Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume 3 (of 3)

by George Henry Lewes

BOOK VIII.

CHAPTER I.
AMIABLE PEOPLE.

It was November. Rose and Julius had returned to London to continue their felicity in a new sphere: they were quite a model couple, and were so happy that several people "of experience" shook their heads sceptically, and exclaimed:—"Ah, well! early times yet, early times!"

What a world of envy in a little phrase!

Meredith Vyner grew morose. His domestic comfort was now utterly destroyed, for his wife was entirely estranged from him; and he was without hope of her ever returning to the former state of hypocritical fondness. Beyond this, Violet would not remain in the house with her step-mother; so that except in his visits to Rose he saw no one that he loved. Blanche was also separated from him: her husband absolutely interdicted all communication between her and her father. This was the result of a violent quarrel on the old subject of his gambling, and of her father's attempt to get her from him.

Cecil's passion for gambling had returned with more than its former force and recklessness. Vyner had discovered it; had suppressed the allowance; lectured Cecil sharply, and endeavoured to persuade Blanche to leave him. A complete rupture was the consequence.

The miserable old man saw his daughter's impending ruin, and saw that he was impotent to save her from it. This, added to his domestic sorrows, made him morose. He was a changed being. He became dirtier and dirtier. He never quoted Horace. The dust collected on his manuscripts like the grains of snuff upon his waistcoat, without any effort on his part to shake them off. Life to him was purposeless, joyless.

Mrs. Vyner was as lively and dissipated as ever. No care sat upon her brow; no sorrow darkened her existence. For some weeks after the scene between her and Maxwell, he ceased to see her; a circumstance which made her husband for a moment rejoice; he believed that a rupture having taken place, his wife would return to him. The hope was not of long duration. She, at first indifferent, became at last uneasy at Maxwell's absence. She loved him, she was accustomed to his presence, she liked the excitement of his love, with its fierce whims, its brutal expressions, and its passionate, unrestrained vehemence. She missed him.

Unable longer to bear his absence, she wrote a long and touching letter, in which real feeling aided her natural adroitness, and gained the victory.

Maxwell was on the point of giving way, when it reached him. Obstinate, violent, and revengeful as he was, he too was so uneasy at being absent from her, that he was glad to have such an excuse for forgiveness. He felt as if he could have stabbed her to the heart; yet he was softened in an instant by her letter.

Peace was made between them. He promised never again to doubt her love; she promised never again to offend him. Things resumed their old course; yes, even to the renewal of his jealousy and his threats; but on the whole Mrs. Vyner's brow was smooth!

Not very long after the reconciliation, they were together at a party at Mrs. Langley Turner's. Among the company there happened to be Lord * * * *, notorious in his early days for his successful gallantries, and not having yet relinquished the ambition of making conquests. He sat next to Mrs. Vyner, who was that evening in high spirits, and looked enchantingly piquante. She was a violent radical in her opinions, and a great tuft-hunter; a title was always resplendent in her eyes, no matter what the wearer might be like. It is easily conceivable therefore, how, both as a coquette and a tuft-hunter, she should have been inordinately gratified at the attentions of Lord * * * *. She put forth all her fascinations; and although from time to time she met the dark scowl of Maxwell, who was observing her like a panther watching from his jungle, she only answered his anger with a scornful smile, and continued her attentions to the old nobleman.

As Maxwell saw her rise to depart, he hurried down stairs to the cloak-room, and there awaited her with the intention of expressing his anger, as he handed her into the carriage; but to his rage he saw Lord * * * * accompany her down stairs, gallantly cover her white shoulders with the shawl, and then handing her to the carriage, take leave of her in the most significant manner.

Maxwell with difficulty restrained himself from challenging his rival on the spot.

The next day when he called on Mrs. Vyner, he saw a cab drive from the door: it was Lord * * * * coming from his first visit. Maxwell refused to go in.

Day after day he saw that cab standing there for an hour or two together; he waited in the street the whole time, and in his impatience the hour seemed quadrupled. It was enough to irritate the least jealous of men; him it drove to phrenzy.

Pale with passion he at last went in, and found the two together. She received him with easy unconcern, as if he were no more than an habitué. Lord * * * * looked somewhat "glum" at his presence, and after a few commonplaces, rose and departed.

"So," said Maxwell to her when they were alone, "my place is taken, is it?"

"What! jealous again?"

"Not jealous, but convinced."

"Convinced of your own folly?"

"Yes."

"Then, there are hopes of a reformation. George, don't scowl in that way; you are not handsome at any time, and when you scowl, least of all."

"Mary, you must see him no more."

"Him? explain: I hate enigmas."

"Lord * * * * I insist upon it."

"Now, don't be absurd, pray! Why should I not see a man old enough to be my father?"

"But not too old to be your lover."

"The old story! What a queer creature you are! Why, who ever could suppose there was danger in a man of his age—he hasn't an unbleached hair on his head."

"Perhaps not; but a coronet hides that."

"Ha! ha! ha! Oh, you green-eyed monster! Really, you are capital fun, though you don't mean it."

"Beware, beware!"

"Ah! now you are getting tragic ... have you an unloaded pistol about you by chance?"

A dark smile passed over his face.

"Mary, listen to me: I am very serious. Laugh, if you please, at my jealousy, but at any rate, acknowledge that I have a right to insist on a cessation of his visits."

"I acknowledge nothing of the kind. Why am I to be deprived of seeing whom I please? My husband does not object to my receiving Lord * * * * why should you?"

"Because you take pleasure in those visits."

"I do."

"They flatter you."

"They do."

"He flatters you."

"He is gallant enough to find my society agreeable—that is more than I can say for yours at this moment."

"You think it a feather in your cap to have a worthless old nobleman dangling after you."

"Perhaps I do; what then?"

"I will not allow it."

"Come, come; this is getting a little too imperious."

"I will not allow it, I say."

"Your permission is not necessary."

"I tell you it shall not be!"

"George—I am serious now—as you raise your voice—if you know me, you must know that I may be persuaded to anything, but I am not to be driven. Obstinacy may not be an amiable quality; but it is a quality which belongs to me. Cease that tone of command therefore; you will get nothing by it."

"I shall not cease that tone. I shall adopt any tone I please."

"Do so; then don't wonder if I refuse to listen to you."

"But, by God! you shall listen."

"Try me."

Her eyes dilated as she said this, though her voice was perfectly calm. She was getting almost as angry as he was. The spirit of opposition was abetted by the resolution she had formed not to rebut the attentions of Lord * * * *, and she now was roused for the struggle.

And yet, flattered as she undoubtedly was, by the admiration of the old roué, she loved Maxwell well enough to have sacrificed that delight, had he taken another course, had he implored instead of threatened; but that was not in his nature, and his brutal imperiousness roused her to rebellion.

He had become livid with passion, and it was only with great effort that he could articulate—

"Don't play with me ... you know not the danger ... I warn you ... I warn you."

"And I laugh at your threats."

"You think I am not serious?"

"I do not care a straw whether you are serious or not."

"You are resolved then?"

"Quite."

"Oh, beware! beware! do not drive me to the last extremity...."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"By God!" he exclaimed, striking a small table with his fist.

"See," she said, "you have broken my china—a real bit of rococo; that's what it is to be ungentlemanly and violent."

"Mary ... This is .... You are rushing to destruction! Look here; I am almost mad ... but I know what I say ... choose whether you will obey me—if you do not, as I live, I will blow your brains out, and then my own!"

"Mr. Maxwell, if you think I am to be frightened by your ravings, if you think I am to obey your ridiculous caprices, if you think you are to be my master, you are egregiously mistaken. Leave the house: I hate you!"

Her look expressed her hate, as she said this.

He was convulsed; the veins started on his forehead; his chest heaved laboriously, and his eyes were dilated with fury, but he uttered no sound.

"Your love is degradation! Your soul is as ignoble as your manners are brutal! I have put up with this too long. I have been contaminated by your presence, and now, I hate you!"

A sort of gurgle, like the death rattle, sounded in his throat; his face was purple.

"I hate you!" she added. "Is that clear? Do you understand me now!"

With his eyes fixed horribly upon her furious countenance, he put his handkerchief to his mouth; when he removed it, she saw that it was stained with blood.

A sudden sickness overcame her, and she trembled.

He did not speak another word, but staggered rather than walked towards the door. Slowly he descended the stairs, and with his handkerchief still at his mouth reached home. The paroxysm of passion had burst a small bloodvessel.

Left to herself, Mrs. Vyner sank on a couch shivering, and her teeth chattering together from the combined effects of rage, excitement, and fear.

The heavy pall of a terrible doom seemed stretched over her future: dark, mysterious, and awful. She shuddered as she thought of what had passed, and only recovered a slight decree of calmness as the thought occurred to her that perhaps that broken bloodvessel might put an end to him!

CHAPTER II.
LOVE NOT KILLED BY UNKINDNESS.

For what will love's exalting not go through,
'Till long neglect and utter selfishness
Shames the fond pride it takes in its distress?
LEIGH HUNT.—Rimini.

Cecil had removed to miserable lodgings at Hammersmith, consisting of two rooms, and those wretchedly furnished; he had also reduced his expenses by giving up his atélier, and was now, without pretence at concealment, a gambler, and nothing else.

Blanche's grief when she first discovered his relapse was not so great as might have been expected, simply because she had to defend him against the bitter accusations of her father, and in the effort to excuse her husband in the eyes of another, she succeeded in greatly excusing him in her own.

There were doubtless many sleepless nights she had to pass, moodily contemplating the probable consequences of their fate; but when Cecil came home, her sorrow fled. Either he had won, and then his gaiety charmed her, and she allowed herself to be seduced into sharing his sanguine expectations; or else he had lost, and then she had to comfort and console him, and in that effort to assuage his grief, forgot her own.

There was something indescribably affecting in the tender solicitude and unshaken love of this gentle creature for her wretched husband; she had truly married him for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, and no adversity could alter the current of that love, which flowed from the everlasting fountain of her heart. He had blighted her youth; he had blighted the existence of their child; but she loved him perhaps still more dearly than on that happy day when the priest had joined them at the altar. He had been weak, contemptible, even infamous; but he had never ceased to be the idol of her heart.

One day she missed her watch; that watch which Cecil had given her, and which had always been at her side. She hunted about the house for it. All day she was in great distress at having lost it, and endeavoured in vain to persuade herself that perhaps Cecil had taken it out with him. He returned at two o'clock in the morning. Her first question was,

"Darling, have you my watch?"

"No," said he sulkily.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! it is lost, then—I have lost it—some one has stolen it!"

"Pooh! don't make a fuss—it's all right."

"Have you got it?'

"No; but I know where it is."

"Where?"

"In a place where it is quite safe—never fear!"

She understood him. He had pawned it, and the proceeds had gone where every shilling went.

Another day she missed the baby's coral with its golden bells. This time she said nothing; she knew too well what must have become of it, and she burst into tears as she thought of the fearful situation of a father robbing his own child to feed an infatuated passion!

One by one, every article upon which money could be raised had disappeared, until he possessed literally nothing more than the clothes he stood up in.

It was in vain she argued with herself that he, as the master, had a right to sell his own property, to sell anything and everything he pleased; she could not drive away the idea of there being something sneaking in this furtive disposal of his goods; an open sale might be necessitated, but this silent disappearance by stealth of article after article was horrible. She never knew what was gone until she wanted it; and at last her uneasiness became so great that she trembled to seek the most trifling thing.

Blanche's eyes were not shut to all the weakness of her husband's character, though her affection made her sophisticate with herself to an extraordinary extent. She saw the deplorable effects of his infatuation, and tried her best to wean him from it; but she always trusted that he would see the folly of the pursuit, and that, after a certain amount of experience, he would be cured. Meanwhile, that hope grew fainter and fainter, as time, instead of lessening, seemed to increase his passion.

To Vyner, Julius, Rose, and Violet, it seemed perfectly incomprehensible that Blanche should continue to love such a wretch as Cecil.

"His conduct," Vyner would say, "is enough to have estranged an angel."

Yet the fact is, that his conduct had not in the least degree alienated her affection from him; and the explanation of this fact resides in the moral axiom (the truth of which a large experience of human nature cannot fail to illustrate), that affection depends upon character, not upon conduct.

We love those most with whom we sympathize most, not those from whom we have received the greatest benefits. The husband who ill-treats his wife (as people say) is often idolized, while the husband who idolizes his wife is often looked upon as a "good sort of person" at the best. No doubt, the ill-treated wife suffers from, and resents each act of ill-treatment; as the kindly-treated wife is pleased and grateful for each act of kindness; but in the one case, occasional acts cannot destroy that sympathy which is the bond of love; nor in the other case, can the occasional kindnesses create it. Again, I say it is character, not conduct, which creates affection.

It was Cecil's character that Blanche sympathized with. His affectionate, caressing manners—his gaiety, his cleverness, and as she thought genius, were qualities the charm of which could not be resisted. Then he loved her so truly! not enough, indeed, to forego, for her sake, the excitement of the gaming-table: not enough to prevent his sacrificing her with himself to this infatuation: but that was because he was incapable of self-mastery. And if he was weak, she sympathized with his weakness.

