"I ask no questions, ma'am."

"And you will serve me faithfully—blindly?"

"Yes, ma'am; both faithfully and blindly."

"I think I may trust you," replied Honoria, very earnestly "And now I will speak freely. There are two men upon whose lives I desire to place a spy. I want to know every act of their lives, every word they speak, every secret of their hearts—I wish to be an unseen witness of their lonely hours, an impalpable guest at every gathering in which they mingle. I want to be near them always in spirit, if not in bodily presence. I want to track them step by step, let their ways be never so dark and winding. This is the purpose of my life; but I am a woman— powerless to act freely—bound and fettered as women only are fettered. Do you begin to understand now what I require of you."

"I think I do."

"Mr. Larkspur," continued Honoria, with energy. "I want you to be my second self. I want you to be the shadow of these two men. Wherever they go, you must follow—in some shape or other you must haunt them, by night and day. It is, of course, a difficult task which I demand of you. You have to decide whether it is impossible."

"Impossible! ma'am—not a bit of it. Nothing is impossible to a man who has served twenty years' apprenticeship as a Bow Street runner. You don't know what we old Bow Street hands can do when we're on our mettle. I've heard a deal of talk about Fooshay, that was at the head of Bonaparty's police—but bless your heart, ma'am, Fooshay was a fool to us. I've done as much and more than what you talk of before to-day. All you have to do is to give me the names and descriptions of the two men I am to watch, and leave all the rest to me."

"One of these two men is Sir Reginald Eversleigh, Baronet, a man of small fortune—a bachelor, occupying lodgings in Villiers Street. I have reason to believe that he is dissipated, a gamester, and a reprobate."

"Good," said Mr. Larkspur, who jotted down an occasional note in a greasy little pocket-book.

"The second person is a medical practitioner, called Victor Carrington—a Frenchman, but a perfect master of the English language, and a man whose youth has been spent in England. The two men are firm friends and constant associates. In keeping watch upon the actions of one, you cannot fail to see much of the other.

"Very good, ma'am; you may make your mind easy," answered the detective, as coolly as if he had just received the most common-place order.

He escorted Honoria to the door of his chambers, and left her to descend the dingy staircase as best as she might.



CHAPTER XVI.

WAITING AND WATCHING.

Valentine Jernam's younger brother, George, had journeyed to and fro on the high seas five years since the murder of the brave and generous- hearted sea-captain.

Things had gone well with Captain George Jernam, and in the whole of the trading navy there were few richer men than the owner of the 'Pizarro', 'Stormy Petrel', and 'Albatross'.

With these three vessels constantly afloat. George Jernam was on the high road to fortune.

His life had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have become so prosperous as to enable him to "settle down." This same process of settling down was one by no means congenial to George Jernam's disposition at any time; and he was far less likely to take to it kindly now, than when "dear old Val"—as he began to call his brother in his thoughts once more, when the horror of the murder had begun to wear off, and the lost friend seemed again familiar—had been the prospective sharer of the retirement which was to be so tranquil, so comfortable, and so well-earned. It had no attraction for George at all; for many a long day after Joyce Harker's letter had reached him he never dwelt upon it; he set his face hard against his grief, and worked on, as men must work, fortunately for them, under all chances and changes of this mortal life, until the last change of all. At first, the thirst for revenge upon his brother's murderers had been hot and strong upon George Jernam—almost as hot and strong as it had been, and continued to be, upon Joyce Harker; but the natures of the men differed materially. George Jernam had neither the dogged persistency nor the latent fierceness of his dead brother's friend and protege; and the long, slow, untiring watching to which Harker devoted himself would have been a task so uncongenial as to be indeed impossible to the more open, more congenial temperament of the merchant-captain.

He had responded warmly to Harker's letters; he had more than sanctioned the outlay which he had made, in money paid and money promised, to the skilled detective to whom Harker had entrusted the investigation of the murder of Valentine Jernam. He had awaited every communication with anxious interest and suspense, and he had never landed after a voyage, and received the letters which awaited his arrival, without a keen revival of the first sharp pang that had smote him with the tidings of his brother's fate.

Happily George Jernam was a busy man, and his life was full of variety, adventure, and incident. In time he began, not to forget, indeed, but to remember less frequently and less painfully, the manner of his brother's death, and to regard the fixed purpose of Joyce Harker's life as more or less of a harmless delusion. A practical man in his own way, George Jernam had very vague ideas concerning the lives of the criminal classes, and the faculties and facilities of the science of detection; and the hope of finding out the secret of his brother's fate had long ago deserted him.

Only once had he and Joyce Harker met since the murder of Valentine Jernam. George had landed a cargo at Hamburg, and had given his brother's friend rendezvous there. Then the two men had talked of all that had been done so vainly, and all that remained to be done, Harker hoped, so effectively. Joyce had never been able to bring his suspicions concerning Black Milsom to the test of proof. Unwearied search had been made for the old man who had played the part of grandfather to the beautiful ballad-singer; but it had been wholly ineffectual. All that could be ascertained concerning him was, that he had died in a hospital, in a country town on the great northern road, and that the girl had wandered away from there, and never more been heard of. Of Black Milsom, Joyce Harker had never lost sight, until his career received a temporary check by the sentence of transportation, which had sent the ruffian out of the country. But all efforts of the faithful watcher had failed to discover the missing link in the evidence which connected Black Milsom with Valentine Jernam's death. All his watching and questioning—all his silent noting of the idle talk around him—all his eager endeavour to take Dennis Wayman unawares, failed to enable him to obtain evidence of that one fact of which he was convinced—the fact that Valentine Jernam had been at the public-house in Ratcliff Highway on the day of his death.

When the inutility of his endeavours became clear to Joyce Harker, he gave up his lodging in Wayman's house, and located himself in modest apartments at Poplar, where he transacted a great deal of business for George Jernam, and maintained a constant, though unprofitable, communication with the detective officer to whom he had confided the task of investigation, and who was no other than Mr. Andrew Larkspur.

In one of the earliest of the numerous letters which George Jernam addressed to Harker, after the death of Valentine, the merchant-captain had given his zealous friend and assistant certain instructions concerning the old aunt to whom the two desolate boys had owed so much in their ill-treated childhood, and whom they had so well and constantly requited in their prosperous manhood. These instructions included a request that Joyce Harker would visit Susan Jernam in person, and furnish George with details relative to that venerable lady's requirements, looks, health, and general circumstances.

"I should have seen the good old soul, you know," wrote George, "when I was to have seen poor Val; but it didn't please God that the one thing should come off any more than the other, and it can't be helped. But I should like you to run down to Allanbay and look her up, and let her know that she is neither neglected nor forgotten by her vagabond nephew."

So Joyce Harker went down to the Devonshire village, and introduced himself to George Jernam's aunt. The old lady was much altered since she had last welcomed a visitor to her pretty, cheerful cottage, and had listened with simple surprise and pleasure to her nephew Valentine's tales of the sea, and they had talked together over the troublous days of his unhappy childhood. The untimely and tragic death of the merchant-captain had afflicted her deeply, and had filled her mind with sentiments which, though they differed in degree, closely resembled in their nature those of Joyce Harker. The determination to be revenged upon the murderers of "her boy" which Harker expressed, found a ready echo in the breast of his hearer, and she thanked him warmly for his devotion to the master he had lost. Strong mutual liking grew up between these two, and when her visitor left her—after having carried out all George's wishes in respect to her, on the scale of liberality which the grateful nephew had dictated—Susan Jernam gave him a cordial invitation to pass any leisure time he might have at the cottage, though, as she remarked—

"I am not very lively company, Mr. Harker, for you or anybody, for I can't talk of anything but George and poor Valentine."

"And I don't care to talk of much else either, Mrs. Jernam," said Harker, in reply; "so, you see, we couldn't possibly be better company for each other."

Thus it happened that a second tie between George Jernam and Joyce Harker arose, in the person of the sole surviving relative of the former, and that Joyce had made three visits to the pretty sea-side village in which the childhood of his dead friend and his living patron had been passed, before he and George Jernam met again on English ground.

When at length that long-deferred meeting took place, Valentine Jernam's murder was a mystery rather more than five years old, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur had made no progress towards its solution. He had been obliged to acknowledge to Joyce Harker that he had not struck the right trail, and to confess that he had begun to despond. The disappearance of Black Milsom from among the congenial society of thieves and ruffians which he frequented was, of course, easily accounted for by Mr. Larkspur, and the absence of any, even the slightest, additional clue to the fate of Jernam, confirmed that astute person in the conviction, which he had reached early in the course of his confabulations with Harker, that the convict was the guilty man. There was, on this hypothesis, nothing for it but to wait until the worthy exile should have worked out his time and once more returned to grace his mother-country, and then to resume the close watch which, though hitherto ineffectual, might in time bring some of his former deeds to light.

Such was the state of affairs when Captain Duncombe bought the deserted house which had had such undesirable tenants, first in the person of old Screwton, the miser, and, secondly, of Black Milsom. Joyce Harker was aware of the transaction, and had watched with some interest the transformation of the dreary, dismal, doomed place, into the cheery, comfortable, middle-class residence it had now become. If he had known that the last hours of Valentine Jernam's life had been passed on that spot, that there his beloved master had met with a violent and cruel death, with what different feelings he would have watched the work! But though, as the former dwelling of Black Milsom, the cottage had a dreary attraction for him, he was far from imagining that within its walls lay hidden one infallible clue to the secret for which he had sought so long and so vainly.

