than the accumulation of money from a variety of schemes and representations so nearly allied to downright swindling, that it was impossible to say what a jury would have thought of them had they come under the notice of a criminal tribunal.

"But how have you managed to do it all?" asked Tomlinson, by way of saying something—although his thoughts were far removed from the topic of Mr. Alderman Sniff's discourse.

"You see I began life with plenty of money," returned the Alderman: "I mean I had a decent fortune at the death of my father, which took place when I was about two-and-twenty. But that soon went; and I was glad to accept an offer to go out to India. On my arrival at Madras I was inducted into a situation as clerk in a mercantile establishment; and there I was making some little money, when I was foolish enough to issue a prospectus for the 'General Boa-Constrictor Killing and Wild Beast Extirpation Joint-Stock Company,'—a project which was not so well relished as I could have wished. My employers discharged me; and, deeply disgusted with the ignorance of the English settlers and the natives, who could not understand the magnitude of my designs, I came back to England. My trip to India was, however, very useful to me; for, on my return to this country, I lived splendidly on the Deccan Prize Money for four years."

"Lived on the Deccan Prize Money!" exclaimed Tomlinson: "why—what claim had you to any of it?"

"None," replied Mr. Sniff; "I never was in the Deccan in my life. But I declared that I had claims to I can't remember how many lacs of rupees; and it was very easy to obtain loans from friends and get bills cashed on the strength of the assertion. Of course this had an end: the settlement of the Deccan Prize Money affairs was interminable; but the facility for procuring cash on the strength of it was not equally lasting. However,—as I just now observed,—I lived comfortably on my alleged claims for four years; and then I started the 'Universal Poor Man's Corn-Plaster and Blister Gratuitous Distribution Society.' I got several philanthropic and worthy men to join me in this laudable undertaking: we took splendid offices in King Street, Cheapside; and the enterprise progressed wonderfully. How well I remember our first annual meeting at Exeter Hall! The great room was crowded to excess. I was the Secretary, and it was my duty to read the Report of the Committee. That document had been drawn up in most pathetic language by some poor devil of an author whom I employed for the purpose; and it produced a wonderful effect. It was really quite touching to see how the ladies—poor dear creatures!—wept tears of the most refreshing philanthropy, when I enumerated the blessings which this Society had conferred upon vast numbers of individuals. Nine thousand six hundred and sixty-seven Corn-Plasters and eleven thousand two hundred and fourteen Blisters had been distributed gratuitously, during the year, to as many poor suffering creatures, who had all been thereby cured of corns previously deemed inveterate, and of chest-complaints that until then had received no medical attention. The Report dwelt upon the gratitude of thousands of poor families for the relief thus dispensed, and congratulated the members of the Society on the claims they possessed to the applause of the whole Christian world. Subscriptions rained in upon me in perfect torrents; and there was not a tearless eye throughout that vast hall."

"How was it that so excellent an institution became extinct?" asked Tomlinson, awaking from his reverie when the Alderman paused.

"I really can scarce tell you," was the reply. "Whether it was that the public thought there could not possibly be any more corns to cure or pulmonary complaints to heal,—or whether it was in consequence of a proposition which I made, in an unlucky hour, to extend the benefits of the Society to the poor savages in the islands of the Pacific,—I can't say: it is, however, certain that the subscribers were very 'backward in coming forward' at the third annual meeting; and so the institution dwindled into nothing. I had, nevertheless, saved some little money; and I was not long idle. My next spec. was 'The Metropolitan Poor Family's Sunday-Dinner Gratuitous Baking Association.' You perceive that I am fond of dealing in humane and philanthropic enterprises. My idea was to establish numerous baking-houses all over London, and to cook the poor man's Sunday joint and potatoes for him, the Society reserving to itself the dripping, which being sold, and the profits added to the voluntary subscriptions received from the charitable, would support these most useful institutions. At the end of a year, however, I was compelled to dissolve the Association, after having gone to the expense of building no less than sixty enormous ovens in as many different parts of London."

"How came that project to fail," asked Tomlinson, "when it was calculated to benefit so many poor families?"

"Simply because so few of those poor families ever had any Sunday dinners to cook at all," replied Alderman Sniff. "Nevertheless, the subscriptions which were received paid all the outlay, and remunerated me for my trouble. I therefore met with some little encouragement in all I did for the benefit of my fellow-creatures; and, more than that," added the philanthropist, slapping his left breast," I enjoyed the approval, Mr. Tomlinson, of my conscience."