Turn the phrase how we will, it always comes back to these simple pregnant words: she loved him!

CHAPTER III.
CAPTAIN HEATH RETURNS.

O why, when Love doth wound, doth it not then
Strike deeper down—and kill!
Old Play.

There was not a farthing in the house. Cecil was out on the chimerical expedition of borrowing a few pounds from one of his gaming-table acquaintances. Continual assistance had been lent them by Vyner and by Julius; but, of course, these sums were dissipated in the usual way; and so recent had been the assistance, that even Cecil had not the face to apply again.

Blanche was weeping over the cradle of her child, whom she had just rocked asleep, when the door opened, and the servant put in her head to say,—

"Please, mum, a gentleman."

In another instant, Captain Heath stood before her with outstretched hand, and embarrassed countenance: she grasped his hand in both of hers and pressed it warmly, for she felt that a deliverer was near. Since last they had met, what changes in her life! What had they both not undergone! He was much thinner, and looked older. Sorrow had deeply lined his noble brow, and dimmed his kind blue eye. He had sought in travel to forget the cause of his voluntary exile; and had learned, if not to forget, at least to master his feelings. When men have passed the impressionable and changeable age of youth, love becomes a more serious and enduring passion with them—it becomes consolidated in their manhood. And Captain Heath—too old not to have lost all the volatility of youth, but still too young to have lost its fervour—found that his passion for Blanche was ineffaceable.

Had he, then, returned with any hopes? No; his was one of those strong, brave, manly natures which know how to endure any calamity, any condition, so soon as it is recognised as inevitable; they endure, without childish repining, what they know must be endured; they brace their minds to the struggle, and they conquer at least that weak and fretful anxiety which attends upon those who cannot calmly look fate in the face.

He returned, but it was to watch over his beloved; and on his return, what was his horror to hear of the situation into which her wretched husband had precipitated her!

Blanche was embarrassed, yet delighted. From childhood she had known him, and loved him almost as a father; and to her old affection there was now added, the unconscious flattery of her knowledge of his love for her. No woman is ever insensible to such flattery; the man who loves her, though hopelessly, is always interesting in her eyes. Blanche was eminently a woman.

"How kind of you to come and see us," she said, "and in such a place as this! But then you are one of our true friends, and poverty cannot scare you."

"Yes, Blanche, I am your friend: always remember that, and in any difficulty, be sure not to forget it. But let me see your child: she is asleep?—what a beauty! How you must love it! Dear little thing, how quiet its breathing! may I kiss it? will she wake up?"

"No; kiss her gently: she is so used to it!"

He stooped down, and kissed its warm, soft cheek, and then gazed at it for some minutes in silence. With a mother's pride, Blanche watched him, occasionally looking down upon her darling, with that yearning tenderness, which only mothers know.

A low sigh escaped from him as he turned away from the cradle.

"Have you been long in England?" she asked.

"I came home last week. This is my second visit."

"Your first was to papa, I suppose?"

"Yes. Things are in a sad state there, Blanche. Your father is very much altered. But what could he expect? What could induce him to marry again?"

"Mama's conduct is shocking!—To think of a wife forgetting herself so!—Did you see her?"

"Yes, and she was as civil to me as ever, talked as hypocritically—and spoke of you in terms that made me excessively angry."

"What did she say?"

"It was not what she said, so much as the manner of saying it: the tone of pity, of false pity, affecting to look upon you as if..."

"And what... Did she speak of ... of Cecil!"

Heath was silent.

"Ah! I know she did; but you must not believe her; indeed, it is not true—indeed, he is not."

"Is it possible?"

"That is .... she must have exaggerated.... He has been imprudent, unfortunate.... but he is the kindest, best of men.... They are all against him; they do not understand him; they require a man of genius to be as formal and regular as other men .... absurd, is it not? .... Are not all men of genius ... are they not?"

"Unhappily!" replied Heath.

"I know you would not join the cabal against him. You are more liberal! Oh! if you knew his heart, how good it is!—I wish he were here..."

At this moment little Rose Blanche cried; and her mother took her up. The little creature was terrified at first seeing the captain, and clung to her mother for protection; but after a little coaxing, she became pacified, and in a few minutes was in his arms and playing with his dark moustache, which greatly interested her.

This interruption saved Heath from an embarrassing situation, and threw the conversation entirely upon the child, of whom the fond mother had innumerable anecdotes to relate, all of which went to the establishment of the fact, that for intelligence and goodness, no such baby was to be met with in the three kingdoms. Heath was too happy to let the conversation continue in that strain, and having spent an agitated yet delicious hour with her, he thought it time to go.

"My dear Blanche," he said at last, "I came here upon a matter of business, which I must not forget in the pleasure of seeing you. My residence in Italy has developed in me a taste for pictures. I am not rich; but I am alone in the world, and can afford to indulge my taste. Your husband is an artist, and I am come to command a picture from him. I leave the subject, size, and price, entirely to him. Let him execute whatever his genius prompts him; and I am quite sure I shall be the gainer by leaving the price to him. Meanwhile, as you are not in flourishing circumstances, here is a cheque for fifty pounds, on account. When he wants more, he knows where to apply."

He placed a cheque in her hand as he said this. She understood but too well this delicate mode of assisting them, and a tear rose into her eye as she pressed his hand significantly: she could not speak. He embraced her child repeatedly, and, with a fond protecting look, bade her good-bye.

Left alone, she burst into tears: they were tears of gratitude and tears of shame: gratitude for the beautiful and delicate friendship of the act and its manner: shame at finding herself reduced to such a state, that she was forced to accept alms from her former lover.

As she grew calmer, the thought rose within her, that perhaps this might be the saving of Cecil—that he, finding employment, might resolutely set to work, and—no longer forced to seek a subsistence by gaming,—resume his honourable career.

Building cloud-castles on the landscape of the future, she was light and joyous when Cecil returned, and flung herself upon his neck, with almost frantic delight.

CHAPTER IV.
HUMBLED PRIDE.

Cecil received those demonstrations of joy with moody sullenness. He had returned exasperated by failure, gloomy with the dark thoughts which lowered upon him, like heavy clouds collected over the sunny fields, boding a coming storm.

"Blanche," he said, "we are beggars."

The smile was still upon her face; she pushed the hair gently from off his forehead.

"There is no hope left. I have tried every body."

"I have had a visitor, darling, since you went out. Guess who it was."

"Julius?"

"No."

"Your father?"

"No."

"A dun?"

"Captain Heath."

"The devil it was!"

"Yes; I thought it would surprise you. Oh! I was so happy to see him!"

"Heath... here!" exclaimed Cecil, his cheek burning as he spoke. "And you saw him? ... received him here ... and in my absence? You did?"

"Was I wrong?" she, trembling, asked.

"Wrong? Oh, no; it was not wrong to receive your lover. You needn't start ... he is your lover, and you know it! You know, moreover, that I hate him... The scoundrel! And he saw you here ... here, in this beggarly place ... in this hole of poverty! And he triumphed over me ... triumphed because his prophecy was fulfilled! Didn't he, too, urge you to leave me? Didn't he, too, tell you I was a villain, dragging you to ruin? Didn't he offer to take you home? .... Speak! don't stare at me in that way! Tell me all the scoundrel said ... quick!"

"Cecil, Cecil, down on your knees, and beg his pardon for having so slandered him! You are not in your senses to speak so—and of him, of him!"

"Slandered him, have I? What! the sneaking wretch who takes advantage of my present situation...."

"To assist you!" indignantly exclaimed Blanche.

"Assist me! and for what purpose? For whose sake—for mine? No; for yours! Oh! I see all his plans—I see them all!"

Cecil, mad with jealousy and rage, dashed his hand upon the table, and swore a fearful oath. It was not that he for a moment suspected his wife; but he had never been able to overcome his jealousy of Heath; and what added tenfold torture to that venomous feeling now, was the thought that Heath had come back to find Blanche reduced to want—to find her in this miserable lodging deprived of all the comforts and necessaries of life. He felt himself horribly humiliated in the eyes of his hated rival; he felt that his rival triumphed over his degradation; and he dreaded lest Blanche should have made an involuntary comparison between her present condition, and what it would have been had she married Heath. All this rapidly crossed his mind, and drove him to fury.

"Cecil," she said, struggling with her tears, "you are unhappy, and that makes you unjust. If you but knew the noble nature of him...."

"Hold your tongue! Am I to sit here and listen to his praises? Noble nature, indeed! Yes, yes, I know it.... I know it."

"Then you know...."

"Silence, I say! Are you going to draw a comparison between us? Are you going to contrast his virtues with my vices? A good subject, but a bold one for a wife to touch upon!"

"Cecil, you break my heart... Will you hear me?"

"No!"

"What have I said or done...."

"You have received, during my absence, a man I hate—a man who, if he again crosses my threshold, I will throw out of the window."

"Look at this!" she said, presenting the cheque to him.

"What is that?"

"If you will not listen to me, trust your own eyes."

"A cheque for fifty pounds—and from him?"

"He came here to command a picture; you are to name your own price; that is on account."

Cecil took the cheque, looked at it, and then at her.

"And do you believe this?" he said, with intense calmness. "Do you really believe that he wants a picture?"

"No; I believe that to be an excuse...."

"An excuse! By God! she knows it!"

"It is a delicate way of assisting us.—That is the conduct of the man whom you have outraged by your suspicions."

Cecil was stupefied. Her perception of the subterfuge quite staggered him.

"So, so—he thinks to buy you, does he?" he at last said, choking with rage.

She coloured deeply with shame, and exclaimed,—

"Oh, Cecil! Cecil!"

"Well then, to buy me! He thinks I am to be patronized.... to be his workman.... to receive his orders.... to receive his money! Blanche, this cheque is either an outrage to you, or an insult to me. Don't speak! .... Not another word."

He rose, and put on his hat.

"Good God! Cecil, what are you about to do?"

"To find out this liberal patron."

"Cecil, Cecil! do be calm!"

"I am. I will fling this cheque in his odious face, and tell him what I think."

She threw herself upon him.

"Cecil! my own darling! listen to your Blanche.... For God's sake, be calm! ... Think of me; think of your child! .... A duel! oh, Cecil! could you leave your child fatherless, Cecil?"

He flung her from him, and rushed out of the house: she reeled and fell. The child began to scream; the old lady living in the parlours hurried up stairs, and found Blanche lifeless on the floor.

Like a madman, Cecil bounded along the streets, goaded by one of those irresistible outbreaks of passion which sometimes mastered him. On reaching the house where Heath formerly lived, and hearing that he no longer lived there, he remembered Heath having just returned from abroad, and that his residence could only be known at his bankers. Thither he went: on his way he passed through Jermyn-street. It was in that street was kept the gaming-house where he had spent so many of his days and nights.

A new direction was given to his thoughts: insensibly they left the subject of Captain Heath to merge into that of play. Still he walked on, but less swiftly. The idea of the splendid martingale he had recently discovered, which this fifty pounds would enable him to play, would not leave him.

He walked more and more slowly. Fifty pounds—it might make his fortune.

After all, Heath might possibly have desired a picture. The fool! as if he knew anything about pictures—he, the heavy guardsman, purchase pictures!

Yet, if he was rich, that was one way of spending his money. There was nothing but what was perfectly legitimate in an artist receiving a commission;—all artists receive them.

And with this fifty pounds a fortune was within his grasp.

He no longer walked, he crawled. This money was certainly his, if he chose to take it; why should he refuse? To be sure, the money of that scoundrel! All an excuse, too: Blanche knew it was an excuse.

He quickened his pace again. He was at the banking-house: he pushed the door, and entered.

"I can return him the money to-morrow. I will say Blanche changed it. Out of my winnings I can repay it."

He handed the cheque to the cashier.

"How will you take it, sir?" demanded the cashier.

"Gold," was the brief answer.

His eyes sparkled as the fifty sovereigns were shovelled across the counter; and he left the bank with lights dancing before him.

CHAPTER V.
"BLACK WINS."

The fascination of the gaming-table was too much for him; all his sense of dignity vanished before it; even his very jealous rage seemed thus powerless against it. Humiliated as he felt at the idea of accepting charity from his rival, he could not reject it when it came to feed his passion for play. Although he had not a farthing in the house, although utter destitution threatened him, he would not, to save himself from it, have accepted Heath's assistance; but he could accept it when it enabled him to play.

To one of his old haunts he went. The first man he saw there was the large-whiskered, jovial, and eccentric gentleman whom he had noticed on the second evening: of his entering a house of play: he had since lost sight of him. The little man stroked his bushy whiskers fondly over his face, and, offering Cecil a pinch of snuff, expressed his pleasure at meeting him again.

"Come to try the goddess, sir?" he inquired. "Fickle goddess! now smiling, now frowning—quite a woman! I am no great hand myself; but, as far as a few crowns go, I find it a pleasant game—decidedly pleasant. Would you like to regulate yourself by my card?—duly pricked, you see. There have been three runs upon the black; once it turned up eleven times. Shall we take a glass of wine together? Yes;—waiter! some wine."

