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[These chapters were originally serialized in
Dublin University Magazine (1868-Jun) as Part Two]
THAT same morning Lord Ardenbroke had, among his other letters, one that served to amuse him. It was from the handsome young man who had so much engaged the curiosity of the party in Miss Gray's box.
It was very short: only a few lines.
"Alfred Dacre — you are a very odd fellow, Alfred Dacre," was all his commentary; and with a smile, and a little shrug, he proceeded to read his other letters.
Later in the day he paid a visit at Guildford House, and saw the ladies there; and when he was going away, Miss Laura Gray said to him: —
"I forgot to tell you I've made out your friend's name — I mean the mysterious person in the peaked beard at the opera."
"Oh! really?"
"Yes."
"I'm not sure that you don't mean to lead me into betraying it — you young ladies are so deep," said he laughing.
"No, really; I do know it."
"Well, what is it?"
"Dacre," she said triumphantly.
"How did you make it out?"
"You shan't hear."
"Do tell me — pray do?
"That's my secret," she replied, shaking her pretty head with a smile.
"But I have a reason, really," said Lord Ardenbroke, a little earnestness mixing in his manner.
"You shan't hear — positively no. You refused me that harmless little confidence, and now you demand to learn my secrets; not a word."
He laughed again, and there ensued a silence, and he was very grave for a minute. Then said he, looking up with a faint smile:
"Well, since you wont tell, I can't help it. But — but you must remember, you did not hear it from me —that's all."
"Certainly not from you," acquiesced Laura.
This little dialogue was spoken standing, and after he had taken his leave — a ceremony which he now repeated, and ran down the stairs.
By this time the good old clergyman had reached the melancholy room of De Beaumirail, within the precincts of the Fleet.
In his dressing-gown, the prisoner leaned back upon his faded red sofa, having pitched the novel with which he had been striving to kill the weary hour, on the floor, on which it lay open. Pale and weary he looked; and the hand that lay on the arm of the sofa was slowly fumbling over the brass heads of the nails, as a friar tells his beads in a vigil.
He nodded, without rising, without smiling, as the old man entered.
"I hope, my young friend," said he, "I have not taken a liberty. I have availed myself of a seat in a friend's brougham to go out to Old Brompton. I've been, unsuccessfully, again at Guildford House. I have seen Miss Gray; but with respect to the object of terminating this miserable confinement, as I say, unsuccessfully."
De Beaumirail's face lighted up with a sudden interest: he sat erect: and his finger's-tip ceased its monotonous course along the clingy nail-heads, as the old man spoke.
"Yes, Nemesis, very good," he said, with a faint sour smile. "I am sorry, Mr. Parker, you gave yourself the trouble to come all this way to tell me that — I can't call it news. Very kind of you, though," he added, recollecting himself.
"But though she wont do that," resumed the clergyman, "she is very willing — to — assist — in fact, if you required money — if you were at all distressed ——"
"Give me money," interrupted Beaumirail with a very angry laugh. "Do you mean to say she seriously offered to give me money? That is pretty near the climax, I should hope, of her insolence. I've been here three years and seven weeks. She has only to write her name, as she does to every note she sends to her heartless acquaintances — to every order she writes to her jeweller or her milliner — and without costing her a shilling — and I should be free, and the malignant little fool wont do it. Offer me money indeed. Dying here by inches! As if it were not slow and miserable enough, she'd eke out my agony a little longer, and buy the gratifying spectacle of my protracted torture by a few judicious doles. I wish I had heard her make that offer; I'd have answered — insult for insult, by heaven! But I can hardly believe it. It is not credible. Look at me here, sir; I'm not a man who can associate with the swindlers and charlatans and bankrupts, the scum of society, who are here. To me it is literal isolation — what in your convict prisons they call solitary confinement — and no brain could stand it long. If that merciless girl could keep me living until I went mad — what a complete revenge?"
"Pardon me, sir; it is not revenge ——"
"Not revenge! And what the devil is it?"
"It is a feeling — a kind of ——"
"A kind of hypocrisy, sir — throwing dust in your eyes. If it reached you as it does me — your person, your health, your brain — you'd not be the dupe of a few fine phrases. The stupid little fiend does not know the danger she is drifting into. This morning I thought the whole thing over. I don't despair yet. I shall have my chance. She likes revenge — she'll pursue it; let her. I've been passive too long. I hope and believe I may never die until I see her pride humbled and her heart broken by my skill and resolution."
"Wild words, sir," said the clergyman, sadly shaking his head.
"Wild words — wild thoughts — wild works! Sir, you shall see. I have thought over a possible revenge, sir, which would outdo hers. I have not put it in motion — a foolish compunction worried me to-day. I dare say I should never have tried my game if she had acted with common humanity. She has driven me to despair, and let her take the consequences."
"There, there, pray, Mr. de Beaumirail. You know I ought not to hear all that without reproof; but there are excuses. You are excited — you are suffering; reflection will come, and the storm will subside of itself."
De Beaumirail laughed impatiently and harshly. He was no longer sitting, but walking in his slippers about the room; and without arresting his march he said —
"Ho! I'm carried away by a sudden gust. I'm to subside, and sit down as heretofore. By Jove, Sir, you mistake me. Cold and hard as a block of ice, Sir. You came just in the nick of time to decide a vacillating man. Your benevolent message, Sir, has settled a very critical question for Miss Laura Challys Gray."
"Sir, may I ask you do you know a Mr. Dacre?" inquired the clergyman.
"Dacre — Alfred Dacre? I do, or rather I did," said De Beaumirail, stopping short and looking hard at the old man; "I don't know whether he is living still — do you?"
"No, sir, no; but may I ask whether he was an enemy of yours."
"Yes; about the worst enemy I ever had, and that's saying a good deal. And now tell me where you heard him mentioned."
"Miss Gray asked me to put the question I have asked to you."
"Miss Gray! Did she? Come, come, that looks oddly. Surely she said something that indicated whether he was alive or dead?"
"No; she did not say."
"Will you be so kind," said De Beaumirail, with a sudden change of manner, and an air of great interest, sitting down again in his former place, "to repeat, as nearly as you can recollect it, exactly what she did say?"
The clergyman complied — as it was very easy to do.
"And that was all?"
"Yes."
"You're sure?"
"I think so."
De Beaumirail fell into a reverie, and seemed pleased. He looked up with an odd smile.
"In that quarter," he said, "I don't think he'll do me much mischief. I suppose he is alive; wretches like him never die. Can you tell me this — did she evince any interest in that person!"
"I can't say she did — not the least. She seemed to fancy that he was an enemy of yours. She asked the question gravely, and seemed curious."
"H'm. All I say is, I think she's cleverer than I gave her credit for; I should like to know what her mind's working upon."
With these latter words he fixed his eyes rather cunningly upon the old man. If he fancied, however, that he had any secret to reveal, the simplicity and good faith that looked out of his grave, old blue eyes laid that suspicion at rest.
"Clever, cruel, vindictive; she'd pierce me with her bodkin. I carry as good a dagger — it is combat to the outrance; recollect I never sought it. It is her doing. I hate it, and it will be her misfortune, perhaps — I can't help it."
"I make excuses, as I said, Mr. de Beaumirail, for the angry language you employ. When next I see you, I shall find you, I trust, in a happier, at least a more resigned temper. You must excuse me also, when I say that you seem to forget, when you utter menaces like those, how powerless you are to accomplish them."
"That's hitting me where you shouldn't, Mr. Parker. It ain't fair, or generous. Quite true I'm locked up here — I don't need to be reminded — but have you never heard or read of magicians who sat in their infernal laboratories, among their elixirs, and their books, as dark and sequestered as this place, and plagued the people they hated, ever so far away, by their art? Beautiful they say she is, as other witches have been. She has drawn her circle round me here, and here I commence, at last, my incantations, and by heaven she shall feel them. It is a contest in which the time is past for relenting. I wish — I wish I knew whether Dacre is living, and in England. If he be, it is hardly a fair fight."
"There was a time, Mr. Beaumirail, when I had reason to hope that you had gathered the fruits of a good experience from your affliction — but — but your present tone and conversation disappoint me."
"I wont argue it any more than your friend Miss Gray will. I accept her version of charity, and her laws of war. I hesitate no longer, and I leave you, sir, a year to guess, and her to feel. Now from this den I shall weave my spells about her."
THERE was disappointment at Guildford House, for the day had closed without bringing the expected visit of Mr. Dacre. Of that gentleman Miss Gray knew nothing, and yet there was an odd feeling or mortification in her mind, by reason of this unimportant neglect. Mrs. Wardell's disappointment was now outspoken.
"If he had not proposed it, I should not have thought so much of it, although it would have been no more than a decent civility to have called and inquired for us to-day, under all the circumstances. But really, after his making such a flourish of trumpets about it, there's no excuse; and I can view it in no other light than as a most ill-bred omission!"
It was dark now, but Miss Laura Gray chose the shutters and the curtains open, and liked, in twilight and moonlight, the look-out upon the circumscribed but singular little landscape, and, looking listlessly from the window, she said, "A lonely pair of women, we are this evening. Even Charles Mannering has failed us."
"Yes, my dear Laura, don't you see? this way of living is so intolerably dull that ——"
"Hush, a moment. The gate has opened, and, yes, here is a carriage," said Miss Gray.
There were lights in the drawing-room, and she drew back as a brougham with a pair of horses approached at a rapid pace.
"Dear me, who can it be?" said old Mrs. Wardell, getting up and hesitating. "It can't be Ardenbroke back again, nor Charles Mannering in a carriage, and it is such a very odd hour — can it be possible — there's the knock; can it be Mr. Dacre, at such an hour?"
"It must be some one, and one visitor is nearly as odd as another," said Miss Gray.
"I — I don't know — should I go down at such an hour?" faltered Mrs. Wardell.
"Go down, certainly, you'll see him, and do precisely as you and I planned. You are to do just as you would if it were three o'clock in the afternoon — there's the hall-door open."
"Oh, dear, so it is! but the idea of bringing him up here."
"I don't say you are to take him by the collar and bring him up here, whether he will or no, but if you find him so disposed let him come up, and take some tea."
"But, my dear, it's nine o'clock."
"I don't care; curiosity must be satisfied first, decorum afterwards; don't dispute."
The door opened — the servant entered.
"Mr. Dacre's compliments, ma'am, and wishes to know particularly how you and Miss Gray are this evening."
This was addressed to Mrs. Wardell.
"Is it a messenger?" inquired Miss Laura Gray.
It was Mr. Dacre himself.
The young lady glanced at Mrs. Wardell, and found Mrs. Wardell glancing at her. Their eyes met, and Miss Laura Gray smiled in spite of herself.
"I think, dear, you had better see Mr. Dacre for a moment," said she to Mrs. Wardell.
Preternaturally grave, Mrs. Wardell arose, and told the servant to show Mr. Dacre into the library, and, after a glance in the mirror, she followed him downstairs.
Now, Miss Laura Challys Gray listened harshly, biting her under lip with a tiny edge of her pearly teeth, and smiling. "He'll come, of course he'll come — that face is full of the spirit of adventure, and I must say that old Wardell and I are behaving very indiscreetly, but it's only for once, and I really could not allow him to escape — ha, is he coming or going? No. What is old Wardell saying, I wonder?" and she laughed quietly in spite of all she could do.
"I suppose we are behaving very oddly. What, I wonder, would my sober cousin, Charles Mannering, say of us, if he happened to drop in, and — here — here — yes; here they come."
So it was, and, with a sudden reaction, her spirits sank, and she would gladly have been anywhere else. She had just time to place herself in her easy chair again, when the half-closed door opened, and good old Mrs. Wardell entered in high chat with the stranger.
There was no mistaking him. The handsome hero of the opera was before her; the oval face and small peaked beard; the delicate mouth and moustache, and the great singular eyes, which lighted upon her with a sudden and gloomy splendour that startled her.
A stately, very low bow he made her, as Mrs. Wardell said —
"This is Mr. Dacre, my dear, you remember, who was so kind as to lend us his carriage; he has been so good as to call to inquire, and I asked him to come up."
"I asked Mrs. Wardell's leave, yesterday, which she was good enough to give me. I have to make my apologies, however, for calling at so awkward an hour; but I was detained by business, from which I could not escape, in the country, and returning this way I could not deny myself, late as it is, the honour of calling to learn how you were."
"We are so much obliged; quite well. We have quite got over our little fright, and we had no idea what a service you had done us till this morning. We should have been delayed more than an hour."
Mr. Dacre seemed very much pleased. He was very handsome: it was pleasant to see him pleased. But there was, or Miss Gray fancied it something ever so slight that was bitter and cynical in the stealthy gaze with which he watched her as she spoke. But there was the smile, and there were those splendid eyes, dark and fiery. Where was this sinister light? Where were those lines and curves of cruelty which gave, in her eyes, to his beauty an anguine and dangerous character — subtle, sinuous, baleful?
His bow had been ceremonious and very grave; but there remained not the least trace of stateliness in his air, or countenance; he was chatting now very easily and gaily. He addressed Mrs. Wardell for the most part, but Laura Gray thought his conversation was intended for her. He was going now. He had set down his tea-cup. He had just told them a very odd story, which turned on an anonymous letter, the author of which, by a curious combination of evidence, he had discovered.
