do for you? I sha'n't keep you half-an-hour."

"A--all right, Shir--nine, at Mortlake. If you want any diamondsh, I
have a beoo--ootiful collar and pendantsh, in that shaafe--brilliantsh.
I can give you the lot three thoushand under cosht prishe. You'll
wa--ant a preshent for the young la--ady."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Sir Richard, abstractedly. "To-morrow
night--to-morrow evening at nine o'clock."

He stopped at the door, looking silently down the stairs, and then
without leave-taking or looking behind him, he ran down, and drove to
Mr. Blount's house, close by, in Manchester Buildings.

For more than a year the young gentleman whom we are following this
morning had cherished vague aspirations, of which good Lady May had been
the object. There was nothing to prevent their union, for the lady was
very well disposed to listen. But Richard Arden did not like ridicule,
and there was no need to hurry; and besides, within the last half-year
had arisen another flame, less mercenary; also, perhaps, reciprocated.

Grace Maubray was handsome, animated; she had that combination of air,
tact, cleverness, which enter into the idea of _chic_. With him it had
been a financial, but notwithstanding rather agreeable, speculation.
Hitherto there seemed ample time before him, and there was no need to
define or decide.

Now, you will understand, the crisis had arrived, which admitted of
neither hesitation nor delay. He was now at Blount's hall-door. He was
certain that he could trust Blount with anything, and he meant to learn
from him what _dot_ his Uncle David intended bestowing on the young
lady.

Mr. Blount was at home. He smiled kindly, and took the young gentleman's
hand, and placed a chair for him.

CHAPTER LXIV.

FROM FLOWER TO FLOWER.

Mr. Blount was intelligent: he was an effective though not an artful
diplomatist. He promptly undertook to sound Mr. Longcluse without
betraying Sir Richard.

Richard Arden did not allude to his losses. He took good care to appear
pretty nearly as usual. When he confessed his _tendresse_ for Miss
Maubray, the grave gentleman smiled brightly, and took him by the hand.

"If _you_ should marry the young lady, mark you, she will have sixty
thousand pounds down, and sixty thousand more after Mr. David Arden's
death. That is splendid, Sir, and I think it will please him _very_
much."

"I have suffered a great deal, Mr. Blount, by neglecting his advice
hitherto. It shall be my chief object, henceforward, to reform, and to
live as he wishes. I believe people can't learn wisdom without
suffering."

"Will you take a biscuit and a glass of sherry, Sir Richard?" asked Mr.
Blount.

"Nothing, thanks," said Sir Richard. "You know, I'm not as rich as I
might have been, and marriage is a very serious step; and you are one of
the oldest and most sensible friends I have, and you'll understand that
it is only right I should be very sure before taking such a step,
involving not myself only, but another who ought to be dearer still,
that there should be no mistake about the means on which we may reckon.
Are you quite sure that my uncle's intentions are still exactly what you
mentioned?"

"Perfectly; he authorised me to say so two months ago, and on the eve of
his departure on Friday last he repeated his instructions."

Sir Richard, in silence, shook the old man very cordially by the hand,
and was gone.

As he drove to his house in May Fair, Sir Richard's thoughts, among
other things, turned again upon the question, "Who could his mysterious
benefactor be?"

Once or twice had dimly visited his mind a theory which, ever since his
recent conversation with Mr. Levi, had been growing more solid and
vivid. An illegitimate brother of his father's, Edwin Raikes, had gone
out to Australia early in life, with a purse to which three brothers,
the late Sir Reginald, Harry, and David, had contributed. He had not
maintained any correspondence with English friends and kindred; but
rumours from time to time reached home that he had amassed a fortune.
His feelings to the family of Arden had always been kindly. He was older
than Uncle David, and had well earned a retirement from the life of
exertion and exile which had consumed all the vigorous years of his
manhood. Was this the "old party" for whom Mr. Levi was acting?

With this thought opened a new and splendid hope upon the mind of Sir
Richard. Here was a fortune, if rumour spoke truly, which, combined with
David Arden's, would be amply sufficient to establish the old baronetage
upon a basis of solid magnificence such as it had never rested on
before.

It would not do, however, to wait for this. The urgency of the situation
demanded immediate action. Sir Richard made an elaborate toilet, after
which, in a hansom, he drove to Lady May Penrose's.

If our hero had had fewer things to think about he would have gone
first, I fancy, to Miss Grace Maubray. It could do no great harm,
however, to feel his way a little with Lady May, he thought, as he
chatted with that plump alternative of his tender dilemma. But in this
wooing there was a difficulty of a whimsical kind. Poor Lady May was so
easily won, and made so many openings for his advances, that he was at
his wits' end to find evasions by which to postpone the happy crisis
which she palpably expected. He did succeed, however; and with a promise
of calling again, with the lady's permission, that evening, he took his
leave.

Before making his call at his uncle's house, in the hope of seeing Grace
Maubray, he had to return to Mr. Blount, in Manchester Buildings, where
he hoped to receive from that gentleman a report of his interview with
Mr. Longcluse.

I shall tell you here what that report related. Mr. Longcluse was
fortunately still at his house when Mr. Blount called, and immediately
admitted him. Mr. Longcluse's horse and groom were at the door; he was
on the point of taking his ride. His gloves and whip were beside him on
the table as Mr. Blount entered.

Mr. Blount made his apologies, and was graciously received. His visit
was, in truth, by no means unwelcome.

"Mr. David Arden very well, I hope?"

"Quite well, thanks. He has left town."

"Indeed! And where has he gone--the moors?"

"To Scotland, but not to shoot, I think. And he's going abroad
then--going to travel."

"On the Continent? How nice that is! What part?"

"Switzerland and Italy, I think," said Mr. Blount, omitting all mention
of Paris, where Mr. Arden was going first to make a visit to the Baron
Vanboeren.

"He's going over ground that I know very well," said Mr. Longcluse.
"Happy man! He can't quite break away from his business, though, I
daresay."

"He never tells us where a letter will find him, and the consequence is
his holidays are never spoiled."

"Not a bad plan, Mr. Blount. Won't he visit the Paris Exhibition?"

"I rather think not."

"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Blount?"

"Well, Mr. Longcluse, I just called to ask you a question. I have been
invited to take part in arranging a little matter which I take an
interest in, because it affects the Arden estates."

"Is Sir Richard Arden interested in it?" inquired Mr. Longcluse, gently
and coldly.

"Yes, I rather fancy he would be benefited."

"I have had a good deal of unpleasantness, and, I might add, a great
deal of ingratitude from that quarter, and I have made up my mind never
again to have anything to do with him or his affairs. I have no
unpleasant _feeling_, you understand; no resentment; there is nothing,
of course, he could say or do that could in the least affect me. It is
simply that, having coolly reviewed his conduct, I have quite made up my
mind to aid in nothing in which he has act, part, or interest."

"It was not _directly_, but simply as a surety----"

"All the same, so far as I'm concerned," said Mr. Longcluse sharply.

"And only, I fancied, it might be, as Mr. David Arden is absent, and you
should be protected by satisfactory joint security----"

"I won't do it," said Mr. Longcluse, a little brusquely; and he took out
his watch and glanced at it impatiently.

"Sir Richard, I think, will be in funds immediately," said Mr. Blount.

"How so?" asked Mr. Longcluse. "You'll excuse me, as you press the
subject, for saying _that_ will be something new."

"Well," said Mr. Blount, who saw that his last words had made an
impression, "Sir Richard is likely to be married, very advantageously,
immediately."

"Are settlements agreed on?" inquired Mr. Longcluse, with real interest.

"No, not yet; but I know all about them."

"He is accepted then?"

"He has not proposed yet; but there can be, I fancy, no doubt that the
lady likes him, and all will go right."

"Oh! and who is the lady?"

"I'm not at liberty to tell."

"Quite right; I ought not to have asked," says Mr. Longcluse; and looks
down, slapping at intervals the side of his trousers lightly with his
whip. He raises his eyes to Mr. Blount's face, and looks on the point of
asking another question, but he does not.

"It is my opinion," said Mr. Blount, "the kindness would involve
absolutely no risk whatever."

There was a little pause. Mr. Longcluse looks rather dark and anxious;
perhaps his mind has wandered quite from the business before them. But
it returns, and he says,--

"Risk or no risk, Mr. Blount, I don't mean to do him that kindness; and
for how long will Mr. David Arden be absent?"

"Unless he should take a sudden thought to return, he'll be away at
least two months."

"Where is he?--in Scotland?"

"I _really_ don't know."

"Couldn't one see him for a few minutes before he starts? Where does he
take the steamer?"

"Southampton."

"And on what day?"

"You really want a word with him?" asked Blount, whose hopes revived.

"I may."

"Well, the only person who will know that is Mr. Humphries, of Pendle
Castle, near that town; for he has to transact some trust-business with
that gentleman as he passes through."

"Humphries, of Pendle Castle. Very good; thanks."

Mr. Longcluse looks again at his watch.

"And perhaps you will reconsider the matter I spoke of?"

"No use, Mr. Blount--not the least. I have quite made up my mind.
Anything more? I am afraid I must be off."

"Nothing, thanks," said Mr. Blount.

And so the interview ended.

When he was gone, Mr. Longcluse thought darkly for a minute.

"That's a straightforward fellow, they say. I suppose the facts are so.
It can't be, though, that Miss Maubray, that handsome creature with so
much money, is thinking of marrying that insolent coxcomb. It may be
Lady May, but the other is more likely. We must not allow _that_, Sir
Richard. That would never do."

There was a fixed frown on his face, and he was smiling in his dream.
Out he went. His pale face looked as if he meditated a wicked joke, and,
frowning still in utter abstraction, he took the bridle from his groom,
mounted, looked about him as if just wakened, and set off at a canter,
followed by his servant, for David Arden's house.

Smiling, gay, as if no care had ever crossed him, Longcluse enters the
drawing-room, where he finds the handsome young lady writing a note at
that moment.

"Mr. Longcluse, I'm so glad you've come!" she says, with a brilliant
smile. "I was writing to poor Lady Ethel, who is mourning, you know, in
the country. The death of her father in the house was so awfully sudden,
and I'm telling her all the news I can think of to amuse her. And is it
really true that old Sir Thomas Giggles has grown so cross with his
pretty young wife, and objects to her allowing Lord Knocknea to make
love to her?"

"Quite true. It is a very bad quarrel, and I'm afraid it can't be made
up," said Mr. Longcluse.

"It must be very bad, indeed, if Sir Thomas can't make it up; for he
allowed his first wife, I am told, to do anything she pleased. Is it to
be a separation?"

"At _least_. And you heard, I suppose, of poor old Lady Glare?"

"No!"

"She has been rolling ever so long, you know, in a sea of troubles, and
now, at last, she has fairly foundered."

"How do you mean?"

"They have sold her diamonds," said Mr. Longcluse. "Didn't you hear?"

"No! Really? Sold her diamonds? Good Heaven! Then there's nothing left
of her but her teeth. I hope they won't sell them."

"It is an awful misfortune," said Mr. Longcluse.

"Misfortune! She's utterly ruined. It was her diamonds that people
asked. I am really sorry. She was such fun; she was so fat, and such a
fool, and said such delicious things, and dressed herself so like a
macaw. Alas! I shall never see her more; and people thought her only use
on earth was to carry about her diamonds. No one seemed to perceive what
a delightful creature she was. What about Lady May Penrose? I have not
seen her since I came back from Cowes, the day before yesterday, and we
leave London together on Tuesday."

"Lady May! Oh! she is to receive a very interesting communication, I
believe. She is one name on a pretty long and very distinguished list,
which Sir Richard Arden, I am told, has made out, and carries about with
him in his pocket-book."

"You're talking riddles; pray speak plainly."

"Well, Lady May is one of several ladies who are to be honoured with a
proposal."

"And would you have me believe that Sir Richard Arden has really made
such a fool of himself as to make out a list of eligible ladies whom he
is about to ask to marry him, and that he has had the excellent good
sense and taste to read this list to his acquaintance?"

"I mean to say this--I'll tell the whole story--Sir Richard has ruined
himself at play; take that as a fact to start with. He is literally
ruined. His uncle is away; but I don't think any man in his senses would
think of paying his losses for him. He turns, therefore, naturally, to
the more amiable and less arithmetical sex, and means to invite, in
turn, a series of fair and affluent admirers to undertake, by means of
suitable settlements, that interesting office for him."

"I don't think you like him, Mr. Longcluse; is not that a story a little
too like 'The Merry Wives of Windsor?'"

"It is quite certain I don't like him, and it is quite certain," added
Mr. Longcluse, with one of his cold little laughs, "that if I did like
him, I should not tell the story; but it is also certain that the story
is, in all its parts, strictly fact. If you permit me the pleasure of a
call in two or three days, you will tell me you no longer doubt it."

Mr. Longcluse was looking down as he said that with a gentle and smiling
significance. The young lady blushed a little, and then more intensely,
as he spoke, and looking through the window, asked with a laugh,--

"But how shall we know whether he really speaks to Lady May?"

"Possibly by his marrying her," laughed Mr. Longcluse. "He certainly
will if he can, unless he is caught and married on the way to her
house."

"He was a little unfortunate in showing you his list, wasn't he?" said
Grace Maubray.

"I did not say that. If there had been any, the least, confidence,
nothing on earth could have induced me to divulge it. We are not even,
at present, on speaking terms. He had the coolness to send a Mr. Blount,
who transacts all Mr. David Arden's affairs, to ask me to become his
security, Mr. Arden being away; and by way of inducing me to do so, he
disclosed, with the coarseness which is the essence of business, the
matrimonial schemes which are to recoup, within a few days, the losses
of the roulette, the whist-table, or the dice-box."

"Oh! Mr. Blount, I'm told, is a very honest man."

"Quite so; particularly accurate, and I don't think anything on earth
would induce him to tell an untruth," testifies Mr. Longcluse.

After a little pause, Miss Maubray laughs.

"One certainly does learn," she said, "something new every day. Could
any one have fancied a _gentleman_ descending to so gross a meanness?"

