A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

Calls, as a matter of course, were succeeded by pressing invitations to dinner. But the earl frankly pleaded his poverty in fact, he almost made a parade of it before his newly found friends. "You say that you live three miles away. Pray tell me how I am to reach you when I have neither a hoof nor a wheel on the premises." Then, of course, came offers to send the brougham or other conveyance for him, which, equally as a matter of course, involved the sending of him home when the evening was at an end. For the earl had made up his mind that if people wanted him they must both send for him and send him back, and before long this necessity came to be accepted as a well-understood fact among those whom he honored with his company.

The vicar of the parish was one of the first to call at Laurel Cottage. Before leaving he expressed a hope that he should occasionally see his lordship at church, and his lordship was good enough to promise that next Sunday morning should find him in the vicar's pew. It was quite a novel sensation for the earl to find himself inside a place of worship. The vicar's wife handed him an elegantly bound, large-print prayer-book, which he accepted with a smile and a little bow, but when he tried to follow the service and find the different places he got "terribly fogged," as he afterwards expressed it; and as he was afraid to let people see the dilemma he was in, he shut the prayer-book up altogether by and by, and tried to put on the air of a man who was so thoroughly familiar with the service that the book was rather an encumbrance to him than otherwise. "The places used to be easy enough to find when I was a lad," he muttered to himself; "but I suppose the Rubric has been altered since then, and evidently altered for the worse."

He had been rather dubious on his arrival at Brimley whether some of the very big people of the neighborhood might not still bear in mind some of the escapades of his early years, and decline to acknowledge him. But his uneasiness on this score was quickly dispelled. A new generation had grown up since he was a young man, and whatever any of the older people might remember, they held their tongues in public, and welcomed him as warmly as if he were the most immaculate of men and peers.

The nearest house to Laurel Cottage was a large redbrick mansion of modern erection and imposing appearance. It bore the dignified name of Bourbon House, from the fact of a certain French prince having at one time made it his home for a few months. As the earl was passing the lodge gates one day a basket-carriage containing two very pretty young ladies was coming out. It then struck him for the first time that he had never been at the trouble to inquire who lived at Bourbon House, neither could he call to mind that any one from there had ever left a card at the Cottage. As soon as he reached home he sent for his man and questioned him. It then came out that Bourbon House was the home of a certain Mr. Orlando Larkins and his two sisters--the pretty girls whom the earl had remarked. The youthful Orlando, it appeared, was the son of a celebrated father--Larkins père having been none other than the inventor and vender of a certain world-famed pill. Everybody has heard of Larkins's pills, and hundreds of thousands of people have swallowed them. As the result, Mr. Larkins, senior, amassed a very comfortable fortune, which he more than doubled by certain lucky speculations. Having done this, there was nothing left him to do but to die; so die he did, and Orlando reigned in his stead. "He's said to be very rich, and he's nothing to do with the pill trade now, my lord," concluded the man. "He's a good-natured, sappy sort o' young gentleman; but somehow the swell people about here don't seem to take to him, and even the lads shout after him, 'How are you, young Pillbox?' when he goes riding into the town."

"Very rich and very good-natured, and not received into society," said the earl to himself. "It might, perhaps, answer my purpose to cultivate the acquaintance of Mr. Orlando Larkins."

[CHAPTER X.]

INFATUATION.

At a quarter-past eleven on the morning of the Thursday following Clement Fildew's visit to Cadogan Place, Mrs. Percival's brougham stopped at the corner of Elm Street, Soho, and from it alighted Miss Collumpton and Miss Browne. They were not long in finding No. 19, and when, in answer to their ring, the door opened apparently of its own accord, they might have been puzzled what to do next had not Clement come rushing downstairs and piloted them the way they were to go.

Tony Macer had gone out in deep dudgeon. He was disgusted with Clem for having engaged himself to paint a couple of portraits when he ought to be devoting the whole of his attention to putting the finishing touches to his Academy picture. Indeed, Tony, who had a great opinion of Clem's abilities, did not like the idea of his friend taking to portrait-painting at all. "You will only spoil yourself for better work," he kept repeating. "Why should you fritter away your time in painting the commonplace features of a couple of nobodies? You had better set up as a photographer at once."

"Only these two," Clem had pleaded. "When I have finished these I won't try my hand at another portrait for a whole year."