In the morning (that present morning), being again in attendance as usual, the maid had found Lady Harry in a more indulgent frame of mind; still troubled by anxieties, but willing to speak of them now.

She had begun by talking of Mr. Mountjoy:

"I think you like him, Fanny: everybody likes him. You will be sorry to hear that we have no prospect of seeing him again at the cottage." There she had stopped; something that she had not said, yet, seemed to be in her mind, and to trouble her. She was near to crying, poor soul, but struggled against it. "I have no sister," she said, "and no friend who might be like a sister to me. It isn't perhaps quite right to speak of my sorrow to my maid. Still, there is something hard to bear in having no kind heart near one—I mean, no other woman to speak to who knows what women feel. It is so lonely here—oh, so lonely! I wonder whether you understand me and pity me?" Never forgetting all that she owed to her mistress—if she might say so without seeming to praise herself—Fanny was truly sorry. It would have been a relief to her, if she could have freely expressed her opinion that my lord must be to blame, when my lady was in trouble. Being a man, he was by nature cruel to women; the wisest thing his poor wife could do would be to expect nothing from him. The maid was sorely tempted to offer a little good advice to this effect; but she was afraid of her own remembrances, if she encouraged them by speaking out boldly. It would be better to wait for what the mistress might say next.

Lord Harry's conduct was the first subject that presented itself when the conversation was resumed.

My lady mentioned that she had noticed how he looked, and how he left the room, when she had spoken in praise of Mr. Mountjoy. She had pressed him to explain himself—-and she had made a discovery which proved to be the bitterest disappointment of her life. Her husband suspected her! Her husband was jealous of her! It was too cruel; it was an insult beyond endurance, an insult to Mr. Mountjoy as well as to herself. If that best and dearest of good friends was to be forbidden the house, if he was to go away and never to see her or speak to her again, of one thing she was determined—he should not leave her without a kind word of farewell; he should hear how truly she valued him; yes, and how she admired and felt for him! Would Fanny not do the same thing, in her place? And Fanny had remembered the time when she might have done it for such a man as Mr. Mountjoy. "Mind you stay indoors this evening, sir," the maid continued, looking and speaking so excitedly that Hugh hardly knew her again. "My mistress is coming to see you, and I shall come with her."

Such an act of imprudence was incredible. "You must be out of your senses!" Mountjoy exclaimed.

"I'm out of myself sir, if that's what you mean," Fanny answered. "I do so enjoy treating a man in that way! The master's going out to dinner—he'll know nothing about it—and," cried the cool cold woman of other times, "he richly deserves it."

Hugh reasoned and remonstrated, and failed to produce the slightest effect.

His next effort was to write a few lines to Lady Harry, entreating her to remember that a jealous man is sometimes capable of acts of the meanest duplicity, and that she might be watched. When he gave the note to Fanny to deliver, she informed him respectfully that he had better not trust her. A person sometimes meant to do right (she reminded him), and sometimes ended in doing wrong. Rather than disappoint her mistress, she was quite capable of tearing up the letter, on her way home, and saying nothing about it. Hugh tried a threat next: "Your mistress will not find me, if she comes here; I shall go out to-night." The impenetrable maid looked at him with a pitying smile, and answered:

"Not you!"

It was a humiliating reflection—but Fanny Mere understood him better than he understood himself.

All that Mountjoy had said and done in the way of protest, had been really dictated by consideration for the young wife. If he questioned his conscience, selfish delight in the happy prospect of seeing Iris again asserted itself, as the only view with which he looked forward to the end of the day. When the evening approached, he took the precaution of having his own discreet and faithful servant in attendance, to receive Lady Harry at the door of the hotel, before the ringing of the bell could summon the porter from his lodge. On calm consideration, the chances seemed to be in favour of her escaping detection by Lord Harry. The jealous husband of the stage, who sooner (or later) discovers the innocent (or guilty) couple, as the case may be, is not always the husband of the world outside the theatre. With this fragment of experience present in his mind, Hugh saw the door of his sitting-room cautiously opened, at an earlier hour than he had anticipated. His trustworthy representative introduced a lady, closely veiled—and that lady was Iris.



CHAPTER XXXII

GOOD-BYE TO IRIS

LADY HARRY lifted her veil, and looked at Mountjoy with sad entreaty in her eyes. "Are you angry with me?" she asked.

"I ought to be angry with you," he said. "This is a very imprudent, Iris."

"It's worse than that," she confessed. "It's reckless and desperate. Don't say I ought to have controlled myself. I can't control the shame I feel when I think of what has happened. Can I let you go—oh, what a return for your kindness!—without taking your hand at parting? Come and sit by me on the sofa. After my poor husband's conduct, you and I are not likely to meet again. I don't expect you to lament it as I do. Even your sweetness and your patience—so often tried—must be weary of me now."

"If you thought that possible, my dear, you would not have come here to-night," Hugh reminded her. "While we live, we have the hope of meeting again. Nothing in this world lasts, Iris—not even jealousy. Lord Harry himself told me that he was a variable man. Sooner or later he will come to his senses."

Those words seemed to startle Iris. "I hope you don't think that my husband is brutal to me!" she exclaimed, still resenting even the appearance of a reflection on her marriage, and still forgetting what she herself had said which justified a doubt of her happiness. "Have you formed a wrong impression?" she went on. "Has Fanny Mere innocently—?"

Mountjoy noticed, for the first time, the absence of the maid. It was a circumstance which justified him in interrupting Iris—for it might seriously affect her if her visit to the hotel happened to be discovered.

"I understood," he said, "that Fanny was to come here with you."

"Yes! yes! She is waiting in the carriage. We are careful not to excite attention at the door of the hotel; the coachman will drive up and down the street till I want him again. Never mind that! I have something to say to you about Fanny. She thinks of her own troubles, poor soul, when she talks to me, and exaggerates a little without meaning it. I hope she has not misled you in speaking of her master. It is base and bad of him, unworthy of a gentleman, to be jealous—and he has wounded me deeply. But dear Hugh, his jealousy is a gentle jealousy. I have heard of other men who watch their wives—who have lost all confidence in them—who would even have taken away from me such a trifle as this." She smiled, and showed to Mountjoy her duplicate key of the cottage door. "Ah, Harry is above such degrading distrust as that! There are times when he is as heartily ashamed of his own weakness as I could wish him to be. I have seen him on his knees before me, shocked at his conduct. He is no hypocrite. Indeed, his repentance is sincere, while it lasts—only it doesn't last! His jealousy rises and falls, like the wind. He said last night (when the wind was high): 'If you wish to make me the happiest creature on the face of the earth, don't encourage Mr. Mountjoy to remain in Paris!' Try to make allowances for him!"

"I would rather make allowances, Iris, for you. Do you, too wish me to leave Paris?"

Sitting very near to him—nearer than her husband might have liked to see—Iris drew away a little. "Did you mean to be cruel in saying that?" she asked. "I don't deserve it."

"It was kindly meant," Hugh assured her. "If I can make your position more endurable by going away, I will leave Paris to-morrow."

Iris moved back again to the place which she had already occupied. She was eager to thank him (for a reason not yet mentioned) as she had never thanked him yet. Silently and softly she offered her gratitude to Hugh, by offering her cheek. The irritating influence of Lord Harry's jealousy was felt by both of them at that moment. He kissed her cheek—and lingered over it. She was the first to recover herself.

"When you spoke just now of my position with my husband," she said, "you reminded me of anxieties, Hugh, in which you once shared, and of services which I can never forget."

Preparing him in those words for the disclosure which she had now to make, Iris alluded to the vagabond life of adventure which Lord Harry had led. The restlessness in his nature which that life implied, had latterly shown itself again; and his wife had traced the cause to a letter from Ireland, communicating a report that the assassin of Arthur Mountjoy had been seen in London, and was supposed to be passing under the name of Carrigeen. Hugh would understand that the desperate resolution to revenge the murder of his friend, with which Lord Harry had left England in the past time, had been urged into action once more. He had not concealed from Iris that she must be resigned to his leaving her for awhile, if the report which had reached him from Ireland proved to be true. It would be useless, and worse than useless, to remind this reckless man of the danger that threatened him from the Invincibles, if he returned to England. In using her power of influencing the husband who still loved her, Iris could only hope to exercise a salutary restraint in her own domestic interests, appealing to him for indulgence by careful submission to any exactions on which his capricious jealousy might insist. Would sad necessity excuse her, if she accepted Mountjoy's offer to leave Paris, for the one reason that her husband had asked it of her as a favour?

Hugh at once understood her motive, and assured her of his sympathy.

"You may depend upon my returning to London to-morrow," he said. "In the meantime, is there no better way in which I can be of use to you? If your influence fails, do you see any other chance of keeping Lord Harry's desperate purpose under control?"

It had only that day occurred to Iris that there might be some prospect of an encouraging result, if she could obtain the assistance of Mrs. Vimpany.

The doctor's wife was well acquainted with Lord Harry's past life, when he happened to be in Ireland; and she had met many of his countrymen with whom he had associated. If one of those friends happened to be the officious person who had written to him, it was at least possible that Mrs. Vimpany's discreet interference might prevent his mischievous correspondent from writing again. Lord Harry, waiting for more news, would in this event wait in vain. He would not know where to go, or what to do next—and, with such a nature as his, the end of his patience and the end of his resolution were likely to come together.

Hugh handed his pocket-book to Iris. Of the poor chances in her favour, the last was to his mind the least hopeless of the two.

"If you have discovered the name of your husband's correspondent," he said, "write it down for me, and I will ask Mrs. Vimpany if she knows him. I will make your excuses for not having written to her lately; and, in any case, I answer for her being ready to help you."