The stock-broker sighed:—not that he envied any inward feelings which Mr. Alderman Sniff could have experienced as the results of the speculations referred to; but the thoughts occasioned by the mere mention of the word "Conscience" aroused painful emotions in the breast of James Tomlinson.

"While I was thus engaged in the behoof of the poorer classes of the community," continued Alderman Sniff, "I was gaining influence with my fellow citizens. I became the Treasurer of no end of charitable institutions, was elected Churchwarden of my parish, and soon became Deputy of the Ward. Fortunately my parish, as you well know, is governed by a Select Vestry—properly consisting of three individuals; but as two of the last-elected trio have died, and as I have ever stedfastly and successfully opposed the nomination of other parishioners to replace the deceased, we have now a Select Vestry of One. This gentleman is my most intimate friend; and it would do your heart good to see the parochial solemnity and official dignity with which he annually proposes me to himself as a candidate for the place of Churchwarden, and then proceeds to second the nomination, put the question, lift up his hand, and declare me duly elected without a dissentient voice. In due time I was chosen Alderman of the Ward; and every thing has gone well with me. I have been eminently successful. My 'British Marble Company' was a glorious hit, as you well know."

"Yes—a glorious hit for you," said Tomlinson, with a faint smile. "You yourself were Managing Director, and you sold your quarry—or rather your supposed quarry—to yourself;—you were Auditor and Secretary, and consequently examined and passed your own accounts;—you were also the Treasurer, and paid yourself. You had the best of it in every way."

"Come, Mr. Tomlinson," exclaimed Sniff, chuckling audibly, "I allowed you to reap a decent profit on the shares which you sold; so you need not complain."

"Oh! I do not complain," observed the stock-broker. "But how do you get on with the accounts of your parish?"

"Mr. Tomlinson," said the Alderman, almost sternly, "I never will give any accounts at all to those refractory parishioners of mine. The Select Vestry of One has met regularly every year, and resolved himself into a Committee to investigate my accounts—and that is sufficient. And, after all," added the civic functionary, sinking his voice to a mysterious whisper, "even if the accounts were produced,—although they run over such a long period of years, you might put them all into your waistcoat-pocket without finding it stick out more than it now does with your small French watch."[34]

With these words, Mr. Alderman Sniff, who had merely looked in to have a chat and talk of himself to one with whom there was no necessity to maintain any secrecy in respect to his antecedents,—Mr. Alderman Sniff retired.

A few minutes afterwards Mr. Greenwood was introduced.

"My dear Tomlinson," he said, "I am quite delighted to find you within. I have made a hit, and shall retrieve myself with ease. The ten thousand pounds which Holmesford lent me are now twenty thousand."

"You are a lucky fellow," observed Tomlinson, with a sigh. "Adversity has no effect upon you; whereas with me——"

"Why—what is the matter now?" interrupted Greenwood. "Always complaining?"

"I have good cause for annoyance," returned the stock-broker. "That precious acquaintance of yours——"

"Who?" demanded Greenwood, sharply.

"The lunatic-asylum keeper, as your friend Chichester supposed him to be—but the resurrectionist, thief, extortioner, villain, and perhaps murderer, as I take him to be," said Tomlinson,—"that scoundrel Tidkins, in a word, has discovered poor old Michael's address, and menaces me."

"Ah!" said Greenwood, coolly; "it is your own fault: you should have got Martin out of the way—even if you had painted him black, shipped him to the United States, and sold him as a slave."

"Ridiculous!" cried Tomlinson, sternly. "I never will cease to be a friend—a grateful friend—to that poor old man."

"Well," observed Greenwood, after a pause, "I can do you a service in this respect. I was at Rottenborough yesterday—amongst my intelligent and independent constituents; and I learnt that the situation of porter to the workhouse in that truly enlightened town is vacant. Now, if——"

"Enough of this, Greenwood!" exclaimed Tomlinson. "I was wrong to mention the old man's name to you.—What can I do for you this morning? Have you made up your mind to take the loan which my friend consented to advance to you about a month ago, and which you——"

"Which I declined then, and decline now," said Greenwood, hastily—as if the allusion awoke unpleasant reminiscences in his mind.

"I never could understand your conduct on that evening," observed Tomlinson, in his quiet manner: "you came at the appointed hour to terminate the business: the money was ready—the deed was prepared—my friend was here,—and when you put your hand into your pocket for the securities, you turned on your heel and bolted off like a shot."

"Yes—yes," said Greenwood, with increased impatience; "I had lost my pocket-book. But——"

"And have you found it since?" asked the stock-broker.

