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VOL. 3245.

THE BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE.

BY

FLORENCE MARRYAT.

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LEIPZIG: BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.

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COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

VOL. 3245.

THE BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE.

BY

FLORENCE MARRYAT.

IN ONE VOLUME.

TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

By the same Author,

THE BLOOD
OF THE VAMPIRE

BY

FLORENCE MARRYAT,

AUTHOR OF

“LOVE’S CONFLICT,” “A PASSING MADNESS,” ETC.

COPYRIGHT EDITION.

LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1897.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE.

CHAPTER I.

It was the magic hour of dining. The long Digue of Heyst was almost deserted; so was the strip of loose, yellow sand which skirted its base, and all the tables d’hôtes were filling fast. Henri, the youngest waiter of the Hôtel Lion d’Or, was standing on the steps between the two great gilded lions, which stood rampant on either side the portals, vigorously ringing a loud and discordant bell to summons the stragglers, whilst the ladies, who were waiting the commencement of dinner in the little salon to the side, stopped their ears to dull its clamour. Philippe and Jules were busy, laying white cloths and glasses, etc., on the marble tables in the open balcony, outside the salle à manger, where strangers to the Hotel might dine à la carte, if they chose. Inside, the long, narrow tables, were decorated with dusty geraniums and fuchsias, whilst each cruet stand had a small bunch of dirty artificial flowers tied to its handle. But the visitors to the Lion d’Or, who were mostly English, were too eager for their evening meal, to cavil at their surroundings. The Baroness Gobelli, with her husband on one side, and her son on the other, was the first to seat herself at table. The Baroness always appeared with the soup, for she had observed that the first comers received a more generous helping than those who came in last. No such anxiety occupied the minds of Mrs. Pullen and her friend Miss Leyton, who sat opposite to the Baroness and her family. They did not care sufficiently for the potage aux croutons, which usually formed the beginning of the table d’hôte dinner. The long tables were soon filled with a motley crew of English, Germans, and Belgians, all chattering, especially the foreigners, as fast as their tongues could travel. Amongst them was a sprinkling of children, mostly unruly and ill-behaved, who had to be called to order every now and then, which made Miss Leyton’s lip curl with disgust. Just opposite to her, and next to Mr. Bobby Bates, the Baroness’s son by her first marriage, and whom she always treated as if he had been a boy of ten years old, was an unoccupied chair, turned up against the table to signify that it was engaged.

“I wonder if that is for the German Princess of whom Madame Lamont is so fond of talking,” whispered Elinor Leyton to Mrs. Pullen, “she said this morning that she expected her this afternoon.”

“O! surely not!” replied her friend, “I do not know much about royalties, but I should think a Princess would hardly dine at a public table d’hôte.”

“O! a German Princess! what is that?” said Miss Leyton, with a curled lip again, for she was a daughter of Lord Walthamstowe, and thought very little of any aristocracy, except that of her own country.

As she spoke, however, the chair opposite was sharply pulled into place, and a young lady seated herself on it, and looked boldly (though not brazenly) up and down the tables, and at her neighbours on each side of her. She was a remarkable-looking girl—more remarkable, perhaps, than beautiful, for her beauty did not strike one at first sight. Her figure was tall but slight and lissom. It looked almost boneless as she swayed easily from side to side of her chair. Her skin was colourless but clear. Her eyes were long-shaped, dark, and narrow, with heavy lids and thick black lashes which lay upon her cheeks. Her brows were arched and delicately pencilled, and her nose was straight and small. Not so her mouth however, which was large, with lips of a deep blood colour, displaying small white teeth. To crown all, her head was covered with a mass of soft, dull, blue-black hair, which was twisted in careless masses about the nape of her neck, and looked as if it was unaccustomed to comb or hairpin. She was dressed very simply in a white cambric frock, but there was not a woman present, who had not discovered in five minutes, that the lace with which it was profusely trimmed, was costly Valenciennes, and that it was clasped at her throat with brilliants. The new-comer did not seem in the least abashed by the numbers of eyes which were turned upon her, but bore the scrutiny very calmly, smiling in a sort of furtive way at everybody, until the entrées were handed round, when she rivetted all her attention upon the contents of her plate. Miss Leyton thought she had never seen any young person devour her food with so much avidity and enjoyment. She could not help watching her. The Baroness Gobelli, who was a very coarse feeder, scattering her food over her plate and not infrequently over the table cloth as well, was nothing compared to the young stranger. It was not so much that she ate rapidly and with evident appetite, but that she kept her eyes fixed upon her food, as if she feared someone might deprive her of it. As soon as her plate was empty, she called sharply to the waiter in French, and ordered him to get her some more.

“That’s right, my dear!” exclaimed the Baroness, nodding her huge head, and smiling broadly at the new-comer; “make ’em bring you more! It’s an excellent dish, that! I’ll ’ave some more myself!”

As Philippe deposited the last helping of the entrée on the young lady’s plate, the Baroness thrust hers beneath his nose.

“’Ere!” she said, “bring three more ’elpings for the Baron and Bobby and me!”

The man shook his head to intimate that the dish was finished, but the Baroness was not to be put off with a flimsy excuse. She commenced to make a row. Few meals passed without a squabble of some sort, between the Hotel servants and this terrible woman.

“Now we are in for it again!” murmured Miss Leyton into Mrs. Pullen’s ear. The waiter brought a different entrée, but the Baroness insisted upon having a second helping of tête de veau aux champignons.

“Il n’y a plus, Madame!” asseverated Philippe, with a gesture of deprecation.

“What does ’e say?” demanded the Baroness, who was not good at French.

“There is no more, mein tear!” replied her husband, with a strong German accent.

“Confound their impudence!” exclaimed his wife with a heated countenance, “’ere, send Monsieur ’ere at once! I’ll soon see if we’re not to ’ave enough to eat in ’is beastly Hotel!”

All the ladies who understood what she said, looked horrified at such language, but that was of no consequence to Madame Gobelli, who continued to call out at intervals for “Monsieur” until she found the dinner was coming to an end without her, and thought it would be more politic to attend to business and postpone her feud till a more convenient occasion. The Baroness Gobelli was a mystery to most people in the Hotel. She was an enormous woman of the elephant build, with a large, flat face and clumsy hands and feet. Her skin was coarse, so was her hair, so were her features. The only things which redeemed an otherwise repulsive face, were a pair of good-humoured, though cunning blue eyes and a set of firm, white teeth. Who the Baroness had originally been, no one could quite make out. It was evident that she must have sprung from some low origin from her lack of education and breeding, yet she spoke familiarly of aristocratic names, even of Royal ones, and appeared to be acquainted with their families and homes. There was a floating rumour that she had been old Mr. Bates’s cook before he married her, and when he left her a widow with an only child and a considerable fortune, the little German Baron had thought that her money was a fair equivalent for her personality. She was exceedingly vulgar, and when roused, exceedingly vituperative, but she possessed a rough good humour when pleased, and a large amount of natural shrewdness, which stood her instead of cleverness. But she was an unscrupulous liar, and rather boasted of the fact than otherwise. Having plenty of money at her command, she was used to take violent fancies to people—taking them up suddenly, loading them with presents and favours for as long as it pleased her, and then dropping them as suddenly, without why or wherefore—even insulting them if she could not shake them off without doing so. The Baron was completely under her thumb; more than that, he was servile in her presence, which astonished those people, who did not know that amongst her other arrogant insistences, the Baroness laid claim to holding intercourse with certain supernatural and invisible beings, who had the power to wreak vengeance on all those who offended her. This fear it was, combined with the fact that she had all the money and kept the strings of the bag pretty close where he was concerned, that made the Baron wait upon his wife’s wishes as if he were her slave. Perhaps the softest spot in the Baroness’s heart was kept for her sickly and uninteresting son, Bobby Bates, whom she treated, nevertheless, with the roughness of a tigress for her cub. She kept him still more under her surveillance than she did her husband, and Bobby, though he had attained his nineteenth year, dared not say Boo! to a goose, in presence of his Mamma. As the cheese was handed round, Elinor Leyton rose from her seat with an impatient gesture.

“Do let us get out of this atmosphere, Margaret!” she said in a low tone. “I really cannot stand it any longer!”

The two ladies left the table, and went out beyond the balcony, to where a number of painted iron chairs and tables were placed on the Digue, for the accommodation of passing wayfarers, who might wish to rest awhile and quench their thirst with limonade or lager beer.

“I wonder who that girl is!” remarked Mrs. Pullen as soon as they were out of hearing. “I don’t know whether I like her or not, but there is something rather distinguished-looking about her!”

“Do you think so?” said Miss Leyton, “I thought she only distinguished herself by eating like a cormorant! I never saw anyone in society gobble her food in such a manner! She made me positively sick!”

“Was it as bad as that?” replied the more quiet Mrs. Pullen, in an indifferent manner. Her eyes were attracted just then by the perambulator which contained her baby, and she rose to meet it.

“How is she, Nurse?” she asked as anxiously as if she had not parted from the infant an hour before. “Has she been awake all the time?”

“Yes, Ma’am, and looking about her like anything! But she seems inclined to sleep now! I thought it was about time to take her in!”

“O! no! not on such a warm, lovely evening! If she does go to sleep in the open air, it will do her no harm. Leave her with me! I want you to go indoors, and find out the name of the young lady who sat opposite to me at dinner to-day, Philippe understands English. He will tell you!”

“Why on earth do you want to know?” demanded Miss Leyton, as the servant disappeared.

“O! I don’t know! I feel a little curious, that is all! She seems so young to be by herself!”

Elinor Leyton answered nothing, but walked across the Digue and stood, looking out over the sea. She was anticipating the arrival of her fiancé, Captain Ralph Pullen of the Limerick Rangers, but he had delayed his coming to join them, and she began to find Heyst rather dull.

The visitors of the Lion d’Or had finished their meal by this time, and were beginning to reassemble on the Digue, preparatory to taking a stroll before they turned into one of the many cafés-chantants, which were situated at stated intervals in front of the sea. Amongst them came the Baroness Gobelli, leaning heavily on a thick stick with one hand, and her husband’s shoulder with the other. The couple presented an extraordinary appearance, as they perambulated slowly up and down the Digue.

She—with her great height and bulk, towering a head above her companion, whilst he—with a full-sized torso, and short legs—a large hat crammed down upon his forehead, and no neck to speak of, so that the brim appeared to rest upon his shoulders—was a ludicrous figure, as he walked beside his wife, bending under the weight of her support. But yet, she was actually proud of him. Notwithstanding his ill-shaped figure, the Baron possessed one of those mild German faces, with pale watery blue eyes, a long nose, and hair and beard of a reddish-golden colour, which entitled him, in the estimation of some people, to be called a handsome man, and the Baroness was never tired of informing the public that his head and face had once been drawn for that of some celebrated saint.

Her own appearance was really comical, for though she had plenty of means, her want of taste, or indifference to dress, made everyone stare at her as she passed. On the present occasion, she wore a silk gown which had cost seventeen shillings a yard, with a costly velvet cloak, a bonnet which might have been rescued from the dustbin, and cotton gloves with all her fingers out. She shook her thick walking-stick in Miss Leyton’s face as she passed by her, and called out loud enough for everyone to hear: “And when is the handsome Captain coming to join you, Miss Leyton, eh? Take care he ain’t running after some other gal! ‘When pensive I thought on my L.O.V.E.’ Ha! ha! ha!”

Elinor flushed a delicate pink but did not turn her head, nor take any notice of her tormentor. She detested the Baroness with a perfectly bitter hatred, and her proud cold nature revolted from her coarseness and familiarity.

“Tied to your brat again!” cried the Baroness, as she passed Margaret Pullen who was moving the perambulator gently to and fro by the handle, so as to keep her infant asleep; “why didn’t you put it in the tub as soon as it was born? It would ’ave saved you a heap of trouble! I often wish I had done so by that devil Bobby! ’Ere, where are you, Bobby?”

“I’m close behind you, Mamma!” replied the simple-looking youth.

“Well! don’t you get running away from your father and me, and winking at the gals! There’s time enough for that, ain’t there, Gustave?” she concluded, addressing the Baron.

“Come along, Robert, and mind what your mother tells you!” said the Herr Baron with his guttural German accent, as the extraordinary trio pursued their way down the Digue, the Baroness making audible remarks on everybody she met, as they went.

Margaret Pullen sat where they had left her, moving about the perambulator, whilst her eyes, like Elinor’s, were fixed upon the tranquil water. The August sun had now quite disappeared, and the indescribably faint and unpleasant odour, which is associated with the dunes of Heyst, had begun to make itself apparent. A still languor had crept over everything, and there were indications of a thunderstorm in the air. She was thinking of her husband, Colonel Arthur Pullen, the elder brother of Miss Leyton’s fiancé, who was toiling out in India for baby and herself. It had been a terrible blow to Margaret, to let him go out alone after only one year of happy wedded life, but the expected advent of her little daughter at the time, had prohibited her undertaking so long a journey and she had been compelled to remain behind. And now baby was six months old, and Colonel Pullen hoped to be home by Christmas, so had advised her to wait for his return. But her thoughts were sad sometimes, notwithstanding.

Events happen so unexpectedly in this world—who could say for certain that she and her husband would ever meet again—that Arthur would ever see his little girl, or that she should live to place her in her father’s arms? But such a state of feeling was morbid, she knew, and she generally made an effort to shake it off. The nurse, returning with the information she had sent her to acquire, roused her from her reverie.

“If you please, Ma’am, the young lady’s name is Brandt, and Philippe says she came from London!”

“English! I should never have guessed it!” observed Mrs. Pullen, “She speaks French so well.”

“Shall I take the baby now, Ma’am?”

“Yes! Wheel her along the Digue. I shall come and meet you by and by!”

As the servant obeyed her orders, she called to Miss Leyton.

“Elinor! come here!”

“What is it?” asked Miss Leyton, seating herself beside her.

“The new girl’s name is Brandt and she comes from England! Would you have believed it?”

“I did not take sufficient interest in her to make any speculations on the subject. I only observed that she had a mouth from ear to ear, and ate like a pig! What does it concern us, where she comes from?”

At that moment, a Mrs. Montague, who, with her husband, was conveying a family of nine children over to Brussels, under the mistaken impression, that they would be able to live cheaper there than in England, came down the Hotel steps with half a dozen of them, clinging to her skirts, and went straight up to Margaret Pullen.

“O! Mrs. Pullen! What is that young lady’s name, who sat opposite to you at dinner? Everybody is asking! I hear she is enormously rich, and travelling alone. Did you see the lace on her dress? Real Valenciennes, and the diamond rings she wore! Frederick says they must be worth a lot of money. She must be someone of consequence I should imagine!”

“On the contrary, my nurse tells me she is English and her name is Brandt. Has she no friends here?”

“Madame Lamont says she arrived in company with another girl, but they are located at different parts of the Hotel. It seems very strange, does it not?”

“And it sounds very improper!” interposed Elinor Leyton, “I should say the less we have to say to her, the better! You never know what acquaintances you may make in a place like this! When I look up and down the table d’hôte menagerie sometimes, it makes me quite ill!”

“Does it?” rejoined Mrs. Montague, “I think it’s so amusing! That Baroness Gobelli, for instance——”

“Don’t mention her before me!” cried Miss Leyton, in a tone of disgust, “the woman is not fit for civilised society!”

“She is rather common, certainly, and strange in her behaviour,” said Mrs. Montague, “but she is very good-natured. She gave my little Edward a louis yesterday. I felt quite ashamed to let him take it!”

“That just proves her vulgarity,” exclaimed Elinor Leyton, who had not a sixpence to give away, herself, “it shows that she thinks her money will atone for all her other shortcomings! She gave that Miss Taylor who left last week, a valuable brooch off her own throat. And poor payment too, for all the dirty things she made her do and the ridicule she poured upon her. I daresay this nouveau riche will try to curry favour with us by the same means.”

At that moment, the girl under discussion, Miss Brandt, appeared on the balcony, which was only raised a few feet above where they sat. She wore the same dress she had at dinner, with the addition of a little fleecy shawl about her shoulders. She stood smiling, and looking at the ladies (who had naturally dropped all discussion about her) for a few moments, and then she ventured to descend the steps between the rampant gilded lions, and almost timidly, as it seemed, took up a position near them. Mrs. Pullen felt that she could not be so discourteous as to take no notice whatever of the new-comer, and so, greatly to Miss Leyton’s disgust, she uttered quietly, “Good evening!”

It was quite enough for Miss Brandt. She drew nearer with smiles mantling over her face.

“Good evening! Isn’t it lovely here?—so soft and warm, something like the Island, but so much fresher!”

She looked up and down the Digue, now crowded with a multitude of visitors, and drew in her breath with a long sigh of content.

