Haunted lives, chs. 1 - 11 (1868-may) by J.S. Le Fanu

HAUNTED LIVES.

[These chapters were originally serialized in
Dublin University Magazine (1868-May) as Part One]

CHAPTER I.

LAURA CHALLYS GRAY.

THE Old Brompton of my earlier recollections, with its silent lanes, its grass-plots, and flower-knots, its towering trees, and those sober old houses of dusky red brick faced with white stone, which, set round with tall flower-pots and flowering shrubs and roses, had a character of old-world comfort, and even grace, has faded and broken up like a sunset city of cloud.

When regretful memory names a place, as I name Old Brompton, I always find it call up a special picture, and always the same. Mine is no bigger than a cabinet picture. Through a short perspective, the rugged columns of half-a-dozen old trees, under shadow, with a patch of broken flickering light, I see little more than the lower half of the tall old drawing-room window -- dusky brick, and a worn setting of old Caen stone. On the broad window-stone stand some flower-pots; I know not the names of the flowers, trembling stars and cups of blue and crimson; and from the chiar'oscuro of the room within leans over them the prettiest face, I almost think, this mortal world ever saw.

Beautiful cousin, Laura Challys Gray! A pretty music rings in your name, for me — with those sad notes that come from the distant past, and die in the far future.

I close my eyes, and I see you, your violet eyes, and rich brown tresses, with their golden folds, the delicate oval of your face, and your crimson lips. Oh! pretty Laura -- odd, wayward, misunderstood, full of faults -- with many perfections, I am sure, that others possessed not -- I am going to jot down my recollections of you, and what I know of a story as odd as your character.

In this house, at the open drawing-room window, Charles Mannering -- a tall young man, with a face kind, frank, and also sensitive -- was standing, looking westward, where the sun was nearing the horizon, with the glow of a coming sunset. I think there is a pleasant sentiment in the artificial rurality of such a scene, and he could fancy, among the urns and roses under the distant groups of ruddy chimneys, melting in the misty light of evening, a pretty powdered Daphne ogling her piping Philander across her crook.

He liked being employed, too, by his pretty cousin. Here was a commission which had given him a world of trouble -- to find her just such a house in the old-fashioned suburbs of London as he had lighted upon.

She ought to have arrived half an hour before. He was standing, as I have said, at the open drawing-room window. He was nervous about her decision upon the manner in which he had executed his commission. Her letter was in his pocket; and, while he was amusing himself with an imaginary dialogue with her, the carriage arrived at the gate, and was admitted. It was a chariot, prettiest of all carriages -- why discarded now I cannot imagine -- four post-horses, and two postillions. They had travelled up from Gray Forest in the old-fashioned way -- by the road and posting stations -- not then on that line, superseded by rail. Hot and dusty were the horses that were pulled up at the steps. He ran down, and handed his pretty cousin from the carriage, and then her elderly kinswoman and companion, fat and rather amiable, and not very active. The springs yielded to her weight, of which that sagacious lady was as conscious as the elephant, and she leaned upon his shoulder, and then upon his arm, with a cautious emphasis that made him stagger.

Good Mrs. Wardell -- that was her name -- came in, very red, talking and giggling, and wheezing a little, and sat down in the dining-room to divide her journey, and recruit before essaying the stairs, under care of her maid, much the more elegantly got up of the two. Charles ran upstairs to the drawing-room, where he had seen his cousin, light of foot, already looking from the window, as he lent Mrs. Wardell his arm up the steps.

Miss Laura Challys Gray was still standing between the voluminous silk curtains, looking out through one of the tall windows, as he entered the room. In shadow and reflected lights there is sometimes a transparent effect which heightens beauty; and I think he never saw her look so lovely as when she turned towards him from the light, as he entered. I pause for a moment to recall that pretty image.

She had removed her little bonnet, which dangled by its ribbon at one side from her slender fingers. Her rich brown hair, so wonderfully voluminous, in the shadow showed its golden glimmer where the dusky sunset touched it. Her large violet eyes, under the long curve of their lashes, were turned upon him. Nearly in shadow, her beautiful lips, with a light just touched in crimson, parted, and very grave. What a beautiful oval that little face was, and how richly her shadowy brown hair parted low above her brows. As she looked at him this pretty face was thoughtful and nun-like, and after a little silence she said, with a very imposing seriousness:—

"I think I shall like this out-of-the-way house, and the fifteen trees, and the half-acre of grass."

"Oh, I assure you, there's a good deal more than you see from this. I should say there are at least two acres altogether, and fifty trees, reckoning —--"

"No; the lilacs and laburnums, which are enormous, and deserve to be counted in," said he.

"I think I shall like it," she repeated a little imperiously, as much as to say, "It is your place to listen at present, and mine to speak." "It looks old, and homely, and secluded. It has a monastic air; and has not the slightest pretension to elegance, and is perfectly dull — thank you. You have acquitted yourself, so far as I see, to admiration. I can't pronounce absolutely, however, until I look about me a little more."

She spoke with such perfect good faith, and such an air of gravity and wisdom, that he was on the point of laughing.

But that would not have done: for Challys Gray, as she liked to style herself, was an imperious little queen; and when she was serious, expected all the world to be grave also.

There was not a folding door between the front and back drawing-rooms, but an ordinary door, with a very heavily carved casing, like the others in that house, which projected almost like a porch. Under this passed Miss Gray, and looked slowly round the other drawing-room.

"Yes, I like it; I'm sure I shall. It is a suitable house for old people. You need not laugh. Mrs. Wardell is actually old, and I am prematurely old, and no one that is not old, either in years, or, older still, in spirits, has any business here."

"Come, Miss Challys, that won't do. You and your spirits, as you say, are precisely of the same age — each two-and-twenty — and that is very young, and you'll not like isolation long, with the great world and the gay world so near; and you'll find this house, and the monotony you propose, the dullest whim that ever you engaged in."

"Well, that's very much my own affair, I suppose," said she. "Suppose my plan of life ever so absurd, it is worth a trial. I don't love the human race. I have no opinion of my species; I have no cause; and if I am to be happy it must be independently of human society; and, after all, I'm not tied to this house. Should I tire of it, I can take my departure without asking any one's leave — I shall travel. I have half a mind to buy a yacht, and live on the sea, a sea queen, and treat the world as a picture-book — look at its scenery, and cities, and depute my courier to talk with its people."

"No; I don't say that quite," she answered, "but a person who, from experience, has formed no very high or pleasant opinion of her fellow-creatures, and, being her own mistress, means in a harmless way to live as pleases her best, and die an old maid."

"Wrong, again. No, not passionless. With one passion very fixed-very wicked. What do you look at? Why do you laugh?" she demanded a little fiercely. "I say very wicked, not because it is wicked, but because the cant of the Pharisee and the cant of the world concur in calling it so. I don't choose to reason; I suppose I could if I chose, but I have no taste for arguing. I leave that to philosophers like you, who always lose their tempers when they engage in it. I read my Bible, and that is my church. I have no notion of being bullied by clergymen. I have gone into various places of worship, both at home and abroad, and I'm not particular about forms. None of them please me exactly, and none of them displease me altogether."

"Ah! Miss Challys," said he, raising his finger, and shaking his head, with a smile, however, "you are the same wild girl — Undine, before she acquired her soul."

"Thank you, Cousin Charles," she answered; "I hope I have not said anything to call for an argument?"

"And I don't see why you need do battle for clergymen. You're not one. There isn't one present — I shouldn't abuse them if there were — and if one can't abuse people behind their backs, I'd like to know where's the liberty of a British subject."

"I don't argue. I do despise reason. Our moral nature, instinct, passion, are divine, but reason came by eating of the tree of knowledge, at the persuasion of Satan, and is part of the curse of our Fall, and therefore devilish, and, what is worse, dull. I like this view better still," she said suddenly, as she looked from the back window. "There is so much green — trees and gardens, and I don't object to the stables, and the roofs and chimneys through the leaves — the look-out is so like a country village. I shall make pets of all the birds — but none in cages. If liberty is so much to me, what must it be to them? — poor papa used to say. And I shall have a little King, Charles or two. And where do they sell cats? I must get one of those great foreign cats. I'll have the most magnificent cat that ever was seen in Old Brompton. Every old maid sets up at the sign of the cat, and an old maid I'm going to be, and the sooner we set up the sign of my profession the better. You smile. Very well — you shall see."

"But you talked of a passion just now. It can't be the passion?" suggested he.

"Now, that's so like your sex! You poor weak men, when you hear passion spoken of, can imagine nothing but the insipid sentiment you call love. Come, rouse your energies, and be a woman. I require a person of sense and energy, and you must please to get rid of your conventional ideas. You got my letter, of course?"

"I have no objection to see them, and I preferred seeing them here. When do they come?"

"How should I know? Come and hear. That is, I do know perfectly; but I shan't discuss it. I'm sure I'm right, and I don't want to be puzzled."

"Something wicked, as you say, I am sure. I see the wild light of Undine's eye again."

And he wondered mentally what she was going to do in the painful matter in which she was called on to pronounce.

"Well, never was Undine in so dusty a plight. Dear old Mrs. Wardell and I almost quarrelled about the windows and such clouds of dust. So would you mind touching the bell for my maid? I suppose they have got my things upstairs by this time; you come back, do you mind? to tea, or dinner, or whatever it's to be. I hear Cousin Julia coming; she'll tell you."

Cousin Julia Wardell was indeed very audible; for the stairs creaked, and she panted and wheezed, and a shrilly lapdog barked and scampered all the way up.

CHAPTER II.

BROTHERS OF MERCY.

"WELL," thought Charles, as he let himself out of the gate, "this freak wont last long; an heiress, well connected, and with her beauty! It would be the greatest pity in the world, but the comfort is she'll tire of it in a fortnight, and confess her mistake in a month, and next season she'll come out, and be presented, and have her head turned like the rest."

Charles chose to present this little prediction to himself as his hope — and I think it might more nearly have resembled his fear.

He glanced back with a little sigh, as he closed the gate, and saw a broken view of the fall windows, and glowing old brick, and the weather-worn Caen stone facings.

"Pretty creature she is, but there's some odd want about her; is it feeling or is it only sentiment? — no — yet she is like Undine without her soul. I always said so — playful, odd, harmless, I think — but also cold, vehement, and wild — a coldness that piques one. She talks so like a fool, too, and yet she has a provoking faculty of thinking."