"I have. But I do not require the loan," returned Greenwood, shortly. "So far from that, I wish you to lay out these seven thousand pounds for me in a particular speculation which I will explain to you. I have prepared the way for certain success, but cannot appear in it myself."

Greenwood then counted the Bank notes upon the table for the sum named, and gave Tomlinson the necessary instructions for the disposal of the amount.

"Any news to-day?" he asked, when this business was concluded.

"Here is a second edition of The Times with another Telegraphic Despatch from Castelcicala," said Tomlinson. "I know you are interested in the affairs of that country, by the way you have lately spoken to me on the subject."

"Yes:—I am—I am indeed," exclaimed Greenwood, earnestly, as he seized the paper, in which the following article appeared in a bold type:—

"CASTELCICALA.

"PROCLAMATION OF ALBERTO I.—FORMATION OF THE NEW MINISTRY.

"The French Government have received the following Telegraphic Despatch from Toulon:—

"'The Alessandro steamer has just arrived from Montoni. THE MARQUIS OF ESTELLA proclaimed the GRAND DUKE ALBERTO I. in the evening of the 24th, instead of in the morning of that day, which was his original intention. This was merely occasioned by the delay of the Marquis in entering the capital. The Marquis has formed the following Ministry:—

"Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, SIGNOR GAËTANO. Minister of the Interior, SIGNOR TERLIZZI. Minister of War, COLONEL COSSARIO. Minister of Marine, ADMIRAL CONTARINO. Minister of Finance, SIGNOR VIVIANI. Minister of Justice, BARON MANZONI. Minister of Commerce, CHEVALIER GRACHIA.'"

The Times newspaper, commenting upon this Administration, reminded its readers that Signors Gaëtano and Terlizzi were the Chiefs of the Provisional Committee of Government during the Revolution in Castelcicala; that Colonel Cossario was the second in command of the glorious army that had achieved Castelcicalan freedom; that Signor Viviani was the well-known banker of Pinalla; and that the Chevalier Grachia was the nephew of the deceased general of that name.

"Thus is it that Richard can now make a Ministry in a powerful State!" murmured Greenwood to himself. "Oh! what a sudden elevation—what a signal rise! And I——"

"What are you muttering about to yourself, Greenwood?" asked Tomlinson.

"Ah!" cried the Member of Parliament, suddenly, and without heeding the stock-broker's question,—for his eyes, wandering mechanically over the surface of the paper which he held in his hand, had settled upon a paragraph that excited the liveliest emotions of surprise:—who could have believed it? Oh! now I recall to mind a thousand circumstances which should have made me suspect the truth!"

"The truth of what?" demanded Tomlinson.

"That Count Alteroni and Prince Alberto were one and the same person," exclaimed Greenwood; "and he is now the Grand Duke of Castelcicala!"

"Then you have had the pleasure of including a sovereign-prince amongst the number of your victims," observed the stock-broker, coolly.

Greenwood made no reply, but remained plunged in a deep reverie, the subject of which was the brilliant destiny that appeared to await Richard Markham.

As soon as he had taken his leave, Tomlinson also began musing; but it was upon a far different topic!

"Oh! what a hollow-hearted wretch is that Greenwood!" he said within himself: "and how would he have treated Michael Martin, had the poor old man been dependent upon him! Greenwood would indeed be capable of sending him to the United States as a slave, were such a course practicable. Ah!—the United States!" cried Tomlinson, aloud, as a sudden idea was created in his mind by the mention of the name of that glorious Republic:—"and why should not Michael Martin visit the States—and with me too? Yes! I am wearied of London,—wearied of this city where all hearts seem to be eaten up with selfishness,—wearied of supporting the weight of that secret which the merest accident may reveal, and which places me at the mercy of that ferocious extortioner! Oh! if that secret were discovered—if it were ascertained that Michael Martin was really in London,—he would be dragged before the tribunals—and I must either appear against him as a witness, or proclaim his innocence and thereby sacrifice myself! No—no—I could not do either:—never—never! I know that I am weak—vacillating—timid! But God also knows how unwillingly I have departed from the ways of rectitude—how many bitter tears have marked the paths of my duplicity! And now I will be firm—yes, firm to commit one last crime! Oh! I will prove myself a worthy pupil of my great master Greenwood! He shall be amply repaid," continued the stock-broker, bitterly, "for all the kind lessons he has given me in the school of dishonour—yes, and repaid, too, in his own coin. Seven thousand pounds—added to my own little stock,—this will be a sufficient fund wherewith to begin an honourable avocation in another clime. Yes—America is the country for me! There I can begin the world again as a new man—and perhaps I may retrieve myself even in my own estimation!"

