Then Sir Charles took an affectionate leave of Dr. Suaby, and made him promise to visit him at Huntercombe Hall.

Then he got into the fly, and sat between two keepers, and the fly drove off.

Sir Charles at that moment needed all his fortitude. The least mistake or miscalculation on the part of his friends, and what might not be the result to him?

As the fly went slowly through the gate he saw on his right hand a light carriage and pair moving up; but was it coming after him, or only bringing visitors to the asylum?

The fly rolled on; even his stout heart began to quake. It rolled and rolled. Sir Charles could stand it no longer. He tried to look out of the window to see if the carriage was following.

One of the keepers pulled him in roughly. "Come, none of that, sir?"

"You insolent scoundrel!" said Sir Charles.

"Ay, ay," said the man; "we'll see about that when we get you home."

Then Sir Charles saw he had offended a vindictive blackguard.

He sank back in his seat, and a cold chill crept over him.

Just then they passed a little clump of fir-trees.

In a moment there rushed out of these trees a number of men in crape masks, stopped the horses, surrounded the carriage, and opened it with brandishing of bludgeons and life-preservers, and pointing of guns.



CHAPTER XXX.

A BIG man, who seemed the leader, fired a volley of ferocious oaths at the keepers, and threatened to send them to hell that moment if they did not instantly deliver up that gentleman.

The keepers were thoroughly terrified, and roared for mercy.

"Hand him out here, you scoundrels!"

"Yes! yes! Man alive, we are not resisting: what is the use?"

"Hand down his luggage."

It was done all in a flutter.

"Now get in again; turn your horses' heads the other way, and don't come back for an hour. You with your guns take stations in those trees, and shoot them dead if they are back before their time."

These threats were interlarded with horrible oaths, and Burdoch's party were glad to get off, and they drove away quickly in the direction indicated.

However, as soon as they got over their first surprise they began to smell a hoax; and, instead of an hour, it was scarcely twenty minutes when they came back.

But meantime the supers were paid liberally among the fir-trees by Vandeleur, pocketed their crape, flung their dummy guns into a cornfield, dispersed in different directions, and left no trace.

But Sir Charles was not detained for that: the moment he was recaptured he and his luggage were whisked off in the other carriage, and, with Rolfe and his secretary, dashed round the town, avoiding the main street, to a railway eight miles off, at a pace almost defying pursuit. Not that they dreaded it: they had numbers, arms, and a firm determination to fight if necessary, and also three tongues to tell the truth, instead of one.

At one in the morning they were in London. They slept at Mr. Rolfe's house; and before breakfast Mr. Rolfe's secretary was sent to secure a couple of prize-fighters to attend upon Sir Charles till further notice. They were furnished with a written paper explaining the case briefly, and were instructed to hit first and talk afterward should a recapture be attempted. Should a crowd collect, they were to produce the letter. These measures were to provide against his recapture under the statute, which allows an alleged lunatic to be retaken upon the old certificates for fourteen days after his escape from confinement, but for no longer.

Money is a good friend in such contingencies as these.

Sir Charles started directly after breakfast to find his wife and child. The faithful pugilists followed at his heels in another cab.

Neither Sir Charles nor Mr. Rolfe knew Lady Bassett's address: it was the medical man who had written: but that did not much matter; Sir Charles was sure to learn his wife's address from Mr. Boddington. He called on that gentleman at 17 Upper Gloucester Place. Mr. Boddington had just taken his wife down to Margate for her health; had only been gone half an hour.

This was truly irritating and annoying. Apparently Sir Charles must wait that gentleman's return. He wrote a line, begging Mr. Boddington to send him Lady Bassett's address in a cab immediately on his return.

He told Mr. Rolfe this; and then for the first time let out that his wife's not writing to him at the asylum had surprised and alarmed him; he was on thorns.

Mr. Boddington returned in the middle of the night, and at breakfast time Sir Charles had a note to say Lady Bassett was at 119 Gloucester Place, Portman Square.

Sir Charles bolted a mouthful or two of breakfast, and then dashed off in a hansom to 119 Gloucester Place.

There was a bill in the window, "To be let, furnished. Apply to Parker & Ellis."

He knocked at the door. Nobody came. Knocked again. A lugubrious female opened the door.

"Lady Bassett?"

"Don't live here, sir. House to be let."

Sir Charles went to Mr. Boddington and told him.

Mr. Boddington said he thought he could not be mistaken; but he would look at his address-book. He did, and said it was certainly 119 Gloucester Place; "Perhaps she has left," said he. "She was very healthy—an excellent patient. But I should not have advised her to move for a day or two more."

Sir Charles was sore puzzled. He dashed off to the agents, Parker & Ellis.

They said, Yes; the house was Lady Bassett's for a few months. They were instructed to let it.

"When did she leave? I am her husband, and we have missed each other somehow."

The clerk interfered, and said Lady Bassett had brought the keys in her carriage yesterday.

Sir Charles groaned with vexation and annoyance.

"Did she give you no address?"

"Yes, sir. Huntercombe Hall."

"I mean no address in London?"

"No, sir; none."

Sir Charles was now truly perplexed and distressed, and all manner of strange ideas came into his head. He did not know what to do, but he could not bear to do nothing, so he drove to the Times office and advertised, requesting Lady Bassett to send her present address to Mr. Rolfe.

At night he talked this strange business over with Mr. Rolfe.

That gentleman thought she must have gone to Huntercombe; but by the last post a letter came from Suaby, inclosing one from Lady Bassett to her husband.



"119 Gloucester Place.

"DARLING—The air here is not good for baby, and I cannot sleep for the noise. We think of creeping toward home to-morrow, in an easy carriage. Pray God you may soon meet us at dear Huntercombe. Our first journey will be to that dear old comfortable inn at Winterfield, where you and I were so happy, but not happier, dearest darling, than we shall soon be again, I hope.

"Your devoted wife.

"BELLA BASSETT.

"My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Rolfe for all he is doing."



Sir Charles wanted to start that night for Winterfield, but Rolfe persuaded him not. "And mind," said he, "the faithful pugilists must go with you."

The morning's post rendered that needless. It brought another letter from Suaby, informing Mr. Rolfe that the Commissioners had positively discharged Sir Charles, and notified the discharge to Richard Bassett.

Sir Charles took leave of Mr. Rolfe as of a man who was to be his bosom friend for life, and proceeded to hunt his wife.

She had left Winterfield; but he followed her like a stanch hound, and when he stopped at a certain inn, some twenty miles from Huntercombe, a window opened, there was a strange loving scream; he looked up, and saw his wife's radiant face, and her figure ready to fly down to him. He rushed upstairs, into the right room by some mighty instinct, and held her, panting and crying for joy, in his arms.

That moment almost compensated what each had suffered.



CHAPTER XXXI.

So full was the joy of this loving pair that, for a long time, they sat rocking in each other's arms, and thought of nothing but their sorrows past, and the sea of bliss they were floating on.

But presently Sir Charles glanced round for a moment. Swift to interpret his every look, Lady Bassett rose, took two steps, came back and printed a kiss on his forehead, and then went to a door and opened it.

"Mrs. Millar!" said she, with one of those tones by which these ladies impregnate with meaning a word that has none at all; and then she came back to her husband.

Soon a buxom woman of forty appeared, carrying a biggish bank of linen and lace, with a little face in the middle. The good woman held it up to Sir Charles, and he felt something novel stir inside him. He looked at the little thing with a vast yearning of love, with pride, and a good deal of curiosity; and then turned smiling to his wife. She had watched him furtively but keenly, and her eyes were brimming over. He kissed the little thing, and blessed it, and then took his wife's hands, and kissed her wet eyes, and made her stand and look at baby with him, hand in hand. It was a pretty picture.

The buxom woman swelled her feathers, as simple women do when they exhibit a treasure of this sort; she lifted the little mite slowly up and down, and said, "Oh, you Beauty!" and then went off into various inarticulate sounds, which I recommend to the particular study of the new philosophers: they cannot have been invented after speech; that would be retrogression; they must be the vocal remains of that hairy, sharp-eared quadruped, our Progenitor, who by accident discovered language, and so turned Biped, and went ahead of all the other hairy quadrupeds, whose ears were too long or not sharp enough to stumble upon language.

Under cover of these primeval sounds Lady Bassett drew her husband a little apart, and looking in his face with piteous wistfulness, said, "You won't mind Richard Bassett and his baby now?"

"Not I."

"You will never have another fit while you live?"

"I promise."

"You will always be happy?"

"I must be an ungrateful scoundrel else, my dear."

"Then baby is our best friend. Oh, you little angel!" And she pounced on the mite, and kissed it far harder than Sir Charles had. Heaven knows what these gentle creatures are so rough with their mouths to children, but so it is.