He did not return that evening to Guildford House. Such, I forgot to mention, was the style of the old-fashioned house in which my young cousin had established herself; but in the morning his breakfast was interrupted by the arrival of a tall footman — inconsistency number one — with a note reminding him that he was to come to her at twelve o'clock, and saying that her solicitor was coming also. But it was plain she would wish to have a kinsman by, although, from an odd wayward pride of hers she would not say so in so many words.

As he walked up the short straight avenue, dark with the shadow of old elms, it was still a quarter of an hour to the appointed time. Already Miss Challys Gray had been busy, and under her beautifying influence tall flowers were nodding and quivering in the great stone pots along the balustrade that ran before the windows, and on the drawing-room window-sills were other tinier flowers, and there he saw her as I always see her — looking from the shadow of the open window.

"See, I keep tryst," said he, smiling up, as he held his watch toward her, standing on the steps.

"I can hardly tell at this distance," said she, "though I have pretty good eyes — for seeing with," she interpolated, observing his smile; "but my little clock tells me you are fifteen minutes before your time, so you are very good indeed."

"You've been doing wonders already — such flowers — like the Indian enchanters, who make them grow up in ten minutes," said he.

"You'll find pictures also, and hung with very good taste, I can tell you," she answered with a smile, well pleased that her energy was appreciated.

"From Gray Forset, and they came last night. Go in, and see Mr. Gryston; you'll find him in the library — the room to the left — and I'll see you there, immediately;" and the pretty head drew back, and nothing but the nodding flowers remained. So in went Charles.

Guildford House was a rather stately old mansion, and really more spacious than from the outside one would have fancied. The hall was a square panelled chamber, with five doors, one facing the hall door, and two opening at either side under those heavy projecting cases, which went out, I believe, with the second George — but which have an air of solid pomp and comfort. Beyond under a broader arch, were visible the wide stairs with their heavy banisters.

When he entered the first room, on the left hand, he found Mr. Gryston reading his Times. He knew that shrewd and reliable attorney, who set down his paper, and seemed tolerably glad to see Charles.

"I thought it was those people about De Beaumirail, he said, glancing at his watch; it isn't quite time, though I think it would be desirable that I should see Miss Gray before they come, and on that account I came a little early. That fellow Levi is a most unscrupulous dog; and Larkin — I've met him once or twice in business, and he's sharp and not very straight; and the fact is, she ought to be cautious what she says — or rather she ought not to say anything, but just leave herself in my bands, d'ye see? and I thought I should have an opportunity of talking to her a little, for I don't know what view she takes, or what she means to do; do you?"

They want her to let him out — they have some object, of course — but I don't see anything we can gain by keeping him in prison. There's that little property in France, it must be trifling, for they say he has very little to live on, and is ready to hang himself, poor devil!"

Charles Mannering did not know much about De Beaumirail. He knew, however, that the Gray family had suffered in more ways than one by his misconduct, and that he was, in the opinion of that family, at least, a very unredeemed mauvais sujet. He had lain in prison now for more than three years, refusing to give up some small property which his creditors could not themselves reach. It was in some respects a pitiable case. A young man who had figured some years ago brilliantly in the great world of Paris; he was of old French blood allied by marriage to English; his mother was a Challys, and related distantly to the Grays of Gray Forest.

Born to a great fortune, he had wasted it, in gaming and fabulous extravagance, in seven or eight years, and now he was, at thirty, a despairing prisoner in the London Fleet, with the alternative of ending his days there, or giving up the pittance which alone saved him from the direst penury. Liberty of course was not to be desired at, that price. His creditors had begun to forget him, his relations with them were assuming the character of routine, and the prisoner was subsiding into despair, when a simple old clergyman, named Parker, took up the case, and had succeeded in getting the creditors to agree to his discharge upon very easy terms indeed, and all that was now needed was the consent of the girl, Laura Challys Gray, who represented a very heavy claim for mesne rates and law costs which had accumulated in her father's time.

"I take an interest, of course," said Charles, "but I am quite ignorant of details."

"Miss Gray will be for letting him out very off-hand and generous, and I've thought it over, and I can't see any good in keeping him locked up any longer. Even if he did eventually give up that bit of property, I don't think we should be benefited to the extent of three hundred pounds, after all costs paid. But he'll never give it up, for he has nothing else to keep body and soul together, and he'll live and die where he is rather than take that step — d'ye see; so I don't see any good in our thwarting her, if she wishes to open the door for him."

Mr. Gryston was a shrewd man, and respected, who knew the city and the profession, and knew something of most persons whom be was at all likely to meet in business.

They had not talked long when the deputation, as they styled themselves, appeared.

Tall, bald Mr. Larkin entered first, with a very well-brushed hat in his large lavender. gloved hand. He had on a lavender-coloured poplin waistcoat and lavender-coloured trowsers, and a perfectly new black frock-coat, that shone with a sleek gloss, and he wore his meek simper, showing gaps at either side, and his pink dovelike eyes glanced this way and that, expecting to see Miss Laura Challys Gray. He liked making a good impression upon rich people, in whom he always saw possible clients.

Mr. Gryston received this gentleman dryly and gravely, with a slight bow; and also the small Jew, Mr. Levi, with the great lurid, vigilant eyes, and sullen dangerous countenance, and black hair, and many trinkets, who followed him closely. This gentleman walked about the room, picking up the books that lay in long rows on the floor, trying the strength of the binding by plucking the covers backward, breathing on the backs and rubbing the gilding with the sleeves of his coat, knocking and scratching the furniture, overhauling the construction of the bookcases, and staring sullenly in the faces of the two or three portraits with which Miss Gray had already hung the walls, with such an expression as one could fancy he might wear while beating down their price in a broker's shop. Charles longed to box his ears and send him about. his business, and was on the point of interrupting his scrutiny rather peremptorily, when he suddenly tired of it, and with his hands in his pockets strode over and placed himself beside the agreeable and pious Mr. Larkin, and contributed now and then, uninvited, a drawling sentence to the conversation.

And now entered that venerable and simple clergyman, Mr. Parker, with no trinkets like Mr. Levi, and whose clothes were by no means so new as the unexceptionable Mr. Larkin's.

With light blue eyes, guileless and kindly, he too looked round the room, as he entered with his white locks uncovered. He recognised Mr. Larkin gladly. Charles Mannering introduced himself, and then Mr. Gryston.

"Yesterday," answered Mr. Gryston, and looked again at his watch. "She'll be with us here, I expect, in five minutes." He signed to Charles Mannering, and walked to the window, and in a low tone said — "Run up to the drawing-room, please, and give her the caution I intended about Larkin and Levi, and tell her she needn't come down unless she likes; she has only to send me word what her wishes are."

"All right," said Charles, with a nod; but before he reached the door, it opened, and his pretty cousin, in her high-up morning dress, came in. I don't think she knew they were all assembled, for she drew back her foot a little surprised, but immediately advanced, greeted Charles with a smile, and Mr. Gryston, and more gravely and coldly her other three visitors.

Among this little assemblage, in which white heads, and bald heads, and long heads, and very hard heads, were represented, this young and beautiful girl was an incongruous intruder, and perhaps a latent sense of the contrast prompted Mr. Gryston to say —

"I've been here some time, Miss Gray. I thought you might wish a few words, as it is a matter of business, and Mr. Larkin is a professional man" — Mr. Larkin's smile was here one of preternatural innocence and urbanity — "and on the other side, you know — I mean, interested for Mr. Guy de Beaumirail."

"I can hardly, in strictness, claim that honour" — interposed Mr. Larkin, blandly shaking his tall head.

"And it might, perhaps, be as well, Miss Gray," continued Gryston, not minding, "that you should confer with me for a few minutes, before taking any step."

"Thanks — no; it's quite simple, I fancy — done in a word; but I think I had better first hear what these friends of Monsieur de Beaumirail wish to tell me, as they have taken the trouble to come here." She spoke to Mr. Gryston, and glanced graciously at these gentlemen. "Ask them to sit down."

CHAPTER III.

AD MISERICORDIAM.

THEY did not sit down, they remained standing, everyone did, Miss Gray included; and Mr. Larkin, in parliamentary phrase, laid upon the table a paper with a series of signatures attached, which he, in his most engaging manner, informed Miss Gray, who stood near the other end of the table, with Gryston at one side and Charles Mannering at the other, was a consent signed by the creditors, for the release of Monsieur de Beaumirail, on the sole condition that their rights were not to be prejudiced by that step.

"I act in this matter, and I believe I may speak for Mr. Levi and his eminent and influential Partner, entirely from motives of compassion, and I will say humanity."

"Humanity — that'sh it — and compassion," echoed. Mr. Levi, standing at his elbow, and eyeing the party with a sulky glare.

"Quite so, a Christian feeling, we hope; that is," said Mr. Larkin, suddenly recollecting Mr. Levi's faith — "a feeling of perfectly disinterested charity and commiseration."

"And we are actuated," continued Mr. Larkin, "in this, I will say, melancholy case, by no other motive."

"I'll take my oath of that," said Mr. Levi, to place the matter quite beyond doubt.

"And really, thrown professionally into contact with that unhappy though sadly misguided young man, I will say that it is impossible to contemplate his great, and I will add, his — a — a — eminent privations — without a sentiment of pity. 'Sick and in prison' — I take the liberty, Miss Gray, of quoting — 'and ye visited me.'"

"Vishits him twishe a week," — "and always finds him at home," he mentally added. But of course this latter was but an unspoken jocularity of Mr. Levi, who looked especially hang-dog, as he always did when he affected the philanthropic vein.

"Occasionally — just occasionally," said Mr. Larkin, blandly. "We don't make a boast, Mr. Levi, of any humble attentions, or unaffected — a — mitigations it may have been in our power to bestow."

"That'sh as true as the table-book, sho help me," said Mr. Levi, with more solemnity than was needed.

Pretty Laura Challys Gray looked at the window with an expression of pain and weariness, as if she would have liked to escape; and as there was a slight pause she said gently —

And Mr. Gryston ventured to suggest that it would be desirable if Mr. Larkin came to the point.

Whereupon Mr. Larkin "agreed — quite agreed — that feelings, however strong and however unexceptionable," ought not to mix in business, and mentioned the nature of the application he had to make, and also the fact that without exception the other creditors had consented, as their names at the foot of the agreement now on the table attested.

Old Mr. Parker then asked to say a very few words; and he had something to add about the health of the unhappy prisoner, and was solemn, earnest, and pathetic. A little silence followed, during which Mr. Larkin clipped the pen in the ink, and tendered it with a saddened smile and a graceful inclination to Miss Gray.