The new occupant of River View Cottage was acquainted with Joyce Harker, and held the solitary old man in some esteem. Captain Joe Duncombe and the protege of the Jernams had nothing whatever in common in character, disposition, or manners, and the distance in the social scale which divided the prosperous merchant-captain from the poor, though clever, dependent, was considerable, even according to the not very strict standard of manners observed by persons of their respective classes. But Joe Duncombe knew and heartily liked George Jernam. He had been in England at the time of Valentine's murder, and he had then learned the faithful and active part played by Harker. He had lost sight of the man for some time, but when he had bought the cottage, and during the progress of the changes and improvements he had made in that unprepossessing dwelling, accident had thrown Harker in his way, and they had found much to discuss in George Jernam's prosperity, in his generous treatment of Harker, in the general condition of the merchant service, which the two men declared to be going to the dogs, after the manner of all professions, trades, and institutions of every age and every clime, when contemplated from a conversational point of view; and in the honest captain's plans, hopes, and prospects concerning his daughter.

Joyce Harker had seen Rosamond Duncombe occasionally, but had not taken much notice of her. Nor had Miss Duncombe been much impressed by that gentleman. Joyce was not a lady's man, and Rosamond, who entertained a rather disrespectful notion of her father's acquaintances in general, classing them collectively as "old fogies," contented herself with distinguishing Mr. Harker as the ugliest and grimmest of the lot. Joyce came and went, not very often indeed, but very freely to River View Cottage, and there was much confidence and good-fellowship between the bluff old seaman and the more acute, but not less honest, adventurer.

There was, however, one circumstance which Captain Duncombe never mentioned to Harker. That circumstance was the apparition of old Screwton's ghost. Joe Duncombe was, to tell the truth, a little ashamed of his credulity on that occasion. He entertained no doubt that he had been victimized by a clever practical joke, and while he chuckled over the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator, who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but because Rosamond loved her father, and Susan Trott respected her master too much to disobey his lightest wish.

There was also one circumstance which Joyce Harker never mentioned to Captain Duncombe. This circumstance was the identity of the former occupant of the cottage with the man whom he believed to be the murderer of Valentine Jernam.

"It is bad enough to live in a place that's said to be haunted," said Harker to himself, when he visited the cottage for the first time; "without my telling him that he comes after a man who is certainly a convict, and probably a murderer."

* * * * *



CHAPTER XVII.

DOUBTFUL SOCIETY.

Victor Carrington still lived in the little cottage on the outskirts of London. Here, with his mother for his only companion, he led a simple, studious life, which, to any one ignorant of his character, would have seemed the life of a good and honourable man.

The few neighbours who passed to and fro beneath the wall which surrounded the cottage, knew nothing of the inner life of its occupants. They knew only that of all the houses in the neighbourhood this was the quietest. Yet those who happened to pass the house late at night always saw a glimmer of light in an upper chamber, and the blue vapour of smoke rising from one particular chimney.

Those who had occasion to pass the house frequently after dark perceived that the smoke from this chimney was different from the common smoke of common chimneys. Sometimes vivid sparks glittered and flashed upon the darkness. At other times a semi-luminous, green vapour was seen to issue from the mouth of the chimney.

These facts were spoken about by the neighbours; and by and by people discovered that the smoke issued from the chimney of Victor Carrington's laboratory, where the surgeon was frequently employed, long after midnight, making experiments in the science of chemistry.

The nature of these experiments was known to no one. The few neighbours who had ever conversed with the French surgeon had heard him declare that he was a student of the mysteries of electricity. It was, therefore, supposed that all his experiments were in some manner connected with that wondrous science.

No one for a moment suspected evil of a young man whose life was sober, respectable, and laborious, and who went to the little Catholic chapel every Sunday, with his mother leaning on his arm.

Those who really knew Victor Carrington knew that he was without one ray of belief in a Divine Ruler, and that he laughed to scorn those terrors of heavenly vengeance which will sometimes restrain the hand of the most hardened criminal. He was a wretch who seemed to have been created without those natural qualities which, in some degree, redeem the worst of humanity. He was a creature without a conscience—without a heart.

And yet he seemed the most dutiful and devoted of sons.

Is it possible that filial love could hold any place in a soul so lost as his? It is difficult to solve this enigma.

Victor Carrington was ambitious; and to gain the object of his ambition he was willing to steep his soul in guilt. But he was also cautious and calculating, and he knew that to commit crime with impunity he must so shape his life as to escape suspicion.

He knew that a devoted and affectionate son is always respected by good men and women; and he had studied human nature too closely not to be aware that there is more goodness than wickedness in the world, base though some of earth's inhabitants may be.

The world is easily hoodwinked; and those who watched the life of the young surgeon were ready to declare that he was a most deserving young man.

He had his reward for this apparent excellence. Patients came to him without his seeking; and at the time of Honoria Eversleigh's arrival in London he had obtained a small but remunerative practice. The money earned thus enabled him to live. The money he won by his pen in the medical journals he was able to save.

He knew how necessary money was in all the turning-points of life, and he denied himself every pleasure and every luxury in order to save a sum which should serve him in time of need.

Matilda Carrington was one of those quiet women who seem to take no interest in the world around them, and to be happy without the pleasures which delight other women. She lived quite alone, without one female friend or acquaintance, and she saw little of her son, whose midnight studies and medical practice absorbed almost every hour of his existence.

Her life, therefore, was one long solitude, and but for the companionship of her birds and two Angora cats, she would have been almost as much alone as a prisoner in a condemned cell.

There was but one visitor who came often to the cottage, and that was Sir Reginald Eversleigh. The young baronet contrived to exist, somehow or other, upon his income of five hundred a year; but, as he had neither abandoned his old haunts, nor put aside his old vices, the income, which to a good man would have seemed a handsome competence, barely enabled him to stave off the demands of his most pressing creditors by occasional payments on account.

He lived a dark and strange existence, occupying a set of shabby- genteel apartments in a street leading out of the Strand; but spending a great part of his life in a house on the banks of the Thames—a house that stood amidst grounds of some extent, situated midway between Chelsea and Fulham.

The mistress of this house was a lady who called herself a widow, but of whose real position the world knew very little.

She was said to be of Austrian extraction, and the widow of an Austrian officer. Her name was Paulina Durski. She had bade farewell to the fresh bloom of early youth; for at her best she looked thirty years of age. But her beauty was of that brilliant order which does not need the charm of girlhood. She was a woman—a grand, queen-like creature. Those who admired her most compared her to a tall white lily, alike stately and graceful.

She was fair, with that snowy purity of complexion which is so rare a charm. Her hair was of the palest gold—darker than flaxen, lighter than auburn—hair that waved in sunny undulations on the broad white forehead, and imparted an unspeakable innocence to the beautiful face.

Such was Paulina Durski. One charm alone was wanting to render this woman as lovable as she was lovely, and that wan the charm of expression.

There was a lack of warmth in that perfect face. The bright blue eyes were hard; the rosy lips had been trained to smile on friend or foe, on stranger or kinsman, with the same artificial smile.

Hilton House was the name of the villa by the river-bank. It had belonged originally to a nobleman; but, on the decay of his fortunes, had fallen into the hands of a speculator, who intended to occupy it, but who failed almost immediately after becoming its owner. After this man's bankruptcy, the house had for a long time been tenantless. It was too expensive for some, too lonely for others; and when Madame Durski saw and took a fancy to the place, she was able to secure it for a moderate rent. The grounds and the house had been neglected. The rare and costly shrubs in the gardens were rank and overgrown; the exquisite decorations of the interior were spoiled by damp.

Madame Durski was a person who lived in a certain style; but it speedily became evident that she was very often at a loss for ready money. Her furniture arrived from Paris, and her household came also from that brilliant city. It was the household of a princess; but of a princess not unfamiliar with poverty.

There was a Spanish courier, one Carlo Toas—a strange, silent creature, whose stately and solemn movements seemed fitted for a courtly assembly, rather than for the unceremonious gatherings of modern society. The next person in importance in the household of Madame Durski was an elderly woman, who attended on the fair Austrian widow. She was a native of Paris, and her name was Sophie Elser. There were three other servants, all foreigners, and apparently devoted to their mistress.

The furniture was of a bygone fashion, costly and beautiful of its kind; but it was furniture which had seen better days. The draperies in every chamber were of satin or velvet; but the satin was worn and faded, the velvet threadbare. The pictures, china, plate, the bronzes and knick-knacks which adorned the rooms, all bore evidence of a refined and artistic taste. But much of the china was imperfect, and the plate was of very small extent.

The existence of Paulina Durski was one which might well excite curiosity in the minds of the few neighbours who had the opportunity of observing her mode of life.

This beautiful widow had no female acquaintances, save a humble friend who lived with her, an Englishwoman, who subsisted upon the charity of the lovely Paulina.

This person never quitted her benefactress. She was constant as her shadow; a faithful watch-dog, always at hand, yet never obtrusive. She was a creature who seemed to have been born without eyes and without ears; so careless was the widow of her presence, so reckless what secrets were disclosed in her hearing.

By daylight the life of Madame Durski and her companion, Miss Brewer, seemed the dullest existence ever endured by womankind. Paulina rarely left her own apartment until six in the evening; at which hour, she and Miss Brewer dined together in her boudoir.

They always dined alone. After dinner Paulina returned to her apartment to dress for the evening, while Miss Brewer retired to her own bedroom on the upper story, where she arrayed herself invariably in black velvet.