As Iris thanked him and wrote the name, the clock on the chimneypiece struck the hour.

She rose to say farewell. With a restless hand she half-lowered her veil, and raised it again. "You won't mind my crying," she said faintly, trying to smile through her tears. "This is the saddest parting I have ever known. Dear, dear Hugh—good-bye!"

Great is the law of Duty; but the elder law of Love claims its higher right. Never, in all the years of their friendship, had they forgotten themselves as they forgot themselves now. For the first time her lips met his lips, in their farewell kiss. In a moment more, they remembered the restraints which honour imposed on them; they were only friends again. Silently she lowered her veil. Silently he took her arm and led her down to the carriage. It was moving away from them at a slow pace, towards the other end of the street. Instead of waiting for its return, they followed and overtook it.

"We shall meet again," he whispered.

She answered sadly: "Don't forget me."

Mountjoy turned back. As he approached the hotel he noticed a tall man crossing from the opposite side of the street. Not two minutes after Iris was on her way home, her jealous husband and her old friend met at the hotel door.

Lord Harry spoke first. "I have been dining out," he said, "and I came here to have a word with you, Mr. Mountjoy, on my road home."

Hugh answered with formal politeness: "Let me show your lordship the way to my rooms."

"Oh, it's needless to trouble you," Lord Harry declared. "I have so little to say—do you mind walking on with me for a few minutes?"

Mountjoy silently complied. He was thinking of what might have happened if Iris had delayed her departure—or if the movement of the carriage had been towards, instead of away from the hotel. In either case it had been a narrow escape for the wife, from a dramatic discovery by the husband.

"We Irishmen," Lord Harry resumed, "are not famous for always obeying the laws; but it is in our natures to respect the law of hospitality. When you were at the cottage yesterday I was inhospitable to my guest. My rude behaviour has weighed on my mind since—and for that reason I have come here to speak to you. It was ill-bred on my part to reproach you with your visit, and to forbid you (oh, quite needlessly, I don't doubt!) to call on me again. If I own that I have no desire to propose a renewal of friendly intercourse between us, you will understand me, I am sure; with my way of thinking, the less we see of each other for the future, the better it may be. But, for what I said when my temper ran away with me, I ask you to accept my excuses, and the sincere expression of my regret."

"Your excuses are accepted, my lord, as sincerely as you have offered them," Mountjoy answered. "So far as I am concerned, the incident is forgotten from this moment."

Lord Harry expressed his courteous acknowledgments. "Spoken as becomes a gentleman," he said. "I thank you."

There it ended. They saluted each other; they wished each other good-night. "A mere formality!" Hugh thought, when they had parted.

He had wronged the Irish lord in arriving at that conclusion. But time was to pass before events helped him to discover his error.



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE DECREE OF FATE

ON his arrival in London, Mountjoy went to the Nurses' Institute to inquire for Mrs. Vimpany.

She was again absent, in attendance on another patient. The address of the house (known only to the matron) was, on this occasion, not to be communicated to any friend who might make inquiries. A bad case of scarlet fever had been placed under the nurse's care, and the danger of contagion was too serious to be trifled with.

The events which had led to Mrs. Vimpany's present employment had not occurred in the customary course.

A nurse who had recently joined the Institute had been first engaged to undertake the case, at the express request of the suffering person—who was said to be distantly related to the young woman. On the morning when she was about to proceed to the scene of her labours, news had reached her of the dangerous illness of her mother. Mrs. Vimpany, who was free at the time, and who felt a friendly interest in her young colleague, volunteered to take her place. Upon this, a strange request had been addressed to the matron, on behalf of the sick man. He desired to be "informed of it, if the new nurse was an Irishwoman." Hearing that she was an Englishwoman, he at once accepted her services, being himself (as an additional element of mystery in the matter) an Irishman!

The matron's English prejudices at once assumed that there had been some discreditable event in the man's life, which might be made a subject of scandalous exposure if he was attended by one of his own countrypeople. She advised Mrs. Vimpany to have nothing to do with the afflicted stranger. The nurse answered that she had promised to attend on him—and she kept her promise.

Mountjoy left the Institute, after vainly attempting to obtain Mrs. Vimpany's address. The one concession which the matron offered to make was to direct his letter, and send it to the post, if he would be content with that form of communication.

On reflection, he decided to write the letter.

Prompt employment of time might be of importance, if it was possible to prevent any further communication with Lord Larry on the part of his Irish correspondent. Using the name with which Iris had provided him, Hugh wrote to inquire if it was familiar to Mrs. Vimpany, as the name of a person with whom she had been, at any time, acquainted. In this event, he assured her that an immediate consultation between them was absolutely necessary in the interests of Iris. He added, in a postscript, that he was in perfect health, and that he had no fear of infection—and sent his letter to the matron to be forwarded.

The reply reached him late in the evening. It was in the handwriting of a stranger, and was to this effect:

"Dear Mr. Mountjoy,—It is impossible that I can allow you to run the risk of seeing me while I am in my present situation. So serious is the danger of contagion in scarlet fever, that I dare not even write to you with my own hand on note-paper which has been used in the sick room. This is no mere fancy of mine; the doctor in attendance here knows of a case in which a small piece of infected flannel communicated the disease after an interval of no less than a year. I must trust to your own good sense to see the necessity of waiting, until I can receive you without any fear of consequences to yourself. In the meantime, I may answer your inquiry relating to the name communicated in your letter. I first knew the gentleman you mention some years since; we were introduced to each other by Lord Harry; and I saw him afterwards on more than one occasion."

Mountjoy read this wise and considerate reply to his letter with indignation.

Here was the good fortune for which he had not dared to hope, declaring itself in favour of Iris. Here (if Mrs. Vimpany could be persuaded to write to her friend) was the opportunity offered of keeping the hot-tempered Irish husband passive and harmless, by keeping him without further news of the assassin of Arthur Mountjoy. Under these encouraging circumstances the proposed consultation which might have produced such excellent results had been rejected; thanks to a contemptible fear of infection, excited by a story of a trumpery piece of flannel!

Hugh snatched up the unfortunate letter (cast away on the floor) to tear it in pieces and throw it into the waste-paper basket—and checked himself. His angry hand had seized on it with the blank leaf of the note-paper uppermost.

On that leaf he discovered two little lines of print, presenting, in the customary form, the address of the house at which the letter had been written! The writer, in taking the sheet of paper from the case, must have accidentally turned it wrong side uppermost on the desk, and had not cared to re-copy the letter, or had not discovered the mistake. Restored to his best good-humour, Hugh resolved to surprise Mrs. Vimpany by a visit, on the next day, which would set the theory of contagion at defiance, and render valuable service to Iris at a crisis in her life.

Having time before him for reflection, in the course of the evening, he was at no loss to discover a formidable obstacle in the way of his design.

Whether he gave his name or concealed his name, when he asked for Mrs. Vimpany at the house-door, she would in either case refuse to see him. The one accessible person whom he could consult in this difficulty was his faithful old servant.

That experienced man—formerly employed, at various times, in the army, in the police, and in service at a public school—obtained leave to make some preliminary investigations on the next morning.

He achieved two important discoveries. In the first place, Mrs. Vimpany was living in the house in which the letter to his master had been written. In the second place, there was a page attached to the domestic establishment (already under notice to leave his situation), who was accessible to corruption by means of a bribe. The boy would be on the watch for Mr. Mountjoy at two o'clock on that day, and would show him where to find Mrs. Vimpany, in the room near the sick man, in which she was accustomed to take her meals.

Hugh acted on his instructions, and found the page waiting to admit him secretly to the house. Leading the way upstairs, the boy pointed with one hand to a door on the second floor, and held out the other hand to receive his money. While he pocketed the bribe, and disappeared, Mountjoy opened the door.

Mrs. Vimpany was seated at a table waiting for her dinner. When Hugh showed himself she started to her feet with a cry of alarm.

"Are you mad?" she exclaimed. "How did you get here? What do you want here? Don't come near me!"

She attempted to pass Hugh on her way out of the room. He caught her by the arm, led her back to her chair, and forced her to seat herself again. "Iris is in trouble," he pleaded, "and you can help her."

"The fever!" she cried, heedless of what he had said. "Keep back from me—the fever!"

For the second time she tried to get out of the room. For the second time Hugh stopped her.

"Fever or no fever," he persisted, "I have something to say to you. In two minutes I shall have said it, and I will go."

In the fewest possible words he described the situation of Iris with her jealous husband. Mrs. Vimpany indignantly interrupted him.

"Are you running this dreadful risk," she asked, "with nothing to say to me that I don't know already? Her husband jealous of her? Of course he is jealous of her! Leave me—or I will ring for the servant."

"Ring, if you like," Hugh answered; "but hear this first. My letter to you alluded to a consultation between us, which might be necessary in the interests of Iris. Imagine her situation if you can! The assassin of Arthur Mountjoy is reported to be in London; and Lord Harry has heard of it."

Mrs. Vimpany looked at him with horror in her eyes.

"Gracious God!" she cried, "the man is here—under my care. Oh, I am not in the conspiracy to hide the wretch! I knew no more of him than you do when I offered to nurse him. The names that have escaped him, in his delirium, have told me the truth."

As she spoke, a second door in the room was opened. An old woman showed herself for a moment, trembling with terror. "He's breaking out again, nurse! Help me to hold him!"

Mrs. Vimpany instantly followed the woman into the bed-room. "Wait and listen," she said to Mountjoy—and left the door open.