"Had fortune placed me in the detective service, I dare say I should have risen to be an eminent catch-thief; I should almost embrace the profession for the pleasure of tracing up that sort of villainy to its source."
The story was well told and very curious. Miss Laura Challys Gray listened to it with that kind of attention which is observant, if not suspicious, of the relator himself, as well as curious about the narrative. Her fancy, that he might be the author of the letter with the locket enclosed, had fast melted away. That Mr. Dacre was an early intimate of Ardenbroke's and that Ardenbroke should have spoken of him as he did, were reassuring circumstances. But Mr. Dacre's manners were winning, respectful, and quite charming, and now, by one of those chances that establish or overthrow a theory in a moment, he had lighted upon the very subject, and had spoken of that kind of treachery with a point and bitterness which ended all controversy.
His visit was not altogether a quarter of an hour, and in those agreeable minutes they had grown to feel so curiously intimate, as if they had known him for years.
"We are very lonely here, Mr. Dacre but if you would sometimes look in upon a very dull house it, would be good-natured of you," said Mrs. Wardell, at parting.
"I am only too much honoured; nothing would give me so much pleasure; but I'm so unfortunate, my stay in this part of the world is so very uncertain, and I'm obliged to go twelve miles out of town every morning, to meet people on business, and there my whole day is unavoidably passed, and I never get away, in fact, earlier than I did this evening.
There was a little pause here; Miss Gray fancied it seemed to invite a repetition of the same hospitality, so did Mrs. Wardell, who stole a little glance at Laura, and seeing in her face nothing to discourage she said —
"If you happened to be passing again to-morrow evening, and would come in and take some tea, it is probable that our cousin, Mr. Mannering — do you know him? — may be here."
"You are very kind; I shall be most happy,
but, may I venture to tell you the business which detains me
for some little time in London is, as I explained to Lord
Ardenbroke, of a nature that makes it desirable, and almost
necessary, that I should not be known to be here; such are my
instructions, as I may call them; and in fact it might defeat
the object of my visit, which is of some importance, if I
were seen, or if my name were so much as mentioned as having
been seen in London, I should, therefore, as a matter of
conscience and honour to others deeply interested in my
mission, avoid meeting any one who might disclose the fact of
my being here. I am telling you quite frankly how I am
"Certainly, Mr. Dacre, you may depend upon it, I shan't endanger your incognito," said Mrs. Wardell.
Had her curiosity been a degree less, Miss Gray would have interposed, I think, and suggested that, considering the circumstances, it would hardly be fair to ask Mr. Dacre to run a risk, and so have withdrawn the slight invitation.
But a new theory had shaped itself in her mind, and till this new conjecture was either established or overthrown she could find no rest.
That old, ugly, harsh face, the long gray head, that had appeared beside Dacre in the box at the opera. Was its owner a kinsman of his? Could he be the writer of the anonymous letter that troubled her with an hourly increasing fever? Might not he be that connecting link, the relation of Dacre, also a relation of De Beaumirail's — and Ardenbroke had described that degree of connexion between Dacre and Beaumirail; and could she rest till that guess at least were answered?
That hard, white head, might hold no end of ugly schemes. And was there not in the letter something of the pedantry of old age lecturing youth.
She would sift this speculation to its conclusion if possible, and therefore the acquaintance of Mr. Dacre must be cultivated, and from him, ultimately, she might secure its solution.
Mr. Dacre took his leave, and his carriage drove away, and, said Miss Gray, suddenly, to her companion —
"My dear Julia Wardell, what have we — done? I assure you we are getting on at such a pace. I am quite stunned and hardly know myself."
"I don't know what you mean," said Mrs. Wardell, with perfect simplicity.
"Here, we have invited a young man — without an introduction — without, in fact, knowing anything about him, except that he is an acquaintance of Ardenbroke's, and given him a, sort of promise that he is not to find my cousin, Charles Mannering, here, when he comes to tea. I am annoyed at myself; what will Ardenbroke think of us — what must Mr. Dacre think of us?"
"I'm not the least uncomfortable about it. We have every reason to conclude that he is an unexceptionable acquaintance, and I really can't see, considering that I am here to take care of you, the slightest oddity in asking him to take a cup of tea here."
"It is odd — I know it's odd — so do you; and what a ridiculous termination to those plans of seclusion I had formed. How Charles Mannering and Ardenbroke will laugh! And I really think, with your experience, you ought to guard me against such absurd mistakes."
This was certainly unreasonable, considered as an attack upon Mrs. Wardell, who had simply done what Miss Gray, could she have been secretly consulted, would have insisted upon. But is it not always pleasant to lay a part of our burdens upon other shoulders, and the entire pack, even, if it be practicable?
Mrs. Wardell was huffed, and she said —
"There has been no mistake, and nothing odd; but as you fancy there is, we can easily arrange to go to tea to-morrow evening to poor old Lady Ardenbroke; you promised Ardenbroke that you would some evening, and it would be a cheer; and I'll leave our apologies with the servant to say to Mr. Dacre where we were obliged to go, and so we shall get rid of all trouble about him."
"Yes; perhaps that will do. It is a little awkward, you know," said Laura.
But Mrs. Wardell did not help her by a single word; thinking, I dare say, that she would not on any account miss Mr. Dacre's visit.
"Yes," resumed Laura, "I believe that is the best thing we can do."
Another silence followed, but no step was taken, I am bound to confess, to carry out this little evasion, either that evening or next morning.
NEXT day, at about three o'clock, Charles Mannering looked in. The ladies received him, he thought, a little oddly. Had his cousin heard, he speculated, of the conversation, so urgent and dolorous, with which, yesterday evening, the good clergyman, Mr. Parker, whom he had accidentally met, had favoured him upon the inexhaustible subject of the prisoner De Beaumirail.
True, he was resolved not to open this unwelcome theme again to his cousin, uninvited. But how else was he to account for the perceptible constraint of her manner — the apparent embarrassment, indeed of both ladies, and those long silences that were so unusual in that easy society?
They were not offended with him. There was no affront, and their looks and manner implied nothing of the kind. But Laura Gray said nothing of "to-day," and invited him instead "to-morrow," to dinner, and seemed put out, and a little vexed, though not with him. And Mrs. Wardell, who was less scrupulous about her yea being strictly yea, and her nay nay, then Miss Gray murmured something about their intending to pass that evening with old Lady Ardenbroke, at which Miss Laura Gray, under her breath, uttered an impatient "oh!" tossing her head with a little glance at Julia Wardell, who returned it with a "h'm!" blushing a little, as her pretty cousin rose and walked to the window.
Altogether, Charles Mannering did not know what to make of them, and went away a great deal sooner than he had intended, more vexed and puzzled than he would have had any other living creature know.
That day moved slowly away. How was this agreeable Mr. Dacre acquiring the sombre influence which he had begun to exercise?
Partly it was due to this, that Miss Gray had resolved that, even at the risk of adding a new item to the eccentricities of their dealing with this stranger, she would, if possible, test his complicity with the author of the letter — if, in truth, he knew anything about it, and. should he prove quite innocent, then she would, if need be, cease to trouble him, and drop that singular acquaintance.
Upon this old-fashioned suburb, and throng of tufted trees and old brick houses, the sun went down, and threw his dusky red over the landscape, transforming the steep roofs and chimneys in the distance into fiery domes and minarets, that faded at last in the dark gray twilight.
Tedious were the hours as those which separate the young heir from the glories of his succession, and never did day die so slowly as that one for Laura Gray.
Night came; candles or lamps were lighted in the drawing-room, and the ladies sat there, rather silently, expecting their visitor.
Miss Gray was vexing herself with doubts and scruples. Was the step she was taking dignified, or even decorous? She could not deceive herself. If it were not for the fancy that he could throw an important light upon the question of the authorship of the letter, she would not have dreamed of inviting Mr. Dacre to tea, and actually getting her kinsman, Charles Mannering, out of the way for the occasion.
"I really am growing quite ashamed again, Julia, as the time approaches, and I almost wish we had not permitted this visit. There's no use thinking now of it; but we could have got Ardenbroke to bring him here and introduce him, and the thing would then have been quite different."
"You forget, my dear, that my presence, having been a married woman, and he knows that I am Mrs. Wardell — he has called me so — and your kinswoman, is quite sufficient protection; there really is nothing at all odd; and, as you said yourself this morning, he might not choose to come here with Ardenbroke. If Ardenbroke saw him here, and heard us call him by his name, he would conclude that there was no longer any secret — it was you who thought of that, and of course, Mr. Dacre has thought of it also; and, I don't see any harm, and there really is no harm, and there really is no oddity, in giving that young man a cup of tea, knowing that Ardenbroke knows him so intimately."
"I will suppose you are
A carriage drove by, upon that quiet road, and, after a momentary silence, Miss Gray said —
"I don't think he's coming. I dare say he's tired, and gone home; or gone to the opera, perhaps, or anywhere but here; it must be so tiresome, and, somehow, so unmeaning; and, to tell you the truth, I think we should look very like three fools sitting in a circle."
"I don't think any such thing. I think, on the contrary, he's very much taken with you, my dear; and I saw him stealing a look now and then, when he thought neither you nor I observed him. I think his visit interests him very much, and I never saw anyone more pleased to be invited."
Laura Gray, as she leaned back in her chair, smiled faintly at the carpet before he at these words; and then, raising her head, looked through the open window and the darkened air towards the gate, now invisible.
A carriage had stopped there. And now — yes — the clang of the gate was audible, and two carriage lamps came sailing up the short avenue, under the trees.
Tranquilly Miss Laura Gray leaned back in her low chair, and in a few moments more Mr. Dacre was announced, and came into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Wardell received him very cordially; and Miss Gray, she scarcely knew why, rather coldly.
He sat down and took his cup of tea, and
chatted agreeably about all sorts of things. But
Perhaps Mr. Dacre fancied that the ladies had been quarrelling. I don't know. But he could hardly fail to perceive the embarrassment that reigned in the drawing-room.
"One is allowed to admire China, when it is so beautiful as this, and so old," said Alfred Dacre, trying a new subject, as he turned his tea-cup round upon its saucer with the tip of his finger; "and I am sure it has a history."
"I dare say," said Mrs. Wardell, catching at the chance, "you know all about it, Laura."
"Yes, it is very old, I believe," said she; "but I am a very bad chronicler, and, I am ashamed to say, I forget all about it."
Here ensued another silence. Mrs. Wardell looked at her again with wild entreaty.
There was rather a difficulty in finding a subject. Miss Gray, notwithstanding, afforded not the slightest assistance. Mrs. Wardell, whose invention was slow, looked at her now, almost angrily, in vain; and Mr. Dacre perceiving the embarrassment, wondered when the mouse would come forth and the mountain cease to labour.
He talked a little more. But his remarks did not germinate. They were thrown on a barren surface. An inspiration reminded Mrs. Wardell, however, of a letter from her nephew, and she said, "I think I told you, Laura, didn't I? that I had a letter from poor Philip Darwin, my nephew, Mr. Dacre, and he is so miserably in love, I think he'll break his heart, poor fellow. What shall I advise him, Mr. Dacre?"
"I'm a poor authority," said Alfred Dacre, "but love is said to be the business of those who have no business — suppose you find him something to do?"
"Oh! he has plenty to do — he's in a cavalry regiment, and he's breaking his heart, for they think they are going to India."
"Oh! don't be uneasy, he'll cool there rapidly, notwithstanding the climate," said Dacre, smiling.
"Heaven grant it, poor fellow," said Mrs. Wardell.
"Heaven has nothing to do with it, I assure you," said Dacre.
"Why, that sounds very odd — you're not an Atheist" said Mrs. Wardell, a little brusquely.
"A very complete Atheist. I hardly believe even in Cupid," he replied.
"Oh! I see you are joking, but there is an old saying, my nurse used to quote it," said Mrs. Wardell, "that marriages are made in heaven."
"Over tea-tables, and in drawing-rooms, and by very odd angels, I believe. You see what a sceptic I am. Except as a spectator, however, I know nothing of marriage, and nothing, I may say, of love." He laughed. "As a rule, however, marriage seldom seems quite to restore the human race to Paradise."
"Some people are very happy in that state, Mr. Dacre," said Mrs. Wardell, in a tone and with a look straight before her, meant to convey a sense of the felicity she, at least, had conferred, when in that state.
"Good heaven!" thought Miss Gray. "What can Julia Wardell mean by harping on love and marriage in this absurd way. He will certainly think that she and I have laid a plan to marry him. It is enough to make one cry."
"Some people — yes, of course," said he, "but our education, I mean that of men, is very much against making love our first much less our only passion, or marriage our chief source of happiness. We have so many pursuits and ambitions, and amusements, and all so engrossing, I can't pretend to say which mode of making life's journey is the easier — celibacy or wedlock, each has its drawbacks like the two chaises that Miss Edgeworth mentions at the Irish inn, the top's out of one, and the bottom's out of the other," and he laughed again.
"I can quite understand young men laughing at marriage," said the persistent Julia Wardell, "but not believing in love, that does amaze me."
"Oh, but I do believe in it. I'd describe it as an inebriation followed by headache."
"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Wardell.