She had never been seen by the visitors at Hilton House in any other costume than this lustreless velvet. Her age was between thirty and forty. She might once have had some pretensions to beauty; but her face was pinched and careworn, and there was a sharp, greedy look in the small eyes, whose colour was that neutral, undecided tint, that seems sometimes a pale yellowish brown, anon a blueish green.

All day long the two women at Hilton House lived alone. No carriage approached the gates; no foot-passenger was seen to enter the grounds. Within and without all was silent and lifeless.

But with nightfall came a change. Lights shone in all the lower windows, music sounded on the still night air, many carriages rolled through the open gateway—broughams with flashing lamps dashed up to the marble portico, and hack cabs mingled with the more stylish equipages.

There were very few nights on which Paulina Durski's saloons were not enlivened by the presence of many guests. Her visitors were all gentlemen; but they treated the mistress of the house with as much respect as if she had been surrounded by women of the highest rank. Night after night the same men assembled in those faded saloons; night after night the carriages rolled along the avenue—the flashing lamps illuminated the darkness. Those who watched the proceedings of the Austrian widow had good reason to wonder what the attraction was which brought those visitors so constantly to Hilton House. Many speculations were formed, and the fair widow's reputation suffered much at the hands of her neighbours; but none guessed the real charm of those nightly receptions.

That secret was known only to those within the mansion; and from those it could not be hidden.

The charm which drew so many visitors to the saloons of Madame Durski was the fatal spell of the gaming-table. The beautiful Paulina opened a suite of three spacious chambers for the reception of her guests. In the outer apartment there was a piano; and it was here Paulina sat— with her constant companion, Matilda Brewer. In the second apartment were small green velvet-covered tables, devoted to whist and ecarte. The third, and inner, apartment was much larger than either of the others, and in this room there was a table for rouge et noir.

The door of this inner apartment was papered so as to appear when closed like a portion of the wall. A heavy picture was securely fastened upon this papered surface, and the door was lined with iron. Once closed, this door was not easily to be discovered by the eye of a stranger; and, even when discovered, it was not easily to be opened.

It was secured with a spring lock, which fastened of itself as the door swung to.

This inner apartment had no windows. It was never used in the day-time. It was a secret chamber, hidden in the very centre of the house; and only an architect or a detective officer would have been likely to have discovered its existence. The walls were hung with red cloth, and Madame Durski always spoke of this apartment as the Red Drawing-room. Her servants were forbidden to mention the chamber in their conversation with the neighbours, and the members of the Austrian widow's household were too well trained to disobey any such orders.

By the laws of England, the existence of a table for rouge et noir is forbidden. All these precautions were therefore necessary to insure safety for the guests of Madame Durski.

Paulina, herself, never played. Sometimes she sat with Miss Brewer in the outer chamber, silent and abstracted, while her visitors amused themselves in the two other rooms; sometimes she seated herself at the piano, and played soft, plaintive German sonatas, or Leider ohne Worte, for an hour at a time; sometimes she moved slowly to and fro amongst the gamblers—now lingering for a few moments behind the chair of one, now glancing at the cards of another.

One of her most constant visitors was Reginald Eversleigh. Every night he drove down to Hilton House in a hack cab. He was generally the first to arrive and the last to depart.

It was also to be observed that almost all the men who assembled in the drawing-rooms of Hilton House were friends and acquaintances of Sir Reginald.

It was he who introduced them to the lovely widow. It was he who tempted them to come night after night, when prudence should have induced them to stay away.

* * * * *

The association between Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina Durski was no new alliance.

Immediately after the death of Sir Oswald Eversleigh, Reginald turned his back upon London, disgusted with the scene of his poverty and humiliation, eager to find forgetfulness of his bitter disappointments in the fever and excitement of a more brilliant city than any to be found in Great Britain. He went to Paris, that capital which he had shunned since the death of Mary Goodwin, but whither he returned eagerly now, thirsting for riot and excitement—any opiate by which he might lull to rest the bitter memories of the past month.

He was familiar with the wildest haunts of that city of dissipation, and he was speedily engulphed in the vortex of vice and folly. If he had been a rich man, this life might have gone on for ever; but without money a man counts for very little in such a circle as that wherein Reginald alone could find delight, and to the inhabitants of that region five hundred a year would seem a kind of pauperism.

Sir Reginald contrived to keep the actual amount of his income a secret locked in his own breast. His acquaintances and associates knew that he was not rich; but they knew no more.

At the French opera-house he saw Paulina Durski for the first time. She was seated in one of the smaller boxes, dressed in pure white, with white camellias in her hair. Her faithful companion, Matilda Brewer, was seated in the shadow of the curtains, and formed a foil for the beautiful Austrian.

Reginald Eversleigh entered the house with a dissipated and fashionable young Parisian—a man who, like his companion, had wasted youth, character, and fortune in the tainted atmosphere of disreputable haunts and midnight assemblies. The two young men took their places in the stalls, and amused themselves between the acts by a scrutiny of the occupants of the house.

Hector Leonce, the Parisian, was familiar with the inmates of every box.

"Do you see that beautiful, fair-haired woman, with the white camellias in her hair?" he said, after he had drawn the attention of the Englishman to several distinguished people. "That is Madame Durski, the young and wealthy widow of an Austrian officer, and one of the most celebrated beauties in Paris."

"She is very handsome," answered Reginald, carelessly; "but hers is a cold style of loveliness—too much like a face moulded out of wax."

"Wait till you see her animated," replied Hector Leonce. "We will go to her box presently."

When the curtain fell on the close of the following act the two men left the stalls, and made their way to Madame Durski's box.

She received them courteously, and Reginald Eversleigh speedily perceived that her beauty, fair and wax-like as it was, did not lack intellectual grace. She talked well, and her manner had the tone of good society. Reginald was surprised to see her attended only by the little Englishwoman, in her dress of threadbare black velvet.

After the opera Sir Reginald and Hector Leonce accompanied Madame Durski to her apartments in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honore; and there the baronet beheld higher play than he had ever seen before in a private house presided over by a woman. On this occasion the beautiful widow herself occupied a place at the rouge et noir table, and Reginald beheld enough to enlighten him as to her real character. He saw that with this woman the love of play was a passion: a profound and soul-absorbing delight. He saw the eyes which, in repose, seemed of so cold a brightness, emit vivid flashes of feverish light; he saw the fair blush-rose tinted cheek glow with a hectic crimson—he beheld the woman with her mask thrown aside, abandoned to the influence of her master-passion.

After this night, Reginald Eversleigh was a frequent visitor at the apartments of the Austrian widow. For him, as for her, the fierce excitement of the gaming-table was an irresistible temptation. In her elegantly appointed drawing-rooms he met rich men who were desperate players; but he met few men who were likely to be dupes. Here neither skill nor bribery availed him, and he was dependent on the caprices of chance. The balance was tolerably even, and he left Paris neither richer nor poorer for his acquaintance with Paulina Durski.

But that acquaintance exercised a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to all who approached her.

He knew this, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her presence. Night after night he haunted the rooms in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honore. He went there even when he was too poor to play, and could only stand behind Paulina's chair, a patient and devoted cavalier.

For a long time she seemed to be scarcely aware of his devotion. She received him as she received her other guests. She met him always with the same cold smile; the same studied courtesy. But one evening, when he went to her apartments earlier than usual, he found her alone, and in a melancholy mood.

Then, for the first time, he became aware that the life she led was odious to her; that she loathed the hateful vice of which she was the slave. She was wont to be very silent about herself and her own feelings; but that night she cast aside all reserve, and spoke with a passionate earnestness, which made her seem doubly charming to Reginald Eversleigh.

"I am so degraded a creature that, perhaps, you have never troubled yourself to wonder how I became the thing I am," she said; "and yet you must surely have marvelled to see a woman of high birth fallen to the depths in which you find me; fallen so low as to be the companion of gamesters, a gamester myself. I will tell you the secret of my life."

Reginald Eversleigh lifted his hand with a deprecating gesture.

"Dear madame, tell me nothing, I implore you. I admire and respect you," he said. "To me, you must always appear the most beautiful of women, whatever may be the nature of your surroundings."

"Yes, the most beautiful!" echoed Paulina, with passionate scorn. "You men think that to praise a woman's beauty is to console her for every humiliation. I have long held that which you call my beauty as the poorest thing on earth, so little, happiness has its possession won for me. I will tell you the story of my life. It is the only justification I have."

"I am ready to listen. So long as you speak of yourself, your words must have the deepest interest for me."

"I was reared amongst gamesters, Reginald Eversleigh," continued Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, "My father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of the rouge et noir table were the most familiar sounds to my ears. Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father's rooms, and have known that grim poverty was drawing nearer and nearer as the long hours of those sleepless nights went by."

"My poor Paulina!"

"My mother died young, exhausted by the perpetual fever of anxiety which the gambler's wife is doomed to suffer. She died, and I was left alone—a woman; beautiful if you will, and, as the world supposed, heiress to a large fortune; for none knew how entirely the wealth which should have been mine had melted away in those nights of dissipation and folly. People knew that my father played, and played desperately; but few knew the extent of his losses. After my mother's death, my father insisted on my doing the honours of his house. I received his friends; I stood by his chair as he played ecarte, or sat by his side and noted the progress of the game at the rouge et noir table. Then first I felt the fatal passion which I can but believe to be a taint in my very blood. Slowly and gradually the fascinating vice assumed its horrible mastery. I watched the progress of the play. I learned to understand that science which was the one all-absorbing pursuit of those around me. Then I played myself, first taking a hand at ecarte with some of the younger guests, half in sport, and then venturing a small golden coin at the rouge et noir table, while my admirers praised my daring, as if I had been some capricious child. In those assemblies I was always the only woman, except Matilda Brewer, who was then my governess. My father would have no female guests at these nightly orgies. The presence of women would have been a hindrance to the delights of the gaming-table. At first I felt all the bitterness of my position. I looked forward with unspeakable dread to the dreary future in which I should find destitution staring me in the face. But when once the gamester's madness had seized upon me, I thought no more of that dreary future; I became as reckless as my father and his guests; I forgot everything in the excitement of the moment. To be lucky at the gaming-table was to be happy; to lose was despair. Thus my youth went by, till the day when my father told me that Colonel Durski had offered me his hand and fortune, and that I had no alternative but to accept him."