Tomlinson's resolution was now irrevocably fixed.

He would emigrate to the United States, accompanied by his faithful old clerk!

Greenwood's money should constitute the principal resource to which he must trust as the basis whereon to establish a fortune in the place of the one he had lost.

Nor did he hesitate a moment—weak, timid, and vacillating as he was in ordinary circumstances—to self-appropriate those funds thus entrusted to him.

He had no sympathy for Greenwood;—and, moreover, he had many an act of insolence on the part of that individual—many an instance of oppression, to avenge. Ere the failure of the bank, Greenwood had taken advantage of his necessities to wring from him enormous interest for loans advanced, and had, moreover, made him his instrument in defrauding the Italian prince. Since the establishment of the office in Tokenhouse Yard, Greenwood had continued to use Tomlinson as a tool so long as his own fortunes had remained prosperous;—and even latterly—since the condition of Greenwood's finances had levelled some of those barriers which the necessities of the one and the wealth of the other had originally raised between them,—even latterly, the manner of the Member of Parliament towards the fallen banker had been that of patronage and superiority. Then the frequent and heartless allusions which Greenwood made to the poor old clerk, rankled deeply in the mind of Tomlinson; and all these circumstances armed that naturally weak and timid man with a giant strength of mind when he contemplated the possibility of at length punishing Greenwood for a thousand insults.

Tomlinson was not naturally a vindictive man:—persons of his quiet and timid disposition seldom are. But there are certain affronts which, when oft repeated and dwelt upon in their aggregate, form a motive power that will arouse the most enduring and the weakest mind to action—especially, too, when accident throws a special opportunity of vengeance in the way.

James Tomlinson was a strange compound of good and bad qualities—the latter arising from his constitutional want of nerve, and his deficiency in moral energy. Had he been mentally resolute, he would have proved a good and great man. The conflicting elements of his character were signally demonstrated on this occasion, when he had determined to fly from the country.

Having given his clerks positive orders that he was not to be interrupted for some hours, he sealed up in different parcels the small sums of money which his various clients had placed in his hands to purchase scrip or other securities, and addressed the packets to those to whom the sums respectively belonged,—omitting, however, Greenwood in this category. He next computed the salaries due to his clerks, and set apart the amount required to liquidate those obligations also. These duties being accomplished, he locked all the parcels up in one of the drawers of his writing-table, and placed the key in his pocket. Greenwood's deposit he secured about his person.

When it grew dusk in the evening, he repaired to the lodging which Michael Martin occupied in Bethnal Green.

As soon as Tomlinson had made known his scheme to the old man—(but, of course, without betraying the fact of his intention to self-appropriate Greenwood's money)—Michael took a huge pinch of snuff, and reflected profoundly for some minutes.

"And what's the meaning of this all of a sudden?" demanded the ex-cashier at length.

Tomlinson explained, with great frankness, that the Resurrection Man had by some means discovered the secret of Michael's abode, and was again playing the part of an extortioner. He, moreover, expressed his invincible dislike for a city where he had experienced such painful reverses; and declared his resolution of no longer living in such a state of suspense and anxiety as he was kept in by the constant dread of an exposure in respect to his faithful old clerk.

"You need not leave London on that account," said Martin, gruffly: "I have long made up my mind how to act in case of detection."

"How?" asked Tomlinson, with a foreboding shudder.

"I should put an end to my life," returned the old man, filling his nose with snuff. "I am well aware that you would not have the courage to appear against me in a court of justice and boldly accuse me of having embezzled your funds——"

"The courage!" exclaimed Tomlinson, wiping away a tear: "no—nor the heart! My good—faithful old friend——"

"Well—well: don't be childish, now," said Michael, who was obliged to take several pinches of snuff to conceal his own emotions: "if you are really desirous to leave England and go to America, I will accompany you. Of course I will—you know I will," he added, more hastily than he was accustomed to speak.

"There is no time for delay," said Tomlinson, rejoiced at this assent which he had wrung from his faithful servitor. "We will repair to Dover this very night, and thence proceed to France. The distance from Calais to Havre is not very great: and from the latter port ships are constantly sailing for America."

"Let me proceed alone to Havre," said old Martin; "and you can follow me openly and at your leisure."

"No," replied Tomlinson; "that would only be to compromise your safety, perhaps. We will part no more."