"We have nothing more to add," said Mr. Larkin, engagingly; and with the ends of his long lank fingers he slid the paper gracefully toward the young lady.

Mr. Gryston raised it and read it through, and turned it round and read it a second time; it was very short.

"You quite understand, Miss Gray? The effect of this is to give Mr. Guy de Beaumirail his liberty, but without prejudice to any rights of yours as to any property of his which may hereafter turn up."

He placed the paper before Miss Gray, who looked not at him, but at it, in what is called a "brown study."

"We make a great sacrifice, gentlemen — our detainer amounts to more than half the other creditors' claims put together; but I suppose, — as the others have done it" — and with this pause he presented the pen, which he had taken from Mr. Larkin's fingers, to his young and beautiful client, adding in a lower tone —

"But I do," said Miss Gray, in a faint icy voice that had a slight tremor in it, raising her head suddenly. "I wont sign it. I have quite made up my mind, Monsieur de Beaumirail shall remain where he is."

And with two or three little impatient waves of her fingers she put away the pen. There was a silence. Mr. Larkin, staring at her, went on smiling inconsistently. Mr. Levi gaped luridly as if he was going to swear at her. Mr. Gryston glanced shrewdly at her, as if he doubted his ears for a moment, and then looked down demurely on the table, and played the devil's tattoo softly on it; and the clergyman, with his gentle eyes wide open, gazed on her with an alarmed uncertainty. The silence that followed was for a few seconds, but for Mr. Gryston's drumming, intense.

Miss Laura placed her hand in her cousin's arm, and said, looking very pale, "Will you take me to the drawing-room? Good-bye," she added, in a low tone; and making a very grave and haughty inclination to the strangers, she drew near the door, which Charles opened for her.

"But, my dear madam — my dear young lady — pardon me — you cannot possibly understand."

"I do, indeed, sir — I understand perfectly; and I wish you and everyone to understand that I have quite made up my mind — that I know the effect of what I do, and that I am — resolved that Monsieur de Beaumirail shall be punished, and my resolution is not to be altered by anything you can possibly say or urge; I am sorry if I give you pain; good-bye."

And with a more gracious farewell to the old clergyman, Miss Laura Challys Gray was gone, and standing at the back drawing-room window, before her audience down stairs had well recovered their surprise.

"You must ask that foolish old clergyman to luncheon, and Mr. Gryston, but on no account either of those dreadful men, the two people with that paper to sign," said Miss Gray to her cousin.

"And why not, pray? He was foolish, and he is foolish. No sensible person talks so dogmatically as he did upon things he knows nothing about."

"You ought to know that he did neither — that is to say, that I have acted rightly in utterly despising his advice. I saw you were shocked, and I don't care; and do just go and give my message to that foolish clergyman and Mr. Gryston."

Charles smiled upbraidingly, shook his head and left the room very gravely, thoughtfully even. Laura looked after him over her shoulder a little vexed.

"There goes another fool," she soliloquized. "What does it signify what they think? Nothing, while I'm sure I'm right — and one must be right, morally, at least, when one does from a superior motive that which is perhaps disagreeable to them; though it ought to be pleasant, very pleasant, and even is pleasant in a certain way.

Down stairs, the gentlemen passing through the hall, on their way out, heard brilliant and joyous music from the piano in the drawing-room. Mr. Larkin's heart was not very deep in this matter, but the Jew heard this music very sourly. As he walked away, said he to Mr. Larkin —

"Who'd think that young woman, Miss Gray, was such a precious screw? When a woman likes money, doesn't she like it, oh, no! They'll go all the way to the devil and back, for a tizzy. Look there — that young man; where's the good of his four bonesh locked up, to Miss Gray? What devils they are! And she knows he's dying by inches there. What's her income — you know something of it?"

"There's Gray Forest, and the Yorkshire property, and they say a great investment in the funds. It's certainly not less than eleven thousand a year, and people who should know, say it's nearer thirteen," said Larkin.

"And all for that one girl's board, and clothing, living in Old Brompton. Bah! She's a miser, and she'll let that fellow die in quod for the chance of a ha'penny in the pound."

"Very young, as you say, Mr. Levi, for so much severity. I hope it is not covetousness — covetousness, which is idolatry, Mr. Levi."

"You have a nishe bit of money yourself, Larkin," said Mr. Levi; "and they do shay you're fond of it too; you take precious good care of it, and turns in a devilish nishe per-shentage."

"There are plenty of 'buses when we get down to the corner here," said Mr. Larkin, mildly, and with his head rather high. He wished this little Jew snob to understand that there was some distance between him and a gentleman of Mr. Larkin's position.

It was not pleasant having such a fellow hanging on him; it could not be helped though. They had promised to see M. de Beaumirail in his den, with the result of their suit, the success of which they had never doubted. But Mr. Larkin would sit back in the 'bus, and take out some letters and read them diligently, and so guard himself against the disconcerting familiarities of that questionable gentleman with the pretty trinkets and somewhat villanous countenance.

Miss Laura Challys Gray laughed to herself pleasantly, as she played a brilliant air in the old-fashioned drawing-room of Guildford House. The slight pallor which had chilled her beauty at the moment of her passing sentence, as it were, of imprisonment for life on that ill-starred Monsieur de Beaumirail, had been succeeded by the brilliant colour of excitement; and gaily, as a girl going to her first ball, she glided round the room, smiled on her beautiful face in the mirror, glanced at the pictures, then stood at the window looking over the brilliant flowers that trembled in the air, and she saw the old clergyman in the seedy black, with the silken white hair, and thin, sad face, with his cotton umbrella in his hand trudging lonely down the short avenue.

She knocked at the window — he turned — she beckoned, and threw it up — she leaned out and beckoned again, smiling, and when he had reached the step, looking up with his sad wintry face beside the flowers that rose high from the great stone flower-pot on the balustrade, imaging side-by-side the fragile beauty of young life and the bleak melancholy of age, she said —

"Pray excuse me, Mr. Parker, I was so much obliged for your letter. Wont you come in and let me thank you, just for a moment?"

He had raised his hat, and the light breeze blew over his thin white locks, as with his patient smile, looking up, he listened to that beautiful young lady with life before her, and with a gentle bow to her he re-entered the house.

"That stupid old man! He has walked all the way, I'm certain, he is so covered with dust, and he's going away without any luncheon!"

When he came up, she again pressed her hospitalities upon him; but he declined. He made an old-fashioned early dinner in his lodgings, and intended the luxury of a seat in a 'bus to the Bank; and after a few words, and a silence, during which the old man fidgeted a little with his hat and umbrella, as if about to take leave, the young lady very gravely opened the following conversation.

CHAPTER IV.

M. DE BEAUMIRAIL.

"I'M so Sorry you wont take even a glass of wine — but — I did not wish you to go away without telling you why I refuse to let that wicked man, Monsieur de Beaumirail, out of prison."

The old man was standing; at these words he bowed his head, leaning his hand upon the table. It might be simply an attitude of attention, or it might be that the subject was painful, and that he did not care to look in her face while discussing it.

"I ought to mention," he said, "that the unfortunate young man is a distant relation of my own — so distant as almost to count for nothing. I mention it only lest your ignorance of the circumstance Should affect the spirit of what you are going to say; not that it need be so, for, as I say, the relationship is very remote."

"I have lost my father; I have lost my sister; I stand alone in the world, sir. My father suffered from a complaint under which he might have lived for very many years to come, but his life was cut short by the excitement and anxiety of a wanton attack upon his property. My sister died when I was very young, seven years ago. They called it consumption — it was a broken heart. The lawsuit which hurried my father's death was instituted by a man who snatched at that desperate chance to redeem his fortunes from the ruin in which his selfish prodigality had plunged him. My sister's heart was broken by the same unscrupulous man, who first won her love, and then deserted her, and that cold, frivolous villain was Guy de Beaumirail. You did not know all that, sir, when you wrote and spoke to me as you did."

"Certainly not; I knew there had been some litigation. But, whoever may have first moved it, let us remember it was De Beaumirail who suffered, and I must add, that even had I known every circumstance you have mentioned, I should have applied to you in his behalf all the same."

"Then, Sir, you would have taken a great liberty," said Miss Gray, flushing brilliantly.

"I don't mean to argue a case that does not exist, ma'am, but I avail myself of this opportunity to re-open the suit which I ventured to prefer on his behalf."

Miss Laura Challys Gray had taken nothing by her motion, neither did old Mr. Parker by his.

"Admitting that you have had provocation, my dear young lady, remember that you are bound to love them that hate you, to do good to them that despitefully use you and persecute you, to bless them that curse you."

"Twaddle, sir — as you misapply and pervert the words — twaddle and nauseous cant. How can you talk so?" said the young lady, changing colour rapidly.

"Oh, my dear Miss Gray, oh, pray, you don't seem to reflect how very shocking such language is," said the old clergyman.

"You don't seem to reflect, sir, how very shocking yours is! what a perversion of the Bible! We are told to discriminate between the wicked and the good; we are told to have natural affections; we are told to have common sense, and common fairness, and common decency; to honour our parents, and not, that I remember, to honour their murderers."

"My dear ma'am, the obligations of charity are immense; read Saint Paul — read his first epistle to the Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter; read the sermon on the Mount, the sixth chapter of Saint Matthew."

"I know it all, Sir; I know the Bible as well as anyone need; but it is not to be read all at one side; reconcile your blind charity with Saint Paul's command, that he that will not work, neither shall he eat; and if any man, being a professed Christian, be also a sinner, we are commanded to let him be accursed, and to avoid him as if he had the plague. Sir, your distortion of our reasonable faith is a blunder; it is imbecile, and not only imbecile, but wicked; and if I thought you represented Christianity truly, I should cease to be a Christian. I am sorry I have detained you; I expected to find you accessible to reason, and I have found you a clergyman — exactly — exactly a clergyman, and I feel very like a fool, sir, and — and I've only to say, good-bye."

So, for his sound doctrine this old gentleman received a sound jobation, and the beautiful young lady, the spoilt child, looked wonderfully brilliant, and handsome, as she blew him up. With a bow, and a faint sad smile of patience — not put on, quite unconscious — he drew towards the door, and without more parley, disappeared.

"We are both fools, but he's the oldest," she said, in soliloquy, with the same carmine tint in her cheeks. "And now he's gone to shake off the dust from his feet, and plenty of dust he has got there — for a testimony against me." She looked at her watch. It was later than she thought. She touched the bell, and ordered up her cousin, Charles Mannering, from the library. She complained of the clergyman, and commanded Charles, as it were, to agree with her. But Charles, on the contrary, took the other side — very quietly, at first, but more spiritedly, as she urged him. She was very much vexed — more than she quite cared to show.