"No wine for me, thank you; I never touch it before dinner. Have you seen Mr. Forrester here to-day?"

"The gentleman with the large moustachios?—Yes; he has been playing, and won; but he went away about a quarter of an hour ago."

Cecil took his seat at the table. Gambling by day has, somehow, a more hideous aspect than by night: I suppose because it looks so little like an amusement, and so much like a mere affair of cupidity. But Cecil had grown used to this, as to other loathsome aspects of his vice, and sat down to the table with as much sang froid as if he were about to transact the most ordinary piece of business.

He had not been playing long, winning and losing in pretty equal succession, when Frank came back.

"What, again!" said Cecil. "I thought you had gone for the day: I heard you had departed with your winnings."

"The fact is, that I found my winnings rapidly decreasing, so I thought a little interval might very properly elapse; after which fortune again might be on my side. Besides, old boy, you must know that I haven't dined for eight days;—and when I say dined, I don't mean dining in the true sense, but in the common, vulgar, pauper sense of the word. I have made no meal which could represent a dinner. For eight days I haven't touched meat, damn my whiskers! So, being as ravenous as a hyena, I determined that to-day, at least, I would dine."

"And have you?"

"Have I, Cis? Why it's not yet five: do you imagine that under any circumstance I could lower myself so far as to dine at the shopkeeper's hour? No, damn it! one may be hard up, but one does not forget one is a gentleman!"

"Have you ordered your dinner then?"

"More than ordered it—paid for it. I went to the butcher's, and bought two pounds of magnificent steak: this I carried to a small Public, hard by, with the strictest injunctions as to the dressing of it—saw the cook myself, and am satisfied she knows what's what. It is to be ready at half-past six precisely, with no end of fried potatoes, and a bottle of their old crusted, which I know from experience is a wine that a gentleman can drink. The dinner you will say is not epicurean, but at any rate it is certain, because I have paid for it all. Now I don't mind risking the rest of my winnings. My mind is at rest: the baser appetites are provided for."

He began to play also; and he won.

"I told you luck would change," he said.

But he soon lost again, and lost repeatedly.

"Never mind, I have secured a dinner for to-day, which will last a week."

Cecil was equally unfortunate; the run seemed to be decidedly against him.

At last Frank threw down his final half-crown. It went like the others. He started up, and hurried away, without saying good-bye; indeed, giving no other expression of his feelings than was convoyed in an energetic denunciation of his whiskers.

Cecil played on; and as he saw the sovereigns disappear in spite of his famous martingale, his heart sank within him, and the gloom of despair seemed to paralyse his mind. Suffering horrible agony from the intense excitement of each coup, he yet played mechanically, almost listlessly, he lost, and won, and lost again, with fearful alternation of sick despair and dull joy. It was as if he were staking his heart's blood on each turn.

Frank returned, not without a certain hilarity in his manner.

"Where have you been?" Cecil faintly inquired.

"To my worthy host of the Coach and Horses, at whose house my dinner is commanded. It struck me that I could very well dispense with wine to-day—the more so as it costs six shillings a bottle, and here one gets it for nothing—so I negociated with the worthy publican, and sold him the wine back again for two half-crowns. Here they are. What d'ye think of that? Is that management of financial difficulties, eh?"

A sickly smile was the only answer Cecil gave, for at that moment he had just lost his fourth coup running. The two half-crowns seemed to bring back Frank's luck, for he won rapidly; Cecil, who played the same colours, also won. Winning and losing, and losing and winning, so the game went on, with alternate rising and falling of hopes, and in the rapidity with which small gains mounted up to large sums, and those sums dwindled down again, crowding as much excitement as would have filled a month of ordinary life.

"Done! cleaned out!" exclaimed Frank, as he saw himself once more penniless.

A sharp pang shot across Cecil's face, as he threw down his last sovereign on the red.

"Après," said the dealer.

Cecil had now only ten shillings remaining of the fifty pounds. In breath-suspended agony he watched the cards.

"Red wins!" said the dealer.

He breathed again, and looked round to smile at Frank; but that worthy had again departed to negociate the sale of his dinner.

Yes; this dinner, so cherished, so anticipated, paid for in advance, on which the imagination had luxuriated as on a kingly banquet; this dinner was sold for a miserable trifle, that he might risk one more coup at that table where so many men had ruined themselves before!

Cecil continued in luck until Frank returned; this time with no hilarity on his face, but a quiet gravity, which seemed prepared for the worst; and when he lost the last shilling he broke out into a short, sharp, hysterical laugh, and turning to Cecil, said with forced calmness,—

"I shall not dine to-day."

"Pleasant game this, sir," said the bushy-whiskered gentleman, coming up to where Frank sat, "take a pinch of snuff, sir?" Frank accepted with grace, and began chatting with the smiling gentleman, who was very communicative, and informed Frank that he had that afternoon won no less than ten half-crowns by backing the red.

"Quite right, sir," said Frank, "red is the colour."

"No doubt about it."

"Yes, yes. By the way, you haven't a half-crown about you at this minute, have you? I am cleared out for the day."

"Why, I certainly have such a thing, but..."

"Say no more, my dear fellow," said Frank, shaking him warmly by the hand, "half a crown will be abundance, I only want to try the red once. I'm really obliged to you for the offer of the loan, and shall accept it with pleasure. Now-a-days one does not often meet with such a trump! If ever you should run low, you know, in me you will always find one ready to reciprocate a civility."

The smiling gentleman rubbed his whiskers and filled his nose with snuff; but he concluded by slipping the half-crown into Frank's hand, who instantly threw it on the red.

Cecil had thrown his last five pounds upon the red, and with straining eyeballs watched the falling cards.

"Black wins," said the dealer.

Frank saw the croupier rake away his half-crown, and with it Cecil's five pounds.

A low cry burst from Cecil, as he learned his fate; and, leaning his elbows on the table, he let his head fall into his hands, and sobbed aloud.

The dealers and croupiers, accustomed to every expression of grief, sat with immoveable, expressionless faces, pursuing their routine with an indifference which was quite ghastly. The players looked upon him with different feelings: some with compassion, some with contempt, some with sympathetic fear. But above his wretched sobs were heard the unvarying tones of, "Gentlemen, make your game; the game is made."

Frank touched Cecil on the shoulder, and beckoned him to come away. Mechanically Cecil did so, and they stepped together out into the dull, dismal, November evening, and walked through the mist and lightly falling snow, without uttering a word.

At Park Lane they parted; a pressure of the hand was the only expression of their feelings which passed between them. Sick at heart, they both felt that nothing could be said to comfort them.

The lights glimmered dimly through the dirty air of that November evening, and the snow fell, and the rain, and the whole scene was drear and desolate, as Cecil wandered on, crushed in spirit, savage from remorse, exasperated by his impotent efforts to shake off the galling remembrance that he was now Heath's debtor—that he had taken his money, and could not throw it back at him.

Wild thoughts of suicide chased across his soul, like dancing lights over a bleak moor at night; but they did not long abide with him.

CHAPTER VI.
CECIL'S WEAKNESS.

O God! O God! that it were possible
To undo things done,—to call back yesterday!
That Time could turn his swift and sandy glass
To untell days, or to redeem these hours!
HEYWOOD.—A Woman Killed with Kindness.

When Blanche returned to her senses, she found herself in the arms of her landlady, who was bathing her forehead with vinegar and water.

"My husband!" she murmured; "where is my husband?"

"Oh, he's not come back yet. There, you are better now, aren't you?"

"Thank you; yes, I can walk now."

"Don't attempt it just yet."

"I must. I must go out."

"Go out such a day as this! Why, see how it snows."

"I must. You see I can stand. Oh, pray God, I may not be too late."

"But where do you wish to go, my dear? Can't I send my girl for you?"

"Where? Where? Ay, indeed. He did not tell me where. But then Cecil will not know where to find .... Thank God! Thank God!"

She sank down again upon the chair, relieved of her terrible anxiety; for she doubted not that if Cecil were unable to meet with Captain Heath, he would soon grow calmer, and look at things more rationally.

She waited for his return, however, with extreme uneasiness, fearful lest he should not have missed the captain; and dreading lest he should still continue his jealous suspicions. Free from all sentiment of jealousy herself, she could not understand Cecil's excessive susceptibility; and knowing Captain Heath so well as she did, she was perfectly convinced that her husband's jealousy was quite motiveless. This made her feel secure on this subject. Her deep sense of her own innocence, and of Heath's high-mindedness, made her convinced that Cecil must see the matter in its true light, so soon as he should calmly consider it.

It was nearly seven o'clock before her anxiety was relieved by hearing his knock at the door; but she screamed with terror as he entered the room. Although his coat and hat were covered with snow, he had left his chest exposed to the cold, and his shirt-collar and front were dripping with wet. He had evidently been altogether heedless of his person, and had given no thought of protecting it from the weather.

His face was pale and haggard, his eyes dull and blood-shot, his lips compressed—his whole aspect that of one who has just committed some fearful crime. She interrogated his face with watchful terror. He avoided her eye.

He seated himself in silence, and began brushing the snow off his hat. That completed, he placed his wet feet on the fender, and looked stedfastly at the fire.

Unable to bear this suspense, she went up to him, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, said timidly,—

"Have you seen him?"

"No."

She felt greatly relieved. He continued to look at the fire, but gave no signs of wishing to prolong the conversation. She drew a stool by his side, and sat down upon it; and in silence they both contemplated the evanescent shapes in the burning coals.

Having sat thus for some time, Blanche rose and went into the next room, and presently returned with her baby in her arms, asleep, which she gently laid upon Cecil's lap.

He turned a dull, sad eye upon her, inquiringly, and then looked down upon the sleeping infant on his knee.

"Unhappy child!" he said, and the tears rolled down his cheeks, as he gazed upon the sleeping babe, unconscious of the sorrow it awakened in its father's heart, and the remorse for infatuated villany, the consequences of which must eventually fall upon its head.

"Take her away," he said, "take her away. Why do you bring her to me?"

"To make you happy."

"To make me more miserable than I was before—to reproach me—me, her father, that she has not a better home, warmer clothing! Take her away."

Blanche, sobbing, took the child and laid it again in its cradle.

"Blanche you must write a note for me," he said, after a pause.

"To whom, dearest?"

No reply.

"To whom am I to write?"

"To—Captain Heath!" he said, with an effort.

She started at the name, alarmed and wondering.

"What am I to say?"

"Whatever you please—you are sure to succeed."

"But tell me what the object is?"

"Money."

"Money?"

"For my picture—I am to paint him one, am I not? he has ordered it. Well! I want money in advance."

Blanche would have been highly delighted at such a speech, had it been uttered in a different tone, and had not Captain Heath, already, that very day, given a cheque in advance.

She made no reply.

"Well!" he said, "are you ready? Write it at once."

"But the fifty pounds...."

"Gone! I met a man to whom I owed it—he demanded payment—I was forced to let him have the cheque. You can explain it all to Heath, and tell him I must have ten pounds more to buy materials with. Tell him what you please, but get the money."

He resumed his contemplation of the fire after this speech, and scarcely opened his lips again for the evening. Blanche wrote the letter, but it was with loathing, and she hated herself while she was doing it, and was sure Captain Heath would also hate her.

Glad as she would have been to see her husband relinquish his absurd jealousy of the captain, it came with quite a different aspect when that relinquishment was not a matter of conviction, but of degraded calculation. She guessed at once the truth of the whole history; she saw that Cecil had gambled away the fifty pounds, and that he had not only reconciled himself to it, but had made up his mind to extort from the generosity of the captain certain sums which would enable him to indulge his unhappy passion.

What a situation for a loving wife! Never before, not even in his worst exhibitions of selfishness and weakness, had Blanche despised her husband; but she could not master the feeling now; a lurking sense of contempt would intrude itself upon her thoughts.

The letter was sent under cover to her father.

All the next day Cecil sat over the fire, sometimes whistling, but mostly quite silent. He was playing over again the games which he had lost on the previous day: and now, as he played them, he calculated rightly, and always won.

Blanche observed that he exhibited singular impatience for the arrival of the postman; and when the day entirely passed over without bringing a letter, he constantly muttered to himself, "Very extraordinary!"

The next morning his impatience was greater, and when the two o'clock postman brought a letter for her from Rose, and nothing from Captain Heath, he began to swear and mutter to himself, till she was quite terrified.

He took up his hat and lounged out, without saying a word as to where he was going.

About three, Captain Heath called. Blanche was frightened lest Cecil should return and find him there; and was also alarmed at the probable storm which would burst upon her in consequence of this visit.

Heath saw her embarrassment, and attributed it to a sense of shame at her husband's conduct; for the note was so incoherently written, that he divined pretty nearly the whole truth of the matter.

