His darling sin

by M. E. Braddon

It was in this year of her return to the world of pleasure, when all things seemed more dazzling by contrast, that she made the acquaintance of two men whom she had not known during her married life. One was Arthur Haldane, a man of letters, who had leapt at once into renown by the success of a first novel—a work of fire and flame, which had startled the novel-reading world, and surprised even the critics, in an age when all stories have been told, and when genius means an original mind dealing with old familiar things. Since that success Mr. Haldane had devoted himself to more solid and serious works, and he was now a personage in the literary world. The other was Colonel Rannock, a Scotchman of old family, grandson of the Earl of Kirkmichael, and late of the Lanarkshire regiment, the man who was destined to bring trouble into Grace Perivale's smooth and prosperous life. He was a reprobate, a man who had long been banished from the holy of holies in the temple of society, but who contrived to whirl in the vortex, nevertheless, by the indulgence of old friends and allies of his house, who would not cast him off utterly so long as he was only suspected and had never been found out. He was known to have ruined other men, callow subalterns who had admired and trusted him; he was known to have lived in the company of vicious women, to have said to evil, "Be thou my good"; and he was even suspected of having cheated at cards, though that is a common suspicion of every Captain Rook who keeps company with pigeons.

But against all this there was the man's personal charm—that subtle, indescribable charm of a high-bred Scotchman who has lived in the best Continental society, and is also a cosmopolitan. "A charm that no woman could resist." That was what men who knew him well said of him.

It was this man that in an evil hour Grace Perivale admitted to her friendship. She had not known him a week before she had been lectured about him, assured solemnly that he ought not to cross her threshold. Her friendly mentor, Mr. Howard, was the most importunate.

"I am old enough to be your father, Lady Perivale," he began; but she stopped him with a laugh.

"If you say that I know something horrid is coming; though my dear father never said a disagreeable thing to me in his life."

"Ah, but you were safe then—a little boat chained to a pier—and now you are a fast sailing schooner racing through unknown waters. I know the chart, and where there are shoals. You must not let Colonel Rannock visit you."

"Why he, too, is old enough to be my father."

"No; I am ten years older than he, and thirty years more trustworthy."

"I don't care about the trustworthiness of a casual acquaintance."

"Rannock will not remain your casual acquaintance. He will make himself your friend, whether you like it or not, unless you put him in his place at once, or, in plain words, tell your butler you are never to be at home to him."