"Everybody is a gentleman now-a-days," remarked Mr. Longcluse with a
smile; "but every one is not a hero--they give way, more or less, under
temptation. Those who stand the test of the crucible and the furnace are
seldom met with."

At this moment the door opened, and Lord Wynderbroke was announced. A
little start, a lighting of the eyes, as Grace rose, and a fluttered
advance, with a very pretty little hand extended, to meet him,
testified, perhaps, rather more surprise than one would have quite
expected. For Mr. Longcluse, who did not know him so well as Miss
Maubray, recognised his voice, which was peculiar, and resembling the
caw of a jay, as he put a question to the servant on his way up.

Mr. Longcluse took his leave. He was not sorry that Lord Wynderbroke had
called. He wished no success to Sir Richard's wooing. He thought he had
pretty well settled the question in Miss Maubray's mind, and smiling, he
rode at a pleasant canter to Lady May's. It was as well, perhaps, that
she should hear the same story. Lady May, however, unfortunately, had
just gone out for a drive.

CHAPTER LXV.

BEHIND THE ARRAS.

It was quite true that Lady May was not at home. She was actually, with
a little charming palpitation, driving to pay a very interesting visit
to Grace Maubray. In affairs of the kind that now occupied her mind, she
had no confidants but very young people.

Miss Maubray was at home--and instantly Lady May's plump instep was seen
on the carriage step. She disdained assistance, and descended with a
heavy skip upon the flags, where she executed an involuntary frisk that
carried her a little out of the line of advance.

As she ascended the stairs, she met her friend Lord Wynderbroke coming
down. They stopped for a moment on the landing, under a picture of Cupid
and Venus; Lady May, smiling, remarked, a little out of breath, what a
charming day it was, and expressed her amazement at seeing him in
town--a surprise which he agreeably reciprocated. He had been at
Glenkiltie in the Highlands, where he had accidentally met Mr. David
Arden. "Miss Maubray is in the drawing-room," he said, observing that
the eyes of the good lady glanced unconsciously upward at the door of
that room. And then they parted affectionately, and turned their backs
on each other with a sense of relief.

"Well, my dear," she said to Grace Maubray as soon as they had kissed,
"longing to have a few minutes with you, with ever so much to say. You
have no idea what it is to be stopped on the stairs by that tiresome
man--I'll never quarrel with you again for calling him a bore. No
matter, here I am; and really, my dear, it _is_ such an odd affair--not
quite that; such an odd scene, I don't know where or how to begin."

"I wish I could help you," said Miss Maubray laughing.

"Oh, my dear, you'd never guess in a hundred years."

"How do you know? Hasn't a certain baronet something to do with it?"

"Well, well--dear me! That is _very_ extraordinary. Did he tell you he
was going to--to--Good gracious! My dear, it _is_ the most extraordinary
thing. I believe you hear everything; but--a--but _listen_. Not an hour
ago he came--Richard Arden, of course, we mean--and, my dear Grace, he
spoke so very nicely of his troubles, poor fellow, you know--debts I
mean, of course--not the least his fault, and all that kind of thing,
and--he went on--I really don't know how to tell you. But he said--he
said--he said he liked me, and no one else on earth; and he was on the
very point of saying _everything_, when, just at that moment, who should
come in but that gossiping old woman, Lady Botherton--and he whispered,
as he was going, that he would return, after I had had my drive. The
carriage was at the door, so, when I got rid of the old woman, I got
into it, and came straight here to have a talk with you; and what do you
think I ought to say? Do tell me, like a darling, do!"

"I wish you would tell _me_ what one ought to say to that question,"
said Grace Maubray with a slight disdain (that young lady was in the
most unreasonable way piqued), "for I'm told he's going to ask me
precisely the same question."

"_You_, my dear?" said Lady May after a pause, during which she was
staring at the smiling face of the young lady; "you can't be serious!"

"_He_ can't be serious, you mean," answered the young lady, "and--who's
this?" she broke off, as she saw a cab drive up to the hall-door. "Dear
me! is it? No. Yes, indeed, it is Sir Richard Arden. We must not be seen
together. He'll know you have been talking to me. Just go in here."

She opened the door of the boudoir adjoining the room.

"I'll send him away in a moment. You may hear every word I have to say.
I should like it. I shall give him a lecture."

As she thus spoke she heard his step on the stair, and motioned Lady May
into the inner room, into which she hurried and closed the door, leaving
it only a little way open.

These arrangements are hardly completed when Sir Richard is announced.
Grace is positively angry. But never had she looked so beautiful; her
eyes so tenderly lustrous under their long lashes; her colour so
brilliant--an expression so maidenly and sad. If it was acting, it was
very well done. You would have sworn that the melancholy and agitation
of her looks, and the slightly quickened movement of her breathing, were
those of a person who felt that the hour of her fate had come.

With what elation Richard Arden saw these beautiful signs!

CHAPTER LXVI.

A BUBBLE BROKEN.

After a few words had been exchanged, Grace said in reply to a question
of Sir Richard's,--

"Lady May and I are going together, you know: in a day or two we shall
be at Brighton. I mean to bid Alice good-bye to-day. There--I mean at
Brighton--we are to meet Vivian Darnley, and possibly another friend;
and we go to meet your uncle at that pretty little town in Switzerland,
where Lady May----I wonder, by-the-bye, you did not arrange to come with
us; Lady May travels with us the entire time. She says there are some
very interesting ruins there."

"Why, dear old soul!" said Sir Richard, who felt called upon to say
something to set himself right with respect to Lady May, "she's thinking
of quite another place. She will be herself the only interesting ruin
there."

"I think you wish to vex me," said pretty Grace, turning away with a
smile, which showed, nevertheless, that this kind of joke was not an
unmixed vexation to her. "I don't care for ruins myself."

"Nor do I," he said, archly.

"But you don't think so of Lady May. I know you don't. You are franker
with her than with me, and you tell her a very different tale."

"I must be very frank, then, if I tell her more than I know myself. I
never said a civil thing of Lady May, except once or twice, to the poor
old thing herself, when I wanted her to do one or two little things, to
please _you_."

"Oh! come, you can't deceive me; I've seen you place your hand to your
heart, like a theatrical hero, when you little fancied any one but she
saw it."

"Now, really, that is too bad. I may have put my hand to my side, when
it ached from laughing."

"How can you talk so? You know very well I have heard you tell her how
you admire her music and her landscapes."

"No, no--not landscapes--she paints faces. But her colouring is, as
artists say, too chalky--and nothing but red and white, like--what is it
like?--like a clown. Why did not she get the late Mr. Etty--she's always
talking of him--to teach her something of his tints?"

"You are not to speak so of Lady May. You forget she is my particular
friend," says the young lady; but her pretty face does not express so
much severity as her words. "I do think you like her. You merely talk so
to throw dust in people's eyes. Why should not you be frank with me?"

"I wish I dare be frank with you," said Sir Richard.

"And why not?"

"How can I tell how my disclosures might be punished? My frankness might
extinguish the best hope I live for; a few rash words might make me a
very unhappy man for life."

"Really? Then I can quite understand that reflection alarming you in the
midst of a _tête-à-tête_ with Lady May; and even interrupting an
interesting conversation."

Sir Richard looked at her quickly, but her looks were perfectly artless.

"I really do wish you would spare me all further allusion to that good
woman. I can bear that kind of fun from any one but you. Why will you?
she is old enough to be my mother. She is fat, and painted, and
ridiculous. You think me totally without romance? I wish to heaven I
were. There is a reason, that makes your saying all that particularly
cruel. I am not the sordid creature you take me for. I'm not insensible.
I'm not a mere stock of stone. Never was human being more capable of the
wildest passion. Oh, if I dare tell you all!"

Was all this acting? Certainly not. Never was shallow man, for the
moment, more in earnest. Cool enough he was, although he had always
admired this young lady, when he entered the room. He had made that
entrance, nevertheless, in a spirit quite dramatic. But Miss Maubray
never looked so brilliant, never half so tender. He took fire--the
situation aiding quite unexpectedly--and the flame was real. It might
have been over as quickly as a balloon on fire; but for the moment the
conflagration was intense.

How was Miss Maubray affected? An immensely abler performer than the
young gentleman who had entered the room with his part at his fingers'
ends, and all his looks and emphasis arranged--only to break through all
this, and begin extemporising wildly--she, on the contrary, maintained
her _rôle_ with admirable coolness. It was not, perhaps, so easy; for
notwithstanding appearances, her histrionic powers were severely tasked;
for never was she more angry. Her self-esteem was wounded; the fancy (it
was no more), she had cherished for him was gone, and a great disgust
was there instead.

"You shall ask me no questions till I have done asking mine," said the
young lady, with decision; "and I will speak as much as I please of Lady
May!"

This jealousy flattered Sir Richard.

"And I will say this," continued Grace Maubray, "you never address her
except as a lover, in what you romantic people would call the language
of love."

"Now, now, now! How can you say that? Is that fair?"

"You do."

"No, really, I swear--that's _too_ bad!"

"Yes, the other day, when you spoke to her at the carriage window--you
did not think I heard--you accused her so tenderly of having failed to
go to Lady Harbroke's garden-party, and you couldn't say what you meant
in plain terms, but you said, 'Why were you false?'"

"I didn't, I swear."

"Oh! you did; I heard every syllable; 'false' was the word."

"Well, if I said 'false,' I must have been thinking of her hair; for she
is really a very honest old woman."

At this moment a female voice in distress is heard, and poor Lady May
comes pushing out of the pretty little room, in which Grace Maubray had
placed her, sobbing and shedding floods of tears.

"I can't stay there any longer, for I hear everything; I can't help
hearing every word--honest old woman, and all--opprobrious. Oh! how
_can_ people be so? how _can_ they? Oh! I'm very angry--I'm very
angry--I'm very angry!"

If Miss Maubray were easily moved to pity she might have been at sight
of the big innocent eyes turned up at her, from which rolled great
tears, making visible channels through the paint down her cheeks. She
sobbed and wept like a fat, good-natured child, and pitifully she
continued sobbing, "Oh, I'm a-a-ho--very angry; wha-at shall I do-o-o,
my dear? I-I'm very angry--oh, oh--I'm very a-a-angry!"

"So am I," said Grace Maubray, with a fiery glance at the young baronet,
who stood fixed where he was, like an image of death; "and I had
intended, dear Lady May, telling you a thing which Sir Richard Arden may
as well hear, as I mean to write to tell Alice to-day; it is that I am
to be married--I have accepted Lord Wynderbroke--and--and that's all."

Sir Richard, I believe, said "Good-bye." Nobody heard him. I don't think
he remembers how he got on his horse. I don't think the ladies saw him
leave the room--only, he was gone.

Poor Lady May takes her incoherent leave. She has got her veil over her
face, to baffle curiosity. Miss Maubray stands at the window, the tip of
her finger to her brilliant lip, contemplating Lady May as she gets in
with a great jerk and swing of the carriage, and she hears the footman
say "Home," and sees a fat hand, in a lilac glove, pull up the window
hurriedly. Then she sits down on a sofa, and laughs till she quivers
again, and tears overflow her eyes; and she says in the intervals,
almost breathlessly,--

"Oh, poor old thing! I really am sorry. Who could have thought she cared
so much? Poor old soul! what a ridiculous old thing!"

Such broken sentences of a rather contemptuous pity rolled and floated
along the even current of her laughter.

CHAPTER LXVII.

BOND AND DEED.

The summer span of days was gone; it was quite dark, and long troops of
withered leaves drifted in rustling trains over the avenue, as Mr. Levi,
observant of his appointment, drove up to the grand old front of
Mortlake, which in the dark spread before him like a house of white
mist.

"I shay," exclaimed Mr. Levi, softly, arresting the progress of the
cabman, who was about running up the steps, "I'll knock myshelf--wait
you there."

Mr. Levi was smoking. Standing at the base of the steps, he looked up,
and right and left with some curiosity. It was too dark; he could hardly
see the cold glimmer of the windows that reflected the grey horizon.
Vaguely, however, he could see that it was a grander place than he had
supposed. He looked down the avenue, and between the great trees over
the gate he saw the distant lights, and heard through the dim air the
chimes, far off, from London steeples, succeeding one another, or
mingling faintly, and telling all whom it might concern the solemn
lesson of the flight of time.

Mr. Levi thought it might be worth while coming down in the day-time,
and looking over the house and place to see what could be made of them;
the thing was sure to go a dead bargain. At present he could see nothing
but the wide, vague, grey front, and the faint glow through the hall
windows, which showed their black outlines sharply enough.

"Well, _he_'sh come a mucker, anyhow," murmured Mr. Levi, with one of
his smiles that showed so wide his white sharp teeth.

He knocked at the door and rang the bell. It was not a footman, but
Crozier who opened it. The old servant of the family did not like the
greasy black curls, the fierce jet eyes, the sallow face and the large,
moist, sullen mouth, that presented themselves under the brim of Mr.
Levi's hat, nor the tawdry glimmer of chains on his waistcoat, nor the
cigar still burning in his fingers. Sir Richard had told Crozier,
however, that a Mr. Levi, whom he described, was to call at a certain
hour, on very particular business, and was to be instantly admitted.

Mr. Levi looks round him, and extinguishes his cigar before following
Crozier, whose countenance betrays no small contempt and dislike, as he
eyes the little man askance, as if he would like well to be uncivil to
him.

Crozier leads him to the right, through a small apartment, to a vast
square room, long disused, still called the library, though but few
books remain on the shelves, and those in disorder. It is a chilly
night, and a little fire burns in the grate, over which Sir Richard is
cowering. Very haggard, the baronet starts up as the name of his visitor
is announced.