"I have brought a cheque for your husband," he said, "because I did not wish to trust it to the post—also, because I wished to say a word to you. Blanche, I take the privilege of an old, a very old friend, to speak frankly to you; therefore, you must not be offended with me when I ask you to receive another ten pounds in advance for the picture, besides the cheque which your husband has requested. I mean the second sum to be received by you, for household expenses—to be kept a secret by you—you can keep a secret from your husband, can you not?"

"Why do you wish it?"

"Because, Blanche, affairs are not in a flourishing condition with you at present; and as your husband owes a good deal of money, perhaps, if he knew you had this sum, instead of allowing it to be devoted to your immediate necessities, he might also play that away."

She blushed deeply, as she perceived that he had guessed the truth.

"I wish, therefore, that you would give him this cheque from me, which he has asked, but that you would say nothing, if you can help it, about the other sum. I am asking, perhaps, that which I ought not to ask. I am overstepping, perhaps, the bounds of friendship, and interfering in domestic concerns where I have no sort of right to interfere. But it is my friendship which dictates the wish, and which must be my excuse. I do not bind you to any condition; I do not even wish you to keep the matter a secret, if it is at all repugnant to your feelings: but I would strenuously advise you to do so. Act just as you think fitting and proper; do not imagine that I wish in any way to dictate to you; but, as a brother might counsel you, I would venture to suggest, that on many accounts it would be well if you did not speak of this."

"Kindest, best of men!" she exclaimed, pressing his hand. She could say no more.

He quietly laid the cheque upon the mantelpiece, and slipped ten sovereigns into the pocket of her apron. He then, to change the subject, asked after Rose Blanche, who was brought to him immediately.

Blanche, after a long struggle with herself, at last said,—

"Captain Heath, you know me well enough to believe that I am neither insensible to your friendship, nor ungrateful for it—do you not?"

"Assuredly, dear Blanche."

"And if I were to say anything to you that might look ungrateful, you would not believe that it sprang from ingratitude? you would at once see that I was forced by circumstances, not by my own will?"

He shook slightly, as he answered,—

"I could not doubt you."

"You do not believe me to be capricious?"

"I do not."

"And if I were to beg you .... to .... if I were to say.... do not come here any more....?"

Her voice faltered, and died away in a whisper. He started as the words fell on his ear, and turned first red, then pale again.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence.

"Oh! do not believe," she passionately exclaimed, "that it comes from me; do not fancy that I should ever.... But I cannot do what my heart dictates: I owe obedience to another."

He saw at once what was in her mind; he saw that Cecil's absurd jealousy was at the bottom of her agitation: and in a low but firm tone, he said,—

"Blanche, do not continue. I understand you. I never was a favourite of his, and he naturally enough does not desire my acquaintance; in which case, of course, I must relinquish the pleasure of seeing you. Do not sob, Blanche—you cannot help this. Such cases are frequent. I shall not regard you less—shall not be less your friend, because I am not permitted to see you. Perhaps, if he knew me better, he might think otherwise of me; but sympathy is not to be commanded, and too many people dislike me, for me to be either surprised or hurt at his opinion. Besides, I have already interfered too much between you. He thinks my conduct unwarrantable—perhaps it was—and he dislikes me. There, you see I look at the matter in its true light. I do not blame you—I do not blame him. A husband is not forced to accept the friends of his wife."

At this moment Cecil returned.

Heath coloured as he saw him enter the room; Blanche turned aside her head to conceal her tears, but not before Cecil's glance had detected them; a fierce pain shot across Cecil's heart, as if a burning iron had entered it, but with a hypocritical smile he extended his hand to the captain, and expressed himself delighted to see him.

The situation was excessively uncomfortable for all three. The captain could not depart, it would have looked so pointed, yet to remain was torture. Blanche was terrified, and silent. Cecil, who in an instant saw that Heath's presence betokened a fresh assistance from him, stifled the horrible jealousy which his presence awakened, and resolved not to lose the benefit. He began a common-place conversation, and soon led it to the subject of the commissioned picture, for which he declared he had been inspired with a magnificent idea.

Heath's replies were brief and cold; but Cecil was not to be daunted. So completely had his vice corrupted him, that he had lost all sense of dignity, and only looked upon the captain as a victim from whom to draw sums of money. That Heath loved his wife he knew; and doubted not but that from such an affection he should draw golden results. That Blanche did not return the captain's love, he was firmly convinced—and yet that conviction could not allay his jealousy. Awful moral perplexity and corruption! Despicable weakness and meanness! Here was a man base enough to barter his honour, yet not strong enough to resist the petty irritation of the pettiest jealousy!

As the captain took his leave, Cecil said:—

"We are generally at home,—if you should be in this neighbourhood, pray don't forget to give us a look in. It is but a miserable place to come to—but old friends, you know."

Blanche's eye met the captain's, and most significantly expressed,—"Don't accept the invitation."

Heath merely bowed his acceptance, and departed, marvelling much whether it was corruption or irony which dictated Cecil's speech.

Cecil made no observation to Blanche respecting the captain's presence; but took up the cheque with delight, and forthwith proceeded to get it cashed, and to carry the money to Leicester-square, whence, after spending the afternoon and night at play, with various alternations of fortune, he came away a winner of thirteen pounds.

He was in excellent spirits on his return home. Blanche said nothing respecting the ten sovereigns in her possession.

CHAPTER VII.
ALL HOPE DESTROYED.

I am so well acquainted with despair,
I know not how to hope; I believe all.
DECKAR.

Oh! press me, baby, with thy hand,
It loosens something at my chest;
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest.
WORDSWORTH.

Although the life of a gamester is full of emotion, full of successes and reverses, the incidents are all so very similar that I need not enter into more details. Suffice it, that Cecil made such frequent applications to Captain Heath, that a point blank refusal came at last; much to Blanche's satisfaction, for she deeply felt the humiliation of seeing him plundered in that shameless way to feed the gaming-table. She knew that it was for her sake Heath gave the money; and she knew that it only added fresh fuel to her husband's unhappy passion.

The last few weeks had completely banished from her heart all hope of an amendment. Not only had Cecil shamelessly applied to Heath for money in advance on a picture which he had made no attempt even to commence; but he had, by one act, opened her eyes to the extent of his reckless infatuation.

It was about a fortnight after Captain Heath's visit, when, as Cecil sat in his usual attitude over the fire, indolently smoking a cigar, Blanche said to him,—

"When are you going to paint that picture, dearest, which you have engaged for?"

"In good time."

"But why not do it at once?"

"He did not stipulate that it was to be done at once, did he?"

"No; but there can be no reason why you should not do it. You have nothing else in hand. Besides, when that is finished you can paint another; and you know how badly we want money."

"Badly enough, God knows!"

"I do not like to accept the advances he makes us, when I see you not working at the picture."

"Bah!"

"You must do it sooner or later; why not now? Come, Cecil, make an effort—begin it."

"Begin when I haven't even money to buy the necessary materials. Write to him and tell him I have a splendid subject, but that really——"

"That is unnecessary. I have money—I will go and get you all you want."

"You, Blanche! And where did you get money from?'

"Never mind," she replied playfully. "Perhaps it was a little fairy. Enough that I have some."

"Oh, I'm not curious; so that you have got money, that is all I care about. How much?"

"There again! Not curious! Why, you are as curious as a woman. Don't inquire."

"Very well. Get me the things, that's all."

She went into the next room, and he heard her unlock a drawer. He continued calmly smoking; she put on her bonnet and tripped down stairs.

No sooner did he hear the street door shut than he rose and walked into her bed-room to search for the money. He saw a drawer with a key in it, but on opening it he found nothing there. He next unlocked all the other drawers, but without result.

There was nothing now in the room likely to conceal any money, and he began to think that perhaps she had only a few shillings, which she had carried away with her. Almost mechanically he opened the small drawer of her wash-hand stand, and there he saw six sovereigns glittering in the farther corner. His face lighted up with a strange expression as they met his eye, and rapidly clutching them, and turning over the drawer to see if it concealed any more, he took his hat, and was out of the house in an instant.

When Blanche returned and found him gone, her heart misgave her; with trembling limbs she staggered into the bed-room—opened the drawer—and saw her fears confirmed. It is impossible to render the despair which seized her at this discovery. That little incident was more frightful to her, was more damning evidence of the unconquerable nature of his vice than any she had yet known; and helpless, hopeless she sank upon the bed, not to weep, but to brood upon the awful prospect of her life.

It was not grief which laid her prostrate, it was a stupor: a dull, heavy agony, like a shroud closing her from life, from hope, from happiness. Before, her heart had been wrung; she had been humiliated, she had been tortured; but in the bitterest moments, she had never been utterly prostrate,—never absolutely without gleam of hope. Now, her husband stood before her as irreclaimable,—marching with frightful rapidity to his doom, and dragging with him, a wife and child.

That child's cries on awaking, partly aroused her. She felt the necessity for an effort; she felt that another demanded she should not give way to the stupor which oppressed her. She put the child to her breast; but, alas! the shock she had received had dried up its life-giving fountains, and the disappointed infant sucked in vain. Tears gushed from her, as she became aware of this new misfortune—tears, scalding yet refreshing tears, which melted down her stubborn grief into something more like human woe; and relieved by them, she rose to make some food for the hungry babe, whose impatient cries recalled her to a sense of duties, which allowed not the passive indulgence of sorrow. Cecil, meanwhile, had lost the little treasure he had obtained possession of in so despicable a manner; and having lost it, remained sauntering about the streets, without courage to return home to face his wife. Exhausted at last by fatigue, he came back.

Not a word passed between them. He got into bed feeling humbled and exasperated, yet not having courage even to put a bullying face on the matter. She was brushing her hair, and he heard the sighs which she struggled to suppress, but he feigned sleep, and would not hear them.

She crept into bed, anxious not to awake him; and through the long night he heard her weeping, so that it almost broke his heart: yet he feigned sleep, and dared not speak!

From that time, there was always a sort of barrier between them. A wall had grown up between their loves, formed out of shame, remorse, pity and hopelessness. They never alluded to the incident which caused it; but they both felt that it was constantly present in each other's minds.

Their existence was wretched indeed. Vyner and Julius took care that Blanche should want for no necessities—food, clothing, little articles of necessity were all regularly sent in by them; and the rent was paid by Vyner himself. But no more money could Cecil extort from them on any pretext. They knew well enough, that to give him money was only to give him opportunities of playing, and so they limited their charity to seeing that Blanche and her child, were not in absolute want.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FORGERY.

One day as Cecil was sauntering down Piccadilly, he was astonished to see Frank Forrester, in a superb cab, with tiger behind, drive up to Burlington Arcade, and there, arrayed in dashing style, step out as if the lord and master of three thousand a year, at least.

The contrast between his appearance at that moment, and the last time Cecil had seen him, when in the final stage of seediness, he had gambled away even his dinner, so amazed Cecil, that he rubbed his eyes as one awaking from a dream.

"Ah! Cis, my boy, how are you?" said Frank, grasping him by the hand. "Why, you're quite a stranger.—I am so glad to see you. Flourishing now, damn my whiskers! flourishing, Cis, as you perceive. Nobby style, eh? Correct thing that, I hope."

"Quite—But whence this change?"

"Oh! tell you that presently. Just step up the arcade with me.—I'm only going to look in upon Jeffs, to see if Paul de Kock's last novel has arrived, and then command me."

He put his arm within Cecil's, and marched up the arcade, playing with an elegant watch-chain which drooped from his waistcoat button, and winking at every woman they passed.

When they turned into Jeffs' shop, that worthy bibliopole, albeit accustomed daily to a strange variety of customers, from noblemen and their flunkies, to dingy, sallow, foreigners, redolent of garlic, and bearded like pards, opened his eyes at such a strange apparition as the resplendent, insolent Frank, arm in arm with the careworn, battered, shabby, Cecil.

"Paul de Kock arrived yet?" said Frank.

"No, sir," replied Jeffs, "but we expect our case to-morrow."

"I think your to-morrow never arrives—at any rate, your case doesn't arrive with it. Is your case a pleasing fiction, or a reality?"

"It will be here to-morrow, sir, I have no doubt. In fact I expected it yesterday."

"Well, then, send me up Paul de Kock the instant you get it; will you?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Come along, Cis, my boy."

"You are quite a grand seigneur, I perceive, Frank," said Cecil, as they strolled out of the shop. "Cab—tiger—chains—French novels—have you come into an inheritance?"

"Something like it, but jump into my cab, and I'll tell you all about it."

They got in, and Frank, handling the reins with no small degree of pride, drove into the Park, and thus explained his present fortune.

"The fact is, Cis, I have discovered the true method of playing. I broke the bank at No. 14, last Saturday; and have won no trifle since. You see all the martingales yet invented have some inherent imperfection. They go smoothly enough in theory; but damn the practice, say I!"

"Is not yours a martingale, then?'

"No: it is simply playing with skill. To explain it in a few words: you know that there are constantly runs upon a colour; sometimes it is the red, sometimes the black. You also know that they dodge about, and that the red will alternately win and lose every successive coup. My plan is to wait quietly while the game is dodging, and directly I see a run, I back in heavily. If the red has turned up three times, the chances are, that there is to be a run on that colour, and I back it till it loses. D'ye understand?'