"When you have quite finished your lecture, tell me, and I shall tell you its effect."

"I hope I have not been very impertinent," said he, a little awkwardly, as he stood by the window and plucked a little blossom from one of the flowers that stood there. "I should not have mentioned the subject — I should not have ventured, only that you asked my opinion."

"I did not give you leave to pluck my flowers though, and that's of more consequence than anything you have said," she observed, a little angrily.

"Oh! I really wasn't thinking. I'm so sorry;" and be placed the little sprig gently on the table.

"And you two gentlemen might as well have spared your eloquence. It is pleasant, though one knows one is right, to have people to agree with us. But we disagree about everything, I think; not that it matters much, for it has not the slightest effect; that vain, worthless man shall be punished, with God's help, while I am spared to punish him; and your tiresome sophistries and platitudes have no effect but to heighten the disgust with which I have been always accustomed to hear you men support one another, through thick and thin, in all your enormities and oppressions, provided they have been directed against my miserable sex. I'm going out for a drive with Mrs. Wardell; and I shan't much mind if I don't see you again till this day week."

With which rude speech she left the room. Charles picked up the little flower he had laid on the table, and smelled at it once, and twice, absently, although it had no perfume; and twiddled it in his finger and thumb for a little, feeling indistinctly very much annoyed with his pretty cousin; much more vexed, in fact, than I think he would have been had she not been so pretty; and away went he under censure, like the clergyman.

"This day week — well, perhaps so, though this day fortnight may answer me as well; better, by Jove," said he, as he drove sulkily along Piccadilly towards his club.

In a dingy room in the Fleet, about the same time, a young man in slippers and dressing-gown, without a necktie, pale, utterly ennuié, with a long beard that added a premature gravity to the dejection of his face, nipped his lip with his teeth, with a frown of sudden pain as he listened to the close of Mr. Larkin's polished statement, heard his gentlemanlike condolences on their failure, and the metallic drawl of Mr. Levi as he contributed his share to the dolorous and vengeful duo.

The old clergyman was looking out upon the listless yard through a window which wanted cleaning. A silence followed the close of the dismal narrative. The Jew sat down and made half-a-dozen notes in his pocket-book, and totted a sum or two, and pulled out some letters.

Mr. Larkin being a polite person, and, as he liked reminding people, a gentleman, awaited with considerate attention the remarks which such a narrative might not unnaturally draw from a person in Mr. Guy de Beaumirail's situation.

That gentleman looked down on the agreement which lay upon the table, with the same sharp frown, drawing the paper toward him, and he drew his finger slowly down from signature to signature in a dreamy despair — there were so many; he had come so near his liberty — within one name. A pencil line was drawn where that talismanic name was to have been written, and with the same pencil thoughtful Mr. Larkin had traced the words "Miss Gray will have the goodness to sign here." De Beaumirail sighed heavily as his finger traced the descending file of names till it reached Mr. Larkin's inscription, and there it stopped, and gradually a strange smile, weary, patient, bitter, lighted up his pale face.

Mr. Larkin "hem'd" slightly to remind him that he was at hand and attentive. But notwithstanding this inducement, silence continued until that painful smile had slowly waned, and De Beaumirail, with his hands in his pockets, shuffled lazily to the clumsy old sofa, covered with faded red stuff, laid down with tarnished brass-headed nails, that stood at the far end of the room, and he took the arm of this in his hand, as if he was trying its strength with a tug or two; and, said he, in a low tone —

And De Beaumirail, with this brief soliloquy, threw himself down on the sofa, with his face to the wall, and lay there at his listless length.

Tall Mr. Larkin looked with his pink eyes at the clergyman, and slowly shook his tall, bald head, and red whiskers, and raised his large hand in religious pain.

Then Mr. Levi and he talked a little in murmurs by the window, about another matter, and the attorney and he appointed a meeting for next day; and soon, the good old clergyman finding himself alone with Monsieur de Beaumirail, accosted him mildly, as he lay on the sofa —

"You must allow me to say, my dear young friend, that I heard what you said, with pain; your words were not Christian."

"They were as Christian as I meant them to be," said De Beaumirail without moving.

"So young and so wealthy, yet insisting upon extreme rights with so much severity, and in a very vengeful spirit. I have been deeply disappointed," said the old man.

"Sir, I deplore it — I feel for you deeply — it is, indeed, a blow!" and after a pause added, a little hesitatingly —

"If I thought you would wish me, in this trying hour, to pray, or even to read with you —"

CHAPTER V.

BEYOND THE PRECINCTS OF GUILDFORD HOUSE.

GUILDFORD HOUSE missed a visitor next day. Its sober red brick and Caen stone, and its short dark files of rugged elms, saw not the passing shadow of Charles.

He had "sulked." He was quite high with his pretty cousin. He was lonely and short-tempered, but he didn't wish to go near her, and mightn't for many a day. But the day after, a little note reached him, asking, "Where have you been, or what have you been doing? Have you forgotten us quite, or why should I have the trouble of writing? Don't you remember there are fifty things to be done, and what are you good for if not to consult with? Pray do come immediately. I do want a little advice about tradesmen and other things, and especially about hanging the other pictures. When we are a little settled, and have entered on the regular humdrum life we propose, you shall have leave of absence — a long one, if you insist; so comfort yourself with that hope, and in the meantime help us poor women in our loneliness."

"Capricious, disingenuous, impudent — what a sex they are! If I did right, I shouldn't go, I suppose — but is it worth a quarrel?" said Charles, very much pleased, I think; and he arrived in the 'bus at the corner next Guildford House more promptly than was, perhaps, strictly dignified, under the circumstances of his sudden recall.

So his friendly relations were restored, and their conversation was untroubled by an allusion to Guy de Beaumirail. The fuss of settling was nearly over, and as things began to subside into that humdrum in which Miss Laura Challys Gray chose to discover, for the present, the secret of human happiness, she began, he fancied, to grow already ever so little weary of the half-conventual and (according to the "arcadian" portrayed in Dresden china) half-arcadian simplicity of life in which she had embarked.

"Slow! Life's always slow, if you mean dull; but this is nothing like so stupid as living in a round of balls, concerts, and kettle-drums. I saw that for half a season; an interval of quiet has saved me, and nothing on earth shall ever tempt me back again into that enervating and headaching intoxication.

"You don't, however, fancy that I'm quite a fool," she said, "and no one but a fool could think of living without either occupation or amusement. I shall, soon find both for myself; there are many things to be seen."

"Well, yes, some of them, I must, I suppose. But there's no need to be in any great hurry. I sometimes think I might very well wait till they find me out; and in this wilderness of London, I might be hidden for a long time."

I know you are a misanthrope, you told me so; but are the Ardenbrokes and the Mayfields on your black list; wont they think it very odd your avoiding them?"

"I shan't avoid them. I like them, on the contrary; but there are times when one prefers postponing even what they like, and I think I should wish to dream away a few months of my life in this place first; just to try my experiment fairly."

Here was a silence. She had set Charles down to a little task of copying a song. She had laid down her work, and, leaning back in her chair, looked out of the window through the flowers. It was a listless hour.

"I call it an experiment, my good friend Charles, because you are pleased to be satirical upon the subject, and I was in a cowardly mood, I suppose. But it isn't an experiment. I mayn't like this life very much; but every day I feel a greater reluctance to enter upon the other — that gay world, the season, and all that. I saw quite enough of it to know that it is insincere, cold, unmeaning, and does not suit me; my idea of life is quite different. It must not be all simper, glare, and headache. Let the groundwork be a good, broad, neutral tint, like this sober existence, on which such sober lights as I may care to throw shall tell with the brilliancy of contrast; above all, let me be free — the liberty to do as I please — live how I like, and go where I list — my birthright — my liberty — to think of selling it for such a mess as that insipid and reckless world can offer!"

"A little oracular, arn't you? — but I see you are amused at the profundity of my self-delusion; you shall see; wait a little; you don't know half."

Charles was very much pleased, I think, at those sober resolves, and I fancy that it was his secret apprehension that they would never bear the strain of surrounding temptation that made him affect to treat her professions so slightly.

"I forget — let me see — where am I to take you to-day? Oh, yes, the ancient armour — the exhibition of water-colours; — and you said you'd look in again at West-Minster Abbey, and there was something else; but don't you think you are pretty sure to light on some of your people in some of these expeditions?"

"'Sufficient to the day.' I dare say I shall — so much the worse — well, and what follows?"

"Nothing particular; only it might be as well that you should call or report yourself, as be found out."

"Now, do pray be quiet — you're growing such a teaze — you have no idea — and it is so stupid. Let them find me out, if they must — I'll not go to their parties, and if they grow seriously troublesome it is very easy to go somewhere else — just as easy as it was to come here; besides, you fancy my plans are all whims and caprices. When the truth is, I have no spirits — no energy — and a positive dislike of nearly everyone — and a genuine horror of all that sort of thing you fancy I secretly like. I can't prevent your thinking — if so, it must be — that I am telling stories; but, remember this, I never told a lie in my life, and anyone who tells me an untruth, I never forgive; and that sort of thing would, you know, of itself disqualify me for all the amenities of human society."

"Here's the carriage, I think;" he interrupted, as I heard the iron gate swing back, and the roll of the wheels.

"So it is; and where is Julia Wardell? Oh! there — walking up and down before the steps."

So they went out, and had their drive, and saw their sights, and did their shopping, Charles dutifully accompanying them; and he came back again with them, and dined at Guildford Hall, and drank tea there.

"What are we to do to-night, Cousin Julia — how are we to pass the evening?" inquired Miss Gray, who delegated the prerogative of thinking to her fat chaperon.

"I don't know how to play — I think I shall learn some time or other. I do know how to play 'beggar-my-neighbour' — but that's all. What do you say, Charles?"

"I say this — and I'm sure Mrs. Wardell will support me — that enjoying good music and the opera, as you do, you ought to take a box for the remainder of the Season, and go there whenever you feel inclined — it will do you good."

"Immense good," acquiesced fat Mrs. Wardell, who, though she liked her sly nap in the evening in her cushioned chair, had also a liking for what she called a little "refined amusement" now and then. "Immense good! and I'll tell, you why," she exclaimed, with an enthusiasm which cost her a fit of coughing, by which the remaining argument or exhortation was lost to the world.