“How gay and happy they all seem, and how happy I am too! Do you know, if I had my will, what I should like to do?” she said, addressing Mrs. Pullen.

“No! indeed!”

“I should like to tear up and down this road as hard as ever I could, throwing my arms over my head and screaming aloud!”

The ladies exchanged glances of astonishment, but Margaret Pullen could not forbear smiling as she asked their new acquaintance the reason why.

“O! because I am free—free at last, after ten long years of imprisonment! I am telling you the truth, I am indeed, and you would feel just the same if you had been shut up in a horrid Convent ever since you were eleven years old!”

At the word “convent”, the national Protestant horror immediately spread itself over the faces of the three other ladies; Mrs. Montague gathered her flock about her and took them out of the way of possible contamination, though she would have much preferred to hear the rest of Miss Brandt’s story, and Elinor Leyton moved her chair further away. But Margaret Pullen was interested and encouraged the girl to proceed.

“In a convent! I suppose then you are a Roman Catholic!”

Harriet Brandt suddenly opened her slumbrous eyes.

“I don’t think so! I’m not quite sure what I am! Of course I’ve had any amount of religion crammed down my throat in the Convent, and I had to follow their prayers, whilst there, but I don’t believe my parents were Catholics! But it does not signify, I am my own mistress now. I can be what I like!”

“You have been so unfortunate then as to lose your parents!”

“O! yes! years ago, that is why my guardian, Mr. Trawler, placed me in the Convent for my education. And I’ve been there for ten years! Is it not a shame? I’m twenty-one now! That’s why I’m free! You see,” the girl went on confidentially, “my parents left me everything, and as soon as I came of age I entered into possession of it. My guardian, Mr. Trawler, who lives in Jamaica,—did I tell you that I’ve come from Jamaica?—thought I should live with him and his wife, when I left the Convent, and pay them for my keep, but I refused. They had kept me too tight! I wanted to see the world and life—it was what I had been looking forward to—so as soon as my affairs were settled, I left the West Indies and came over here!”

“They said you came from England in the Hotel!”

“So I did! The steamer came to London and I stayed there a week before I came on here!”

“But you are too young to travel about by yourself, Miss Brandt! English young ladies never do so!” said Mrs. Pullen.

“I’m not by myself, exactly! Olga Brimont, who was in the Convent with me, came too. But she is ill, so she’s upstairs. She has come to her brother who is in Brussels, and we travelled together. We had the same cabin on board the steamer, and Olga was very ill. One night the doctor thought she was going to die! I stayed with her all the time. I used to sit up with her at night, but it did her no good. We stopped in London because we wanted to buy some dresses and things, but she was not able to go out, and I had to go alone. Her brother is away from Brussels at present so he wrote her to stay in Heyst till he could fetch her, and as I had nowhere particular to go, I came with her! And she is better already! She has been fast asleep all the afternoon!”

“And what will you do when your friend leaves you?” asked Mrs. Pullen.

“O! I don’t know! Travel about, I suppose! I shall go wherever it may please me!”

“Are you not going to take a walk this evening?” demanded Elinor Leyton in a low voice of her friend, wishing to put a stop to the conversation.

“Certainly! I told nurse I would join her and baby by-and-by!”

“Shall I fetch your hat then?” enquired Miss Leyton, as she rose to go up to their apartments.

“Yes! if you will, dear, please, and my velvet cape, in case it should turn chilly!”

“I will fetch mine too!” cried Miss Brandt, jumping up with alacrity. “I may go with you, mayn’t I? I’ll just tell Olga that I’m going out and be down again in five minutes!” and without waiting for an answer, she was gone.

“See what you have brought upon us!” remarked Elinor in a vexed tone.

“Well! it was not my fault,” replied Margaret, “and after all, what does it signify? It is only a little act of courtesy to an unprotected girl. I don’t dislike her, Elinor! She is very familiar and communicative, but fancy what it must be like to find herself her own mistress, and with money at her command, after ten years’ seclusion within the four walls of a convent! It is enough to turn the head of any girl. I think it would be very churlish to refuse to be friendly with her!”

“Well! I hope it may turn out all right! But you must remember how Ralph cautioned us against making any acquaintances in a foreign hotel.”

“But I am not under Ralph’s orders, though you may be, and I should not care to go entirely by the advice of so very fastidious and exclusive a gentleman as he is! My Arthur would never find fault with me, I am sure, for being friendly with a young unmarried girl.”

“Anyway, Margaret, let me entreat you not to discuss my private affairs with this new protégée of yours. I don’t want to see her saucer eyes goggling over the news of my engagement to your brother-in-law!”

“Certainly I will not, since you ask it! But you hardly expect to keep it a secret when Ralph comes down here, do you?”

“Why not? Why need anyone know more than that he is your husband’s brother?”

“I expect they know a good deal more now,” said Margaret, laughing. “The news that you are the Honourable Elinor Leyton and that your father is Baron Walthamstowe, was known all over Heyst the second day we were here. And I have no doubt it has been succeeded by the interesting intelligence that you are engaged to marry Captain Pullen. You cannot keep servants’ tongues from wagging, you know!”

“I suppose not!” replied Elinor, with a moue of contempt. “However, they will learn no more through me or Ralph. We are not ‘’Arry and ’Arriet’ to sit on the Digue with our arms round each other’s waists.”

“Still—there are signs and symptoms,” said Margaret, laughing.

“There will be none with us!” rejoined Miss Leyton, indignantly, as Harriet Brandt, with a black lace hat on, trimmed with yellow roses, and a little fichu tied carelessly across her bosom, ran lightly down the steps to join them.

CHAPTER II.

The Digue was crowded by that time. All Heyst had turned out to enjoy the evening air and to partake in the gaiety of the place. A band was playing on the movable orchestra, which was towed by three skinny little donkeys, day after day, from one end of the Digue to the other. To-night, it was its turn to be in the middle, where a large company of people was sitting on green painted chairs that cost ten centimes for hire each, whilst children danced, or ran madly round and round its base. Everyone had changed his, or her, seaside garb for more fashionable array—even the children were robed in white frocks and gala hats—and the whole scene was gay and festive. Harriet Brandt ran from one side to the other of the Digue, as though she also had been a child. Everything she saw seemed to astonish and delight her. First, she was gazing out over the calm and placid water—and next, she was exclaiming at the bits of rubbish in the shape of embroidered baskets, or painted shells, exhibited in the shop windows, which were side by side with the private houses and hotels, forming a long line of buildings fronting the water.

She kept on declaring that she wanted to buy that or this, and lamenting she had not brought more money with her.

“You will have plenty of opportunities to select and purchase what you want to-morrow,” said Mrs. Pullen, “and you will be better able to judge what they are like. They look better under the gas than they do by daylight, I can assure you, Miss Brandt!”

“O! but they are lovely—delightful!” replied the girl, enthusiastically, “I never saw anything so pretty before! Do look at that little doll in a bathing costume, with her cap in one hand, her sponge in the other! She is charming—unique! Tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau!”

She spoke French perfectly, and when she spoke English, it was with a slightly foreign accent, that greatly enhanced its charm. It made Mrs. Pullen observe:

“You are more used to speaking French than English, Miss Brandt!”

“Yes! We always spoke French in the Convent, and it is in general use in the Island. But I thought—I hoped—that I spoke English like an Englishwoman! I am an Englishwoman, you know!”

“Are you? I was not quite sure! Brandt sounds rather German!”

“No! my father was English, his name was Henry Brandt, and my mother was a Miss Carey—daughter of one of the Justices of Barbadoes!”

“O! indeed!” replied Mrs. Pullen. She did not know what else to say. The subject was of no interest to her! At that moment they encountered the nurse and perambulator, and she naturally stopped to speak to her baby.

The sight of the infant seemed to drive Miss Brandt wild.

“O! is that your baby, Mrs. Pullen, is that really your baby?” she exclaimed excitedly, “you never told me you had one. O! the darling! the sweet dear little angel! I love little white babies! I adore them. They are so sweet and fresh and clean—so different from the little niggers who smell so nasty, you can’t touch them! We never saw a baby in the Convent, and so few English children live to grow up in Jamaica! O! let me hold her! let me carry her! I must!”

She was about to seize the infant in her arms, when the mother interposed.

“No, Miss Brandt, please, not this evening! She is but half awake, and has arrived at that age when she is frightened of strangers. Another time perhaps, when she has become used to you, but not now!”

“But I will be so careful of her, pretty dear!” persisted the girl, “I will nurse her so gently, that she will fall to sleep again in my arms. Come! my little love, come!” she continued to the baby, who pouted her lips and looked as if she were going to cry.

“Leave her alone!” exclaimed Elinor Leyton in a sharp voice. “Do you not hear what Mrs. Pullen says—that you are not to touch her!”

She spoke so acridly, that gentle Margaret Pullen felt grieved for the look of dismay that darted into Harriet Brandt’s face on hearing it.

“O! I am sorry—I didn’t mean—” she stammered, with a side glance at Margaret.

“Of course you did not mean anything but what was kind,” said Mrs. Pullen, “Miss Leyton perfectly understands that, and when baby is used to you, I daresay she will be very grateful for your attentions. But to-night she is sleepy and tired, and, perhaps, a little cross. Take her home, Nurse,” she went on, “and put her to bed! Good-night, my sweet!” and the perambulator passed them and was gone.

An awkward silence ensued between the three women after this little incident. Elinor Leyton walked somewhat apart from her companions, as if she wished to avoid all further controversy, whilst Margaret Pullen sought some way by which to atone for her friend’s rudeness to the young stranger. Presently they came across one of the cafés chantants which are attached to the seaside hotels, and which was brilliantly lighted up. A large awning was spread outside, to shelter some dozens of chairs and tables, most of which were already occupied. The windows of the hotel salon had been thrown wide open, to accommodate some singers and musicians, who advanced in turn and stood on the threshold to amuse the audience. As they approached the scene, a tenor in evening dress was singing a love song, whilst the musicians accompanied his voice from the salon, and the occupants of the chairs were listening with rapt attention.

“How charming! how delightful!” cried Harriet Brandt, as they reached the spot, “I never saw anything like this in the Island!”

“You appear never to have seen anything!” remarked Miss Leyton, with a sneer. Miss Brandt glanced apologetically at Mrs. Pullen.

“How could I see anything, when I was in the Convent?” she said, “I know there are places of entertainment in the Island, but I was never allowed to go to any. And in London, there was no one for me to go with! I should so much like to go in there,” indicating the café. “Will you come with me, both of you I mean, and I will pay for everything! I have plenty of money, you know!”

“There is nothing to pay, my dear, unless you call for refreshment,” was Margaret’s reply. “Yes, I will go with you certainly, if you so much wish it! Elinor, you won’t mind, will you?”

But Miss Leyton was engaged talking to a Monsieur and Mademoiselle Vieuxtemps—an old brother and sister, resident in the Lion d’Or—who had stopped to wish her Good-evening! They were dear, good old people, but rather monotonous and dull, and Elinor had more than once ridiculed their manner of talking and voted them the most terrible bores. Mrs. Pullen concluded therefore, that she would get rid of them as soon as courtesy permitted her to do so, and follow her. With a smile and a bow therefore, to the Vieuxtemps, she pushed her way through the crowd with Harriet Brandt, to where she perceived that three seats were vacant, and took possession of them. They were not good seats for hearing or seeing, being to one side of the salon, and quite in the shadow, but the place was so full that she saw no chance of getting any others. As soon as they were seated, the waiter came round for orders, and it was with difficulty that Mrs. Pullen prevented her companion purchasing sufficient liqueurs and cakes to serve double the number of their company.

“You must allow me to pay for myself, Miss Brandt,” she said gravely, “or I will never accompany you anywhere again!”

“But I have lots of money,” pleaded the girl, “much more than I know what to do with—it would be a pleasure to me, it would indeed!”

But Mrs. Pullen was resolute, and three limonades only were placed upon their table. Elinor Leyton had not yet made her appearance, and Mrs. Pullen kept craning her neck over the other seats to see where she might be, without success.

“She cannot have missed us!” she observed, “I wonder if she can have continued her walk with the Vieuxtemps!”

“O! what does it signify?” said Harriet, drawing her chair closer to that of Mrs. Pullen, “we can do very well without her. I don’t think she’s very nice, do you?”

“You must not speak of Miss Leyton like that to me, Miss Brandt,” remonstrated Margaret, gently, “because—she is a great friend of our family.”

She had been going to say, “Because she will be my sister-in-law before long,” but remembered Elinor’s request in time, and substituted the other sentence.

“I don’t think she’s very kind, though,” persisted the other.

“It is only her manner, Miss Brandt! She does not mean anything by it!”

“But you are so different,” said the girl as she crept still closer, “I could see it when you smiled at me at dinner. I knew I should like you at once. And I want you to like me too—so much! It has been the dream of my life to have some friends. That is why I would not stay in Jamaica. I don’t like the people there! I want friends—real friends!”

“But you must have had plenty of friends of your own age in the Convent.”

“That shows you don’t know anything about a convent! It’s the very last place where they will let you make a friend—they’re afraid lest you should tell each other too much! The convent I was in was an Ursuline order, and even the nuns were obliged to walk three and three, never two, together, lest they should have secrets between them. As for us girls, we were never left alone for a single minute! There was always a sister with us, even at night, walking up and down between the rows of beds, pretending to read her prayers, but with her eyes on us the whole time and her ears open to catch what we said. I suppose they were afraid we should talk about lovers. I think girls do talk about them when they can, more in convents than in other places, though they have never had any. It would be so dreadful to be like the poor nuns, and never have a lover to the end of one’s days, wouldn’t it?”

“You would not fancy being a nun then, Miss Brandt!”

“I—Oh! dear no! I would rather be dead, twenty times over! But they didn’t like my coming out at all. They did try so hard to persuade me to remain with them for ever! One of them, Sister Féodore, told me I must never talk even with gentlemen, if I could avoid it—that they were all wicked and nothing they said was true, and if I trusted them, they would only laugh at me afterwards for my pains. But I don’t believe that, do you?”

“Certainly not!” replied Margaret warmly. “The sister who told you so knew nothing about men. My dear husband is more like an angel than a man, and there are many like him. You mustn’t believe such nonsense, Miss Brandt! I am sure you never heard your parents say such a silly thing!”

“O! my father and mother! I never remember hearing them say anything!” replied Miss Brandt. She had crept closer and closer to Mrs. Pullen as she spoke, and now encircled her waist with her arm, and leaned her head upon her shoulder. It was not a position that Margaret liked, nor one she would have expected from a woman on so short an acquaintance, but she did not wish to appear unkind by telling Miss Brandt to move further away. The poor girl was evidently quite unused to the ways and customs of Society, she seemed moreover very friendless and dependent—so Margaret laid her solecism down to ignorance and let her head rest where she had placed it, resolving inwardly meanwhile that she would not subject herself to be treated in so familiar a manner again.

“Don’t you remember your parents then?” she asked her presently.

“Hardly! I saw so little of them,” said Miss Brandt, “my father was a great doctor and scientist, I believe, and I am not quite sure if he knew that he had a daughter!”

“O! my dear, what nonsense!”

“But it is true, Mrs. Pullen! He was always shut up in his laboratory, and I was not allowed to go near that part of the house. I suppose he was very clever and all that—but he was too much engaged in making experiments to take any notice of me, and I am sure I never wanted to see him!”

“How very sad! But you had your mother to turn to for consolation and company, whilst she lived, surely?”

“O! my mother!” echoed Harriet, carelessly. “Yes! my mother! Well! I don’t think I knew much more of her either. The ladies in Jamaica get very lazy, you know, and keep a good deal to their own rooms. The person there I loved best of all, was old Pete, the overseer!”

“The overseer!”

“Of the estate and niggers, you know! We had plenty of niggers on the coffee plantation, regular African fellows, with woolly heads and blubber lips, and yellow whites to their eyes. When I was a little thing of four years old, Pete used to let me whip the little niggers for a treat, when they had done anything wrong. It used to make me laugh to see them wriggle their legs under the whip and cry!”

“O! don’t, Miss Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret Pullen, in a voice of pain.

“It’s true, but they deserved it, you know, the little wretches, always thieving or lying or something! I’ve seen a woman whipped to death, because she wouldn’t work. We think nothing of that sort of thing, over there. Still—you can’t wonder that I was glad to get out of the Island. But I loved old Pete, and if he had been alive when I left, I would have brought him to England with me. He used to carry me for miles through the jungle on his back,—out in the fresh mornings and the cool, dewy eves. I had a pony to ride, but I never went anywhere, without his hand upon my bridle rein. He was always so afraid lest I should come to any harm. I don’t think anybody else cared. Pete was the only creature who ever loved me, and when I think of Jamaica, I remember my old nigger servant as the one friend I had there!”