"That is, in the case of most men. I should be afraid of love, because, with me, it would be a first and only love, and therefore violent enough to kill." He spoke with a sadness almost enthusiastic, was silent for a moment, and then laughed. "But I have seen lovers, men who belonged to the profession, I may call it, and practised nothing else. I have watched the decline of passion and the veering of fancy. The vision fades, the charm expires, and love goes out. Now I fear the passion, because, with me, it might prove the reverse — a live-long madness. In a case like mine I could suppose something prodigious, I could suppose a man in love with his wife!"
"What do you mean, Mr. Dacre?" exclaimed Mrs. Wardell.
"Yes, that may happen," he said, "because I believe there is nothing that may not happen, although, I allow, it is not likely."
At this point of the dialogue, Miss Laura Gray got up as if she were looking for a book, or a letter, and, having slowly moved to the piano, she consummated the rudeness of the evening, in Mrs. Wardell's opinion, by playing a piece of grand and melancholy music by Beethoven.
Up got Mr. Dacre, as that terrified lady thought, to leave the room. But, of course, it was with no such intent; on the contrary, he placed himself gently by the piano and listened, it seemed, in a kind of rapture.
WHEN the music ceased Dacre sighed, and, said he, "That music always agitates one — it moves one's better nature, but it jars also — the spirit of anguish breathes through it — the pathetic and the victorious are soaring there, but all through is felt the vibration of a more than human pain."
Miss Laura Gray laid her hands on her lap and sighed also. A short silence followed, and she in turn spoke.
"Did you ever happen to meet a gentleman named Guy de Beaumirail?"
To this sudden and distinct question he answered as distinctly.
"How very odd! I was at that very moment, by an association hardly definable, thinking of him. Yes, I do know a good deal of him, and more than I care to know."
"Ardenbroke — you know him? — said it was not improbable," said Miss Gray.
"Oh! did he?"
He looked steadily at her, as if expecting her to say more.
"And Ardenbroke said so?" he resumed. "Well, he was quite right in one sense, although he knows very well how I feel about it."
"He is a very distant relation of ours — of mine, I believe, that is, or a connexion. I am a miserable genealogist; but I am curious to learn something about him, not the least from any interest in him, but for a different reason — something quite different."
"Yes, I saw him once," said Dacre, "very lately, and he's an undeserving fellow. I could not avoid it, but I don't talk about him — that is, as little as I can help."
"But why?" asked Miss Gray.
He smiled and shook his head a little.
"He's an awkward subject," said he.
"Are you ashamed of him?"
"Not exactly; but — but he's an awkward subject. He might have been very well, a great deal better than I am; and he chose to throw everything away, and he's in a position which I consider disgraceful, and I — don't — mention him.
He uttered this very gravely, and with a slow and deliberate emphasis.
Miss Gray was silent for a little, and then she said, "But I must ask another question — I saw you —I'm certain it was you — speaking to Ardenbroke at the opera on the night on which you were so good as to assist us on the occasion of our breakdown."
Mr. Dacre acquiesced.
"And there was an old man in the same box with gray hair, and with a long face — a severe-looking old man."
Dacre smiled a little, and nodded.
"Now, I have a reason for asking, is that old man an enemy of Mr. de Beaumirail's?"
"An enemy?"
"I mean — does he know Mr. de Beaumirail, and does he bear him an enmity?"
"I should say he does bear him ill-will. I know next to nothing of him, but this — that he is rich, and loves his money as people who have too much only can, and that he has lost a great deal by De Beaumirail's break-up, and I fancy hates him accordingly."
"Yes, and would like to pursue him?"
"I dare say," said Dacre.
"Do you think he would go the length of writing an anonymous letter to determine a vacillating person in a hostile course against Mr. de Beaumirail?"
"It seems odd, but I really know very little about him — nothing, I may say, not even his name, for I forget it — a formal acquaintance of an hour — very slight indeed. He had a part of a box to dispose of and I took it; that is all I know personally of him, and that he is one of De Beaumirail's creditors."
"Do you think he would be a likely person to write an anonymous letter with the purpose I have mentioned?"
"I was told he is a man of business, and I don't think it likely that he would take that trouble. Was the letter to Ardenbroke?"
"No, to another person, a creditor, who could have given De Beaumirail his liberty, by simply signing an agreement for his discharge, and declined to do so, and the anonymous writer urged a persistence in that refusal."
"Oh! that settles it. It could not have been he, for he, being creditor himself, to a large amount, could prevent his discharge until he paid him his uttermost farthing?"
"I see — yes, I suppose so," said Miss Gray, thoughtfully.
"And how did this creditor act under the pressure of his anonymous adviser?" asked Dacre.
"It was no pressure to her. She had already determined on leaving him in prison."
"She? — Good heavens! then it was a woman! What beasts those tradespeople are where money is concerned," exclaimed Alfred Dacre.
"Worse — not a tradeswoman, but a lady," said Miss Laura Gray.
"A lady — a lady no longer. She's self-degraded," said Dacre; "don't you think a woman so unsexed and so divested of all good, deserves to be made an example of?"
"Then you are one of those chivalrous lawgivers who would punish women, whom you term the weaker sex, as severely as men?" said Laura Gray.
"More severely, in certain cases," he replied. "Where they are wicked they are more fiendish than men. Nature has made them softer and purer, most of what is generous in life, all of what is generous in love, belongs to women, and where they commit cold and malignant cruelties they sin against nature, and become very paragons of monsters?"
"And what would you have done to this lady?" inquired Miss Gray. "Burn her alive?"
"No, on second thoughts I should leave her to the chances of reprisal and to the equities of eternity. May I ask, do you really know anything of this person?"
"I do — yes."
"Is she a Jewess, or is she a Christian?"
"A Christian!" answered Laura Gray, "by profession at least."
"Well, I know more of De Beaumirail than I have seen. He has injured me probably as much as any other man living. I don't admire Guy de Beaumirail. I divide his character, so far as it is known to me, into three parts — one part I despise, another I hate, and in the third I see rudiments of good. I have no particular wish to say one word in excuse or defence of him, but I don't envy the lady who, being a Christian, as you say, believes her Bible, and reads there the parable of the debtor whom his Lord forgave, and who afterwards took his fellow-servant by the throat, saying 'pay me that thou owest.'"
Mr. Dacre did not speak with enthusiasm. He seemed cool enough about the scamp De Beaumirail, and the menacing words uttered so coldly, acquired a strong force by reason of a latent contrast.
"There are cases in which reason will not direct
us. Our coachman, I remember, one night, put out the carriage
lamps — I think it was snowing, he said he could see better
without them, by the very faint light in the heavens. That light
for me is instinct, and my carriage lamps are
She began to play again that strange music, without leaving Mr. Dacre time for answer, apology, or explanation.
"I never cry, I hate tears; but that air half breaks my heart," she said, "and when I grow irresolute and perplexed, I play it, and light rises up for me in darkness, and courage returns to my heart."
"I had not an idea, Miss Gray, — I owe you a thousand apologies;" pleaded Mr. Dacre, with great humility.
"Not one, no indeed. It is only that you don't understand this distracting case; you don't know the facts, you don't know my motives. And now I must tell you something, and also ask your assistance."
As she uttered this last sentence she glanced again at good Mrs. Wardell, whom she had already observed nodding in her chair. Billy Winkie, the Dustman, as in the mythology of the nursery, the angel of sleep was termed in my nonage, had visited her, and just at that moment Miss Gray did not choose to observe, or to disturb her nap.
"NOW, I am going to ask you two, or three questions, and you must not think them very odd, until you have heard my reasons," said Miss Laura Gray, looking thoughtfully at a little ring on her finger.
"I shall be only too happy, if I can answer them," said he.
"Has it ever happened to you to receive an anonymous letter?" she asked.
"No, never, unless you so called such things as boys used to send about on St. Valentine's day."
"No, oh no. I mean a letter assuming a grave tone, affecting to criticise conduct, to exhort, and perhaps to menace," said she.
"No, never."
"Then you can hardly understand the way in which such a letter haunts one, the feeling of conjecture, suspicion, and insecurity."
"Pardon me, I can, very well. I once knew a person almost at his wits' ends, from no other cause — an anonymous letter. I think I mentioned that I was fortunate enough to hunt down the writer of it. I assure you it cost a great deal of thought, and some resolution, but I succeeded."
Miss Laura Challys Gray, still looking at her ring, knit her pretty eyebrows slightly in momentary thought.
"I may as well tell you, this letter was written to me, and the fact is, though I did not mind it at first, I have grown perfectly miserable about it, and I can't rest till I find out who wrote it."
"In my researches I was very lucky. It is once in a hundred times one would have a chance of detecting such a thing; but do you really care?" said he.
"I do, indeed, more than I can describe," she answered.
"I wish so much I could be of the least use. Do you suspect any particular person?"
"No one."
"And why should you care, then?"
"I can't help it, it has made me quite nervous. It is so very strange."
"I wish I had more time at your disposal; but command me, pray, in any way you think may be useful," said he.
"Well, thanks; you are very kind. Ardenbroke, my cousin, you know him, told me that you are acquainted with Mr. de Beaumirail's relations; in fact, that some of them are connected with you, and so I thought you would perhaps be able to form a probable conjecture as to who his enemy might be, for he admits himself in the letter to be a relation."
"He may have a great many whom I have never even heard of," said Dacre; "but my best consideration and exertions are at your service."
"The letter is in the room, would you mind just looking at it?"
And she unlocked her desk and produced the mysterious letter.
"Am I to read it?" said he, as he took it in his fingers.
"Certainly," she replied. "It is an odd, letter, and contained that locket, which is a very pretty thing, a toy of some little value," she said, turning the brilliants in the light, so as to make them flash.
"That came from some person who could afford to part with a little money, and the tone of the letter is earnest. I am, however, totally without even a guess. The fact is I know very little about his relations — and what an odd seal — gallant and ghastly; do you read anything of menace in it?"
"Well, no, that did not strike me," and she smiled, but not like a person amused.
"I have now, I think, fixed the whole thing pretty well in my memory; nothing very remarkable about the paper, thick note paper, red wax, posted at Charing Cross — I shall bear everything in my mind."
"It is so kind of you, Mr. Dacre; I'm sure I am a great fool, but I can't help it; I can't get it for a moment out of my mind; even my dreams are troubled with it."
"I don't wonder," said he gravely. "I can quite understand it. I think I should be miserable myself, in such a state of conjecture and uncertainty."
"Your business, I'm afraid, will prevent your recollecting it," pleaded Miss Laura Gray.
"It is much more likely that your commission, Miss Gray, should make me forget my business; I suspect I shall think of very little else."
"It is very kind — you need not mention it before Mrs. Wardell, who has not been attending, unless you happen to discover something about it; that is, if you should call here again."
"I shall certainly call, if you allow me, to-morrow evening. I have already formed a theory; I shall test it very soon; possibly I may have something to tell. If my guess proves a right one, your intuition warned you well, for that letter indicates a danger, which, if it cost me my life, I will defeat."
Whether Mr. Alfred Dacre spoke these words with more emphasis than he had used before, or that some sense of discomfort had brought it about, at this point in their conversation, Mrs. Wardell wakened with a snort, and said, "Yes, dear, I — I — where's the dog?"
So Mr. Alfred Dacre, with apologies for having stayed too late, took his leave.
Had he ever looked so handsome before? He now filled in relation to her a double office; he was the sole depository of a secret which she felt a strange reluctance to communicate to anyone, and he had devoted himself, as solemnly as words could pledge him, to the task of quieting the anxiety which had fastened upon her.
He was beginning to have her confidence, to be her knight. He was stealing into the rôle of hero to her romance.
When she returned next day from her gardening to the house, she found a letter, the address of which startled her, for it was written in the same bold, broadnibbed penmansbip which had grown so disagreeably familiar with her thoughts. She felt a little chill as turning it about she saw the same seal impressed upon the wax.
Cupid, there, as before, drew his arrow to the head; death held his javelin poised in air; the same simper, the same grin: the same invitation in the motto to "Choose which dart."
She took the letter hastily, and ran up to her room. She did not want talking old Mrs. Wardell to ask any questions.
As, even at that moment, she glanced into the glass, she was struck by the paleness of the pretty face it presented to her.
"Why can't they leave me at peace? I am attacking
no one's rights; I ask for no assistance or
She sat down, looked over her shoulder, and getting up, secured the door, then returned and opened the letter with a sick anticipation.
"More incentives to punish Mr. de Beaumirail; more advice, I suppose; more threats."
She read —
"So, you form a plot to discover me; your path crookens. Beware of the shadow. Mr. Alfred Dacre thinks himself clever. He needs to be so. Dead men who come to life had best be modest. He challenges conflict. He will find me the more potent spirit. The world is open to him. There is beauty in France, in Italy, in Spain; let him open his breast to the dart of Cupid, and not to that other. If you will have him search me out — so be it. If he be wise, he will pass me by with eyes averted. I wait him with my spear poised. Your plot against me has drawn me nearer. Pray that you see me not. De Beaumirail defied me, and I have laid him where he is. I am willing to spare Alfred Dacre; but if need be ——. His blood be on your head."
A sharp frown marked her face as she read and re-read this odd composition. She then replaced it in its envelope, looking at it askance as if on an evil talisman. She hid it away in her dressing-case, and locked it up, and then, in an agony, she said — "Why can't they let me be at peace? What can be the meaning of this cruel espionage and dictation? How could any mortal have discovered the subject of our conversation of last night? I am bewildered — frightened. God help me!"