"Oh, then, your first marriage was no love-match?" cried Reginald, eagerly.

"A love-match!" exclaimed Paulina, contemptuously. "No; it was a marriage of convenience, dictated by a father who set less value on his daughter's happiness than on a good hand of cards. My father told me I must choose between Leopold Durski and ruin. 'This house cannot shelter you much longer,' he said. 'For myself there is flight. I can go to America, and lose my identity in strange cities. I cannot remain in Vienna, to be pointed at as the beggared Count Veschi. But with you for my companion I should be tied hand and foot. As a wanderer and an adventurer, I may prosper alone; but as a wanderer, burdened with a helpless woman, failure would be certain. It is not a question of choice, Paulina,' he said, resolutely; 'there is no alternative. You must become the wife of Leopold Durski.'"

"And you consented?"

"I ask you, Reginald Eversleigh, could I refuse? For me, love was a word which had no meaning. Leopold Durski was more than double my age; but in outward seeming he was a gentleman. He was reported to be wealthy; he had a high position at the Austrian Court. I was so utterly helpless, so desolate, so despairing, that it is scarcely strange if I accepted the fate my father pressed upon me, careless as to a future which held no joy for me, beyond the pleasure of the gaming-table. I left the house of one gambler to ally myself to the fortunes of another, for Leopold Durski was my father's companion and friend, and the same master-passion swayed both. It was strange that my father, himself a ruined gamester, should have become the dupe of a man whose reported wealth was as great a sham as his own. But so it was. I exchanged poverty with one master for poverty with another master. My new life was an existence of perpetual falsehood and trickery. I occupied a splendid house in the most fashionable quarter of Vienna; but that house was maintained by my husband's winnings at the gaming- table; and it was my task to draw together the dupes whose money was to support the false semblance of grandeur which surrounded me. The dupes came. I had my little court of flatterers; but the courtiers paid dearly for their allegiance to their queen. I was the snare which was set to entrap the birds whose feathers my husband was to pluck. If I had been like other women, my position would have been utterly intolerable to me. I should have found some means of escape from a life so hateful—a degradation so shameful."

"And you made no attempt to escape?"

"None. I was a gambler; the vice which had degraded my husband had degraded me. We had both sunk to the same level, and I had no right to reproach him for infamy which I shared. We had little affection for each other. Colonel Durski had sought me only because I was fitted to adorn his reception-rooms, and attract the dupes who were to suffer by their acquaintance with him. But if there was little love between us, we at least never quarrelled. He treated me always with studied courtesy, and I never upbraided him for the deception by which he had obtained my hand. My father disappeared suddenly from Vienna, and only after his departure was it discovered that his fortune had long vanished, and that he had for several years been completely insolvent. His creditors tittered a cry of execration; but in great cities the cries of such victims are scarcely heard. My reception-rooms were still thronged by aristocratic guests, and no one cared to remember my father's infamy. This life had lasted three years, when my husband died and left me penniless. I sold my jewels, and came to this city, where for a year and a half I have lived, as my husband lived in Vienna, on the fortune of the gaming-table. I am growing weary of Paris, and it may be that Paris is growing weary of me. I suppose I shall go to London next. And next? Who knows? Ah, Reginald Eversleigh, believe me there are many moments of my life in which I think that the little walk from here to the river would cut the knot of all my difficulties. To- night I am surrounded with anxieties, steeped in degradation, hemmed in by obstacles that shut me out of all peaceful resting-places. To-morrow I might be lying very quietly in the Morgue."

"Paulina, for pity's sake—"

"Ah, me! these are idle words, are they not?" said Madame Durski, with a weary sigh. "And now I have told you my history, Reginald Eversleigh, and it is for you to judge whether there is any excuse for such a creature as I am."

Sir Reginald pitied this hopeless, friendless, woman as much as it was in him to pity any one except himself, and tried to utter some words of consolation.

She looked up at him, as he spoke to her, with a glance in which he saw a deeper feeling than gratitude.

Then it was that Reginald declared himself the devoted lover of the woman who had revealed to him the strange story of her life. He told her of the influence which she exercised over him, the fascination which he had sought in vain to resist. He declared himself attached to her by an affection which would know no change, come what might. But he did not offer this friendless woman the shelter of his name, the ostensible position which would have been hers had she become his wife.

Even when beneath the sway of a woman's fascination Reginald Eversleigh was cold and calculating. Paulina Durski was poor, and doubtless deeply in debt. She was a gambler, and the companion of gamblers. She was, therefore, no fitting wife for a man who looked upon marriage as a stepping-stone by which he might yet redeem his fallen fortunes.

Paulina received his declaration with an air of simulated coldness; but Reginald Eversleigh could perceive that it was only simulated, and that he had awakened a real affection in the heart of this desolate woman.

"Do not speak to me of love," she said; "to me such words can promise no happiness. My love could only bring shame and misery on the man to whom it was given. Let me tread my dreary pathway alone, Reginald— alone to the very end."

Much was said after this by Reginald and the woman who loved him, and who was yet too proud to confess her love. Paulina Durski was not an inexperienced girl, to be persuaded by romantic speeches. She had acquired knowledge of the world in a hard and bitter school. She could fully fathom the base selfishness of the man who pretended to love her, and she understood why it was that he shrank from offering her the only real pledge of his truth.

"I will speak frankly to you, Paulina," he said. "I am too poor to marry."

"Yes," she answered, bitterly; "I comprehend. You are too poor to marry a penniless wife."

"And I am not likely to find a rich one. But, believe me, that my love is none the less sincere because I shrink from asking you to ally yourself to misery."

"So be it, Sir Reginald. I am willing to accept your love for what it is—a wise and prudent affection—such as a man of the world may freely indulge in without fear that his folly may cost him too dearly. You will come to my house; I shall see you night after night amongst the reckless idlers who gather round me; you will pay me compliments all the year round, and bring me bon-bons on New Year's Day; and some day, when I have grown old and haggard, you will all at once forget the fact of our acquaintance, and I shall see you no more. Let it be so. It is pleasant for a woman to fancy herself beloved, however false the fancy may be. I will shut my eyes, and dream that you love me, Reginald."

And this was all. No more was ever said of love between these two; but from that hour Reginald was more constant than ever in his attendance on the beautiful widow. The time came when she grew weary of Paris, and when those who had lost money began to shun the seductive delights of her nightly receptions. Reginald Eversleigh was not slow to perceive that the brilliant throng grew thin—the most distinguished guests "conspicuous by their absence." He urged Paulina to leave Paris for London; and he himself selected the lonely villa on the banks of the Thames, in which he found a billiard-room, lighted from the roof, that was easily converted into a secret chamber.

It was by his advice that Paulina Durski altered her line of conduct on taking up her abode in England, and refrained altogether from any active share in the ruinous amusements for which men frequented her receptions.

"It was all very well for you to take a hand at ecarte, or to take your place at the rouge et noir table, in Paris," Reginald said, when he discussed this question; "but here it will not do. The English are full of childish prejudices, and to see a woman at the gaming-table would shock these prejudices. Let me play for you. I will find the capital, and we will divide the profits of each night's speculation. For your part, you will have only to look beautiful, and to lure the golden-feathered birds into the net; and sometimes, perhaps, when I am playing ecarte with one of your admirers, behind whose chair you may happen to be standing, you may contrive to combine a flattering interest in his play with a substantial benefit to mine."

Paulina's eyelids fell, and a crimson flush dyed her face: but she uttered no exclamation of anger or disgust. And yet she understood only too well the meaning of Sir Reginald's words. She knew that he wished her to aid him in a deliberate system of cheating. She knew this, and she did not withdraw her friendship from this man.

Alas, no! she loved him. Not because she believed him to be good and honourable—not because she was blinded to the baseness of his nature. She loved him in spite of her knowledge of his real character—she yielded to the influence of an infatuation which she was so powerless to resist that she might almost be pardoned for believing herself the victim of a baleful destiny.

"It is my fate," she murmured to herself, after this last revelation of her lover's infamy. "It must needs be my fate, since women with less claim to be loved than I possess are so happy as to win the devotion of good and brave men. It is my fate to love a cheat and trickster, on whose constancy I have so poor a hold that a breath may sever the miserable bond that unites us."

Victor Carrington was one of the first persons whom Reginald Eversleigh introduced to Madame Durski after her arrival in England. She was pleased with the quiet and graceful manners of the Frenchman; but she was at a loss to understand Sir Reginald's intimate association with a man who was at once poor and obscure.

She told Sir Reginald as much the next time she saw him alone.

"I know that in most of your friendships convenience and self-interest reign paramount over what you call sentimentality; and yet you choose for your friend this Carrington, whom no one knows; and who is, you tell me, even poorer than yourself. You must have a hidden motive, Reginald; and a strong one."