The quick, fierce, muttering tones of a man in delirium were now fearfully audible. His maddened memory was travelling back over his own horrible life. He put questions to himself; he answered himself:

"Who drew the lot to kill the traitor? I did! I did! Who shot him on the road, before he could get to the wood? I did! I did! Arthur Mountjoy, traitor to Ireland. Set that on his tombstone, and disgrace him for ever. Listen, boys—listen! There is a patriot among you. I am the patriot—preserved by a merciful Providence. Ha, my Lord Harry, search the earth and search the sea, the patriot is out of your reach! Nurse! What's that the doctor said of me? The fever will kill him? Well, what does that matter, as long as Lord Harry doesn't kill me? Open the doors, and let everybody hear of it. I die the death of a saint—the greatest of all saints—the saint who shot Arthur Mountjoy. Oh, the heat, the heat, the burning raging heat!" The tortured creature burst into a dreadful cry of rage and pain. It was more than Hugh's resolution could support. He hurried out of the house.

* * * * * * * *

Ten days passed. A letter, in a strange handwriting, reached Iris at Passy.

The first part of the letter was devoted to the Irish desperado, whom Mrs. Vimpany had attended in his illness.

When she only knew him as a suffering fellow-creature she had promised to be his nurse. Did the discovery that he was an assassin justify desertion, or even excuse neglect? No! the nursing art, like the healing art, is an act of mercy—in itself too essentially noble to inquire whether the misery that it relieves merits help. All that experience, all that intelligence, all that care could offer, the nurse gave to the man whose hand she would have shrunk from touching in friendship, after she had saved his life.

A time had come when the fever threatened to take Lord Harry's vengeance out of his hands. The crisis of the disease declared itself. With the shadow of death on him, the wretch lived through it—saved by his strong constitution, and by the skilled and fearless woman who attended on him. At the period of his convalescence, friends from Ireland (accompanied by a medical man of their own choosing) presented themselves at the house, and asked for him by the name under which he passed—Carrigeen. With every possible care, he was removed; to what destination had never been discovered. From that time, all trace of him had been lost.

Terrible news followed on the next page.

The subtle power of infection had asserted itself against the poor mortal who had defied it. Hugh Mountjoy, stricken by the man who had murdered his brother, lay burning under the scarlet fire of the fever.

But the nurse watched by him, night and day.



CHAPTER XXXIV

MY LORD'S MIND

HERE, my old-vagabond-Vimpany, is an interesting case for you—the cry of a patient with a sick mind.

Look over it, and prescribe for your wild Irish friend, if you can.

You will perhaps remember that I have never thoroughly trusted you, in all the years since we have known each other. At this later date in our lives, when I ought to see more clearly than ever what an unfathomable man you are, am I rash enough to be capable of taking you into my confidence?

I don't know what I am going to do; I feel like a man who has been stunned. To be told that the murderer of Arthur Mountjoy had been seen in London—to be prepared to trace him by his paltry assumed name of Carrigeen—to wait vainly for the next discovery which might bring him within reach of retribution at my hands—and then to be overwhelmed by the news of his illness, his recovery, and his disappearance: these are the blows which have stupefied me. Only think of it! He has escaped me for the second time. Fever that kills thousands of harmless creatures has spared the assassin. He may yet die in his bed, and be buried, with the guiltless dead around him, in a quiet churchyard. I can't get over it; I shall never get over it.

Add to this, anxieties about my wife, and maddening letters from creditors—and don't expect me to write reasonably.

What I want to know is whether your art (or whatever you call it) can get at my diseased mind, through my healthy body. You have more than once told me that medicine can do this. The time has come for doing it. I am in a bad way, and a bad end may follow. My only medical friend, deliver me from myself.

In any case, let me beg you to keep your temper while you read what follows.

I have to confess that the devil whose name is Jealousy has entered into me, and is threatening the tranquillity of my married life. You dislike Iris, I know—and she returns your hostile feeling towards her. Try to do my wife justice, nevertheless, as I do. I don't believe my distrust of her has any excuse—and yet, I am jealous. More unreasonable still, I am as fond of her as I was in the first days of the honeymoon. Is she as fond as ever of me? You were a married man when I was a boy. Let me give you the means of forming an opinion by a narrative of her conduct, under (what I admit to have been) very trying circumstances.

When the first information reached Iris of Hugh Mountjoy's dangerous illness, we were at breakfast. It struck her dumb. She handed the letter to me, and left the table.

I hate a man who doesn't know what it is to want money; I hate a man who keeps his temper; I hate a man who pretends to be my wife's friend, and who is secretly in love with her all the time. What difference did it make to me whether Hugh Mountjoy ended in living or dying? If I had any interest in the matter, it ought by rights (seeing that I am jealous of him) to be an interest in his death. Well! I declare positively that the alarming news from London spoilt my breakfast. There is something about that friend of my wife—that smug, prosperous, well-behaved Englishman—which seems to plead for him (God knows how!) when my mind is least inclined in his favour. While I was reading about his illness, I found myself hoping that he would recover—and, I give you my sacred word of honour, I hated him all the time.

My Irish friend is mad—you will say. Your Irish friend, my dear follow, does not dispute it.

Let us get back to my wife. She showed herself again after a long absence, having something (at last) to say to her husband.

"I am innocently to blame," she began, "for the dreadful misfortune that has fallen on Mr. Mountjoy. If I had not given him a message to Mrs. Vimpany, he would never have insisted on seeing her, and would never have caught the fever. It may help me to bear my misery of self-reproach and suspense, if I am kept informed of his illness. There is no fear of infection by my receiving letters. I am to write to a friend of Mrs. Vimpany, who lives in another house, and who will answer my inquiries. Do you object, dear Harry, to my getting news of Hugh Mountjoy every day, while he is in danger?"

I was perfectly willing that she should get that news, and she ought to have known it.

It seemed to me to be also a bad sign that she made her request with dry eyes. She must have cried, when she first heard that he was likely to sink under an attack of fever. Why were her tears kept hidden in her own room? When she came back to me, her face was pale and hard and tearless. Don't you think she might have forgotten my jealousy, when I was so careful myself not to show it? My own belief is that she was longing to go to London, and help your wife to nurse the poor man, and catch the fever, and die with him if he died.

Is this bitter? Perhaps it is. Tear it off, and light your pipe with it.

Well, the correspondence relating to the sick man continued every day; and every day—oh, Vimpany, another concession to my jealousy!—she handed the letters to me to read. I made excuses (we Irish are good at that, if we are good at nothing else), and declined to read the medical reports. One morning, when she opened the letter of that day, there passed over her a change which is likely to remain in my memory as long as I live. Never have I seen such an ecstasy of happiness in any woman's face, as I saw when she read the lines which informed her that the fever was mastered. Iris is sweet and delicate and bright—essentially fascinating, in a word. But she was never a beautiful woman, until she knew that Mountjoy's life was safe; and she will never be a beautiful woman again, unless the time comes when my death leaves her free to marry him. On her wedding-day, he will see the transformation that I saw—and he will be dazzled as I was.

She looked at me, as if she expected me to speak.

"I am glad indeed," I said, "that he is out of danger."

She ran to me—she kissed me; I wouldn't have believed it was in her to give such kisses. "Now I have your sympathy," she said, "my happiness is complete!" Do you think I was indebted for these kisses to myself or to that other man? No, no—here is an unworthy doubt. I discard it. Vile suspicion shall not wrong Iris this time.

And yet——

Shall I go on, and write the rest of it?

Poor, dear Arthur Mountjoy once told me of a foreign author, who was in great doubt of the right answer to some tough question that troubled him. He went into his garden and threw a stone at a tree. If he hit the tree, the answer would be—Yes. If he missed the tree, the answer would be—No. I am going into the garden to imitate the foreign author. You shall hear how it ends.

I have hit the tree. As a necessary consequence, I must go on and write the rest of it.

There is a growing estrangement between Iris and myself—and my jealousy doesn't altogether account for it. Sometimes, it occurs to me that we are thinking of what our future relations with Mountjoy are likely to be, and are ashamed to confess it to each other. Sometimes—and perhaps this second, and easiest, guess may be the right one—I am apt to conclude that we are only anxious about money matters. I am waiting for her to touch on the subject, and she is waiting for me; and there we are at a deadlock.

I wish I had some reason for going to some other place. I wish I was lost among strangers. I should like to find myself in a state of danger, meeting the risks that I used to run in my vagabond days. Now I think of it, I might enjoy this last excitement by going back to England, and giving the Invincibles a chance of shooting me as a traitor to the cause. But my wife would object to that.

Suppose we change the subject.

You will be glad to hear that you knew something of law, as well as of medicine. I sent instructions to my solicitor in London to raise a loan on my life-insurance. What you said to me turns out to be right. I can't raise a farthing, for three years to come, out of all the thousands of pounds which I shall leave behind me when I die.

Are my prospects from the newspaper likely to cheer me after such a disappointment as this? The new journal, I have the pleasure of informing you, is much admired. When I inquire for my profits, I hear that the expenses are heavy, and I am told that I must wait for a rise in our circulation. How long? Nobody knows.

I shall keep these pages open for a few days more, on the chance of something happening which may alter my present position for the better.

My position has altered for the worse.

I have been obliged to fill my empty purse, for a little while, by means of a bit of stamped paper. And how shall I meet my liabilities when the note falls due? Let time answer the question; for the present the evil day is put off. In the meanwhile, if that literary speculation of yours is answering no better than my newspaper, I can lend you a few pounds to get on with. What do you say (on second thoughts) to coming back to your old quarters at Passy, and giving me your valuable advice by word of mouth instead of by letter?

Come, and feel my pulse, and look at my tongue—and tell me how these various anxieties of mine are going to end, before we are any of us a year older. Shall I, like you, be separated from my wife—at her request; oh, not at mine! Or shall I be locked up in prison? And what will become of You? Do you take the hint, doctor?