She had murmured words like these aloud, and now looked around lest the spy, who seemed to glide through her rooms like a thief in the night, should have heard them.
"Your plot against me has drawn me nearer," she read again; "the language of the letter is so much more insolent, and angry, and enigmatical, and I, who was so brave, am growing such a coward!"
She bit her lip. She was pale, and felt on the point of bursting into tears.
"I WISH I had never come here. I wish I were away," were the natural aspirations that rose to her lips, as she went down to the drawing-room, feeling all the time as if she were in a dream.
"You're not ill, I hope, Laura, dear," said Julia Wardell, who was at her crochet, with her dog beside her. Some minutes had passed, and now she had looked up, and saw how pale and dejected Laura looked.
"No. Oh, no! only a very little headache; nothing at all."
Julia Wardell looked at her inquisitively for a moment, from under her spectacles, but could make nothing of the inspection, and resumed her work with a few words to her dog, who evidently did not thank her for disturbing him.
A few hours later on the same day Lord Ardenbroke called.
"We like your friend so much," said Mrs. Wardell.
"A friend! Who?"
"Mr. Alfred Dacre," she added.
"Oh! Mr. Alfred Dacre? And do you mean to say he has been here to see you?"
"Yes, he has," answered Mrs. Wardell, with a little triumph. "Is there any reason why he should not?"
"Reason? No, I can't say there is; but it surprises me a little. How soon is he going? I've lost sight of him for so long. Did he say when he goes — when he leaves London?"
"No."
"I wonder where he's staying now; have you any idea?"
"No," again answered Mrs. Wardell.
"I should like to make him out — and — and have a little talk with him; but I must be in Scotland the day after to-morrow, and by the time I return he will have made his exit."
Lord Ardenbroke was silent for a time, and looked down, and Miss Laura Gray, who glanced covertly at him, saw that there was in his face a look of something more than annoyance — something of suspicion amounting almost to alarm. He stood up, and walked to the window, and looked out.
"Laura, you promised to show me over your grounds, and, from all I see, I fancy you can do so without risk of fatiguing yourself." He laughed. "Will you?"
Laura got her hat, and out they went.
After he had seen the sights, and admired and quizzed, he said, standing with her under the shade of the great old trees —
"And so you have really had a visit from this Mr. Dacre?" he said on a sudden, returning to this subject.
"Yes; is there any reason against it?"
"It is a feeling rather than a reason. I had rather he had not minded coming here."
"You gave us a very good account of him at the opera, you remember. Is there really anything to object to?"
"No; I can't say there is. I never thought — I never blamed him."
"Blamed him! For what?"
"For — anything. I say I liked him, and should have been very glad to see him at Ardenbroke, if he could have come. But there was — there is; in fact, I can't tell you; but I don't think you'd like him."
"You are determined to make him the centre figure of a mystery," said Laura Gray, and laughed.
He smiled, looked down, and became thoughtful.
"Well, you see, it is some years since saw him, till I met him that night at the opera. There were reports about him saying he was dead; but he turned up there, as you saw. And you used to like a ghost story; just suppose him a ghost, and treat him accordingly."
"What can you mean?" said Miss Gray.
Lord Ardenbroke was laughing, but he looked uncomfortable.
"Place a pentagram at the door, as Dr. Faustus did — a pentagram which Alephistophiles could not pass, you remember."
"I remember; but I should like to know what you mean," said Miss Laura Gray.
"I mean this — simply shut your door against him," he answered.
"Why?" persisted Laura.
"I can't define my reason; but he is a 'double' — a Döppelganger — he is, I assure you. He is an unreality. I mean what I say. You'll do as you please, of course; but, upon my honour, seriously, I think, you'll be sorry if you don't act as I tell you."
She looked at him with a faint smile of incredulity; but, if he observed it, the challenge was not accepted, and he did not add a word in support of what he had already said.
"I shan't see you now for a good many days. I shall stay for some weeks, at least, in Scotland; but my mother will come and see you as soon as she is able to go out for a drive. So, good-bye, Laura, and bid Mrs. Wardell good-bye for me — good-bye. God bless you."
And he was gone, leaving Miss Gray buried in thought.
"I don't mind an oracle like Ardenbroke," she thought. "I'm not to be ordered about like a child, without knowing why I'm to do one thing and avoid another. If Ardenbroke knew what has happened, and saw those letters, and that I could communicate to him the hopes which, rightly or wrongly, I entertain of gaining some information respecting the writer of them from Mr. Dacre's cleverness and opportunities, he would probably speak quite differently; and, indeed, I need not care, for the account he gives of Mr. Dacre is quite inconsistent with his advice to exclude him; and if he chooses to be unintelligible, I'm not to blame if nothing comes of his advice."
Then she began to wonder at the odd coincidence of Lord Ardenbroke's advice, jesting as it was, to regard Dacre as a döppelganger and a ghost, and to exclude him from the house with that kind of horror, and the language of the letter — "dead men who come to life had best be modest." Altogether there was in the tone in which Lord Ardenbroke had spoken of him to-day, a change which chilled her.
Still she never faltered in her resolution to see Mr. Alfred Dacre, to consult him further upon the subject which now engrossed her, and to show him the more truculent letter of to-day.
And now the evening twilight made all things dim, and darkness followed, and that sense of uncertainty which precedes an event however sure to happen, which is intensely looked forward to, began to act upon this excitable young lady's nerves.
This suspense ended, however, as before. At about the same hour the carriage, with lamps burning, drove up to the door. The double-knock resounded, and in a moment or two more Mr. Dacre was announced. Miss Laura Gray was agitated as he entered, and he, too, looked paler than usual.
Mr. Dacre chatted with an animation and gaiety which, for a time, belied the fatigue and anxiety of his looks. He took tea, and talked in a gay satiric vein of fifty things.
Once or twice Miss Laura Challys Gray detected his stolen gaze fixed upon her with an air of anxious conjecture, and as stealthily averted.
He seemed instinctively aware that Miss Gray did
not
Mrs. Wardell was one of those convenient old people who, when left to themselves, in the evening, are sure to enjoy a nap — who can sleep in perpendicular positions, and maintain, with a wonderful simulation, the attitudes of waking people, while far away on the wings of slumber.
Laura Gray sat down at the piano.
"Will you play that wonderful poem, shall I call it, of Beethoven's, Miss Gray? I had not heard it for ever so many years, when you played it last night."
"No, I think not. I don't care to play it to-night. There are moods in which I can, and others in which I hate it — no, not hate, but fear it."
"I know. I can understand. Nothing so capricious, or, rather, so sensitive, as those terrible nerves of music. I quite understand the feeling, having, though not so finely, I am sure, experienced the same charm and the same anguish."
"But I'll play something else. Shall it be gay — shall it be melancholy?"
"Not gay, no, not gay," said he, and sat down at the corner of the instrument. "It is so good of you to consent. One seldom hears these things played by a hand that can awaken their inner life."
"I'll play you an odd, melancholy Irish air, with an Irish name, which I can't pronounce — wild, minor, and to my ear so unspeakably plaintive," she said as her fingers rambled over the notes, making a few preliminary chords and passages.
He listened, leaning on his elbow, his fingers in his soft dark hair. She was looking through the distant window at the old trees, and thinking sadly, and, as he marked the plaintive melancholy of her beautiful features, and fancied he saw a brimming of tears in her large, blue eyes, gazing steadily at her from the shade of his hand, a smile, cold and crafty, glimmered on his face.
THE air was played out and over. He sighed and thanked Miss Laura Gray.
They both knew that Mrs. Wardell was lost, for the moment, in one of her little evening naps. A restraint was removed, and Miss Gray, now and then touching a note or a chord on the keys to which her eyes were lowered, approached, at last, the subject which troubled her mind.
"You were so good as to say, Mr. Dacre that you would try to make out something about that letter?"
"You may be quite sure, Miss Gray, that I have not forgotten or neglected — I have been at work about it since I saw you, but I am sorry to say with an unsatisfactory result. The person whom I suspected is certainly not the writer of the letter."
"Oh!" murmured Miss Gray, in a tone of great disappointment. And a short silence followed.
"I don't despair, however. If I were only sure that you really made a point of discovering, there's nothing I would not do to accomplish it."
"That is very kind of you, Mr. Dacre. I don't know anything I am so interested in — in fact so anxious about. I've had another to-day, will you read it?"
"Only too much obliged," said he, as he took the letter from her hand. "Yes! The same seal. 'Choose which dart.' Very obliging of him. Cupid — an odd ally of such a writer. He offers you there — I'm interpreting the emblems and inscription — amity, if not something more tender still — on the one hand, or death on the other. Cajolery and terror would be a suitable motto for such a seal, writer, and despatch: and now for the contents."
So Mr. Dacre read, and carefully re-read the letter.
"I can't tell you, Miss Gray," he said, for the first time with an expression of real sympathy and concern in his handsome face —
"With how much sympathy and compassion for you — with how much indignation against the cowardly wretch who tries to alarm you — and, I fear, has succeeded in causing you a great deal of anxiety — I say, I can't express the feelings with which I have read this dastardly thing. I wish, Miss Gray, I could, or rather dare. But this I may venture to say, that I accept this miscreant's challenge, that I will even prolong my stay in England, at all risks, and leave nothing untried to unearth and punish him."
"Oh, no, pray no — I'm so much obliged; but I merely wish him discovered, and an end put effectually to these annoyances," said Miss Gray.
He smiled — he was still holding the letter by one corner, and he shook his head slowly as he answered —
"You must allow me a discretion in dealing with the writer of this, should I be fortunate enough to discover him. Only, this you may be sure of, that your name shall not be publicly mixed in the matter, unless with your distinct permission."
"Thanks — a thousand thanks," said she; "but, Mr. Dacre, there must be no violence. If I thought there was danger of that kind it would greatly increase my anxiety; and, in fact, I should prefer going away, and leaving my persecutor in possession of the field."
He shook his head, and laughed a little again, still looking at the letter.
"I don't think going away would save you from that annoyance," he said.
"Really? Mr. Dacre, do you think he would follow us? I have not mentioned a word of this to Mrs. Wardell. I know she would be frightened. But do you really think so? or what exactly do you suppose?"
"Judging by this letter, I should say that the person who wrote it — whether man or woman — has an ulterior object, distinct from any revenge upon that miserable person De Beaumirail, who is, perhaps, as well where he is as anywhere else. I can't, of course, guess, in the least, what that object may be; but I am sure very few people would take so much trouble in following up a grudge owed to so insignificant a person as De Beaumirail now is. Of course there can be no good-will, but there must be a more powerful motive — this is an organized affair, that last letter shows, and is intended to show that they have secured the services of, at least, one spy in your house."
Laura changed colour as he said this, fixing his dark eyes inquiringly upon her.
"I hope not. I can't think of any one who would be so base."
"It is a painful discovery, but the world is full of base people; and the worst of it is that the baser they are — within the limits of caution — the better they get on," said Alfred Dacre, in that sarcastic tone which he sometimes used. "Is there any person in the house who may be the writer of those letters — think."
"No one — no, not a creature. No servant could write a letter so correctly; it is certainly no one in the house," she answered eagerly.
"Well, then, they are written by some one, as I said, who commands the services, of, at least, one spy in your house. It may take time to detect that agent; but accident, vigilance, a momentary indiscretion, may lead to detection. If we had that end of the thread in our fingers, it would, perhaps, answer as well. I think I should reach the other. But, for the present, we must be secret — not a creature in your house must suspect that these letters affect your conduct, or even your spirits — and as Mrs. Wardell does not know anything of them ——"
Here good Mrs. Wardell snorted, covering this evidence of her condition by a little cough. Miss Gray struck gently a few chords, and the old lady resumed her nap.
"You were saying ——"
"I may say that Mrs. Wardell had better, for the present, continue in total ignorance of their existence."
"Perhaps so."
"Certainly; because Mrs. Wardell would talk to her maid, and she in the housekeeper's room; and the person who acts as spy would report that the letters had produced an agitation, and that would induce caution on the part of the machinators, and increase the difficulty of our pursuit."
Miss Gray thoughtfully assented.
"And now I'll tell you why I think things apparently so slight as these letters deserve your prompt and serious attention. I am quite clear that your intuition has not deceived you. There is an object in these practices deeper than any hatred of De Beaumirail. They want to frighten you into some concession not yet so much as hinted at. The fact that a trinket of value has been sent with the letters, convinces me that something serious is intended. For it was no gentleman who wrote that villanous letter. That locket can't be worth much less than a hundred guineas. It is sunk, you may be quite certain, upon a commercial calculation of ultimate profits. Your leaving the country would not extricate you from their machinations. The same annoyances will probably follow you, go where you may. It is a terrorism, with an object, and there is but one way of relieving you from it, and, that is, by tracking the beast to his lair; and, with God's help, I'll reach him."
"But, Mr. Dacre, there is no need to run into danger," began Miss Gray.