“It is very, very sad!” was all that Mrs. Pullen could say.

She had become fainter and fainter, as the girl leaned against her with her head upon her breast. Some sensation which she could not define, nor account for—some feeling which she had never experienced before—had come over her and made her head reel. She felt as if something or someone, were drawing all her life away. She tried to disengage herself from the girl’s clasp, but Harriet Brandt seemed to come after her, like a coiling snake, till she could stand it no longer, and faintly exclaiming:

“Miss Brandt! let go of me, please! I feel ill!” she rose and tried to make her way between the crowded tables, towards the open air. As she stumbled along, she came against (to her great relief) her friend, Elinor Leyton.

“O! Elinor!” she gasped, “I don’t know what is the matter with me! I feel so strange, so light-headed! Do take me home!”

Miss Leyton dragged her through the audience, and made her sit down on a bench, facing the sea.

“Why! what’s the matter?” demanded Harriet Brandt, who had made her way after them, “is Mrs. Pullen ill?”

“So it appears,” replied Miss Leyton, coldly, “but how it happened, you should know better than myself! I suppose it is very warm in there!”

“No! no! I do not think so,” said Margaret, with a bewildered air, “we had chairs close to the side. And Miss Brandt was telling me of her life in Jamaica, when such an extraordinary sensation came over me! I can’t describe it! it was just as if I had been scooped hollow!”

At this description, Harriet Brandt burst into a loud laugh, but Elinor frowned her down.

“It may seem a laughing matter to you, Miss Brandt,” she said, in the same cold tone, “but it is none to me. Mrs. Pullen is far from strong, and her health is not to be trifled with. However, I shall not let her out of my sight again.”

“Don’t make a fuss about it, Elinor,” pleaded her friend, “it was my own fault, if anyone’s. I think there must be a thunderstorm in the air, I have felt so oppressed all the evening. Or is the smell from the dunes worse than usual? Perhaps I ate something at dinner that disagreed with me!”

“I cannot understand it at all,” replied Miss Leyton, “you are not used to fainting, or being suddenly attacked in any way. However, if you feel able to walk, let us go back to the Hotel. Miss Brandt will doubtless find someone to finish the evening with!”

Harriet was just about to reply that she knew no one but themselves, and to offer to take Mrs. Pullen’s arm on the other side, when Elinor Leyton cut her short.

“No! thank you, Miss Brandt! Mrs. Pullen would, I am sure, prefer to return to the Hotel alone with me! You can easily join the Vieuxtemps or any other of the visitors to the Lion d’Or. There is not much ceremony observed amongst the English at these foreign places. It would be better perhaps if there were a little more! Come, Margaret, take my arm, and we will walk as slowly as you like! But I shall not be comfortable until I see you safe in your own room!”

So the two ladies moved off together, leaving Harriet Brandt standing disconsolately on the Digue, watching their departure. Mrs. Pullen had uttered a faint Good-night to her, but had made no suggestion that she should walk back with them, and it seemed to the girl as if they both, in some measure, blamed her for the illness of her companion. What had she done, she asked herself, as she reviewed what had passed between them, that could in any way account for Mrs. Pullen’s illness? She liked her so much—so very much—she had so hoped she was going to be her friend—she would have done anything and given anything sooner than put her to inconvenience in any way. As the two ladies moved slowly out of sight, Harriet turned sadly and walked the other way. She felt lonely and disappointed. She knew no one to speak to, and there was a cold empty feeling in her breast, as though, in losing her hold on Margaret Pullen, she had lost something on which she had depended. Something of her feeling must have communicated itself to Margaret Pullen, for after a minute or two she stopped and said,

“I don’t half like leaving Miss Brandt by herself, Elinor! She is very young to be wandering about a town by night and alone!”

“Nonsense!” returned Miss Leyton, shortly, “a young lady who can make the voyage from Jamaica to Heyst on her own account, knocking about in London for a week on the way, is surely competent to walk back to the Hotel without your assistance. I should say that Miss Brandt was a very independent young woman!”

“Perhaps, by nature, but she has been shut up in a convent for the best part of her life, and that is not considered to be a good preparation for fighting one’s way through the world!”

“She’ll be able to fight her own battles, never fear!” was Elinor’s reply.

Just then they encountered Bobby Bates, who lifted his cap as he hurried past them.

“Where are you going so fast, Mr. Bates?” said Elinor Leyton.

“I am going back to the Hotel to fetch Mamma’s fur boa!” he answered.

They were passing a lighted lamp at the time, and she noticed that the lad’s eyes were red, and his features bore traces of distress.

“Are you ill?” she enquired quickly, “or in any trouble?”

He halted for a minute in his stride.

“No! no! not exactly,” he said in a low voice, and then, as if the words came from him against his will, he went on, “But O! I do wish someone would speak to Mamma about the way she treats me. It’s cruel—to strike me with her stick before all those people, as if I were a baby, and to call me such names! Even the servant William laughs at me! Do all mothers do the same, Miss Leyton? Ought a man to stand it quietly?”

“Decidedly not!” cried Elinor, without hesitation.

“O! Elinor! remember, she is his mother,” remonstrated Margaret, “don’t say anything to set him against her!”

“But I was nineteen last birthday,” continued the lad, “and sometimes she treats me in such a manner, that I can’t bear it! The Baron dare not say a word to her! She swears at him so. Sometimes, I think I will run away and go to sea!”

“No! no! you mustn’t do that!” called Miss Leyton after him, as he quickened his footsteps in the direction of the Lion d’Or.

“What an awful woman!” sighed Mrs. Pullen. “Fancy! striking her own son in public, and with that thick stick too. I believe he had been crying!”

“I am sure he had,” replied her friend, “you can see the poor fellow is half-witted, and very weakly into the bargain. I suppose she has beaten his brains to a pap. What a terrible misfortune to have such a mother! You should hear some of the stories Madame Lamont has to tell of her!”

“But how does she hear them?”

“Through the Baron’s servant William, I suppose. He says the Baroness has often taken her stick to him and the other servants, and thinks no more of swearing at them than a trooper! They all hate her. One day, she took up a kitchen cleaver and advanced upon her coachman with it, but he seized her by both arms and sat her down upon the fire, whence she was only rescued after being somewhat severely burned!”

“It served her right!” exclaimed Margaret, laughing at the ludicrous idea, “but what a picture she must have presented, seated on the kitchen range! Where can the woman have been raised? What sort of a person can she be?”

“Not what she pretends, Margaret, you may be sure of that! All her fine talk of lords and ladies is so much bunkum. But I pity the poor little Baron, who is, at all events, inoffensive. How can he put up with such a wife! He must feel very much ashamed of her sometimes!”

“And yet he seems devoted to her! He never leaves her side for a moment. He is her walking stick, her fetcher and carrier, and her scribe. I don’t believe she can write a letter!”

“And yet she was talking at the table d’hôte yesterday of the Duke of This and the Earl of That, and hinting at her having stayed at Osborne and Windsor. Of course they are falsehoods! She has never seen the inside of a palace unless it was in the capacity of a char-woman! Have you observed her hair? It is as coarse as a horse-tail! And her hands! Bobby informed me the other day that his Mamma took nines in gloves! She’s not a woman, my dear! She’s a female elephant!”

Margaret was laughing still, when they reached the steps of the Lion d’Or.

“You are very naughty and very scandalous, Elinor,” she said, “but you have done me a world of good. My unpleasant feelings have quite gone. I am quite capable of continuing our walk if you would like to do so.”

“No such thing, Madam,” replied Miss Leyton. “I am responsible for your well-doing in Arthur’s absence. Upstairs and into bed you go, unless you would like a cup of coffee and a chasse first. That is the only indulgence I can grant you.”

But Mrs. Pullen declined the proffered refreshment, and the two ladies sought their rooms in company.

CHAPTER III.

The next morning dawned upon a perfect August day. The sun streamed brightly over every part of Heyst, turning the loose dry yellow sand (from end to end of which not a stone or boulder was to be seen), into a veritable cloth of gold. The patient asses, carrying their white-covered saddles, and tied to stakes, were waiting in a row for hire, whilst some dozen Rosinantes, called by courtesy, horses, were also of the company. The sands were already strewn with children, their short petticoats crammed into a pair of bathing-drawers, and their heads protected by linen hats or bonnets, digging away at the dry sand as if their lives depended on their efforts. The bathing-machines, painted in gay stripes of green, red, blue, or orange, were hauled down, ready for action, and the wooden tents, which can be hired for the season at any foreign watering place, were being swept out and arranged for the day’s use.

Some of the more pretentious ones, belonging to private families, were surmounted by a gilt coronet, the proud possession of the Comte Darblaye, or the Herr Baron Grumplestein—sported flags moreover of France or Germany, and were screened from the eyes of the vulgar, by lace or muslin curtains, tied up with blue ribbons. On the balcony of the Lion d’Or, where the visitors always took their breakfast, were arranged tables, piled with dishes of crevettes, fresh from the sea, pistolets, and beautiful butter as white and tasteless as cream. It was a delight to breakfast on the open balcony, with the sea breeze blowing in one’s face, and in the intervals of eating prawns and bread and butter, or perusing the morning papers, to watch the cheerful scene below.

The Baroness was there, early of course. She, and her husband, and the ill-used Bobby, occupied a table to themselves, whence she addressed her remarks to whomever she chose, whether they wished to listen, or not, and the Baron shelled her crevettes and buttered her pistolets for her. Margaret and Elinor were rather later than usual, for Mrs. Pullen had not passed a good night, and Miss Leyton would not have her disturbed.

Harriet Brandt was there as they appeared, and beside her, a pale, unhealthy-looking young woman, whom she introduced as her friend, and travelling companion, Olga Brimont.

“Olga did not wish to come down. She thought she would lie another day in bed, but I made her get up and dress, and I was right, wasn’t I, Mrs. Pullen?”

“I think the fresh air will do Mademoiselle Brimont more good than the close bedroom, if she is strong enough to stand it!” replied Margaret, with a smile. “I am afraid you are still feeling weak,” she continued, to the new-comer.

“I feel better than I did on board the steamer, or in London,” said Mademoiselle Brimont. She was an under-sized girl with plain features, and did not shew off to advantage beside her travelling companion.

“Did you suffer so much from sea-sickness? I can sympathise with you, as I am a very bad sailor myself!”

“O! no! Madame, it was not the mal de mer. I can hardly tell you what it was. Miss Brandt and I occupied a small cabin together, and perhaps, it was because it was so small, but I did not feel as if I could breathe there—such a terrible oppression as though some one were sitting on my chest—and such a general feeling of emptiness. It was the same in London, though Miss Brandt did all she could for me, indeed she sat up with me all night, till I feared she would be ill herself—but I feel better now! Last night I slept for the first time since leaving Jamaica!”

“That is right! You will soon get well in this lovely air!”

They all sat down at the same table, and commenced to discuss their rolls and coffee. Margaret Pullen, glancing up once, was struck by the look with which Harriet Brandt was regarding her—it was so full of yearning affection—almost of longing to approach her nearer, to hear her speak, to touch her hand! It amused her to observe it! She had heard of cases, in which young unsophisticated girls had taken unaccountable affections for members of their own sex, and trusted she was not going to form the subject for some such experience on Miss Brandt’s part. The idea made her address her conversation more to Mademoiselle Brimont, than to her companion of the evening before.

“I suppose you and Miss Brandt were great friends in the Convent,” she said.

“O! no, Madame, we hardly ever saw each other whilst there, except in chapel. There is so much difference in our ages, I am only seventeen, and was in the lower school, whilst Miss Brandt did hardly any lessons during the two last years she spent there. But I was very glad to have her company across to England. My brother would have sent for me last year, if he could have heard of a lady to travel with me!”

“Are you going on to join your brother soon?”

“He says he will fetch me, Madame, as soon as he can be spared from his business. He is my only relation. My parents died, like Miss Brandt’s, in the West Indies.”

“Well! you must be sure and get your looks back before he arrives!” said Margaret, kindly.

The head waiter now appeared with the letters from England, amongst which was one for Miss Leyton in a firm, manly handwriting, with a regimental crest in blue and gold upon the envelope. Her face did not change in the least as she broke the seal, although it came from her fiancé, Captain Ralph Pullen. Elinor Leyton’s was an exceptionally cold face, and it matched her disposition. She had attractive features;—a delicate nose, carved as if in ivory—brown eyes, a fair rose-tinted complexion, and a small mouth with thin, firmly closed lips. Her hair was bronze-coloured, and it was always dressed to perfection. She had a good figure too, with small hands and feet—and she was robed in excellent taste. She was pre-eminently a woman for a man to be proud of as the mistress of his house, and the head of his table. She might be trusted never to say or do an unladylike thing—before all, she was cognisant of the obligations which devolved upon her as the daughter of Lord Walthamstowe and a member of the British aristocracy. But in disposition she was undoubtedly cold, and her fiancé had already begun to find it out. Their engagement had come about neither of them quite knew how, but he liked the idea of being connected with an aristocratic family, and she was proud of having won a man, for whom many caps had been pulled in vain. He was considered to be one of the handsomest men of his generation, and she was what people called an unexceptional match for him. She was fond of him in her way, but her way was a strange one. She called the attitude she assumed towards him, a proper and ladylike reserve, but impartial spectators, with stronger feelings, would have deemed it indifference.

However, like the proverbial dog in the manger, whether she valued her rights in Captain Pullen or not, Miss Leyton had no intention of permitting them to be interfered with. She would have died sooner than admit that he was necessary to her happiness,—at the same time she considered it due to her dignity as a woman, never to give in to his wishes, when they opposed her own, and often when they did not.

She displayed no particular enthusiasm when they met, nor distress when they parted—neither was she ever troubled by any qualms lest during their frequent separations, he should meet some woman whom he might perchance prefer to herself. They were engaged, and when the proper time came they would marry—meanwhile their private affairs concerned no one but themselves. In short, Elinor Leyton was not what is termed “a man’s woman”—all her friends (if she had any) were of her own sex.

Having perused her letter, she refolded and replaced it in its envelope without a glance in the direction of Mrs. Pullen. Margaret thought she had a right to be informed of her brother-in-law’s movements. She had invited Miss Leyton to accompany her to Heyst at his request, and any preparations which might be requisite before he joined them, would have to be made by herself.

“Is that from Ralph? What does he say?” she enquired in a low voice.

“Nothing in particular!”

“But when may we expect him at Heyst?”

“Next week, he says, in time for the Bataille des Fleurs!”

“Are you not pleased?”

“Of course I am!” replied Elinor, but without a sparkle or blush.

“O! if it were only my Arthur that were coming!” exclaimed Margaret, fervently, “I should go mad with joy!”

“Then it is just as well perhaps that it is not your Arthur!” rejoined her companion, as she put the letter into her pocket.

“Now, Bobby,” announced the strident tones of the Baroness Gobelli from the other side of the balcony, “leave off picking the shrimps! You’ve ’ad more than enough! Ain’t bread and butter good enough for you? What’ll you want next?”

“But, Mamma,” pleaded the youth, “I’ve only had a few! I’ve been shelling Papa’s all this time!”

“Put ’em down at once, I say!” reiterated the Baroness, “’ere William, take Bobby’s plate away! He’s ’ad plenty for this morning!”

“But I haven’t begun yet. I’m hungry!” remonstrated Bobby.

“Take ’is plate away!” roared the Baroness. “’Ang it all! Can’t you ’ear what I say?”

“Mein tear! mein tear!” ejaculated the Herr Baron in a subdued voice.

“Leave me alone, Gustave! Do you suppose I can’t manage my own son? He ain’t yours! ’E’d make ’imself ill if I didn’t look after him. Take ’is plate away, at once!”

The man-servant William lifted the plate of peeled shrimps and bread and butter from the table, whilst Bobby with a very red face rose from his seat and rushed down the steps to the beach.

“He! he! he!” cackled the Baroness, “that’ll teach ’im not to fiddle with ’is food another time! Bobby don’t care for an empty belly!”

“What a shame!” murmured Margaret, who was nothing if she was not a mother, “now the poor boy will go without his breakfast.”

Presently, William was to be seen sneaking past the Hotel with a parcel in his hands. The Baroness pounced upon him like a cat upon a mouse.

“William!” she cried from the balcony, “what ’ave you got in your ’and?”

“Summat of my own, my lady!”

“Bring it ’ere!”

The man mounted the steps and stood before his mistress. He held a parcel in his hands, wrapped up in a table napkin.

“Open that parcel!” said the Baroness.

“Indeed, my lady, it’s only the shrimps as Master Robert left behind him and I thought they would make me a little relish on the sands, my lady!”

“Open that parcel!”

William obeyed, and disclosed the rolls and butter and peeled shrimps just as Bobby had left them.

“You were going to take ’em down to Bobby on the beach!”