A dark shade passed over the face of the baronet.

"I have my reasons," he said. "Victor Carrington was once useful to me—at least he endeavoured to be so. If he failed, the obligation is none the less; and he is a man who will have his bond."



CHAPTER XVIII.

AT ANCHOR.

The current of life flowed on at River View Cottage without so much as a ripple in the shape of an event, after the appalling midnight visit of Miser Screwton's ghost, until one summer evening, when Captain Duncombe came home in very high spirits, bringing with him an old friend, of whom Miss Duncombe had heard her father talk very often; but whom she had hitherto never seen.

This was no other than George Jernam, the captain of the "Albatross," and the owner of the "Stormy Petrel" and "Pizarro."

In London the captain of the "Albatross" found plenty of business to occupy him. He had just returned from an African cruise, and though he had not forgotten the circumstances which had made his last intended visit to England only a memorable and melancholy failure, he was in high spirits.

The first few days hardly sufficed for the talks between George Jernam and Joyce Harker, who aided him vigorously in the refitting of his vessel. He had been in London about a week before he fell in with honest Joe Duncombe. The two men had been fast friends ever since the day on which George, while still a youngster, had served as second-mate under the owner of the "Vixen."

They met accidentally in one of the streets about Wapping. Joseph Buncombe was delighted to encounter a sea-faring friend, and insisted on taking George Jernam down to River View Cottage to eat what he called a homely bit of dinner.

The homely bit of dinner turned out to be a very excellent repast; for Mrs. Mugby prided herself upon her powers as a cook and housekeeper, and to produce a good dinner at a short notice was a triumph she much enjoyed.

Susan Trott waited at table in her prettiest cotton gown and smartest cap.

Rosamond Duncombe sat by her father's side during the meal; and after dinner, when the curtains were drawn, and the lamp lighted, the captain of the "Vixen" set himself to brew a jorum of punch in a large old Japanese china bowl, the composition of which punch was his strong point.

Altogether that little dinner and cheerful evening entertainment seemed the perfection of home comfort. George Jernam had been too long a stranger to home and home pleasures not to feel the cheerful influence of that hospitable abode.

For Joseph Duncombe the companionship of his old friend was delightful. The society of the sailor was as invigorating to the nostrils of a seaman as the fresh breeze of ocean after a long residence inland.

"You don't know what a treat it is to me to have an old shipmate with me once more, George," he said. "My little Rosy and I live here pretty comfortably, though I keep a tight hand over her, I can tell you," he added, with pretended severity; "but it's dull work for a man who has lived the best part of his life on the sea to find himself amongst a pack of spooney landsmen. Never you marry a landsman, Rosy, if you don't want me to cut you off with a shilling," he cried, turning to his daughter.

Of course Miss Rosamond Duncombe blushed on hearing herself thus apostrophized, as young ladies of eighteen have a knack of blushing when the possibility of their falling in love is mentioned.

George Jernam saw the blush, and thought that Miss Duncombe was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

George Jernam stayed late at the cottage, for its hospitable owner was loth to let his friend depart.

"How long do you stay in London, George?" he asked, as the young man was going away.

"A month, at least—perhaps two months."

"Then be sure you come down here very often. You can dine with us every Sunday, of course, for I know you haven't a creature belonging to you in London except Harker; and you can run down of an evening sometimes, and bring him with you, and smoke your cigar in my garden, with the bright water rippling past you, and all the ships in the Pool spreading their rigging against the calm grey sky; and I'll brew you a jorum of punch, and Rosy shall sing us a song while we drink it."

It is not to be supposed that George Jernam, who had a good deal of idle time on his hands, could refuse to oblige his old captain, or shrink from availing himself of hospitality so cordially pressed upon him.

He went very often in the autumn dusk to spend an hour or two at River View Cottage, where he always found a hearty welcome. He strolled in the garden with Captain Duncombe and Rosamond, talking of strange lands and stranger adventures.

Harker did not always accompany him; but sometimes he did, and on such occasions Rosamond seemed unaccountably glad to see him. Harker paid her no more attention than usual, and invariably devoted himself to Joe Duncombe, who was frequently lazy, and inclined to smoke his cigar in the comfortable parlour. On these occasions George Jernam and Rosamond Duncombe strolled side by side in the garden; and the sailor entertained his fair companion by the description of all the strangest scenes he had beheld, and the most romantic adventures he had been engaged in. It was like the talk of some sea-faring Othello; and never did Desdemona more "seriously incline" to hear her valiant Moor than did Miss Duncombe to hear her captain.

One of the windows of Joseph Duncombe's favourite sitting-room commanded the garden; and from this window the captain of the "Vixen" could see his daughter and the captain of the "Albatross" walking side by side upon the smoothly kept lawn. He used to look unutterably sly as he watched the two figures; and on one occasion went so far as to tap his nose significantly several times with his ponderous fore-finger.

"It's a match!" he muttered to himself; "it's a match, or my name is not Joe Duncombe."

Susan Trott was not slow to notice those evening walks in the garden. She told the dashing young baker that she thought there would be a wedding at the cottage before long.

"Yours, of course," cried the baker.

"For shame, now, you impitent creature!" exclaimed Susan, blushing till she was rosier than the cherry-coloured ribbons in her cap; "you know what I mean well enough."

Neither Captain Duncombe nor Susan Trott were very far wrong. The "Albatross" was not ready for her next cruise till three months after George Jernam's first visit to River View Cottage, nor did the captain of the vessel seem particularly anxious to hasten the completion of the repairs.

When the "Albatross" did drop down into the Channel, she sailed on a cruise that was to last less than six months; and when George Jernam touched English ground again, he was to return to claim Rosamond Duncombe as his plighted wife. This arrangement had Joyce Harker's hearty approbation; but when he, too, had taken leave of George Jernam, he turned away muttering, "I think he really has forgotten Captain Valentine now; but I have not, I have not. No, I remember him better than ever now, when there's no one but me."

* * * * *

The "Albatross" came safely back to the Pool in the early spring weather. George Jernam had promised Rosamond that she should know of his coming before ever he set foot on shore, and he contrived to keep his word.

One fine March day she saw a vessel sailing up the river, with a white flag flying from the main-mast. On the white flag blazed, in bright red letters, the name, "Rosamond!"

When Miss Duncombe saw this, she knew at once that her lover had returned. No other vessel than the "Albatross" was likely to sport such a piece of bunting.

George Jernam came back braver, truer, handsomer even than when he went away, as it seemed to Rosamond. He came back more devoted to her than ever, she thought; and a man must have been indeed cold of heart who could be ungrateful for the innocent, girlish affection which Rosamond revealed in every word and look.

The wedding took place within a month of the sailor's return; and, after some discussion, George Jernam consented that he and his wife should continue to live at the cottage.

"I can't come here to take possession of your house," he had said, addressing himself to his future father-in-law; "that would be rather too much of a good thing. I know you'd like to keep Rosy in the neighbourhood, and so you shall. I'll do as you did. I'll find a little bit of ground near here, and build myself a comfortable crib, with a view of the river."

"Stuff and nonsense!" replied Captain Duncombe. "If that's what you are going to do, you shall not have my Rosy. I've no objection to her having a husband on the premises; but the day she leaves my roof for the sake of any man in Christendom, I'll cut her off with a shilling— and the shilling shall be a bad one."

The captain of the "Albatross" took his young wife into Devonshire for a brief honeymoon; and during this pleasant spring-time holiday, Rosamond made the acquaintance of her husband's aunt. Susan Jernam was pleased with the bright-eyed, pure-minded, modest girl, and in the few days they were together, learned to regard her with a motherly feeling, which was destined to be of priceless value to Rosy at an unforeseen crisis of the new life that began so fairly.

Never did a married couple begin their new life with a fairer prospect than that which lay before George Jernam and his wife when they returned to River View Cottage. Captain Duncombe received his son-in- law with the hearty welcome of a true seaman; but a few days after George Jernam's return, the old sailor took him aside, and made an announcement which filled him with surprise.

"You know how fond I am of Rosy," he said, "and you know that if Providence had blessed me with a son of my own, he couldn't have been much dearer to me than you are; so come what may, neither you or Rosy must doubt my affection for both of you. Come now, George, promise me you won't."

"I promise, with all my heart," answered Captain Jernam; "I should no more think of doubting your goodness or your love for us, than I should think of doubting that there's a sun shining up aloft yonder. But why do you speak of this?"

"Because, George, the truth of the matter is, I'm going to leave you."

"You are going to leave us?"

"Yes, old fellow. You see, a lazy, land-lubber's life doesn't suit me. I've tried it, and it don't answer. I thought the sound of the water washing against the bank at the bottom of my garden, and the sight of the ships in the Pool, would be consolation enough for me, but they ain't, and I've been sickening for the sea for the last six mouths. As long as my little Rosy had nobody in the world but me to take care of her, I stayed with her, and I should have gone on staying with her till I died at my post. But she's got a husband now, and two trust-worthy women-servants, who would protect her if you left her—as I suppose you must leave her, sooner or later—so there's no reason why I should stop on shore any longer, pining for a sight of blue water."

"And you really mean to leave us!" exclaimed George Jernam. "I am afraid your going will break poor Rosy's heart."