"Danger disappears before a resolute will. There shall be no danger — nothing but victory. Let me tell you why I speak in so sanguine and confident a spirit: if, as I suspect, this odious persecution originates from some one point in the circle of debt and villany that surrounds that miserable fellow, De Beaumirail, I have opportunities which no other person possesses, of placing my hand upon its spring. I will see De Beaumirail again to-morrow. I don't much enjoy an interview with him." He laughed. "I have had one already, and thought it quite enough; but I must see him, and from him I will learn who are his enemies among the people at present in London. I shall have all the light that he can indirectly throw upon it; and there is a great deal that I cannot yet tell you. But I hope I may soon have something very decisive and very satisfactory to say."
"I wish, Mr. Dacre, I could tell you how much obliged ——"
"No — no — you are not to use that phrase to me."
"But I can't help saying how very kind I think it; and I think it is very selfish, allowing a friend to engage in so irksome and, perhaps, dangerous an enterprise."
"You don't know all I feel about it. You have
called me your friend, pray do not
Mrs. Wardell had been conversing with her dog while Mr. Dacre finished his sentence; and under cover of this tender babble and its snarling accompaniment he added —
"Have I permission to call again to-morrow evening? I may have nothing to tell you; but possibly I may hear news that will interest you."
"Pray do; but — but you will be engaged about business of your own — that business that so much occupies your time."
"I have told you, Miss Gray, I forswear it in favour of yours; not one moment of my time shall it engage to-morrow."
"Then you can come to us earlier, can't you?"
Mr. Dacre's countenance darkened, and then he smiled, oddly: —
"I thought I mentioned to you, Miss Gray — or — no. I beg pardon, it was to Ardenbroke, that it was not my business only, but a condition imposed upon me altogether in the interest of other people, not to let myself be known to be in London — at least for some little time. I am, therefore, obliged to observe a sort of mystery, or to make my excursions — as that UNKNOWN CORRESPONDENT says — like a man who has returned from the dead — is not that his phrase? — in the dark."
"In the dark?"
"Yes — certainly in the dark."
His even white teeth glimmered as he laughed gently and coldly, and she fancied he looked paler.
Did he anticipate more danger than he chose to avow?
"Those who invoke the dead must abide the consequences. I look upon their mention of me, and in those menacing terms, as of good augury. If they understood me better they would not have resorted to threats. As it is, their doing so betrays their apprehensions — they are conscious of my opportunities."
Mr. Dacre was looking sternly on the ground beside his boot as he spoke, and he fell into a grim reverie of a few seconds.
"Suppose," he said suddenly, raising his eyes with a look inquisitive, and it seemed also cruel — "A thought has struck me. Suppose the motive of this experiment upon your nerves should prove to be hatred of you rather than of De Beaumirail?"
"Hatred of me?"
"Yes, Miss Gray; because you are yourself incapable of hatred, malice, and revenge, you fancy such things do not exist, or if you do, you do not, and cannot, understand their infernal psychology."
Miss Gray dropped her eyes.
"Nothing so hard for the young and gentle who have seen nothing of the world — nothing of human nature — except within the paradise of home, as to believe in the existence of those reptile natures, cold-blooded, full of poison, patient, and more subtle than any beast of the field."
"The confines of revenge and justice are so hard to define," said Miss Gray in a very low tone, still looking down.
"Oh! oh!" he laughed very softly in a kind of derision, "much they think of justice. No; the strange thing is this — such people will hate you without a cause — will hate you for your prosperity — for your position; or, if in your walk through life, ever so accidentally, you, tread on a fibre or touch their skins, they'll sting you to death if they can."
Miss Gray sighed.
"You, Miss Gray, are young; you have as yet neither had adulation nor misery to harden your heart. You are forgiving and compassionate, and can conceive no other nature. Because you are conscious of never having intentionally inflicted one moment's pain on any living creature — are incapable of revenge ——"
"No, not incapable of revenge; but my revenges are peculiar, and not from a malignant motive," said she, interrupting suddenly.
"Revenge, and Miss Laura
"No," she again interrupted; "I have been what many good and stupid people would call revengeful, but not from malice. I have requited injury by punishment, and I mean to persevere in so doing."
Mr. Dacre smiled and shook his head.
"I suspect, Miss Gray, you are taking a tragic view of yourself, There are some things too hard for my belief, and one is, the possibility of your cherishing a harsh thought or feeling."
"But I can't bear to be thought better than I am," said Miss Gray; "and it may be that it will help you to conclusions."
"Yes," he said, with a faint laugh, "so it might, if you think you really have enemies."
"I don't know. You saw Mr. de Beaumirail?"
"I saw him, yes, for ten minutes only; it was a very dry and hurried interview. My wish was to make it as short as possible, and I had to crowd a great deal into it."
"Did he mention me or my family?"
"No, not a word."
He paused inquiringly.
"Well, then," she said, "there's no need that I should mention him more."
There was a little silence here.
"From what you have told me this evening, Miss Gray, I may conjecture a great deal, and for the present I must return to my proper element — darkness."
"Oh?" she said, with that look of imperfect apprehension and inquiry, which seemed to ask for explanation.
But Mrs. Wardell now broke in with —
"Charming music! Do you sing, Mr. Dacre?"
"I can't say I do. I once did, a little; but among musicians I could not venture; and, at all events, my happy minutes have run out, and I must say good night."
NOW he was gone, and with the moment of departure came that revulsion which always followed her interviews with him.
How was it that he had stolen into those strangely confidential terms with her? So soon as he went she felt like a somnambulist awakened, who opens her eyes in the confusion of an interrupted dream, and in an unintelligible situation. Something for a moment like the panic of such an awaking, agitated Miss Gray.
Next day, at about five o'clock, came the old Countess of Ardenbroke. The invalid either could not or would not get out of her carriage, so Laura Gray came down and got into it, and was very affably received by the thin old lady in an ermine tippet, propped with cushions, and with her feet upon a heated stool. It was hard to say which was paying this visit. She made Laura sit opposite to her, and told her all about her health and her sufferings, and her wants and sorrows with her maid, and various little bits of news about fifty people of whom Laura had never heard before. And now the visit being over, before Laura bid her good-bye, she said —
"You know something, Lady Ardenbroke, of the De Beaumirails, who were related to us?"
"Yes; not a great deal, but something."
"Can you tell me anything about relations or connexions of theirs named Dacre?"
"Yes, there were Dacres."
"Are they related to us?"
"No. De Beaumirail's uncle married a Dacre, that's all. Why?"
"Nothing, only that; I know that a Mr. Dacre has turned up in London who claims to be a relative of the De Beaumirails."
"Don't believe it, my dear. The last of those Dacres was Alfred Dacre, who died, let me see fully ten years ago."
"Alfred! Are you sure?"
"Yes. Alfred."
"Oh, then, it must be a brother of his."
"No, it can't be that. There was no, brother. The property has gone to the Davenants," said the old lady.
"Alfred Dacre, a friend of Ardenbroke's," repeated Miss Gray; "then you have seen him, I dare say?"
"Oh, dear, yes, a hundred times."
"Then it must be a mistake. Was he agreeable?"
"Yes; agreeable, amusing, and odd. I think he was clever."
"And young?"
"Yes, young — quite a young man."
"And good-looking?"
"Oh, very good-looking. The Dacres were all that. I'll tell you what will give you an idea. If you suppose Mario, the Tenore at the Opera, in some of his most becoming parts, you have a very good idea of him."
"Oh!" said Laura Gray in a very low tone, dropping her eyes for a moment. She had seen the great Tenore, and the general likeness had struck her on seeing her mysterious visitor.
"Yes, it must be a
"I think so," said the old lady. "There is not one of that family left, and it is ten years since that handsome creature died. There may be cousins. I don't say positively; but if there are I never heard. And why do you ask me all these questions?"
"I haven't asked many, have I? But it was only that when we heard him mentioned, Julia Wardell remembered the name, and was puzzling over it."
"Well, if there is one of that handsome family left, pray don't think of making him master of Gray Forest. Dear me, how the little creature blushes!"
She had blushed very brilliantly.
"I — I didn't know; but if I have," said Laura, "it is because I blush more capriciously than any other person I ever heard of, and totally without a cause."
And hereupon she blushed still more intensely.
"Well, dear, don't mind; it's very becoming."
And she kissed her. And Miss Gray said, with a laugh —
"It is very provoking; but I assure you my blushes bear false witness, and there is not the slightest excuse for them. And now your horses are impatient, and I have delayed you a great deal too long."
So in turn she kissed the old lady, who forthwith departed for her drive in the park.
"It must be a cousin, then," thought the young lady as old Lady Ardenbroke's carriage drove away, "and when we come to know him a little better, of course he will tell us everything."
That evening the two ladies sat as usual in the drawing-room of Guildford Hall, and the hour of tea was approaching when Charles Mannering joined the little party.
Laura Challys Gray was very frank and true; but was she quite so glad to see him as she seemed? Perhaps she was; but if so, she quickly recollected something that qualified that sentiment.
Mr. Dacre would probably look in as usual, and would he quite like an introduction to a stranger under his present circumstances?
I don't know whether he imagined some little constraint or coldness in his reception, for he said —
"I'm afraid it's very cool my coming this way. I should have waited, I dare say, until I was sent for?"
Though he laughed; Miss Gray thought he was piqued.
"If you stay away, Charlie, until I send for you, it will be a long wait. Not," she added kindly, "that I should not wish to see you back, but being just as proud as you are — if you choose to stand aloof and grow ceremonious — I shall draw back a step too, and then, little by little, we shall stand so far that the tips of our fingers can't touch, and shaking hands any more will be quite out of the question. Therefore, Charlie Mannering, you must never be high or cold with me; but if you are angry scold me, and if you think I have affronted you, say so, and we may quarrel for ten minutes very spiritedly, but at the end of that time we'll be sure to shake hands, and then we'll be better friends than ever."
He smiled on her, very much pleased. He looked on her as if he would have given her the Kohinoor at that moment, had he possessed it. But he only said, after a little silence —
"I don't know, Challys, that you are not preaching a very good philosophy — what shall we call it? the sect of the plain-speakers — of which it would hereafter be written: This school of philosophers was founded by Laura Challys Gray, the first of the wise women of Brompton, who practised her philosophy with such a charm and success, that she speedily drew about her a school of disciples of the other sex. But it needed so much beauty as well as so much natural goodness to make the things they said go down with the unlearned, that her followers were ultimately beaten and dispersed; and the doctrine and practice of the plain-speakers being discovered, in a short time, to amount simply to speaking the truth, fell speedily into contempt, and in deference to the devil, whom it was intended to shame, and who is always paramount in London and the suburbs, it was peremptorily put down by the respectable inhabitants, and so fell into absolute neglect."
"Many thanks for that page of history, which will also recount," said Miss Gray, "that, in the same remarkable age, one Charles Mannering, of the same city, set up as a prophet, in which profession he had some moderate success, up to the period of fulfilment, when nothing ever came of his prophecies; and when he and the wise woman of Brompton met of an evening, they had so much to say to one another, and were so very wise, that they invariably forgot that it was time to take their tea, the more especially as in that dull age their audience usually fell asleep, and there was no one consequently to remind them. So as Julia Wardell is taking her nap, would you mind touching the bell? for I think a little tea would do us all good."
They had tea, and talked on pleasantly, and Mrs. Wardell, waking, said —
"By-the-bye, Charles Mannering, you know Mr. Dacre, don't you?"
"Haven't that pleasure. Who is he?"
"Oh, dear! a most agreeable and handsome young man, whose acquaintance we have made. He'll probably be here to tea. Did not Laura mention him?"
"No, I think not."
"Did you?" said Mrs. Wardell.
"No," said Charles, "but I'm really glad to hear
you have made an agreeable acquaintance. I told you you would
find your solitude here
He spoke with a smile; but I don't think that he was a bit pleased, nevertheless, to find that solitude invaded. I suspect he would have liked very much to ask some questions about this charming Mr. Dacre, of whom he had already an uncomfortable perception, as an insupportable puppy whom these ladies were, no doubt, bent upon making him still more conceited. But what need he care, or how could it possibly interest him? So, with the hand next it, he gently touched a few notes of the piano, and hummed an air.
While he was thus engaged, the door opened, and Mr. Dacre was announced.
MR. DACRE, entered, and, as he did so, his quick eye detected the presence of the stranger, leaning upon the piano. Miss Gray observed the shrewd, hard glance which he directed on him — it was hardly momentary, it seemed but to touch its object, but it was stern and suspicious.
"I ventured, you see, to look in on my way into town," said he, advancing quite like himself in a moment.
"We are charmed to see you," said Mrs. Wardell.
"Rather cool at this hour, and not quite, usual," thought Charles Mannering sarcastically, as he looked at Miss Gray, whose hand the stranger's was just now touching. "By Jove! a fellow, learns as he gets on — nothing like impudence, I do believe, plenty of conceit, and a little impertinence. I dare say I'm rather in the way here."
Charles Mannering's sneer, however, was not inconsistent, it seemed, with his staying where he was. He had no notion of going — he went on fiddling at the piano, and a stranger might have fancied that his whole soul was absorbed in the attempt to stumble through the treble of an air.
Mr. Dacre put down his cup of tea on the table, and seating himself beside Miss Gray, he said, with a glance toward the pianist, which seemed to say, "There's no risk, I see, of being overheard."
"I have made a discovery since I saw you."
He paused with an odd smile, looking in her eyes. She was silent.
"Can't you guess what it is?"
"About those letters," she said, very low.
"Of course — yes — about those letters; can't you guess?"