"Perfectly. But I don't so clearly see how you must win at it."

"Bah—that's the very best proof! In every martingale, don't you on the contrary clearly see how you must win, but does that prevent your losing when you begin to play? So, you may not see how I must win, but I see how I do win—that's enough for me."

They dined together that day, and Frank, who had a box at Drury Lane, proposed that Cecil should accompany him, but Cecil was too unwell, and went home brooding on his friend's prosperity, and playing imaginary games with fantastic success.

All the next day he was moody and irritable. He would not even notice his child, but walked up and down his small room, or sat with his feet on the fender, cowering over the fire, his head buried in his hands.

Towards evening, he wrote to Captain Heath a hypocritical letter, the object of which was, as may be expected, to extract a few pounds from him. He was less moody after sending this off; but Blanche observed a strange wandering in his thoughts.

On the morrow he received a cold, firm answer from the captain, who stated that he had already advanced as much money on the picture as he could afford to pay for it, and that he was therefore forced to refuse.

"Damn him!" Cecil muttered, as he read the letter and crumpled it between his fingers.

Blanche guessed the contents by that action; but she made no remark.

For at least an hour did he sit looking fixedly on the ground, keeping the crumpled letter in his closed hand; and then she saw him slowly open it, smooth the paper, and examine it attentively. While she was thus watching his countenance, curious as to what could be his motive for examining so minutely a handwriting he knew, he suddenly looked up at her. A strange expression distorted his face as he shouted,—

"What the devil are you looking at me for?"

"I ... I ... Cecil..."

"You don't suspect anything, do you?" he fiercely asked.

"Suspect, Cecil; and what?"

"What's that to you?" he said brusquely, and again turned away his head.

She began to fear that he was getting insane.

"Are you not well, dearest?"

"No."

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing. Don't bother me! It must be near dinner, is it not?"

"Yes. Are you hungry?"

"Very; go and see about it."

She left the room.

A few minutes afterwards he was seated at the table, with Captain Heath's letter before him, carefully copying the writing, and comparing his copy with the original. He smiled grimly at his own success; and after several further trials, he forged a check for eighty pounds, which he had just folded and thrust into his waistcoat pocket, when Blanche returned with the dinner.

His agitation and the eager manner with which he caught up some scraps of paper, and threw them into the fire, did not escape her.

He sat down to dinner, but he could not swallow a morsel; and his hand shook so, that he dared not venture to raise it to his mouth.

"You are ill, dearest," she said. "I am sure you are."

"Pooh! it's want of exercise. I will take a walk."

"Do not go out such weather as this; see how fast the snow falls."

"It won't hurt me. I must go out."

She dared not further interpose; and in a few minutes he was gone.

Left alone, she meditated on the singular change in his manner—on his fierceness when he had observed her watching him—his paleness—his agitation—and his throwing those pieces of paper into the fire.

She opened his writing-case. There, among some loose pieces of blank paper, she found one with some writing on it. A film overspread her eyes, as she recognised in it a copy of Captain Heath's writing—so like it, that had not the characters been traced on a stray slip of paper, she could never have suspected it to be other than his writing.

Rushing upon her like an overwhelming tide, came the swift and terrible thoughts which revealed that her husband had committed a forgery. In the desperate hope that she might not yet be too late to save him from the last act—that she might yet meet him at the banker's and save him—she threw a shawl around her, put on her bonnet, and in an instant she was in a cab driving furiously to Charing Cross; in her anxiety too much excited to feel the horror of her situation.

As the cab dashed round the corner, by Charles the First's statue, she saw Cecil hurry from Messrs. Drummonds' banking-house. She saw no more: her brain swam round. When the driver opened the cab door, he found her in a swoon.

It did not last long: she recovered herself; and wildly looking round her, remembered in an instant all that had passed.

"To South Audley Street!" she impatiently exclaimed.

To Captain Heath's she drove, and astonished the servant very much by hurrying up stairs, and rushing into the room as if life and death depended on her speed.

"Good God, Blanche! what is this?" he exclaimed, as the half lifeless woman threw herself speechless into his arms.

It was a long time before she could speak; and even then, in such incoherent sentences that it was with difficulty Heath understood what she meant to tell him; but he found that it was something terrible, and about Cecil; and he redoubled his attention, trying to piece together into a coherent narrative, the broken utterances of this wretched wife.

At last he understood her, and tears of deep compassion stood in his eyes as he said,—

"Cheer up, dear Blanche, cheer up! It is not so bad after all. You terrified me at first. He has only drawn on me in anticipation. You know I still owe him money for the picture,—he has paid himself,—he was doubtless close pressed."

"But," she sobbed, "he has forged."

"He has been irregular, that is all; he should have warned me of it. However, now you have told me, it is all safe. Quiet yourself."

"Oh, that I should have lived for this!"

"Courage, courage."

"Dishonoured! My Cecil dishonoured!"

"Not yet, Blanche. He has been imprudent, that is all—imprudent."

"Dishonoured!" she exclaimed, distractedly.

"Do you not see, that now I am informed of what has passed I shall be on my guard? He has been imprudent; no one knows it but ourselves. You can gently point out to him the imprudence—and he is saved. Only yesterday I heard of a situation for him in the Colonies—an excellent place. Away from England, he will have broken from his present connexion, and lose his unfortunate habits. A new sphere will call forth fresh energy. He may be saved yet, Blanche; only take courage."

She took his hand, and kissed it in mute thankfulness, but her sobs still tore her bosom, and all his persuasion could not calm her.

Now that she felt the great danger was past, she had time to feel the immensity of the blow—she could grieve.

Heath allowed her to weep without trying to soothe her; for he saw that the great crisis was over; and silently compassionating the sorrow of this broken-hearted creature, to dry whose eyes, he would have sold the world, he sat by her side holding her hand, from time to time replying to its convulsive pressure.

She rose at last to go home. He accompanied her to the door—saw her take Rose Blanche from the servant girl, and cover it with frantic kisses; and then departed sad and thoughtful to his own solitary home.

He could not, in his sympathy with her, forbear picturing to himself the contrast of what her fate would have been had she married him instead of Cecil; nor could he refrain from bitterly commenting on the truth of his own prophecies that Cecil would make her unhappy. No lover ever believes that his beloved can possibly be happy with his rival; but Heath had too clearly read Cecil's character, not to feel assured that, rivalry out of the question, Blanche was badly matched in wedding one so weak and selfish.

CHAPTER IX.
RUIN.

In one of the low gambling houses, in Leicester-square, Cecil sat, as in a dream, risking the fruits of his crime. His brain whirled round, and his heart beat every time the door opened, for he could not drive away the fear that his forgery had been detected, and that they were coming to arrest him.

He had dishonoured himself to play this new game which Frank had explained to him, and now that the crime was committed he could not profit by it!

Such a game required, above all others, consummate coolness, and self-mastery; Cecil was more agitated, his brain was more confused than ever it had been, and he played utterly at random. It would be difficult to conceive greater torture than that which he endured, for he won without satisfaction, and lost with agony; his brain was not so confused but that he had a distinct perception of his situation, and of the necessity for playing every coup as if for life; but at the same time his brain was so drugged with horror and despair, that his will seemed paralyzed, and he was forced, as by an unseen hand, into the ruin which he saw yawning before him.

While the cards were dealt with mechanical precision by the impassive dealer, and Cecil's crime-furnished gold was passing away before his eyes, visions of his happy youth, of his early days of marriage, and healthy activity, floated before his mind; and he, the gambler, on the edge of that dark gulph which gaped before him, turned back his thoughts to those sunny days when his soul was stainless, and his life was full of love and hope, of activity and happiness; it was like a small wild flower on a mass of loosening rock, which the next gust of wind will quite unloosen, and tumble thundering into the ravine.

He thought of his mother, and of her dying injunctions, and her words of blessing fell upon his ear, just as the dealer in his passionless voice proclaimed,—

"Black wins."

And a heap of gold was swept away before him.

For hours did this tortured gamester play, becoming gradually inured to the pain he suffered, and deadened to the whispers of his conscience.

It was now eleven o'clock. The room was full of players. A succession of new faces replaced those who one by one fell off, contented with their winnings, or, and this was by far the most frequent case, desperate from their losses. But Cecil never moved. He called for wine occasionally, but nothing interrupted his play.

His last three sovereigns were staked upon the black: his life was on the hazard of that one deal. Even the old players, accustomed to every species of intense emotion, could not keep their eyes off Cecil, as with parted lips, straining eyes, and purple face, he watched the rapid progress of the game. Intensely they felt the moment was supreme.

He lost!

With a burst of uncontrollable despair, he snatched the rake from the hand of the croupier, who had just swept away his money, and with both hands snapped it in two; a murmur followed this act of violence, which only seemed preparatory to something worse; but he glared round upon the players with such a look of mad fury that they were awe-stricken.

Instead of any further violence, however, he broke out into a wild hysterical laugh, which made their blood run cold, and staggered out of the house.

In that moment which had preceded his wild laugh, a vision of his young wife and child destitute,—starving,—thinned with want and sickness, had appeared to him, and, as in a flash, revealed to him the hideous extent of his ruin.

Beggared, dishonoured, stained with a profitless crime, nought remained for him but death; and in death he resolved to still the throbbing of his agony.

As he stumbled into Leicester Square, he ran up against one of those unfortunate women, who, flaunting in satin and faded frippery, make the streets hideous after sunset.

"Now then, my dear, are you going to rush into my arms without an invitation?

'Was ever woman in this humour wooed?
Was ever woman in this humour won?'"

The fumes of bad wine poisoned the breath of the speaker, but the tones struck so strangely upon Cecil's ears, that they arrested him even on the path of death.

He seized her by the wrist, and dragged her under a lamp-post. As the light fell upon both their faces, and he recognised in the wretched woman arrayed in the garb of shame, the Hester Mason whom he had known so prosperous and ambitious—and, as she recognised in the emaciated haggard wreck before her, the only man she had ever loved, he gasped with inexpressible emotion, she wept with intense shame.

Not a word passed between them. With a suffocating sense of bitter humiliation, she wrested herself from his grasp, and darted down Cranbourne Alley. He put his hand to his brow, as if to repress its throbbing, and slowly walked on.

CHAPTER X.
THE SINNER THAT REPENTETH.

The cause of Hester's degradation was one which always has, and one fears always will, people our streets with those unhappy women, whom the law refuses either to acknowledge or to suppress—refuses either to protect or to punish: a lasting stigma upon our civilization!

When Sir Chetsom Chetsom was killed, she had to look about her for means of subsistence; and at first imagined that literature would be an ample field.

Thanks to the diffusion of knowledge, and to the increasing taste for reading, it is now very possible for man or woman to earn a decent and honourable livelihood by the pen; but if possible, it is not easy, and is always, with the best of talents, eminently precarious. For a woman still more so than for a man. Above all, the woman must have good friends, must be "respectable," and fortunate.

Hester had no good friends; she had many acquaintances, but no one who interested himself in her success, no one, at any rate, who both could and would assist her. Moreover, she was not "respectable;" and what was the consequence? dissolute editors were afraid of her contributions "on the score of morals."

To be brief, Hester struggled in vain to get employment; and in great danger of starving, she determined to go back to Walton. Her father consented to receive his unhappy child, and promised that "bye-gones should be bye-gones."

She had better have taken a situation as servant of all-work in a lodginghouse, than have returned to her home after what had occurred. She found her father, indeed, glad enough to receive her, and willing enough to forgive the past, on condition of not absolutely forgetting it: from time to time he could not refrain from "throwing it in her teeth," when he was at a loss for an argument or an invective.

This is always the case when a fallen daughter returns home, or when she commits the one unpardonable fault, and stays at home: her parents, her brothers, and sisters—oh! especially the sisters—never forget that fault. It is held over her head in terrorem. It is an ever-present warning and illustration. Bridling up in their unshaken chastity—too often unshaken because untempted—the sisters make her feel in a hundred ways, that her fault is unpardoned and unpardonable. Exasperated by this incessant and unjust retribution for a fault which the girl feels deserves more pity, she is at last driven from home and takes refuge in the streets, because her virtuous family cannot forget!

It has been often remarked that women are more pitiless towards each other, on that very point where common sympathy should make them most tolerant; and little do they know the extent of the mischief their intolerance creates.

Hester had not to suffer from the sneers and allusions of chaste and offended sisters, but she had to endure worse—the sneers and slights of the whole offended town. The reader remembers how Walton was scandalized at her flirtation, how shocked at her flight; let him then imagine the howl of outraged purity which saluted her repentant return! She, indeed, come back to a town she had disgraced! She to show herself amongst the daughters of respectable people! She to be allowed to wallow in corruption, and then as soon as she found that course led to no good, to return again to her home as if nothing had occurred! The minx!

Mrs. Ruddles hoped her husband would take notice of it from the pulpit: such an example as it was to other girls!

Mrs. Spedley expected to see many imitations of such conduct; it was such a premium on vice!