CHAPTER XXXV

MY LADY'S MIND

"ENTREAT Lady Harry not to write to me. She will be tempted to do so, when she hears that there is good hope of Mr. Mountjoy's recovery. But, even from that loving and generous heart, I must not accept expressions of gratitude which would only embarrass me. All that I have done, as a nurse, and all that I may yet hope to do, is no more than an effort to make amends for my past life. Iris has my heart's truest wishes for her happiness. Until I can myself write to her without danger, let this be enough."

In those terms, dearest of women, your friend has sent your message to me. My love respects as well as admires you; your wishes are commands to me. At the same time, I may find some relief from the fears of the future that oppress me, if I can confide them to friendly ears. May I not harmlessly write to you, if I only write of my own poor self?

Try, dear, to remember those pleasant days when you were staying with us, in our honeymoon time, at Paris.

You warned me, one evening when we were alone, to be on my guard against any circumstances which might excite my husband's jealousy. Since then, the trouble that you foresaw has fallen on me; mainly, I am afraid, through my own want of self-control. It is so hard for a woman, when she really loves a man, to understand a state of mind which can make him doubt her.

I have discovered that jealousy varies. Let me tell you what I mean.

Lord Harry was silent and sullen (ah, how well I knew what that meant!) while the life of our poor Hugh was in jeopardy. When I read the good news which told me that he was no longer in danger, I don't know whether there was any change worth remarking in myself—but, there was a change in my husband, delightful to see. His face showed such sweet sympathy when he looked at me, he spoke so kindly and nicely of Hugh, that I could only express my pleasure by kissing him. You will hardly believe me, when I tell you that his hateful jealousy appeared again, at that moment. He looked surprised, he looked suspicious—he looked, I declare, as if he doubted whether I meant it with all my heart when I kissed him! What incomprehensible creatures men are! We read in novels of women who are able to manage their masters. I wish I knew how to manage mine.

We have been getting into debt. For some weeks past, this sad state of things has been a burden on my mind. Day after day I have been expecting him to speak of our situation, and have found him obstinately silent. Is his mind entirely occupied with other things? Or is he unwilling to speak of our anxieties because the subject humiliates him? Yesterday, I could bear it no longer.

"Our debts are increasing," I said. "Have you thought of any way of paying them?"

I had feared that my question might irritate him. To my relief, he seemed to be diverted by it.

"The payment of debts," he replied, "is a problem that I am too poor to solve. Perhaps I got near to it the other day."

I asked how.

"Well," he said, "I found myself wishing I had some rich friends. By-the-bye, how is your rich friend? What have you heard lately of Mr. Mountjoy?"

"I have heard that he is steadily advancing towards recovery."

"Likely, I dare say, to return to France when he feels equal to it," my husband remarked. "He is a good-natured creature. If he finds himself in Paris again, I wonder whether he will pay us another visit?"

He said this quite seriously. On my side, I was too much as astonished to utter a word. My bewilderment seemed to amuse him. In his own pleasant way he explained himself:

"I ought to have told you, my dear, that I was in Mr. Mountjoy's company the night before he returned to England. We had said some disagreeable things to each other here in the cottage, while you were away in your room. My tongue got the better of my judgment. In short, I spoke rudely to our guest. Thinking over it afterwards, I felt that I ought to make an apology. He received my sincere excuses with an amiability of manner, and a grace of language, which raised him greatly in my estimation."

There you have Lord Harry's own words! Who would suppose that he had ever been jealous of the man whom he spoke of in this way?

I explain it to myself, partly by the charm in Hugh's look and manner, which everybody feels; partly by the readiness with which my husband's variable nature receives new impressions. I hope you agree with me. In any case, pray let Hugh see what I have written to you in this place, and ask him what he thinks of it.*

*Note by Mrs. Vimpany.—I shall certainly not be foolish enough to show what she has written to Mr. Mountjoy. Poor deluded Iris! Miserable fatal marriage!

Encouraged, as you will easily understand, by the delightful prospect of a reconciliation between them, I was eager to take my first opportunity of speaking freely of Hugh. Up to that time, it had been a hard trial to keep to myself so much that was deeply interesting in my thoughts and hopes. But my hours of disappointment were not at an end yet. We were interrupted.

A letter was brought to us—one of many, already received!—insisting on immediate payment of a debt that had been too long unsettled. The detestable subject of our poverty insisted on claiming attention when there was a messenger outside, waiting for my poor Harry's last French bank note.

"What is to be done?" I said, when we were left by ourselves again.

My husband's composure was something wonderful. He laughed and lit a cigar.

"We have got to the crisis," he said. "The question of money has driven us into a corner at last. My darling, have you ever heard of such a thing as a promissory note?"

I was not quite so ignorant as he supposed me to be; I said I had heard my father speak of promissory notes.

This seemed to fail in convincing him. "Your father," he remarked, "used to pay his notes when they fell due."

I betrayed my ignorance, after all. "Doesn't everybody do the same?" I asked.

He burst out laughing. "We will send the maid to get a bit of stamped paper," he said; "I'll write the message for her, this time."

Those last words alluded to Fanny's ignorance of the French language, which made it necessary to provide her with written instructions, when she was sent on an errand. In our domestic affairs, I was able to do this; but, in the present case, I only handed the message to her. When she returned with a slip of stamped paper, Harry called to me to come to the writing-table.

"Now, my sweet," he said, "see how easily money is to be got with a scratch of the pen."

I looked, over his shoulder. In less than a minute it was done; and he had produced ten thousand francs on paper—in English money (as he told me), four hundred pounds. This seemed to be a large loan; I asked how he proposed to pay it back. He kindly reminded me that he was a newspaper proprietor, and, as such, possessed of the means of inspiring confidence in persons with money to spare. They could afford, it seems, to give him three months in which to arrange for repayment. In that time, as he thought, the profits of the new journal might come pouring in. He knew best, of course.

We took the next train to Paris, and turned our bit of paper into notes and gold. Never was there such a delightful companion as my husband, when he has got money in his pocket. After so much sorrow and anxiety, for weeks past, that memorable afternoon was like a glimpse of Paradise.

On the next morning, there was an end to my short-lived enjoyment of no more than the latter half of a day.

Watching her opportunity, Fanny Mere came to me while I was alone, carrying a thick letter in her hand. She held it before me with the address uppermost.

"Please to look at that," she said.

The letter was directed (in Harry's handwriting) to Mr. Vimpany, at a publishing office in London. Fanny next turned the envelope the other way.

"Look at this side," she resumed.

The envelope was specially protected by a seal; bearing a device of my husband's own invention; that is to say, the initials of his name (Harry Norland) surmounted by a star—his lucky star, as he paid me the compliment of calling it, on the day when he married me. I was thinking of that day now. Fanny saw me looking, with a sad heart, at the impression on the wax. She completely misinterpreted the direction taken by my thoughts.

"Tell me to do it, my lady," she proceeded; "and I'll open the letter."

I looked at her. She showed no confusion. "I can seal it up again," she coolly explained, "with a bit of fresh wax and my thimble. Perhaps Mr. Vimpany won't be sober enough to notice it."

"Do you know, Fanny, that you are making a dishonourable proposal to me?" I said.

"I know there's nothing I can do to help you that I won't do," she answered; "and you know why. I have made a dishonourable proposal—have I? That comes quite naturally to a lost woman like me. Shall I tell you what Honour means? It means sticking at nothing, in your service. Please tell me to open the letter."

"How did you come by the letter, Fanny?"

"My master gave it to me to put in the post."

"Then, post it."

The strange creature, so full of contraries—so sensitive at one time, so impenetrable at another—pointed again to the address.

"When the master writes to that man," she went on—"a long letter (if you will notice), and a sealed letter—your ladyship ought to see what is inside it. I haven't a doubt myself that there's writing under this seal which bodes trouble to you. The spare bedroom is empty. Do you want to have the doctor for your visitor again? Don't tell me to post the letter, till I've opened it first."

"I do tell you to post the letter."

Fanny submitted, so far. But she had a new form of persuasion to try, before her reserves of resistance were exhausted. "If the doctor comes back," she continued, "will your ladyship give me leave to go out, whenever I ask for it?"

This was surely presuming on my indulgence. "Are you not expecting a little too much?" I suggested—not unkindly.

"If you say that, my lady," she answered, "I shall be obliged to ask you to suit yourself with another maid."

There was a tone of dictation in this, which I found beyond endurance. In my anger, I said: "Leave me whenever you like."

"I shall leave you when I'm dead—not before," was the reply that I received. "But if you won't let me have my liberty without going away from you, for a time, I must go—for your sake."

(For my sake! Pray observe that.)

She went on:

"Try to see it, my lady, as I do! If we have the doctor with us again, I must be able to watch him."

"Why?"

"Because he is your enemy, as I believe."

"How can he hurt me, Fanny?"

"Through your husband, my lady, if he can do it in no other way. Mr. Vimpany shall have a spy at his heels. Dishonourable! oh, dishonourable again! Never mind. I don't pretend to know what that villain means to do, if he and my lord get together again. But this I can tell you, if it's in woman's wit to circumvent him, here I am with my mind made up. With my mind, made up!" she repeated fiercely—and recovered on a sudden her customary character as a quiet well-trained servant, devoted to her duties. "I'll take my master's letter to the post now," she said. "Is there anything your ladyship wants in the town?"

What do you think of Fanny Mere? Ought I to have treated this last offer of her services, as I treated her proposal to open the letter? I was not able to do it.

The truth is, I was so touched by her devotion to me, that I could not prevail on myself to mortify her by a refusal. I believe there may be a good reason for the distrust of the doctor which possesses her so strongly; and I feel the importance of having this faithful and determined woman for an ally. Let me hope that Mr. Vimpany's return (if it is to take place) may be delayed until you can safely write, with your own hand, such a letter of wise advice as I sadly need.