"Come in," cries Sir Richard, walking to meet him. "Here--here I am,
Levi, utterly ruined. There isn't a soul I dare tell how I am beset, or
anything to, but you. Do, for God's sake take pity on me, and think of
something! my brain's quite gone--you're such a clever fellow" (he is
dragging Levi by the arm all this time towards the candles): "do now,
you're sure to see some way out. It is a matter of _honour_; I only want
time. If I could only find my Uncle David: think of his
selfishness--good heaven! was there ever man so treated? and there's the
bank letter--_there_--on the table; you see it--dunning me, the
ungrateful harpies, for the trifle--what is it?--three hundred and
something, I overdrew; and that blackguard tallow-chandler has been
three times to my house in town, for payment to-day, and it's more than
I thought--near four thousand, he says--the scoundrel! It's just the
same to him two months hence; he's full of money, the beast--a fellow
like that--it's delight to him to get hold of a gentleman, and he won't
take a bill--the lying rascal! He is pressed for cash just now--a
pug-faced villain with three hundred thousand pounds! Those scoundrels!
I mean the people, whatever they are, that lent me the money; it turns
out it was all but at sight, and they were with my attorney to-day, and
they won't wait. I wish I was shot; I envy the dead dogs rolling in the
Thames! By heaven; Levi, I'll say you're the best friend man ever had on
earth, I will, if you manage something! I'll never forget it to you;
I'll have it in my power, yet! no one ever said I was ungrateful; I
swear I'll be the making of you! _Do_, Levi, think; you're accustomed
to--to emergency, and unless you will, I'm utterly ruined--ruined, by
heaven, before I have time to think!"

The Jew listened to all this with his hands in his pockets, leaning back
in his chair, with his big eyes staring on the wild face of the baronet,
and his heavy mouth hanging. He was trying to reduce his countenance to
vacancy.

"What about them shettlements, Sir Richard--a nishe young lady with a
ha-a-tful o' money?" insinuated Levi.

"I've been thinking over that, but it wouldn't do, with my affairs in
this state, it would not be honourable or straight. Put that quite
aside."

Mr. Levi gaped at him for a moment solemnly, and turned suddenly, and,
brute as he was, spit on the Turkey carpet. He was not, as you perceive,
ceremonious; but he could not allow the baronet to see the laughter that
without notice caught him for a moment, and could think of no better way
to account for his turning away his head.

"That'sh wery honourable indeed," said the Jew, more solemn than ever;
"and if you can't play in that direction, I'm afraid you're in queer
shtreet."

The baronet was standing before Levi, and at these words from that dirty
little oracle, a terrible chill stole up from his feet to the crown of
his head. Like a frozen man he stood there, and the Jew saw that his
very lips were white. Sir Richard feels, for the first time, actually,
that he is ruined.

The young man tries to speak, twice. The big eyes of the Jew are staring
up at the contortion. Sir Richard can see nothing but those two big
fiery eyes; he turns quickly away and walks to the end of the room.

"There's just one fiddle-string left to play on," muses the Jew.

"For God's sake!" exclaims Sir Richard, turning about, in a voice you
would not have known, and for fully a minute the room was so silent you
could scarcely have believed that two men were breathing in it.

"Shir Richard, will you be so good as to come nearer a bit? There,
that'sh the cheeshe. I brought thish 'ere thing."

It is a square parchment with a good deal of printed matter, and blanks,
written in, and a law stamp fixed with an awful regularity, at the
corner.

"Casht your eye over it," says Levi, coaxingly, as he pushes it over the
table to the young gentleman, who is sitting now at the other side.

The young man looks at it, reads it, but just then, if it had been a
page of "Robinson Crusoe," he could not have understood it.

"I'm not quite myself, I can't follow it; too much to think of. What is
it?"

"A bond and warrant to confess judgment."

"What is it for?"

"Ten thoushand poundsh."

"Sign it, shall I? Can you do anything with it?"

"Don't raishe your voishe, but lishten. Your friend"--and at the phrase
Mr. Levi winked mysteriously--"has enough to do it twishe over; and upon
my shoul, I'll shwear on the book, azh I hope to be shaved, it will
never shee the light; he'll never raishe a pig on it, sho' 'elp me, nor
let it out of hish 'ands, till he givesh it back to you. He can't ma-ake
no ushe of it; I knowshe him well, and he'll pay you the ten thoushand
to-morrow morning, and he wantsh to shake handsh with you, and make
himself known to you, and talk a bit."

"But--but my signature wouldn't satisfy him," began Sir Richard
bewildered.

"Oh! _no_--no, no?" murmured Mr. Levi, fiddling with the corner of the
bank's reminder which lay on the table.

"Mr. Longcluse won't sign it," said Sir Richard.

Mr. Levi threw himself back in his chair, and looked with a roguish
expression still upon the table, and gave the corner of the note a
little fillip.

"Well," said Levi, after both had been some time silent, "it ain't much,
only to write his name on the penshil line, _there_, you see, and
_there_--he shouldn't make no bonesh about it. Why, it's done every day.
Do you think I'd help in a thing of the short if there was any danger?
The Sheneral's come to town, is he? What are you afraid of? Don't you be
a shild--ba-ah!"

All this Mr. Levi said so low that it was as if he were whispering to
the table, and he kept looking down as he put the parchment over to Sir
Richard, who took it in his hand, and the bond trembled so much that he
set it down again.

"Leave it with me," he said faintly.

Levi got up with an unusual hectic in each cheek, and his eyes very
brilliant.

"I'll meet you what time you shay to-night; you had besht take a little
time. It'sh ten now. Three hoursh will do it. I'll go on to my offish by
one o'clock, and you come any time from one to two."

Sir Richard was trembling.

"Between one and two, mind. Hang it! Shir Richard, don't you be a fool
about nothing," whispers the Jew, as black as thunder.

He is fumbling in his breast-pocket, and pulling out a sheaf of letters;
he selects one, which he throws upon the parchment that lies open on the
table.

"That'sh the note you forgot in my offish yeshterday, with hish name
shined to it. There, now you have everything."

Without any form of valediction, the Jew had left the room. Sir Richard
sits with his teeth set, and a strange frown upon his face, scarcely
breathing. He hears the cab drive away. Before him on the table lie the
papers.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

SIR RICHARD'S RESOLUTION.

Two hours had passed, and more, of solitude. With a candle in his hand,
and his hat and great-coat on, Sir Richard Arden came out into the hall.
His trap awaited him at the door.

In the interval of his solitude, something incredible has happened to
him. It is over. A spectral secret accompanies him henceforward. A devil
sits in his pocket, in that parchment. He dares not think of himself.
Something sufficient to shake the world of London, and set all English
Christian tongues throughout the earth wagging on one theme, has
happened.

Does he repent? One thing is certain: he dares not falter. Something
within him once or twice commanded him to throw his crime into the fire,
while yet it is obliterable. But what then? what of to-morrow? Into that
sheer black sea of ruin, that reels and yawns as deep as eye can fathom
beneath him, he must dive and see the light no more. Better his chance.

He won't think of what he has done, of what he is going to do. He
suspects his courage: he dares not tempt his cowardice. Braver, perhaps,
it would have been to meet the worst at once. But surely, according to
the theory of chances, we have played the true game. Is not a little
time gained, everything? Are we not in friendly hands? Has not that
little scoundrel committed himself, by an all but actual participation
in the affair? It can never come to _that_. "I have only to confess, and
throw myself at Uncle David's feet, and the one dangerous debt would
instantly be brought up and cancelled."

These thoughts came vaguely, and on his heart lay an all but
insupportable load. The sight of the staircase reminded him that Alice
must long since have gone to her room. He yearned to see her and say
good-night. It was the last farewell that the brother she had known from
her childhood till now should ever speak or look. That brother was to
die to-night, and a spirit of guilt to come in his stead.

He taps lightly at her door. She is asleep. He opens it, and dimly sees
her innocent head upon the pillow. If his shadow were cast upon her
dream, what an image would she have seen looking in at the door! A
sudden horror seizes him--he draws back and closes the door; on the
lobby he pauses. It was a last moment of grace. He stole down the
stairs, mounted his tax-cart, took the reins from his servant in
silence, and drove swiftly into town. In Parliament Street, near the
corner of the street leading to Levi's office, they passed a policeman,
lounging on the flagway. Richard Arden is in a strangely nervous state;
he fancies he will stop and question him, and he touches the horse with
the whip to get quickly by.

In his breast-pocket he carried his ghastly secret. A pretty business if
he happened to be thrown out, and a policeman should make an inventory
of his papers, as he lay insensible in an hospital--a pleasant thing if
he were robbed in these villanous streets, and the bond advertised, for
a reward, by a pretended finder. A nice thing, good heaven! if it should
wriggle and slip its way out of his pocket, in the jolting and tremble
of the drive, and fall into London hands, either rascally or severe. He
pulled up, and gave the reins to the servant, and felt, however
gratefully, with his fingers, the crisp crumple of the parchment under
the cloth! Did his servant look at him oddly as he gave him the reins?
Not he; but Sir Richard began to suspect him and everything. He made him
stop near the angle of the street, and there he got down, telling him
rather savagely--for his fancied look was still in the baronet's
brain--not to move an inch from that spot.

It was half-past one as his steps echoed down the street in which Mr.
Levi had his office. There was a figure leaning with its back in the
recess of Levi's door, smoking. Sir Richard's temper was growing
exasperated.

It was Levi himself. Upstairs they stumble in the dark. Mr. Levi has not
said a word. He is not treating his visitor with much ceremony. He lets
himself into his office, secured with a heavy iron bar, and a lock that
makes a great clang, and proceeds to light a candle. The flame expands
and the light shows well-barred shutters, and the familiar objects.

When Mr. Levi had lighted a second candle, he fixed his great black eyes
on the young baronet, who glances over his shoulder at the door, but the
Jew has secured it. Their eyes meet for a moment, and Sir Richard places
his hand nervously in his breast-pocket and takes out the parchment.
Levi nods and extends his hand. Each now holds it by a corner, and as
Sir Richard lets it go hesitatingly, he says faintly--

"Levi, you wouldn't--you could not run any risk with that?"

Levi stands by his great iron safe, with the big key in his hand. He
nods in reply, and locking up the document, he knocks his knuckles on
the iron door, with a long and solemn wink.

"_Sha-afe!_--that'sh the word," says he, and then he drops the keys into
his pocket again.

There was a silence of a minute or more. A spell was stealing over them;
an influence was in the room. Each eyed the other, shrinkingly, as a man
might eye an assassin. The Jew knew that there was danger in that
silence; and yet he could not break it. He could not disturb the
influence acting on Richard Arden's mind. It was his good angel's last
pleading, before the long farewell.

In a dreadful whisper Richard Arden speaks:--

"Give me that parchment back," says he.

Satan finds his tongue again.

"Give it back?" repeats Levi, and a pause ensues. "Of course I'll give
it back; and I wash my hands of it and you, and you're throwing away ten
thoushand poundsh for _nothing_."

Levi was taking out his keys as he spoke, and as he fumbled them over
one by one, he said--

"You'll want a lawyer in the Insholwent Court, and you'd find Mishter
Sholomonsh azh shatisfactory a shengleman azh any in London. He'sh an
auctioneer, too; and there'sh no good in your meetin' that friendly cove
here to-morrow, for he'sh one o' them honourable chaps, and he'll never
look at you after your schedule's lodged, and the shooner that'sh done
the better; and them women we was courting, won't they laugh!"

Hereupon, with great alacrity, Mr. Levi began to apply the key to the
lock.

"Don't mind. Keep it; and mind, you d----d little swindler, so sure as
you stand there, if you play me a trick, I'll blow your brains out, if
it were in the police-office!"

Mr. Levi looked hard at him, and nodded. He was accustomed to excited
language in certain situations.

"Well," said he coolly, a second time returning the keys to his pocket,
"your friend will be here at twelve to-morrow, and if you please him as
well as he expects, who knows wha-at may be? If he leavesh you half hish
money, you'll not 'ave many bill transhactionsh on your handsh."

"May God Almighty have mercy on me!" groans Sir Richard, hardly above
his breath.

"You shall have the cheques then. He'll be here all right."

"I--I forget; did you say an hour?"

Levi repeats the hour. Sir Richard walks slowly to the stairs, down
which Levi lights him. Neither speaks.

In a few minutes more the young gentleman is driving rapidly to his town
house, where he means to end that long-remembered night.

When he had got to his room, and dismissed his valet, he sat down. He
looked round, and wondered how collected he now was. The situation
seemed like a dream, or his sense of danger had grown torpid. He could
not account for the strange indifference that had come over him. He got
quickly into bed. It was late, and he exhausted, and aided, I know not
by what narcotic, he slept a constrained, odd sleep--black as
Erebus--the thread of which snaps suddenly, and he is awake with a heart
beating fast, as if from a sudden start. A hard bitter voice has said
close by the pillow, "You are the first Arden that ever did that!" and
with these words grating in his ears, he awoke, and had a confused
remembrance of having been dreaming of his father.

Another dream, later on, startled him still more. He was in Levi's
office, and while they were talking over the horrid document, in a
moment it blew out of the window; and a lean, ill-looking man, in a
black coat, like the famous person who, in old woodcuts, picked up the
shadow of Peter Schlemel, caught the parchment from the pavement, and
with his eyes fixed corner-wise upon him, and a dreadful smile, tapped
his long finger on the bond, and with wide paces stepped swiftly away
with it in his hand.

Richard Arden started up in his bed; the cold moisture of terror was
upon his forehead, and for a moment he did not know where he was, or how
much of his vision was real. The grey twilight of early morning was over
the town. He welcomed the light; he opened the window-shutters wide. He
looked from the window down upon the street. A lean man with tattered
black, with a hammer in his hand, just as the man in his dream had held
the roll of parchment, was slowly stepping with long strides away from
his house, along the street.

As his thoughts cleared, his panic increased. Nothing had happened
between the time of his lying down and his up-rising to alter his
situation, and the same room sees him now half mad.

CHAPTER LXIX.

THE MEETING.

Near the appointed hour, he walked across the park, and through the
Horse Guards, and in a few minutes more was between the tall
old-fashioned houses of the street in which Mr. Levi's office is to be
found. He passes by a dingy hired coach, with a tarnished crest on the
door, and sees two Jewish-looking men inside, both smiling over some sly
joke. Whose door are they waiting at? He supposes another Jewish office
seeks the shade of that pensive street.