She looked at him, and down for a moment, but she could not, nor at all fancy why he looked at her with a kind of significance.
"No, I can't — not the least," she said, at last, with a little shake of her head. She fancied he looked a little disappointed.
"Ah! then you really have formed no conjecture?"
"No — none. Do pray tell me if there is anything worse than I fancied," she said.
"No. In one sense not at all — that is, my suspicions point at no one in whom you place confidence, or with whom you need have any relations, but recollect they are as yet suspicions only, and I thought that you, perhaps, might throw some light to confirm or dispel them."
She shook her head.
"Well, I shan't say a word more, until I can speak with a little more confidence. If my conjecture is right, a plan both curious and atrocious has been formed. I give myself three days to find it out. I shall withdraw myself, for that time, from every other occupation. The villain De Beaumirail is, I believe, implicated in it, and its centre is another person of whom you know nothing."
"Mr. de Beaumirail! How can that possibly be? The letters come evidently from an enemy of his."
"Say a pretended enemy — a real enemy of yours. I do not say the letters are written by him: they are written by a still worse and more dangerous man, and they are, as I thought, but the prelude to other steps. You had an idea, do you remember, that you were watched — I certainly am, and with no friendly purpose. Don't, pray, Miss Gray, don't suppose that I regret any little trouble that may fall to my share in this affair. You little know my feelings; you little understand, if there were a real danger to be encountered, with what devotion, and happiness, and pride, I would meet it." This was spoken low and rapidly, while his great dark eyes were fixed on her with the enthusiasm and admiration, which for a moment held her in their wild fascination, and before she could chill it by look or word that gaze was lowered, and turning quickly, he said to Mrs. Wardell, who bored him so wonderfully little, by either talking or listening during these strange little visits. "Have you heard, Mrs. Wardell, of the wonderful man who is coming to London — a Malayan magician, who has turned the heads of all Paris, and sees futurity — and describes it — in a crystal circle which he holds in the hollow of his hand?"
"Futurity! Tell us our fortunes, I suppose! Why that will be extremely amusing, and even curious, I dare say."
"Quite amazing, if all they say, or even half they swear, is to be believed. Everything turns out exactly as he says, and he can tell everyone everything that ever happened to them in their lives."
"A rather inconvenient faculty," said Charles Mannering, who had seen the little confidential tête-à-tête which had just occurred, and had observed, he fancied, a tinge in Laura Gray's cheek which was not there before, and had felt the sting of a new mortification. "Of course, with people who have no fault to find with themselves it is different, but 1 should not like to find a Malayan savage in possession of all my poor secrets, and ready to hand them over for half-a-crown to my civilized neighbours."
This was to Mrs. Wardell.
"Well, of course, there are things one would tell to friends, you know," began Mrs. Wardell.
"I don't know," answered Dacre, "that friends are not the very last people one ought to tell anything to; they are so reserved and odd in this age of iron, or brass, or whatever it is; and my belief is that people who don't trust, are not to be trusted."
Laura Gray laughed, and said —
"You are very hard upon friends to-night; I hope, Mr. Dacre, you don't think all that."
Mr. Dacre smiled, without glancing even momentarily at Charles Mannering, or seeming at all conscious of his presence. Perhaps he viewed that young gentleman's presence here as much in the light of an impertinence, as Charles had his.
"I don't exactly know what the question is."
"I mean," she said, "that people are worse friends — more reserved, and less trustworthy, than they used to be; in fact, that friendship is degenerating."
"I believe that the cant of perpetual degeneracy, which has been fashionable in all ages, is simply the register of the discontent that characterizes our unreasonable human nature in every age alike. Every man who is treated according to his deserts fancies himself ill-used because he is not treated according to his egotism. When I hear general invectives I know that the declaimer is wincing under some secret ulceration of vanity! Friendship degenerating! Human nature losing its characteristics! The Ethiopian changing his skin, and the leopard his spots! How could you think me such a muff?"
"But that is very much — is not it? — what Mr. Mannering said," interposed plain-spoken Mrs. Wardell. "What was it — what did you say?" she asked that young gentleman.
"I talked, I believe, some such folly as young men usually do when they attempt to, philosophize. I no more think of remembering it when I do it, than I dream of listening when others commit the same folly."
Mr. Dacre looked at Miss Gray and laughed gently. It was ineffably provoking, it seemed to say, "How amusingly the fellow winces. Were they making a butt of him?"
It did not mend the matter that he was nearly certain that this Mr. Dacre, who had grown in a day or two into an intimacy, was the same handsome young man whom he had seen in his box at the opera.
"I know I'm not so pretty as that doll of a fellow, but I'm worth fifty of him," was Charles Mannering's modest thought; "I'm a man; he's a puppy. He talks like a cox-comb. He's a selfish, conceited, pushing fool, and I could throw him out of that window as easily as the sofa-pillow."
Charles was very much vexed, but he had no notion of carrying on this covert sparring with him, a game in which he might possibly suffer; in which, at all events, it was not easy to keep one's temper.
"Suppose we have a little more light?" suggested Mrs. Wardell. The room was very imperfectly lighted; it was a fancy of Laura's when there was moonlight.
"Isn't it almost a pity?" said Laura, approaching the window, and looking out. "It seems so inhospitable — shutting out the moon, so gentle and beautiful and benignant. I think I'll put it to the vote; what do you say, Charles?"
"Very much honoured; but I can't agree with you. I have no sympathy with your hospitality, in this case, and I think the world's large enough for the moon; it has room enough to shine in without troubling your drawing-room; and I'm not so sure of its benignity, and I have no sympathy with the man in it; and altogether I'm for shutting the whole affair out, and having the drawing-room to ourselves, and the blessing of candle-light."
Miss Gray nodded, a little vexed, perhaps; very childish, but so it was; and Charles's speech was not the pleasanter for this.
"And what do you say, Mr. Dacre?" she inquired.
"I? Of course I vote for the moon and against the candles. I quite agree in the spirit of your remarks; and now, Miss Gray, we stand divided, two and two, and, as the lawyers say, there is no rule, and things remain as they are."
"Really! Well, that's very nice, and I think that lamp is quite light enough to read and work by; and, Julia dear, I'll only ask a few minutes longer; the light is really so beautiful."
And she leaned on the side of the window looking out. Under the dark elm trees, near the gate, she saw the carriage faintly; over their tops, above a filmy cloud, the moon shone resplendent.
Charles Mannering saw her, and would have liked to go to her side, and look out also. But he was vexed and high with her, and would not go till he was very clearly wanted.
But Alfred Dacre was, in a moment, at her side.
"I must go in two or three minutes," said he. "I have a call to make to-night; you think, perhaps, I am making too much of this affair; you will think otherwise by-and-bye; but you have nothing to fear, being, as you are, forewarned." He spoke dejectedly, although his words were cheering. "Remember, though evil spirits compass us about, they cannot hurt us but by our own fault. I say this to prevent your allowing yourself to be agitated if a new scene in this conspiracy should suddenly unfold itself. I do believe this place is watched. I know that I am suspected, and I regret this only because it makes my success the more uncertain. I have said all this to assure you that no matter what unlooked-for occurrence may take place, you have no personal danger to apprehend."
"I don't understand you. I grow only more and more bewildered," said Miss Gray.
"I don't wish you to understand more than that. Simply that you are not to let your fears overpower you. The real struggle will be at a distance. Actual danger shall not touch you, and now — (I was going to say good-night, but, oh! not yet!) I shan't see you, Miss Gray, for three days, and then something decisive. Three days seem a long time now — what an egotist I am, and you hate egotism. Absorbed by my one dominant feeling, I would subordinate all people and considerations to my special revenge — and you hate vengeance — upon the troublers of this tranquil little place. Pray mention it no more to-night; my minutes here are counted. Is it possible to describe that moonlight? How it spiritualizes all vulgar things. I am sure that is the secret of its charm for lovers and for poets; it so resembles — I mean in that respect — both love and poetry. How love, for instance, exalts and beautifies the homeliest objects in the surroundings of the beloved. Do you remember, Miss Gray, you mentioned a moonlight sketch of the ruins of Gray Forest, and promised to let me see it when next I came?"
"So I did," she said, a little flattered by his recollection. "But it really is not worth looking at."
"I've heard of your drawing, Miss Gray. Ardenbroke, who is a very good judge, admires it so immensely, and I've been told it is not the least like the drawing of an amateur — so much poetry, so much force."
"If you really thought all that, I should be very foolish to lose your good opinion by showing what my poor drawings really are."
"Is the one I speak of in the room?"
"No."
"Could you send and get it?"
"Well, no; but I never make a fuss about anything I've made up my mind to; and you shall see the sketch, as you make a point of it, although it is perfectly true that I am ashamed of it."
"Pray not now, though," said he; "I had no idea you could think of going yourself."
But it would not do; she was gone.
OLD-FASHIONED lamps, swinging from chains lighted the lobby, and the stairs, and the hall. She knew the spot in the library where she could lay her hand upon the drawing. For a moment she had forgotten the anxious subject of her thoughts. But the transition from the glow of the lighted hall, to the spacious and dark room, with its narrow scenery standing in moonlight and shadows, white and black, before the window, with a sudden chill recalled the hated ambiguities of the conspiracy, which day and night fevered her curiosity, and alarmed her imagination.
With an instinctive wish to escape from the room and accomplish her errand as quickly as might be, she hastened to the table near the window, and as if her approach had evoked it, suddenly the figure of a small, rather long-limbed man, appeared at the same large window, and laying his arm above his eyes, to shade them from the reflected light, he looked for some seconds into the room.
The light coming from behind touched his face oddly. The outlines of the figure were apish, and there was, as well as she could see, something sinister, which stared into the room with great eyeballs and a gaping mouth.
She stood quite motionless, and chill, as if she saw a ghost. She could not tell whether this man, with his face close to the glass, and his features distorted by the faint odd light and deep shadow, saw her or not. One thing she felt — that he might be one of those persecuting agents who were spying out all her ways, and weaving about her a net, with what object or how much malignity she could not guess. For a moment she fancied that this person, who seemed, by an intuition, aware that she was coming, had placed himself there with the intention of injuring her.
As quickly almost as he came, however, he disappeared. Very pale, Laura Gray found herself on the stairs, close to the drawing-room door. Charles Mannering she heard singing to his own accompaniment for the entertainment of Mrs. Wardell, who seldom failed to ask him. The sounds reassured the girl, though she still felt frightened, and she was about to venture into the room under cover of the music, when, looking stealthily over the banister, she saw the hall-door partly open, and the little sinister figure she had seen at the window, step in, peering jealously round him as he did.
The idea that he was in search of her took possession of Miss Gray. With renewed terror she got into the drawing-room.
Charles was singing, and Mrs. Wardell whispering to her lapdog, as she tenderly folded him in her arms, the question, "Is not that charming, you little angel? but we mustn't bark — no, no,"
Charles Mannering's performance was nothing to boast of, and he knew it. He chose to oblige the old lady to-night, however; partly, I think, to show that he was perfectly at his ease, and happy; and being engrossed with his own music, as singers are, Miss Gray passed across the room lightly, without exciting observation, except that of Mr. Dacre. Her face was so pale, that he exclaimed in a whisper, and with a gaze of alarm,
"Has anything happened?"
In a whisper she replied,
"A very wicked-looking, little man, with a pale face — I could hardly see it, stared in through the library window at me, and, as I reached the top of the stairs, he came in at the hall-door. I think he must be one of those dreadful people; for God's sake, Mr. Dacre, will you run down and try and get the servants to help?"
Mr. Dacre got quietly out of the room, and ran down the stairs. There was no sign of anyone in the hall, or in the rooms opening from it. The servants had seen no one.
"A mistake, no doubt!" said Mr. Dacre, and ran up the stairs again, and, as he did so, he thought,
"De Beaumirail and a Jew, a not unnatural association!" and he laughed gently, and shrugged, as he said it.
Softly, lightly, he entered the room.
"But that you are so confident," he whispered, "I should fancy it must be a dream — not a creature except the servants downstairs, and everything perfectly quiet. They have gone to search the upper part of the house, but I think you may be quite at ease about it."
"No dream — quite a certainty," she said.
"Oh! no — not that; I mean only that the fellow just peeped in at the window, and afterwards at the door. I wish to heaven I had seen him, so that I should have known him afterwards, if I met him. I quite agree with you as to the object of his visit."
As they talked a postman's knock sounded through the hall, and Miss Gray was instantly silent; she expected one of those odious letters.
Fortunately, for the safety of the secret, which she still hated to divulge, Mrs. Wardell had asked Charles Mannering for another song — a quiet little pastoral ditty, which she loved, and which he sang with very angry feelings, for he did not lose the little scene — the low-toned confidences — in short, the insufferable rudeness of Miss Laura Gray and that conceited young man, who did not know how to behave himself, and talked incessantly all the time he was singing.
No letter came up — no parcel — nothing; five minutes more passed, and Mr. Alfred Dacre lingeringly took his leave; and he whispered, as he was about to go, "May I write a line if anything should happen?"
"Well, I suppose so; that is, if anything of any consequence should happen — thanks."
So he bid her good-bye. He took Mrs. Wardell's hand, and bid her also a farewell — and took no notice of Charles Mannering, who took none of him; and then this little drum broke up, leaving Charles very sulky and bitter, and Laura distrait and excited.