In the meantime, give my love to Hugh, and say to this dear friend all that I might have said for myself, if I had been near him. But take care that his recovery is not retarded by anxiety for me. Pray keep him in ignorance of the doubts and fears with which I am now looking at the future. If I was not so fond of my husband, I should be easier in my mind. This sounds contradictory, but I believe you will understand it. For a while, my dear, good-bye.



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE DOCTOR MEANS MISCHIEF

ON the day after Lord Harry's description of the state of his mind reached London, a gentleman presented himself at the publishing office of Messrs. Boldside Brothers, and asked for the senior partner, Mr. Peter Boldside. When he sent in his card, it bore the name of "Mr. Vimpany."

"To what fortunate circumstance am I indebted, sir, for the honour of your visit?" the senior partner inquired. His ingratiating manners, his genial smile, his roundly resonant voice, were personal advantages of which he made a merciless use. The literary customer who entered the office, hesitating before the question of publishing a work at his own expense, generally decided to pay the penalty when he encountered Mr. Peter Boldside.

"I want to inquire about the sale of my work," Mr. Vimpany replied.

"Ah, doctor, you have come to the wrong man. You must go to my brother."

Mr. Vimpany protested. "You mentioned the terms when I first applied to you," he said, "and you signed the agreement."

"That is in my department," the senior partner gently explained. "And I shall write the cheque when, as we both hope, your large profits shall fall due. But our sales of works are in the department of my brother, Mr. Paul Boldside." He rang a bell; a clerk appeared, and received his instructions: "Mr. Paul. Good-morning, doctor."

Mr. Paul was, personally speaking, his brother repeated—without the deep voice, and without the genial smile. Conducted to the office of the junior partner, Mr. Vimpany found himself in the presence of a stranger, occupied in turning over the pages of a newspaper. When his name was announced, the publisher started, and handed his newspaper to the doctor.

"This is a coincidence," he said. "I was looking, sir, for your name in the pages which I have just put into your hand. Surely the editor can't have refused to publish your letter?"

Mr. Vimpany was sober, and therefore sad, and therefore (again) not to be trifled with by a mystifying reception. "I don't understand you," he answered gruffly. "What do you mean?"

"Is it possible that you have not seen last week's number of the paper?" Mr. Paul asked. "And you a literary man!" He forthwith produced the last week's number, and opened it at the right place. "Read that, sir," he said, with something in his manner which looked like virtuous indignation.

Mr. Vimpany found himself confronted by a letter addressed to the editor. It was signed by an eminent physician, whose portrait had appeared in the first serial part of the new work—accompanied by a brief memoir of his life, which purported to be written by himself. Not one line of the autobiography (this celebrated person declared) had proceeded from his pen. Mr. Vimpany had impudently published an imaginary memoir, full of false reports and scandalous inventions—and this after he had been referred to a trustworthy source for the necessary particulars. Stating these facts, the indignant physician cautioned readers to beware of purchasing a work which, so far as he was concerned, was nothing less than a fraud on the public.

"If you can answer that letter, sir," Mr. Paul Boldside resumed, "the better it will be, I can tell you, for the sale of your publication."

Mr. Vimpany made a reckless reply: "I want to know how the thing sells. Never mind the letter."

"Never mind the letter?" the junior partner repeated. "A positive charge of fraud is advanced by a man at the head of his profession against a work which we have published—and you say, Never mind the letter."

The rough customer of the Boldsides struck his fist on the table. "Bother the letter! I insist on knowing what the sale is."

Still preserving his dignity, Mr. Paul (like Mr. Peter) rang for the clerk, and briefly gave an order. "Mr. Vimpany's account," he said—and proceeded to admonish Mr. Vimpany himself.

"You appear, sir, to have no defence of your conduct to offer. Our firm has a reputation to preserve. When I have consulted with my brother, we shall be under the disagreeable necessity—"

Here (as he afterwards told his brother) the publisher was brutally interrupted by the author:

"If you will have it," said this rude man, "here it is in two words. The doctor's portrait is the likeness of an ass. As he couldn't do it himself, I wanted materials for writing his life. He referred me to the year of his birth, the year of his marriage, the year of this, that, and the other. Who cares about dates? The public likes to be tickled by personal statements. Very well—I tickled the public. There you have it in a nutshell."

The clerk appeared at that auspicious moment, with the author's account neatly exhibited under two sides: a Debtor side, which represented the expenditure of Hugh Mountjoy's money; and a Creditor side, which represented (so far) Mr. Vimpany's profits. Amount of these last: 3l. 14s. 10d.

Mr. Vimpany tore up the account, threw the pieces in the face of Mr. Paul, and expressed his sentiments in one opprobrious word: "Swindlers!"

The publisher said: "You shall hear of us, sir, through our lawyer."

And the author answered: "Go to the devil!"

Once out in the streets again, the first open door at which Mr. Vimpany stopped was the door of a tavern. He ordered a glass of brandy and water, and a cigar.

It was then the hour of the afternoon, between the time of luncheon and the time of dinner, when the business of a tavern is generally in a state of suspense. The dining-room was empty when Mr. Vimpany entered it: and the waiter's unoccupied attention was in want of an object. Having nothing else to notice, he looked at the person who had just come in. The deluded stranger was drinking fiery potato-brandy, and smoking (at the foreign price) an English cigar. Would his taste tell him the melancholy truth? No: it seemed to matter nothing to him what he was drinking or what he was smoking. Now he looked angry, and now he looked puzzled; and now he took a long letter from his pocket, and read it in places, and marked the places with a pencil. "Up to some mischief," was the waiter's interpretation of these signs. The stranger ordered a second glass of grog, and drank it in gulps, and fell into such deep thought that he let his cigar go out. Evidently, a man in search of an idea. And, to all appearance, he found what he wanted on a sudden. In a hurry he paid his reckoning, and left his small change and his unfinished cigar on the table, and was off before the waiter could say, "Thank you."

The next place at which he stopped was a fine house in a spacious square. A carriage was waiting at the door. The servant who opened the door knew him.

"Sir James is going out again, sir, in two minutes," the man said. Mr. Vimpany answered: "I won't keep him two minutes."

A bell rang from the room on the ground floor; and a gentleman came out, as Mr. Vimpany was shown in. Sir James's stethoscope was still in his hand; his latest medical fee lay on the table. "Some other day, Vimpany," the great surgeon said; "I have no time to give you now."

"Will you give me a minute?" the humble doctor asked.

"Very well. What is it?"

"I am down in the world now, Sir James, as you know—and I am trying to pick myself up again."

"Very creditable, my good fellow. How can I help you? Come, come—out with it. You want something?"

"I want your great name to do me a great service. I am going to France. A letter of introduction, from you, will open doors which might be closed to an unknown man like myself."

"What doors do you mean?" Sir James asked.

"The doors of the hospitals in Paris."

"Wait a minute, Vimpany. Have you any particular object in view?"

"A professional object, of course," the ready doctor answered. "I have got an idea for a new treatment of diseases of the lungs; and I want to see if the French have made any recent discoveries in that direction."

Sir James took up his pen—and hesitated. His ill-starred medical colleague had been his fellow-student and his friend, in the days when they were both young men. They had seen but little of each other since they had gone their different ways—one of them, on the high road which leads to success, the other down the byways which end in failure. The famous surgeon felt a passing doubt of the use which his needy and vagabond inferior might make of his name. For a moment his pen was held suspended over the paper. But the man of great reputation was also a man of great heart. Old associations pleaded with him, and won their cause. His companion of former times left the house provided with a letter of introduction to the chief surgeon at the Hotel Dieu, in Paris.

Mr. Vimpany's next, and last, proceeding for that day, was to stop at a telegraph-office, and to communicate economically with Lord Harry in three words:

"Expect me to-morrow."



CHAPTER XXXVII

THE FIRST QUARREL

EARLY in the morning of the next day, Lord Harry received the doctor's telegram. Iris not having risen at the time, he sent for Fanny Mere, and ordered her to get the spare room ready for a guest. The maid's busy suspicion tempted her to put a venturesome question. She asked if the person expected was a lady or a gentleman.

"What business is it of yours who the visitor is?" her master asked sharply. Always easy and good-humoured with his inferiors in general, Lord Harry had taken a dislike to his wife's maid, from the moment when he had first seen her. His Irish feeling for beauty and brightness was especially offended by the unhealthy pallor of the woman's complexion, and the sullen self-suppression of her manner. All that his native ingenuity had been able to do was to make her a means of paying a compliment to his wife. "Your maid has one merit in my eyes," he said; "she is a living proof of the sweetness of your temper."

Iris joined her husband at the breakfast-table with an appearance of disturbance in her face, seldom seen, during the dull days of her life at Passy. "I hear of somebody coming to stay with us," she said. "Not Mr. Vimpany again, I hope and trust?"

Lord Harry was careful to give his customary morning kiss, before he replied. "Why shouldn't my faithful old friend come and see me again?" he asked, with his winning smile.

"Pray don't speak of that hateful man," she answered, "as your faithful old friend! He is nothing of the kind. What did you tell me when he took leave of us after his last visit, and I owned I was glad that he had gone? You said: 'Faith, my dear, I'm as glad as you are.'"

Her good-natured husband laughed at this little picture of himself. "Ah, my darling, how many more times am I to make the same confession to my pretty priest? Try to remember, without more telling, that it's one of my misfortunes to be a man of many tempers. There are times when I get tired to death of Mr. Vimpany; and there are times when the cheery old devil exercises fascinations over me. I declare you're spoiling the eyebrows that I admire by letting them twist themselves into a frown! After the trouble I have taken to clear your mind of prejudice against an unfortunate man, it's disheartening to find you so hard on the poor fellow's faults and so blind to his virtues."