"I don't see why I shouldn't — I think the opera is quite within my conventual vow; there is just the objection that friends may see me, and fancy they are obliged to make me out-but I can reconnoitre carefully before coming to the front, and I need not be much in evidence."

"You'll say I'm inconsistent — I know you will — and it will be very treacherous if you do," said she.

"Because," she continued, "you advised it, remember; and, after all, it is merely transporting our little party to a smaller room, where we can listen to good music, and may be as much to ourselves as here."

"Then I am commanded by you to do the best I can to-morrow? We can get a box for to-morrow, and see how you like it."

"Well, yes — you may; and I'm glad you advise it. I think, after my vows of solitude, I should have been half ashamed to hint at it, so soon at least; but I've begun to have an uncomfortable kind of presentiment — I don't know what it is — an anticipation, an omen."

As she spoke she got up and sat by the window, looking out on the short, dark double row of trees, through whose rugged stems the moonbeams crossed.

"I know that kind of thing," said fat Mrs. Wardell plaintively; " I have experienced it, my dear — and in my case it was always followed by some affliction, particularly once," and she touched her handkerchief to her eyes.

"But I wont believe in omens," said Laura Gray; "and after all, I don't see that there is any form in which grief can well reach me now; of course I may die like anyone else, but this is not the sort of apprehension."

Mrs. Wardell touched the cushion beside her, and her little dog obeyed the signal, and she, in murmurs, and the dog in snarls, carried on a dialogue ; while Charles followed his pretty kinswoman to the window, and in a tone accordant with the moonlight hour, asked with a smile —

"I begin to think it is better having something of that kind to occupy one — to look forward to," said Miss Gray, half thinking, half answering him. "I have felt so oddly — I'm sure its nervous — a kind of fancy that I am — how shall I describe it? — watched — well, not exactly watched — a kind of feeling that I am going to meet somebody — I don't know whom — whom I have never seen, perhaps, except in a dream, or somehow," she laughed, "in a preexistent state, a kind of expectation mixed very largely with fear. And, of course, you and I know that the whole thing is purely nervous."

"But how do you mean watched — have you any reason to suspect any such thing? I'd like to see anyone presuming ——"

"No; there's no cat looking at the king or queen, that I know of," said Miss Gray; "and apropos of cats, you have not brought me the cat you promised — and an old maid without her cat is a witch without her familiar — and pray do choose me one of those huge creatures. I should so like one of those splendid northern tigresses."

"My darling Laura, you're not really going to bother Mr. Mannering about a cat. You haven't an idea what odious animals they are!" exclaimed Mrs. Wardell, who thought it might not contribute to the comfort of her lapdog.

"I had not an idea you heard me, Julia, darling. But there's no contending with instinct; unlike you, I'm going to be, as I said, an old maid — and so the invincible affinity between me and those demure and comfortable animals — so reserved, so querulous, and with such nice little claws, on occasion."

"I'm sure you're not serious," said Mrs. Wardell, with a lurch towards her lapdog on the cushion. "No; she would not, she couldn't be so cruel as to bring in a great big beast to the housey-wousey — to eat up poor little darling, precious Scampsicums, that its old mother doats upon!"

And the dog, with a sympathetic wriggle, playfully snapped at her nose, which, with an adoring smile, she had approached perhaps incautiously near. A squeak of alarm from Julia Wardell, and a shrill bark from the charming animal, and then a torrent of endearments from its fat and indulgent "mother," as she termed herself, closed the little episode.

And now their early evening drew to a close, and Charles Mannering took his leave; and he had hardly gone when the postman knocked. He left a letter, from which seemed gradually to germinate, as from a bulb, a living stem of romance that bore its sombre boughs, its blossoms, and its strange fruit, and gradually cast an inexplicable gloom upon her life.

CHAPTER VI.

A DIAMOND LOCKET.

"HOW very late for a letter!" said Miss Gray, who was thinking of going to her room. "I have only had four since we came here. A letter is quite an event — and this comes so late! Oh, here it is."

And the servant brought her a square letter, addressed with a broad-nibbed pen, and a firm hand, which she did not know, to "Miss Gray, Guildford House, Old Brompton."

She turned this letter round curiously. She had not six correspondents in the world. All her letters of business went direct to Mr. Gryston. This autograph she had certainly never seen before. It was a bold, rather large hand.

The letter contained a small enclosure — a coin, perhaps — and was sealed in black wax, with a very odd device. The motto said, in French, "Choose which dart," and represented Cupid with his arrow drawn to the bead at one side, and, at the other, Death with his javelin brandished — a small, but very distinct and beautifully cut seal. Solitude and monotony form the discipline which prepares the nerves for odd impressions, and Laura Challys Gray was predisposed toward that vague superstition which has more to do with the nerves than reason.

It was a London letter, dropped in a West-end office; and this also troubled her. Her retreat had been discovered — and so soon! With a growing anticipation of something disagreeable, and a wish that it had never come, she glanced again at the bold, distinct character of the address, and at the hurried, blotted monogram — now undecipherable — which was traced in the corner. Was it a monogram or only an accidental mark? She could not make it out, but she thought it was a blotted monogram.

Her intuitive misgiving postponed the moment of certainty, and when Mrs. Wardell asked —

"Don't ask me now, dear. I should hate to open it. Some stupid thing, I dare say, that should have gone to Mr. Gryston. We can read it at breakfast. It's from no one that we know."

When she got to her room she laid it, still unopened, on her table; and it was not until her maid had gone that, unable to resist longer, she opened it.

It contained an enamelled gold locket, very prettily set in brilliants. It was not new; it had lain long in the piece of tissue paper that was wrapped round it, and was a little tarnished. It contained some very silken, dark brown hair, a little like her own; and on the other side some interlaced initials were engraved, which she did not stop to decipher.

The writing in the letter was in the same hand, but much smaller and more elegant than that upon the envelope.

"MISS LAURA CHALLYS GRAY, — You will never know more of me than I chose to disclose. That, for certain reasons, shall be little. I observe, with admiration and respect, how, with firmness and justice beyond your years, you have answered the application of De Beaumirail. You remember your father; you remember your sister — I know not for what purpose, if not to subserve the ends of justice, our affections were made strong enough to outlive the frail beings to whom they were dedicated. The retribution is virtuous — persist! This locket, which I once had thoughts of giving to a degraded kinsman, De Beaumirail, contains your dead sister's hair. Deserve my good-will. Go where you will, my eye is upon you. Do what you will, my hand can reach you. Those who know it not are not to learn from you, that De Beaumirail is a prisoner. He is almost, and shall be utterly forgotten. What am I — man or woman — young or old — kind or malignant — whence come I — whither go I? With respect to you, the writer is a shadow —a shadow, however, that if your path be crooked will cross it."

"A weak invention of the enemy," said Miss Laura Challys Gray, making her quotation with an uncomfortable smile. "The enemy! But what enemy have I, except, I suppose, that wicked De Beaumirail? and this, certainly, is no friend of his."

"What a piece of melodrama! The idea of trying to frighten a sane person with such rubbish!"

She examined the seal again and again, tried to make something of the little scribble in the corner, and, standing in her slippers and dressing-gown, read the whole thing through once more.

"It's a mere hoax! Who can it be? It certainly is not Charles Mannering. There is no one but Ardenbroke," she thought. "It must be he — but, oh no. I forgot the allusion to my sister and father. And this little locket — no; that's quite out of the question."

What a contemptible thing," she murmured, sitting down in a great chair by the fireplace. "How ridiculous! What an idea the writer must have of me, to fancy I should be frightened or influenced by such a device."

She looked down at, the slipper in which her tiny foot was tapping the floor; and then looking up, smiling, she said —

"And what a fool I am to think for a moment about it. I would tear it into little bits but that I may chance to trace the author by the writing, and I half doubt whether it is worth sparing till to-morrow morning."

She was more interested by it, however, than she was quite aware, and more alarmed. It seemed, little by little, to her exaggerated fears, that the privacy of her life was gone, a secret eye watching her intensely, and an undetected and possibly potent influence interfering with her daily life. "Kind or malignant" — here, at all events, were evidences of an unaccountable interest in her doings, of the accuracy with which the writer was informed, and the malignant pretensions with which he or she affected to control her conduct. She was growing more uncomfortable.

When she lay down she could not sleep, but lay awake in excited conjecture. Every theory she framed broke down. Sometimes it seemed that her own servants were spies upon her; sometimes that the simple old clergyman had unwittingly made a confidant of some masked enemy of De Beaumirail's.

But these conjectures gave place, and failed one after the other, and left her with the uneasy sense of being watched by an unseen eye — a vague suspicion and constraint that gathered strength as the minutes passed, and assured her that her solitude was false.

On the table by the fireplace lay the letter, and on it the locket, which, amid the dark thoughts that gathered about her, glimmered with a sinister brilliancy in the distant light which she had left burning on her dressing-table. In the obscure light, that little glimmering circle simulated to her fancy the steady eye that observed her, and associated with the relic of her dead sister, helped to wring her girlish imagination with a strange pain.

She was glad she had preserved the letter. She was resolved to find out who wrote it. She would consult her friends; she would charge Gryston with it; she would place it in the hands of the London detectives; she would lose her life but she would discover the author of the letter — and, what then?

"Well, it can't be legal, for it is certainly cowardly and wicked to try and frighten poor creatures like me with anonymous letters. If the laws permit that sort of thing, pretty laws we live under!"

CHAPTER VII.

ROBERT LE DIABLE.

BEHOLD our little party installed in the box which had been promptly secured in the name of Miss Gray, Guildford House, Old Brompton.

"Something a little triste. I always thought, in the aspect of this great house — I mean, compared with a theatre; these little curtained pigeon-holes, real boxes, partitioned, and dim — very splendid, the coup d'œil, a sort of oriental richness — superb and luxurious, but also a little gloomy," said Miss Gray.

She was leaning back in her chair, and making a cautious survey of the long sweep of boxes, which were beginning to be inhabited.

"Yes, over there; no one in it," said Charles. "You have found out some one you know — haven't you?"

"0h! Perhaps so," she answered, with a smile and a little shrug. "I had better look again."

And she did turn her glasses in the direction he indicated, and he saw them again linger, he fancied, at the same point in their circuit. It was at a box where sat two gentlemen, whose appearance had already struck him.