"No it won't, George," answered Captain Duncombe. "When a young woman's married, her heart is uncommonly tough with regard to everybody except her husband. I dare say poor little Rosy-posy will be sorry to lose her old father; but she'll have you to console her, and she won't grieve long. Besides, I'm not going away for ever, you know. I'm only just going to take a little cruise to the Indies, with a cargo of dry goods, make a bit of money for my grandchildren that are to be, and then come home again, fresher than ever, and settle down in the bosom of my family. I've seen a neat little craft that will suit me to a T; and I shall fit her out, and be off for blue water before the month is ended."

It was evident that the old sailor was in earnest, and George Jernam did not attempt to overrule his determination. Rosamond pleaded against her father's departure, but she pleaded in vain. Early in June Captain Duncombe left England on board a neat little craft, which he christened the "Young Wife," in compliment to his daughter.

Before he went, George promised that he would himself await the return of his father-in-law before he started on a new voyage.

"I can afford to be idle for twelve months, or so," he said; "and my dear little wife shall not be left without a protector."

So the young couple settled down comfortably in the commodious cottage, which was now all their own.

To Rosamond, her new existence was all unbroken joy. She had loved her husband with all the romantic devotion of inexperienced girlhood. To her poetic fancy he seemed the noblest and bravest of created beings; and she wondered at her own good fortune when she saw him by her side, fond and devoted, consent to sacrifice all the delights of his free, roving life for her sake.

"I don't think such happiness can last, George," she said to him one day.

That vague foreboding was soon to be too sadly realized! The sunshine and the bright summer peace had promised to last for ever; but a dark cloud arose which in one moment overshadowed all that summer sky, and Rosamond Jernam's happiness vanished as if it had been indeed a dream.



CHAPTER XIX.

A FAMILIAR TOKEN.

Joseph Duncombe had been absent from River View Cottage little more than a month, and the life of its inmates had been smooth and changeless as the placid surface of a lake. They sought no society but that of each other. Existence glided by, and the eventless days left little to remember except the sweet tranquillity of a happy home.

It was on a wet, dull, unsettled July day that Rosamond Jernam found her life changed all at once, while the cause for that dark change remained a mystery to her.

After idling away half the morning, Captain Jernam discovered that he had an important business letter to write to the captain of his trading ship, the "Pizarro."

On opening his portfolio, the captain found himself without a single sheet of foreign letter-paper. He told this difficulty to his wife, as it was his habit to tell her all his difficulties; and he found her, as usual, able to give him assistance.

"There is always foreign letter-paper in papa's desk," she said; "you can use that."

"But, my dear Rosy, I could not think of opening your father's desk in his absence."

"And why not?" cried Rosamond, laughing. "Do you think papa has any secrets hidden there; or that he keeps some mysterious packet of old love-letters tied up with a blue ribbon, which he would not like your prying eyes to discover? You may open the desk, George. I give you my permission; and if papa should be angry, the blame shall fall upon me alone."

The desk was a large old-fashioned piece of furniture, which stood in the corner of Captain Duncombe's favourite sitting-room.

"But how am I to open this ponderous piece of machinery?" asked George. "It seems to be locked."

"It is locked," answered his wife. "Luckily I happen to have a key which precisely fits it. There, sir, is the key; and now I leave you to devote yourself to business, while I go to see about dinner."

She held up her pretty rosy lips to be kissed, and then tripped away, leaving the captain to achieve a duty for which he had no particular relish.

He unlocked the desk, and found a quire of letter-paper. He dipped a pen in ink, tried it, and then began to write.

He wrote, "London, July 20th," and "My Dear Boyd;" and having written thus much, he came to a stop. The easiest part of the letter was finished.

Captain Jernam sat with his elbows resting on the table, looking straight before him, in pure absence of mind. As he did so, his eyes were caught suddenly by an object lying amongst the pens and pencils in the tray before him.

That object was a bent gold coin.

His face grew pale as he snatched up the coin, and examined it closely. It was a small Brazilian coin, bent and worn, and on one side of it was scratched the initial "G."

That small battered coin was very familiar to George Jernam's gaze, and it was scarcely strange if the warm life-blood ebbed from his cheeks, and left them ashy pale.

The coin was a keepsake which he had given to his murdered brother, Valentine, on the eve of their last parting.

And he found it here—here, in Joseph Duncombe's desk!

For some moments he sat aghast, motionless, powerless even to think. He could not realize the full weight of this strange discovery. He could only remember the warm breath of the tropical night on which he and his brother had bidden each other farewell—the fierce light of the tropical stars beneath which they had stood when they parted.

Then he began to ask himself how that farewell token, the golden coin, which he had taken from his pocket in that parting hour, and upon which he had idly scratched his own initial, had come into the possession of Joseph Duncombe.

He was not a man of the world, and he was not able to reason calmly and logically on the subject of his brother's untimely fate. He shared Joyce's rooted idea, that the escape of Valentine's murderer was only temporary, and that, sooner or later, accident would disclose the criminal.

It seemed now as if the eventful moment had come. Here, on this spot, near the scene of his brother's disappearance, he came upon this token—this relic, which told that Valentine had been in some manner associated with Joseph Duncombe.

And yet Joseph Duncombe and George had talked long and earnestly on the subject of the murdered sailor's fate, and in all their talk Captain Duncombe had never acknowledged any acquaintance with its details.

This was strange.

Still more incomprehensible to George Jernam was the fact that Valentine should have parted with the farewell token, except with his life, for his last words to his brother had been—

"I'll keep the bit of gold, George, to my dying day, in memory of your fidelity and love."

There had been something more between these two men than a common brotherhood: there had been the bond of a joyless childhood spent together, and their affection for each other was more than the ordinary love of brothers.

"I don't believe he would have parted with that piece of gold," cried George, "not if he had been without a sixpence in the world."

"And he was rich. It was the money he carried about him which tempted his murderer. It was near here that he met his fate—on this very spot, perhaps. Joyce told me that before my father-in-law built this house, there was a dilapidated building, which was a meeting-place for the vilest scoundrels in Ratcliff Highway. But how came that coin in Joseph Duncombe's desk?—how, unless Joseph Duncombe was concerned in my brother's murder?"

This idea, once aroused in the mind of George Jernam, was not to be driven away. It seemed too hideous for reality; but it took possession of his mind, nevertheless, and he sat alone, trying to shut horrible fancies out of his brain, but trying uselessly.

He remembered Joseph Duncombe's wealth. Had all that wealth been honestly won?

He remembered the captain's restlessness—his feverish desire to run away from a home in which he possessed so much to render life happy.

Might not that eagerness to return to the sailor's wild, roving life have its root in the tortures of a guilty conscience?

"His very kindness to me may be prompted by a vague wish to make some paltry atonement for a dark wrong done my brother," thought George.

He remembered Joseph Duncombe's seeming goodness of heart, and wondered if such a man could possibly be concerned in the darkest crime of which mankind can be guilty. But he remembered also that the worst and vilest of men were often such accomplished hypocrites as to remain unsuspected of evil until the hour when accident revealed their iniquity.

"It is so, perhaps, with this man," thought George Jernam. "That air of truth and goodness may be but a mask. I know what a master-passion the greed of gain is with some men. It has doubtless been the passion of this man's heart. The wretches who lured Valentine Jernam to this house were tools of Joseph Duncombe's. How otherwise could this token have fallen into his hands?"

He tried to find some other answer to this question; but he tried in vain. That little piece of gold seemed to fasten the dark stigma of guilt upon the absent owner of the house.

"And I have shaken this man's hand!" cried George. "I am the husband of his daughter. I live beneath the shelter of his roof—in this house, which was bought perhaps with my brother's blood. Great heavens! it is too horrible."

For two long hours George Jernam sat brooding over the strange discovery which had changed the whole current of his life. Rosamond came and peeped in at the door.

"Still busy, George?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, in a strange, harsh tone, "I am very busy."

That altered voice alarmed the loving wife. She crept into the room, and stood behind her husband's chair.

"George," she said, "your voice sounded so strange just now; you are not ill, are you, darling?"

"No, no; I only want to be alone. Go, Rosamond."

The wife could not fail to be just a little offended by her husband's manner. The pretty rosy lips pouted, and then tears came into the bright blue eyes.

George Jernam's head was bent upon his clasped hands, and he took no heed of his wife's sorrow. She could not leave him without one more anxious question.

"Is there anything amiss with you, George?" she asked.

"Nothing that you can cure."

The harshness of his tone, the coldness of his manner, wounded her heart. She said no more, but went quietly from the room.

Never before had her beloved George spoken unkindly to her—never before had the smallest cloud obscured the calm horizon of her married life.

After this, the dark cloud hung black and heavy over that once happy household; the sun never shone again upon the young wife's home.

She tried to penetrate the secret of this sudden change, but she could not do so. She could complain of no unkindness from her husband—he never spoke harshly to her after that first day. His manner was gentle and indulgent; but it seemed as if his love had died, leaving in its place only a pitiful tenderness, strangely blended with sadness and gloom.

He asked Rosamond several questions about her father's past life; but on that subject she could tell him very little. She had never lived with her father until after the building of River View Cottage, and she knew nothing of his existence before that time, except that he had only been in England during brief intervals, and that he had always come to see her at school when he had an opportunity of doing so.

"He is the best and dearest of fathers," she said, affectionately.

George Jernam asked if Captain Duncombe had been in England during that spring in which Valentine met his death.

After a moment's reflection, Rosamond replied in the affirmative.

"I remember his coming to see me that spring," she said. "He came early in March, and again in April, and it was then he began first to talk of settling in England."

"And with that assurance my last hope vanishes," thought George.

He had asked the question in the faint hope of hearing that Joseph Duncombe was far away from England at the time of the murder.