The post-mistress hoped she was as charitable as most people, but she knew what was due to herself, and as long as that creature remained in Walton, she, the post-mistress, could not think of purchasing anything at her father's shop.

Nor, for that matter, could Mrs. Spedley.

Mrs. Ruddles had never for an instant thought of such a thing. It would be a positive encouragement. Mrs. Ruddles herself had daughters. She knew something, she thought, of what constituted a well-regulated mind. She had no fears for her Arabella, Mary, and Martha Jane; but Mrs. Ruddles knew the ill effects of example.

When Hester appeared in the street, all the women instantly crossed to the other side. If she went into a shop to make a purchase, the shop immediately became empty. Women avoided her as if she were a walking pestilence.

En revanche the men ogled her with effrontery, and even middle-aged rotundities with large families, gave themselves killing airs when in her presence.

The stupid ignorance of men! I declare the older I grow the more amazed I am at the dull, purblind, inexcusable ignorance in which one-half of the human race seems destined to remain with respect to the other half, in spite of all experience. To meet with a man who has not some gross prejudice, founded on the most blundering misconception with regard to the nature of women, and on that point, too, which one would imagine they would best understand, is really one of the rarest occurrences. The vast majority of men never seem to escape from the ideas they form about women at school; and no contradiction in the shape of experience seems to suggest to them that those ideas are essentially false. To hear men—and men of the world too—talk about women, is to hear the strangest absurdities and platitudes you can listen to on any subject; to be let into the secret of their conduct towards women, is only to see the ludicrous results to which such erroneous opinions lead them.

It is a tempting subject, but I am not going to pursue this diatribe. I have an illustration to give instead.

Hester Mason having committed a faux pas, was instantly, and from that very cause, looked upon by all the men, young and old, as a woman "to be had for the asking." In their simplicity, they could admit of no gradations between a Lucretia and Messalina. If a woman were not as chaste as ice, she must necessarily be utterly abandoned. If one man had succeeded in overcoming her scruples, of course another might. The dolts!

Perhaps it is owing to our prudery, which keeps so strict a surveillance over every word and act, that the smallest licence seems to imply the extremity of licentiousness!

The school-boy notion of the facility of women was at the bottom of their minds, and with beautiful simplicity some of the "knowing dogs" commenced the attack upon Hester's virtue, without even thinking it necessary to adopt a semblance of respect and attachment.

Certainly Hester was not a woman, under any circumstances, to have admitted the addresses of these men; but now, the undisguised insolence and fatuity of their approaches not only made her cheek burn with shame, but made her heart sick with disgust.

With scorn and withering sarcasms she discomfited them one after the other. The contemptible fools instantly joined the chorus of the women; and with good proof that at any rate, she was not altogether abandoned, they were unanimous in their execration of her infamy.

If women were not purer, stronger, and honester than the dull and coarse imaginations of most men depict them, what a world this would be! what children would these women bring forth!

Those men who have known women, known how great their influence for good and for evil, known what a well of feeling, of pure, spontaneous nature, untarnished by contact with the world, there lies hidden in a woman's breast; those who have known how this nature has moulded their own minds, refined its coarseness, giving beauty to its strength, will exclaim with me: what a world would this be were women what men generally suppose them!

Here is Hester Mason, certainly not a good specimen of her sex: vain, capricious, wilful, sensual, perverted by sounding sophisms respecting the rights of women, and the injustice of the marriage laws; she acts up to her opinions, and throws herself away upon a rich and titled noodle for the sake of furthering her ambitious projects; she finds out her mistake, returns home repentant, and instantly a number of ill-conditioned, coarse-minded, coarse-mannered men imagine she cannot hesitate to stoop to them! Believing that she acted from unrestrained licentiousness, they interpreted one act, in this school-boy fashion, and hoped to profit by her weakness. But they found out their mistake; or rather never found it out, for they attributed her refusal to viler motives than those to which they would have attributed her consent.

The insult of their proposals struck deep into her heart—deeper far than the scorn of her own sex; and it made her so wretched, that, at last, it drove her once more from her home. Yes, home became insupportable, and in a moment of desperation she fled; fled to London, and there endeavoured to seek oblivion in the turbulent vortex of a career which one shudders to contemplate.

Of all the tortures, of all the humiliations to which she had submitted, none equalled that of meeting Cecil. In her strange unhappy life there had been but one short dream, and that was her love for Cecil; even when he had rejected her love, and humiliated her by his rejection, she still felt towards him something of that elevating, purifying attachment which forms a sort of serene heaven smiling upon the most abject condition—which is, as it were, the ideal region where the purest, brightest thoughts take refuge. And to meet him in the streets—to appear before his eyes in the flaunting finery of disgrace—to let him see the abyss into which she had fallen! Poor girl! if her errors had no other expiation than that, bitterly would she have expiated them.

CHAPTER XI.
THE WIFE AWAITING HER HUSBAND.

While the wretched girl wandered distractedly on her way, goaded by the pangs of shame and remorse, the still more wretched Cecil, calm in his concentrated despair, was walking along the river side, pursued by the Eumenides, eager to reach a quiet spot where he might end his blighted existence.

The snow fell in large flakes that cold January night; and as each flake sank gently on the quiet bosom of the river, and silently disappeared in it, leaving no other trace than the smallest possible circle, it seemed to him an image of his own disappearance from this stormy, sunless world. In the deep, quiet bosom of Eternity was he about to vanish: from this scene of turmoil and disgrace, he was to drop into the swiftly flowing river of Eternity, in it to be absorbed like to those flakes of snow. There was comfort in that thought.

He walked on, thinking of what his wife and child would do when left by him. He thought sadly of Blanche's misery; for he knew the depth of her affection for him—for him who had so ill repaid it, who had brought such shame and sorrow on her head; but he endeavoured to console himself with the reflection that her father would take care of her, and that, perhaps, the best thing that could occur to her was to become a widow.

In those lucid moments which precede the last solemn act, he reviewed his conduct with melancholy clearness; and, undimmed by sophisms, his conduct appeared to him in its true light.

He grew calmer as he walked. He thought of his child with something like satisfaction, when he reflected that she was too young to know anything of her father's disgrace; and that, before she grew old enough even to prattle about him, all would be forgotten.

Then he thought of Hester, in her miserable finery, and followed her in imagination through the rapid stages of her inevitable career.

And he thought of Frank, then so prosperous, but soon, as he foresaw, to be dragged down from his prosperity to the destitution which must quickly follow; and he saw him dying in an hospital.

And the thought of death was sweeter to him, as he walked musingly on.

A light was dimly shining in Blanche's bedroom, and she was seated by the window looking out into the night, awaiting the return of him who was to return no more. Her child was sleeping calmly; no hint of the anguish which ploughed the hearts of its parents troubled its quiet breathing.

The clock struck twelve.

A heavy sigh issued from the watcher as the strokes fell upon her ear, and she rose to snuff the enormous wick of the neglected candle. She then resumed her seat at the window.

"When will he come?" she asked herself, sadly.

She feared to meet him—feared to look upon his face, after what had passed; feared lest he, upon whose brow she had been wont to see the imperial stamp of genius—in whose eye the lustre of a glorious mind, on whose lips the smile of unutterable tenderness,—there should now be legible the stamp of infamy, the dull look of shame, the cynical sneer of recklessness.

She feared to meet him, yet she could not repress her impatience to see him: a vague dread that he might not return, shifted to and fro before her mind, and kept her anxiously watching.

The clock struck one.

Her candle was guttering in the socket, and she lighted another. She bent over the cradle of her sleeping infant with a searching look of love; and seeing that it slept peacefully, she again resumed her seat at the window.

The snow had ceased to fall. The bright stars were lustrous in the deep, dark, moonless heavens, in which they seemed suspended. The ground was white with the untrodden snow, as also were the tops of the houses, and the branches of the trees. Not a breath of wind stirred. All was silent without, hushed in the repose of night. Not a footstep was heard; not even the distant barking of some watchful dog.

Cold, cheerless, desolate as a leafless tree, was the night out into which the watcher looked, awaiting her husband's return; but he came not, would not come!

The clock struck two.

The watcher stirred the fire, and drew the shawl closer around her. She was cold; but it was not the cold of that winter night which numbed her limbs, it was the cold icy fear which momently assumed a more definite and consistent shape.

She no longer asked: "when will he come?"

Her teeth chattered as the thought that he would never come, grew more and more like a certainty.

There was a shroud upon the earth: a pure, white, stainless shroud, prepared for one who was yet young, but who had lived too long.

To her widowed eyes this garment of snow, which nature wore, became a terrible symbol, and the stars seemed to look down upon her in infinite compassion.

He came not; could not come. The silent river had opened to receive him, and was now flowing swiftly and silently over his lifeless corpse.

The clock struck three.

A cry of agony broke from the watcher as those three small strokes with horrible distinctness fell upon her ear and seemed to utter,—

"He is dead!"

But she remained at her window looking; out into the night. For two hours longer did she sit there, and then dropped into a feverish sleep, visited by happy, though broken, dreams.

She dreamed that she had dreamed her husband had committed a forgery, and that she awoke to find it but a dream: how great her joy, as she clasped him by the hand and told him all! and how his tender eyes bent down upon her as he said,—

"What! think that of me!"

And she awoke—awoke to find herself seated at the window—the dull winter morning struggling into obscure day—the snow heaped up on the window ledge, and covering everything without—and the crushing reality was once more threatening her!

CHAPTER XII.
THE GAMBLER'S END.

Set down, set down that sorrow, 't is all mine.
DECKAR.

Her candle was burnt out; the fire had only a few live embers which went out directly she attempted to revive it. She was numbed with cold; weary with grief; and threw herself upon the bed.

Sleep was impossible. A settled, though vague, conviction that Cecil would not return had taken possession of her mind. She fancied that he must have lost the money, and was now lying concealed for fear of the consequences of his crime.

As the morning fairly broke, she put on her things, and hurried to Captain Heath to ask his assistance and advice. He was at breakfast when she arrived, and her appearance so wan, and yet so strangely supernaturally calm, made him fear the worst.

"Cecil has not returned," she said quietly. "What is to be done?"

The captain at once guessed the truth, and was silent.

"He is ashamed to return," she said. "How are we to learn where he is?"

He remained silent.

"If we were to advertise in the papers," she suggested, "could we not by that means let him know that his ... imprudence ... has been overlooked?"

"Yes, yes. That is the only plan."

"Will you do it?"

"At once; but go you home, he may return every minute."

"You think, then, he will return?" she asked with more emotion in her voice than she had hitherto betrayed.

He trembled slightly as he answered,—

"At any rate ... you had better be there."

She pressed his hand mournfully, and withdrew, leaving Heath amazed and alarmed at the quietude of her manner.

On reaching Hammersmith she saw at some distance before her, a large crowd of people hurrying along. She quietly wondered what it could be; perhaps a fire; perhaps a man led to the station house; perhaps a show which the crowd followed wondering.

She walked on, till she saw the crowd stop at her own house, and then she flew, urged on by some quick sudden fear—she pierced the crowd—she entered the house—in the passage were four men bearing a corpse on a shutter: her heart told her whose corpse it was before her eyes had recognised it.

She saw no more.

When next she became conscious, she found herself in her old bedroom at her father's, her sister Violet seated by her bedside, gazing inquiringly upon her. The fever was subsiding, and her life was saved.

CHAPTER XIII.
EXPLANATION.

"Mrs. Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be some understanding arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me, madam .... I have made you my wife. You bear my name. You are associated with my position and my reputation."

CHARLES DICKENS.

On the day on which Cecil had forged the cheque, Meredith Vyner entered his wife's boudoir with the intention of coming to a serious explanation with her.

Several times, lately, had the word "separation" been pronounced between them, without, however, her attaching much importance to it. She knew that he was miserable, she knew that his love for her had been worn away, but she knew also that he was weak, and thought he would never have courage enough to proceed to extremities.

In this she made a great mistake. Vyner was weak, it is true, but he was also obstinate; he was easily cajoled, but not easily driven from any plan he had once resolved on. Unable to resist the wildest caprices of his wife, while he loved her, she lost all power over him in losing his affection. This she did not suspect. Like many other people, she altogether miscalculated the nature of her power over him, and imagined that what she really gained by cajolery and pretended affection, she gained by mere cunning and strength of will.

Their relative positions were altogether changed. Vyner, no longer the doating husband, was now the obstinate man. He saw that it was impossible to live happily with her, and saw that if his children were once more around him—if Violet especially were once more at home—he could again resume his peaceful routine of existence.

"I am come to speak seriously to you," he said, as seating himself opposite to her, he drew out his deliberative snuff-box.

"And I am in no humour for it," she replied, "my head aches. My nerves are irritable this morning."

"What I have to say must be said, and the sooner it is said the better for both of us."

She was surprised at the firmness of his manner.

"It is on the old subject," he added; "I need not again recapitulate the many strong objections your conduct this last year has given rise to, but I wish once for all to understand whether you intend persisting in it, or whether you will pay a little more attention to what is due both to me and yourself."