One was an elderly man, with a long, close-cropped, gray head, gray whiskers, and well-waxed moustache of the same colour, whose white-gloved hands, folded together, rested on the edge of the box, as, with a grave face, rather apathetic, and with features commonplace, insignificant, but on the whole grim, he looked steadily towards the stage. The other was a singularly handsome and elegant-looking young man, with dark hair moustache, and small peaked beard in the Italian style, an oval face, and large soft eyes, and delicately pencilled eyebrows. This face was very feminine. There was colour in the cheeks, and a soft lustre in those large eyes, with their long lashes, and a soft carmine touched the lips. The waving hair lay low upon a very white forehead. Altogether, the tints and formation of the face were feminine and delicate, and there was something of fire and animation, too, that gave it that kind of beauty that belonged to the great Italian tenor in his young days.

When Charles Mannering's glasses rested on this face, it was with an unpleasant feeling — a little pang of scarcely conscious jealousy — an intuition of antagonism. He was standing behind Miss Gray, and, stooping as he lowered his glasses, he said with an unreasonably bitter feeling —

"There are two fellows over there. Did you observe them? An old gray man who seems to have come to hear the opera, and a young, man — such a specimen of a man-milliner! He seems to have painted under his eye-lashes, and put on some rouge. He certainly has, and he has done nothing since he came in but stare at all the women in the house. He'll get himself a precious good kicking if he doesn't take care." So spoke Charles, and affected a little laugh.

"I don't think I've seen anyone answering that description," said she, indifferently.

"0h! you must have observed him. You wont deny it, you who hate anything that resembles — what shall I say? — a concealment."

"A caricature is not a description, and yet it may indicate a person, and you forget that you have helped me by mentioning that old man with the long gray head. Well, tell me — what is it?"

"I? Story, Lord bless you, I have none to tell. Interesting subject, no doubt; but I was merely thinking how like a girl in masquerade he is."

"I think him very handsome — he is handsome — I don't say exactly in the style I admire, but you must see that he is. Hush! We are going to have that divine tenor again. Oh! isn't that voice angelic?"

This night there were selections from two operas. The scenes from "La Sonnambula" had closed. In the interval between it and those that followed from "Robert le Diable," the people in Miss Gray's box, who had talked now and then during the singing, grew perversely silent. Most persons whose spirits are, at all capricious have at times experienced in a theatre something like the sensation which that young lady on a sudden felt just now. A sudden air of desolateness seemed to overspread the stage; an idea of cavernous solitudes beyond, half-lighted and silent, made the scene joyless and unreal; the illusion failed; imagination and the spirits collapsed together; the music sounded jaded and forlorn; the lights grew less light, and fancy and enjoyment chilled.

The descent of the curtain did not dissipate this odd depression; she leaned back; the whole scene had lost its interest. "It comes from over there — this influence comes from that singular looking person. Such strange beauty, such brilliant intelligence, and yet such a gleam of malevolence as sometimes looks half fiendish — he is the writer of that letter enclosing the locket with poor, darling Maude's hair; and that horrid old man beside him, so stiff and apathetic, who has never turned his head once, or changed a muscle of his gray face, and whose arm moves as if it was made of wood, he looks as if he were dead, and just animated for this occasion. I wish so much I had not come."

This young lady, looking apathetically forward over the heads of the distant people in the stalls, over the foot-lights, to the line where the gray boards and the curtain meet, is conscious of those images which disturbed her, reflected obliquely on her eye — that brilliant, malignant young man; that cadaverous old one. Had these two figures and faces in reality all that sinister character with which they seemed to present themselves to her? Not one particle, possibly. I can't tell. Miss Laura Challys Gray had a fancy highly excitable, and sometimes sombre. An intuition, fancied or real, told her that the young man in the box at the other side was the author of that letter, which, in spite of every effort, troubled her more and more. And from this one speck, gradually rose and spread that darkness through which she saw all things changed.

This Robert le Diable did not find in that house a spectator so pre-disposed to receive in good faith the whole melodramatic impression of that great church-yard scene. The peaks and shafts of the ruined abbey, glimmering in moonlight, the terrible necromantic basso, and the sheeted phantoms, all but a moving picture — had yet a relation to real emotions which circumstances and fancy bad already set in motion within her; and Miss Gray, to whom accident made the opera and all such scenic glamour still new, gazed on in the sort of erie rapture with which she might have read, for the first time, in the solitude of her room, the ghostly scene in the "Lay of the last Minstrel" in the aisle of Melrose Abbey.

Had Charles suspected how rapt and thrilled she was, he would, no doubt, have smiled, notwithstanding his pre-occupation. She was absorbed-music, scene, and figures, all blended in one solemn, supernatural impression that was for her quite genuine. Leaning back again, with a sigh, as if something drew her, without thinking, she turned her glasses unconsciously on the box where these people sat. The effect was startling.

Through her glasses she saw, it seemed but four feet removed, straight before her, the person of whom she had been thinking so disagreeably. That young man held his glasses on the edge of the box in both hands, as if he had but that moment lowered them. The sensation was as if their eyes at that short distance had met. His were directed on her with a steady, stern, and penetrating gaze, that seemed to hold her fixed for a moment — his face lighted with a faint smile of recognition.

With a kind of start she turned her glasses away, and carried them slowly on a feminine effort to conceal the effect of that accidental encounter over a space so wide. She felt her cheeks, her very throat and forehead flush intensely, and then a chill and pallor came. There seemed to her a character of menace in that smile, and she felt that she was detected, and probably her thoughtless look misinterpreted.

She could have cried with vexation and terror. She had not time to reflect what a fool she was. A vague suspicion, however, of the light in which others might view her uneasiness about the whole occurrence, and some other feelings, had made her lock the letter and the locket up, and evade good Mrs. Wardell's inquiries in the morning. That was her first secret.

At this moment she felt so uncomfortable and disconcerted that she would gladly have got up and left her place. She did not wish to talk over her folly with other people; her reluctance to divulge to old Mrs. Wardell, and to Charles, the odd occurrence of yesterday evening, had grown upon her, and was now insurmountable; and Challys Gray had a scornful hatred of even the smallest and most harmless untruths, which unfitted her, a good deal, as she felt for the benevolences of the world.

In the meantime Charles, whom the handsome unknown had also impressed as disagreeably, though quite in a different way, again looked at him from his less prominent post of observation.

The young man who had excited the contempt of Charles still occupied more of his attention than the opera. He fixed his glasses on him for a moment, with a stern countenance. He was, indisputably, in a certain style, the handsomest fellow he had ever seen; the outline was, as he said himself, almost feminine. The tints were those of a rich enamel; and, to crown all, not only had Challys Gray observed him, but he had detected the glasses of the unknown in her direction more than once. It was very provoking. The thought that he had been the person to persuade his fair kinswoman to come here also soured him.

"I don't know how it is," he thought, "that fellow has the air of an adventurer — a charlatan."

As he opened this vein of suspicion, however, he saw Lord Ardenbroke enter the box of the unknown, place his hand with a kind smile gently on the young man's arm, and shake him by the hand, as he turned about smiling, also. So that suspicion was exploded.

It certainly was Lord Ardenbroke, there could be no mistake about that, and they were chatting together, as it seemed, in a very friendly way.

CHAPTER VIII.

ALFRED DACRE.

"Over there," said Charles, with a glance and a little nod, indicating the box at the opposite side.

"Your cousin, Lord Ardenbroke, has just made his appearance, and he's talking to that lady-like young gentleman about whom we so nearly quarrelled just now."

"If I am to be discovered, there's no one I should rather be found out by; he's so good-natured, and so pleasant."

She almost hoped he might see her and come across, so intensely curious had she become to learn something about that young man. If she could only be certain that he was not the writer of the anonymous letter which made her so restless, she would never think of him more. It was that fanciful association that connected him with that disguised communication, that made him so interesting.

In the meantime what had passed between Lord Ardenbroke and the charlatan of Charles's dream, and the avenger of Miss Challys Gray's?

"Five years — six years, so it is. I did not think you could have known me. I hadn't this" — he touched his small peaked beard as he spoke — "and wore my hair long — do you remember — like young France, and I fancied I was so changed."

"I never forget a face," said Lord Ardenbroke. "And how long have you been in this part of the world, and what have you been doing these hundred years?"

"I've been all over the world, and doing everything, and I'm here in London upon a very secret affair — diplomatic, shall I say? I can't tell you yet, I'll call it a — what? — a secret mission" — he laughed a little — "and I know you'll not be vexed, but I must ask you to do me this kindness, not to mention that I've been here, I mean in this town of yours, to any living creature. I might, I'm quite serious, get into a very awkward scrape, if it were known, and you'll promise."

"I see, you don't know what to make of me," said this young man, with a smile, perhaps the least degree in the world embarrassed, "but you shall, no one before you; I only wish I could tell you all about it now, you could give me counsel well worth having, but the truth is, the secret isn't mine — it is quite other people's."

"I shan't say I saw you," said Lord Ardenbroke, with a grave and quiet decision, "but would there be the least use in asking you to come to us to-morrow?"

"No," said the young man, with a smile and a shake of the head, "nothing would give me greater pleasure, but I can't go anywhere."

"Well, I was afraid you couldn't, from what you said; but you'll be coming back, I hope, soon, more your own master, and then I'll not let you off."

"I've given up music, except my own miserable singing, for my private entertainment (he laughed), for years. I used to live in the opera, but one changes."

"No, I've given that up also; one tires of everything at last, except — there's one pursuit I still do enjoy. I studied Lavater, you remember, or you forget, but I did, and I think it an inexhaustible science, and I've been exercising my craft on a face this evening, and it has rather interested me."

"By Jove!" exclaimed Lord Ardenbroke, looking in the direction of Miss Gray's box, I'm so glad! why that's ——"

"Don't tell me who, pray, just for a moment; she's good-looking, as we all see."

"Am I to speak quite plainly, in my character as philosopher, physiognomist, psychologist?"

"I mean it; I could show you the lines and proportions in that, I may say, lovely face that quite settle the point; she is a fiend if you place her in certain relations."

"That's because you fancy that cruelty and malice are inseparable. She has no malice, and yet she is diabolically cruel. Recollect, I know absolutely nothing of her past life, and nothing of her character except what my art reveals. But that art is infallible, you'll find I'm right."

"I shall be very sorry," said Lord Ardenbroke with a smile, "and till then I must venture to question your mode of divination."

"You don't fancy that the people who burnt heretics in Smithfield, were more ill-natured than others; they were simply stupid on a certain point — now there's a face quite beautiful, but it shows a capability, not a habit, of intense narrowness, intense obstinacy, and intense violence — she has imagination also. She might be in certain situations a character bigoted and terrible. There are fine qualities also — very, but I shan't trouble you with them. But, because she has so many fine attributes, I repeat, she is worth punishing. Who is she?"