Mr. Levi opened his office door for his handsome client. They were quite
to themselves. Mr. Levi did not look well. He received him with a nod.
He shut the door when Sir Richard was in the room.

"He'sh not come yet. We'll talk to him inshide." He indicates the door
of the inner room, with a little side jerk of his head. "That'sh
private. He hazh that--_thing_ all right."

Sir Richard says nothing. He follows Levi into a small inner room, which
had, perhaps, originally been a lady's boudoir, and had afterwards, one
might have conjectured, served as the treasury of cash and jewels of a
pawn-office; for its door was secured with iron bars, and two great
locks, and the windows were well barred with iron. There were two huge
iron safes in the room, built into the wall.

"I'll show you a beauty of a dresshing-ca-ashe," said Levi, rousing
himself; "I'll shell it a dead bargain, and give time for half, if you
knowsh any young shwell as wantsh such a harticle. Look here; it was
made for the Duchess of Horleans--all in gold, hemerald, and
brilliantsh."

And thus haranguing, he displayed its contents, and turned them over,
staring on them with a livid admiration. Sir Richard is not thinking of
the duchess's dressing-case, nor is he much more interested when Mr.
Levi goes on to tell him, "There'sh three executions against peersh out
thish week--two gone down to the country. Sholomonsh nobbled Lord
Bylkington's carriage outshide Shyner's at two o'clock in the morning,
and his lordship had to walk home in the rain;" and Levi laughs and
wriggles pleasantly over the picture. "I think he'sh coming," says Levi
suddenly, inclining his ear toward the door. He looked back over his
shoulder with an odd look, a little stern, at the young gentleman.

"Who?" asked the young man, a little uncertain, in consequence of the
character of that look.

"Your--that--your friend, of course," said Levi, with his eyes again
averted, and his ear near the door.

It was a moment of trepidation and of hope to Richard Arden. He hears
the steps of several persons in the next room. Levi opens a little bit
of the door, and peeps through, and with a quick glance towards the
baronet, he whispers, "Ay, it's him."

Oh, blessed hope! here comes, at last, a powerful friend to take him by
the hand, and draw him, in his last struggle, from the whirlpool.

Sir Richard glances towards the door through which the Jew is still
looking, and signing with his hand as, little by little, he opens it
wider and wider; and a voice in the next room, at sound of which Sir
Richard starts to his feet, says sharply, "Is all right?"

"All _right_," replies Levi, getting aside; and Mr. Longcluse entered
the room and shut the door.

His pale face looked paler than usual, his thin cruel lips were closed,
his nostrils dilated with a terrible triumph, and his eyes were fixed
upon Arden, as he held the fatal parchment in his hand.

Levi saw a scowl so dreadful contract Sir Richard Arden's face--was it
pain, or was it fury?--that, drawing back as far as the wall would let
him, he almost screamed, "It ain't me!--it ain't my fault!--I can't help
it!--I couldn't!--I can't!" His right hand was in his pocket, and his
left, trembling violently, extended toward him, as if to catch his arm.

But Richard Arden was not thinking of him--did not hear him. He was
overpowered. He sat down in his chair. He leaned back with a gasp and a
faint laugh, like a man just overtaken by a wave, and lifted
half-drowned from the sea. Then, with a sudden cry, he threw his hands
and head on the table.

There was no token of relenting in Longcluse's cruel face. There was a
contemptuous pleasure in it. He did not remove his eyes from that
spectacle of abasement as he replaced the parchment in his pocket. There
is a silence of about a minute, and Sir Richard sits up and says
vaguely,--

"Thank God, it's over! Take me away; I'm ready to go."

"You shall go, time enough; I have a word to say first," said Longcluse,
and he signs to the Jew to leave them.

On being left to themselves, the first idea that struck Sir Richard was
the wild one of escape. He glanced quickly at the window. It was barred
with iron. There were men in the next room--he could not tell how
many--and he was without arms. The hope lighted up, and almost at the
same moment expired.

CHAPTER LXX.

MR. LONGCLUSE PROPOSES.

"Clear your head," says Mr. Longcluse, sternly, seating himself before
Sir Richard, with the table between; "you must conceive a distinct idea
of your situation, Sir, and I shall then tell you something that
remains. You have committed a forgery under aggravated circumstances,
for which I shall have you convicted and sentenced to penal servitude at
the next sessions. I have been a good friend to you on many occasions;
you have been a false one to me--who baser?--and while I was anonymously
helping you with large sums of money, you forged my name to a legal
instrument for ten thousand pounds, to swindle your unknown benefactor,
little suspecting who he was."

Longcluse smiled.

"I have heard how you spoke of me. I'm an adventurer, a leg, an
assassin, a person whom you were compelled to drop; rather a low person,
I fear, if a felon can't afford to sit beside me! You were always too
fine a man for me. Your get up was always peculiar; you were famous for
that. It will soon be more singular still, when your hair and your
clothes are cut after the fashion of the great world you are about to
enter. How your friends will laugh!"

Sir Richard heard all this with a helpless stare.

"I have only to stamp on the ground, to call up the men who will
accomplish your transformation. I can change your life by a touch, into
convict dress, diet, labour, lodging, for the rest of your days. What
plea have you to offer to my mercy?"

Sir Richard would have spoken, but his voice failed him. With a second
effort, however, he said--"Would it not be more manly if you let me meet
my fate, without this."

"And you are such an admirable judge of what is manly, or even
gentlemanlike!" said Longcluse. "Now, mind, I shall arrest you in five
minutes, on your three over-due bills. The men with the writ are in the
next room. I sha'n't immediately arrest you for the forgery. That shall
hang over you. I mean to make you, for a while, my instrument. Hear, and
understand; I mean to marry your sister. She don't like me, but she
suits me; I have chosen her, and I'll not be baulked. When that is
accomplished, you are safe. No man likes to see his brother a spectacle
of British justice, with cropped hair, and a log to his foot. I may hate
and despise you, as you deserve, but that would not do. Failing that,
however, you shall have justice, I promise you. The course I propose
taking is this: you shall be arrested here, for _debt_. You will be good
enough to allow the people who take you, to select your present place of
confinement. It is arranged. I will then, by a note, appoint a place of
meeting for this evening, where I shall instruct you as to the
particulars of that course of conduct I prescribe for you. If you mean
to attempt an escape, you had better try it _now_; I will give you
fourteen hours' start, and undertake to catch and bring you back to
London as a forger. If you make up your mind to submit to fate, and do
precisely as you are ordered, you may emerge. But on the slightest
evasion, prevarication, or default, the blow descends. In the meantime
we treat each other civilly before these people. Levi is in my hands,
and you, I presume, keep your own secret."

"That is all?" inquired Sir Richard, faintly, after a minute's silence.

"All for the _present_," was the reply; "you will see more clearly,
by-and-by, that you are my property, and you will act accordingly."

The two Jewish-looking gentlemen, whom Richard had passed in a
conference in their carriage which stood now at the steps of the house,
were the sheriff's officers destined to take charge of the fallen
gentleman, and convey him, by Levi's direction, to a "sponging house,"
which, I believe, belonged jointly to him and his partner, Mr. Goldshed.

It was on the principle, perhaps, on which hunters tame wild beasts, by
a sojourn at the bottom of a pit-fall, that Mr. Longcluse doomed the
young baronet to some ten hours' solitary contemplation of his hopeless
immeshment in that castle of Giant Despair, before taking him out and
setting him again before him, for the purpose of instructing him in the
conditions and duties of the direful life on which he was about to
enter.

Mr. Longcluse left the baronet suddenly, and returned to Levi's office
no more.

Sir Richard's _rôle_ was cast. He was to figure, at least first, as a
captive in the drama for which fate had selected him. He had no wish to
retard the progress of the piece. Nothing more odious than his present
situation was likely to come.

"You have something to say to me?" said the baronet, making tender, as
it were, of himself. The offer was, obligingly, accepted, and the
sheriffs, by his lieutenants, made prisoner of Sir Richard Arden, who
strode down the stairs between them, and entered the seedy coach, and
sitting as far back as he could, drove rapidly toward the City.

Stunned and confused, there was but one image vividly present to his
recollection, and that was the baleful face of Walter Longcluse.

CHAPTER LXXI.

NIGHT.

At about eight o'clock that evening, a hurried note reached Alice Arden,
at Mortlake. It was from her brother, and said,--

    "MY DARLING ALICE,

    "I can't get away from town to-night, I am overwhelmed with
    business; but to-morrow, before dinner, I hope to see you, and stay
    at Mortlake till next morning.--Your affectionate brother,

    "DICK."

The house was quiet earlier than in former times, when Sir Reginald, of
rakish memory, was never in his bed till past three o'clock in the
morning. Mortlake was an early house now, and all was still by a quarter
past eleven. The last candle burning was usually that in Mrs. Tansey's
room. She had not yet gone to bed, and was still in "the housekeeper's
room," when a tapping came at the window. It reminded her of Mr.
Longcluse's visit on the night of the funeral.

She was now the only person up in the house, except Alice, who was at
the far side of the building, where, in the next room, her maid was in
bed asleep. Alice, who sat at her dressing-table, reading, with her long
rich hair dishevelled over her shoulders, was, of course, quite out of
hearing.

Martha went to the window with a little frown of uncertainty. Opening a
bit of the shutter, she saw Sir Richard's face close to her. Was ever
old housekeeper so pestered by nightly tappings at her window-pane?

"La! who'd a thought o' seeing you, Master Richard! why, you told Miss
Alice you'd not be here till to-morrow!" she says pettishly, holding the
candle high above her head.

He makes a sign of caution to her, and placing his lips near the pane,
says,--

"Open the window the least bit in life."

With a dark stare in his face, she obeys. An odd approach, surely, for a
master to make to his own house!

"No one up in the house but you?" he whispers, as soon as the window is
open.

"Not one!"

"Don't say a word, only listen: come, softly, round to the hall-door,
and let me in; and light those candles there, and bring them with you to
the hall. Don't let a creature know I have been here, and make no noise
for your life!"

The old woman nodded with the same little frown; and he, pointing toward
the hall door, walks away silently in that direction.

"What makes you look so white and dowley?" mutters the old woman, as she
secures the window, and bars the shutters again.

"Good creature!" whispers Sir Richard, as he enters the hall, and places
his hand kindly on her shoulder, and with a very dark look; "you have
always been true to me, Martha, and I depend on your good sense; not a
word of my having been here to any one--not to Miss Alice! I have to
search for papers. I shall be here but an hour or so. Don't lock or bar
the door, mind, and get to your bed! Don't come up this way
again--good-night!"

"Won't you have some supper?"

"No, thanks."

"A glass of sherry and a bit o' something?"

"Nothing."

And he places his hand on her shoulder gently, and looks toward the
corridor that led to her room; then taking up one of the candles she had
left alight on the table in the hall, he says,--

"I'll give you a light," and he repeats, with a wondrous heavy sigh,
"Good-night, dear old Martha."

"God bless ye, Master Dick. Ye must chirp up a bit, mind," she says very
kindly, with an earnest look in her face. "I'm getting to rest--ye
needn't fear me walkin' about to trouble ye. But ye must be careful to
shut the hall-door close. I agree, as it is a thing to be done; but ye
must also knock at my bed-room window when ye've gane out, for I must
get up, and lock the door, and make a' safe; and don't ye forget, Master
Richard, what I tell ye."

He held the candle at the end of the corridor, down which the wiry old
woman went quickly; and when he returned to the hall, and set the candle
down again, he felt faint. In his ears are ever the terrible words:
"Mind, _I_ take command of the house, _I_ dispose of and appoint the
servants; I don't appear, you do all ostensibly--but from garret to
cellar, I'm _master_. I'll look it over, and tell you what is to be
done."

Sir Richard roused himself, and having listened at the staircase, he
very softly opened the hall-door. The spire of the old church showed
hoar in the moonlight. At the left, from under a deep shadow of elms,
comes silently a tall figure, and softly ascends the hall-door steps.
The door is closed gently.

Alice sitting at her dressing-table, half an hour later, thought she
heard steps--lowered her book, and listened. But no sound followed.
Again the same light foot-falls disturbed her--and again, she was
growing nervous. Once more she heard them, very stealthily, and now on
the same floor on which her room was. She stands up breathless. There is
no noise now. She was thinking of waking her maid, but she remembered
that she and Louisa Diaper had in a like alarm, discovered old Martha,
only two or three nights before, poking about the china-closet, dusting
and counting, at one o'clock in the morning, and had then exacted a
promise that she would visit that repository no more, except at
seasonable hours. But old Martha was so pig-headed, and would take it
for granted that she was fast asleep, and would rather fidget through
the house and poke up everything at that hour than at any other.

Quite persuaded of this, Alice takes her candle, determined to scold
that troublesome old thing, against whom she is fired with the
irritation that attends on a causeless fright. She walks along the
gallery quickly, in slippers, flowing dressing-gown and hair, with her
candle in her hand, to the head of the stairs, through the great window
of which the moonlight streams brightly. Through the keyhole of the door
at the opposite side, a ray of candlelight is visible, and from this
room opens the china-closet, which is no doubt the point of attraction
for the troublesome visitant. Holding the candle high in her left hand,
Alice opens the door.

What she sees is this--a pair of candles burning on a small table, on
which, with a pencil, Mr. Longcluse is drawing, it seems, with care, a
diagram; at the same moment he raises his eyes, and Richard Arden, who
is standing with one hand placed on the table over which he is leaning a
little, looks quickly round, and rising walks straight to the door,
interposing between her and Longcluse.

"Oh, Alice? You didn't expect me: I'm very busy, looking for--looking
over papers. Don't mind."

He had placed his hands gently on her shoulders, and she receded as he
advanced.

"Oh! it don't matter. I thought--I thought--I did not know."

She was smiling her best. She was horrified. He looked like a ghost.
Alice was gazing piteously in his face, and with a little laugh, she
began to cry convulsively.

