"I have need of wealth, Victor," replied the baronet, eagerly; "I have bitter need of it. There are men who can endure poverty; but I am not one of them. If my position does not change speedily I may find myself branded with the stigma of dishonour—an outlaw from society. I must be rich at any cost—at any cost, Victor."
"You have told me that before," answered the Frenchman, coolly, "and I have promised that you shall be rich. But if I am to keep my promise, you must submit yourself with unquestioning faith to my guidance. If the path we must tread together is a dark one, tread it blindly. The end will be success. And now tell me when you expect to see Douglas Dale in London."
Sir Reginald explained his cousin's plans, and after a brief conversation left the cottage. He heard Mrs. Carrington's birds twittering in the cold January sunshine, and a passing glimpse through the open doorway of the drawing-room revealed to him the exquisite neatness and purity of the apartment, which even at this season was adorned with a few flowers.
"Strange!" he thought to himself, as he left the house; "any stranger entering that abode would imagine it the very shrine of domestic peace and simple happiness, and yet it is inhabited by a fiend."
He went back to town. He dined alone in his dingy lodging, scarcely daring to show himself at his club—Lord Caversham had spoken so plainly; and had, no doubt, spoken to others still more plainly. Reginald Eversleigh's face grew hot with shame as he remembered the insults he had been obliged to endure with pretended unconsciousness.
He feared to encounter other men who also had been losers at Hilton House, and who might speak as significantly as the viscount had spoken. This man, who violated the laws of heaven and earth with little terror of the Divine vengeance, feared above all to be cut by the men of his set.
This is the slavery which the man of fashion creates for himself—these are the fetters which such men as Reginald Eversleigh forge for their own souls.
But before we trace the progress of Sir Reginald from step to step in this terrible career, we must once more revert to the strange visitors at Frimley.
Jane Payland by no means approved of passing Christmas-day in the uninteresting seclusion of a country inn, with nothing more festive to look forward to than a specially ordered, but lonely dinner, and nothing to divert her thoughts but the rural spectacle afforded by the inn-yard. As to going out for a walk in such weather, she would not have thought of such a thing, even if she had any one to walk out with; and to go alone—no—Jane Payland had no fancy for amusement of that order. The day had been particularly dreary to the lady's maid, because the lady had been busily engaged in affairs of which she had no cognizance, and this ignorance, not a little exasperating even in town, became well-nigh intolerable to her in the weariness, the idleness, and the dullness of Frimley. When Lady Eversleigh went out in the dark evening, accompanied by the mysterious personage in whom Jane Payland had recognized their fellow-lodger, the amazement which she experienced produced an agreeable variety in her sensations, and the fact that the man with the vulture-like beak carried a carpet-bag intensified her surprise.
"Now I'm almost sure she is something to him; and she has come down here with him to see her people," said Jane Payland to herself, as she sat desolately by the fire in her mistress's room, a well-thumbed novel lying neglected on her knee; "and she's mean enough to be ashamed of them. Well, I don't think I should be that of my own flesh and blood, if I was ever so great and so grand. I suppose the bag is full of presents—I'm sure she might have told me if it was clothes she was going to give away; I shouldn't have grudged 'em to the poor things."