The time had been when this remonstrance might have influenced his wife's opinion. She passed it over without notice now.

"Does he come here by your invitation?" she asked.

"How else should he come here, my dear?"

She looked at her husband with doubt too plainly visible in her eyes. "I wonder what your motive is for sending for him," she said.

He was just lifting his teacup to his lips—he put it down again when he heard those words.

"Are you ill this morning?" he asked.

"No."

"Have I said anything that has offended you?"

"Certainly not."

"Then I must tell you this, Iris; I don't approve of what you have just said. It sounds, to my mind, unpleasantly like suspicion of me and suspicion of my friend. I see your face confessing it, my lady, at this moment."

"You are half right, Harry, and no more. What you see in my face is suspicion of your friend."

"Founded on what, if you please?"

"Founded on what I have seen of him, and on what I know of him. When you tried to alter my opinion of Mr. Vimpany some time since, I did my best to make my view your view. I deceived myself, for your sake; I put the best construction on what he said and did, when he was staying here. It was well meant, but it was of no use. In a thousand different ways, while he was doing his best to win my favour, his true self was telling tales of him under the fair surface. Mr. Vimpany is a bad man. He is the very worst friend you could have about you at any time—and especially at a time when your patience is tried by needy circumstances."

"One word, Iris. The more eloquent you are, the more I admire you. Only, don't mention my needy circumstances again."

She passed over the interruption as she had already passed over the remonstrance, without taking notice of it.

"Dearest, you are always good to me," she continued gently. "Am I wrong in thinking that love gives me some little influence over you still? Women are vain—are they not?—and I am no better than the rest of them. Flatter your wife's vanity, Harry, by attaching some importance to her opinion. Is there time enough, yet, to telegraph to Mr. Vimpany? Quite out of the question, is it? Well, then, if he must come here, do—pray, pray do consider Me. Don't let him stay in the house! I'll find a good excuse, and take a bedroom for him in the neighbourhood. Anywhere else, so long as he is not here. He turns me cold when I think of him, sleeping under the same roof with ourselves. Not with us! oh, Harry, not with us!"

Her eyes eagerly searched her husband's face; she looked there for indulgence, she looked for conviction. No! he was still admiring her.

"On my word of honour," he burst out, "you fascinate me. What an imagination you have got! One of these days, Iris, I shall be prouder of you than ever; I shall find you a famous literary character. I don't mean writing a novel; women who can't even hem a handkerchief can write a novel. It's poetry I'm thinking of. Irish melodies by Lady Harry that beat Tom Moore. What a gift! And there are fortunes made, as I have heard, by people who spoil fair white paper to some purpose. I wish I was one of them."

"Have you no more to say to me?" she asked.

"What more should there be? You wouldn't have me take you seriously, in what you have just said of Vimpany?"

"Why not?"

"Oh, come, come, my darling! Just consider. With a bedroom empty and waiting, upstairs, is my old Vimpany to be sent to quarters for the night among strangers? I wouldn't speak harshly to you, Iris, for the whole world; and I don't deny that the convivial doctor may be sometimes a little too fond of his drop of grog. You will tell me, maybe, that he hasn't got on nicely with his wife; and I grant it. There are not many people who set such a pretty example of matrimony as we do. Poor humanity—there's all that's to be said about it. But when you tell me that Vimpany is a bad man, and the worst friend I could possibly have, and so forth—what better can I do than set it down to your imagination? I've a pretty fancy, myself; and I think I see my angel inventing poetical characters, up among congenial clouds. What's the matter? Surely, you haven't done breakfast yet?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to leave me?"

"I am going to my room."

"You're in a mighty hurry to get away. I never meant to vex you, Iris. Ah, well, if you must leave the table, I'll have the honour of opening the door for you, at any rate. I wonder what you're going to do?"

"To cultivate my imagination," she answered, with the first outbreak of bitterness that had escaped her yet.

His face hardened. "There seems to be something like bearing malice in this," he said. "Are you treating me, for the first time, to an exhibition of enmity? What am I to call it, if it's not that?"

"Call it disappointment," she suggested quietly, and left him.

Lord Harry went back to his breakfast. His jealousy was up in arms again. "She's comparing me with her absent friend," he said to himself, "and wishing she had married the amiable Mountjoy instead of me."

So the first quarrel ended—and Mr. Vimpany had been the cause of it.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

ICI ON PARLE FRANCAIS

THE doctor arrived in good time for dinner, and shook hands with the Irish lord in excellent spirits.

He looked round the room, and asked where my lady was. Lord Harry's reply suggested the presence of a cloud on the domestic horizon. He had been taking a long ride, and had only returned a few minutes since; Iris would (as he supposed) join them immediately.

The maid put the soup on the table, and delivered a message. Her mistress was suffering from a headache, and was not well enough to dine with the gentlemen.

As an old married man, Mr. Vimpany knew what this meant; he begged leave to send a comforting message to the suffering lady of the house. Would Fanny be good enough to say that he had made inquiries on the subject of Mr. Mountjoy's health, before he left London. The report was still favourable; there was nothing to complain of but the after-weakness which had followed the fever. On that account only, the attendance of the nurse was still a matter of necessity. "With my respects to Lady Harry," he called after Fanny, as she went out in dogged silence.

"I have begun by making myself agreeable to your wife," the doctor remarked with a self-approving grin. "Perhaps she will dine with us to-morrow. Pass the sherry."

The remembrance of what had happened at the breakfast-table, that morning, seemed to be dwelling disagreeably on Lord Harry's mind. He said but little—and that little related to the subject on which he had already written, at full length, to his medical friend.

In an interval, when the service of the table required the attendance of Fanny in the kitchen, Mr. Vimpany took the opportunity of saying a few cheering words. He had come (he remarked) prepared with the right sort of remedy for an ailing state of mind, and he would explain himself at a fitter opportunity. Lord Harry impatiently asked why the explanation was deferred. If the presence of the maid was the obstacle which caused delay, it would be easy to tell her that she was not wanted to wait.

The wary doctor positively forbade this.

He had observed Fanny, during his previous visit, and had discovered that she seemed to distrust him. The woman was sly and suspicious. Since they had sat down to dinner, it was easy to see that she was lingering in the room to listen to the conversation, on one pretence or another. If she was told not to wait, there could be no doubt of her next proceeding: she would listen outside the door. "Take my word for it," the doctor concluded, "there are all the materials for a spy in Fanny Mere."

But Lord Harry was obstinate. Chafing under the sense of his helpless pecuniary position, he was determined to hear, at once, what remedy for it Vimpany had discovered.

"We can set that woman's curiosity at defiance," he said.

"How?"

"When you were learning your profession, you lived in Paris for some years, didn't you?

"All right!"

"Well, then, you can't have entirely forgotten your French?"

The doctor at once understood what this meant, and answered significantly by a wink. He had found an opportunity (he said) of testing his memory, not very long since. Time had undoubtedly deprived him of his early mastery over the French language; but he could still (allowing for a few mistakes) make a shift to understand it and speak it. There was one thing, however, that he wanted to know first. Could they be sure that my lady's maid had not picked up French enough to use her ears to some purpose? Lord Harry easily disposed of this doubt. So entirely ignorant was the maid of the language of the place in which she was living, that she was not able to ask the tradespeople for the simplest article of household use, unless it was written for her in French before she was sent on an errand.

This was conclusive. When Fanny returned to the dining-room, she found a surprise waiting for her. The two gentlemen had taken leave of their nationality, and were talking the language of foreigners.

An hour later, when the dinner-table had been cleared, the maid's domestic duties took her to Lady Harry's room to make tea. She noticed the sad careworn look on her mistress's face, and spoke of it at once in her own downright way.

"I thought it was only an excuse," she said, "when you gave me that message to the gentlemen, at dinner-time. Are you really ill, my lady?"

"I am a little out of spirits," Iris replied.

Fanny made the tea. "I can understand that," she said to herself, as she moved away to leave the room; "I'm out of spirits myself."

Iris called her back: "I heard you say just now, Fanny, that you were out of spirits yourself. If you were speaking of some troubles of your own, I am sorry for you, and I won't say any more. But if you know what my anxieties are, and share them—"

"Mine is the biggest share of the two," Fanny broke out abruptly. "It goes against the grain with me to distress you, my lady; but we are beginning badly, and you ought to know it. The doctor has beaten me already."

"Beaten you already?" Iris repeated. "Tell me plainly what you mean?"

"Here it is, if you please, as plainly as words can say it. Mr. Vimpany has something—something wicked, of course—to say to my master; and he won't let it pass his lips here, in the cottage."

"Why not?"

"Because he suspects me of listening at the door, and looking through the keyhole. I don't know, my lady, that he doesn't even suspect You. 'I've learnt something in the course of my life,' he says to my master; 'and it's a rule with me to be careful of what I talk about indoors, when there are women in the house. What are you going to do to-morrow?' he says. My lord told him there was to be a meeting at the newspaper office. The doctor says: 'I'll go to Paris with you. The newspaper office isn't far from the Luxembourg Gardens. When you have done your business, you will find me waiting at the gate. What I have to tell you, you shall hear out of doors in the Gardens—and in an open part of them, too, where there are no lurking-places among the trees.' My master seemed to get angry at being put off in this way. 'What is it you have got to tell me?' he says. 'Is it anything like the proposal you made, when you were on your last visit here?' The doctor laughed. 'To-morrow won't be long in coming,' he says. 'Patience, my lord—patience.' There was no getting him to say a word more. Now, what am I to do? How am I to get a chance of listening to him, out in an open garden, without being seen? There's what I mean when I say he has beaten me. It's you, my lady—it's you who will suffer in the end."