And now how can a mere male relate all the pretty childish things that were done and said to baby, and of baby, before the inevitable squalling began, and baby was taken away to be consoled by another of his subjects.

Sir Charles and Lady Bassett had a thousand things to tell each other, to murmur in each other's ears, sitting lovingly close to each other.

But when all was quiet, and everybody else was in bed, Lady Bassett plucked up courage and said, "Charles, I am not quite happy. There is one thing wanting." And then she hid her face in her hands and blushed. "I cannot nurse him."

"Never mind," said Sir Charles kindly.

"You forgive me?"

"Forgive you, my poor girl! Why, is that a crime?"

"It leads to so many things. You don't know what a plague a nurse is, and makes one jealous."

"Well, but it is only for a time. Come, Bella, this is a little peevish. Don't let us be ungrateful to Heaven. As for me, while you and our child live, I am proof against much greater misfortunes than that."

Then Lady Bassett cleared up, and the subject dropped.

But it was renewed next morning in a more definite form.

Sir Charles rose early; and in the pride and joy of his heart, and not quite without an eye to triumphing over his mortal enemy and his cold friends, sent a mounted messenger with orders to his servants to prepare for his immediate reception, and to send out his landau and four horses to the "Rose," at Staveleigh, half-way between Huntercombe and the place where he now was. Lady Bassett had announced herself able for the journey.

After breakfast he asked her rather suddenly whether Mrs. Millar was not rather an elderly woman to select for a nurse. "I thought people got a young woman for that office."

"Oh," said Lady Bassett, "why, Mrs. Millar is not the nurse. Of course nurse is young and healthy, and from the country, and the best I could have in every way for baby. But yet—oh, Charles, I hope you will not be angry—who do you think nurse is? It is Mary Gosport—Mary Wells that was."

Sir Charles was a little staggered. He put this and that together, and said, "Why, she must have been playing the fool, then?"

"Hush! not so loud, dear. She is a married woman now, and her husband gone to sea, and her child dead. Most wet-nurses have a child of their own; and don't you think they must hate the stranger's child that parts them from their own? Now baby is a comfort to Mary. And the wet-nurse is always a tyrant; and I thought, as this one has got into a habit of obeying me, she might be more manageable; and then as to her having been imprudent, I know many ladies who have been obliged to shut their eyes a little. Why, consider, Charles, would good wives and good mothers leave their own children to nurse a stranger's? Would their husbands let them? And I thought," said she, piteously, "we were so fortunate to get a young, healthy girl, imprudent but not vicious, whose fault had been covered by marriage, and then so attached to us both as she is, poor thing!"

Sir Charles was in no humor to make mountains of mole-hills. "Why, my dear Bella," said he, "after all, this is your department, not mine."

"Yes, but unless I please you in every department there is no happiness for me."

"But you know you please me in everything; and the more I look into anything, the wiser I always think you. You have chosen the best wet-nurse possible. Send her to me."

Lady Bassett hesitated. "You will be kind to her. You know the consequence if anything happens to make her fret. Baby will suffer for it."

"Oh, I know. Catch me offending this she potentate till he is weaned. Dress for the journey, my dear, and send nurse to me."

Lady Bassett went into the next room, and after a long time Mary came to Sir Charles with baby in her arms.

Mary had lost for a time some of her ruddy color, but her skin was clearer, and somehow her face was softened. She looked really a beautiful and attractive young woman.

She courtesied to Sir Charles, and then took a good look at him.

"Well, nurse," said he, cheerfully, "here we are back again, both of us."

"That we be, sir." And she showed her white teeth in a broad smile. "La, sir, you be a sight for sore eyes. How well you do look, to be sure!"

"Thank you, Mary. I never was better in my life. You look pretty well too; only a little pale; paler than Lady Bassett does."

"I give my color to the child," said Mary, simply.

She did not know she had said anything poetic; but Sir Charles was so touched and pleased with her answer that he gave her a five-pound note on the spot; and he said, "We'll bring your color back if beef and beer and kindness can do it."

"I ain't afeard o' that, sir; and I'll arn it. 'Tis a lovely boy, sir, and your very image."

Inspection followed; and something or other offended young master; he began to cackle. But this nurse did not take him away, as Mrs. Millar had. She just sat down with him and nursed him openly, with rustic composure and simplicity.

Sir Charles leaned his arm on the mantel-piece, and eyed the pair; for all this was a new world of feeling to him. His paid servant seemed to him to be playing the mother to his child. Somehow it gave him a strange twinge, a sort of vicarious jealousy: he felt for his Bella. But I think his own paternal pride, in all its freshness, was hurt a little too.

At last he shrugged his shoulders, and was going out of the room, with a hint to Mary that she must wrap herself up, for it would be an open carriage—

"Your own carriage, sir, and horses?"

"Certainly."

"And do all the folk know as we are coming?"

Sir Charles laughed. "Most likely. Gossip is not dead at Huntercombe, I dare say."

Nurse's black eyes flashed. "All the village will be out. I hope he will see us ride in, the black-hearted villain!"

Sir Charles was too proud to let her draw him into that topic; he went about his business.



Lady Bassett's carriage, duly packed, came round, and Lady Bassett was ready soon afterward; so was Mrs. Millar; so was baby, imbedded now in a nest of lawn and lace and white fur. They had to wait for nurse. Lady Bassett explained sotto voce to her husband, "Just at the last moment she was seized with a desire to wear a silk gown I gave her. I argued with her, but she only pouted. I was afraid for baby. It is very hard upon you, dear."

Her face and voice were so piteous that Sir Charles burst out laughing.

"We must take the bitter along with the sweet. Don't you think the sweet rather predominates at present?"

Lady Bassett explored his face with all her eyes. "My darling is happy now; trifles cannot put him out."

"I doubt if anything could shake me while I have you and our child. As for that jade keeping us all waiting while she dons silk attire, it is simply delicious. I wish Rolfe was here, that is all. Ha! ha! ha!"

Mrs. Gosport appeared at last in a purple silk gown, and marched to the carriage without the slightest sign of the discomfort she really felt; but that was no wonder, belonging, as she did, to a sex which can walk not only smiling but jauntily, though dead lame on stilts, as you may see any day in Regent Street.

Sir Charles, with mock gravity, ushered King Baby and his attendants in first, then Lady Bassett, and got in last himself.

Before they had gone a mile Nurse No. 1 handed the child over to Nurse No. 2 with a lofty condescension, as who should say, "You suffice for porterage; I, the superior artist, reserve myself for emergencies." No. 2 received the invaluable bundle with meek complacency.

By-and-by Nurse 1 got fidgety, and kept changing her position.

"What is the matter, Mary?" said Lady Bassett, kindly. "Is the dress too tight?"

"No, no, my lady," said Mary, sharply; "the gownd's all right." And then she was quiet a little.

But she began again; and then Lady Bassett whispered Sir Charles, "I think she wants to sit forward: may I?"

"Certainly not. I'll change with her. Here, Mary, try this side. We shall have more room in the landau; it is double, with wide seats."

Mary was gratified, and amused herself looking out of the window. Indeed, she was quiet for nearly half an hour. At the expiration of that period the fit took her again. She beckoned haughtily for baby, "which did come at her command," as the song says. She got tired of baby, or something, and handed him back again.

Presently she was discovered to be crying.

General consternation! Universal but vague consolation!

Lady Bassett looked an inquiry at Mrs. Millar. Mrs. Millar looked back assent. Lady Bassett assumed the command, and took off Mary's shawl.

"Yes," said she to Mrs. Millar. "Now, Mary, be good; it is too tight."

Thus urged, the idiot contracted herself by a mighty effort, while Lady Bassett attacked the fastenings, and, with infinite difficulty, they unhooked three bottom hooks. The fierce burst open that followed, and the awful chasm, showed what gigantic strength vanity can command, and how savagely abuse it to maltreat nature.

Lady Bassett loosened the stays too, and a deep sigh of relief told the truth, which the lying tongue had denied, as it always does whenever the same question is put.

The shawl was replaced, and comfort gained till they entered the town of Staveleigh.

Nurse instantly exchanged places with Sir Charles, and took the child again. He was her banner in all public places.

When they came up to the inn they were greeted with loud hurrahs. It was market-day. The town was full of Sir Charles's tenants and other farmers. His return had got wind, and every farmer under fifty had resolved to ride with him into Huntercombe.

When five or six, all shouting together, intimated this to Sir Charles, he sent one of his people to order the butchers out to Huntercombe with joints a score, and then to gallop on with a note to his housekeeper and butler. "For those that ride so far with me must sup with me," said he; a sentiment that was much approved.