“No, indeed, my lady!”

“Confound you, Sir, don’t you lie to me!” exclaimed the Baroness, shaking her stick in his face, “I’ve ways and means of finding out things that you know nothing of! Throw that stuff into the road!”

“But, my lady——”

“Throw it into the road at once, or you may take your month’s warning! ’Ang it all! are you the mistress, or am I?”

The servant threw a glance of enquiry in the direction of the Herr Baron but the Herr Baron kept his face well down in his plate, so after a pause, he walked to the side, and shook the contents of the napkin upon the Digue.

“And now don’t you try any more of your tricks upon me or I’ll thrash you till your own mother won’t know you! You leave Bobby alone for the future, or it’ll be the worst day’s work you ever did! Remember that!”

“Very good, my lady!” replied William, but as he left the balcony he gave a look at the other occupants, which well conveyed his feelings on the subject.

“I should not be surprised to hear that that woman had been murdered by her servants some day!” said Margaret to Elinor Leyton.

“No! and I should not be sorry! I feel rather like murdering her myself. But let us go down to the sands, Margaret, and try to find the disconsolate Bobby! I’m not afraid of his mother if William is, and if he wants something to eat, I shall give it him!”

They fetched their hats and parasols, and having left the Hotel by a side entrance, found their way down to the sands. It was a pretty sight there, and in some cases, a comical one. The bathing-machines were placed some sixty or more feet from the water, according to the tide, and their occupants, clad in bathing-costumes, had to run the gauntlet of all the eyes upon the beach, as they traversed that distance in order to reach the sea. To some visitors, especially the English ones, this ordeal was rather trying. To watch them open a crevice of the machine door, and regard the expectant crowd with horror;—then after some hesitation, goaded on by the cries of the bathing women that the time was passing, to see them emerge with reluctant feet, sadly conscious of their unclothed condition, and of the unsightly corns and bunions which disfigured their feet—to say nothing of the red and blue tint which their skin had suddenly assumed—was to find it almost impossible to refrain from laughter. The very skinny and knuckle-kneed ones; the very fat and bulging ones; the little fair men who looked like Bobby’s peeled shrimps, and the muscular black and hairy ones who looked like bears escaped from a menagerie,—these types and many others, our ladies could not help being amused at, though they told each other it was very improper all the time. But everybody had to pass through the same ordeal and everybody submitted to it, and tried to laugh off their own humiliation by ridiculing the appearance of their neighbours. Margaret and Elinor were never tired of watching the antics of the Belgians and Germans whilst they were (what they called) bathing. The fuss they made over entering two feet of water—the way in which they gasped and puffed as they caught it up in their hands and rubbed their backs and chests with it—the reluctance with which the ladies were dragged by their masculine partners into the briny, as if they expected to be overwhelmed and drowned by the tiny waves which rippled over their toes, and made them catch their breath. And lastly, when they were convinced there was no danger, to see them, men and women, fat and thin, take hands and dance round in a ring as if they were playing at “Mulberry Bush” was too delightful. But if one bather, generally an Englishman, more daring than his fellows, went in for a good swim, the coast-guardsmen ran along the breakwater, shouting “Gare, gare!” until he came out again.

“They are funnier than ever to-day,” remarked Margaret, after a while, “I wonder what they will say when they see Ralph swimming out next week. They will be frightened to death. All the Pullens are wonderful swimmers. I have seen Anthony Pennell perform feats in the water that made my blood run cold! And Ralph is famous for his diving!”

The topic did not appear to interest Elinor. She reverted to the subject of Anthony.

“Is that the literary man—the cousin?”

“Yes! Have you not met him?”

“Never!”

“I am sure you would like him! He is such a fine fellow! Not such a ‘beauty man’ as Ralph, perhaps, but quite as tall and stalwart! His last book was a tremendous success!”

“Ralph has never mentioned him to me, though I knew he had a cousin of that name!”

“Well!—if you won’t be offended at my saying so—Ralph has always been a little jealous of Anthony, at least so Arthur says. He outstripped him at school and college, and the feeling had its foundation there. And anyone might be jealous of him now! He has shewn himself to be a genius!”

“I don’t like geniuses as a rule,” replied Elinor, “they are so conceited. I believe that is Bobby Bates sitting out there on the breakwater! I will go and see if he is still hungry!”

“Give the poor boy a couple of francs to get himself a breakfast in one of the restaurants,” said Margaret, “he will enjoy having a little secret from his terrible Mamma!”

She had not been alone long before the nurse came up to her, with the perambulator, piled up with toys, but no baby. Margaret’s fears were excited at once.

“Nurse! nurse, what is the matter? Where is the baby?” she exclaimed in tones of alarm.

“Nothing’s the matter, Ma’am! pray don’t frighten yourself!” replied the servant, “it’s only that the young ladies have got baby, and they’ve bought her all these toys, and sent me on to tell you that they would be here directly!”

The perambulator was filled with expensive playthings useless for an infant of six months’ old. Dolls, woolly sheep, fur cats, and gaily coloured balls with a huge box of chocolates and caramels, were piled one on the top of the other. But Mrs. Pullen’s face expressed nothing but annoyance.

“You had no right to let them take her, Nurse—you had no right to let the child out of your sight! Go back at once and bring her here to me! I am exceedingly annoyed about it!”

“Here are the young ladies, Ma’am, and you had better lay your orders on them, yourself, for they wouldn’t mind me,” said the nurse, somewhat sullenly.

In another minute Harriet Brandt, and Olga Brimont had reached her side, the former panting under the weight of the heavy infant, but with her face scarlet with the excitement of having captured her.

“O! Miss Brandt!” cried Margaret, “you have given me such a fright! You must never take baby away from her nurse again, please! As I told you last night, she is afraid of strangers, and generally cries when they try to take her! Come to me, my little one!” she continued, holding out her arms to the child, “come to mother and tell her all about it!”

But the baby seemed to take no notice of the fond appeal. It had its big eyes fixed upon Miss Brandt’s face with a half-awed, half-interested expression.

“O! no! don’t take her away!” said Harriet, eagerly, “she is so good with me! I assure you she is not frightened in the least bit, are you, my little love?” she added, addressing the infant. “And nurse tells me her name is Ethel, so I have ordered them to make her a little gold bangle with ‘Ethel’ on it, and she must wear it for my sake, darling little creature!”

“But, Miss Brandt, you must not buy such expensive things for her, indeed. She is too young to appreciate them, besides I do not like you to spend so much money on her!”

“But why shouldn’t I? What am I to do with my money, if I may not spend it on others?”

“But, such a quantity of toys! Surely, you have not bought all these for my baby!”

“Of course I have! I would have bought the whole shop if it would have pleased her! She likes the colours! Little darling! look how earnestly she gazes at me with her lovely grey eyes, as if she knew what a little beauty I think her! O! you pretty dear! you sweet pink and white baby!”

Mrs. Pullen felt somewhat annoyed as she saw the dolls and furry animals which were strewn upon the sands, at the same time she was flattered by the admiration exhibited of her little daughter, and the endearments lavished upon her. She considered them all well deserved (as what mother would not?)—and it struck her that Harriet Brandt must be a kindhearted, as well as a generous girl to spend so much money on a stranger’s child.

“She certainly does seem wonderfully good with you,” she observed presently, “I never knew her so quiet with anybody but her nurse or me, before. Isn’t it marvellous, Nurse?”

“It is, Ma’am! Baby do seem to take surprisingly to the young lady! And perhaps I might go into the town, as she is so quiet, and get the darning-wool for your stockings!”

“O! no! no! We must not let Miss Brandt get tired of holding her. She is too heavy to be nursed for long!”

“Indeed, indeed she is not!” cried Harriet, “do let me keep her, Mrs. Pullen, whilst nurse goes on her errand. It is the greatest pleasure to me to hold her. I should like never to give her up again!”

Margaret smiled.

“Very well, Nurse, since Miss Brandt is so kind, you can go!”

As the servant disappeared, she said to Harriet,

“Mind! you give her to me directly she makes your arm ache! I am more used to the little torment than you are.”

“How can you call her by such a name, even in fun? What would I not give to have a baby of my very own to do what I liked with? I would never part with it, night nor day, I would teach it to love me so much, that it should never be happy out of my sight!”

“But that would be cruel, my dear! Your baby might have to part with you, as you have had to part with your mother!”

At the mention of her mother, something came into Miss Brandt’s eyes, which Margaret could not define. It was not anger, nor sorrow, nor remorse. It was a kind of sullen contempt. It was something that made Mrs. Pullen resolve not to allude to the subject again. The incident made her examine Harriet’s eyes more closely than she had done before. They were beautiful in shape and colour, but they did not look like the eyes of a young girl. They were deeply, impenetrably black—with large pellucid pupils, but there was no sparkle nor brightness in them, though they were underlaid by smouldering fires which might burst forth into flame at any moment, and which seemed to stir and kindle and then go out again, when she spoke of anything that interested her. There was an attraction about the girl, which Mrs. Pullen acknowledged, without wishing to give in to. She could not keep her eyes off her! She seemed to hypnotise her as the snake is said to hypnotise the bird, but it was an unpleasant feeling, as if the next moment the smouldering fire would burst forth into flame and overwhelm her. But watching her play with, and hearing her talk to, her baby, Margaret put the idea away from her, and only thought how kindly natured she must be, to take so much trouble for another woman’s child. It was not long before Miss Leyton found her way back to them, and as her glance fell upon Harriet Brandt and the baby, she elevated her eyebrows.

“Where is the nurse?” she demanded curtly.

“She has gone to the shops to see if she can get some darning-wool, and Miss Brandt was kind enough to offer to keep baby for her till she returns. And O! Elinor, look what beautiful toys Miss Brandt has bought her! Isn’t she too kind?”

“Altogether too kind!” responded Elinor. “By the way, Margaret, I found our friend and transacted the little business we spoke of! But he says his Mamma has ordered him to remain here, till she comes down to see him bathe, and dry him, I suppose, with her own hands! And do I not descry her fairy feet indenting the sands at this very moment, and bearing down in our direction?”

“You could hardly mistake her for anything else!” replied Mrs. Pullen.

In another minute the Baroness was upon them.

“Hullo,” she called out, “you’re just in time to see Gustave bathe! He looks lovely in his bathing costume! His legs are as white as your baby’s, Mrs. Pullen, and twice as well worth looking at!”

“Mein tear! mein tear!” remonstrated the Baron.

“Don’t be a fool, Gustave! You know it’s the truth! And the loveliest feet, Miss Leyton! Smaller than yours, I bet. Where’s that devil, Bobby? I’m going to give ’im a dousing for his villainy this morning, I can tell you! Once I get ’is ’ead under water, it won’t come up again in a hurry! I expect ’e’s pretty ’ungry by this time! But ’e don’t get a centime out of me for cakes to-day. I’ll teach ’im not to stuff ’imself like a pig again. Come, Gustave! ’ere’s a machine for you! Get me a chair that I may sit outside it! Now, we’ll ’ave some fun,” she added, with a wink at Mrs. Pullen.

“Let us move on to the breakwater!” said Margaret to Elinor Leyton, and the whole party got up and walked some little distance off.

“Ah! you don’t hoodwink me!” screamed the Baroness after them. “You’ve got glasses with you, and you’re going to ’ave a good squint at Gustave’s legs through ’em, I know! You’d better ’ave stayed ’ere, like honest women, and said you enjoyed the sight!”

“O! Margaret!” said Miss Leyton, with a look of horror, “if it had not been for the Bataille de Fleurs and ... the other thing ... I should have said, for goodness’ sake, let us move on to Ostende or Blankenburghe, with the least possible delay. That woman will be the death of me yet! I’m sure she will!”

Notwithstanding which, they could not help laughing in concert, a little later on, to see the unwilling Bobby dragged down by William to bathe, and as he emerged from his machine, helpless and half naked, to watch his elephantine mother chase him with her stout stick in hand, and failing to catch him in time, slip on the wet sand and flounder in the waves herself, from which plight, it looked very much as though her servant instead of rescuing her, did his best to push her further in, before he dragged her, drenched and disordered, on dry land again.

CHAPTER IV.

The Baroness Gobelli’s temperament was as inconsistent as her dress. Under the garb of jocose good-humour, which often degenerated to horse-play, she concealed a jealous and vindictive disposition, which would go any lengths, when offended, to revenge itself. She was wont to say that she never forgot, nor forgave an injury, and that when she had her knife (as she termed it) in a man, she knew how to bide her time, but that when the time came, she turned it. These bloodthirsty sentiments, coupled with an asseveration which was constantly on her lips, that when she willed the death of anyone, he died, and that she had powers at her command of which no one was aware but herself, frightened many timid and ignorant people into trying to propitiate so apparently potent a mortal, and generally kow-towing before her. To such votaries, so long as they pleased her, Madame Gobelli was used to shew her favour by various gifts of dresses, jewelry, or money, according to their circumstances, for in some cases she was lavishly generous, but she soon tired of her acquaintances and replaced them by fresh favourites.

The hints that she gave forth, regarding herself and her antecedents, were too extraordinary to gain credence except from the most ignorant of her auditors, but the Baroness always spoke in parables, and left no proof of what she meant, to be brought up against her. This proved that if she were clever, she was still more cunning. The hints she occasionally gave of being descended from Royal blood, though on the wrong side of the blanket, and of the connection being acknowledged privately, if not publicly, by the existing members of the reigning family, were received with open mouths by people of her own class, but rejected with scorn by such as were acquainted with those whom she affected to know. It was remarkable also, and only another proof that, whatever her real birth and antecedents, the Baroness Gobelli was unique, that, notwithstanding her desire to be considered noble by birth if not by law, she never shirked the fact that the Baron was in trade—on the contrary she rather made a boast of it, and used to relate stories bringing it into ridicule with the greatest gusto. The fact being that Baron Gobelli was the head of a large firm of export bootmakers, trading in London under the name of Fantaisie et Cie, the boots and shoes of which, though professedly French, were all manufactured in Germany, where the firm maintained an enormous factory. The Baroness could seldom be in the company of anyone for more than five minutes without asking them where they bought their boots and shoes, and recommending them to Fantaisie et Cie as the best makers in London. She wanted to be first in everything—in popularity, in notice, and in conversation—if she could not attract attention by her personality, she startled people by her vulgarity—if she could not reign supreme by reason of her supposed birth, she would do so by boots and shoes, if nothing else—and if anybody slighted her or appeared to discredit her statements, he or she was immediately marked down for retaliation.

Harriet Brandt had not been many days in Heyst before the Baroness had become jealous of the attention which she paid Mrs. Pullen and her child. She saw that the girl was attractive, she heard that she was rich, and she liked to have pretty and pleasant young people about her when at home—they drew men to the house and reflected a sort of credit upon herself—and she determined to get Harriet away from Margaret Pullen and chain her to her own side instead. The Baroness hated Miss Leyton quite as much as Elinor hated her. She was quick of hearing and very intuitive—she had caught more than one of the young lady’s uncomplimentary remarks upon herself, and had divined still more than she had heard. She had observed her sympathy with Bobby also, and that she encouraged him in his boyish rebellion. For all these reasons, she “had her knife” into Miss Leyton, and was waiting her opportunity to turn it. And she foresaw—with the assistance perhaps of the Powers of Darkness, of whose acquaintance she was so proud—that she would be enabled to take her revenge on Elinor Leyton through Harriet Brandt.

But her first advances to the latter were suavity itself. She was not going to frighten the girl by shewing her claws, until she had stroked her down the right way with her pattes de velours.

She came upon her one morning, as she sat upon the sands, with little Ethel in her arms. The nurse was within speaking distance, busy with her needlework, and the infant seemed so quiet with Miss Brandt and she took such evident pleasure in nursing it, that Mrs. Pullen no longer minded leaving them together, and had gone for a stroll with Miss Leyton along the Digue. So the Baroness found Harriet, comparatively speaking, alone.

“So you’re playing at nursemaid again!” she commenced in her abrupt manner. “You seem to have taken a wonderful fancy to that child!”

“She is such a good little creature,” replied Harriet, “she is no trouble whatever. She sleeps half the day!”

Miss Brandt had a large box of chocolates beside her, into which she continually dipped her hand. Her mouth, too, was stained with the delicate sweetmeat—she was always eating, either fruit or bonbons. She handed the box now, with a timid air, to the Baroness.

“Do you care for chocolate, Madame?” she asked.

The Baroness did not like to be called “Madame” according to the French fashion. She thought it derogated from her dignity. She wished everyone to address her as “my lady,” and considered she was cheated out of her rights when it was omitted. But she liked chocolate almost as well as Harriet did.