The advice of the stock-broker was acted upon; and the fugitives succeeded in leaving the kingdom in safety.

But that night the Resurrection Man vainly awaited the arrival of James Tomlinson.

And on the following day, Mr. Greenwood discovered, to his cost, that the effects of those lessons of duplicity and dishonour which he had inculcated in respect to the stock-broker, practically redounded upon himself!

-----

Footnote 34:

The readers must not for a moment suppose that we intend Mr. Sniff to be a type of all the city aldermen. Far from it. There are some excellent, honourable, and talented men amongst the civic body. Mr. Sniff is as different from what Sir Peter Laurie is, or Mr. Harmer was, as light differs from darkness. There are, however, some individuals wearing civic gowns, who are a disgrace to the great city of which they have the unaccountable effrontery to remain magistrates.

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CCX. HOLFORD'S STUDIES

It was midnight.

In a garret, belonging to a house in the same court where Crankey Jem resided, sate Henry Holford.

He was alone. His elbow rested on the table, and his hand supported his feverish head—for dark thoughts filled the brain of that young man.

The flickering light of a single candle fell upon the pages of an old volume, which he was reading with intense interest.

His cheeks were pale,—his lips were dry,—his throat was parched,—and his eye-balls glared with unnatural lustre.

He did not feel athirst—else there was water handy to assuage the craving:—nor did he hear his heart beating violently, nor experience the feverish and rapid throbbing of his temples.

No:—his whole thoughts—his entire feelings—his every sensation,—all were absorbed in the subject of his study.

And that the reader may fully comprehend the nature of those impulses which were now urging this strange young man on to the perpetration of a deed that was destined to give a terrible celebrity to his name, we must quote the passage on which his mind was so intently fixed:—

"THE ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS III., OF SWEDEN.[35]

"The nobles were discontented with the general conduct of the King; and a conspiracy was planned against him under his own roof. His wars had compelled him to negotiate large loans, and to impose upon his subjects heavy taxes. The nobles took advantage of that circumstance to prejudice the minds of many of the people against the sovereign who had laboured so long for their real good. On the 16th of March, 1792, he received an anonymous letter, warning him of his immediate danger from a plot that was laid to take away his life, requesting him to remain at home, and avoid balls for a year; and assuring him, that if he should go to the masquerade for which he was preparing, he would be assassinated that very night. The King read the note with contempt, and at a late hour entered the ball-room. After some time he sat down in a box with the Count of Essen, and observed he was not deceived in his contempt for the letter, since, had there been any design against his life, no time could be more favourable than that moment. He then mingled, without apprehension, among the crowd; and just as he was preparing to retire with the Prussian ambassador, he was surrounded by several persons in masks, one of whom fired a pistol at the back of the King, and lodged the contents in his body. A scene of dreadful confusion ensued. The conspirators, amidst the general tumult and alarm, had time to retire to other parts of the room; but one of them had previously dropped his pistols and a dagger close by the wounded King. A general order was given to all the company to unmask, and the doors were immediately closed; but no person appeared with any particular distinguishing marks of guilt. The King was immediately conveyed to his apartment; and the surgeon, after extracting a ball and some slugs, gave favourable hopes of his Majesty's recovery.

"Suspicions immediately fell upon such of the nobles as had been notorious for their opposition to the measures of the court. The anonymous letter was traced up to Colonel Liljehorn, Major in the King's Guards, and he was immediately apprehended. But the most successful clue that seemed to offer was in consequence of the weapons which had fallen from the assassin. An order was issued, directing all the armourers, gunsmiths, and cutlers, in Stockholm, to give every information in their power to the officers of justice, concerning the weapons. A gunsmith who had repaired the pistols readily recognised them to be the same which he had repaired some time since for a nobleman of the name of Ankarstrom, a captain in the army; and the cutler who had made the dagger, referred at once to the same person.

"The King languished from the 17th to the 29th of March. At first, the reports of his medical attendants were favourable; but on the 28th a mortification was found to have taken place, which terminated his existence in a few hours. On opening his body, a square piece of lead and two rusty nails were found unextracted within the ribs.

"During his illness, and particularly after he was made acquainted with the certainty of his approaching dissolution, Gustavus continued to display that unshaken courage which he had manifested on every occasion during his life. A few hours before his decease, he made some alterations in the arrangement of public affairs. He had before, by his will, appointed a council of regency, but convinced, by recent experience, how little he could depend on the attachment of his nobles, and being also aware of the necessity of a strong government in difficult times, he appointed his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, sole regent, till his son, who was then about fourteen, should have attained the age of eighteen years. His last words were a declaration of pardon to the conspirators against his life. The actual murderer alone was excepted; and he was excepted only at the strong instance of the regent, and those who surrounded his Majesty in his dying moments. Immediately on the death of the King, the young prince was proclaimed by the title of Gustavus IV.