"You don't know that, Fanny."

"No, my lady—but I'm certain of it. And here I am, as helpless as yourself! My temper has been quiet, since my misfortune; it would be quiet still, but for this." The one animating motive, the one exasperating influence, in that sad and secret life was still the mistress's welfare—still the safety of the generous woman who had befriended and forgiven her. She turned aside from the table, to hide her ghastly face.

"Pray try to control yourself." As Iris spoke, she pointed kindly to a chair. "There is something that I want to say when you are composed again. I won't hurry you; I won't look at you. Sit down, Fanny."

She appeared to shrink from being seated in her mistress's presence. "Please to let me go to the window," she said; "the air will help me."

To the window she went, and struggled with the passionate self so steadily kept under at other times; so obstinately conquered now. "What did you wish to say to me?" she asked.

"You have surprised—you have perplexed me," Iris said. "I am at a loss to understand how you discovered what seems to have passed between your master and Mr. Vimpany. You don't surely mean to tell me that they talked of their private affairs while you were waiting at table?"

"I don't tell lies, my lady," Fanny declared impulsively. "They talked of nothing else all through the dinner."

"Before you!" Iris exclaimed.

There was a pause. Fear and shame confessed themselves furtively on the maid's colourless face. Silently, swiftly, she turned to the door. Had a slip of the tongue hurried her into the betrayal of something which it was her interest to conceal? "Don't be alarmed," Iris said compassionately; "I have no wish to intrude on your secrets."

With her hand on the door, Fanny Mere closed it again, and came back.

"I am not so ungrateful," she said, "as to have any secrets from You. It's hard to confess what may lower me in your good opinion, but it must be done. I have deceived your ladyship—and I am ashamed of it. I have deceived the doctor—and I glory in it. My master and Mr. Vimpany thought they were safe in speaking French, while I was waiting on them. I know French as well as they do."

Iris could hardly believe what she heard. "Do you really mean what you say?" she asked.

"There's that much good in me," Fanny replied; "I always mean what I say."

"Why did you deceive me? Why have you been acting the part of an ignorant woman?"

"The deceit has been useful in your service," the obstinate maid declared. "Perhaps it may be useful again."

"Was that what you were thinking of," Iris said, "when you allowed me to translate English into French for you, and never told me the truth?"

"At any rate, I will tell you the truth, now. No: I was not thinking of you, when you wrote my errands for me in French—I was thinking again of some advice that was once given to me."

"Was it advice given by a friend?"

"Given by a man, my lady, who was the worst enemy I have ever had."

Her considerate mistress understood the allusion, and forbade her to distress herself by saying more. But Fanny felt that atonement, as well as explanation, was due to her benefactress. Slowly, painfully she described the person to whom she had referred. He was a Frenchman, who had been her music-master during the brief period at which she had attended a school: he had promised her marriage; he had persuaded her to elope with him. The little money that they had to live on was earned by her needle, and by his wages as accompanist at a music-hall. While she was still able to attract him, and to hope for the performance of his promise, he amused himself by teaching her his own language. When he deserted her, his letter of farewell contained, among other things the advice to which she had alluded.

"In your station of life," this man had written, "knowledge of French is still a rare accomplishment. Keep your knowledge to yourself. English people of rank have a way of talking French to each other, when they don't wish to be understood by their inferiors. In the course of your career, you may surprise secrets which will prove to be a little fortune, if you play your cards properly. Anyhow, it is the only fortune I have to leave to you." Such had been the villain's parting gift to the woman whom he had betrayed.

She had hated him too bitterly to be depraved by his advice.

On the contrary, when the kindness of a friend (now no longer in England) had helped her to obtain her first employment as a domestic servant, she had thought it might be to her interest to mention that she could read, write, and speak French. The result proved to be not only a disappointment, but a warning to her for the future. Such an accomplishment as a knowledge of a foreign language possessed by an Englishwoman, in her humble rank of life, was considered by her mistress to justify suspicion. Questions were asked, which it was impossible for her to answer truthfully. Small scandal drew its own conclusions—her life with the other servants became unendurable—she left her situation.

From that time, until the happy day when she met with Iris, concealment of her knowledge of French became a proceeding forced on her by her own poor interests. Her present mistress would undoubtedly have been taken into her confidence, if the opportunity had offered itself. But Iris had never encouraged her to speak of the one darkest scene in her life; and for that reason, she had kept her own counsel until the date of her mistress's marriage. Distrusting the husband, and the husband's confidential friend—for were they not both men?—she had thought of the vile Frenchman's advice, and had resolved to give it a trial; not with the degrading motive which he had suggested, but with the vague presentiment of making a discovery of wickedness, threatening mischief under a French disguise, which might be of service to her benefactress at some future time.

"And I may still turn it to your advantage, my lady," Fanny ventured to add, "if you will consent to say nothing to anybody of your having a servant who has learnt French."

Iris looked at her coldly and gravely. "Must I remind you," she said, "that you are asking my help in practicing a deception on my husband?"

"I shall be sent away," Fanny answered, "if you tell my master what I have told you."

This was indisputably true. Iris hesitated. In her present situation, the maid was the one friend on whom she could rely. Before her marriage, she would have recoiled from availing herself, under any circumstances, of such services as Fanny's reckless gratitude had offered to her. But the moral atmosphere in which she was living had begun, as Mrs. Vimpany had foreseen, to exert its baneful influence. The mistress descended to bargaining with the servant.

"Deceive the doctor," she said, "and I well remember that it may be for my good." She stopped, and considered for a moment. Her noble nature rallied its forces, and prompted her next words: "But respect your master, if you wish me to keep your secret. I forbid you to listen to what my lord may say, when he speaks with Mr. Vimpany to-morrow."

"I have already told your ladyship that I shall have no chance of listening to what they say to each other, out of doors," Fanny rejoined. "But I can watch the doctor at any rate. We don't know what he may not do when he is left by himself, while my master is at the meeting. I want to try if I can follow that rogue through the streets, without his finding me out. Please to send me on an errand to Paris to-morrow."

"You will be running a terrible risk," her mistress reminded her, "if Mr. Vimpany discovers you."

"I'll take my chance of that," was the reckless reply.

Iris consented.



CHAPTER XXXIX

THE MYSTERY OF THE HOSPITAL

ON the next morning Lord Harry left the cottage, accompanied by the doctor.

After a long absence, he returned alone. His wife's worst apprehensions, roused by what Fanny had told her, were more than justified, by the change which she now perceived in him. His eyes were bloodshot, his face was haggard, his movements were feeble and slow. He looked like a man exhausted by some internal conflict, which had vibrated between the extremes of anger and alarm. "I'm tired to death," he said; "get me a glass of wine."

She waited on him with eager obedience, and watched anxiously for the reviving effect of the stimulant.

The little irritabilities which degrade humanity only prolong their mischievous existence, while the surface of life stagnates in calm. Their annihilation follows when strong emotion stirs in the depths, and raises the storm. The estrangement of the day before passed as completely from the minds of the husband and wife—both strongly agitated—as if it had never existed. All-mastering fear was busy at their hearts; fear, in the woman, of the unknown temptation which had tried the man; fear, in the man, of the tell-tale disturbance in him, which might excite the woman's suspicion. Without venturing to look at him, Iris said: "I am afraid you have heard bad news?" Without venturing to look at her, Lord Harry answered: "Yes, at the newspaper office." She knew that he was deceiving her; and he felt that she knew it. For awhile, they were both silent.

From time to time, she anxiously stole a look at him.

His mind remained absorbed in thought. There they were, in the same room—seated near each other; united by the most intimate of human relationships—and yet how far, how cruelly far, apart! The slowest of all laggard minutes, the minutes which are reckoned by suspense, followed each other tardily and more tardily, before there appeared the first sign of a change. He lifted his drooping head. Sadly, longingly, he looked at her. The unerring instinct of true love encouraged his wife to speak to him.

"I wish I could relieve your anxieties," she said simply. "Is there nothing I can do to help you?"

"Come here, Iris."

She rose and approached him. In the past days of the honeymoon and its sweet familiarities, he had sometimes taken her on his knee. He took her on his knee now, and put his arm round her. "Kiss me," he said.

With all her heart she kissed him. He sighed heavily; his eyes rested on her with a trustful appealing look which she had never observed in them before.

"Why do you hesitate to confide in me?" she asked. "Dear Harry, do you think I don't see that something troubles you?"

"Yes," he said, "there is something that I regret."

"What is it?"

"Iris," he answered, "I am sorry I asked Vimpany to come back to us."

At that unexpected confession, a bright flush of joy and pride overspread his wife's face. Again, the unerring instinct of love guided her to discovery of the truth. The opinion of his wicked friend must have been accidentally justified, at the secret interview of that day, by the friend himself! In tempting her husband, Vimpany had said something which must have shocked and offended him. The result, as she could hardly doubt, had been the restoration of her domestic influence to its helpful freedom of control—whether for the time only it was not in her nature, at that moment of happiness, to inquire. "After what you have just told me," she ventured to say, "I may own that I am glad to see you come home, alone."

In that indirect manner, she confessed the hope that friendly intercourse between the two men had come to an end. His reply disappointed her.

"Vimpany only remains in Paris," he said, "to present a letter of introduction. He will follow me home."

"Soon?" she asked, piteously.

"In time for dinner, I suppose." She was still sitting on his knee. His arm pressed her gently when he said his next words, "I hope you will dine with us to-day, Iris?"

"Yes—if you wish it."

"I wish it very much. Something in me recoils from being alone with Vimpany. Besides, a dinner at home without you is no dinner at all."