"What is the matter with the little fool! There, there--don't,
don't--nonsense!"

With an effort she recovered herself.

"Only a little startled, Dick; I did not think you were
there--good-night."

And she hastened back to her chamber, and locked the door; and running
into her maid's room, sat down on the side of her bed, and wept
hysterically. To the imploring inquiries of her maid, she repeated only
the words, "I am frightened," and left her in a startled perplexity.

She knew that Longcluse had seen her, and he, that she had seen him.
Their eyes had met. He saw with a bleak rage the contracting look of
horror, so nearly hatred, that she fixed on him for a breathless moment.
There was a tremor of fury at his heart, as if it could have sprung at
her, from his breast, at her throat, and murdered her; and--she looked
so beautiful! He gazed with an idolatrous admiration. Tears were welling
to his eyes, and yet he would have laughed to see her weltering on the
floor. A madman for some tremendous seconds!

CHAPTER LXXII.

MEASURES.

About twelve o'clock next day Richard Arden showed himself at Mortlake.
It was a beautiful autumnal day, and the mellow sun fell upon a foliage
that was fading into russet and yellow. Alice was looking out from the
open window, on the noble old timber whose wide-spread boughs and
thinning leaves caught the sunbeams pleasantly. She had heard her
brother and his companion go down the stairs, and saw them, from the
window, walk quickly down the avenue, till the trees hid them from view.
She thought that some of the servants were up, and that the door was
secured on their departure; and the effect of the shock she had received
gradually subsiding, she looked to her next interview with her brother
for an explanation of the occurrence which had so startled her.

That interview was approaching; the cab drove up to the steps, and her
brother got out. Anxiously she looked, but no one followed him, and the
driver shut the cab-door. Sir Richard kissed his hand to her, as she
stood in the window.

From the hall the house opens to the right and left, in two suites of
rooms. The room in which Alice stood was called the sage-room, from its
being hung in sage-green leather, stamped in gold. It is a small room to
the left, and would answer very prettily for a card party or a
_tête-à-tête_. Alice had her work, her books, and her music there; she
liked it because the room was small and cheery.

The door opened, and her brother comes in.

"Good Dick, to come so early! welcome, darling," she said, putting her
arms about his neck, as he stooped and kissed her, smiling.

He looked very ill, and his smile was painful.

"That was an odd little visit I paid last night," said he, with his dark
eyes fixed on her, inquiringly she thought--"very late--quite
unexpected. You are quite well to-day?--you look flourishing."

"I wish I could say as much for you, Dick; I'm afraid you are tiring
yourself to death."

"I had some one with me last night," said Sir Richard, with his eye
still upon her; "I--I don't know whether you perceived that."

Alice looked away, and then said carelessly, but very gravely--

"I did--I saw Mr. Longcluse. I could not believe my eyes, Dick. You must
promise me one thing."

"What is that?"

"That he sha'n't come into this house any more--while I am here, I
mean."

"That is easily promised," said he.

"And what did he come about, Dick?"

"Oh! he came--he came--I thought I told you; he came about papers. I did
not tell you; but he has, after all, turned out very friendly. He is
going to do me a very important service."

She looked very much surprised.

The young man glanced through the window, to which he walked; he seemed
embarrassed, and then turning to her, he said peevishly--

"You seem to think, Alice, that one can never make a mistake, or change
an opinion."

"But I did not say so; only, Dick, I must tell you that I have such a
horror of that man--a _terror_ of him--as nothing can ever get over."

"I'm to blame for that."

"No, I can't say you are. I don't mind stories so much as----"

"As what?"

"As looks."

"Looks! Why, you used to think him a gentlemanly-looking fellow, and so
he is."

"Looks _and language_," said Alice.

"I thought he was a very civil fellow."

"I sha'n't dispute anything. I suppose you have found him a good friend
after all, as you say."

"As good a friend as most men," said Sir Richard, growing pale; "they
all act from interest: where interests are the same, men are friends.
But he has saved me from a great deal, and he may do more; and I believe
I was too hasty about those stories, and I think you were right when you
refused to believe them without proof."

"I daresay--I don't know--I believe my senses--and all I say is this, if
Mr. Longcluse is to come here any more, I must go. He is no gentleman, I
think--that is, I can't describe how I dislike him--how I hate him! I'm
afraid of him! Dick, you look ill and unhappy: what's the matter?"

"I'm well enough--I'm better; we shall be better--all better by-and-by.
I wish the next five weeks were over! We must leave this, we must go to
Arden Court; I will send some of the servants there first. I am going to
tell them now, they must get the house ready. You shall keep your maid
here with you; and when all is ready in Yorkshire, we shall be
off--Alice, Alice, don't mind me--I'm miserable--mad!" he says suddenly,
and covers his face with his hands, and, for the first time for years,
he is crying bitter tears.

Alice was by his side, alarmed, curious, grieved; and with all these
emotions mingling in her dark eyes and beautiful features, as she drew
his hand gently away, with a rush of affectionate entreaties and
inquiries.

"It is all very fine, Alice," he exclaims, with a sudden bitterness;
"but I don't believe, to save me from destruction, you would sacrifice
one of your least caprices, or reconcile one of your narrowest
prejudices."

"What can you mean, dear Richard? only tell me how I can be of any use.
You can't mean, of course----"

She stops with a startled look at him. "You know, dear Dick, that was
always out of the question: and surely you have heard that Lord
Wynderbroke is to be married to Grace Maubray? It is all settled."

Quite another thought had been in Richard's mind, but he was glad to
accept Alice's conjecture.

"Yes, so it is--so, at least, it is said to be--but I am so worried and
distracted, I half forget things. Girls are such jolly fools; they throw
good men away, and lose themselves. What is to become of you, Alice, if
things go wrong with me! I think the old times were best, when the old
people settled who was to marry whom, and there was no disputing their
decision, and marriages were just as happy, and courtships a great deal
simpler; and I am very sure there were fewer secret repinings, and
broken hearts, and--threadbare old maids. Don't _you_ be a fool, Alice;
mind what I say."

He is leaving the room, but pauses at the door, and returns and places
his hand on her arm, looking in her face, and says--

"Yes, mind what I say, for God's sake, and we may all be a great deal
happier."

He kisses her, and is gone. Her eyes follow him, as she thinks with a
sigh--

"How strange Dick is growing! I'm afraid he has been playing again, and
losing. It must have been something very urgent that induced him to make
it up again with that low malignant man; and this break-up, and journey
to Arden Court! I think I should prefer being there. There is something
ominous about this place, picturesque as it is, and much as I like it.
But the journey to Yorkshire is only another of the imaginary excursions
Dick has been proposing every fortnight; and next year, and the year
after, will find us, I suppose, just where we are."

But this conjecture, for once, was mistaken. It was, this time, a
veritable break-up and migration; for Martha Tansey came in, with the
importance of a person who has a matter of moment to talk over.

"Here's something sudden, Miss Alice; I suppose you've heard. Off to
Arden Court in the mornin'. Crozier and me; the footman discharged, and
you to follow with Master Richard in a week."

"Oh, then, it _is_ settled. Well, Martha, I am not sorry, and I daresay
you and Crozier won't be sorry to see old Yorkshire faces again, and the
Court, and the rookery, and the orchard."

"I don't mind; glad enough to see a'ad faces, but I'm a bit o'er a'ad
myself for such sudden flittins, and Manx and Darwent, and the rest, is
to go by night train to-morrow, and not a housemaid left in Mortlake.
But Master Richard says a's provided, and 'twill be but a few days after
a's done; and ye'll be down, then, at Arden by the middle o' next week,
and I'm no sa sure the change mayn't serve ye; and as your uncle, Master
David, and Lady May Penrose, and Miss Maubray--a strackle-brained lass
she is, I doubt--and to think o' that a'ad fule, Lord Wynderbroke,
takin' sich a young, bonny hizzy to wife! La bless ye, she'll play the
hangment wi' that a'ad gowk of a lord, and all his goold guineas won't
do. His kist o' money won't hod na time, I warrant ye, when once that
lassie gets her pretty fingers under the lid. There'll be gaains on in
that house, I warrant, not but he's a gude man, and a fine gentleman as
need be," she added, remembering her own strenuous counsel in his
favour, when he was supposed to be paying his court to Alice; "and if he
was mated wi' a gude lassie, wi' gude blude in her veins, would
doubtless keep as honourable a house, and hod his head as high as any
lord o' them a'. But as I was saying, Miss Alice, now that Master David,
and Lady May, and Miss Maubray, has left Lunnon, there's no one here to
pay ye a visit, and ye'd be fairly buried alive here in Mortlake, and
ye'll be better, and sa will we a', down at Arden, for a bit; and
there's gentle folk down there as gude as ever rode in Lunnon streets,
mayhap, and better; and mony a squire, that ony leddy in the land might
be proud to marry, and not one but would be glad to match wi' an Arden."

"That is a happy thought," said Alice, laughing.

"And so it is, and no laughing matter," said Martha, a little offended,
as she stalked out of the room, and closed the door, grandly, after her.

"And God bless you, dear old Martha," said the young lady, looking
towards the door through which she had just passed; "the truest and
kindest soul on earth."

Sir Richard did not come back. She saw him no more that evening.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

AT THE BAR OF THE "GUY OF WARWICK."

Next evening there came, not Richard, but a note saying that he would
see Alice the moment he could get away from town. As the old servant
departed northward, her solitude for the first time began to grow
irksome, and as the night approached, worse even than gloomy.

Her extemporised household made her laugh. It was not even a skeleton
establishment. The kitchen department had dwindled to a single person,
who ordered her luncheon and dinner, only two or three _plats_, daily,
from the "Guy of Warwick." The housemaid's department was undertaken by
a single servant, a short, strong woman of some sixty years of age.

This person puzzled Alice a good deal. She came to her, like the others,
with a note from her brother, stating her name, and that he had engaged
her for the few days they meant to remain roughing it at Mortlake, and
that he had received a very good account of her.

This woman has not a bad countenance. There is, indeed, no tenderness in
it; but there is a sort of hard good-humour. There are quickness and
resolution. She talks fluently of herself and her qualifications, and
now and then makes a short curtsey. But she takes no notice of any one
of Alice's questions.

A silence sometimes follows, during which Alice repeats her
interrogatory perhaps twice, with growing indignation, and then the new
comer breaks into a totally independent talk, and leaves the young lady
wondering at her disciplined impertinence. It was not till her second
visit that she enlightened her.

"I did not send for you. You can go!" said Alice.

"I don't like a house that has children in it, they gives a deal o'
trouble," said the woman.

"But I say you may go; you must go, please."

The woman looked round the room.

"When I was with Mrs. Montgomery, she had five, three girls and two
boys; la! there never was five such----"

"Go, this moment, please, I insist on your going; do you hear me, pray?"

But so far from answering, or obeying, this cool intruder continues her
harangue before Miss Arden gets half way to the end of her little
speech.

"That woman was the greatest fool alive--nothing but spoiling and
petting--I could not stand it no longer, so I took Master Tommy by the
lug, and pulled him out of the kitchen, the limb, along the passage to
the stairs, every inch, and I gave him a slap in the face, the fat young
rascal; you could hear all over the house! and didn't he rise the roof!
So missus and me, we quarrelled upon it."

"If you don't leave the room, _I_ must; and I shall tell my brother, Sir
Richard, how you have behaved yourself; and you may rely upon it----"

But here again she is overpowered by the strong voice of her visitor.

"It was in my next place, at Mr. Crump's, I took cold in my head, very
bad, Miss, indeed, looking out of window to see two fellows fighting, in
the lane--in both ears--and so I lost my hearing, and I've been deaf as
a post ever since!"

Alice could not resist a laugh at her own indignant eloquence quite
thrown away; and she hastily wrote with a pencil on a slip of paper:--

"Please don't come to me except when I send for you."

"La! Ma'am, I forgot!" exclaims the woman, when she had examined it; "my
orders was not to read any of _your_ writing."

"Not to read any of my writing!" said Alice, amazed; "then, how am I to
tell you what I wish about anything?" she inquires, for the moment
forgetting that not one word of her question was heard. The woman makes
a curtsey and retires. "What can Richard have meant by giving her such a
direction? I'll ask him when he comes."

It was likely enough that the woman had misunderstood him, still she
began to wish the little interval destined to be passed at Mortlake
before her journey to Yorkshire, ended.

She told her maid, Louisa Diaper, to go down to the kitchen and find out
all she could as to what people were in the house, and what duties they
had undertaken, and when her brother was likely to arrive.

Louisa Diaper, slim, elegant, and demure, descended among these
barbarous animals. She found in the kitchen, unexpectedly, a male
stranger, a small, slight man, with great black eyes, a big sullen
mouth, a sallow complexion, and a profusion of black ringlets. The deaf
woman was conning over some writing of his on a torn-off blank leaf of a
letter, and he was twiddling about the pencil, with which he had just
traced it, in his fingers, and, in a singing drawl, holding forth to the
other woman, who, with a long and high canvas apron on, and the handle
of an empty saucepan in her right hand, stood gaping at him, with her
arms hanging by her sides.

On the appearance of Miss Diaper, Mr. Levi, for he it was, directs his
solemn conversation to that young lady.

"I was just telling them about the robberies in the City and Wesht Hend.
La! there'sh bin nothin' like it for twenty year. They don't tell them
in the papersh, blesh ye! The 'ome Shecretary takesh precious good care
o' that; they don't want to frighten every livin' shoul out of London.
But there'll be talk of it in Parliament, I promish you. I know three
opposition membersh myshelf that will move the 'oushe upon it next
session."

Mr. Levi wagged his head darkly as he made this political revelation.

"Thish day twel'month the number o' burglariesh in London and the West
Hend, including Hizzlington, was no more than fifteen and a half a
night; and two robberiesh attended with wiolensh. What wazh it lasht
night? I have it in confidensh, from the polishe offish thish morning."

