“Confound the fellow, I always disliked him,” he muttered, as he rode down the avenue; “every one gives him a worse character than his father.”
Captain O’Loughlin had undertaken this visit to Sir Howard Etherton at Mabel’s earnest request. Most important intelligence had reached Madame Volney from Paris relative to her own affairs. Her letters came through Hamburg. The correspondent mentioned, as a piece of news, that Madame Coulancourt, formerly Duchesse de Coulancourt, was living in Paris, and had had her estates restored to her, but that she was under strict surveillance. There was no other remark in the letter; but this was quite sufficient to fill Mabel’s heart with rapturous joy. Her beloved mother was living, and well; this knowledge seemed to her the greatest boon Providence could bestow upon her.
Mr. Stanmore was extremely anxious, when he heard the intelligence, that some mode of communication might be contrived with Madame de Coulancourt, so that Mabel’s birth could be clearly established, as this would be absolutely necessary to substantiate her claims to her uncle’s legacy. Mr. Stanmore, however, was made aware by Madame Volney that any attempt to correspond with Mabel’s mother would subject her to the utmost rigour of the French Government.
“At all events,” said the solicitor, “I will try a feeler to Sir Howard Etherton’s solicitor;” and he did: but Mabel, who could not bear to make her name and position a subject of public conversation by enforcing her claims, without having a single proof to bring forward, begged Captain O’Loughlin to try and bring Sir Howard Etherton to amicable terms. She was quite willing to relinquish all claim on the Etherton property, provided Sir Howard offered no opposition to her being publicly known as the niece of Sir Oscar de Bracy, and the daughter of Mr. Granby Arden.
Captain O’Loughlin undertook the embassy to Sir Howard Etherton; and knowing that gentleman’s penurious disposition, he thought he would eagerly grasp at the large sum of money he would gain by his compliance, though the Captain grumbled terribly at such a sacrifice on Mabel’s part. Mabel insisted that it would be a very hard case for Sir Howard to have to pay that sum; so, to satisfy her, he rode over to Etherton Hall, and returned quite pleased at having failed, for he would not be persuaded that Mabel had any right to forego or abandon her natural rights. About fourteen or fifteen days after this interview Captain O’Loughlin was appointed to the command of a very handsome and dashing corvette, the Onyx and had orders to sail immediately and join the ship under Vice-Admiral Colboy, cruising off Brest.
After a most affectionate leave-taking with his betrothed and Mabel, Captain O’Loughlin proceeded to join his ship. In our next chapter we return to our hero and his attached follower Bill Saunders.
CHAPTER XVIII.
We left Lieutenant Thornton and Bill Saunders scrambling over the rough rocks, after swimming from the sunken lugger. It was not yet daybreak, and our hero was anxious to get as far from the wreck as possible. They never thought of the man whom they had left on board; and whether he had swam ashore or perished by drowning they knew not. It was a remarkably rough road over those rocks, and Bill Saunders, as he stumbled and bruised his shins against the sharp stones, vowed vengeance against the first Monsieur he could conveniently knock on the head; declaring that all their misfortunes arose from not pitching the two Frenchmen, who sought refuge in the fore cuddy of the lugger, overboard; had he done so, they could not have set the lugger on fire.
To add to Bill’s dissatisfaction and vexation, the garments he had put on were those of a middle-sized man—Bill, like his master, was six feet—and being soaked through, they clung to him so tightly that he could hardly walk.