“Thank you! I’ll ’ave a few!” she said, grabbing about a dozen in her huge hand at the first venture. “What a liking for candies the Amurricans seem to ’ave introduced into England! I can remember the time when you never saw such a thing as sweets in the palace—I don’t think they were allowed—and now they’re all over the place. I shouldn’t wonder if Her Majesty hasn’t a box or two in her private apartments, and as for the Princesses, well!—”

“The Palace!—Her Majesty!”—echoed Miss Brandt, opening her dark eyes very wide.

“As I tell ’em,” continued the Baroness, “they won’t ’ave a tooth left amongst the lot of ’em soon! What are you staring at?”

“But—but—do you go to the Queen’s palace?” demanded Harriet, incredulously, as well she might.

“Not unless I’m sent for, you may take your oath! I ain’t fond enough of ’em for all that; besides, Windsor’s ’orribly damp and don’t suit me at all. But you mustn’t go and repeat what I tell you, in the Hotel. It might give offence in high places if I was known to talk of it. You see there’s some of ’em has never seen me since I married the Baron! Being in trade, they thought ’e wasn’t good enough for me! I’ve ’eard that when Lady Morton—the dowager Countess, you know—was asked if she ’ad seen me lately, she called out loud enough for the whole room to ’ear, ‘Do you mean the woman that married the boot man? No! I ’aven’t seen ’er, and I don’t mean to either!’ Ha! ha! ha! But I can afford to laugh at all that, my dear!”

“But—I don’t quite understand!” said Harriet Brandt, with a bewildered look.

“Why! the Baron deals in shoe-leather! ’Aven’t you ’eard it? I suppose we’ve got the largest manufactory in Germany! Covers four acres of ground, I give you my word!”

“Shoe-leather!” again ejaculated Harriet Brandt, not knowing what to say.

“Why, yes! of course all the aristocracy go in for trade now-a-days! It’s the fashion! There’s the Viscountess Gormsby keeps a bonnet-shop, and Lord Charles Snowe ’as a bakery, and Lady Harrison ’as an old curiosity-shop, and stands about it, dusting tables and chairs, all day! But how can you know anything about it, just coming from the West Indies, and all those ’orrid blacks! Ain’t you glad to find yourself amongst Christians again?”

“This is the first time I ever left Jamaica,” said Miss Brandt, “I was born there.”

“But you won’t die there, or I’m much mistaken! You’re too good to be wasted on Jamaica! When are you going back to England?”

“Oh! I don’t know! I’ve hardly thought about it yet! Not while Mrs. Pullen stays here, though!”

“Why! you’re not tied to ’er apron-string, surely! What’s she to you?”

“She is very kind, and I have no friends!” replied Miss Brandt.

The Baroness burst into a coarse laugh.

“You won’t want for friends, once you shew your face in England, I can tell you. I’d like to ’ave you at our ’ouse, the Red ’Ouse, we call it. Princess—but there, I mustn’t tell you ’er name or it’ll go through the Hotel, and she says things to me that she never means to go further—but she said the other day that she preferred the Red ’Ouse to Windsor! And for comfort, and cheerfulness, so she may!”

“I suppose it is very beautiful then!” observed Harriet.

“You must judge for yourself,” replied the Baroness, with a broad smile, “when you come to London. You’ll be your own mistress there, I suppose, and not so tied as you are here! I call it a shame to keep you dancing attendance on that brat, when there’s a nurse whose business it is to look after ’er!”

“O! but indeed it is my own wish!” said the girl, as she cuddled the sleeping baby to her bosom, and laid her lips in a long kiss upon its little mouth. “I asked leave to nurse her! She loves me and even Nurse cannot get her off to sleep as I can! And it is so beautiful to have something to love you, Madame Gobelli! In the Convent I felt so cold—so lonely! If ever I took a liking to a girl, we were placed in separate rooms! It is what I have longed for—to come out into the world and find someone to be a friend, and to love me, only me, and all for myself!”

Madame Gobelli laughed again.

“Well! you’ve only got to shew those eyes of yours, to get plenty of people to love you, and let you love them in return—that is, if the men count in your estimation of what’s beautiful!”

Harriet raised her eyes and looked at the woman who addressed her!

There was the innocence of Ignorance in them as yet, but the slumbering fire in their depths proved of what her nature would be capable, when it was given the opportunity to shew itself. Hers was a passionate temperament, yearning to express itself—panting for the love which it had never known—and ready to burst forth like a tree into blossom, directly the sun of Desire and Reciprocity shone upon it. The elder woman, who had not been without her little experiences in her day, recognised the feeling at once, and thought that she would not give a fig for the virtue of any man who was subjected to its influence.

“I don’t think that you’ll confine your attentions to babies long!” quoth the Baroness, as she encountered that glance.

“How do you know?” said her young companion.

“Ah! it’s enough that I do know, my dear! I ’ave ways and means of knowing things that I keep to myself! I ’ave friends about me too, who can tell me everything—who can ’elp me, if I choose, to give Life and Fortune to one person, and Trouble and Death to another—and woe to them that offend me, that’s all!”

But if the Baroness expected to impress Miss Brandt with her hints of terror, she was mistaken. Harriet did not seem in the least astonished. She had been brought up by old Pete and the servants on her father’s plantation to believe in witches, and the evil eye, and “Obeah” and the whole cult of Devil worship.

“I know all about that,” she remarked presently, “but you can’t do me either good or harm. I want nothing from you and I never shall!”

“Don’t you be too sure of that!” replied Madame Gobelli, nodding her head. “I’ve brought young women more luck than enough with their lovers before now—yes! and married women into the bargain! If it ’adn’t been for me, Lady—there! it nearly slipped out, didn’t it?—but there’s a certain Countess who would never ’ave been a widow and married for the second time to the man of ’er ’eart, if I ’adn’t ’elped ’er, and she knows it too! By the way, ’ow do you like Miss Leyton?”

“Not at all,” replied Harriet, quickly, “she is not a bit like Mrs. Pullen—so cold and stiff and disagreeable! She hardly ever speaks to me! Is it true that she’s the daughter of a lord, as Madame Lamont says, and is it that makes her so proud?”

“She’s the daughter of Lord Walthamstowe, but that’s nothing. They’ve got no money. ’Er people live down in the country, quite in a beggarly manner. A gal with a fortune of ’er own, would rank ’eads and ’eads above ’er in Society. There’s not much thought of beside money, nowadays, I can tell you!”

“Why does she stay with Mrs. Pullen then? Are they any relation to each other?” demanded Harriet.

“Relation, no! I expect she’s just brought ’er ’ere out of charity, and because she couldn’t afford to go to the seaside by ’erself!”

She had been about to announce the projected relationship between the two ladies, when a sudden thought struck her. Captain Ralph Pullen was expected to arrive in Heyst in a few days—thus much she had ascertained through the landlady of the Lion d’Or. She knew by repute that he was considered to be one of the handsomest and most conceited men in the Limerick Rangers, a corps which was noted for its good-looking officers. It might be better for the furtherance of her plans against the peace of Miss Leyton’s mind, she thought, to keep her engagement to Captain Pullen a secret—at all events, no one could say it was her business to make it public. She looked in Harriet Brandt’s yearning, passionate eyes, and decided that it would be strange if any impressionable young man could be thrown within their influence, without having his fidelity a little shaken, especially if affianced to such a cold, uninteresting “bit of goods” as Elinor Leyton. Like the parrot in the story, though she said nothing, she “thought a deal” and inwardly rumbled with half-suppressed laughter, as she pictured the discomfiture of the latter young lady, if by any chance she should find her fiancé’s attentions transferred from herself to the little West Indian.

“You seem amused, Madame!” said Harriet presently.

“I was thinking of you, and all the young men who are doomed to be slaughtered by those eyes of yours,” said the Baroness. “You’d make mischief enough amongst my friends, I bet, if I ’ad you at the Red ’Ouse!”

Harriet felt flattered and consciously pleased. She had never received a compliment in the Convent—no one had ever hinted that she was pretty, and she had had no opportunity of hearing it since.

“Do you think I am handsome then?” she enquired with a heightened colour.

“I think you’re a deal worse! I think you’re dangerous!” replied her new friend, “and I wouldn’t trust you with the Baron any further than I could see you!”

“O! how can you say so?” exclaimed the girl, though she was pleased all the same to hear it said.

“I wouldn’t, and that’s the truth! Gustave’s an awful fellow after the gals. I ’ave to keep a tight ’old on ’im, I can tell you, and the more you keep out of ’is way, the better I shall be pleased! You’ll make a grand match some day, if you’re only sharp and keep your eyes open.”

“What do you call a grand match?” asked Harriet, as she let the nurse take the sleeping child from her arms without remonstrance.

“Why! a Lord or an Honourable at the very least! since you ’ave money of your own. It’s money they’re all after in these times, you know—why! we ’ave dooks and markisses marrying all sorts of gals from Amurrica—gals whose fathers made their money in oil, or medicine, or electricity, or any other dodge, so long as they made it! And why shouldn’t you do the same as the Amurrican gals? You have money, I know—and a goodish lot, I fancy—” added the Baroness, with her cunning eyes fixed upon the girl as if to read her thoughts.

“O! yes!” replied Harriet, “Mr. Trawler, my trustee, said it was too much for a young woman to have under her own control, but I don’t know anything about the value of money, never having had it to spend before. I am to have fifteen hundred pounds every year. Is that a good deal?”

“Quite enough to settle you in life, my dear!” exclaimed the Baroness, who immediately thought what a good thing it would be if Miss Brandt could be persuaded to sink her capital in the boot trade, “and all under your own control too! You are a lucky young woman! I know ’alf-a-dozen lords,—not to say Princes—who would jump at you!”

“Princes!” cried Harriet, unable to believe her ears.

“Certainly! Not English ones of course, but German, which are quite as good after all, for a Prince is a Prince any day! There’s Prince Adalbert of Waxsquiemer, and Prince Harold of Muddlesheim, and Prince Loris of Taxelmein, and ever so many more, and they’re in and out of the Red ’Ouse, twenty times a day! But don’t you be in an ’urry! Don’t take the first that offers, Miss Brandt! Pick and choose! Flirt with whom you like and ’ave your fun, but wait and look about you a bit before you decide!”

The prospect was too dazzling! Harriet Brandt’s magnificent eyes were opened to their widest extent—her cheeks flushed with expectation—both life and light had flashed into her countenance. Her soul was expanding, her nature was awakening—it shone through every feature—the Baroness had had no idea she was so beautiful! And the hungry, yearning look was more accentuated than before—it seemed as if she were on the alert, watching for something, like a panther awaiting the advent of its prey. It was a look that women would have shrunk from, and men welcomed and eagerly responded to.

“I should like to go and see you when I go to England—very much!” she articulated slowly.

“And so you shall, my dear! The Baron and me will be very glad to ’ave you on a visit. And you mustn’t let that capital of yours lie idle, you know! If it’s in your own ’ands, you must make it yield double to what it does now! You consult Gustave! ’E’s a regular business man and knows ’ow many beans make five! ’E’ll tell you what’s best to be done with it—’e’ll be a good friend to you, and you can trust ’im with everything!”

“Thank you!” replied the girl, but she still seemed to be lost in a kind of reverie. Her gaze was fixed—her full crimson lips were slightly parted—her slender hands kept nervously clasping and unclasping each other.

“Well, you are ’andsome and no mistake!” exclaimed the Baroness. “You remind me a little of the Duchess of Bewlay before she was married! The first wife, I mean—the second is a poor, pale-faced, sandy-’aired creature. (’Ow the Dook can stomach ’er after the other, I can’t make out!) The first Duchess’s mother was a great flame of my grandfather, the Dook of—however, I mustn’t tell you that! It’s a State secret, and I might get into trouble at Court! You’d better not say I mentioned it.”

But Harriet Brandt was not in a condition to remember or repeat anything. She was lost in a dream of the possibilities of the Future.

The bell for déjeuner roused them at last, and brought them to their feet. They resembled each other in one particular ... they were equally fond of the pleasures of the table.

The little Baron appeared dutifully to afford his clumsy spouse the benefit of his support in climbing the hillocks of shifting sand, which lay between them and the hotel, and Miss Brandt sped swiftly on her way alone.

“I’ve been ’aving a talk with that gal Brandt,” chuckled the Baroness to her husband, “she’s a regular green-’orn and swallows everything you tell ’er. I’ve been stuffing ’er up, that she ought to marry a Prince, with ’er looks and money, and she quite believes it. But she ain’t bad-looking when she colours up, and I expect she’s rather a warm customer, and if she takes a fancy to a man, ’e won’t well know ’ow to get out of it! And if he tries to, she’ll make the fur fly. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Better leave it alone, better leave it alone!” said the stolid German, who had had more than one battle to fight already, on account of his wife’s match-making propensities, and considered her quite too clumsy an artificer to engage in so delicate a game.

CHAPTER V.

There was a marked difference observable in the manner of Harriet Brandt after her conversation with the Baroness. Hitherto she had been shy and somewhat diffident—the seclusion of her conventual life and its religious teachings had cast a veil, as it were, between her and the outer world, and she had not known how to behave, nor how much she might venture to do, on being first cast upon it. But Madame Gobelli’s revelations concerning her beauty and her prospects, had torn the veil aside, and placed a talisman in her hands, against her secret fear.

She was beautiful and dangerous—she might become a Princess if she played her cards well—the knowledge changed the whole face of Nature for her. She became assured, confident, and anticipatory. She began to frequent the company of the Baroness, and without neglecting her first acquaintances, Mrs. Pullen and her baby, spent more time in the Gobelli’s private sitting-room than in the balcony, or public salon, a fact for which Margaret did not hesitate to declare herself grateful.

“I do not know how it is,” she confided to Elinor Leyton, “I rather like the girl, and I would not be unkind to her for all the world, but there is something about her that oppresses me. I seem never to have quite lost the sensation she gave me the first evening that she came here. Her company enervates me—I get neuralgia whenever we have been a short time together—and she leaves me in low spirits and more disposed to cry than laugh!”

“And no wonder,” said her friend, “considering that she has that detestable school-girl habit of hanging upon one’s arm and dragging one down almost to the earth! How you have stood it so long, beats me! Such a delicate woman as you are too. It proves how selfish Miss Brandt must be, not to have seen that she was distressing you!”

“Well! it will take a large amount of expended force to drag Madame Gobelli to the ground,” said Margaret, laughing, “so I hope Miss Brandt will direct that portion of her attention to her, and leave me only the residue. Poor girl! she seems to have had so few people to love, or to love her, during her lifetime, that she is glad to practise on anyone who will reciprocate her affection. Did you see the Baroness kissing her this morning?”

“I saw the Baroness scrubbing her beard against Miss Brandt’s cheek, if you call that ‘kissing’?” replied Elinor. “The Baroness never kisses! I have noticed her salute poor Bobby in the morning exactly in the same manner. I have a curiosity to know if it hurts.”

“Why don’t you try it?” said Margaret.

“No, thank you! I am not so curious as all that! But the Gobellis and Miss Brandt have evidently struck up a great friendship. She will be the recipient of the Baroness’s cast-off trinkets and laces next!”

“She is too well off for that, Elinor! Madame Lamont told me she has a fortune in her own right, of fifteen hundred a year!”

“She will want it all to gild herself with!” said Elinor.

Margaret Pullen looked at Miss Leyton thoughtfully. Did she really mean what she said, or did her jealousy of the West Indian heiress render her capable of uttering untruths? Surely, she must see that Harriet Brandt was handsome—growing handsomer indeed, every day, with the pure sea air tinting her cheeks with a delicate flush like the inside of a shell—and that her beauty, joined to her money, would render her a tempting morsel for the men, and a formidable rival for the women.

“I do not think you would find many people to agree with your opinion, Elinor!” she said after a pause, in answer to Miss Leyton’s last remark.

“Well! I think she’s altogether odious,” replied her friend with a toss of her head, “I thought it the first time I saw her, and I shall think it to the last!”

It was the day that Captain Ralph Pullen was expected to arrive in Heyst and the two ladies were preparing to go to the station to meet him.

“The Baroness has at all events done you one good turn,” continued Miss Leyton, “she has delivered you for a few hours from your ‘Old Man of the Sea.’ What have you been doing with yourself all the morning! I expected you to meet me on the sands, after I had done bathing!”

“I have not stirred out, Elinor. I am uneasy about baby! She does not seem at all well. I have been waiting your return to ask you whether I had not better send for a doctor to see her. But I am not sure if there is such a thing in Heyst!”

“Sure to be, but don’t send unless it is absolutely necessary. What is the matter with her?”

The nurse was sitting by the open window with little Ethel on her lap. The infant looked much the same as usual—a little paler perhaps, but in a sound sleep and apparently enjoying it.

“She does not seem ill to me,” continued Elinor, “is she in any pain?”