He pulled a pocket-book, rather greasy, from his breast, and from this
depositary, it is to be presumed, of statistical secrets, he read the
following official memorandum:--

"Number of 'oushes burglarioushly hentered lasht night, including
private banksh, charitable hinshtitutions, shops, lodging-'oushes,
female hacadamies, and private dwellings, and robbed with more or less
wiolench, one thoushand sheven hundred and shixty-sheven. We regret to
hadd," he continued, the official return stealing, as it proceeded,
gradually into the style of "The Pictorial Calendar of British Crime," a
half-penny paper which he took in--"this hinundation of crime seems
flowing, or rayther rushing northward, and hazh already enweloped
Hizhlington, where a bald-headed clock and watch maker, named Halexander
Goggles, wazh murdered with his sheven shmall children, with
unigshampled ba-arba-arity."

Mr. Levi eyed the women horribly all round as he ended the sentence, and
he added,--

"Hizhlington'sh only down there. It ain't five minutesh walk; only a
pleasant shtep; just enough to give a fellow azh has polished off a
family there a happetite for another up here. Azh I 'ope to be shaved, I
shleep every night with a pair of horshe pishtols, a blunderbush, and a
shabre by my bed; and Shir Richard wantsh every door in the 'oushe fasht
locked, and the keysh with him, before dark, thish evening, except only
such doors as you want open; and he gave me a note to Miss Harden." And
he placed the note in Miss Diaper's hand. "He wantsh the 'oushe a bit
more schecure," he added, following her towards the hall. "He wishes to
make you and she quite shafe, and out of harm's way, if anything should
occur. It will be only a few days, you know, till you're both away."

The effect of this little alarm, accompanied by Sir Richard's note, was
that Mr. Levi carried out a temporary arrangement, which assigned the
suite of apartments in which Alice's room was as those to which she
would restrict herself during the few days she was to remain there, the
rest of the house, except the kitchen and a servant's room or two
down-stairs, being locked up.

By the time Mr. Levi had got the keys together, and all safe in
Mortlake, the sun had set, and in the red twilight that followed he set
off in his cab towards town. At the "Guy of Warwick"--from the bar of
which already was flaring a good broad gas-light--he stopped and got
out. There was a full view of the bar from where he stood; and,
pretending to rummage his pockets for something, he was looking in to
see whether "the coast was clear."

"She's just your sort--not too bad and not too good--not too nashty, and
not too nishe; a good-humoured lash, rough and ready, and knowsh a thing
or two."

"Ye're there, are ye?" inquired Mr. Levi, playfully, as he crossed the
door-stone, and placed his fists on the bar grinning.

"What will you take, Sir, please?" inquired the young woman, at one side
of whom was the usual row of taps and pump-handles.

"Now, Miss Phœbe, give me a brandy and shoda, pleashe. When I talked to
you in thish 'ere place 'tother night, you wished to engage for a lady's
maid. What would you shay to me, if I was to get you a firsht-chop
tip-top pla-ashe of the kind? Well, don't you shay a word--that brandy
ain't fair measure--and I'll tell you. It'sh a la-ady of ra-ank! where
wagesh ish no-o object; and two years' savings, and a good match with a
well-to-do 'andsome young fellow, will set you hup in a better place
than this 'ere."

"It comes very timely, Sir, for I'm to leave to-morrow, and I was
thinking of going home to my uncle in a day or two, in Chester."

"Well it's all settled. Come you down to my offishe, you know where it
is, to-morrow, at three, and I'll 'av all partickulars for you, and a
note to the lady from her brother, the baronet; and if you be a good
girl, and do as you're bid, you'll make a little fortune of it."

She curtsied, with her eyes very round, as he, with a wag of his head
drank down what remained of his brandy and soda, and wiping his mouth
with his glove, he said, "Three o'clock sha-arp, mind; good-bye, Phœbe,
lass, and don't you forget all I said."

He stood ungallantly with his back towards her on the threshold lighting
a cigar, and so soon as he had it in his own phrase, "working at high
blast," he got into his cab, and jingled towards his office, with all
his keys about him.

While Miss Arden remained all unconscious, and even a little amused at
the strange shifts to which her brief stay and extemporised household at
Mortlake exposed her, a wily and determined strategist was drawing his
toils around her.

The process of isolation was nearly completed, without having once
excited her suspicions; and, with the same perfidious skill, the house
itself was virtually undergoing those modifications which best suited
his designs.

Sir Richard appeared at his club as usual. He was compelled to do so.
The all-seeing eye of his pale tyrant pursued him everywhere; he lived
under terror. A dreadful agony all this time convulsed the man, within
whose heart Longcluse suspected nothing but the serenity of death.

"What easier than to tell the story to the police. Meditated duresse.
Compulsion. Infernal villain! And then: what then? A pistol to his head,
a flash, and--darkness!"

CHAPTER LXXIV.

A LETTER.

Mr. Longcluse knocked at Sir Richard's house in May Fair, and sent
up-stairs for the baronet. It was about the same hour at which Mr. Levi
was drinking his thirsty potation of brandy and soda at the "Guy of
Warwick." The streets were darker than that comparatively open place,
and the gas lamp threw its red outline of the sashes upon the dark
ceiling, as Mr. Longcluse stood in the drawing-room between the windows,
in his great-coat, with his hat on, looking in the dark like an image
made of fog.

Sir Richard Arden entered the room.

"You were not at Mortlake to-day," said he.

"No."

"There's a cab at the door that will take you there; your absence for a
whole day would excite surmise. Don't stay more than five minutes, and
don't mention Louisa Diaper's name, and account for the locking up of
all the house, but one suite of rooms, I directed, and come to my house
in Bolton Street, direct from Mortlake. That's all."

Without another word, Mr. Longcluse took his departure.

In this cavalier way, and in a cold tone that conveyed all the menace
and insult involved in his ruined position, had this conceited young man
been ordered about by his betrayer, on his cruel behests, ever since he
had come under his dreadful rod. The iron trap that held him fast,
locked him in a prison from which, except through the door of death,
there seemed no escape.

Outraged pride, the terrors of suspense, the shame and remorse of his
own enormous perfidy against his only sister, peopled it with spectres.

As he drove out to Mortlake, pale, frowning, with folded arms, his
handsome face thinned and drawn by the cords of pain, he made up his
mind. He knocked furiously at Mortlake Hall door. The woman in the
canvas apron let him in. The strange face startled him; he had been
thinking so intently of one thing. Going up, through the darkened house,
with but one candle, and tapping at the door, on the floor above the
drawing-room, within which Alice was sitting, with Louisa Diaper for
company, and looking at her unsuspicious smile, he felt what a heinous
conspirator he was.

He made an excuse for sending the maid to the next room after they had
spoken a few words, and then he said,--

"Suppose, Alice, we were to change our plan, would you like to come
abroad? Out of this you must come immediately." He was speaking low. "I
am in great danger; I must go abroad. For your life, don't seem to
suspect anything. Do exactly as I tell you, or else I am utterly ruined,
and you, Alice, on your account, very miserable. Don't ask a question,
or look a look, that may make Louisa Diaper suspect that you have any
doubt as to your going to Arden, or any suspicion of any danger. She is
quite true, but not wise, and your left hand must not know what your
right hand is doing. Don't be frightened, only be steady and calm. Get
together any jewels and money you have, and as little else as you can
possibly manage with. Do this yourself; Louisa Diaper must know nothing
of it. I will mature our plans, and to-morrow or next day I shall see
you again; I can stay but a moment now, and have but time to bid you
good-night."

Then he kissed her. How horribly agitated he looked! How cold was the
pressure of his hand!

"Hush!" he whispered, and his dark eyes were fixed on the door through
which he expected the return of the maid. And as he heard her step, "Not
a word, remember!" he said; then bidding her good-night aloud, he
quitted the room almost as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving her, for
the first time, in the horrors of a growing panic.

Sir Richard leaned back in the cab as he drove into town. He had as yet
no plan formed. It was a more complicated exploit than he was at the
moment equal to. In Mortlake were two fellows, by way of protectors,
placed there for security of the house and people.

These men held possession of the keys of the house, and sat and regaled
themselves with their hot punch, or cold brandy and water, and pipes;
always one awake, and with ears erect, they kept watch and ward in the
room to the right of the hall-door, in which Sir Richard and Uncle David
had conversed with the sad Mr. Plumes, on the evening after the old
baronet's death. To effect Alice's escape, and reserve for himself a
chance of accomplishing his own, was a problem demanding skill, cunning,
and audacity.

While he revolved these things an alarm had been sounded in another
quarter, which unexpectedly opened a chance of extrication, sudden and
startling.

Mr. Longcluse was destined to a surprise to-night. Mr. Longcluse, at his
own house, was awaiting the return of Sir Richard. Overlooked in his
usually accurate though rapid selection, a particularly shabby and
vulgar-looking letter had been thrown aside among circulars, pamphlets,
and begging letters, to await his leisure. It was a letter from Paris,
and vulgar and unbusiness-like as it looked, there was yet, in its
peculiar scrivenery that which, a little more attentively scanned,
thrilled him with a terrible misgiving. The post-mark showed it had been
delivered four days before. When he saw from whom it came, and had
gathered something of its meaning from a few phrases, his dark eyes
gleamed and his face grew stern. Was this wretch's hoof to strike to
pieces the plans he had so nearly matured? The letter was as follows:--

    "SIR,

    "Mr Longcluse, I have been unfortunate With your money which you
    have Gave me to remove from England, and Keep me in New York. My
    boxes, and other things, and Ballens of the money in Gold, except
    about a Hundred pounds, which has kep me from want ever sense, went
    Down in the Mary Jane, of London, and my cousin went down in her
    also, which I might as well av Went down myself in her, only for me
    Stopping in Paris, where I made a trifle of Money, intending to go
    Out in August. Now, Sir, don't you Seppose I am not in as good
    Possition as I was when I Harranged with sum difculty With you. The
    boot with The blood Mark on the Soul is not Lost nor Distroyed, but
    it is Safe in my Custody; so as Likewise in safe Keeping is The
    traising, in paper, of the foot Mark in blood on the Floar of the
    Smoaking Room in question, with the signatures of the witnesses
    attached; and, Moreover, my Staitment made in the Form of a
    Information, at the Time, and signed In witness of My signature by
    two Unekseptinible witnesses. And all Is ready to Produise whenevor
    his worshop shall Apoynt. i have wrote To mister david Arden on this
    Supget. i wrote to him just a week ago, he seaming To take a Intrast
    in this Heer case; and, moreover, the two ieyes that sawd a certain
    Person about the said smoaking Room, and in the saime, is Boath wide
    open at This presen Time. mister Longcluse i do not Want to have
    your Life, but gustice must Taike its coarse unless it is settled of
    hand Slik. i will harrange the Same as last time, And i must have
    two hundred And fifty pounds More on this Settlement than i Had last
    time, for Dellay and loss of Time in this town. I will sign any law
    paper in reason you may ask of me. My hadress is under cover to
    Monseer Letexier, air-dresser, and incloses his card, which you Will
    please send an Anser by return Of post, or else i Must sepose you
    chose The afare shall take Its coarse; and i am as ever,

    "Your obeediant servant to command,
    "PAUL DAVIES."

Never did paper look so dazzlingly white, or letters so intensely black,
before Mr. Longcluse's eyes, as those of this ominous letter. He
crumpled it up, and thrust it in his trousers pocket, and gave to the
position a few seconds of intense thought.

His first thought was, what a fool he was for not having driven Davies
to the wall, and settled the matter with the high hand of the law at
once. His next, what could bring him to Paris? He was there for
something. To see possibly the family of Lebas, and collect and dovetail
pieces of evidence, after his detective practice, a process which would
be sure to conduct him to the Baron Vanboeren! Was this story of the
boot and the tracing of the bloodstained foot-print true? Had this
scoundrel reserved the strongest part of his case for this new
extortion? Was his trouble to be never ending? If this accursed ferret
were once to get into his warren, what power could unearth him, till the
mischief was done?

His eye caught again the words, on which, in the expressive phrase which
Mr. Davies would have used, his "sight spred" as he held the letter
before his eyes--"Mister Loncluse, i do not want to have your life." He
ground his teeth, shook his fist in the air, and stamped on the floor
with fury, at the thought that a brutal detective, not able to spell two
words, and trained for such game as London thieves and burglars, should
dare to hold such language to a man of thought and skill, altogether so
masterly as he! That he should be outwitted by that clumsy scoundrel!

Well, it was now to begin all over again. It should all go right this
time. He thought again for a moment, and then sat down and wrote,
commencing with the date and address--

    "PAUL DAVIES,

    "I have just received your note, which states that you have
    succeeded in obtaining some additional information, which you think
    may lead to the conviction of the murderer of M. Lebas, in the
    Saloon Tavern. I shall be most happy to pay handsomely any expense
    of any kind you may be put to in that matter. It is, indeed, no more
    than I had already undertaken. I am glad to learn that you have also
    written on the subject to Mr. David Arden, who feels entirely with
    me. I shall take an early opportunity of seeing him. Persist in your
    laudable exertions, and I shall not shrink from rewarding you
    handsomely.

    "Yours,
    "WALTER LONGCLUSE."

He addressed the letter carefully, and went himself and put it in the
post-office.

By this time Sir Richard Arden was awaiting him at home in his
drawing-room, and as he walked homeward, under the lamps, in inward
pain, one might have moralised with Peter Pindar--

    "These fleas have other fleas to bite 'em
     And so on _ad infinitum_."

The secret tyrant had in his turn found a secret tyrant, not less cruel
perhaps, but more ignoble.

"You made your visit?" asked Mr. Longcluse.

"Yes."

"Anything to report?"

"Absolutely nothing."

A silence followed.

"Where is Mr. Arden, your uncle?"

"In Scotland."

"How soon does he return?"

"He will not be in town till spring, I believe; he is going abroad, but
he passes through Southampton on his way to the Continent, on Friday
next."

"And makes some little stay there?"

"I think he stays one night."

"Then I'll go down and see him, and you shall come with me."

Sir Richard stared.