I can't wonder at Charles Mannering's mistake, all things considered; and, perhaps, his odd state of temper is also intelligible.
"I see, I was very much in the way this evening," said Charles, not able to contain longer.
"You! in the way; not in the least; no one is ever in my way; if they are disposed to be so, I dismiss them."
"Then, they must be greater fools than I if they ever come back."
"But you were not de trop, and I did not send you away; on the contrary, you made yourself very much the reverse. I wanted to say a few words to Mr. Dacre, and I thought you very considerate, if you meant it."
"I really did not happen to be thinking about it at the time; and what you have just said quite satisfies me, and I need not reproach myself any more."
He was thinking of going; but he wanted resolution. He took up a book, and turned over its leaves, and tried to think of something careless to say to Mrs. Wardell, but could not; and, at all events, that lady was at that moment in one of her gentle naps. He looked toward the window where Laura Gray was sitting, but she was not looking toward him, on the contrary, through the window, "following, no doubt," thought Charles, "in spirit, the departed Don Whiskerandos, who has passed beneath those files of elms."
This sensitive Charles Mannering — sensitive at least in all that concerned her — saw that there was no suspicion of affectation or pique, but that her inattention was perfectly genuine.
"Polite, certainly," said he, with a bitter smile, glancing from nodding Mrs. Wardell to Laura Gray, who was looking out of the window.
He was thinking of going unperceived out of the room, and adding some life to the landscape which Miss Gray was contemplating, by walking away before her eyes. But again his heart failed him, and he sat down on the corner of a chair beside the unfailing piano, and began again to touch its notes.
AT length he could stand it no longer, and, said he, sitting erect and addressing the window in a clear tone, and with a rather bitter jocularity —
"Nothing ever arrests the progress of mind and the march of discovery."
Laura looked at him with her large eyes, a little puzzled, and after a little pause, she said —
"Your allusions, I am sure, are wise, if one could only understand them."
"I did not intend to be the least mysterious, I assure you. I've been away just forty-eight hours. It is very amusing — and I find a new worship established."
"A new worship! I don't know what you mean. What worship, pray, have you found here? Worship is a very comprehensive term — isn't it?" said the young lady, with a colour suddenly heightened, and looking at him with brilliant eyes.
Perhaps, if she had not blushed so ambiguously, he might have kept his temper better; but the feeling that, in the very act of snubbing him, she was exhibiting this beautiful evidence of so different a feeling with respect to that miserable coxcomb! Unaided human nature could hardly be expected to stand that.
"Worship — yes, quite true — a very comprehensive term. There are all sorts of worship. The Egyptians worshipped reptiles, and some people worship monkeys, I believe; and others, perhaps more degraded still, worship themselves."
"Still enigmatical; but I think there can be no doubt that you intend to be — I'll only say — disagreeable; and suppose there is a worship established here. I think I may do and say pretty much, here, what I like, without being considered intrusive. And, suppose Julia Wardell — oh! I see, she's asleep — has committed the impiety of removing Mr. Charles Mannering from her altar, and the profanity of setting up Mr. Alfred Dacre instead, is not this a land of liberty? Hasn't she a right to practice her idolatries according to her taste? I don't see why the good old soul should not have her plurality of Josses, or whatever she calls her idols, or why the deposed divinity should thunder his displeasure in my small habitation, and the fact is, I don't choose it."
"You quite mistake me."
"So much the better."
"I don't, at all, affect rivalry with the new divinity. I never had the distinction of standing upon an altar and receiving incense. It must be very pleasant, and judging from the enthusiasm, and the looks of the priestesses, there must be no small happiness, too, in the mere act of devotion."
"Come now, do speak plainly — what do you mean?" said Miss Laura Gray peremptorily.
"In the practice of idolatry everything is allegory and myth. Isn't it rather unreasonable to ask me to speak literally?" said Charles Mannering, pleased, perhaps, to see evidence of irritation on the other side.
"I suppose you are joking," said the young lady. "If you have no meaning it is a bad joke, and if you have a meaning it is a worse one. I wish to know, once for all, what you do mean, if meaning you have any.
"Well, I don't mind telling you that it does strike me that an intimacy, which I suppose seems to other people quite natural, and selon les règles appears to have grown up, almost in an hour. I recognise the young gentleman as the same whom you thought so good-looking at the opera, the other night, and I suppose he has been properly introduced and all that, and that Ardenbroke, who is, I think, the only friend you have — of course I don't include myself — with the slightest claim to offer advice on such a subject unasked, has told you all that is necessary to know — I assume that — but still, the very distinguished confidence, and, in fact, the intimacy with which I find that fortunate young gentleman received and entertained, at whatever hours it may suit him to drop in, does strike a person accustomed to see such relations grow up with a less tropical suddenness, as in the highest degree marvellous."
"Well, thank you for some plain speaking at last, and considering you have no right, as you say, to offer advice unasked, you contrive to exercise the privilege of saying and insinuating more rude things than any other modest young gentleman I have had the good fortune to hear of."
"You may resent it. I can't help that," said he, "but I think it would be neither kind nor right, if in a place like this city, I were to abandon you, with no more experience than a child, and no one but Mrs. Wardell to take care of you — Mrs. Wardell, who really knows very little more of the world than you do yourself — to the risk of being imposed on, or even compromised by your confidence in the professions of people who happen to turn up in a Babel so handsomely provided with sharks and sharpers, as London is."
"We happen to know, not from himself, but from
people who are perfectly informed, and whose authority even you
would not dispute, that Mr. Dacre is a person whom there could be
no possible objection to knowing. I say this, neither as
admitting your right to demand explanations, nor to make
offensive remarks, but simply as a matter of fact, and as showing
that we do not commit such extravagances as, in your
"That which we desire to believe, we do believe often upon very slender evidence," said Charles Mannering.
"I don't think you perceive how very offensive, I may say insulting, your little speeches have become. You can't help making them, I dare say. I suppose people, in the main, act according to their natures, and yours is to say such pleasant things as you have entertained me with this evening. I take it for granted you must go on saying them, so I mean to go up to my room, not having Julia Wardell's faculty of retiring into dreams and slumber; but, of course, you can waken her with one of those pretty speeches, as they wakened King Lear with music, and she has the advantage of a much better temper than I have." And with these words the young lady left the room.
She had not blown up Charles Mannering with half the spirit she might, at another time. A sense of fear and anxiety had in some measure tamed that wayward creature, and her manner was not so fierce as her words.
When she got to her room — at every step fancying she saw the peeping face of the odious little man whom she had seen at the window, that night, and in the hall — she sat down and asked her maid all about the search that had been made.
Every nook and corner had been searched, not a sign of the slightest disturbance anywhere detected, and it was plain that the person who had entered the hall could have only stepped in, looked about him, and withdrawn.
In a minute more Miss Laura Gray heard the hall-door shut, and a step pass away upon the dry court. She knew that step. It was Charles Mannering taking his departure. She smiled faintly as she fancied his feelings, his dignity, and his huff; and then she thought uneasily whether there might not be reason at the bottom of his reclamations.
A SMALL letter was laid upon her dressing-table next morning, as she entered; Mrs. Wardell had, placed it there. She was relieved at the first glance. It was not from her unknown correspondent. It was addressed in an extremely pretty hand, and at the foot of the page was "A. Dacre."
"My Dear Miss Gray," it said, "you see how impatient I am to use my privilege. Lest your servants should omit to mention the circumstance, I have to relate, that on going down-stairs, I learned from the servant that I had been honoured by an inquiry, as I conclude, from the same person who alarmed you by showing himself at the window, and who I have no doubt is implicated in the cowardly annoyance to which you have been exposed. I instantly pursued, but not a trace of him was discoverable. Any direction you may be so good as to honour me with, I shall be only too happy to obey, if you will be so good as to send, during my three days' absence, to my address, Minivers Hotel, &c.
"Believe me, my dear Miss Gray,
"Ever Yours, &c., &c.
"P.S. — I think the bravado of last night will materially aid discovery. The one talent I really do possess, that of the detective, I devote to this enterprise. I had twice in my life to employ it before, and very quickly succeeded. Pray burn this letter. There are those whom I would not wish to know that I wrote. I entreat of you therefore to be secret for three days."
When Miss Gray came down she questioned the servant who had opened the door to the unknown visitor of last night. When did he come? A few minutes before Mr. Dacre left. Did he knock or ring at the door; or how was it? He came with a postman's knock. Would the servant know him again? Yes, he was a low-sized, vicious-looking little wasp of a Jew — pale and surly. And what did he say? Only to, ask if Mr. Dacre was here, and he asked the servant if he was quite sure, and seemed irresolute what to do, like a man making up his mind to mischief, but away he went again, so quick he could not tell which way he took. That was the narrative.
Now, Miss Laura Challys Gray was beginning to grow dissatisfied, and to quarrel with herself about several things. In the first place, had she done wisely in snubbing her honest cousin, Charles Mannering, whom she really wished to consult — whom, however, she found herself, by an understood obligation of secrecy, unable to consult — in whose eyes, her reason told her, she must inevitably appear so strange — possibly her conduct so equivocal, and to whom she yet could give no explanation? Had she done wisely in admitting this stranger — Mr. Dacre — to such strangely confidential relations? Had she not acted in panic — without thinking — without consulting even the instincts of caution. The intimacy which had grown in a day or two between her and this Mr. Dacre, which seemed to her like a dream, did it not affright her at times? And, then, was she quite sure that the handsome hero of this little mystery, who had taken up her quarrel so good-naturedly, or rather so enthusiastically, of whom she thought through every hour of the day almost, for his words and looks were inseparably associated with the subject which so rivetted her thoughts — was she quite certain that she cared as little for him as in prudence she ought? Altogether, would it not have been wiser, to open this matter, the importance of which she had possibly exaggerated immensely, to Lord Ardenbroke or Charles Mannering? It was now, however, too late; she could hardly remember how these relations with Mr. Dacre had come about. But, now, she felt she could not recede. There was really nothing against him. He had been zealous, but very respectful. He was a friend of Ardenbroke's. Whom better could she have employed? And so on, inconsistently.
She was low. Her novel did not please her, nor music, nor work; she had a headache; she did not care for a drive or a walk; her gardening wearied her; she was in a state of unavowed suspense; expecting news; none came.
In the afternoon, near the hedge-row that bounded the lawn of Guildford House, came a big drum and pandean pipes resounding shrilly, and the grave brown-faced showman set up the stage of "Punch and Judy," and the time-honoured play began.
Here was a diversion. Miss Gray, who happened at the moment to be in the library, sent for her opera glasses, threw open the window, and amused herself with the Hogarthian picture of the motley crowd and the showman, seen pleasantly in the dappled sunlight under the trees.
When this pleasure, like all others, came to its end, she sat with her glasses in her lap at the open window. In a little while, the crowd having marched off with the show-box and big-drum, there came to the gate a slender girl whom the person in the lodge would not allow to pass.
"She's a gipsy," thought Miss Gray, raising her glasses, and thus distinctly confirming her first impression. She touched the bell, and told the servant to tell the people at the gate to allow the girl to come up to the house.
Up came the girl — lithe, dark, handsome, smiling, with all the servile wildness of her race, with fine eyes, and brilliant little teeth.
"Send my maid here," said the young lady, not caring to be quite alone, though the window-stood interposed between her, and this wild child of fortune. "You can tell all that's going to happen us, can't you?" said the young lady, smiling with an odd mixture of curiosity, antipathy, and admiration upon her vagabond sister.
"Oh, yes, she would tell the pretty young lady her fortune, if my lady wished; she would look at her hand, and she hoped the pretty young lady would have everything she wished in the world, for, indeed, she was pretty enough to be a princess, and dress in gold and diamonds, and pearls, and marry a king," and so forth.
"Have you told many fortunes to-day?"
"A deal of fortunes to-day, my lady. Yes, a great many pretty young ladies, but not one so pretty as you; no, no, my lady, indeed."
"Would you like to have your fortune told? I'm going to have mine," said Miss Gray turning to her maid, who had that moment come in. What maid could refuse such an offer. And, so, with a giggle, and a little toss of her head, she submitted.
So, Miss Mary Anne Mersey's hand told its secrets, and promised that amiable person her heart's content, and a rich tailor for her husband, and, finally, the sibyl added —
"And you will find, very soon, something that will make the young lady, your mistress, wonder!"
"Oh! something! Of what kind?" inquired Miss Gray.
"I can't know that, my lady. She will find something that will give you a start; yes, indeed, my pretty lady."
"You mean that will frighten me, do you?"
"Yes, my lady, — that will frighten you."
"La! what can she mean?" exclaimed Miss Mary Anne.
"I suppose we shall both be frightened, Mersey; but it can't be helped, and you have certainly got a great deal to console you, for I don't think a single thing has gone wrong in your fortune."
"Very nice hand, yes, very lucky," acquiesced the smiling prophetess.
"But she's to find, something — how soon — that is to frighten me?" persisted the young lady.
"How soon is not fixed, but very soon, my lady. That will be by the stars."
"We shall learn time enough, Mersey, I dare say," and putting more money in her hand, with a smile, she extended her own for the chiromancer's examination.
"You will travel about a great deal," began the gipsy; "you will not settle at home for a long time."