He took Lady Bassett and the women upstairs and rested them about an hour; and then they started for Huntercombe, followed by some thirty farmers and a dozen towns-people, who had a mind for a lark and to sup at Huntercombe Hall for once.

The ride was delightful; the carriage bowled swiftly along over a smooth road, with often turf at the side; and that enabled the young farmers to canter alongside without dusting the carriage party. Every man on horseback they overtook joined them; some they met turned back with them, and these were rewarded with loud cheers. Every eye in the carriage glittered, and every cheek was more or less flushed by this uproarious sympathy so gallantly shown, and the very thunder of so many horses' feet, each carrying a friend, was very exciting and glorious. Why, before they got to the village they had fourscore horsemen at their backs.

As they got close to the village Mary Gosport held out her arms for young master: this was not the time to forego her importance.

The church-bells rang out a clashing peal, the cavalcade clattered into the village. Everybody was out to cheer, and at sight of baby the women's voices were as loud as the men's. Old pensioners of the house were out bareheaded; one, with hair white as snow, was down on his knees praying a blessing on them.

Lady Bassett began to cry softly; Sir Charles, a little pale, but firm as a rock; both bowing right and left, like royal personages; and well they might; every house in the village belonged to them but one.

On approaching that one Mary Gosport turned her head round, and shot a. glance round out of the tail of her eye. Ay, there was Richard Bassett, pale and gloomy, half-hid behind a tree at his gate: but Hate's quick eye discerned him: at the moment of passing she suddenly lifted the child high, and showed it him, pretending to show it to the crowd: but her eye told the tale; for, with that act of fierce hatred and cunning triumph, those black orbs shot a colored gleam like a furious leopardess's.

A roar of cheers burst from the crowd at that inspired gesture of a woman, whose face and eyes seemed on fire: Lady Bassett turned pale.

The next moment they passed their own gate, and dashed up to the hall steps of Huntercombe.

Sir Charles sent Lady Bassett to her room for the night. She walked through a row of ducking servants, bowing and smiling like a gentle goddess.

Mary Gosport, afraid to march in a long dress with the child, for fear of accidents, handed him superbly to Millar and strutted haughtily after her mistress, nodding patronage. Her follower, the meek Millar, stopped often to show the heir right and left, with simple geniality and kindness.

Sir Charles stood on the hall steps, and invited all to come in and take pot-luck.

Already spits were turning before great fires; a rump of beef, legs of pork, and pease-puddings boiling in one copper; turkeys and fowls in another; joints and pies baking in the great brick ovens; barrels of beer on tap, and magnums of champagne and port marching steadily up from the cellars, and forming in line and square upon sideboards and tables.

Supper was laid in the hall, the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the great kitchen.

Poor villagers trickled in: no man or woman was denied; it was open house that night, as it had been four hundred years ago.



CHAPTER XXXII.

WHEN Sharpe's clerk retired, after serving that writ on Bassett, Bassett went to Wheeler and treated it as a jest. But Wheeler looked puzzled, and Bassett himself, on second thoughts, said he should like advice of counsel. Accordingly they both went up to London to a solicitor, and obtained an interview with a counsel learned in the law. He heard their story, and said, "The question is, can you convince a jury he was insane at the time?"

"But he can't get into court," said Bassett. "I won't let him."

"Oh, the court will make you produce him."

"But I thought an insane person was civiliter mortuus, and couldn't sue."

"So he is; but this man is not insane in law. Shutting up a man on certificates is merely a preliminary step to a fair trial by his peers whether he is insane or not. Take the parallel case of a felon. A magistrate commits him for trial, and generally on better evidence than medical certificates; but that does not make the man a felon, or disentitle him to a trial by his peers; on the contrary, it entitles him to a trial, and he could get Parliament to interfere if he was not brought to trial. This plaintiff simply does what, he will say, you ought to have done; he tries himself; if he tries you at the same time, that is your fault. If he is insane now, fight. If he is not, I advise you to discharge him on the instant, and then compound."

Wheeler said he was afraid the plaintiff was too vindictive to come to terms.

"Well, then, you can show you discharged him the moment you had reason to think he was cured, and you must prove he was insane when you incarcerated him; but I warn you it will be uphill work if he is sane now; the jury will be apt to go by what they see."

Bassett and Wheeler retired; the latter did not presume to differ; but Bassett was dissatisfied and irritated.

"That fellow would only see the plaintiff's side," said he. "The fool forgets there is an Act of Parliament, and that we have complied with its provisions to a T."

"Then why did you not ask his construction of the Act?" suggested Wheeler.

"Because I don't want his construction. I've read it, and it is plain enough to anybody but a fool. Well, I have consulted counsel, to please you; and now I'll go my own way, to please myself."

He went to Burdoch, and struck a bargain, and Sir Charles was to be shifted to Burdoch's asylum, and nobody allowed to see him there, etc., etc.; the old system, in short, than which no better has as yet been devised for perpetuating, or even causing, mental aberration.

Rolfe baffled this, as described, and Bassett was literally stunned. He now saw that Sir Charles had an ally full of resources and resolution. Who could it be? He began to tremble. He complained to the police, and set them to discover who had thus openly and audaciously violated the Act of Parliament, and then he went and threatened Dr. Suaby.

But Rolfe and Sir Charles, who loved Suaby as he deserved, had provided against that; they had not let the doctor into their secret. He therefore said, with perfect truth, that he had no hand in the matter, and that Sir Charles, being bound upon his honor not to escape from Bellevue, would be in the asylum still if Mr. Bassett had not taken him out, and invoked brute force, in the shape of Burdoch. "Well, sir," said he, "it seems they have shown you two can play at that game." And so bade him good afternoon very civilly.

Bassett went home sickened. He remained sullen and torpid for a day or two; then he wrote to Burdoch to send to London and try and recapture Sir Charles.

But next day he revoked his instructions, for he got a letter from the Commissioners of Lunacy, announcing the authoritative discharge of Sir Charles, on the strong representation of Dr. Suaby and other competent persons.

That settled the matter, and the poor cousin had kept the rich cousin three months at his own expense, with no solid advantage, but the prospect of a lawsuit.

Sharpe, spurred by Rolfe, gave him no breathing time. With the utmost expedition the Declaration in Bassett v. Bassett followed the writ.

It was short, simple, and in three counts.

"For violently seizing and confining the plaintiff in a certain place, on a false pretense that he was insane.

"For detaining him in spite of evidence that he was not insane.

"For endeavoring to remove him to another place, with a certain sinister motive there specified.

"By which several acts the plaintiff had suffered in his health and his worldly affairs, and had endured great agony of mind."

And the plaintiff claimed damages, ten thousand pounds.

Bassett sent over for his friend Wheeler, and showed him the new document with no little consternation.

But their discussion of it was speedily interrupted by the clashing of triumphant bells and distant shouting.

They ran out to see what it was. Bassett, half suspecting, hung back; but Mary Gosport's keen eye detected him, and she held up the heir to him, with hate and triumph blazing in her face.

He crept into his own house and sank into a chair foudroye.

Wheeler, however, roused him to a necessary effort, and next day they took the Declaration to counsel, to settle their defense in due form.

"What is this?" said the learned gentleman. "Three counts! Why, I advised you to discharge him at once."

"Yes," said Wheeler, "and excellent advice it was. But my client—"

"Preferred to go his own road. And now I am to cure the error I did what I could to prevent."

"I dare say, sir, it is not the first time in your experience."

"Not by a great many. Clients, in general, have a great contempt for the notion that prevention is better than cure."

"He can't hurt me," said Bassett, impatiently. "He was separately examined by two doctors, and all the provisions of the statute exactly complied with."

"But that is no defense to this plaint. The statute forbids you to imprison an insane person without certain precautions; but it does not give you a right, under any circumstances, to imprison a sane man. That was decided in Butcher v. Butcher. The defense you rely on was pleaded as a second plea, and the plaintiff demurred to it directly. The question was argued before the full court, and the judges, led by the first lawyer of the age, decided unanimously that the provisions of the statute did not affect sane Englishmen and their rights under the common law. They ordered the plea to be struck off the record, and the case was reduced to a simple issue of sane or insane. Butcher v. Butcher governs all these cases. Can you prove him insane? If not, you had better compound on any terms. In Butcher's case the jury gave 3,000 pounds, and the plaintiff was a man of very inferior position to Sir Charles Bassett. Besides, the defendant, Butcher, had not persisted against evidence, as you have. They will award 5,000 pounds at least in this case."

He took down a volume of reports, and showed them the case he had cited; and, on reading the unanimous decision of the judges, and the learning by which they were supported, Wheeler said at once: "Mr. Bassett, we might as well try to knock down St. Paul's with our heads as to go against this decision."