"Ankarstrom was no sooner apprehended, than he confessed with an air of triumph, that he was the person 'who had endeavoured to liberate his country from a monster and a tyrant.' Suspicions at the same time fell on the Counts Horn and Ribbing, Baron Pechlin, Baron Ehrensvard, Baron Hartsmandorf, Von Engerstrom the Royal Secretary, and others; and these suspicions were confirmed by the confession of Ankarstrom. After a very fair and ample trial, this man was condemned to be publicly and severely whipped on three successive days, his right hand and his head to be cut off, and his body impaled: which sentence he suffered on the 17th of May. His property was given to his children, who, however, were compelled to change their name."

"Ankarstrom was a martyr—a hero!" exclaimed Holford, aloud; his imagination excited by the preceding narrative, and all the morbid feelings of his wrongly-biassed mind aroused at the idea of the terrible renown that attached itself to the name of a regicide.

Then,—although the garret in which he sate was so cold that ice floated on the water in the pitcher, and the nipping chill of a February night came through the cracked panes and ill-closed lattice, while the snow lay thick upon the slanting tiles immediately above his head,—that young man's entire frame glowed with a feverish heat, which shone with sinister lustre in his eyes, and appeared in the two deep-red hectic spots which marked his cheeks.

"Yes—Ankarstrom was a hero!" he exclaimed. "Oh! how he must have despised the efforts of the torturers to wring from him a groan:—how he must have scorned the array of penalties which were sought to be made so terrible! And Ravaillac—the regicide beneath whose hand fell Henry IV. of France—oh! how well is every word of his history treasured up in my mind. But Francis Damien—ah! his fate was terrible indeed! And yet I am not afraid to contemplate it—even though such a one should be in store for me."

Then hastily turning to the "History of France," in the volume which he was reading, he slowly and in measured terms repeated aloud the following passage:—

"ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF LOUIS XV., OF FRANCE.

"In the year 1757, one Francis Damien, an unhappy wretch, whose sullen mind, naturally unsettled, was inflamed by the disputes between the King and his Parliament concerning religion, formed the desperate resolution of attempting the life of his Sovereign. In the dusk of the evening, as the King prepared to enter his coach, he was suddenly, though slightly, wounded, with a pen-knife, between the fourth and fifth ribs, in the presence of his son, and in the midst of his guards. The daring assassin had mingled with the crowd of courtiers, but was instantly betrayed by his distracted countenance. He declared it was never his intention to kill the King: but that he only meant to wound him, that God might touch his heart, and incline him to restore the tranquillity of his dominions by re-establishing the Parliament, and banishing the Archbishop of Paris, whom he regarded as the source of the present commotions. In these frantic and incoherent declarations he persisted, amidst the most exquisite tortures; and after human ingenuity had been exhausted in devising new modes of torment, his judges, tired out with his obstinacy, consigned him to a death, the inhumanity of which might fill the hearts of savages with horror: he was conducted to the common place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of the populace; stripped naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron manacles. One of his hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs, legs, and arms, were torn with red hot pincers: boiling oil, melted lead, resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; and, to complete the terrific catastrophe, he was torn to pieces by horses!"

"And they call him an unhappy wretch!" exclaimed Holford, pushing the book from him: "no—no! He must have had a great and a powerful mind to have dared to attempt to kill a King! And his name is remembered in history! Ah! that thought must have consoled him in the midst of those infernal torments. What is more delightful than the conviction of emerging from vile obscurity, and creating a reputation—although one so tarnished and disfigured that the world shrinks from it with loathing? Yes:—better to be a Turpin or a Barrington—a Claude du Val or a Jack Sheppard, than live unknown, and die without exciting a sensation. But it would be glorious—oh! how glorious to be ranked with Ankarstrom, Ravaillac, Damien, Felton, Guy Fawkes, Fieschi, and that gallant few who have either slain, or attempted the lives of, monarchs or great men! I am miserable,—poor,—obscure,—and without a hope of rising by legitimate means. I have seen the inside of a palace—and am doomed to drag on my wretched existence in this garret. I have partaken of the dainties that came from the table of a sovereign—and, were I hungry now, a sorry crust is all that my cupboard would afford. I have listened to the musical voice of that high-born lady whose name I scarcely dare to breathe even to myself—and now the cold blast of February comes with its hoarse sound to grate upon my ears in this miserable—miserable garret! Oh! why was my destiny cast in so lowly a sphere? What has been my almost constant occupation—with some few brighter intervals—since I was twelve years old? A pot-boy—a low, degraded pot-boy: the servant of servants—the slave of slaves—forced to come and go at the beck and call of the veriest street-sweeper that frequented the tap-room! Ah! my God—when I think of all this humiliation, I feel that my blood boils even up to my very brain—my eyes and cheeks appear to be upon fire—I seem as if my senses were leaving me!"