A fortnight after the discovery of the Brazilian coin, George Jernam announced to his wife that he was about to leave her. He was going to the coast of Africa, he said. He had tried to reconcile himself to a landsman's life, and had found it unendurable.

The blow fell very heavily on poor Rosamond's loving heart.

"We seemed so happy, George, only two short weeks ago," she pleaded.

"Yes," he answered, "I tried to be happy; but you see, the life doesn't suit me. Tour father couldn't rest in this house, though he had made himself such a comfortable home. No more can I rest here. There is a curse upon the house, perhaps," he added, with a bitter laugh.

Rosamond burst into tears.

"Oh, George, you will break my heart," she cried. "I thought our lives were to be so happy; and now our happiness ends all at once like a broken dream. It is because you are weary of me, and of my love, that you are going away. You promised my father that you would remain with me till his return."

"I did, Rosamond," answered her husband, gravely, "and, as I am an honest man, I meant to keep that promise! I am not weary of your love— that is as precious to me as ever it was. But you must not continue to reside beneath this roof. I tell you there is a curse upon this house, Rosamond, and neither peace nor happiness can be the lot of those who dwell within its fatal walls. You must go down to Allanbay, where you may find kind friends, where you may be happy, dear, while I am away."

"But, George, what is all this mystery?"

"Ask me no questions, Rosamond, for I can answer none. Believe me when I tell you that you have no share in the change that has come upon me. My feelings towards you remain unaltered; but within the last few weeks I have made a discovery which has struck a death-blow to my happiness. I go out once more a homeless wanderer, because the quiet of domestic life has become unbearable to me. I want bustle, danger, hard work. I want to get away from my own thoughts."

Rosamond in vain implored her husband to tell her more than this. He, so yielding of old, was on this point inflexible.

Before the leaves had begun to fall in the dreary autumn days the "Albatross" was ready for a new voyage. The first mate took her down to Plymouth Harbour, there to wait the coming of her captain, who travelled into Devonshire by mail-coach, taking Rosamond to her future abode.

At any other time Rosamond would have been delighted with the romantic beauty of that Devonian village, where her husband had selected a pleasant cottage for her, near his aunt's abode; but a settled melancholy had taken possession of the once joyous girl. She had brooded continually over her husband's altered conduct, and she had at last arrived at a terrible conclusion.

She believed that he was mad. What but sudden insanity could have produced so great a change?—a change for which it was impossible to imagine a cause.

"If he had been absent from me for some time, and had returned an altered creature, I should not be so much bewildered by the change," Rosamond said to herself. "But the transformation occurred in an hour. He saw no strange visitor; he received no letter. No tidings of any kind could possibly have reached him. He entered my father's sitting- room a light-hearted, happy man; he came out of it gloomy and miserable. Can I doubt that the change is something more than any ordinary alteration of feeling or character?"

Poor Rosamond remembered having heard of the fatal effects of sunstrokes—effects which have sometimes revealed themselves long after the occurrence of the calamity that caused them; and she told herself that the change in George Jernam's nature must needs be the result of such a calamity.

She entreated her husband to consult an eminent physician as to the state of his health; but she dared not press her request, so coldly was it received.

"Who told you that I was ill?" he asked; "I am not ill. All the physicians in Christendom could do nothing for me."

After this, Rosamond could say no more. For worlds she would not have revealed to a stranger her sad suspicion of George Jernam's insanity. She could only pray that Providence would protect and guide him in his roving life.

"The excitement and hard work of his existence on board ship may work a cure," she thought, trying to be hopeful. "It is very possible that the calm monotony of a landsman's life may have produced a bad effect upon his brain. I can only trust in Providence—I can only pray night and day for the welfare of him I love so fondly."

And so they parted. George Jernam left his wife with sadness in his heart; but it was a kind of sadness in which love had little share.

"I have thought too much of my own happiness," he said to himself, "and I have left my brother's death unavenged. Have I forgotten the time when he carried me along the lonely sea-shore in his loving arms? Have I forgotten the years in which he was father, mother—all the world to me? No; by heaven! I have not. The time has come when the one thought of my life must be revenge—revenge upon the murderer of my brother, whosoever he may be."

* * * * *



CHAPTER XX.

ON GUARD.

Mr. Andrew Larkspur, the police-officer, took up his abode in Percy Street a week after his interview with Lady Eversleigh.

For a fortnight after he became an occupant of the house in which she lived, Honoria received no tidings from him. She knew that he went out early every morning, and that he returned late every night, and this was all that she knew respecting his movements.

At the end of the fortnight, he came to her late one evening, and begged to be favoured with an audience.

"I shall want at least two hours of your time, ma'am," he said; "and, perhaps, you may find it fatiguing to listen to me so late at night. If you'd rather defer the business till to-morrow morning—"

"I would rather not defer it," answered Lady Eversleigh; "I am ready to listen to you for as long a time as you choose. I have been anxiously expecting some tidings of your movements."

"Very likely, ma'am," replied Mr. Larkspur, coolly; "I know you ladies are given to impatience, as well as Berlin wool work, and steel beads, and the pianoforte, and such like. But you see, ma'am, there's not a living creature more unlike a race-horse than a police-officer. And it's just like you ladies to expect police-officers to be Flying Dutchmen, in a manner of speaking. I've been a hard worker in my time, ma'am; but I never worked harder, or stuck to my work better, than I have these last two weeks; and all I can say is, if I ain't dead-beat, it's only because it isn't in circumstances to dead-beat me."

Lady Eversleigh listened very quietly to this exordium; but a slight, nervous twitching of her lips every now and then betrayed her impatience.

"I am waiting to hear your news," she said, presently.

"And I'm a-going to tell it, ma'am, in due course," returned the police-officer, drawing a bloated leather book from his pocket, and opening it. "I've got all down here in regular order. First and foremost, the baronet—he's a bad lot, is the baronet."

"I do not need to hear that from your lips."

"Very likely not, ma'am. But if you set me to watch a gentleman, you must expect I shall form an opinion about him. The baronet has lodgings in Villiers Street, uncommon shabby ones. I went in and took a good survey of him and his lodgings together, in the character of a bootmaker, taking home a pair of boots, which was intended for a Mr. Everfield in the next street, says I, and, of course, Everfield and Eversleigh being a'most the same names, was calculated to lead to inconvenient mistakes. In the character of the bootmaker, Sir Reginald Eversleigh tells me to get out of his room, and be—something uncommonly unpleasant, and unfit for the ears of ladies. In the character of the bootmaker, I scrapes acquaintance with a young person employed as housemaid, and very willing to answer questions, and be drawed out. From the young person employed as housemaid, I gets what I take the liberty to call my ground-plan of the baronet's habits; beginning with his late breakfast, consisting chiefly of gunpowder tea and cayenne pepper, and ending with the scroop of his latch-key, to be heard any time from two in the morning to day-break. From the young person employed as housemaid, I discover that my baronet always spends his evenings out of doors, and is known to visit a lady at Fulham very constant, whereby the young person employed as housemaid supposes he is keeping company with her. From the same young person I obtain the lady's address—which piece of information the young person has acquired in the course of taking letters to the post. The lady's address is Hilton House, Fulham. The lady's name has slipped my young person's memory, but is warranted to begin with a D."

Mr. Larkspur paused to take breath, and to consult the memoranda in the bloated leather book.

"Having ascertained this much, I had done with the young person, for the time being," he continued, glibly; "and I felt that my next business would be at Hilton House. Here I presented myself in the character of a twopenny postman; but here I found the servants foreign, and so uncommonly close that they might as well have been so many marble monuments, for any good that was to be got out of them. Failing the servants, I fell back upon the neighbours and the tradespeople; and from the neighbours and the tradespeople I find out that my foreign lady's name is Durski, and that my foreign lady gives a party every night, which party is made up of gentlemen. That is queer, to say the least of it, thinks I. A lady who gives a party every night, and whose visitors are all gentlemen, is an uncommonly queer customer. Having found out this much, my mouth watered to find out more; for a man who has his soul in his profession takes a pleasure in his work, ma'am; and if you were to offer to pay such a man double to waste his time, he couldn't do it. I tried the neighbours, and I tried the tradespeople, every way; and work 'em how I would, I couldn't get much out of 'em. You see, ma'am, there's scarcely a human habitation within a quarter of a mile of Hilton House, so, when I say neighbours, I don't mean neighbours in the common sense of the word. There might be assassination going on every night in Hilton House undiscovered, for there's no one lives near enough to hear the victims' groans; and if there was anything as good for our trade as pork-pie making out of murdered human victims going nowadays, ma'am, Hilton House would be the place where I should look for pork-pies. Well, I was almost beginning to lose patience, when I sat down in a fancy-stationer's shop to rest myself. I sat down in this shop because I was really tired, not with any hope of making use of my time, for I was too far away from Hilton House to expect any luck in the way of information from the gentleman behind the counter. However, when a man has devoted his life to ferreting out information, the habit of ferreting is apt to be very strong upon him; so I pass the time of day to my fancy-stationer, and then begins to ferret. 'Madame Durski, at Hilton House yonder, is an uncommonly handsome woman,' I throw out, by way of an opening. 'Uncommonly,' replies my fancy-stationer, by which I perceive he knows her. 'A customer of yours, perhaps?' I throw out, promiscuous. 'Yes,' answers my fancy-stationer. 'A good one, too, I'll be bound,' I throw out, in a lively, conversational way. My fancy-stationer smiles, and being accustomed to study smiles, I see significance in his smile. 'A very good one in some things,' replies my fancy-stationer, laying a tremendous stress upon the word some. 'Oh,' says I, 'gilt-edged note- paper and cream-coloured sealing-wax, for instance.' 'I don't sell her a quire of paper in a month,' answers my stationer. 'If she was as fond of writing letters as she is of playing cards, I think it would be better for her.' 'Oh, she's fond of card-playing is she?' I ask. 'Yes,' replies my fancy-stationer, 'I rather think she is. Your hair would stand on end if I were to tell you how many packs of playing-cards I've sold her lady-companion within the last three months. The lady- companion comes here at dusk with a thick black veil over her face, and she thinks I don't know who she is; but I do know her, and know where she lives, and whom she lives with.' After this I buy myself a quire of writing-paper, which I don't want, and I wish my fancy-stationer good afternoon. 'Oh, oh,' I say to myself when I get outside, 'I know the meaning of Madame Durski's parties now. Madame Durski's house is a flash gambling crib, and all those fine gentlemen in cabs and broughams go there to play cards.'"