They then settled to put in a single plea, that Sir Charles was insane at the time of his capture.

This done, to gain time, Wheeler called on Sharpe, and, after several conferences, got the case compounded by an apology, a solemn retractation in writing, and the payment of four thousand pounds; his counsel assured him his client was very lucky to get off so cheap.

Bassett paid the money, with the assistance of his wife's father: but it was a sickener; it broke his spirit, and even injured his health for some time.

Sir Charles improved the village with the money, and gave a copy-hold tenement to each of the men Bassett had got imprisoned. So they and their sons and their grandsons lived rent free—no, now I think of it, they had to pay four pence a year to the Lord of the Manor.



Defeated at every point, and at last punished severely, Richard Bassett fell into a deep dejection and solitary brooding of a sort very dangerous to the reason. He would not go out-of-doors to give his enemies a triumph. He used to sit by the fire and mutter, "Blow upon blow, blow upon blow. My poor boy will never be lord of Huntercombe now!" and so on.

Wheeler pitied him, but could not rouse him. At last a person for whose narrow attainments and simplicity he had a profound, though, to do him justice, a civil contempt, ventured to his rescue. Mrs. Bassett went crying to her father, and told him she feared the worst if Richard's mind could not be diverted from the Huntercombe estate and his hatred of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, which had been the great misfortune of her life and of his own, but nothing would ever eradicate it. Richard had great abilities; was a linguist, a wonderful accountant; could her dear father find him some profitable employment to divert his thoughts?

"What! all in a moment?" said the old man. "Then I shall have to buy it; and if I go on like this I shall not have much to leave you."

Having delivered this objection, he went up to London, and, having many friends in the City, and laying himself open to proposals, he got scent at last of a new insurance company that proposed also to deal in reversions, especially to entailed estates. By prompt purchase of shares in Bassett's name, and introducing Bassett himself, who, by special study, had a vast acquaintance with entailed estates, and a genius for arithmetical calculation, he managed somehow to get him into the direction, with a stipend, and a commission on all business he might introduce to the office.

Bassett yielded sullenly, and now divided his time between London and the country.

Wheeler worked with him on a share of commission, and they made some money between them.

After the bitter lesson he had received Bassett vowed to himself he never would attack Sir Charles again unless he was sure of victory. For all this he hated him and Lady Bassett worse than ever, hated them to the death.

He never moved a finger down at Huntercombe, nor said a word; but in London he employed a private inquirer to find out where Lady Bassett had lived at the time of her confinement, and whether any clergyman had visited her.

The private inquirer could find out nothing, and Bassett, comparing his advertisements with his performance, dismissed him for a humbug.

But the office brought him into contact with a great many medical men, one after another. He used to say to each stranger, with an insidious smile, "I think you once attended my cousin—Lady Bassett."



CHAPTER XXXIII.

SIR CHARLES and Lady Bassett, relieved of their cousin's active enmity, led a quiet life, and one that no longer furnished striking incidents.

But dramatic incident is not everything: character and feeling show themselves in things that will not make pictures. Now it was precisely during this reposeful period that three personages of this story exhibited fresh traits of feeling, and also of character.

To begin with Sir Charles Bassett. He came back from the asylum much altered in body and mind. Stopping his cigars had improved his stomach; working in the garden had increased his muscular power, and his cheeks were healthy, and a little sunburned, instead of sallow. His mind was also improved: contemplation of insane persons had set him by a natural recoil to study self-control. He had returned a philosopher. No small thing could irritate him now. So far his character was elevated.

Lady Bassett was much the same as before, except a certain restlessness. She wanted to be told every day, or twice a day, that her husband was happy; and, although he was visibly so, yet, as he was quiet over it, she used to be always asking him if he was happy. This the reader must interpret as he pleases.

Mary Gosport gave herself airs. Respectful to her master and mistress, but not so tolerant of chaff in the kitchen as she used to be. Made an example of one girl, who threw a doubt on her marriage. Complained to Lady Bassett, affected to fret, and the girl was dismissed.

She turned singer. She had always sung psalms in church, but never a profane note in the house. Now she took to singing over her nursling; she had a voice of prodigious power and mellowness, and, provided she was not asked, would sing lullabies and nursery rhymes from another county that ravished the hearer. Horsemen have been known to stop in the road to hear her sing through an open window of Huntercombe, two hundred yards off.

Old Mr. Meyrick, a farmer well-to-do, fascinated by Mary Gosport's singing, asked her to be his housekeeper when she should have done nursing her charge.

She laughed in his face.

A fanatic who was staying with Sir Charles Bassett offered her three years' education in Do, Ra, Mi, Fa, preparatory to singing at the opera.

Declined without thanks.

Mr. Drake, after hovering shyly, at last found courage to reproach her for deserting him and marrying a sailor.

"Teach you not to shilly-shally," said she. "Beauty won't go a-begging. Mind you look sharper next time."

This dialogue, being held in the kitchen, gave the women some amusement at the young farmer's expense.

One day Mr. Richard Bassett, from motives of pure affection no doubt, not curiosity, desired mightily to inspect Mr. Bassett, aged eight months and two days.

So, in his usual wily way, he wrote to Mrs. Gosport, asking her, for old acquaintance' sake, to meet him in the meadow at the end of the lawn. This meadow belonged to Sir Charles, but Richard Bassett had a right of way through it, and could step into it by a postern, as Mary could by an iron gate.

He asked her to come at eleven o'clock, because at that hour he observed she walked on the lawn with her charge.

Mary Gosport came to the tryst, but without Mr. Bassett.

Richard was very polite; she cold, taciturn, observant.

At last he said, "But where's the little heir?"

She flew at him directly. "It is him you wanted, not me. Did you think I'd bring him here—for you to kill him?"

"Come, I say."

"Ay, you'd kill him if you had a chance. But you never shall. Or if you didn't kill him, you'd cast the evil-eye on him, for you are well known to have the evil-eye. No; he shall outlive thee and thine, and be lord of these here manors when thou is gone to hell, thou villain."

Mr. Richard Bassett turned pale, but did the wisest thing he could—put his hands in his pockets, and walked into his own premises, followed, however, by Mary Gosport, who stormed at him till he shut his postern in her face.

She stood there trembling for a little while, then walked away, crying.

But having a mind like running water, she was soon seated on a garden chair, singing over her nursling like a mavis: she had delivered him to Millar while she went to speak her mind to her old lover.

As for Richard Bassett, he was theory-bitten, and so turned every thing one way. To be sure, as long as the woman's glaring eyes and face distorted by passion were before him, he interpreted her words simply; but when he thought the matter over he said to himself, "The evil-eye! That is all bosh; the girl is in Lady Bassett's secrets; and I am not to see young master: some day I shall know the reason why."



Sir Charles Bassett now belonged to the tribe of clucking cocks quite as much as his cousin had ever done; only Sir Charles had the good taste to confine his clucks to his own first-floor. Here, to be sure, he richly indemnified himself for his self-denial abroad. He sat for hours at a time watching the boy on the ground at his knee, or in his nurse's arms.

And while he watched the infant with undisguised delight, Lady Bassett would watch him with a sort of furtive and timid complacency.

Yet at times she suffered from twinges of jealousy—a new complaint with her.

I think I have mentioned that Sir Charles, at first, was annoyed at seeing his son and heir nursed by a woman of low condition. Well, he got over that feeling by degrees, and, as soon as he did get over it, his sentiments took quite an opposite turn. A woman for whom he did very little, in his opinion—since what, in Heaven's name, were a servant's wages?—he saw that woman do something great for him; saw her nourish his son and heir from her own veins; the child had no other nurture; yet the father saw him bloom and thrive, and grow surprisingly.

A weak observer, or a less enthusiastic parent, might have overlooked all this; but Sir Charles had naturally an observant eye and an analytical mind, and this had been suddenly but effectually developed by the asylum and his correspondence with Rolfe.

He watched the nurse, then, and her maternal acts with a curious and grateful eye, and a certain reverence for her power.

He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly—sang, in low, mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval barons in their cradles.

And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.

Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl, with the hardish look of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft, poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.

This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.

She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the propriety of weaning baby.

But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they were eighteen months old or so.

By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve, coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that she was the greatest baby of the two.

When the inevitable hour approached that was to dethrone her she took to reading the papers, and one day she read of a disastrous wreck, the Carbrea Castle—only seven saved out of a crew of twenty-three. She read the details carefully, and two days afterward she received a letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gosport's, in a handwriting not very unlike her own, relating the sad wreck of the Carbrea Castle, and the loss of several good sailors, James Gosport for one.

Then the house was filled with the wailing and weeping of the bereaved widow; and at last came consolers and raised doubts; but then somebody remembered to have seen the loss of that very ship in the paper. The paper was found, and the fatal truth was at once established.

Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as quickly as possible, and the widow clothed in black at Lady Bassett's expense, and everything in reason done to pet her and console her.

But she cried bitterly, and said she would throw herself into the sea and follow her husband.

Huntercombe was nowhere near the coast.

At last, however, she relented, and concluded to remain on earth as dry-nurse to Mr. Bassett.

Sir Charles did not approve this: it seemed unreasonable to turn a wet-nurse into a dry-nurse when that office was already occupied by a person her senior and more experienced.

Lady Bassett agreed with him, but shrugged her shoulders and said, "Two nurses will not hurt, and I suspect it will not be for long. Mary does not feel her husband's loss one bit."

"Surely you are mistaken. She howls loud enough."

"Too loud—much," said Lady Bassett, dryly.

Her perspicuity was not deceived. In a very short time Mr. Meyrick, unable to get her for his housekeeper, offered her marriage.

"What!" said she, "and James Gosport not dead a month?"

"Say the word now, and take your own time," said he.

"Well, I might do worse," said she.

About six weeks after this Drake came about her, and in tender tones of consolation suggested that it is much better for a pretty girl to marry one who plows the land than one who plows the sea.

"That is true," said Mary, with a sigh; "I have found it to my sorrow."

After this Drake played a bit with her, and then relented, and one evening offered her marriage, expecting her to jump eagerly at his offer.

"You be too late, young man," said she, coolly; "I'm bespoke."

"Doan't ye say that! How can ye be bespoke? Why, t'other hain't been dead four months yet."

"What o' that? This one spoke for me within a week. Why, our banns are to be cried to-morrow; come to church and hear 'em; that will learn ye not to shilly-shally so next time."

"Next time!" cried Drake, half blubbering; then, with a sudden roar, "what, be you coming to market again, arter this?"

"Like enough: he is a deal older than I be. 'Tis Mr. Meyrick, if ye must know."

Now Mr. Meyrick was well-to-do, and so Drake was taken aback.

"Mr. Meyrick!" said he, and turned suddenly respectful.

But presently a view of a rich widow flitted before his eye.

"Well," said he, "you shan't throw it in my teeth again as I speak too late. I ask you now, and no time lost."

"What! am I to stop my banns, and jilt Farmer Meyrick for thee?"

"Nay, nay. But I mean I'll marry you, if you'll marry me, as soon as ever the breath is out of that dall'd old hunks's body."

"Well, well, Will Drake," said Mary, gravely, "if I do outlive this one—and you bain't married long afore—and if you keeps in the same mind as you be now—and lets me know it in good time—I'll see about it."

She gave a flounce that made her petticoats whisk like a mare's tail, and off to the kitchen, where she related the dialogue with an appropriate reflection, the company containing several of either sex. "Dilly-Dally and Shilly-Shally, they belongs to us as women be. I hate and despise a man as can't make up his mind in half a minnut."

So the widow Gosport became Mrs. Meyrick, and lived in a farmhouse not quite a mile from the Hall.

She used often to come to the Hall, and take a peep at her lamb: this was the name she gave Mr. Bassett long after he had ceased to be a child.



About four years after the triumphant return to Huntercombe, Lady Bassett conceived a sudden coldness toward the little boy, though he was universally admired.

She concealed this sentiment from Sir Charles, but not from the female servants: and, from one to another, at last it came round to Sir Charles. He disbelieved it utterly at first; but, the hint having been given him, he paid attention, and discovered there was, at all events, some truth in it.

He awaited his opportunity and remonstrated: "My dear Bella, am I mistaken, or do I really observe a falling off in your tenderness for your child?"

Lady Bassett looked this way and that, as if she meditated flight, but at last she resigned herself, and said, "Yes, dear Charles; my heart is quite cold to him."

"Good Heavens, Bella! But why? Is not this the same little angel that came to our help in trouble, that comforted me even before his birth, when my mind was morbid, to say the least?"

"I suppose he is the same," said she, in a tone impossible to convey by description of mine.

"That is a strange answer."

"If he is, I am changed." And this she said doggedly and unlike herself.

"What!" said Sir Charles, very gravely, and with a sort of awe: "can a woman withdraw her affection from her child, her innocent child? If so, my turn may come next."

"Oh, Charles! Charles!" and the tears began to well.

"Why, who can be secure after this? What is so stable as a mother's love? If that is not rooted too deep for gusts of caprice to blow it away, in Heaven's name, what is?"

No answer to that but tears.

Sir Charles looked at her very long, attentively, and seriously, and said not another syllable.

But his dropping so suddenly a subject of this importance was rather suspicious, and Lady Bassett was too shrewd not to see that.

They watched each other.

But with this difference: Sir Charles could not conceal his anxiety, whereas the lady appeared quite tranquil.

One day Sir Charles said, cheerfully, "Who do you think dines here to-morrow, and stays all night? Dr. Suaby."

"By invitation, dear?" asked Lady Bassett, quietly.

Sir Charles colored a little, and said, quietly, "Yes."

Lady Bassett made no remark, and it was impossible to tell by her face whether the visit was agreeable or not.

Some time afterward, however, she said, "Whom shall I ask to meet Dr. Suaby?"

"Nobody, for Heaven's sake!"

"Will not that be dull for him?"

"I hope not."

"You will have plenty to say to him, eh, darling?"

"We never yet lacked topics. Whether or no, his is a mind I choose to drink neat."

"Drink him neat?"

"Undiluted with rural minds."

"Oh!"

She uttered that monosyllable very dryly, and said no more.

Dr. Suaby came next day, and dined with them, and Lady Bassett was charming; but rather earlier than usual she said, "Now I am sure you and Dr. Suaby must have many things to talk about," and retired, casting back an arch, and almost a cunning smile.

The door closed on her, the smile fled, and a somber look of care and suffering took its place.

Sir Charles entered at once on what was next his heart, told Dr. Suaby he was in some anxiety, and asked him if he had observed anything in Lady Bassett.

"Nothing new," said Dr. Suaby; "charming as ever."

Then Sir Charles confided to Dr. Suaby, in terms of deep feeling and anxiety, what I have coldly told the reader.

Dr. Suaby looked a little grave, and took time to think before he spoke.

At last he delivered an opinion, of which this is the substance, though not the exact words.

"It is sudden and unnatural, and I cannot say it does not partake of mental aberration. If the patient was a man I should fear the most serious results; but here we have to take into account the patient's sex, her nature, and her present condition. Lady Bassett has always appeared to me a very remarkable woman. She has no mediocrity in anything; understanding keen, perception wonderfully swift, heart large and sensitive, nerves high strung, sensibilities acute. A person of her sex, tuned so high as this, is always subject, more or less, to hysteria. It is controlled by her intelligence and spirit; but she is now, for the time being, in a physical condition that has often deranged less sensitive women than she is. I believe this about the boy to be a hysterical delusion, which will pass away when her next child is born. That is to say, she will probably ignore her first-born, and everything else, for a time; but these caprices, springing in reality from the body rather than the mind, cannot endure forever. When she has several grown-up children the first-born will be the favorite. It comes to that at last, my good friend."

"These are the words of wisdom," said Sir Charles; "God bless you for them!"

After a while he said, "Then what you advise is simply—patience?"

"No, I don't say that. With such a large house as this, and your resources, you might easily separate them before the delusion grows any farther. Why risk a calamity?"

"A calamity?" and Sir Charles began to tremble.

"She is only cold to the child as yet. She might go farther, and fancy she hated it. Obsta principiis: that is my motto. Not that I really think, for a moment, the child is in danger. Lady Bassett has mind to control her nerves with; but why run the shadow of a chance?"

"I will not run the shadow of a chance," said Sir Charles, resolutely; "let us come upstairs: my decision is taken."

The very next day Sir Charles called on Mrs. Meyrick, and asked if he could come to any arrangement with her to lodge Mr. Bassett and his nurse under her roof. "The boy wants change of air," said he.

Mrs. Meyrick jumped at the proposal, but declined all terms. "No," said she, "the child I have suckled shall never pay me for his lodging. Why should he, sir, when I'd pay you to let him come, if I wasn't afeard of offending you?"

Sir Charles was touched at this, and, being a gentleman of tact, said, "You are very good: well, then, I must remain your debtor for the present."

He then took his leave, but she walked with him a few yards, just as far as the wicket, gate that separated her little front garden from the high-road.

"I hope," said she, "my lady will come and see me when my lamb is with me; a sight of her would be good for sore eyes. She have never been here but once, and then she did not get out of her carriage."

"Humph!" said Sir Charles, apologetically; "she seldom goes out now; you understand."