And, as he spoke, he clenched his fists and ground his teeth together with a ferocious bitterness, which indicated the fearfully morbid condition of his mind.

For he was enraged against fortune who had made him poor and humble—against the world for keeping him so—and against royalty and aristocracy for being so much happier and so incomparably more blessed than the section of society to which he belonged.

And in his vanity—for his soaring disposition made him vain—he conceived that he possessed elements of greatness, which the world, with a wilful blindness, would not see; or which adverse circumstances would not suffer to develop themselves.

He deemed himself more persecuted than others moving in the same sphere: his restless, diseased, and excited mind, had conjured up a thousand evils to which he thought himself the marked—the special prey.

He had seen, in his visits to the palace, so much of the highest eminence of luxury, pleasure, happiness, and indolent enjoyment, that he looked around with horror and affright when he found himself hurled back again into the lowest depths of obscurity, privation, and cheerlessness of life.

He had at intervals feasted his eyes so greedily with all the fascination, the glitter, the gorgeousness, the splendour, the ease, and the voluptuousness, of the Court, that he could not endure the contemplation of the fearful contrast which was afforded by the every-day and familiar scenes of starvation, penury, misery, and ineffectual toil that marked the existence of the people.

The moral condition of Henry Holford was a striking proof of the daring flights of which the human mind is capable. On the very first occasion of his visit to the palace, he had allowed himself to be carried away by all the wildest emotions and the strangest impressions that were produced by the novelty of what he then saw and heard. Royalty had been ever associated, in his vulgar conception, with something grand and handsome in man, and something wonderfully beautiful in woman. Thus, when he first saw the Queen, he was prepared to admire her:—he admired her accordingly; and that feeling increased to a degree the insolence of which at times overawed and terrified even himself.

By another wayward inclination of his unhealthy but enthusiastic mind, he had from the first been prepared to dislike the Prince; and this feeling increased in violence with those circumstances which each successive visit to the royal abode developed. At length—as if his evil destiny must infallibly hurry him on to some appalling catastrophe—he was discovered by the Prince in the detestable condition of an eaves-dropper, and was ignominiously driven forth from that dwelling where his mind had gradually collected the elements of a most unnatural excitement.

He knew that any attempt to repeat his visits would be frustrated by the precautions which were certain to have been adopted to prevent future intrusions of a like nature; and he now felt precisely as one who is compelled suddenly to abandon a habit to which he had become wedded. Strange as it may appear, the morbid excitement attendant upon those visits to the palace was as necessary to Holford's mental happiness as tobacco, opium, snuff, or strong liquors are to so many millions of individuals.

With a person in such a state of mind, the first impulse was bitter hatred against the one who had deprived him of a source of pleasurable excitement; and in that vengeful feeling were absorbed all those rational reflections which would have convinced him that his own insolent intrusion—his own unpardonable conduct—had provoked the treatment he had received. He never paused to ask himself by what right he had entered the palace and played the ignoble part of a listener to private conversation and a spy upon the hallowed sanctity of domestic life:—the dominant idea in his mind was his ignominious expulsion.

"Fate has now filled my cup of bitterness to the brim," he would say to himself; "and all that remains for me to do is to avenge myself on him whom my destiny has made the instrument of this crowning degradation."

By degrees the mind of that young man found its gloomy broodings upon vengeance associating themselves with other sentiments. He gradually blended this idea of revenge with the ardent desire of breaking those trammels which kept his name imprisoned in the silent cavern of obscurity. The two sentiments at length united in his imagination; and his pulse beat quickly—and his eyes flashed fire, when he surveyed the possibility of gratifying his thirst for vengeance and suddenly rendering his name notorious at the same moment, and by one desperate—fearful deed!

The reader cannot now be at a loss to comprehend how this wretchedly mistaken young man was brought to study the history of those regicides who have gained an infamous renown in the annals of nations.