There was a slight tension of features, as if a screw tightened. While putting the question he fixed his dark eyes on Lord Ardenbroke.

"Really, how odd! The moment I looked at her, the thought struck me, that she was one of that family. It is a name that always strikes me with pain when I hear it. I sometimes think they had reason to complain, but that's an old story now, and I shan't disturb it. She's very pretty, and unless I mistake, she will take very good care of herself. I have fifty things to ask you, but not here. I know where to find you, and you'll allow me to look in on you?"

"Only too happy, and remember, you really must. I'm going now to that box over the way — I have not seen her for such a time."

"Shall I introduce you?" whispered the young man to his elderly companion, with an arch and bitter smile. The man of the long white head replied by slightly hitching his shoulder and turning a degree more away, his eyes still fixed on the remote prompter's box, while a shadow of displeasure gathered on his face, and he muttered some inaudible monologue to himself.

It was a mere whisper, and having uttered it the young man, still smiling, gave his hand again to Lord Ardenbroke, who bid him good-bye, and vanished.

"You knew verra well I did not want to be introduced, what for should I?" said the old man, with traces of a Scotch accent, grimly, and without turning. "What for should I?"

"And the way you talk — the questions you ask at him, and the things you do, I'd say ye were daft, and I tell ye plainly, sir, I don't understand it," said the old man, turning and looking full at him for a moment.

"No; you young men, if ye were a bit more steady and less conceited, ye'd be nothing the worse o't," said the gray man sternly.

"Cautious, cautious, but don't you know that rashness is often the highest caution?"

"I have my own ideas about it," said the young man. "I say with Monsieur Danton — l'audace, encore l'audace, toujours Faudace!"

"And if I wanted to speak with Lord Ardenbroke," continued his elderly companion, "what for shouldn't I, without cereemony, for I ha' spoken with him sayveral times, it will be eight years since, and upon business of his own, confidential business, but I've no desire to renew the acquaintance, and if I had, ye'll understand, I should consider the present, sir, a vera inopportune time for ony such purpose."

"Well, well, Mr. Dacre, there, and as I am acting. with you. Mr. Dacre, I take the liberty of reminding you, sir, that business is business, and I see no room for trifling here."

"None in the world — quite the contrary, by Jove. I quite agree with you," answered Dacre.

"And I tauld ye somebody would recognise ye; ye should a sat more back, and held a bit o' playbill or something before your face."

"Or worn a paper nose and a pair of spectacles. But seriously, I had not an idea he could have known me after so long a time, for I am very much altered."

"And ye needn't have talked so long with him; he's vera well known, and I saw other folk with spy-glasses turned this way, while he was here."

"Well, they didn't hurt us, and what for shouldn't I hae a crack wi' the Lord after sae mony years?" said Dacre, with a mimicry of the Scottish dialect.

"It needn't have been so long," said the gray man, accepting the phrase in good faith.

"And now, to change the subject. In a quarter of an hour this opera will be over, and then comes the ballet, and I mean to leave this in exactly five minutes," said Dacre, and he looked at his watch.

CHAPTER IX.

AN ADVENTURE.

IN the meantime, in Miss Laura Challys Gray 's box, another greeting had taken place, and after some talk, unnecessary to set down here, Lord Ardenbroke said —

"And so you think my friend very distinguished-looking, and — what else — I forget?"

"Yes, I think he is — and I said, fierce, sinister sometimes; and you are to answer me two questions," she said.

"Well, I'll, tell you," said Lord Ardenbroke. "He's good-natured — he s agreeable — he's always in good spirits — he's very good company, and — I really think that is everything."

"He has come here, he says, upon political business; that's his own account of it; but there may be some other mixed in it; in fact, I should be very much surprised if there was any public business in it whatever."

Miss Challys Gray was trying to spell out some clue to the author of her anonymous letter.

"That's a thing which might be very easily hidden. He was an intimate acquaintance, not an intimate friend, do you see? — very different thing. I have had no experience of him in any other way; he has had quarrels like other people — a good many; but one does not often know who is in the right, and who altogether in the wrong; and the truth is, except of his lighter qualities, I have had little or no experience of him."

"Let me consider. Isn't this a very severe cross-examination? Well, yes, this much I am sure of — he is related to relations of De Beaumirail, and" — he laughed merrily — "I should be very much flattered if any young lady were to make such particular inquiries about me."

"I know hardly anything of him, I told you, except what I've said; but I never heard of anything of the kind."

There's no particular reason, except that I promised, only five minutes ago. He doesn't choose anyone to know that he's here, and he made me promise — I'm quite serious."

"You must go and get his leave just to tell one person who will not repeat it to any other creature living."

"But wont that be putting you in a very interesting light? What is he to think?"

"But he'll be bound to secrecy, just as I am, and you, still in the dark, and — just look there — there's no use in debating it further, for they have left their box, and, perhaps, I shan't see him again during his stay in town."

Yes, the box was empty, and Miss Laura Challys Gray was vexed. She had been so near, she fancied, obtaining a key to the puzzle that excited her curiosity and her fears, and now, perhaps, she should never know.

Lord Ardenbroke took his leave. Then followed a listless interval — nearly a quarter of an hour — before the curtain went down.

"It's very good — and the tenor quite angelic, and that basso wonderful — but somehow I haven't enjoyed it. I don't know; I haven't been in spirits."

"You were talking to Ardenbroke about that man with the get-up, after Mario. Had he much to say about him?"

He fancied that a faint tinge of crimson stole to her cheeks as she answered his question.

"I did not think of that, it is very true; if we knew all about him it might throw a light —— "

How ridiculous, and even coarse, this eagerness about a total stranger! thought Charles Mannering — throw a light indeed; what stuff!

A few minutes later, having seen the ladies into their carriage, and bid good night — it the window, Charles lighted his cigar, not in a cheerful temper, and walked away towards his lodging, through streets already very nearly deserted, while Miss Gray's brougham drove at a rapid pace towards Guildford House.

Turning the corner of a street, at a rapid pace, the of horse, young and fresh, swerved a little, the wheel struck one of those iron posts that guard the flagway, and in an instant one of the horses was lying on the pavement, and the other plunging furiously; Mrs. Wardell screaming, while the carriage rocked most uncomfortably.

The door was, however, opened almost instantly, and not by her footman, whose descent from the box was delayed by the plunging of the horses. It was the handsome unknown of the opera who opened the door. By the light of the carriage lamps she had seen this tall slender figure approaching from the front, and recognised him in his loose coat. The fine eyes and oval face, also, were not to be mistaken.

It was he who held the door open and assisted Miss Gray to alight. He led her to the pathway with as ceremonious a respect as heroes in fairy tales lead their princesses, leaving Mrs. Wardell to the care of the servant, who had, by this time, got to the ground.

"You can't stay here till your carriage and horses are ready; it may be a very long wait; my carriage," he said, "is quite at your disposal; shall I tell your servant that he is to attend you home, and your friend? I wish it was more comfortable."

As the coachman reported something amiss with the harness, and a possible delay, the stranger's offer was accepted, the two ladies got in, and he shut the door; Miss Gray's servant got up beside the driver, and away they went.

CHAPTER X.

A FEW WORDS IN THE HALL.

AS they drove homeward Miss Gray was silent, but her thoughts were happier. There was even a little excitement that was pleasant. Did this heroic looking young man interest her independently of all theories about the nameless letter or the diamond locket, about which her conjectures grew more and more confused?

Here she was, sitting, in his carriage, a very nice one — pretty, elegant even — and utterly in the dark as to who or what he was — longing to know — with nothing but a moveable sheet of glass between her and the coachman, who could relate everything about him, and, yet, still in the dark, without a conjecture as to how she was ever to learn more than the generalities she had collected from Ardenbroke.

"Did you remark the young man who was so kind about lending us his carriage; I mean, did you recognise him as the same who sat with an ugly old man at the opera, nearly opposite to us?"

"I've been wondering who he is; he's a friend of Ardenbroke's; but Ardenbroke would not tell me who he is, and we must make it all out; you are to manage that, mind, when we get home; you can see the servant and ask him whether our horse was much hurt, or anything you please, only you must learn the name of his master."

"Very good, my dear.; suppose you tell Mrs. Rumble to get him some supper, and to make out everything while he is eating it; and I can call him into the dining-room first, so that you shall have time to give Rumble her instructions."

This little plot was hardly completed when they reached the gate of Guildford House. It was thrown open. The carriage lamps flashed on the knotted trunks of the old elms, as they flew by, and with a sudden sweep they drew up at the steps.

The plan, so artfully contrived, however, broke down before it was so much as set in motion; for the door was again opened by the handsome young man who owned the carriage. He assisted the ladies, in turn, to alight, and Miss Gray with only a little bow, and "We are very much obliged," ran up the steps, and disappeared, leaving Mrs. Wardell to deal with the stranger.

This handsome cavalier might have assumed this invitation to mean precisely so much as similar hospitalities so offered, do mean, and no more. Even Mrs. Wardell, curious as she had become — and what passion is more unscrupulous than curiosity? — was at her wit's end to find a decent pretext for urging him to come into the house at such an hour, had he hesitated.

But this difficulty did not occur, for he instantly availed himself of her invitation.

He followed her into the hall, and said, "I could not deny myself the honour of coming in, just to receive from your own lips the assurance that you and your young friend were not hurt."

"Hurt! well I do hope not injured, but shaken — shaken a good deal, and — and our nerves — you can understand — but no serious injury."

"I'm so happy to hear you say so; and would it be very impertinent to ask leave to call to inquire to-morrow? My name is Dacre; your servant mentioned that the young lady is Miss Gray, of Gray Forest. I knew, at one time, some of her relations, and I shall do myself the honour to call."

And thus speaking, with a bow that was graceful, as well as stately and grave, he took his leave; and in another minute was driving rapidly in the direction from which he had come.

"He's coming to-morrow," said Mrs. Wardell, who repaired forthwith to Laura Gray's room, very purple, and very much out of breath, "and his name is Dacre; and I think him one of the very most agreeable and elegant young men I ever saw; and he knew some of your people long ago, and he was so kind, and anxious, and attentive."

"Oh! coming here? How odd! And why is he coming here?" asked Laura, very gravely.

"Dacre — I think I recollect the name, but I'm not sure. Well, he'll call; do you intend seeing him?"

"I see no reason why I shouldn't, merely to tell him how we are," answered Mrs. Wardell.