"Oh, I've heard, sir; and I do put up my prayers for her; for my lady has been a good friend to me, sir, and if you will believe me, I often sets here and longs for a sight of her, and her sweet eyes, and her hair like sunshine, that I've had in my hand so often. Well, sir, I hope it will be a girl this time, a little girl with golden hair; that's what I wants this time. They'll be the prettiest pair in England."

"With all my heart," said Sir Charles; "girl or boy, I don't care which; but I'd give a few thousands if it was here, and the mother safe."

He hurried away, ashamed of having uttered the feelings of his heart to a farmer's wife. To avoid discussion, he sent Mrs. Millar and the boy off all in a hurry, and then told Lady Bassett what he had done.

She appeared much distressed at that, and asked what she had done.

He soothed her, and said she was not to blarne at all; and she must not blame him either. He had done it for the best.

"After all, you are the master," said she, submissively.

"I am," said he, "and men will be tyrants, you know."

Then she flung her arm round her tyrant's neck, and there was an end of the discussion.

One day he inquired for her, and heard, to his no small satisfaction, she had driven to Mrs. Meyrick's, with a box of things for Mr. Bassett. She stayed at the farmhouse all day, and Sir Charles felt sure he had done the right thing.

Mrs. Meyrick found out to her cost the difference between a nursling and a rampageous little boy.

Her lamb, as she called him, was now a young monkey, vigorous, active, restless, and, unfortunately, as strong on his pins as most boys of six. It took two women to look after him, and smart ones too, so swiftly did he dash off into some mischief or other. At last Mrs. Meyrick simplified matters in some degree by locking the large gate, and even the small wicket, and ordering all the farm people and milkmaids to keep an eye on him, and bring him straight to her if he should stray, for he seemed to hate in-doors. Never was such a boy.

Nevertheless, such as had not the care of him admired the child for his beauty and his assurance. He seemed to regard the whole human race as one family, of which he was the rising head. The moment he caught sight of a human being he dashed at it and into conversation by one unbroken movement.

Now children in general are too apt to hide their intellectual treasures from strangers by shyness.

One day this ready converser was standing on the steps of the house, when a gentleman came to the wicket gate, and looked over into the garden.

Young master darted to the gate directly, and getting his foot on the lowest bar and his hands on the spikes, gave tongue.

"Who are you? I'm Mr. Bassett. I don't live here; I'm only staying. My home is Huncom Hall. I'm to have it for myself when papa dies. I didn't know dat till I come here. How old are you? I'm half past four—"

A loud scream, a swift rustle, and Mr. Bassett was clutched up by Mrs. Meyrick, who snatched him away with a wild glance of terror and defiance, and bore him swiftly into the house, with words ringing in her ears that cost Mr. Bassett dear, he being the only person she could punish. She sat down on a bench, flung young master across her knee in a minute, and bestowed such a smacking on him as far transcended his wildest dreams of the weight, power, and pertinacity of the human arm.

The words Richard Bassett had shot her flying with were these:

"Too late! I've SEEN THE PARSON'S BRAT."



Richard Bassett mounted his horse and rode over to Wheeler, for he could no longer wheedle the man of law over to Highmore, and I will very briefly state why.

1st. About three years ago an old lady, one of his few clients, left him three thousand pounds, just reward of a very little law and a vast deal of gossip.

2d. The head solicitor of the place got old and wanted a partner. Wheeler bought himself in, and thenceforth took his share of a good business, and by his energy enlarged it, though he never could found one for himself.

3d. He married a wife.

4th. She was a pretty woman, and blessed with jealousy of a just and impartial nature: she was equally jealous of women, men, books, business—anything that took her husband from her.

No more sleeping out at Highmore; no more protracted potations; no more bachelor tricks for Wheeler. He still valued his old client and welcomed him; but the venue was changed, so to speak.

Richard Bassett was kept waiting in the outer office; but when he did get in he easily prevailed on Wheeler to send the next client or two to his partner, and give him a full hearing.

Then he opened his business. "Well," said he, "I've seen him at last!"

"Seen him? seen whom?"

"The boy they have set up to rob my boy of the estate. I've seen him, Wheeler, seen him close; and HE'S AS BLACK AS MY HAT."



CHAPTER XXXIV.

WHEELER, instead of being thunder-stricken, said quietly, "Oh, is he? Well?"

"Sir Charles is lighter than I am: Lady Bassett has a skin like satin, and red hair."

"Red! say auburn gilt. I never saw such lovely hair."

"Well," said Richard, impatiently, "then the boy has eyes like sloes, and a brown skin, like an Italian, and black hair almost; it will be quite."

"Well," said Wheeler, "it is not so very uncommon for a dark child to be born of fair parents, or vice versa. I once saw an urchin that was like neither father nor mother, but the image of his father's grandfather, that died eighty years before he was born. They used to hold him up to the portrait."

Said Bassett, "Will you admit that it is uncommon?"

"Not so uncommon as for a high-bred lady, living in the country, and adored by her husband, to trifle with her marriage vow, for that is what you are driving at."

"Then we have to decide between two improbabilities: will you grant me that, Mr. Wheeler?"

"Yes."

"Then suppose I can prove fact upon fact, and coincidence upon coincidence, all tending one way! Are you so prejudiced that nothing will convince you?"

"No. But it will take a great deal: that lady's face is full of purity, and she fought us like one who loved her husband."

"Fronti nulla fides: and as for her fighting, her infidelity was the weapon she defeated us with. Will you hear me?"

"Yes, yes; but pray stick to facts, and not conjectures."

"Then don't interrupt me with childish arguments:

"Fact 1.—Both reputed parents fair; the boy as black as the ace of spades.

"Fact 2.—A handsome young fellow was always buzzing about her ladyship, and he was a parson, and ladies are remarkably fond of parsons.

"Fact 3.—This parson was of Italian breed, dark, like the boy.

"Fact 4.—This dark young man left Huntercombe one week, and my lady left it the next, and they were both in the city of Bath at one time.

"Fact 5.—The lady went from Bath to London. The dark young man went from Bath to London."

"None of this is new to me," said Wheeler, quietly.

"No; but it is the rule, in estimating coincidences, that each fresh one multiplies the value of the others. Now the boy looking so Italian is a new coincidence, and so is what I am going to tell you—at last I have found the medical man who attended Lady Bassett in London."

"Ah!"

"Yes, sir; and I have learned Fact 6.—Her ladyship rented a house, but hired no servants, and engaged no nurse. She had no attendant but a lady's maid, no servant but a sort of charwoman.

"Fact 7.—She dismissed this doctor unusually soon, and gave him a very large fee.

"Fact 8.—She concealed her address from her husband."

"Oh! can you prove that?"

"Certainly. Sir Charles came up to town, and had to hunt for her, came to this very medical man, and asked for the address his wife had not given him; but lo! when he got there the bird was flown.

"Fact 9.—Following the same system of concealment, my lady levanted from London within ten days of her confinement.

"Now put all these coincidences together. Don't you see that she had a lover, and that he was about her in London and other places? Stop! Fact 10.—Those two were married for years, and had no child but this equivocal one; and now four years and a half have passed, during all which time they have had none, and the young parson has been abroad during that period."

Wheeler was staggered and perplexed by this artful array of coincidences.

"Now advise me," said Bassett.

"It is not so easy. Of course if Sir Charles was to die, you could claim the estate, and give them a great deal of pain and annoyance; but the burden of proof would always rest on you. My advice is not to breathe a syllable of this; but get a good detective, and push your inquiries a little further among house agents, and the women they put into houses; find that charwoman, and see if you can pick up anything more."

"Do you know such a thing as an able detective?"

"I know one that will work if I instruct him."

"Instruct him, then."

"I will."



CHAPTER XXXV.

LADY BASSETT, as her time of trial drew near, became despondent.

She spoke of the future, and tried to pierce it; and in all these little loving speculations and anxieties there was no longer any mention of herself.

This meant that she feared her husband was about to lose her. I put the fear in the very form it took in that gentle breast.

Possessed with this dread, so natural to her situation, she set her house in order, and left her little legacies of clothes and jewels, without the help of a lawyer; for Sir Charles, she knew, would respect her lightest wish.

To him she left her all, except these trifles, and, above all—a manuscript book. It was the history of her wedded life. Not the bare outward history; but such a record of a sensitive woman's heart as no male writer's pen can approach.

It was the nature of her face and her tongue to conceal; but here, on this paper, she laid bare her heart; here her very subtlety operated, not to hide, but to dissect herself and her motives.

But oh, what it cost her to pen this faithful record of her love, her trials, her doubts, her perplexities, her agonies, her temptations, and her crime! Often she laid down the pen, and hid her face in her hands. Often the scalding tears ran down that scarlet face. Often she writhed at her desk, and wrote on, sighing and moaning. Yet she persevered to the end. It was the grave that gave her the power. "When he reads this," she said, "I shall be in my tomb. Men make excuses for the dead. My Charles will forgive me when I am gone. He will know I loved him to desperation."