"Yes, and you had better not put your foot in it; and clear your head of
all notion of running away," he said, fixing his fiery eyes on Sir
Richard, with a sudden ferocity that made him fancy that his secret
thoughts had revealed themselves under that piercing gaze. "It is not
easy to levant now-a-days, unless one has swifter wings than the wires
can carry news with; and if you are false, what more do I need than to
blast you? and with your name in the _Hue-and-Cry_, and a thousand
pounds reward for the apprehension of Sir Richard Arden, Baronet, for
forgery, I don't see much more that infamy can do for you."

A dark flush crossed Arden's face as he rose.

"Not a word now," cried Longcluse harshly, extending his hand quickly
towards him; "I may do that which can't be undone."

CHAPTER LXXV.

BLIGHT AND CHANGE.

Danger to herself, Alice suspected none. But she was full of dreadful
conjectures about her brother. There was, she was persuaded, no good any
longer in remonstrance or entreaty. She could not upbraid him; but she
was sure that the terrible fascination of the gaming-table had caused
the sudden ruin he vaguely confessed.

"Oh," she often repeated, "that Uncle David were in town, or that I knew
where to find him!"

"But no doubt," she thought, "Richard will hide nothing from him, and
perhaps my hinting his disclosures, even to him, would aggravate poor
Richard's difficulties and misery."

It was not until the next evening that, about the same hour, she again
saw her brother. His good resolutions in the interval had waxed faint.
They were not reversed, but only in the spirit of indecision, and
something of the apathy of despair, postponed to a more convenient
season.

To her he seemed more tranquil. He said vaguely that the reasons for
flight were less urgent and that she had better continue her
preparations, as before, for her journey to Yorkshire.

Even under these circumstances the journey to Yorkshire was pleasant.
There was comfort in the certainty that he would there be beyond the
reach of that fatal temptation which had too plainly all but ruined him.
From the harrassing distractions, also, which in London had of late
beset him, almost without intermission, he might find in the seclusion
of Arden a temporary calm. There, with Uncle David's help, there would
be time, at least, to ascertain the extent of his losses, and what the
old family of Arden might still count upon as their own, and a plan of
life might be arranged for the future.

Full of these more cheery thoughts, Alice took leave of her brother.

"I am going," he said, looking at his watch, "direct to Brighton; I have
just time to get to the station nicely; business, of course--a meeting
to-night with Bexley, who is staying there, and in the morning a long
and, I fear, angry discussion with Charrington, who is also at
Brighton."

He kissed his sister, sighed deeply, and looking in her eyes for a
little, fixedly, he said--

"Alice, darling, you must try to think what sacrifice you can make to
save your wretched brother."

Their eyes met as she looked up, her hands about his neck, his on her
shoulders; he drew his sister to him quickly, and with another kiss,
turned, ran down stairs, got into his cab, and drove down the avenue.
She stood looking after him with a heavy heart. How happy they two might
have been, if it had not been for the one incorrigible insanity!

About an hour later, as the sun was near its setting, she put on her hat
and short grey cloak, and stepped out into its level beams, and looked
round smiling. The golden glow and transparent shadows made that
beautiful face look more than ever lovely. All around the air was
ringing with the farewell songs of the small birds, and, with a heart
almost rejoicing in sympathy with that beautiful hour, she walked
lightly to the old garden, which in that luminous air, looked, she
thought, so sad and pretty.

The well-worn aphorism of the Frenchman, "History repeats itself," was
about to assert itself. Sometimes it comes in literal sobriety,
sometimes in derisive travesti, sometimes in tragic aggravation.

She is in the garden now. The associations of place recall her strange
interview with Mr. Longcluse but a few months before. Since then a
blight has fallen on the scenery, and what a change upon the persons!
The fruit-leaves are yellow now, and drifts of them lie upon the walks.
Mantling ivy, as before, canopies the door, interlaced with climbing
roses; but they have long shed their honours. This thick mass of dark
green foliage and thorny tendrils forms a deep arched porch, in the
shadow of which, suddenly, as on her return she reached it, she sees Mr.
Longcluse standing within a step or two of her.

He raises his hand, it might be in entreaty, it might be in menace; she
could not, in the few alarmed moments in which she gazed at his dark
eyes and pale equivocal face, determine anything.

"Miss Arden, you may hate me; you can't despise me. You _must_ hear me,
because you are in my power. I relent, mind you, thus far, that I give
you one chance more of reconciliation; don't, for God's sake, throw it
from you!" (he was extending his open hand to receive hers). "Why should
you prefer an unequal war with me? I tell you frankly you are in my
power--don't misunderstand me--in _my power_ to this degree, that you
shall _voluntarily_, as the more tolerable of two alternatives, submit
with abject acquiescence to every one of my conditions. Here is my hand;
think of the degradation I submit to in asking you to take it. You gave
me no chance when I asked forgiveness. I tender you a full forgiveness;
here is my hand, beware how you despise it."

Fearful as he appeared in her sight, her fear gave way before her
kindling spirit. She had stood before him pale as death--anger now fired
her eye and cheek.

"How dare you, Sir, hold such language to me! Do you suppose, if I had
told my brother of your cowardice and insolence as I left the abbey the
other day, you would have dared to speak to him, much less to me? Let me
pass, and never while you live presume to address me more."

Mr. Longcluse, with a slow recoil, smiling fixedly, and bowing, drew
back and opened the door for her to pass. He did not any longer look
like a villain whose heart had failed him.

Her heart fluttered violently with fear as she saw that he stepped out
after her, and walked by her side toward the house. She quickened her
pace in great alarm.

"If you had liked me ever so little," said he in that faint and horrible
tone she remembered--"one, the smallest particle, of disinterested
liking--the grain of mustard-seed--I would have had you fast, and made
you happy, made you _adore_ me; _such_ adoration that you could have
heard from my own lips the confession of my crimes, and loved me
still--loved me more desperately. Now that you hate me, and I hate
_you_, and have you in my power, and while I hate still admire
you--still choose you for my wife--you shall hear the same story, and
think me all the more dreadful. You sought to degrade me, and I'll
humble you in the dust. Suppose I tell you I'm a criminal--the kind of
man you have read of in trials, and can't understand, and can scarcely
even believe in--the kind of man that seems to you as unaccountable and
monstrous as a ghost--your terrors and horror will make my triumph
exquisite with an immense delight. I don't want to smooth the way for
you; you do nothing for me. I disdain hypocrisy. Terror drives you on;
fate coerces you; you can't help yourself, and my delight is to make the
plunge terrible. I reveal myself that you may know the sort of person
you are yoked to. Your sacrifice shall be the agony of agonies, the
death of deaths, and yet you'll find yourself unable to resist. I'll
make you submissive as ever patient was to a mad doctor. If it took
years to do it, you shall never stir out of this house till it is done.
Every spark of insolence in your nature shall be trampled out; I'll
break you thoroughly. The sound of my step shall make your heart jump; a
look from me shall make you dumb for an hour. You shall not be able to
take your eyes off me while I'm in sight, or to forget me for a moment
when I am gone. The smallest thing you do, the least word you speak, the
very thoughts of your heart, shall all be shaped under one necessity and
one fear." (She had reached the hall door). "Up the steps! Yes; you wish
to enter? Certainly."

With flashing eyes and head erect, the beautiful girl stepped into the
hall, without looking to the right or to the left, or uttering one word,
and walked quickly to the foot of the great stair.

If she thought that Mr. Longcluse would respect the barrier of the
threshold, she was mistaken. He entered but one step behind her, shut
the heavy hall door with a crash, dropped the key into his coat pocket,
and signing with his finger to the man in the room to the right, that
person stood up briskly, and prepared for action. He closed the door
again, saying simply, "I'll call."

The young lady, hearing his step, turned round and stood on the stair,
confronting him fiercely.

"You must leave this house this moment," she cried, with a stamp, with
gleaming eyes and very pale.

"By-and-by," he replied, standing before her.

Could this be the safe old house in which childish days had passed, in
which all around were always friendly and familiar faces? The window
stood reflected upon the wall beside her in dim sunset light, and the
shadows of the flowers sharp and still that stood there.

"I have friends here who will turn you out, Sir!"

"You have _no_ friends here," he replied, with the same fixed smile.

She hesitated; she stepped down, but stopped in the hall. She remembered
instantly that, as she turned, she had seen him take the key from the
hall door.

"My brother will protect me."

"Is he here?"

"He'll call you to account to-morrow, when he comes."

"Will he say so?"

"Always--brave, true Richard!" she sobbed, with a strange cry in her
words.

"He'll do as I bid him: he's a forger, in my power."

To her wild stare he replied with a low, faint laugh. She clasped her
fingers over her temples.

"Oh! no, no, no, no, no, no!" she screamed, and suddenly she rushed into
the great room at her right. Her brother--was it a phantom?--stood
before her. With one long, shrill scream, she threw herself into his
arms, and cried, "It's a lie, darling, it's a lie!" and she had fainted.

He laid her in the great chair by the fire-place. With white lips, and
with one fist shaking wildly in the air, he said, with a dreadful shiver
in his voice,--

"You villain! you villain! you villain!"

"Don't you be a fool," said Longcluse. "Ring for the maid. There must
have been a crisis some time. I'm giving you a fair chance--trying to
save you; they all faint--it's a trick with women."

Longcluse looked into her lifeless face, with something of pity and
horror mingling in the villany of his countenance.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

PHŒBE CHIFFINCH.

Mr. Longcluse passed into the inner room, as he heard a step approaching
from the hall. It was Louisa Diaper, in whose care, with the simple
remedy of cold water, the young lady recovered. She was conveyed to her
room, and Richard Arden followed, at Longcluse's command, to "keep
things quiet."

In an agony of remorse, he remained with his sister's hand in his,
sitting by the bed on which she lay. Longcluse had spoken with the
resolution that a few sharp and short words should accomplish the
crisis, and show her plainly that her brother was, in the most literal
and terrible sense, in his power, and thus, indirectly, she also.
Perhaps, if she must know the fact, it was as well she should know it
now.

Longcluse, I suppose, had reckoned upon Richard's throwing himself upon
his sister's mercy. He thought he had done so before, and moved her as
he would have wished. Longcluse, no doubt, had spoken to her, expecting
to find her in a different mood. Had she yielded, what sort of husband
would he have made her? Not cruel, I daresay. Proud of her, he would
have been. She should have had the best diamonds in England. Jealous,
violent when crossed, but with all his malice and severity, easily by
Alice to have been won, had she cared to win him, to tenderness.

Was Sir Richard now seconding his scheme?

Sir Richard had no plan--none for escape, none for a catastrophe, none
for acting upon Alice's feelings.

"I am so agitated--in such despair, so stunned! If I had but one clear
hour! Oh, God! if I had but one clear hour to think in!"

He was now trying to persuade Alice that Longcluse had, in his rage,
used exaggerated language--that it was true he was in his power, but it
was for a large sum of money, for which he was his debtor.

"Yes, darling," he whispered, "only be firm. I shall get away, and take
you with me--only be secret, and don't mind one word he says when he is
angry--he is literally a madman; there is no limit to the violence and
absurdity of what he says."

"Is he still in the house?" she whispered.

"Not he."

"Are you certain?"

"Perfectly; with all his rant, he dares not stay: it would be a
police-office affair. He's gone long ago."

"Thank God!" she said, with a shudder.

Their agitated talk continued for some time longer. At last, darkly and
suddenly, as usual, he took his leave.

When her brother had gone, she touched the bell for Louisa Diaper. A
stranger appeared.

The stranger had a great deal of pink ribbon in her cap, she looked
shrewd enough, and with a pair of rather good eyes; she looked curiously
and steadily on the young lady.

"Who are you?" said Alice, sitting up. "I rang for my maid, Louisa
Diaper."

"Please, my lady," she answers, with a short curtsey, "she went into
town to fetch some things here from Sir Richard's house."

"How long ago?"

"Just when you was getting better, please, my lady."

"When she returns send her to me. What is your name?"

"Phœbe Chiffinch, please 'm."

"And you are here----"

"In her place, please my lady."

"Well, when she comes back you can assist. We shall have a great deal to
do, and I like your face, Phœbe, and I'm so lonely, I think I'll get you
to sit here in the window near me."

And on a sudden the young lady burst into tears, and sobbed and wept
bitterly.

The new maid was at her side, pouring all sorts of consolation into her
ear, with odd phrases--quite intelligible, I daresay, over the bar of
the "Guy of Warwick"--dropping h's in all directions, and bowling down
grammatic rules like nine-pins.

She was wonderfully taken by the kind looks and tones of the pretty lady
whom she saw in this distress, and with the silk curtains drawn back in
the fading flush of evening.

Hard work, hard fare, and harder words had been her portion from her
orphaned childhood upward, at the old "Guy of Warwick," with its dubious
customers, failing business, and bitter and grumbling old hostess.
Shrewd, hard, and not over-nice had Miss Phœbe grown up in that godless
school.

But she had taken a fancy, as the phrase is, to the looks of the young
lady, and still more to her voice and words, that in her ears sounded so
new and strange. There was not an unpleasant sense, too, of the
superiority of rank and refinement which inspires an admiring awe in her
kind; and so, in a voice that was rather sweet and very cheery, she
offered, when the young lady was better, to sit by the bed and tell her
a story, or sing her a song.

Everyone knows how his view of his own case may vary within an hour.
Alice was now of opinion that there was no reason to reject her
brother's version of the terrifying situation. A man who could act like
Mr. Longcluse, could, of course, say anything. She had begun to grow
more cheerful, and in a little while she accepted the offer of her
companion, and heard, first a story, and then a song; and, after all,
she talked with her for some time.

"Tell me, now, what servants there are in the house," asked Alice.

"Only two women and myself, please, Miss."

"Is there anyone else in the house, besides ourselves?"

The girl looked down, and up again, in Alice's eyes, and then away to
the floor at the other end of the room.

"I was told, Ma'am, not to talk of nothing here, Miss, except my own
business, please, my lady."

"My God! This girl mayn't speak truth to me," exclaimed Alice, clasping
her hands aghast.