"The mistress of a gaming-house!" exclaimed Honoria. "A fitting companion for Reginald Eversleigh!"

"Just so, ma'am; and a fitting companion for Mr. Victor Carrington likewise."

"Have you found out anything about him?" cried Lady Eversleigh, eagerly.

"No, ma'am, I haven't. At least, nothing in my way. I've tried his neighbours, and his tradespeople also, in the character of a postman, which is respectable, and calculated to inspire confidence. But out of his tradespeople I can get nothing more than the fact that he is a remarkably praiseworthy young man, who pays his debts regular, and is the very best of sons to a highly-respectable mother. There's nothing much in that, you know, ma'am."

"Hypocrite!" murmured Lady Eversleigh. "A hypocrite so skilled in the vile arts of hypocrisy that he will contrive to have the world always on his side. And this is all your utmost address has been able to achieve?"

"All at present, ma'am; but I live in hopes. And now I've got a bit of news about the baronet, which I think will astonish you. I've been improving my acquaintance with the young person employed as housemaid in Villiers Street for the last fortnight, and I find from her that my baronet is on very friendly terms with his first cousin, Mr. Dale, of the Temple."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Honoria. "These two men are the last between whom I should have imagined a friendship impossible."

"Yes, ma'am; but so it is, notwithstanding. Mr. Douglas Dale, barrister-at-law, dined with his cousin, Sir Reginald, twice last week; and on each occasion the two gentlemen left Villiers Street together in a hack cab, between eight and nine o'clock. My friend, the housemaid, happened to hear the address given to the cabmen on both occasions; and on both occasions the address was Hilton House, Fulham."

"Douglas Dale a gambler!" cried Honoria; "the companion of his infamous cousin! That is indeed ruin."

"Well, certainly, ma'am, it does not seem a very lively prospect for my friend, D. D.," answered Mr. Larkspur, with irrepressible flippancy.

"Do you know any more respecting this acquaintance?" asked Honoria.

"Not yet, ma'am; but I mean to know more."

"Watch then," she cried; "watch those two men. There is danger for Mr. Dale in any association with his cousin, Sir Reginald Eversleigh. Do not forget that. There is peril for him—the deadliest it may be. Watch them, Mr. Larkspur; watch them by day and night."

"I'll do my duty, ma'am, depend upon it," replied the police officer; "and I'll do it well. I take a pride in my profession, and to me duty is a pleasure."

"I will trust you."

"You may, ma'am. Oh, by-the-bye, I must tell you that in this house my name is Andrews. Please remember that, ma'am."

"Mr. Andrews, lawyer's clerk. The name of Larkspur smells too strong of Bow Street."

* * * * *

The information acquired by Andrew Larkspur was perfectly correct. An intimacy and companionship had arisen between Douglas Dale and his cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, and the two men spent much of their time together.

Douglas Dale was still the same simple-minded, true-hearted young man that he had been before his uncle Oswald's death endowed him with an income of five thousand a year; but with the accession of wealth the necessity for industry ceased; and instead of a hard-working student, Douglas became one of the upper million, who have nothing to think of but the humour of the moment—now Alpine tourist, now Norwegian angler; anon idler in clubs and drawing-rooms; anon book collector, or amateur litterateur.

He still occupied chambers in the Temple; he still called himself a barrister; but he had no longer any desire to succeed at the bar.

His brother Lionel had become rector of Hallgrove, a village in Dorsetshire, where there was a very fine old church and a very small congregation. It was one of those fat livings which seem only to fall to the lot of rich men.

Lionel had the tastes of a typical country gentleman, and he found ample leisure to indulge in his favourite amusement of hunting, after having conscientiously discharged his duties.

The poor of Hallgrove had good reason to congratulate themselves on the fact that their rector was a rich man. Mr. Dale's charities seemed almost boundless to his happy parishioners.

The rectory was a fine old house, situated in one of those romantic spots which one scarcely hopes to see out of a picture. Hill, wood, and water combined to make the beauty of the landscape; and amid verdant woods and fields the old red-brick mansion looked the perfection of an English homestead. It had been originally a manor-house, and some portions of it were very old.

Douglas Dale called Hallgrove the Happy Valley. Neither of the brothers had yet married, and the barrister paid frequent visits to the rector. He was glad to find repose after the fatigue and excitement of London life. Like his brother, he delighted in the adventures and perils of the hunting field, and he was rarely absent from Hallgrove during the hunting season.

In London he had his clubs, and the houses of friends. The manoeuvring mammas of the West End were very glad to welcome Mr. Dale at their parties. He might have danced with the prettiest girls in London every night of his life had he pleased.

To an unmarried man, with unlimited means and no particular occupation, the pleasures of a life of fashionable amusement are apt to grow "weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable," after a certain time. Douglas Dale was beginning to be very tired of balls and dinner parties, flower-shows and morning concerts, when he happened to meet his cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, at a club to which both men belonged.

Eversleigh could make himself very agreeable when he chose; and on this occasion he exerted himself to the utmost to produce a good impression upon the mind of Douglas Dale. Hitherto Douglas had not liked his cousin, Reginald; but he now began to fancy that he had been prejudiced against his kinsman. He felt that Reginald had some reason to consider himself ill-used; and with the impulsive kindness of a generous nature, he was ready to extend the hand of friendship to a man who had been beaten in the battle of life.

The two men dined together at their club; they met again and again; sometimes by accident—sometimes by appointment. The club was one at which there was a good deal of quiet gambling amongst scientific whist- players; but until his meeting with Reginald Eversleigh, Douglas Dale had never been tempted to take part in a rubber.

His habits changed gradually under the influence of his cousin and Victor Carrington. He consented to take a hand at ecarte after dinner on one day; on another day to join at a whist-party. Three months after his first meeting with Reginald, he accompanied the baronet to Hilton House, where he was introduced to the beautiful Austrian widow.

Sir Reginald Eversleigh played his cards very cautiously. It was only after he had instilled a taste for gambling into his kinsman's breast that he ventured to introduce him to the fashionable gaming-house presided over by Paulina Durski.

The introduction had a sinister effect upon his destiny. He had passed unscathed through the furnace of London life; many women had sought to obtain power over him; but his heart was still in his own keeping when he first crossed the threshold of Hilton House.

He saw Paulina Durski, and loved her. He loved her from the very first with a deep and faithful affection, as far above the selfish fancy of Reginald Eversleigh as the heaven is above the earth.

But she was no longer mistress of her heart. That was given to the man whose baseness she knew, and whom she loved despite her better reason.

Sir Reginald speedily discovered the state of his cousin's feelings. He had laid his plans for this result. Douglas Dale, as the adoring slave of Madame Durski, would be an easy dupe, and much of Sir Oswald's wealth might yet enrich his disinherited nephew. Victor Carrington looked on, and shared his spoils; but he watched Eversleigh's schemes with a half-contemptuous air.

"You think you are doing wonders, my dear Reginald," he said; "and certainly, by means of Mr. Dale's losses, you and I contrive to live— to say nothing of our dear Madame Durski, who comes in for her share of the plunder. But after all, what is it? a few hundreds more or less, at the best. I think you may by-and-by play a better and a deeper game than that, Reginald, and I think I can show you how to play it."

"I do not want to be mixed up in any more of your schemes," answered Sir Reginald, "I have had enough of them. What have they done for me?"

The two men were seated in Sir Reginald's dingy sitting-room in Villiers Street when this conversation took place.

They were sitting opposite to each other, with a little table between them. Victor Carrington rested his folded arms upon the table, and leaned across them, looking full in the face of his companion.

"Look you, Reginald Eversleigh," he said, "because I have failed once, there is no reason that I am to fail always. The devil himself conspired against me last time; but the day will come when I shall have the devil on my side. It is yet on the cards for you to become owner of ten thousand a-year; and it shall be my business to make you owner of that income."

"Stay, Carrington, do you think I would permit—?"

"I ask your permission for nothing: I know you to be a weak and wavering coward, who of your own volition would never rise from the level of a ruined spendthrift and penniless vagabond. You forget, perhaps, that I hold a bond which gives me an interest in your fortunes. I do not forget. When my own wisdom counsels action, I shall act, without asking your advice. If I am successful, you will thank me. If I fail, you will reproach me for my folly. That is the way of the world. And now let us change the subject. When do you go down to Dorsetshire with your cousin, Douglas Dale?"

"Why do you ask me that question?"

"My curiosity is only prompted by a friendly interest in your welfare, and that of your relations. You are going to hunt with Lionel Dale, are you not?"