It took her many days to write; it was quite a thick quarto; so much may a woman feel in a year or two; and, need I say that, to the reader of that volume, the mystery of her conduct was all made clear as daylight; clearer far, as regards the revelation of mind and feeling, than I, dealer in broad facts, shall ever make it, for want of a woman's mental microscope and delicate brush.

And when this record was finished, she wrapped it in paper, and sealed it with many seals, and wrote on it,

"Only for my husband's eye. From her who loved him not wisely, But too well."

And she took other means that even the superscription should never be seen of any other eye but his. It was some little comfort to her, when the book was written.

She never prayed to live. But she used to pray, fervently, piteously, that her child might live, and be a comfort and joy to his father.



The person employed by Wheeler discovered the house agent, and the woman he had employed.

But these added nothing to the evidence Bassett had collected.

At last, however, this woman, under the influence of a promised reward, discovered a person who was likely to know more about the matter—viz., the woman who was in the house with Lady Bassett at the very time.

But this woman scented gold directly: so she held mysterious language; declined to say a word to the officer; but intimated that she knew a great deal, and that the matter was, in truth, well worth looking into, and she could tell some strange tales, if it was worth her while.

This information was sent to Bassett; he replied that the woman only wanted money for her intelligence, and he did not blame her; he would see her next time he went to town, and felt sure she would complete his chain of evidence. This put Richard Bassett into extravagant spirits. He danced his little boy on his knee, and said, "I'll run this little horse against the parson's brat; five to one, and no takers."

Indeed, his exultation was so loud and extravagant that it jarred on gentle Mrs. Bassett. As for Jessie, the Scotch servant, she shook her head, and said the master was fey.

In the morning he started for London, still so exuberant and excited that the Scotch woman implored her mistress not to let him go; there would be an accident on the railway, or something. But Mrs. Bassett knew her husband too well to interfere with his journeys.

Before he drove off he demanded his little boy.

"He must kiss me," said he, "for I'm going to work for him. D'ye hear that, Jane? This day makes him heir of Huntercombe and Bassett."

The nurse brought word that Master Bassett was not very well this morning.

"Let us look at him," said Bassett.

He got out of his gig, and went to the nursery. He found his little boy had a dry cough, with a little flushing.

"It is not much," said he; "but I'll send the doctor over from the town."

He did so, and himself proceeded up to London.

The doctor came, and finding the boy labored in breathing, administered a full dose of ipecacuanha. This relieved the child for the time; but about four in the afternoon he was distressed again, and began to cough with a peculiar grating sound.

Then there was a cry of dismay—"The croup!" The doctor was gone for, and a letter posted to Richard Bassett, urging him to come back directly.

The doctor tried everything, even mercury, but could not check the fatal discharge; it stiffened into a still more fatal membrane.

When Bassett returned next afternoon, in great alarm, he found the poor child thrusting its fingers into its mouth, in a vain attempt to free the deadly obstruction.

A warm bath and strong emetics were now administered, and great relief obtained. The patient even ate and drank, and asked leave to get up and play with a new toy he had. But, as often happens in this disorder, a severe relapse soon came, with a spasm of the glottis so violent and prolonged that the patient at last resigned the struggle. Then pain ceased forever; the heavenly smile came; the breath went; and nothing was left in the little white bed but a fair piece of tinted clay, that must return to the dust, and carry thither all the pride, the hopes, the boasts of the stricken father, who had schemed, and planned, and counted without Him in whose hands are the issues of life and death.

As for the child himself, his lot was a happy one, if we could but see what the world is really worth. He was always a bright child, that never cried, nor complained: his first trouble was his last; one day's pain, then bliss eternal: he never got poisoned by his father's spirit of hate, but loved and was beloved during his little lifetime; and, dying, he passed from his Noah's ark to an inheritance a thousand times richer than Huntercombe, Bassett, and all his cousin's lands.



The little grave was dug, the bell tolled, and a man bowed double with grief saw his child and his ambition laid in the dust.

Lady Bassett heard the bell tolled, and spoke but two words: "Poor woman!"

She might well say so. Mrs. Bassett was in the same condition as herself, yet this heavy blow must fall on her.

As for Richard Bassett, he sat at home, bowed down and stupid with grief.

Wheeler came one day to console him; but, at the sight of him, refrained from idle words. He sat down by him for an hour in silence. Then he got up and said, "Good-by."

"Thank you, old friend, for not insulting me," said Bassett, in a broken voice.

Wheeler took his hand, and turned away his head, and so went away, with a tear in his eye.

A fortnight after this he came again, and found Bassett in the same attitude, but not in the same leaden stupor. On the contrary, he was in a state of tremor; he had lost, under the late blow, the sanguine mind that used to carry him through everything.

The doctor was upstairs, and his wife's fate trembled in the balance.

"Stay by me," said he, "for all my nerve is gone. I'm afraid I shall lose her; for I have just begun to value her; and that is how God deals with his creatures—the merciful God, as they call him."

Wheeler thought it rather hard God Almighty should be blamed because Dick Bassett had taken eight years to find out his wife's merit; but he forbore to say so. He said kindly that he would stay.

Now while they sat in trying suspense the church-bells struck up a merry peal.

Bassett started violently and his eyes gave a strange glare. "That's the other!" said he; for he had heard about Lady Bassett by this time.

Then he turned pale. "They ring for him: then they are sure to toll for me."

This foreboding was natural enough in a man so blinded by egotism as to fancy that all creation, and the Creator himself, must take a side in Bassett v. Bassett.

Nevertheless, events did not justify that foreboding. The bells had scarcely done ringing for the happy event at Huntercombe, when joyful feet were heard running on the stairs; joyful voices clashed together in the passage, and in came a female servant with joyful tidings. Mrs. Bassett was safe, and the child in the world. "The loveliest little girl you ever saw!"

"A girl!" cried Richard Bassett with contemptuous amazement. Even his melancholy forebodings had not gone that length. "And what have they got at Huntercombe?"

"Oh, it is a boy, sir, there."

"Of course."

The ringers heard, and sent one of their number to ask him if they should ring.

"What for?" asked Bassett with a nasty glittering eye; and then with sudden fury he seized a large piece of wood from the basket to fling at his insulter. "I'll teach you to come and mock me."

The ringer vanished, ducking.

"Gently," said Wheeler, "gently."

Bassett chucked the wood back into the basket, and sat down gloomily, saying, "Then how dare he come and talk about ringing bells for a girl? To think that I should have all this fright, and my wife all this trouble—for a girl!"



It was no time to talk of business then; but about a fortnight afterward Wheeler said, "I took the detective off, to save you expense."

"Quite right," said Bassett, wearily.

"I gave you the woman's address; so the matter is in your hands now, I consider."

"Yes," said Bassett, wearily; "Move no further in it."

"Certainly not; and, frankly, I should be glad to see you abandon it."

"I have abandoned it. Why should I stir the mud now? I and mine are thrown out forever; the only question is, shall a son of Sir Charles or the parson's son inherit? I'm for the wrongful heir. Ay," he cried, starting up, and beating the air with his fists in sudden fury, "since the right Bassetts are never to have it, let the wrong Bassetts be thrown out, at all events; I'm on my back, but Sir Charles is no better off; a bastard will succeed him, thanks to that cursed woman who defeated me."

This turn took Wheeler by surprise. It also gave him real pain. "Bassett," said he, "I pity you. What sort of a life has yours been for the last eight years? Yet, when there's no fuel left for war and hatred, you blow the embers. You are incurable."

"I am," said Richard. "I'll hate those two with my last breath and curse them in my last prayer."



CHAPTER XXXVI.

LADY BASSETT'S forebodings, like most of our insights into the future, were confuted by the event.

She became the happy mother of a flaxen-haired boy. She insisted on nursing him herself; and the experienced persons who attended her raised no objection.

In connection with this she gave Sir Charles a peck, not very severe, but sudden, and remarkable as the only one on record.

He was contemplating her and her nursling with the deepest affection, and happened to say, "My own Bella, what delight it gives me to see you!"

"Yes," said she, "we will have only one mother this time, will we, my darling? and it shall be Me." Then suddenly, turning her head like a snake, "Oh, I saw the looks you gave that woman!"

This was the famous peck; administered in return for a look that he had bestowed on Mary Gosport not more than five years ago.

Sir Charles would, doubtless, have bled to death on the spot, but either he had never been aware how he looked, or time and business had obliterated the impression, for he was unaffectedly puzzled, and said, "What woman do you mean, dear?"