"How tiresome you are on that subject! When will you understand that a young woman cannot have an old head upon her shoulders, unless it is also an ugly one? I shall be grave and sedate enough in time, I dare say; meanwhile, allow me to observe, that, although I may be fond of admiration, yet I know perfectly well what is due to myself."

"If you know it, you do not demean yourself in consequence."

"That is the question. I maintain that I do; and I suppose I am old enough to know what is right on such matters."

He shook his head.

"Can you name any one instance in which I have overstepped the limits to which even English rigidity confines a young woman?"

"Your encouragement of the attentions of Mr. Ashley...."

"Again, Mr. Ashley!"

"Of Mr. Maxwell...."

She burst out laughing; but the laugh was hollow.

"Of Lord * * * * who every day...."

"Why he's as old as you are!"

Vyner winced at the epigram, which indeed was cruel and insulting.

"It is a pity you did not think of the great disparity in our ages before you married me, Mrs. Vyner."

"A great pity."

"I have often thought so of late."

"How much better had you thought so before you made me an offer!"

"It was the greatest mistake I ever made, but—

'Sic visum Veneri, cui placeat impares
Formas atque animos sub juga aënea
Sævo mittere cum joco!'"

Vyner had often made that quotation to himself, and now launched it with great satisfaction, as was evident by the noisy pinch of snuff with which he closed it.

Mrs. Vyner shrugged her shoulders.

"You have spoken," he said, "of incompatibilities, and I fear they exist. But, Mrs. Vyner, if you have destroyed my domestic happiness, you shall not destroy my future comfort. I will not be made a laughing-stock abroad, and be made miserable at home. I say I will not. I am come, therefore, to offer you an alternative."

"Let me hear it."

"You must cease to see Mr. Maxwell and Lord * * * *"

"Impossible!"

"I say you must. Moreover, you must change your manner entirely, both to other men and to your husband."

"What manner am I to adopt?"

"That which befits a well-conducted wife."

"Mr. Vyner, you are insulting."

"In demanding you to do your duty?"

"No; in asserting that I do anything derogatory."

"You have strange ideas, Mrs. Vyner, on that point."

"Perhaps so; but they are mine."

"They are not mine, however."

"That is unfortunate!"

"Very. I am demanding nothing extraordinary, I imagine, in insisting that you should cease to flirt with others, and should pay more respect and deference to my wishes than you have done of late. I do not demand affection..."

She again shrugged her shoulders; he perceived it.

"Because," he continued, "I know that is absurd; whatever regard you may once have had for me is gone. I do not even demand gratitude for the kindness I have ever shown you—and you must admit that I have been an indulgent husband—foolishly so. But I have a right to demand from a wife a fulfilment at least of the most ordinary duties of a wife, and a certain amount of respect, or the show of it at any rate. This I have a right to demand, and this I will have."

Mrs. Vyner was not a woman to brook such a dictatorial tone even from the man she loved; and we have seen how Maxwell, when he adopted it, only irritated her to an unusual degree; from Vyner, whom she had been accustomed to sway as she pleased; from Vyner whom she disliked, and somewhat despised, this tone was, therefore, excessively offensive.

Her lip quivered as she replied, "This is a subject upon which we can never agree. I hold myself to be quite competent to judge of my own actions, and until I have done anything to forfeit the good opinion of the world, I shall continue to act as I think proper."

"That is your final determination?"

"It is. I hope it will be unnecessary for me to repeat it."

"In coming here I expected this, so I came prepared."

"Let me hear your alternative."

"A separation."

She started; not at the word—that she had heard before—but at the quiet, dogged resolution of the tone. A flush of angry pride ran over her cheeks and brow.

"It is very terrible, your alternative!" she said, ironically.

"Are you prepared to accept it?"

"Perfectly."

"Very well, then, in that case, I have only to see about the settlements, and in a week or two, at the farthest, the affair can be arranged."

He put back his snuff-box into his huge pocket, as he said this, and walked out of the room with a calmness that lent dignity to his lumpish figure.

She drooped her head upon her hand, and reflected. Revolted pride, anger, and fear were struggling in her breast. Irritated as she was by her husband's manner, she could not reflect upon the separation without uneasiness.

As his wife, she had an enviable position; separated from him, she not only lost the advantages of that position, in a deprivation of wealth, but also in a deprivation of the consideration with which the world regarded her. A woman separated from her husband is always equivocally placed; even when the husband is notorious as a bad character, as a man of unendurable temper, or bitten with some disgraceful vice, society always looks obliquely at the woman separated from him; and when she has no such glaring excuse, her position is more than equivocal. "Respectable" women will not receive her; or do so with a certain nuance of reluctance. Men gossip about her, and regard her as a fair mark for their gallantries.

Mrs. Vyner knew all this thoroughly; she had refused to know women in that condition; at Mrs. Langley Turner's, where she had more than once encountered these black sheep, she had turned aside her head, and by a thousand little impertinent airs made them feel the difference between her purity and their disgrace. A separation, therefore, was not a thing to be lightly thought of; yet the idea of obeying Vyner, of accepting his conditions, made her cheek burn with indignation.

Absorbed in thought she sat, weighing, as in a delicate balance, the conflicting considerations which arose within her, and ever and anon asking herself,—"What has become of Maxwell?"

CHAPTER XIV.
THE ALTERNATIVE.

Maxwell had just recovered from the effect of that broken bloodvessel which terminated the paroxysm of passion Mrs. Vyner's language and conduct had thrown him into.

At the very moment when she was asking herself, "What has become of Maxwell?" he concluded his will, arranged all his papers, burnt many letters, and, going to a drawer, took from them a pair of pocket pistols with double barrels.

He was very pale, and his veins seemed injected with bile in lieu of blood; but he was excessively calm.

In one so violent, in one whose anger was something more like madness than any normal condition of the human mind, who from childhood upwards had been unrestrained in the indulgence of his passion, this calmness was appalling.

He loaded the four barrels with extreme precision, having previously cleared the touchholes, and not only affixed the caps with care, but also took the precaution of putting some extra caps in his waistcoat pocket in case of accidents.

His hand did not tremble once; on his brow there was no scowl; on his colourless lips no grim smile; but calm, as if he were about the most indifferent act of his life, and breathing regularly as if no unusual thought was in his mind, he finished the priming of those deadly instruments, and placed them in his pocket.

Once more did he read over his will; and then having set everything in order, rang the bell.

"Fetch a cab," he said quietly to the servant who entered.

"Are you going out, sir?" asked the astonished servant.

"Don't you see I am?"

"Yes, sir,—only you are but just out of bed...."

"I am quite well enough."

There was no reply possible. The cab was brought. He stepped into it, and drove to Mrs. Vyner's.

Although she was thinking of him at the very moment when he was announced, she started at the sound of his name. His appearance startled her still more. She saw that he could only just have risen from a bed of sickness, and that sickness she knew had been caused by the vehemence of his love for her.

Affectionate as was her greeting, it brought no smile upon his lips, no light into his glazed eyes.

"The hypocrite!" was his mental exclamation.

"Oh! Maxwell, how I have longed to see you," she said "you left me in anger, and I confess I did not behave well to you; but why have you not been here before? did you not know that I was but too anxious to make it up with you?"

"How should I know that?" he quietly asked.

"How! did you not know my love for you?"

"I did not," he said, perfectly unmoved.

"You did not? Oh you ungrateful creature! Is that the return I am to meet with? Is it to say such things that you are here?"

A slight smile played in his eyes for a moment, but his lips were motionless.

"Come," she said, "you have been angry with me—I have been wrong—let us forget and forgive."

He did not touch her proffered hand, but said,—

"If for once in your life you can be frank, be so now."

"I will. What am I to say?"

Carelessly putting both hands into his coat pockets, and grasping the pistols, he rose, stretched out his coat tails, and stood before her in an attitude usual with him, and characteristic of Englishmen generally, when standing with their backs to the fire.

"You promise to be frank?" he said.

"I do."

"Then tell me whether Lord * * * * * was here yesterday."

"He was."

"Will he be here to-morrow?"

"Most likely."

"Then you have not given him his congé?"

"Not I."

Maxwell paused and looked at her keenly, his right hand grasping firmly the pistol in his pocket.

"Then may I ask the reason of your very civil reception of me to-day?"

"The reason! Civil!"

"Yes, the reason, the motive: you must have one."

"Is not my love...."

"You promised to be frank," he said, menacingly.

"I did—I am so."

"Then let us have no subterfuge of language—speak plainly—it will be better for you."

"Maxwell, if you are come here to irritate me with your jealousy, and your absurd doubts, you have chosen a bad time. I am not well. I am not happy. I do not wish to quarrel with you—do not force me to it."

"Beware!" he said, in deep solemn tones.

"Beware you! George, do not provoke me—pray do not. Sit down and talk reasonably. What is it you want to ask me?"

"I repeat: the motive for your civility to me?"

"And I repeat: my love."

"Your love!"

"There again! Why will you torment me with this absurd doubt? Why should you doubt me? Have I any interest in deceiving you? You are not my husband.—It is very strange that when I do not scruple to avow my love, you should scruple to believe me."

"My scruples arise from my knowledge of you: you are a coquette."

"I know it; but not to you."

"Solemnly—do you love me?"

"Solemnly—I do!"

He paused again, as unprepared for this dissimulation. She withstood his gaze without flinching.

An idea suddenly occurred to him.

"Mary, after what I have seen, doubts are justifiable. Are you prepared to give me a proof?"

"Yes, any; name it."

"Will you go with me to France?"

"Run away with you?"

"You refuse!" he said, half drawing a pistol from his pocket.

She was bewildered. The suddenness of the proposition, and its tremendous importance staggered her.

A deep gloom concentrated on his face; the crisis had arrived, and he only awaited a word from her to blow her brains out.

With the indescribable rapidity of thought, her mind embraced the whole consequences of his offer—weighed the chances—exposed the peril of her situation with her husband, and permitted her to calculate whether, since separation seemed inevitable, there would not be an advantage in accepting Maxwell's offer. "He loves me," she said; "loves me as no one ever loved before. With him I shall be happy."

"I await your decision," he said.

"George, I am yours!"

She flung herself upon his neck. He was so astonished at her resolution, that at first he could not believe it, and his hands still grasped the pistols; but by degrees her embrace convinced him, and clasping her in his arms, he exclaimed,—

"Your love has saved you! You shall be a happy woman—I will be your slave!"

CHAPTER XV.
THOSE LEFT TO WEEP.

The discovery of Mrs. Vyner's flight was nearly coincident with the announcement of Cecil's suicide. Poor Vyner was like a madman. He reproached himself for having spoken so harshly to his wife, for having driven her to this desperate act, and thus causing her ruin. Had he been more patient, more tolerant! She was so young, so giddy, so impulsive, he ought to have had more consideration for her!

It was quite clear to Vyner's mind that he had behaved very brutally, and that his wife was an injured innocent.

In the midst of this grief, there came the horrible intelligence of Cecil's end. There again Vyner reproached himself. Why did he allow Blanche to marry that unhappy young man? On second thoughts, "he had never allowed it"; but yet it was he who encouraged Cecil—who invited him to his seat—who pressed him to stay!

In vain did Captain Heath remonstrate with him on this point; Vyner was at that moment in a remorseful, self-reproachful spirit, which no arguments could alter. He left everything to Captain Heath's management, with the helplessness of weak men, and sat desolate in his study, wringing his hands, taking ounces of snuff, and overwhelming himself with unnecessary reproaches.

Blanche, in a brain fever, was removed to her father's, where she was watched by the miserable old man, as if he had been the cause of her sorrow. Violet was sent for from her uncle's, and established herself once more in the house. Now her step-mother was gone, she could devote herself to her father.

Blanche's return to consciousness was unhappily also a return to that fierce sorrow which nothing but time could assuage. She was only induced to live by the reflection that her child needed her care. But what a prospect was it for her! How could she ever smile again! How could she ever cease to weep for her kind, affectionate, erring, but beloved Cecil!

It is the intensity of all passion which makes us think it must be eternal; and it is this very intensity which makes it so short-lived. In a few months Blanche occasionally smiled; her grief began to take less the shape of a thing present, and more that of a thing past; it was less of a sensation, and more of a reverie.

At first the image of her husband was a ghastly image of dishonour and early wreck; his face wore the stern keen look of suspicion which had agitated her when last she saw him alive; or else it wore the placidity of the corpse which she had last beheld. Behind that ghastly image stood the background of their happy early days of marriage, so shortlived, yet so exquisite!

In time the ghastliness faded away, and round the image of her husband, there was a sort of halo—the background gradually invaded the foreground, till at last the picture had no more melancholy in it than there is in some sweet sunset over a quiet sea. The tears she shed were no longer bitter: they were the sweet and pensive tears shed by that melancholy which finds pleasure in its own indulgence.

Grief had lost its pang. Her mind, familiarized with her loss, no longer dwelt upon the painful, but on the beautiful side of the past. Her child was there to keep alive the affectionate remembrance of its father, without suggesting the idea of the moody, irritable, ungenerous husband, which Cecil had at the last become.