“Not at all, Miss,” said the nurse, “and begging the mistress’s pardon, I am sure she is frightening herself without cause. Baby is cutting two more teeth, and she feels the heat. That’s all!”

“Why are you frightened, Margaret?” asked Miss Leyton.

“Because her sleep is unnatural, I am sure of it,” replied Mrs. Pullen, “she slept all yesterday, and has hardly opened her eyes to-day. It is more like torpor than sleep. We can hardly rouse her to take her bottle and you know what a lively, restless little creature she has always been.”

“But her teeth,” argued Elinor Leyton, “surely her teeth account for everything! I know my sister, Lady Armisdale, says that nothing varies so quickly as teething children—that they’re at the point of death one hour and quite well the next, and she has five, so she ought to know!”

“That’s quite right, Miss,” interposed the nurse, respectfully, “and you can hardly expect the dear child to be lively when she’s in pain. She has a little fever on her too! If she were awake, she would only be fretful! I am sure that the best medicine for her is sleep!”

“You hear what Nurse says, Margaret, but if you are nervous, why not send for a doctor to see her! We can ask Madame Lamont as we go downstairs who is the best here, and call on him as we go to the station, or we can telegraph to Bruges for one, if you think it would be better!”

“O! no! no! I will not be foolish! I will try and believe that you and Nurse know better than myself. I will wait at all events until to-morrow.”

“Where has baby been this morning?”

“She was with Miss Brandt on the sands, Miss!” replied the nurse.

“Since you are so anxious about Ethel, Margaret, I really wonder that you should trust her with a stranger like Miss Brandt! Perhaps she let the sun beat on her head.”

“O! no, Elinor, Nurse was with them all the time. I would not let Miss Brandt or anyone take baby away alone. But she is so good-natured and so anxious to have her, that I don’t quite know how to refuse.”

“Perhaps she has been stuffing the child with some of her horrid chocolates or caramels. She is gorging them all day long herself!”

“I know my duty too well for that, Miss!” said the nurse resentfully, “I wouldn’t have allowed it! The dear baby did not have anything to eat at all.”

“Well! you’re both on her side evidently, so I will say no more,” concluded Miss Leyton, “At the same time if I had a child, I’d sooner trust it to a wild beast than the tender mercies of Miss Brandt. But it’s past four o’clock, Margaret! If we are to reach the entrepôt in time we must be going!”

Mrs. Pullen hastily assumed her hat and mantle, and prepared to accompany her friend. They had opened the door, and were about to leave the room when a flood of melody suddenly poured into the apartment. It proceeded from a room at the other end of the corridor and was produced by a mandoline most skilfully played. The silvery notes in rills and trills and chords, such as might have been evolved from a fairy harp, arrested the attention of both Miss Leyton and Mrs. Pullen. They had scarcely expressed their wonder and admiration to each other, at the skilful manipulation of the instrument (which evinced such art as they had never heard before except in public) when the strings of the mandoline were accompanied by a young, fresh contralto voice.

“O! hush! hush!” cried Elinor, with her finger on her lip, as the rich mellow strains floated through the corridor, “I don’t think I ever heard such a lovely voice before. Whose on earth can it be?”

The words of the song were in Spanish, and the only one they could recognise was the refrain of, “Seralie! Seralie!” But the melody was wild, pathetic, and passionate, and the singer’s voice was touching beyond description.

“Some professional must have arrived at the Hotel,” said Margaret, “I am sure that is not the singing of an amateur. But I hope she will not practise at night, and keep baby awake!”

Elinor laughed.

“O! you mother!” she said, “I thought you were lamenting just now that your ewe lamb slept too much! For my part, I should like to be lulled to sleep each night by just such strains as those. Listen, Margaret! She has commenced another song. Ah! Gounod’s delicious ‘Ave Maria.’ How beautiful!”

“I don’t profess to know much about music,” said Margaret, “but it strikes me that the charm of that singing lies more in the voice than the actual delivery. Whoever it is, must be very young!”

“Whoever it proceeds from, it is charming,” repeated Elinor. “How Ralph would revel in it! Nothing affects him like music. It is the only thing which makes me regret my inability to play or sing. But I am most curious to learn who the new arrival is. Ah! here is Mademoiselle Brimont!” she continued, as she caught sight of Olga Brimont, slowly mounting the steep staircase, “Mademoiselle, do you happen to know who it is who owns that lovely voice? Mrs. Pullen and I are perfectly enchanted with it!”

Olga Brimont coloured a little. She had never got over her shyness of the English ladies, particularly of the one who spoke so sharply. But she answered at once,

“It is Harriet Brandt! Didn’t you know that she sang?”

Miss Leyton took a step backward. Her face expressed the intensest surprise—not to say incredulity.

“Harriet Brandt! Impossible!” she ejaculated.

“Indeed it is she,” repeated Olga, “she always sang the solos in the Convent choir. They used to say she had the finest voice in the Island. O! yes, it is Harriet, really.”

And she passed on to her own apartment.

“Do you believe it?” said Elinor Leyton, turning almost fiercely upon Mrs. Pullen.

“How can I do otherwise,” replied Margaret, “in the face of Mademoiselle Brimont’s assertion? But it is strange that we have heard nothing of Miss Brandt’s talent before!”

“Has she ever mentioned the fact to you, that she could sing?”

“Never! but there has been no opportunity. There is no instrument here, and we have never talked of such a thing! Only fancy her possessing so magnificent a voice! What a gift! She might make her fortune by it if she needed to do so.”

“Well! she ought to be able to sing with that mouth of hers,” remarked Miss Leyton almost bitterly, as she walked into the corridor. She was unwilling to accord Harriet Brandt the possession of a single good attribute. As the ladies traversed the corridor, they perceived that others had been attracted by the singing as well as themselves, and most of the bedroom doors were open. Mrs. Montague caught Margaret by the sleeve as she passed.

“O! Mrs. Pullen, what a heavenly voice! Whose is it? Fred is just mad to know!”

“It’s only that girl Brandt!” replied Elinor roughly, as she tried to escape further questioning.

“Miss Brandt! what, the little West Indian! Mrs. Pullen, is Miss Leyton jesting?”

“No, indeed, Mrs. Montague! Mademoiselle Brimont was our informant,” said Margaret.

But at that moment their attention was diverted by the appearance of Harriet Brandt herself. She looked brilliant. In one hand she carried her mandoline, a lovely little instrument, of sandal-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl,—her face was flushed with the exertion she had gone through, and her abundant hair was somewhat in disorder. Mrs. Montague pounced on her at once.

“O! Miss Brandt! you are a sly puss! We have all been delighted—enchanted! What do you mean by hiding your light under a bushel in this way? Do come in here for a minute and sing us another song! Major Montague is in ecstasies over your voice!”

“I can’t stop, I can’t indeed!” replied Miss Brandt, evidently pleased with the effect she had produced, “because I am on my way down to dear Madame Gobelli. I promised to sing for her this afternoon. I was only trying my voice to see if it was fit for anything!”

She smiled at Mrs. Pullen as she spoke and added,

“I hope I have not disturbed the darling baby! I thought she would be out this lovely afternoon!”

“O! no! you did not disturb her. We have all been much pleased, and surprised to think that you have never told us that you could sing!”

“How could I tell that anyone would care about it?” replied Harriet, indifferently, with a shrug of her shoulders. “But the Baron is very musical! He has a charming tenor voice. I have promised to accompany him! I mustn’t delay any longer! Good afternoon!”

And she flew down the stairs with her mandoline.

“It is all the dear Baroness and the dear Baron now, you perceive,” remarked Elinor to Mrs. Pullen, as they walked together to the railway-station, “you and the baby are at a discount. Miss Brandt is the sort of young lady, I fancy, who will follow her own interests wherever they may lead her!”

“You should be the last to complain of her for that, Elinor, since you have tried to get rid of her at any cost,” replied her friend.

Captain Ralph Pullen arrived punctually by the train which he had appointed, and greeted his sister-in-law and fiancée with marked cordiality.

He was certainly a man to be proud of, as far as outward appearance went. He was acknowledged, by general consent, to be one of the handsomest men in the British Army, and he was fully aware of the fact. He was tall and well built, with good features, almost golden hair; womanish blue eyes, and a long drooping moustache, which he was always caressing with his left hand. He regarded all women with the same languishing, tired-to-death glance, as if the attentions shewn him by the beau sexe had been altogether too much for him, and the most he could do now was to regard them with an indolent, worn-out favour, which had had all the excitement, and freshness, and flavour taken out of it long before. Most women would have considered his method of treatment as savouring little short of insult, but Elinor Leyton’s nature did not make extravagant demands upon her lover, and so long as he dressed and looked well and paid her the courtesies due from a gentleman to a gentlewoman, she was quite satisfied. Margaret, on the other hand, had seen through her brother-in-law’s affectations from the first, and despised him for them. She thought him foolish, vain, and uncompanionable, but she bore with him for Arthur’s sake. She would have welcomed his cousin Anthony Pennell, though, with twice the fervour.

Ralph was looking remarkably well. His light grey suit of tweed was fresh and youthful looking, and the yellow rose in his buttonhole was as dainty as if he had just walked out of his Piccadilly club. He was quite animated (for him) at the idea of spending a short time in Heyst, and actually went the length of informing Elinor that she looked “very fit”, and that if it was not so public a place he should kiss her. Miss Leyton coloured faintly at the remark, but she turned her head away and would not let him see that she was sorry the place was so public.

“Heyst seems to have done you both a lot of good,” Captain Pullen went on presently, “I am sure you are fatter, Margaret, than when you were in Town. And, by the way, how is the daughter?”

“Not very well, I am sorry to say, Ralph! She is cutting more teeth. Elinor and I were consulting whether we should send for a doctor to see her, only this afternoon.”

“By the way, I have good news for you, or you will consider it so. Old Phillips is coming over to join us next week.”

“Doctor Phillips, my dear old godfather!” exclaimed Margaret, “O! I am glad to hear it! He will set baby to rights at once. But who told you so, Ralph?”

“The old gentleman himself! I met him coming out of his club the other day and told him I was coming over here, and he said he should follow suit as soon as ever he could get away, and I was to tell you to get a room for him by next Monday!”

“I shall feel quite happy about my baby now,” said Mrs. Pullen, “I have not much faith in Belgian doctors. Their pharmacopœia is quite different from ours, but Doctor Phillips will see if there is anything wrong with her at once!”

“I hope you will not be disappointed with the Hotel visitors, Ralph,” said Elinor, “but they are a terrible set of riff-raff. It is impossible to make friends with any one of them. They are such dreadful people!”

“O! you mustn’t class them all together, Elinor,” interposed Margaret, “I am sure the Montagues and the Vieuxtemps are nice enough! And du reste, there is no occasion for Ralph even to speak to them.”

“Of course not,” said Captain Pullen, “I have come over for the sake of your company and Margaret’s, and have no intention of making the acquaintance of any strangers. When is the Bataille de Fleurs? Next week? that’s jolly! Old Phillips will be here by that time, and he and Margaret can flirt together, whilst you and I are billing and cooing, eh, Elinor?”

“Don’t be vulgar, Ralph,” she answered, “you know how I dislike that sort of thing! And we have had so much of it here!”

“What, billing and cooing?” he questioned. But Elinor disdained to make any further remark on the subject.

The appearance of Ralph Pullen at the table d’hôte dinner naturally excited a good deal of speculation. The English knew that Mrs. Pullen expected her brother-in-law to stay with her, but the foreigners were all curious to ascertain who the handsome, well-groomed, military-looking stranger might be, who was so familiar with Mrs. Pullen and her friend. The Baroness was not behind the rest in curiosity and admiration. She was much before them in her determination to gratify her curiosity and make the acquaintance of the new-comer, whose name she guessed, though no introduction had passed between them. She waited through two courses to see if Margaret Pullen would take the initiative, but finding that she addressed all her conversation to Captain Pullen, keeping her face, meanwhile, pertinaciously turned from the party sitting opposite to her, she determined to force her hand.

“Mrs. Pullen!” she cried, in her coarse voice, “when are you going to introduce me to your handsome friend?”

Margaret coloured uneasily and murmured,

“My brother-in-law, Captain Pullen—Madame Gobelli.”

“Very glad to see you, Captain,” said the Baroness, as Ralph bowed to her in his most approved fashion, “your sister thought she’d keep you all to ’erself, I suppose! But the young ladies of Heyst would soon make mincemeat of Mrs. Pullen if she tried that little game on them. We ’aven’t got too many good-looking young men ’ereabouts, I can tell you. Are you going to stay long?”

Captain Pullen murmured something about “uncertain” and “not being quite sure”, whilst the Baroness regarded him full in the face with a broad smile on her own. She always had a keen eye for a handsome young man!

“Ah! you’ll stay as long as it suits your purpose, won’t you? I expect you ’ave your own little game to play, same as most of us! And it’s a pretty little game, too, isn’t it, especially when a fellow’s young and good-looking and ’as the chink-a-chink, eh?”

“I fancy I know some of your brother officers, Mr. Naggett, and Lord Menzies, they belong to the Rangers, don’t they?” continued Madame Gobelli, “Prince Adalbert of Waxsquiemer used to bring ’em to the Red ’Ouse! By the way I ’aven’t introduced you to my ’usband, Baron Gobelli! Gustave, this is Captain Ralph Pullen, the Colonel’s brother, you know. You must ’ave a talk with ’im after dinner! You two would ’it it off first-rate together! Gustave’s in the boot trade, you know, Captain Pullen! We trade under the name of Fantaisie et Cie! The best boots and shoes in London, and the largest manufactory, I give you my word! You should get your boots from us. I know you dandy officers are awfully particular about your tootsies. If you’ll come and see me in London, I’ll take you over the manufactory, and give you a pair. You’ll never buy any others, once you’ve tried ’em!”

Ralph Pullen bowed again, and said he felt certain that Madame was right and he looked forward to the fulfilment of her promise with the keenest anticipation.

Harriet Brandt meanwhile, sitting almost opposite to the stranger, was regarding him from under the thick lashes of her slumbrous eyes, like a lynx watching its prey. She had never seen so good-looking and aristocratic a young man before. His crisp golden hair and drooping moustaches, his fair complexion, blue eyes and chiselled features, were a revelation to her. Would the Princes whom Madame Gobelli had promised she should meet at her house, be anything like him, she wondered—could they be as handsome, as perfectly dressed, as fashionable, as completely at their ease, as the man before her? Every other moment, she was stealing a veiled glance at him—and Captain Pullen was quite aware of the fact. What young man, or woman, is not aware when they are being furtively admired? Ralph Pullen was one of the most conceited of his sex, which is not saying a little—he was accomblé with female attentions wherever he went, yet he was not blasé with them, so long as he was not called upon to reciprocate in kind. Each time that Harriet’s magnetic gaze sought his face, his eyes by some mystical chance were lifted to meet it, and though all four lids were modestly dropped again, their owners did not forget the effect their encounter had left behind it.

“’Ave you been round Heyst yet, Captain Pullen,” vociferated Madame Gobelli, “and met the Procession? I never saw such rubbish in my life. I laughed fit to burst myself! A lot of children rigged out in blue and white, carrying a doll on a stick, and a crowd of fools following and singing ’ymns. Call that Religion? It’s all tommy rot. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs. Pullen?”

“I cannot say that I do, Madame! I have been taught to respect every religion that is followed with sincerity, whether I agree with its doctrine or not. Besides, I thought the procession you allude to a very pretty sight. Some of the children with their fair hair and wreaths of flowers looked like little angels!”

“O! you’re an ’umbug!” exclaimed the Baroness, “you say that just to please these Papists. Not that I wouldn’t just as soon be a Papist as a Protestant, but I ’ate cant. I wouldn’t ’ave Bobby ’ere, brought up in any religion. Let ’im choose for ’imself when ’e’s a man, I said, but no cant, no ’umbug! I ’ad a governess for ’im once, a dirty little sneak, who thought she’d get the better of me, so she made the boy kneel down each night and say, ‘God bless father and mother and all kind friends, and God bless my enemies.’ I came on ’em one evening and I ’ad ’im up on his legs in a moment. I won’t ’ave it, Bobby, I said, I won’t ’ave you telling lies for anyone, and I made ’im repeat after me, ‘God bless father and mother and all kind friends, and d—n my enemies.’ The governess was so angry with me, that she gave warning, he! he! he! But I ’ad my way, and Bobby ’asn’t said a prayer since, ’ave you, Bobby?”

“Sometimes, Mamma!” replied the lad in a low voice. Margaret Pullen’s kind eyes sought his at once with an encouraging smile.

“Well! you’d better not let me ’ear you, or I’ll give you ‘what for’. I ’ate ’umbug, don’t you, Captain Pullen?”