"No matter, darling," said Lady Bassett, who had already repented her dire severity: "all I say is that a nurse is a rival I could not endure now; and another thing, I do believe those wet-nurses give their disposition to the child: it is dreadful to think of."

"Well, if so, baby is safe. He will be the most amiable boy in England."

"He shall be more amiable than I am—scolding my husband of husbands;" and she leaned toward him, baby and all, for a kiss from his lips.

We say at school "Seniores priores"—let favor go by seniority; but where babies adorn the scene, it is "juniores priores" with that sex to which the very young are confided.

To this rule, as might be expected, Lady Bassett furnished no exception; she was absorbed in baby, and trusted Mr. Bassett a good deal to his attendant, who bore an excellent character for care and attention.

Now Mr. Bassett was strong on his pins and in his will, and his nurse-maid, after all, was young; so he used to take his walks nearly every day to Mrs. Meyrick's: she petted him enough, and spoiled him in every way, while the nurse-maid was flirting with the farm-servants out of sight.

Sir Charles Bassett was devoted to the boy, and used always to have him to his study in the morning, and to the drawing-room after dinner, when the party was small, and that happened much oftener now than heretofore; but at other hours he did not look after him, being a business man, and considering him at that age to be under his mother's care.

One day the only guest was Mr. Rolfe; he was staying in the house for three days, upon a condition suggested by himself—viz., that he might enjoy his friends' society in peace and comfort, and not be set to roll the stone of conversation up some young lady's back, and obtain monosyllables in reply, faintly lisped amid a clatter of fourteen knives and forks. As he would not leave his writing-table on any milder terms, they took him on these.

After dinner in came Mr. Bassett, erect, and a proud nurse with little Compton, just able to hold his nurse's gown and toddle.

Rolfe did not care for small children; he just glanced at the angelic, fair-haired infant, but his admiring gaze rested on the elder boy.

"Why, what is here—an Oriental prince?"

The boy ran to him directly. "Who are you?"

"Rolfe the writer. Who are you—the Gipsy King?"

"No; but I am very fond of gypsies. I'm Mister Bassett; and when papa dies I shall be Sir Charles Bassett."

Sir Charles laughed at this with paternal fatuity, especially as the boy's name happened to be Reginald Francis, after his grandfather.

Rolfe smiled satirically, for these little speeches from children did much to reconcile him to his lot.

"Meantime," said he, "let us feed off him; for it may be forty years before we can dance over his grave. First let us see what is the unwholesomest thing on the table."

He rose, and to the infinite delight of Mr. Bassett, and even of Master Compton, who pointed and crowed from his mother's lap, he got up on his chair, and put on a pair of spectacles to look.

"Eureka!" said he; "behold that dish by Lady Bassett; those are marrons glaces; fetch them here, and let us go in for a fit of the gout at once."

"Gout! what's that?" inquired Mr. Bassett.

"Don't ask me."

"You don't know.

"Not know! What, didn't I tell you I was Rolfe the writer? Writers know everything. That is what makes them so modest."

Mr. Bassett was now unnaturally silent for five minutes, munching chestnuts; this enabled his guests to converse; but as soon as he had cleared his plate, he cut right across the conversation, with that savage contempt for all topics but his own which characterizes gentlemen of his age, and says he to Rolfe, "You know everything? Then what's a parson's brat?"

"Well, that's the one thing I don't know," said Rolfe; "but a brat I take to be a boy who interrupts ladies and gentlemen with nonsense when they are talking sense."

"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Rolfe," said Lady Bassett. "That remark was very much needed."

Then she called Reginald to her, and lectured him, sotto voce, to the same tune.

"You old bachelors are rather hard," said Sir Charles, not very well pleased.

"We are obliged to be; you parents are so soft. After all, it is no wonder. What a superb boy it is!—Here is nurse. I'm so sorry. Now we shall be cabined, cribbed, confined to rational conversation, and I shall not be expected to—(good-night, little flaxen angel; good-by, handsome and loquacious demon; kiss and be friends)—expected to know, all in a minute, what is a parson's brat. By-the-by, talking of parsons, what has become of Angelo?"

"He has been away a good many years. Consumption, I hear."

"He was a fine-built fellow too; was he not, Lady Bassett?"

"I don't know; but he was beautifully strong. I think I see him now carrying dear Charles in his arms all down the garden."

"Ah, you see he was raised in a university that does not do things by halves, but trains both body and mind, as they did at Athens; for the union of study and athletic sports is spoken of as a novelty, but it is only a return to antiquity."

Here letters were brought by the second post. Sir Charles glanced at his, and sent them to his study. Lady Bassett had but one. She said, "May I?" to both gentlemen, and then opened it.

"How strange!" said she. "It is from Mr. Angelo: just a line to say he is coming home quite cured."

She began this composedly, but blushed afterward—blushed quite red.

"May I?" said she, and tossed it delicately half-way to Rolfe. He handed it to Sir Charles.

Some remarks were then made about the coincidence, and nothing further passed worth recording at that time.

Next day Lady Bassett, with instinctive curiosity, asked Master Reginald how he came to put such a question as that to Mr. Rolfe.

"Because I wanted to know."

"But what put such words into your head? I never heard a gentleman say such words; and you must never say them again, Reginald."

"Tell me what it means, and I won't," said he.

"Oh," said Lady Bassett, "since you bargain with me, sir, I must bargain with you. Tell me first where you ever heard such words."

"When I was staying at nurse's. Ah, that was jolly."

"You like that better than being here?"

"Yes."

"I am sorry for that. Well, dear, did nurse say that? Surely not?"

"Oh, no; it was the man."

"What man?"

"Why, the man that came to the gate one morning, and talked to me, and I talked to him, and that nasty nurse ran out and caught us, and carried me in, and gave me such a hiding, and all for nothing."

"A hiding! What words the poor child picks up! But I don't understand why nurse should beat you."

"For speaking to the man. She said he was a bad man, and she would kill me if ever I spoke to him again."

"Oh, it was a bad man, and said bad words—to somebody he was quarreling with?"

"No, he said them to nurse because she took me away."

"What did he say, Reginald?" asked Lady Bassett, becoming very grave and thoughtful all at once.

"He said, 'That's too late; I've seen the parson's brat.'"

"Oh!"

"And I've asked nurse again and again what it meant, but she won't tell me. She only says the man is a liar, and I am not to say it again; and so I never did say it again—for a long time; but last night, when Rolfe the writer said he knew everything, it struck my head—what is the matter, mamma?"

"Nothing; nothing."

"You look so white. Are you ill, mamma?" and he went to put his arms round her, which was a mighty rare thing with him.

She trembled a good deal, and did not either embrace him or repel him. She only trembled.

After some time she recovered herself enough to say, in a voice and with a manner that impressed itself at once on this sharp boy: "Reginald, your nurse was quite right. Understand this: the man was your enemy—and mine; the words he said you must not say again. It would be like taking up dirt and flinging some on your own face and some on mine."

"I won't do that," said the boy, firmly. "Are you afraid of the man that you look so white?"

"A man with a woman's tongue—who can help fearing?"

"Don't you be afraid; as soon as I'm big enough, I'll kill him."

Lady Bassett looked with surprise at the child, he uttered this resolve with such a steady resolution.

She drew him to her, and kissed him on the forehead.

"No, Reginald," said she; "we must not shed blood; it is as wicked to kill our enemies as to kill any one else. But never speak to him, never even listen to him; if he tries to speak to you, run away from him, and don't let him—he is our enemy."

That same day she went to Mrs. Meyrick, to examine her. But she found the boy had told her all there was to tell.

Mrs. Meyrick, whose affection for her was not diminished, was downright vexed. "Dear me!" said she; "I did think I had kept that from vexing of you. To think of the dear child hiding it for nigh two years, and then to blurt it out like that! Nobody heard him I hope?"

"Others heard; but—"

"Didn't heed; the Lord be praised for that."

"Mary," said Lady Bassett, solemnly, "I am not equal to another battle with Mr. Richard Bassett; and such a battle! Better tell all, and die."

"Don't think of it," said Mary. "You're safe from Richard Bassett now. Times are changed since he came spying to my gate. His own boy is gone. You have got two. He'll lie still if you do. But if you tell your tale, he must hear on't, and he'll tell his. For God's sake, my lady, keep close. It is the curse of women that they can't just hold their tongues, and see how things turn. And is this a time to spill good liquor? Look at Sir Charles! why, he is another man; he have got flesh on his bones now, and color into his cheeks, and 'twas you and I made a man of him. It is my belief you'd never have had this other little angel but for us having sense and courage to see what must be done. Knock down our own work, and send him wild again, and give that Richard Bassett a handle? You'll never be so mad."