She thanked him for that little compliment by a look. At the same time, her grateful sense of her husband's kindness was embittered by the prospect of the doctor's return. "Is he likely to dine with us often, now?" she was bold enough to say.

"I hope not."

Perhaps he was conscious that he might have made a more positive reply. He certainly took refuge in another subject—more agreeable to himself.

"My dear, you have expressed the wish to relieve my anxieties," he said; "and you can help me, I think, in that way. I have a letter to write—of some importance, Iris, to your interests as well as to mine—which must go to Ireland by to-day's post. You shall read it, and say if you approve of what I have done. Don't let me be disturbed. This letter, I can tell you, will make a hard demand on my poor brains—I must go and write in my own room."

Left alone with the thoughts that now crowded on her mind, Iris found her attention claimed once more by passing events. Fanny Mere arrived, to report herself on her return from Paris.

She had so managed her departure from Passy as to precede Lord Harry and Mr. Vimpany, and to watch for their arrival in Paris by a later train. They had driven from the railway to the newspaper office—-with the maid in attendance on them in another cab. When they separated, the doctor proceeded on foot to the Luxembourg Gardens. Wearing a plain black dress, and protected from close observation by her veil, Fanny followed him, cautiously keeping at a sufficient distance, now on one side of the street and now on the other. When my lord joined his friend, she just held them in view, and no more, as they walked up and down in the barest and loneliest part of the Gardens that they could find. Their talk having come to an end, they parted. Her master was the first who came out into the street; walking at a great rate, and looking most desperately upset. Mr. Vimpany next appeared, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, grinning as if his own villainous thoughts were thoroughly amusing him. Fanny was now more careful than ever not to lose sight of the doctor. The course which he pursued led them to the famous hospital called the Hotel Dieu.

At the entrance she saw him take a letter out of his pocket, and give it to the porter. Soon afterwards, a person appeared who greeted him politely, and conducted him into the building. For more than an hour, Fanny waited to see Mr. Vimpany come out again, and waited in vain. What could he possibly want in a French hospital? And why had he remained in that foreign institution for so long a time? Baffled by these mysteries, and weary after much walking, Fanny made the best of her way home, and consulted her mistress.

Even if Iris had been capable of enlightening her, the opportunity was wanting. Lord Harry entered the room, with the letter which he had just written, open in his hand, As a matter of course, the maid retired.



CHAPTER XL

DIRE NECESSITY

THE Irish lord had a word to say to his wife, before he submitted to her the letter which he had just written.

He had been summoned to a meeting of proprietors at the office of the newspaper, convened to settle the terms of a new subscription rendered necessary by unforeseen expenses incurred in the interests of the speculation. The vote that followed, after careful preliminary consultation, authorised a claim on the purses of subscribing proprietors, which sadly reduced the sum obtained by Lord Harry's promissory note. Nor was this inconvenience the only trial of endurance to which the Irish lord was compelled to submit. The hope which he had entertained of assistance from the profits of the new journal, when repayment of the loan that he had raised became due, was now plainly revealed as a delusion. Ruin stared him in the face, unless he could command the means of waiting for the pecuniary success of the newspaper, during an interval variously estimated at six months, or even at a year to come.

"Our case is desperate enough," he said, "to call for a desperate remedy. Keep up your spirits, Iris—I have written to my brother."

Iris looked at him in dismay.

"Surely," she said, "you once told me you had written to your brother, and he answered you in the cruellest manner through his lawyers."

"Quite true, my dear. But, this time, there is one circumstance in our favour—my brother is going to be married. The lady is said to be an heiress; a charming creature, admired and beloved wherever she goes. There must surely be something to soften the hardest heart in that happy prospect. Read what I have written, and tell me what you think of it."

The opinion of the devoted wife encouraged the desperate husband: the letter was dispatched by the post of that day.

If boisterous good spirits can make a man agreeable at the dinner-table, then indeed Mr. Vimpany, on his return to the cottage, played the part of a welcome guest. He was inexhaustible in gallant attentions to his friend's wife; he told his most amusing stories in his happiest way; he gaily drank his host's fine white Burgundy, and praised with thorough knowledge of the subject the succulent French dishes; he tried Lord Harry with talk on politics, talk on sport, and (wonderful to relate in these days) talk on literature. The preoccupied Irishman was equally inaccessible on all three subjects. When the dessert was placed on the table—still bent on making himself agreeable to Lady Harry—Mr. Vimpany led the conversation to the subject of floriculture. In the interests of her ladyship's pretty little garden, he advocated a complete change in the system of cultivation, and justified his revolutionary views by misquoting the published work of a great authority on gardening with such polite obstinacy that Iris (eager to confute him) went away to fetch the book. The moment he had entrapped her into leaving the room, the doctor turned to Lord Harry with a sudden change to the imperative mood in look and manner.

"What have you been about," he asked, "since we had that talk in the Gardens to-day? Have you looked at your empty purse, and are you wise enough to take my way of filling it?"

"As long as there's the ghost of a chance left to me," Lord Harry replied, "I'll take any way of filling my purse but yours."

"Does that mean you have found a way?"

"Do me a favour, Vimpany. Defer all questions till the end of the week."

"And then I shall have your answer?"

"Without fail, I promise it. Hush!"

Iris returned to the dining-room with her book; and polite Mr. Vimpany owned in the readiest manner that he had been mistaken.

The remaining days of the week followed each other wearily. During the interval, Lord Harry's friend carefully preserved the character of a model guest—he gave as little trouble as possible. Every morning after breakfast the doctor went away by the train. Every morning (with similar regularity) he was followed by the resolute Fanny Mere. Pursuing his way through widely different quarters of Paris, he invariably stopped at a public building, invariably presented a letter at the door, and was invariably asked to walk in. Inquiries, patiently persisted in by the English maid, led in each case to the same result. The different public buildings were devoted to the same benevolent purpose. Like the Hotel Dieu, they were all hospitals; and Mr. Vimpany's object in visiting them remained as profound a mystery as ever.

Early on the last morning of the week the answer from Lord Harry's brother arrived. Hearing of it, Iris ran eagerly into her husband's room. The letter was already scattered in fragments on the floor. What the tone of the Earl's inhuman answer had been in the past time, that it was again now.

Iris put her arms round her husband's neck. "Oh, my poor love, what is to be done?"

He answered in one reckless word: "Nothing!"

"Is there nobody else who can help us?" she asked.

"Ah, well, darling, there's perhaps one other person still left,"

"Who is the person?"

"Who should it be but your own dear self?"

She looked at him in undisguised bewilderment: "Only tell me, Harry, what I can do?"

"Write to Mountjoy, and ask him to lend me the money."

He said it. In those shameless words, he said it. She, who had sacrificed Mountjoy to the man whom she had married, was now asked by that man to use Mountjoy's devotion to her, as a means of paying his debts! Iris drew back from him with a cry of disgust.

"You refuse?" he said.

"Do you insult me by doubting it?" she answered.

He rang the bell furiously, and dashed out of the room. She heard him, on the stairs, ask where Mr. Vimpany was. The servant replied: "In the garden, my lord."

Smoking a cigar luxuriously in the fine morning air, the doctor saw his excitable Irish friend hastening out to meet him.

"Don't hurry," he said, in full possession of his impudent good-humour; "and don't lose your temper. Will you take my way out of your difficulties, or will you not? Which is it—Yes or No?"

"You infernal scoundrel—Yes!"

"My dear lord, I congratulate you."

"On what, sir?"

"On being as great a scoundrel as I am."



CHAPTER XLI

THE MAN IS FOUND.

THE unworthy scheme, by means of which Lord Harry had proposed to extricate himself from his pecuniary responsibilities, had led to serious consequences. It had produced a state of deliberate estrangement between man and wife.

Iris secluded herself in her own room. Her husband passed the hours of every day away from the cottage; sometimes in the company of the doctor, sometimes among his friends in Paris. His wife suffered acutely under the self-imposed state of separation, to which wounded pride and keenly felt resentment compelled her to submit. No friend was near her, in whose compassionate advice she might have token refuge. Not even the sympathy of her maid was offered to the lonely wife.

With the welfare of Iris as her one end in view, Fanny Mere honestly believed that it would be better and safer for Lady Harry if she and her husband finally decided on living separate lives. The longer my lord persisted in keeping the doctor with him as his guest, the more perilously he was associated with a merciless wretch, who would be capable of plotting the ruin of anyone—man or woman, high person or low person—who might happen to be an obstacle in his way. So far as a person in her situation could venture on taking the liberty, the maid did her best to widen the breach between her master and her mistress.

While Fanny was making the attempt to influence Lady Harry, and only producing irritation as the result, Vimpany was exerting stronger powers of persuasion in the effort to prejudice the Irish lord against any proposal for reconciliation which might reach him through his wife.

"I find an unforgiving temper in your charming lady," the doctor declared. "It doesn't show itself on the surface, my dear fellow, but there it is. Take a wise advantage of circumstances—say you will raise no inconvenient objections, if she wants a separation by mutual consent. Now don't misunderstand me. I only recommend the sort of separation which will suit our convenience. You know as well as I do that you can whistle your wife back again—"

Mr. Vimpany's friend was rude enough to interrupt him, there.

"I call that a coarse way of putting it," Lord Harry interposed.

"Put it how you like for yourself," the doctor rejoined. "Lady Harry may be persuaded to come back to you, when we want her for our grand project. In the meantime (for I am always a considerate man where women are concerned) we act delicately towards my lady, in sparing her the discovery of—what shall I call our coming enterprise?—venturesome villainy, which might ruin you in your wife's estimation. Do you see our situation now, as it really is? Very well. Pass the bottle, and drop the subject for the present."