And as he dwelt with an insane enthusiasm upon those narratives, the feeling of admiration—nay, adoration—which he had once experienced towards the Queen, was merged in the terrible longing for a diabolical notoriety that now became his predominating—his all-absorbing passion!

"Yes!" he exclaimed, as he pushed the book away from him, that night on which we have introduced the reader to his garret: "I will be talked about—my name shall be upon every tongue! Obscurity shall no longer enshroud me: its darkness is painful to my soul. I will do a deed that shall make the Kingdom ring from one end to the other with the astounding tidings:—the newspapers shall struggle with all the eagerness of competition to glean the most trivial facts concerning me;—and when the day arrives for me to appear before my judges, the great nobles and the high-born ladies of England shall crowd in the tribunal to witness the trial of the pot-boy Henry Holford!"

The act on which the young man was now resolved, appeared not to him in its real light as an atrocious crime—a damnable deed that would arouse a yell of execration from one end of the land to the other:—it seemed, on the contrary, a glorious achievement of which he would have reason to be proud.

Alas! how strangely constituted is the human mind, which, in any state of being, could cherish such monstrous delusions—such fatal aspirations!

But is there no blame to be attached to society for this development of ideas so morbid even on the part of one single individual? is there nothing in the constitution of that society which gives encouragement, as it were, to those detestable sentiments?

Let us see.

Enough has been said in the more serious and reasoning parts of this work to prove that society is in a vitiated—a false—and an artificial condition. The poor are too poor, and the rich too rich: the obscure are too low, and the exalted too high. The upper classes alone have opportunities of signalising themselves: the industrious millions have no chance of rising in the State. Interest procures rank in the Navy—money buys promotion in the Army—and interest and money united obtain seats in the Legislative Assembly. Interest and money, then, remain to the exclusive few: the millions have neither—nor are they even stimulated by a national system of Education. An aristocrat of common abilities may rise to eminence in some department of the State, with but little trouble: but a son of toil, however vast his natural talents, has not a single chance of starting from obscurity through the medium of their proper development.

This is true: and we defy the most subtle reasoner on behalf of the oligarchy to refute those positions.

Now, such being the case,—with a dominant aristocracy on one hand, and the oppressed millions on the other,—is it not evident that every now and then some member of the latter class will brood upon the vast, the astounding contrast until feelings of a deplorably morbid nature become excited in his mind? How could it be otherwise? Ireland, with its agrarian outrages and its frequent instances of assassination, proves the fact. England, with its incendiary fires in periods of deep distress, affords additional corroboration.

We deplore that such should be the case; and not for a moment do we advocate such means of vindicating just rights against the usurpers thereof.

But if these instances of outbreaking revenge—if these ebullitions of indomitable resentment do now and then occur, no small portion of the blame must be charged against that aristocracy which maintains itself on an eminence so immeasurably above the depths in which the masses are compelled to languish. And when the poor creature who is goaded to desperation, does strike—can we wonder if, in the madness of his rage, he deals his blows indiscriminately, or against an innocent person? He may even aim at royalty itself—although, in every really constitutional country, the sovereign is little more than a mere puppet, the Prime Minister of the day being the virtual ruler of the nation.

From what we have said, it is easy to perceive how the contemplation of the splendid luxury of the palace first unhinged and unsettled the mind of Henry Holford.

We must now go a step farther.

Society manifests a most inordinate and pernicious curiosity in respect to criminals who perpetrate an unusual offence. This curiosity passes all legitimate bounds. The newspapers, with a natural attention to pecuniary interests, obey the cravings of that feeling by serving up the most highly-seasoned food to suit the peculiar appetite. Portraits of the guilty one are exhibited in every picture-shop. Apposite allusions are introduced into dramatic representations; and even the presiding genius of a "Punch and Judy show" mingles the subject with his humorous outpourings. If the criminal make an attack upon royalty, he goes through the important but mysterious ordeal of an examination at the Home Office, whence the reporters for the press are excluded. On his appearance at Bow Street, the magisterial tribunal is "crowded with gentlemen and ladies, who were accommodated with seats upon the bench," as the journals say; and when the finale comes at the Central Criminal Court, the fees for admission to the gallery rise to two or three guineas for each individual.

Thus the criminal is made into a hero!

Now is not all this sufficient to turn the head of one whose mind is already partially unhinged?

Society, then, is to blame in many ways for the development of those morbid feelings which, in the present instance, actuated Henry Holford in his desperate purpose.

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Footnote 35:

From Evans' and Forbes' "Geographical Grammar." Edition of 1814.

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