The girl looked up uneasily.

"I should be sent away, Ma'am, if I do."

"Look--listen: in this strait you must be for or against me; you can't
be divided. For God's sake be a friend to me now. I may yet be the best
friend you ever had. Come, Phœbe, trust me, and I'll never betray you."

She took the girl's hand. Phœbe did not speak. She looked in her face
earnestly for some moments, and then down, and up again.

"I don't mind. I'll do what I can for you, Ma'am; I'll tell you what I
know. But if you tell them, Ma'am, it will be awful bad for me, my
lady."

She looked again, very much frightened, in her face, and was silent.

"No one shall ever know but I. Trust me entirely, and I'll never forget
it to you."

"Well, Ma'am, there is two men."

"Who are they?"

"Two men, please 'm. I knows one on 'em--he was keeper on the 'Guy o'
Warwick,' please, my lady, when there was a hexecution in the 'ouse.
They're both sheriff's men."

"And what are they doing here?"

"A hexecution, my lady."

"That is, to sell the furniture and everything for a debt, isn't that
it?" inquired the lady, bewildered.

"Well, that was it below at the 'Guy o' Warwick,' Miss; but Mr. Vargers,
he was courting me down there at the 'Guy o' Warwick,' and offered
marriage if I would 'av 'ad him, and he tells me heverything, and he
says that there's a paper to take you, please, my lady."

"Take _me_?"

"Yes, my lady; he read it to me in the room by the hall-door. Halice
Harden, spinster, and something about the old guv'nor's will, please;
and his horder is to take you, please, Miss, if you should offer to go
out of the door; and there's two on 'em, and they watches turn about, so
you can't leave the 'ouse, please, my lady; and if you try they'll only
lock you up a prisoner in one room a-top o' the 'ouse; and, for your
life, my lady, don't tell no one I said a word."

"Oh! Phœbe. What can they mean? What's to become of me? Somehow or other
you must get me out of this house. Help me, for God's sake! I'll throw
myself from the window--I'll kill myself rather than remain in their
power."

"Hush! My lady, please, I may think of something yet. But don't you do
nothing 'and hover 'ead. You must have patience. They won't be so sharp,
maybe, in a day or two. I'll get you out if I can; and, if I can't, then
God's will be done. And I'll make out what I can from Mr. Vargers; and
don't you let no one think you likes me, and I'll be sly enough, you may
count on me, my lady."

Trembling all over, Alice kissed her.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

MORE NEWS OF PAUL DAVIES.

Louisa Diaper did not appear that night, nor next morning. She had been
spirited away like the rest. Sir Richard had told her that his sister
desired that she should go into town, and stay till next day, under the
care of the housekeeper in town, and that he would bring her a list of
commissions which she was to do for her mistress preparatory to starting
for Yorkshire. I daresay this young lady liked her excursion to town
well enough. It was not till the night after that she started for the
North.

Alice Arden, for a time, lost heart altogether. It was no wonder she
should.

That her only brother should be an accomplice against her, in a plot so
appalling, was enough to overpower her; her horror of Longcluse, the
effectual nature of her imprisonment, and the strange and, as she
feared, unscrupulous people by whom she had been so artfully surrounded,
heightened her terrors to the pitch of distraction.

At times she was almost wild; at others stupefied in despair; at others,
again, soothed by the kindly intrepidity of Phœbe, she became more
collected. Sometimes she would throw herself on her bed, and sob for an
hour in helpless agony; and then, exhausted and overpowered, she would
fall for a time into a deep sleep, from which she would start, for
several minutes, without the power of collecting her thoughts, and with
only the stifled cry, "What is it?--Where am I?" and a terrified look
round.

One day, in a calmer mood, as she sat in her room after a long talk with
Phœbe, the girl came beside her chair with an oddly made key, with a
little strap of white leather to the handle, in her hands.

"Here's a latch-key, Miss; maybe you know what it opens?"

"Where did you find it?"

"In the old china vase over the chimney, please 'm."

"Let me see--oh! dear, yes, this opens the door in the wall of the
grounds, in that direction," and she pointed. "Poor papa lent it to my
drawing-master. He lived somewhere beyond that, and used to let himself
in by it when he came to give me my lessons."

"I remember that door well, Miss," said Phœbe, looking earnestly on the
key--"Mr. Crozier let me out that way, one day. Mr. Longcluse has put
strangers, you know, in the gatehouse. That's shut against us. I'll tell
you what, Miss--wait--well, I'll _think_. I'll keep this key safe,
anyhow; and--the more the merrier," she added with a sudden alacrity,
and lifting her finger, by way of signal, for everything now was done
with caution here, she left the room, and passed through the suite to
the landing, and quietly took out the door-keys, one by one, and
returned with her spoil to Alice's room.

"You thought they might lock us up?" whispered Alice.

The girl nodded. "No harm to have 'em, Miss--it won't hurt us." She
folded them tightly in a handkerchief, and thrust the parcel as far as
her arm could reach between the mattress and the bed. "I'll rip the
ticken a bit just now, and stitch them in," whispered the girl.

"Didn't I hear another key clink as you put your hand in?" asked Alice.

The girl smiled, and drew out a large key, and nodded, still smiling as
she replaced it.

"What does that open?" whispered Alice eagerly.

"_Nothing_, Miss," said the girl gravely--"it's the key of the old
back-door lock; but there's a new one there now, and this won't open
nothing. But I have a use for it. I'll tell you all in time, Miss; and,
please, you must keep up your heart, mind."

Sir Richard Arden was not the cold villain you may suppose. He was
resolved to make an effort of some kind for the extrication of his
sister. He could not bear to open his dreadful situation to his Uncle
David, nor to kill himself, nor to defy the vengeance of Longcluse. He
would effect her escape and his own simultaneously. In the meantime he
must acquiesce, ostensibly at least, in every step determined on by
Longcluse.

It was a bright autumnal day as Sir Richard and Mr. Longcluse took the
rail to Southampton. Longcluse had his reasons for taking the young
baronet with him.

It was near the hour, by the time they got there, when David Arden would
arrive from his northern point of departure. Longcluse looked
animated--smiling; but a stupendous load lay on his heart. A single
clumsy phrase in the letter of that detective scoundrel might be enough
to direct the formidable suspicions of that energetic old gentleman upon
him. The next hour might throw him altogether upon the defensive, and
paralyse his schemes.

Alice Arden, you little dream of the man and the route by which,
possibly, deliverance is speeding to you.

Near the steps of the large hotel that looks seaward, Longcluse and Sir
Richard lounge, expecting the arrival of David Arden almost momentarily.
Up drives a fly, piled with portmanteaus, hat-case, dressing-case, and
all the other travelling appurtenances of a comfortable wayfarer. Beside
the driver sits a servant. The fly draws up at the door near them.

Mr. Longcluse's seasoned heart throbs once or twice oddly. Out gets
Uncle David, looking brown and healthy after his northern excursion. On
reaching the top of the steps, he halts, and turns round to look about
him. Again Mr. Longcluse feels the same odd sensation.

Uncle David recognises Sir Richard, and smiling greets him. He runs down
the steps to meet him. After they have shaken hands, and, a little more
coldly, he and Mr. Longcluse, he says,--

"You are not looking yourself, Dick; you ought to have run down to the
moors, and got up an appetite. How is Alice?"

"Alice? Oh! Alice is very well, thanks."

"I should like to run up to Mortlake to see her. She has been
complaining, eh?"

"No, no--better," says Sir Richard.

"And you forget to tell your uncle what you told me," interposes Mr.
Longcluse, "that Miss Arden left Mortlake for Yorkshire yesterday."

"Oh!" said Uncle David, turning to Richard again.

"And the servants went before--two or three days ago," said Sir Richard,
looking down for a moment, and hastening, under that clear eye, to speak
a little truth.

"Well, I wish she had come with us," said David Arden; "but as she could
not be persuaded, I'm glad she is making a little change of air and
scene, in any direction. By-the-bye, Mr. Longcluse, you had a letter,
had not you, from our friend, Paul Davies?"

"Yes; he seemed to think he had found a clue--from Paris it was--and I
wrote to tell him to spare no expense in pushing his inquiries and to
draw upon me."

"Well, I have some news to tell you. His exploring voyage will come to
nothing; you did not hear?"

"No."

"Why, the poor fellow's dead. I got a letter--it reached me, forwarded
from my house in town, yesterday, from the person who hires the
lodgings--to say he had died of scarlatina very suddenly, and sending an
inventory of the things he left. It is a pity, for he seemed a smart
fellow, and sanguine about getting to the bottom of it."

"An awful pity!" exclaimed Longcluse, who felt as if a mountain were
lifted from his heart, and the entire firmament had lighted up; "an
awful pity! Are you quite sure?"

"There can't be a doubt, I'm sorry to say. Then, as Alice has taken
wing, I'll pursue my first plan, and cross by the next mail."

"For Paris?" inquired Mr. Longcluse, carelessly.

"Yes, Sir, for Paris," answered Uncle David deliberately, looking at
him; "yes, for Paris."

And then followed a little chat on indifferent subjects. Then Uncle
David mentioned that he had an appointment, and must dine with the dull
but honest fellow who had asked him to meet him here on a matter of
business, which would have done just as well next year, but he wished it
now. Uncle David nodded, and waved his hand, as on entering the door he
gave them a farewell smile over his shoulder.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

THE CATACOMBS.

At his disappearance, for Sir Richard the air darkened as when, in the
tropics, the sun sets without a twilight, and the silence of an awful
night descended.

It seemed that safety had been so near. He had laid his hand upon it,
and had let it glide ungrasped between his fingers; and now the sky was
black above him, and an unfathomable sea beneath.

Mr. Longcluse was in great spirits. He had grown for a time like the
Walter Longcluse of a year before.

They two dined together, and after dinner Mr. Longcluse grew happy, and
as he sat with his glass by him, he sang, looking over the waves, a
sweet little sentimental song, about ships that pass at sea, and smiles
and tears, and "true, boys, true," and "heaven shows a glimpse of its
blue." And he walks with Sir Richard to the station, and he says, low,
as he leans and looks into the carriage window, of which young Arden was
the only occupant--

"Be true to me now, and we may make it up yet."

And so saying, he gives his hand a single pressure as he looks hard in
his eyes.

The bell had rung. He was remaining there, he said, for another train.
The clapping of the doors had ceased. He stood back. The whistle blew
its long piercing yell, and as the train began to glide towards London,
the young man saw the white face of Walter Longcluse in deep shadow, as
he stood with his back to the lamp, still turned towards him.

The train was now thundering on its course; the solitary lamp glimmered
in the roof. He threw himself back, with his foot against the opposite
seat.

"Good God! what is one to resolve! All men are cruel when they are
exasperated. Might not good yet be made of Longcluse? What creatures
women are!--what fools! How easy all might have been made, with the
least temper and reflection! What d----d selfishness!"

Uncle David was now in Paris. The moon was shining over that beautiful
city. In a lonely street, in a quarter which fashion had long
forsaken--over whose pavement, as yet unconscious of the Revolution, had
passed, in the glare of torchlight, the carved and emblazoned carriages
of an aristocracy, as shadowy now as the courts of the Cæsars--his
footsteps are echoing.

A huge house presents its front. He stops and examines it carefully for
a few seconds. It is the house of which he is in search.

At one time the Baron Vanboeren had received patients from the country,
to reside in this house. For the last year, during which he had been
gathering together his wealth, and detaching himself from business, he
had discontinued this, and had gradually got rid of his establishment.

When David Arden rang the bell at the hall-door, which he had to do
repeatedly, it was answered at last by an old woman, high-shouldered,
skin and bone, with a great nose, and big jaw-bones, and a high-cauled
cap. This lean creature looks at him with a vexed and hollow eye. Her
bony arm rests on the lock of the hall-door, and she blocks the narrow
aperture between its edge and the massive door-case. She inquires in
very nasal French what Monsieur desires.

"I wish to see Monsieur the Baron, if he will permit me an interview,"
answered Mr. Arden in very fair French.

"Monsieur the Baron is not visible; but if Monsieur will,
notwithstanding, leave any message he pleases for Monsieur the Baron, I
will take care he receives it punctually."

"But Monsieur the Baron appointed me to call to-night at ten o'clock."

"Is Monsieur sure of that?"

"Perfectly."

"Eh, very well; but, if he pleases, I must first learn Monsieur's name."

"My name is Arden."

"I believe Monsieur is right." She took a bit of notepaper from her
capacious pocket, and peering at it, spelled aloud, "D-a-v-i-d----"

"A-r-d-e-n," interrupted and continued the visitor, spelling his name,
with a smile.

"A-r-d-e-n," she followed, reading slowly from her paper; "yes, Monsieur
is right. You see, this paper says, 'Admit Monsieur David Arden to an
interview.' Enter, if you please Monsieur, and follow me."

It was a decayed house of superb proportions, but of a fashion long
passed away. The gaunt old woman, with a bunch of large keys clinking at
her side, stalked up the broad stairs and into a gallery, and through
several rooms opening _en suite_. The rooms were hung with cobwebs,
dusty, empty, and the shutters closed, except here and there where the
moonlight gleamed through chinks and seams.

David Arden, before he had seen the Baron Vanboeren in London, had
pictured him in imagination a tall old man with classic features, and
manners courteous and somewhat stately.

We do not fabricate such images; they rise like exhalations from a few
scattered data, and present themselves spontaneously. It is this
self-creation that invests them with so much reality in our
imaginations, and subjects us to so odd a surprise when the original
turns out quite unlike the portrait with which we have been amusing
ourselves.

She now pushed open a door, and said, "Monsieur the Baron here is
arrived Monsieur David d'Ardennes."

The room in which he now stood was spacious, but very nearly dark. The
shutters were closed outside, and the moonlight that entered came
through the circular hole cut in each. A large candle on a bracket
burned at the further end of the room. There the baron stood. A
reflector which interposed between the candle and the door at which
David Arden entered directed its light strongly upon something which the
baron held, and laid upon the table, in his hand; and now that he turned