Like a child crying itself to sleep—passing from sorrow into quiet breathing—her grief had passed into pensiveness. Cecil's image was as a star smiling down upon her from heaven: round it were clustered quiet, happy thoughts, not the less happy because shadowed with a seriousness which had been grief.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE VOICE OF PASSION.

Vyner soon recovered from the double shock he had sustained, and was now quite happy again with his two girls, and his excellent friend Heath, as his constant companions; while Julius and Rose were seldom two days absent from them.

For the sake of Blanche they now returned to Wytton Hall, and there her health was slowly but steadily restored.

Captain Heath was her companion in almost every walk and drive; reading to her the books she wished; daily becoming a greater favourite with little Rose Blanche, who would leave even her nurse to come to him; and daily feeling serener, as his love grew not deeper, but less unquiet: less, as he imagined, like a lover's love, and more like that of an elder brother.

Blanche was happier with him than with any one else; not that she loved him, not even that she divined his love; since Cecil's death, his manner had been even less demonstrative than it had ever been before, and it would have been impossible for the keenest observer to have imagined there was anything like love in his attentions.

What quiet blissful months those were which they then passed: Vyner once more absorbed in his Horace; Blanche daily growing stronger, and less melancholy; Heath living as one in a dream; Violet hearing, with a woman's pride in him she loves, of Marmaduke's immense success in parliament, where he was already looked up to as the future Chatham or Burke.

Every time Violet saw Marmaduke's name in the papers, her heart fluttered against the bars of its prison, and she groaned at the idea of being separated from him. Indeed her letters to Rose were so full of Marmaduke, that Rose planned with Julius a little scheme to bring the two unexpectedly together, as soon as Violet returned to town.

"I am sure Violet loves him," said Rose; "I don't at all understand what has occurred to separate them. Violet is silent on the point, and is uneasy if I allude to it. But don't you agree with me, Julius, that she must love him?"

"I think it very probable."

"Probable! Why not certain?"

"Because, you know, I am apt to be suspicious on that subject."

"I know you are," she said, laughing and shaking her locks at him, "and a pretty judge you are of a woman's heart!"

Julius allowed himself to be persuaded that Violet really did love Marmaduke, and accordingly some weeks afterwards, when the Vyners had returned, Julius arranged a pic-nic in which Marmaduke was to join, without Violet's knowledge. Fearful lest she should refuse to accompany them if she saw him before starting, it was agreed that Marmaduke should meet them at Richmond.

Imagine with what feverish impatience he awaited them, and with what a sinking, anxious heart he appeared amongst them. Violet blushed, and looked at Rose; the laughter in her eyes plainly betrayed her share in the plot, in defiance of the affected gravity of her face. He shook hands with such of the company as he knew personally, was introduced to the others, and then quietly seated himself beside Violet, in a manner so free from either embarrassment or gallantry, that it put her quite at her ease. She had determined, from the first, to frustrate Rose's kindly-intentioned scheme; and she felt that she had strength enough to do so. But his manner at once convinced her that, however he might have been brought there, it was with no intention of taking any advantage of their meeting to open forbidden subjects.

Marmaduke was in high spirits, and talked quite brilliantly. Violet was silent; but from time to time, as he turned to address a remark to her, he saw her look of admiration, and that inspired him.

I need not describe the pic-nic, for time presses, and pic-nics are all very much alike. Enough if we know that the day was spent merrily and noisily, and that dinner was noisier and merrier than all: the champagne drank, amounting to something incredible.

Evening was drawing in. The last rays of a magnificent sunset were fading in the western sky, and the cool breeze springing up warned the company that it was time to prepare for their return.

The boisterous gaiety of the afternoon and dinner had ceased. Every one knows the effect of an exhilarating feast, followed by a listless exhausted hour or two; when the excitement produced by wine and laughter has passed away, a lassitude succeeds, which in poetical minds induces a tender melancholy, in prosaic minds a desire for stimulus or sleep.

As the day went down, all the guests were exhausted, except Marmaduke and Violet, who, while the others were gradually becoming duller and duller, had insensibly wandered away, engrossed in the most enchanting conversation.

"Did I not tell you?" whispered Rose, as she pointed out to Julius the retreating figures of her sister and Marmaduke.

Away the lovers wandered, and although their hearts were full of love, although their eyes were speaking it as eloquently as love can speak, not a syllable crossed their lips which could be referred to it. A vague yearning—a dim, melancholy, o'ermastering feeling held its empire over their souls. The witching twilight, closing in so strange a day, seemed irresistibly to guide their thoughts into that one channel which they had hitherto so dexterously avoided. Her hand was on his arm—he pressed it tenderly, yet gently—so gently!—to his side. He gazed into her large lustrous eyes, and intoxicated by their beauty and tenderness, he began to speak.

"It is getting late. We must return. We must separate. Oh! Violet, before we separate, tell me that it is not for ever——"

"Marmaduke!" she stammered out, alarmed.

"Dearest, dearest Violet, we shall meet again—you will let me see you—will you not?"

She was silent, struggling.

They walked on a few paces; then he again said,—

"You will not banish me entirely—you will from time to time——"

"No, Marmaduke," she said, solemnly; "no, it will not be right. You need not look so pained—I—have I nothing to overcome when I forego the delight of seeing you? But it must not be. You know that it cannot be."

"I know nothing of the kind!" he impetuously exclaimed; "I only know that you do not love me!"

She looked reproachfully at him; but his head was turned away.

"Cold, cold as marble," he muttered as they walked on.

She did not answer him. Lovers are always unreasonable and unjust. He was furious at her "coldness;" she was hurt at his misunderstanding her. She could have implored him to be more generous; but he gave her no encouragement—he spoke no word—kept his look averted. Thus neither tried to explain away the other's misconception; neither smoothed the other's ruffled anger. In silence they walked on, environed by their pride. The longer they kept silent, the bitterer grew their feelings;—the more he internally reprobated her for coldness, the more she was hurt at his refusal to acknowledge the justness of her resolution, after all that had passed between them by letter.

In this painful state of feeling, they joined their companions just as the boats were got ready.

Rose looked inquiringly at Violet; but Violet averted her head. Julius was troubled to perceive the evident anger of Marmaduke.

The boats pushed off. The evening was exquisite, and Rose murmured to Julius the words of their favourite Leopardi:—

Dolce e chiara è la notte, e senza vento,
E queta sovra i tetti e in mezzo agli orti
Posa la luna, e di lontan rivela
Serena ogni montagna.

Wearied by the excitement of the day, they were almost all plunged in reveries from which they made no effort to escape. The regular dip of the oars in the water, and the falling drops shaken from them, had a musical cadence, which fell deliciously on the ear. It was a dreamy scene. The moon rose, and shed her gentle light upon them, as they moved along, in almost unbroken silence, upon the silver stream. The last twitter of the birds had ceased; the regular and soothing sounds of the oars alone kept them in a sort of half consciousness of being awake.

Marmaduke and Violet were suffering tortures. She occasionally stole a glance at him, and with redoubled pain read upon his haughty face the expression of anger and doubt which so much distressed her. The large tears rolled over her face. She leaned over the boat side to hide them, and as she saw the river hurrying on beneath her, she thought of the unhappy Cecil, and of his untimely end. Over his dishonoured corpse had this cold river flowed, as gently as now it flowed beneath her... From Cecil her thoughts wandered to Wytton Hall, and her early inclination for him—to her scene in the field with the bull—to her first meeting with Marmaduke; and then she thought no more of Cecil.

Thus they were rowed through the silent evening. On reaching town, the party dispersed.

Marmaduke and Violet separated with cold politeness, and each went home to spend a miserable night.

For some days did Marmaduke brood over her refusal, and as he reflected on the strength of her character, and the slight probability that she would ever yield—her very frankness told him that—he took a sudden and very loverlike resolution that he would quit England, and return to Brazil.

Preparations for his departure were not delayed an instant, and with his usual impetuosity he had completed every arrangement before another would have fairly commenced.

Leave-taking began. He wrote to Vyner announcing his intention, and saying that he proposed doing himself the pleasure of bidding them adieu. He had the faint hope, which was very faint, that Violet might be present, and that he might see her for the last time. Lovers attach a very particular importance to a last farewell, and angry as Marmaduke was with Violet, the idea of quitting England for ever, without once more seeing her, was extremely painful to him.

It was a dull, drizzly day, enough to depress the most elastic of temperaments. Violet was in her father's study, looking out upon the mist of rain and cloud, debating with herself whether she should be present during Marmaduke's visit or not. After what had passed, she tried to persuade herself that it was fortunate he was going to quit England, fearing that her resolution would never hold out against his renewed entreaties; but it was in vain she sophisticated with herself, her heart told her that she was wretched, intensely wretched at his departure.

Her father's voice roused her from this reverie, and she passed into the drawing-room, where a few minutes afterwards the servant entered, and announced "Mr. Ashley."

A stream of fire seemed suddenly to pour along her veins; but by the time he had shaken hands with Vyner and Blanche, and had turned to her, she was comparatively calm. His face was very sallow, and there was a nervous quivering of his delicate nostrils, which indicated the emotion within, but which was unobserved by her, as her eyes were averted.

The conversation was uneasy and common-place. Marmaduke's manner was calm and composed, but his voice was low. Violet sat with her eyes upon the carpet, deadly pale, and with colourless lips. Blanche, who did not quite understand the relation between them, but who knew that Violet loved him, was anxious on her account. Vyner alone was glib and easy. He talked of parliament, and remarked, that the best thing he knew of it was, that the members always quoted Horace.

As the interview proceeded, Marmaduke's grave, cold manner became slightly tinged with irony and bitterness; and when Vyner said to him, "Apropos, what—if the question be permissible—what induces you to leave us? are you to be away long?"

He replied, with a marked emphasis, "Very long."

"Is Brazil, then, so very attractive?"

"England ceases to be attractive. I want breathing space. There I can, as Tennyson sings,—

'Burst all the links of habit—there to wander far away,
On from island unto island, at the gateways of the day.'"

Blanche, mildly interposing, said,—

"But what does he also sing, and in the same poem?

'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'"

Violet's eyes were fixed upon the ground.

"And, after all—poetry aside—what are you going to do with yourself in that hot climate?"

"To marry, perhaps," he said, carelessly, and with a forced laugh.

Violet shook all over; but she did not raise her eyes.

"An heiress?" asked Vyner.

"No,—to continue Tennyson,—

'I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.'"

There was singular bitterness, as he added,—

"In those climates, the passions are not cramped by the swaddling clothes of civilisation; their franker natures better suit my own impulsiveness; when they love they love—they do not stultify their hearts with intricate sophisms."

Violet now raised her large eyes, and, with mournful steadiness, reproached him by a look, for the words he had just uttered. He met her look with one as steady, but flashing with scorn.

"Well, for my part," said Vyner, tapping his snuff-box, "Brazil would have little attraction for me, especially if the women are violent. I can't bear violent women."

Marmaduke had expected some remark from Violet in answer to his speech; but that one look was her only answer, and she was now as intently examining the carpet as before. He noticed her paleness, and the concentrated calmness of her manner, and it irritated him the more.

Blanche, with true feminine sagacity, saw it was desirable, in every case, that Violet should have an opportunity of speaking with him alone, so walked out of the room, and in a few minutes sent the servant with a message to Vyner that he was wanted for an instant down stairs.

The lovers were now alone, and horribly embarrassed. They wanted to break the uneasy silence, but neither of them could utter a word.

At last Violet, feeling that it was imperative on her to say something, murmured, without looking at him,—

"And when do you start?"

"On Monday."

Another pause ensued; perhaps worse this time than before, because of the unsuccessful attempt.

"I wonder whether it still rains?" he said, after a few moments' silence, and walked to the window to look out.

Left thus sitting by herself—an emblem of the far more terrible desertion which was to follow—Violet looked in upon her desolate heart, and felt appalled at the prospect. The imperious cry of passion sounded within her, and would not be gagged: the pent-up tide burst away the barriers, and rushed precipitately onwards, carrying before it all scruples like straws upon a stream.

"Marmaduke!" she exclaimed.

He turned from the window; she had half-risen from her seat; he walked up to her.

She flung herself into his arms.

"Is this true, Violet? Speak—are you mine—mine?"

She pressed him closer to her. It is only men who find words in such moments; and Marmaduke was as eloquent as love and rapture could make him.

When she did speak, it was in a low fluttering tone, her pale face suffused with blushes, as she told him, that to live apart from him was impossible;—either he must stay, or take her with him.

Meanwhile, Vyner had been prettily rated by Blanche for his dulness in not perceiving that the lovers wanted to be alone.

"But are you certain, Blanche, that they are lovers? For my part, I wish it were so; but although Violet certainly has a regard for him, I have reason to believe, that he has none for her."

Blanche sighed and said,—

"Then let us go back, for in that case, they will only be uncomfortable together."

* * * * * *

N.B.—The journey to Brazil was indefinitely postponed.