"Hush! Mersey. You are not to say a word," said her mistress, warningly.
"And there's a handsome young gentleman in love with you, my lady, though you don't know it, and he will, maybe, be wounded shortly for your sake, maybe killed, and he'll leave you some money, for he's very rich, though you don't know it. He's young, and he's very handsome, and he loves you ever so much more than his life, and you'll marry some one, but I don't know whether him or no, and you saw him in a fair, or in a playhouse, maybe; some place where there was a show going on, and music, and that is all I'm sure about, my lady."
"And how soon is this unfortunate young gentleman to be killed or wounded in my service?" she asked, laughing.
"Ah! you would not laugh, pretty lady, if you saw the poor young gentleman bleeding."
"Oh! but you know there's a hope, isn't there, that he may not be hurt at all, and what I want to know is, how soon the time of danger is to come."
"Soon, my lady, it can't be more than a year, but it might be to-morrow morning, a letter might come; it is some time very shortly."
"Well, thanks. Now, I think, we know everything," said Miss Gray.
"Is there any more young ladies would like their fortunes told, in the house, pretty young lady?"
"No, no, thanks, no one, and I think we'll say goodbye now?" said Miss Laura Gray, with a smile and a little nod.
The handsome young prophetess smiled and showed all her little white teeth and curtsied, and crossed the windows here and there, and up and down with her restless glance, and so, smiling and curtseying again, with many "thankies, my ladies," and "good lucks," away she went.
"A very good fortune you have got, Mersey, and much good may it do you. I'm not so lucky quite. My young gentleman is to be shot; whoever he is, on very short notice too; and I'm to be frightened by something you are to be good enough to find for me. I shan't want you any more just now, Mersey."
Though the young lady knew that the gipsy was an impostor, and that, probably, the same prediction was repeated at every second window where she got a piece of money and an audience, yet, in her present mood, she would rather that the man at the lodge had taken his own way, and this little folly been omitted.
THAT evening was unrelieved by a single incident worthy of being recorded, and Miss Gray was early weary — no note had reached her; all was silent. She went early to her room.
"I'll leave this tiresome place, Mersey," she said; "I'll leave it in two or three weeks, I think; do you like it?"
"Like it — hates it — rayther, you mean, miss. I can't think whatever bewitched you, Miss Challys, to come to such a dismal hole of a place. I've sat up an hour at a time, in my window, crying my eyes out. I told you the day after we came, miss, you could not bear to live here no time. 'Tisn't a place where there's nothing to recommend it. 'Taint country, miss, and it aint town, no more; and when I look out of the window, them old trees, so like the churchyard at Gray Forest, and not a soul stirring, I do really, miss, I cries my eyes red again for downright lowness of spirits."
"I'm coming to the same way of thinking myself, Mersey; I believe I made a mistake when I came here. It's quite true, I hate what they call society, that is, balls and drums, and all that wear and tear, and racket, and fever; but then this is unnecessarily dull; and the fact is, it is so unnaturally quiet that I am growing quite nervous, and I believe a year of it would go very near making me mad."
"La, miss," rejoined Miss Mary Anne Mersey, who had been Laura's maid from Miss Gray's nursery days, and could consequently speak her mind fearlessly, "Of course it will make you mad. It is not natural, nor right, for young people to shut themselves up like that, and you so handsome, miss; a pretty thing with your fortune and all, you should go off into an old maid, with your fancies and vagaries."
Laura laughed, looking at her own pretty face in the glass before which she had seated herself. It seems to me a harmless satisfaction which young ladies seek in that sort of reflection.
"When you see me an old maid, as you shall, you need not trouble yourself about the causes of it, because I have weighed the matter well, and an old maid I'm resolved to be."
"Well, if I could? But, no, Miss Challys; I don't believe nothink of the sort. Why should you allow such an ungodly notion into your head?"
"Ungodly — is it? How?" inquired Miss Gray.
"Ungrateful to God, miss, for your wealth, and health, and beauty. Why, miss, it's only natural you should choose a fine, handsome young gentleman that will love you with all his heart and soul, and be a good husband, and make you a happy wife and a good mother of a family."
"Oh, Mersey! you suffocate me."
"There, now, already there's an uncommon nice young gentleman as ever you need wish to look at — that lovely young man, Mr. Dacres, and he's rolling in money besides."
Laura blushed brilliantly, and with flashing eyes said angrily —
"You could not have said a more absurd thing, Mersey, or a more awkward one. I almost think you are possessed. I'm obliged to see Mr. Dacre when he calls for half an hour in the evening. He has most particular business to speak of, and nothing could be more inconvenient than my being obliged to decline the information he is so good as to give me, and that, at any inconvenience, I should unquestionably do, if I thought any such monstrous folly could be talked by anyone upon the subject."
"And why should you feel like that, Miss Challys? How can you or me stop people talking if they likes it? And where could you see a handsomer or a nicer gentleman? And he has no end of money — and so generous he is. La, Miss Challys, dear. Old maid, indeed! What notions do come in your head, miss!"
"Well, Mersey, if you will talk like a fool I can't help it. Only I'd rather you talked of anyone but me. We'll go abroad, and see the world. You shall see such beautiful places — Paris and Rome, and Venice and Switzerland — and if there must be marrying you shall marry, for I wont. What do you say to a French restaurateur or an Italian artist?"
"Many thanks, miss; but I'm no more thinking of taking a husband than other people; and as for them foreigners, I can't abide the sight of them."
And as she whisked her handkerchief from her pocket at these hoity-toity words, a letter flew out on the floor. Taking it up she found the address to "Miss Gray, Guildford House."
"Letter to you, miss, please."
As she leaned back indolently in her low chair, the young lady received it, almost without looking, in her fingers; and it was not until she held it just under her eyes that she gave herself the trouble of looking at it. Turning pale, she exclaimed —
"My God! where did you get this?"
And, staring at it, she held it tightly pinched in her hand. Mary Anne Mersey was seared by the looks and exclamations of her young mistress.
"It fell out, miss. I think it must have been in my handkerchief — and — I don't know. In my pocket, leastways — and I don't know how in the world it ever has got there."
Miss Laura Gray might well be a little startled, for there, at a glance, she had recognised the broad, firm hand which had grown to her so horrible.
Miss Gray stood up straight. She recognised the evil face of this letter, and her heart sank.
Her maid, with a frown and her lips pursed, was peering curiously in her frightened face.
There was something beside the letter enclosed in the envelope — a small, hard substance. The odd emblem was on the seal as before, and the legend, "Choose which Dart."
She broke the seal, and impatiently plucked out the contents. The enclosure was a ring.
"This is so like my pearl ring!" she said, touching it with her finger, and looking, in her maid's face inquiringly. "When did I wear it last?"
"I thought you had it on now, miss."
"No, no; look there, on the ring-stand."
"It ain't there, miss, and 'tain't on your finger, and that's it, returned in the note. You must have dropped it when you were out, or forgot it on the counter, maybe, in some shop."
Miss Gray took it up and scrutinized it near the candle's flame.
"It is my ring — it certainly is. How can this have happened?"
"Wont the note tell you, miss?"
Miss Gray read it in silence.
"You have sent a fool on his last errand. I enclose you proof that I have been in your house, where for half an hour the sword hung over his head. In and out, up and down your house, like tame cats, we know pretty well what passes there, as you perceive. I have had the pleasure of sending you in succession two little reminders — a locket set with brilliants — and a pearl-hoop ring. On the day after to-morrow I shall have the honour to present you with a larger and more precious packet, containing a suitable memento of a meddler, viz., the right hand of Mr. Alfred Dacre packed in lint."
"What is the matter with you, miss; you look very bad," said her maid.
"Nothing, nothing, too late to send a message. What o'clock is it, Mersey?"
"Past ten, miss. Half-past and three minutes, please."
"How much? Is it too late? I suppose we had better send to-morrow," said the young lady, with a puzzled air.
"Too late for what, miss, please?"
"Too late to send for Lord Ardenbroke, or — or for whom? Mr. Mannering — yes — yes — it must wait till morning."
"What is it, miss, nothing gone wrong, sure?"
"You had better run down and ask Mrs. Wardell, with my love, whether she can come up to me for a moment, or — no — don't mind. Stay here, please," she continued, in a suddenly altered voice. "I have, — let me think. Yes — Mary Anne Mersey, you must answer me honestly the questions I shall ask you. I'll begin at the beginning — let me think! I'm stunned, I believe ——"
Miss Mersey stood bridling a little, and looked from the corners of her eyes, in the young lady's face, expecting what might come.
"WHERE did you get this letter, Mary Anne?"
"Where did I get it, Miss? La! It tumbled out of my pocket, when I pulled out my handkerchief."
"Oh, Mersey! How can you fancy I am to be put off so? How did you get possession of that letter? I must know. You know everything about it, and you shall tell me the truth."
"But I don't know, miss, as I hope to be saved, miss, I don't!"
"It's a conspiracy — it's a conspiracy; those that ought to love me best are my betrayers. Oh, Mersey! how could you? Why are you so changed; what have I done; how can you league yourself with such wretches?"
"But, miss, I've done nothing; may I choke if I tell you a lie."
"I'll know what you have done. Yes; you shall tell me everything. Come, Mersey, you had better tell me the truth, or I'll find those who will make you," said the young lady, with a sudden and fierce change of manner.
"I've nothing to tell, so help me!"
"Come, come, speak truth. Who gave you that letter?"
"No one, miss," she replied, with sturdy vehemence.
"Shame! Why you took it from your pocket!"
"No I didn't, miss. I didn't, please. No such thing. When I drew out my handkerchief, the letter was in it, and fell on the carpet, please, which you saw it yourself, miss."
"Then, by fair means, you'll tell me nothing?"
"Fair or foul, miss, I've nothing to tell. I haved sawed nothing but what you have sawed yourself, miss, and I don't care who says it. I know no more about it than you do, miss."
Laura Gray paused, gazing in her face.
"I don't know what to think. I'm half distracted. Mersey, you look honest; you have been always a good girl. I conjure you, don't deceive me; now, tell me all you know about it."
"I do tell you, miss, and it's nothing. You, have made me ready to cry, you have; you misdoubt me so. It is very hard, it is."
And Miss Mary Anne Mersey began to whimper into her handkerchief.
"You need not cry, Mersey. It is I who should cry, if anyone cries. But here it's the fact. Some one in the house has been telling to people outside all that passes among us; our secret conversations, our visitors and their names, our plans; in short, everything. Who can it be? What am I to think? How can you have got this letter into your possession?"
"It must have stuck in my handkerchief, miss, by chance. No one gave it me. I never knew I had it till it fell on the floor, and I'll make oath to that anywhere you like, miss."
"It was not in the Post-office. It has no mark. It must have come by a messengers hand. Some of the servants, then, must have put it into your pocket when you weren't looking. No, Mersey, it was only for a moment the doubt took possession of me, in this great perplexity. I am sure you would not aid in this cruel annoyance. But there are persons in this house who do, and who betray us to dangerous people outside, and repeat everything that passes among us."
"I wonder could it have been that fortune-teller; I was just thinking, miss. But she was standing outside, and we looking. I don't think she could."
"That did not strike me. They are such thieves, and do such things with so much sleight of hand. I should not wonder if it were she. I dare say it was."
Miss Laura Gray paused, thinking.
"But I think I had seen her, or felt her; I'm sharp enough that way," said Mary Anne.
"Not so sharp as she though. Those people live by roguery and sleight of hand. The more I think of it, the more likely it seems. Don't you remember she said that you would find something that would frighten me? Yes; and that some one would be in danger within a short time? It is only a guess though."
"Yes, your sweetheart, miss," said Mary Anne Mersey, thoughtfully.
Laura Gray blushed, and turned her eyes angrily on her maid, but there was not a suspicion of slyness; a grave and perfect good faith, on the contrary.
"Well, there is a gentleman in danger, though he is nothing whatever of the kind, and if not in danger, actually, at all events, threatened with injury; and as I don't fancy that gipsies are inspired, I believe she must have been told to say those things, and the only persons who could have told her are those who employ themselves in writing these letters — I mean this letter that fell from your handkerchief — don't you see? Well, then, if that is so, all the rest is plain; for the same people who gave her her instructions wrote the letter, perhaps, but it is only conjecture; and is there any use in telling you to keep it secret? Will you promise to tell no one a word of what has passed, for two or three days, until, at least, I give you leave?"
"Not to Mrs. Wardell, miss?"
"Certainly not; but I meant particularly to the servants," said the young lady.
"Oh, no, miss, sure!" said Miss Mersey, so loftily that Laura felt almost moved to beg her pardon for having admitted a suspicion so vulgar.
"Mersey, you must sleep in this room to-night; I am so nervous. I dare say I'm a great fool, but I can't help it; and in the morning, with God's blessing, I shall have advice, and take steps to prevent all this. You know this ring — my pearl-hoop — I did not wear it yesterday?"
"I can't say, Miss; I'm not quite sure."
"Did I the day before?"
"I'm sure you wore it within the last three or four days, but I could not be sure which was the last, miss."
"Very well, Mersey, but you must not say a word of it; it will put people in this house on their guard if you do. That ring was taken out of this house, and has been returned; and it is not the first proof I have had that we are watched, and betrayed."
End of Part Two