"No, there's no reason," acquiesced Laura Gray, slowly; "did he come into the house?"

"Yes; just to the hall, but merely to inquire, and ask leave to call to-morrow, which, of course, I could not refuse; but it may be merely a call at the hall door, you know."

"Very likely. Dacre? Do you remember the name among friends or acquaintance of ours?"

"He only said that he once knew relations of yours. No; I can't say I do," answered Mrs. Wardell.

Laura Gray was sitting before her glass, in her dressing-gown, with her line hair loose about her shoulders. She leaned back in her chair.

"Dacre?" repeated Laura, thinking. "I saw him, I told you, at the opera; but distance, you know — and — I don't know how it is, but people do look different in such places. Did he look like a singer, or an actor, when you saw him near — in the house?"

"Not at all; he looked just like anyone else, only very handsome, and distinguished," answered the old lady.

"He seems to have made a very agreeable impression," said Laura, smiling, and relapsed into thought. "Dacre, I cannot recall it; yet I feel as if I ought to remember it. And what hour is he to call?"

"He did not say; and if he asks to come in I don't see why I shouldn't see him," said Mrs. Wardell.

"Ardenbroke will be here to-morrow, I'm certain. What fun if he and Mr. Dacre happened to meet here after all their mystery to-night," said Miss Gray.

So they continued to chat together till it was time to say good night, and old Mrs. Wardell went away.

Then Laura Gray, having also despatched her maid, unlocked her desk, and took out the mysterious letter and the diamond locket.

Just as that glimmering circle flashed suddenly and steadily on her eye, had the conviction gleamed on her mind that the person whom she saw that night in the box with that long-headed old man, was the author of the letter which she now scanned with an excited interest. As she read, the image of the young man, as he appeared for a moment before her, when her glass had lighted upon him unawares — was before her handsome, sinister, watching. As she read, still she saw that faint, stern smile, that seemed to imply a mutual understanding — shadowed unpleasantly before her.

And now, what did her evidence amount to? Simply to this smile and this intuition. A case of shadows. And yet this intuition continued, and the smile abated not. A painful impression — a persistent phantom — that followed her to her bed — and showed still through the filmy curtain of her eyelid.

CHAPTER XI.

DE BEAUMIRAIL'S AMBASSADOR.

EARLY next day, about eleven o'clock, Miss Gray was among her flowers with hoe and rake, and a pair of those rough, gauntlet shaped gloves, with which ladies protect their hands in such operations, and a small boy assisting, and to-ing and fro-ing on errands, and often on his knees grubbing in the mould.

The sun shone out pleasantly, the tufted foliage of the old trees cast soft shadows on the grass; and. yielding to indolence, and inspired by the quietude of the miniature scene, she dropped her trowel, and seated herself on her garden chair, at first watching the labours of the boy, who was working away among the weeds and flowers. But her thoughts soon carried her elsewhere. One subject had begun to engross her mind. It engaged it last at, night, and first in the morning, and haunted her incessantly.

The little diamond locket she wore about her neck, bidden inside her dress, she now drew forth, and looked at the rich brown hair it contained with a, pang of bitter remembrance. She brooded over that sad history with a commiseration that deepened into rage. "Thank God," she murmured, "I never faltered — it is my duty to be firm."

The shorn grass under the windows was cut into flower-beds, glowing and glaring all over with masses of blossom.

The double row of elms leading down to the gate was at her left, some equally tall and spreading trees stood at intervals by the lane side, lilacs and laburnums made an underwood, and the wall had a thick mantle of ivy.

Gliding with slow, long paces from under the deep shadow, in which the noble elms at her left enveloped the short avenue, emerged from between their trunks, upon the grass, the old clergyman whom she had dismissed so summarily on the clay after her arrival at Guildford House.

It was on the whole with a compunctious feeling that she saw the old man whom she had dismissed so rudely, approaching her again. She rose, and with a few quick steps hastened to meet him, looking grave, sorrowful, with a few quick steps extended.

"I'm so much obliged to you for coming to me again. It is very good of you, sir, and I'm ashamed of my rudeness, and beg your pardon. I hope you forgive me, sir." She looked with sad and earnest eyes in his.

"Oh, dear me, I never thought it more than a momentary vexation — pray think of it no more. I took the liberty of calling to beg two or three minutes."

"Oh, sir! not, I hope, on the same subject; but whatever it may be, I shall listen with great respect, for I know very well how pure and kind your motive must be, and I am quite ashamed when I think of my ungracious and flippant words. Wont you come into the house?"

"Thank you, ma'am, very much, but a friend who dropped me at the corner will call for me in a very few minutes, and so I had better say what I came to tell you here."

"But, oh! pray do come in. Do, Mr. Parker. I can't think you have quite forgiven me, unless you do. Oh! do, Sir, please."

It was one of her fancies, and when an idea took possession of her she was irresistible. The old clergyman found himself, quite against his first intention, in the drawing-room of Guildford House, making his little speech in the cause of humanity, while the listening flowers on the window-stone trembled and nodded. But what effect did he produce where to mould the will would be to unlock the gates of despair?

"It is indeed, ma'am, as you rightly suppose, upon the same subject that I come to speak only a few words, very few, but, I trust, moving words. Yesterday evening Mr. de Beaumirail sent for me. I found him very ill; I found him in despair. In that miserable place, among the other prisoners, is a clever but unfortunate physician, who has been there for more than ten years. As I left Mr. de Beaumirail I met this gentleman, Dr. Wiley, on the stairs, and he turned and walked down with me, and said he, 'I observe that you visit Mr. de Beaumirail. I went into his room to pay my respects this morning, as I do pretty often, and found him ill.' He used some technical terms which I did not understand, but he made it clear to me that he thought him in a bad way."

"I mean," answered the clergyman, "in a precarious state of health. Protracted confinement," he said, "in his present state, might in a short time prove fatal — I mean, reduce him to such a condition as would render his recovery impossible."

"Oh! Sir, isn't this cruel? isn't it distracting?" said Laura Gray, piteously wringing her hands. "Why do you urge me on this point? I have not told you half my reasons. I can hardly explain them to myself. You would think me mad. You argue with me as if you thought I acted from simple malice. There is what I told you mingling in it, but there is another feeling, quite different. Sit down for a moment, and let me tell you."

"Dear, dear!" murmured the old man, throwing a weary weight of disappointment into the homely ejaculation.

"Yes, I know by your looks — your tones declare it — you think me, on this point, immovable, and so I am. But listen, it is not malice that makes me so. It is this: a feeling, right or wrong, that he is undergoing punishment that a righteous power has awarded — a punishment that satisfies some equities that I don't fully comprehend. God knows I would set him free if I could. Is it religion — is it superstition — this awe of an unseen power that terrifies me?"

"You remember my excellent friend, Mr. Larkin, who quoted the blessed words. 'Sick and in prison and ye visited me,'" said the clergyman.

"Oh, yes, I know. I tried, sir, to persuade myself to consent to his liberation. I tell you, Mr. Parker, I wished it, but I can't. Those texts don't apply. The Redeemer speaks of those who are his — so entirely his, that in visiting them we visit him. Is it not impiety to apply that to a man who never thought of his Redeemer, of heaven, of anything — but himself, and whose prodigality and wickedness, and not his Christian heroism, have placed him where he is? Yet, even so, through mere good nature, or weakness, or what you will, I should have set him free, but that the idea terrifies me. How can I tell how those who are gone would regard it; how God would view it; and whether I am not, if I give way, yielding not to mercy, but to an evil influence, and sacrificing the claims of affection, and the justice of God, to a base temptation? I can't define it: my poor sister! I feel it. A horror I can't describe bars my interfering with the course of that hateful tragedy. If I did so I think I should go mad. Oh! sir, don't press me. Spare me, for God's sake, and never mention it again."

The old man looked down, pained, perplexed. He did not know how to argue with a difficulty so unlike the simple vulgarities of revenge and hatred.

The old clergyman sighed deeply, and looked up as if to resume his plea. But she said, anticipating —

"No, sir. Faith may move mountains, but you cannot shake the barrier that rises before my will. I could as easily persuade you to deny your Lord, as you could me to violate that awful conviction."

He bowed, and in a minute more took his leave. She walked down the stairs with him in — silence, and from the hall door upon the grass, and, walking a few steps beside him, she said —

"I wonder whether M. de Beaumirail has an enemy called Dacre? Can you make out? — a young man called Dacre? and I will, if you think he wants money — I would tell Mr. Gryston to place a sum in your hands for his use. But more than that is impossible."

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAP.
I.	LAURA CHALLYS GRAY
II.	BROTHERS OF MERCY
III.	AD MISERICORDIAM
IV.	M. DE BEAUMIRAIL
V.	BEYOND THE PRECINCTS OF GUILDFORD HOUSE
VI.	A DIAMOND LOCKET
VII.	ROBERT LE DIABLE
VIII.	ALFRED DACRE
IX.	AN ADVENTURE
X.	A FEW WORDS IN THE HALL
XI	DE BEAUMIRAIL'S AMBASSADOR
XII	DE PROFUNDIS
XIII.	TEA
XIV.	ANOTHER VISIT
XV.	BEETHOVEN
XVI.	CONSULTATION
XVII.	LORD ARDENBROKE'S ADVICE
XVIII.	A TRUE KNIGHT
XIX.	WHO ARE THE DACRES?
XX.	THEY DRINK TEA
XXI.	A STRANGE FACE
XXII.	CHARLES OBJECTS TO THE NEW WORSHIP
XXIII.	LAURA GRAY'S FORTUNE TOLD
XXIV.	WHAT MARY ANNE MERSEY FOUND
XXV.	MARY ANNE MERSEY EXAMINED
XXVI.	CHARLES MANNERING'S MISSION
XXVII.	HE RETURNS

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HAUNTED LIVES,

CHAPTER I. LAURA CHALLYS GRAY.

CHAPTER II. BROTHERS OF MERCY.

CHAPTER III. AD MISERICORDIAM.

CHAPTER IV. M. DE BEAUMIRAIL.

CHAPTER V. BEYOND THE PRECINCTS OF GUILDFORD HOUSE.

CHAPTER VI. A DIAMOND LOCKET.

CHAPTER VII. ROBERT LE DIABLE.

CHAPTER VIII. ALFRED DACRE.

CHAPTER IX. AN ADVENTURE.

CHAPTER X. A FEW WORDS IN THE HALL.

CHAPTER XI. DE BEAUMIRAIL'S AMBASSADOR.