“Unreservedly, Madame!” replied Ralph in a stifled voice and with an inflamed countenance. He had been trying to conceal his amusement for some time past, greatly to the disgust of Miss Leyton, who would have had him pass by his opposite neighbour’s remarks in silent contempt, and the effort had been rather trying. As he spoke, his eyes sought those of Harriet Brandt again, and discovered the sympathy with his distress, lurking in them, coupled with a very evident look of admiration for himself. He looked at her back again—only one look, but it spoke volumes! Captain Pullen had never given such a glance at his fiancée, nor received one from her! It is problematical if Elinor Leyton could make a telegraph of her calm brown eyes—if her soul (if indeed she had in that sense a soul at all) ever pierced the bounds of its dwelling-place to look through its windows. As the dessert appeared, Margaret whispered to her brother-in-law,

“If we do not make our escape now, we may not get rid of her all the evening,” at which hint he rose from table, and the trio left the salle à manger together. As Margaret descended again, equipped for their evening stroll, she perceived Harriet Brandt in the corridor also ready, and waiting apparently for her. She took her aside at once.

“I cannot ask you to join us in our walk this evening, Miss Brandt,” she said, “because, as it is the first day of my brother’s arrival, we shall naturally have many family topics to discuss together!”

For the first time since their acquaintance, she observed a sullen look creep over Harriet Brandt’s features.

“I am going to walk with the Baron and Baroness, thank you all the same!” she replied to Margaret’s remark, and turning on her heel, she re-entered her room. Margaret did not believe her statement, but she was glad she had had the courage to warn her—she knew it would have greatly annoyed Elinor if the girl she detested had accompanied them on that first evening. The walk proved after all to be a very ordinary one. They paraded up and down the Digue, until they were tired and then they sat down on green chairs and listened to the orchestra whilst Ralph smoked his cigarettes. Elinor was looking her best. She was pleased and mildly excited—her costume became her—and she was presumably enjoying herself, but as far as her joy in Captain Pullen went, she might have been walking with her father or her brother. The conscious looks that had passed between him and Harriet Brandt were utterly wanting.

They began by talking of home, of Elinor’s family, and the last news that Margaret had received from Arthur—and then went on to discuss the visitors to the Hotel. Miss Leyton waxed loud in her denunciation of the Baroness and her familiar vulgarity—she deplored the ill fate that had placed them in such close proximity at the table d’hôte, and hoped that Ralph would not hesitate to change his seat if the annoyance became too great. She had warned him, she said, of what he might expect by joining them at Heyst.

“My dear girl,” he replied, “pray don’t distress yourself! In the first place I know a great deal more about foreign hotels than you do, and knew exactly what I might expect to encounter, and in the second, I don’t mind it in the least—in fact, I like it, it amuses me, I think the Baroness is quite a character, and look forward to cultivating her acquaintance with the keenest anticipations.”

“O! don’t, Ralph, pray don’t!” exclaimed Miss Leyton, fastidiously, “the woman is beneath contempt! I should be exceedingly annoyed if you permitted her to get at all intimate with you.”

“Why not, if it amuses him?” demanded Margaret, laughing, “for my part, I agree with Ralph, that her very vulgarity makes her most amusing as a change, and it is not as if we were likely to be thrown in her way when we return to England!”

“She is a rara avis,” cried Captain Pullen enthusiastically, “she certainly must know some good people if men like Naggett and Menzies have been at her house, and yet the way she advertises her boots and shoes is too delicious! O! dear yes! I cannot consent to cut the Baroness Gobelli! I am half in love with her already!”

Elinor Leyton made a gesture of disgust.

“And you—who are considered to be one of the most select and fastidious men in Town,” she said, “I wonder at you!”

Then he made a bad matter worse, by saying,

“By the way, Margaret, who was that beautiful girl who sat on the opposite side of the table?”

“The what,” exclaimed Elinor Leyton, ungrammatically, as she turned round upon the Digue and confronted him.

“He means Miss Brandt!” interposed Margaret, hastily, “many people think that she is handsome!”

“No one could think otherwise,” responded Ralph. “Is she Spanish?”

“O! no; her parents were English. She comes from Jamaica!”

“Ah! a drop of Creole blood in her then, I daresay! You never see such eyes in an English face!”

“What’s the matter with her eyes?” asked Elinor sharply.

“They’re very large and dark, you know, Elinor!” said Mrs. Pullen, observing the cloud which was settling down upon the girl’s face, “but it is not everybody who admires dark eyes, or you and I would come off badly!”

“Well, with all due deference to you, my fair sister-in-law,” replied Ralph, with the stupidity of a selfish man who never knows when he is wounding his hearers, “most people give the preference to dark eyes in women. Anyway Miss Brandt (if that is her name) is a beauty and no mistake!”

“I can’t say that I admire your taste,” said Elinor, “and I sincerely hope that Miss Brandt will not force her company upon us whilst you are here. Margaret and I have suffered more than enough already in that respect! She is only half educated and knows nothing of the world, and is altogether a most uninteresting companion. I dislike her exceedingly!”

“Ah! don’t forget her singing!” cried Margaret, unwittingly.

“Does she sing?” demanded the Captain.

“Yes! and wonderfully well for an amateur! She plays the mandoline also. I think Elinor is a little hard on her! Of course she is very young and unformed, but she has only just come out of a convent where she has been educated for the last ten years. What can you expect of a girl who has never been out in Society? I know that she is very good-natured, and has waited on baby as if she had been her servant!”

“Don’t you think we have had about enough of Miss Harriet Brandt?” said Elinor, “I want to hear what Ralph thinks of Heyst, or if he advises our going on to Ostende. I believe Ostende is much gayer and brighter than Heyst!”

“But we must wait now till Doctor Phillips joins us,” interposed Margaret.

“He could come after us, if Ralph preferred Ostende or Blankenburghe,” said Elinor eagerly.

“My dear ladies,” exclaimed Captain Pullen, “allow me to form an opinion of Heyst first, and then we will talk about other places. This seems pleasant enough in all conscience to me now!”

“O! you two are bound to think any place pleasant,” laughed Margaret, “but I think I must go in to my baby! I do not feel easy to be away from her too long, now that she is ailing. But there is no need for you to come in, Elinor! It is only just nine o’clock!”

“I would rather accompany you,” replied Miss Leyton, primly.

“No! no! Elinor, stay with me! If you are tired we can sit in the balcony. I have seen nothing of you yet!” remonstrated her lover.

She consented to sit in the balcony with him for a few minutes, but she would not permit his chair to be placed too close to hers.

“The waiters pass backward and forward,” she said, “and what would they think?”

“The deuce take what they think,” replied Captain Pullen, “I haven’t seen you for two months, and you keep me at arms’ length as if I should poison you! What do you suppose a man is made of?”

“My dear Ralph, you know it is nothing of the kind, but it is quite impossible that we can sit side by side like a pair of turtle doves in a public Hotel like this!”

“Let us go up to your room then?”

“To my bedroom?” she ejaculated with horror.

“To Margaret’s room then! she won’t be so prudish, I’m sure! Anywhere where I can speak to you alone!”

“The nurse will be in Margaret’s room, with little Ethel!”

“Hang it all, then, come for another walk! Let us go away from the town, out on those sand hills. I’m sure no one will see us there!”

“Dear Ralph, you must be reasonable! If I were seen walking about Heyst alone with you at night, it would be all over the town to-morrow.”

“Let it be! Where’s the harm?”

“But I have kept our engagement most scrupulously secret! No one knows anything, but that you are Margaret’s brother-in-law! You don’t know how they gossip and chatter in a place like this. I could never consent to appear at the public table d’hôte again, if I thought that all those vulgarians had been discussing my most private affairs!”

“O! well! just as you choose!” replied Ralph Pullen discontentedly, “but I suppose you will not object to my taking another turn along the Digue before I go to bed! Here, garçon, bring me a chasse! Good-night, then, if you will not stay!”

“It is not that I will not—it is that I cannot, Ralph!” said Miss Leyton, as she gave him her hand. “Good-night! I hope you will find your room comfortable, and if it is fine to-morrow, we will have a nice walk in whichever direction you prefer!”

“And much good that will be!” grumbled the young man, as he lighted his cigarette and strolled out again upon the Digue.

As he stood for a moment looking out upon the sea, which was one mass of silvery ripples, he heard himself called by name. He looked up. The Gobellis had a private sitting-room facing the Digue on the ground floor, and the Baroness was leaning out of the open window, and beckoning to him.

“Won’t you come in and ’ave a whiskey and soda?” she asked. “The Baron ’as ’is own whiskey ’ere, real Scotch, none of your nasty Belgian stuff, ’alf spirits of wine and ’alf varnish! Come along! We’ve got a jolly little parlour, and my little friend ’Arriet Brandt shall sing to you! Unless you’re off on some lark of your own, eh?”

“No! indeed,” replied Ralph, “I was only wondering what I should do with myself for the next hour. Thank you so much! I’ll come with pleasure.”

And in another minute he was seated in the company of the Baron and Baroness and Harriet Brandt.

CHAPTER VI.

The day had heralded in the Bataille de Fleurs and all Heyst was en fête. The little furnished villas, hired for the season, were all built alike, with a balcony, on the ground floor, which was transformed into a veritable bower for the occasion. Villa Imperatrice vied with Villa Mentone and Villa Sebastien, as to which decoration should be the most beautiful and effective, and the result was a long line of arbours garlanded with every sort of blossom. From early morning, the occupants were busy, entwining their pillars with evergreens, interspersed with flags and knots of ribbon, whilst the balustrades were laden with growing flowers and the tables inside bore vases of severed blooms. One balcony was decorated with corn, poppies and bluets, whilst the next would display pink roses mixed with the delicate blue of the sea-nettle, and the third would be all yellow silk and white marguerites. The procession of charrettes, and the Bataille itself was not to commence till the afternoon, so the visitors crowded the sands as usual in the morning, leaving the temporary owners of the various villas, to toil for their gratification, during their absence. Margaret Pullen felt sad as she sat in the hotel balcony, watching the proceedings on each side of her. She had intended her baby’s perambulator to take part in the procession of charrettes, and had ordered a quantity of white field-lilies with which to decorate it. It was to be a veritable triumph—so she and Miss Leyton had decided between themselves—and she had fondly pictured how lovely little Ethel would look with her fluffy yellow hair, lying amongst the blossoms, but now baby was too languid and ill to be taken out of doors, and Margaret had given all the flowers to the little Montagues, who were trimming their mail-cart with them, in their own fashion. As she sat there, with a pensive, thoughtful look upon her face, Harriet Brandt, dressed in a costume of grass-cloth, with a broad-brimmed hat, nodding with poppies and green leaves, that wonderfully became her, on her head, entered the balcony with an eager, excited appearance.

“O! Mrs. Pullen! have you seen the Baroness?” she exclaimed. “We are going to bathe this morning. Aren’t you coming down to the sands?”

“No! Miss Brandt, not to-day. I am unhappy about my dear baby! I am sure you will be sorry to hear that she has been quite ill all night—so restless and feverish!”

“O! she’ll be all right directly her teeth come through!” replied Harriet indifferently, as her eyes scanned the scene before them. “There’s the Baroness! She’s beckoning to me! Good-bye!” and without a word of sympathy or comfort, she rushed away to join her friends.

“Like the way of the world!” thought Margaret, as she watched the girl skimming over the sands, “but somehow—I didn’t think she would be so heartless!”

Miss Leyton and her fiancé had strolled off after breakfast to take a walk, and Mrs. Pullen went back to her own room, and sat down quietly to needlework. She was becoming very anxious for Doctor Phillips’ arrival; had even written to England to ask him to hurry it if possible—for her infant, though not positively ill, rejected her food so often that she was palpably thinner and weaker.

After she had sat there for some time, she took up her field glasses, to survey the bathers on the beach. She had often done so before, when confined to the hotel—it afforded her amusement to watch their faces and antics. On the present occasion, she had no difficulty in distinguishing the form of the Baroness Gobelli, looking enormous as, clad in a most conspicuous bathing costume, she waddled from her machine into the water, loudly calling attention to her appearance, from all assembled on the sands, as she went. The Baron, looking little less comical, advanced to conduct his spouse down to the water, whilst after them flew a slight boyish figure in yellow, with a mane of dark hair hanging down her back, which Margaret immediately recognised as that of Harriet Brandt.

She was dancing about in the shallow water, shrieking whenever she made a false step, and clinging hold of the Baron’s hand, when Margaret saw another gentleman come up to them, and join in the ring. She turned the glasses upon him and saw to her amazement that it was her brother-in-law. Her first feeling was that of annoyance. There was nothing extraordinary or improper, in his joining the Baroness’s party—men and women bathed promiscuously in Heyst, and no one thought anything of it. But that Ralph should voluntarily mix himself up with the Gobellis, after Elinor’s particular request that he should keep aloof from them, was a much more serious matter. And by the way, that reminded her, where was Elinor the while? Margaret could not discern her anywhere upon the sands, and wondered if she had also been persuaded to bathe. She watched Captain Pullen, evidently trying to induce Miss Brandt to venture further into the water, holding out both hands for her protection,—she also saw her yield to his persuasion, and leaving go of her hold on the Herr Baron, trust herself entirely to the stranger’s care. Mrs. Pullen turned from the window with a sigh. She hoped there were not going to be any “ructions” between Ralph and Elinor—but she would not have liked her to see him at that moment. She bestowed a silent benediction, “not loud but deep” on the foreign fashion of promiscuous bathing, and walked across the corridor to her friend’s room, to see if she had returned to the Hotel. To her surprise, she found Miss Leyton dismantled of her walking attire, soberly seated at her table, writing letters.

“Why! Elinor,” she said, “I thought you were out with Ralph!”

The young lady was quite composed.

“So I was,” she answered, “until half an hour ago! But as he then expressed his determination to bathe, I left him to his own devices and came back to write my letters.”

“Would he not have preferred your waiting on the sands till he could join you again?”

“I did not ask him! I should think he would hardly care for me to watch him whilst bathing, and I am sure I should not consent to do so!”

“But everybody does it here, Elinor, and if you did not care to go down to the beach, you might have waited for him on the Digue.”

“My dear Margaret, I am not in the habit of dancing attendance upon men. It is their business to come after me! If Ralph is eager for another walk after his dip, he can easily call for me here!”

“True! and he can as easily go for his walk with any stray acquaintance he may pick up on the sands!”

“O! if he should prefer it, he is welcome to do so,” replied Elinor, resuming her scribbling.

“My dear Elinor, I don’t think you quite understand Ralph! He has been terribly spoilt, you know, and when men have been accustomed to attention they will take it wherever they can get it! He has come over here expressly to be with you, so I think you should give him every minute of your time. Men are fickle creatures, my dear! It will take some time yet to despoil them of the idea that women were made for their convenience.”

“I am afraid the man is not born yet for whose convenience I was made!”

“Well! you know the old saying: ‘Most women can catch a man, but it takes a clever woman to keep him.’ I don’t mean to insinuate that you are in any danger of losing Ralph, but I think he’s quite worth keeping, and, I believe, you think so too!”

“And I mean to keep him!” replied Miss Leyton, as she went on writing.

Margaret did not venture to give her any further hints, but returned to her own room, and took another look through her spyglass.

The bathers in whom she was interested had returned to their machines by this time, and presently emerged, “clothed and in their right minds,” Miss Brandt looking more attractive than before, with her long hair hanging down her back to dry. And then, that occurred which she had been anticipating. Captain Pullen, having taken a survey of the beach, and seeing none of his own party there, climbed with Harriet Brandt to where they were high and dry above the tide, and threw himself down on the hot, loose sand by her side, whilst the Baron and Baroness with a laughing injunction to the two young people, to take care of themselves, toiled up to the Digue and walked off in another direction.

When they all met at déjeuner, she attacked her brother-in-law on the subject.

“Have you been bathing all this while?” she said to him, “you must have stayed very long in the water!”

“O! dear no!” he replied, “I wasn’t in above a quarter of an hour!”

“And what have you been doing since?”

“Strolling about, looking for you and Elinor!” said Captain Pullen. “Why the dickens didn’t you come out this lovely morning?”

“I could not leave baby!” cried Margaret shortly.

“And I was writing,” chimed in Elinor.

“Very well, ladies, if you prefer your own company to mine, of course I have nothing to say against it! But I suppose you are not going to shut yourselves up this afternoon!”

“O! no. It is a public duty to attend the Bataille de Fleurs. Have you bought any confetti, Ralph?”

“I have! Miss Brandt was good enough to show me where to get them, and we are well provided. There is to be a race between lady jockeys at the end of the Digue too, I perceive!”

“What, with horses?”

“I conclude so. I see they have railed in a portion of ground for the purpose,” replied Captain Pullen.

“’Ow could they race without ’orses?” called out the Baroness.

Harriet Brandt did not join in the conversation, but she was gazing all the while at Ralph Pullen—not furtively as she had done the day before, but openly, and unabashedly, as though she held a proprietary right in him. Margaret noticed her manner at once and interpreted it aright, but Miss Leyton, true to her principles, never raised her eyes in her direction and ignored everything that came from that side of the table.

Mrs. Pullen was annoyed; she knew how angry Elinor would be if she intercepted any telegraphic communication between her lover and Miss Brandt; and she rose from the table as soon as possible, in order to avert such a catastrophe. She had never considered her brother-in-law a very warm wooer, and she fancied that his manner towards Miss Leyton was more indifferent than usual. She took one turn with them along the Digue to admire the flower-bedecked villas, which were in full beauty, and then returned to her nursery, glad of an excuse to leave them together, and give Elinor a chance of becoming more cordial and affectionate to Ralph, than she had yet appeared to be. The lovers had not been alone long, however, before they were waylaid, to the intense disgust of Elinor, by Harriet Brandt and her friend, Olga Brimont.

Still further to her annoyance, Captain Pullen seemed almost to welcome the impertinent interference of the two girls, who could scarcely have had the audacity to join their company, unless he had invited them to do so.

“The charrettes are just about to start!” exclaimed Harriet. “O! they are lovely, and such dear little children! I am so glad that the Bataille de Fleurs takes place to-day, because my friend’s brother, Alfred Brimont, is coming to take her to Brussels the day after to-morrow!”

“Brussels is a jolly place. Mademoiselle Brimont will enjoy herself there,” said Ralph. “There are theatres, and balls and picture-galleries, and every pleasure that a young lady’s heart can desire!”

“Have you been to Brussels?” asked Harriet.

“Yes! when I was a nasty little boy in jacket and trousers. I was placed at Mr. Jackson’s English school there, in order that I might learn French, but I’m afraid that was the last thing I acquired. The Jackson boys were known all over the town for the greatest nuisances in it!”

“What did you do?”

“What did we not do? We tore up and down the rue Montagne de la Cour at all hours of the day, shouting and screaming and getting into scrapes. We ran up bills at the shops which we had no money to pay—we appeared at every place of amusement—and we made love to all the school-girls, till we had become a terror to the school-mistresses.”

“What naughty boys!” remarked Miss Brandt, with a side glance at Miss Leyton. She did not like to say all she thought before this very stiff and proper young English lady. “But Captain Pullen,” she continued, “where are the confetti? Have you forgotten them? Shall I go and buy some more?”

“No! no! my pockets are stuffed with them,” he said, producing two bags, of which he handed Harriet one. Her thanks were conveyed by throwing a large handful of tiny pieces of blue and white and pink paper (which do duty for the more dangerous chalk sugar-plums) at him and which covered his tweed suit and sprinkled his fair hair and moustaches. He returned the compliment by flying after her retreating figure, and liberally showering confetti upon her.

“O! Ralph! I do hope you are not going to engage in this horse-play,” exclaimed Elinor Leyton, “because if so I would rather return to the Hotel. Surely, we may leave such vulgarities to the common people, and—Miss Harriet Brandt!”

“What nonsense!” he replied. “It’s evident you’ve never been in Rome during the Carnival! Why, everyone does it! It’s the national custom. If you imagine I’m going to stand by, like a British tourist and stare at everything, without joining in the fun, you’re very much mistaken!”

“But is it fun?” questioned Miss Leyton.

“To me it is! Here goes!” he cried, as he threw a handful of paper into the face of a passing stranger, who gave him as good as she had got, in return.

“I call it low—positively vulgar,” said Miss Leyton, “to behave so familiarly with people one has never seen before—of whose antecedents one knows nothing! I should be very much surprised if the mob behaved in such a manner towards me. Oh!”

The exclamation was induced by the action of some young épicier, or hotel garçon, who threw a mass of confetti into her face with such violence as almost for the moment to blind her.

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Ralph Pullen with his healthy British lungs, as he saw her outraged feelings depicted in her countenance.

“I thought you’d get it before long!” he said, as she attempted to brush the offending paper off her mantle.

“It has not altered my opinion of the indecency of the custom!” she replied.

“Never mind!” he returned soothingly. “Here come the charrettes.”

They were really a charming sight. On one cart was drawn a boat, with little children dressed as fishermen and fisherwomen—another represented a harvest-field, with the tiny haymakers and reapers—whilst a third was piled with wool to represent snow, on the top of which were seated three little girls attired as Esquimaux. The mail-carts, and perambulators belonging to the visitors to Heyst were also well represented, and beautifully trimmed with flowers. The first prize was embowered in lilies and white roses, whilst its tiny inmate was seated in state as the Goddess Flora, with a wreath twined in her golden curls. The second was taken by a gallant Neapolitan fisherman of about four years old, who wheeled a mail cart of pink roses, in which sat his little sisters, dressed as angels with large white wings. The third was a wheel-barrow hidden in moss and narcissi, on which reposed a Sleeping Beauty robed in white tissue, with a coronal of forget-me-nots.

Harriet Brandt fell into ecstasies over everything she saw. When pleased and surprised, she expressed herself more like a child than a young woman, and became extravagant and ungovernable. She tried to kiss each baby that took part in the procession, and thrust coins into their chubby hands to buy bonbons and confetti with. Captain Pullen thought her conduct most natural and unaffected; but Miss Leyton insisted that it was all put on for effect. Olga Brimont tried to put in a good word for her friend.

“Harriet is very fond of children,” she said, “but she has never seen any—there were no children at the Convent under ten years of age, so she does not know how to make enough of them when she meets them. She wants to kiss every one. Sometimes, I tell her, I think she would like to eat them. But she only means to be kind!”

“I am sure of that!” said Captain Pullen.

“But she should be told,” interposed Elinor, “that it is not the custom in civilised countries for strangers to kiss every child they meet, any more than it is to speak before being introduced, or to bestow their company where it is not desired. Miss Brandt has a great deal to learn in that respect before she can enter English Society!”

As is often the case when a woman becomes unjust in abusing another, Miss Leyton made Captain Pullen say more to cover her discourtesy, than, in other circumstances, he would have done.

“Miss Brandt,” he said slowly, “is so beautiful, that she will have a great deal forgiven her, that would not be overlooked in a plainer woman.”

“That may be your opinion, but it is not mine,” replied Miss Leyton.

Her tone was so acid, that it sent him flying from her side, to battle with his confetti against the tribe of Montagues, who fortunately for the peace of all parties, joined their forces to theirs, and after some time spent on the Digue, they returned, a large party, to the Hotel.

It was not until they had sat down to dinner, that they remembered they had never been to see the lady jockey race.

“He! he! he!” laughed Madame Gobelli, “but I did, and you lost something, I can tell you! We ’ad great difficulty to get seats, but when we did, it was worth it, wasn’t it, Gustave?”

“You said so, mein tear!” replied the Baron, gravely.

“And you thought so, you old rascal! don’t you tell me! I saw your wicked eyes glozing at the gals in their breeches and boots! There weren’t any ’orses, after all, Captain Pullen, but sixteen gals with different-coloured jackets on and top boots and tight white breeches—such a sight you never saw! Gustave ’ere did ’ave a treat! As for Bobby, when I found we couldn’t get out again, because of the crowd, I tied my ’andkerchief over ’is eyes, and made him put ’is ’ead in my lap!”

“Dear! dear!” cried Ralph, laughing, “was it as bad as that, Madame?”

“Bad! my dear boy! It was as bad as it could be! It’s a mercy you weren’t there, or we shouldn’t ’ave seen you ’ome again so soon! There were the sixteen gals, with their tight breeches and their short racing jackets, and a fat fellow dressed like a huntsman whipping ’em round and round the ring, as if they were so much cattle! You should ’ave seen them ’op, when he touched ’em up with the lash of ’is whip. I expect they’ve never ’ad such a tingling since the time their mothers smacked ’em! There was a little fat one, there! I wish you could ’ave seen ’er, when ’e whipped ’er to make ’er ’urry! It was comical! She ’opped like a kangaroo!”

“And what was the upshot of it all? Who won?” asked Ralph.

“O! I don’t know! I got Gustave out as soon as I could! I wasn’t going to let ’im spend the whole afternoon, watching those gals ’opping. There were ’is eyes goggling out of ’is ’ead, and his lips licking each other, as if ’e was sucking a sugar-stick—”

“Mein tear! mein tear!” interposed the unfortunate Baron.

“You go on with your dinner, Gustave, and leave me alone! I saw you! And no more lady jockey races do you attend, whilst we’re in this Popish country. They ain’t good for you.”

“I’m very thankful that I have been saved such a dangerous experiment,” said Captain Pullen, “though if I thought that you would tie your handkerchief over my eyes, and put my head in your lap, Madame, I should feel tempted to try it as soon as dinner is over!”

“Go along with you, you bad boy!” chuckled the Baroness, “there’s something else to see this evening! They are going to ’ave a procession of lanterns as soon as it’s dark!”

“And it is to stop in front of every hotel,” added Harriet, “and the landlords are going to distribute bonbons and gâteaux amongst the lantern-bearers.”

“O! we must not miss that on any account!” replied Captain Pullen, addressing himself to her in reply.

Margaret and Elinor thought, when the time came, that they should be able to see the procession of lanterns just as well from the balcony as when mingled with the crowd, so they brought their work and books down there, and sat with Ralph, drinking coffee and conversing of all that had occurred. The Baroness had disappeared, and Harriet Brandt had apparently gone with her—a fact for which both ladies were inwardly thankful.

Presently, as the dusk fell, the procession of lanterns could be seen wending its way from the further end of the Digue. It was a very pretty and fantastical sight. The bearers were not only children—many grown men and women took part in it, and the devices into which the Chinese lanterns had been formed were quaint and clever. Some held a ring around them, as milkmaids carry their pails—others held crosses and banners designed in tiny lanterns, far above their heads. One, which could be seen topping all the rest, was poised like a skipping-rope over the bearer’s shoulders, whilst the coloured lanterns swung inside it, like a row of bells. The members of the procession shouted, or sang, or danced, or walked steadily, as suited their temperaments, and came along, a merry crowd, up and down the Digue, stopping at the various hotels for largesse in the shape of cakes and sugar-plums.

Ralph Pullen found his eyes wandering more than once in the direction of the Baroness’s sitting-room, to see if he could catch a glimpse of her or her protégée (as Harriet Brandt seemed to be now universally acknowledged to be), but he heard no sound, nor caught a glimpse of them, and concluded in consequence that they had left the hotel again.

“Whoever is carrying that skipping-rope of lanterns seems to be in a merry mood,” observed Margaret after a while, “for it is jumping up and down in the most extravagant manner! She must be dancing! Do look, Elinor!”

“I see! I suppose this sort of childish performance amuses a childish people, but for my own part, I think once of it is quite enough, and am thankful that we are not called upon to admire it in England!”

“O! I think it is rather interesting,” remarked Margaret, “I only wish my dear baby had been well enough to enjoy it! How she would have screamed and cooed at those bright-coloured lanterns! But when I tried to attract her attention to them just now, she only whined to be put into her cot again. How thankful I shall be to see dear Doctor Phillips to-morrow!”

The procession had reached the front of the Hotel by this time, and halted there for refreshment. The waiters, Jules and Phillippe and Henri, appeared with plates of dessert and cakes and threw them indiscriminately amongst the people. One of the foremost to jump and scramble to catch the falling sweetmeats was the girl who carried the lantern-skipping rope above her head, and in whom Ralph Pullen, to his astonishment, recognised Harriet Brandt. There she was, fantastically dressed in a white frock, and a broad yellow sash, with her magnificent hair loose and wreathed with scarlet flowers. She looked amazingly handsome, like a Bacchante, and her appearance and air of abandon, sent the young man’s blood into his face and up to the roots of his fair hair.

“Surely!” exclaimed Margaret, “that is never Miss Brandt!”

“Yes! it is,” cried Harriet, “I’m having the most awful fun! Why don’t you come too? I’ve danced the whole way up the Digue, and it is so warm! I wish the waiters would give us something to drink! I’ve eaten so many bonbons I feel quite sick!”

“What will you take, Miss Brandt?” asked Captain Pullen eagerly, “limonade or soda water?”

“A limonade, please! You are good!” she replied, as he handed her the tumbler over the balcony balustrades. “Come along and dance with me!”

“I cannot! I am with my sister and Miss Leyton!” he replied.

“O! pray do not let us prevent you,” said Elinor in her coldest voice; “Margaret was just going upstairs and I am quite ready to accompany her!”

“No, no, Elinor,” whispered Mrs. Pullen with a shake of her head, “stay here, and keep Ralph company!”

“But it is nearly ten o’clock,” replied Miss Leyton, consulting her watch, “and I have been on my feet all day! and feel quite ready for bed. Good-night, Ralph!” she continued, offering him her hand.

“Well! if you two are really going to bed, I shall go too,” said Captain Pullen, rising, “for there will be nothing for me to do here after you’re gone!”

“Not even to follow the procession?” suggested Miss Leyton, with a smile.

“Don’t talk nonsense!” he rejoined crossly. “Am I the sort of man to go bobbing up and down the Digue amongst a parcel of children?”

He shook hands with them both, and walked away rather sulkily to his own quarter of the hotel. But he did not go to bed. He waited until some fifteen minutes had elapsed, and then telling himself that it was impossible to sleep at that hour, and that if Elinor chose to behave like a bear, it was not his fault, he came downstairs again and sauntered out on the sea front.

It was very lonely there at that moment. The procession had turned and gone down to the other end again, where its lights and banners could be seen, waving about in the still summer air.

“Why shouldn’t the girl jump about and enjoy herself if she chooses,” thought Ralph Pullen. “Elinor makes no allowances for condition or age, but would have everyone as prim and old-maidish as herself. I declare she gets worse each time I see her! A nice sort of wife she will make if this kind of thing goes on! But by Jingo! if we are ever married, I’ll take her prudery out of her, and make her—what? The woman who commences by pursing her mouth up at everything, ends by opening it wider than anybody else! There’s twice as much harm in a prude as in one of these frank open-hearted girls, whose eyes tell you what they’re thinking of, the first time you see them!”

He had been strolling down the Digue as he pondered thus, and now found himself meeting the procession again.

“Come and dance with me,” cried Harriet Brandt, who, apparently as fresh as ever, was still waving her branch of lanterns to the measure of her steps. He took her hand and tried to stop her.

“Haven’t you had about enough of this?” he said, “I’m sure you must be tired. Here’s a little boy without a lantern! Give him yours to hold, and come for a little walk with me!”

The touch of his cool hand upon her heated palm, seemed to rouse all the animal in Harriet Brandt’s blood. Her hand, very slight and lissom, clung to his with a force of which he had not thought it capable, and he felt it trembling in his clasp.

“Come!” he repeated coaxingly, “you mustn’t dance any more or you will overtire yourself! Come with me and get cool and rest!”

She threw her branch of lanterns to the boy beside her impetuously.

“Here!” she cried, “take them! I don’t want them any more! And take me away,” she continued to Ralph, but without letting go of his hand. “You are right! I want—I want—rest!”

Her slight figure swayed towards him as he led her out of the crowd, and across a narrow street, to where the road ran behind all the houses and hotels, and was dark and empty and void. The din of the voices, and the trampling of feet, and the echo of the songs still reached them, but they could see nothing—the world was on the Digue, and they were in the dusk and quietude together—and alone.

Ralph felt the slight form beside him lean upon his shoulder till their faces almost touched. He threw his arm about her waist. Her hot breath fanned his cheek.

“Kiss me!” she murmured in a dreamy voice.

Captain Pullen was not slow to accept the invitation so confidingly extended. What Englishman would be? He turned his face to Harriet Brandt’s, and her full red lips met his own, in a long-drawn kiss, that seemed to sap his vitality. As he raised his head again, he felt faint and sick, but quickly recovering himself, he gave her a second kiss more passionate, if possible, than the first. Then the following whispered conversation ensued between them.

“Do you know,” he commenced, with his head close to hers, “that you are the very jolliest little girl that I have ever met!”

“And you—you are the man I have dreamt of, but never seen till now!”

“How is that? Am I so different from the rest of my sex?”

“Very—very different! So strong and brave and beautiful!”

“Dear little girl! And so you really like me?”

“I love you,” said Harriet feverishly, “I loved you the first minute we met.”

“And I love you! You’re awfully sweet and pretty, you know!”

“Do you really think so? What would Mrs. Pullen say if she heard you?”

“Mrs. Pullen is not the keeper of my conscience. But she must not hear it.”

“O! no! nor Miss Leyton either!”

“Most certainly not Miss Leyton. She is a terrible prude! She would be awfully shocked!”

“It must be a secret,—just between you and me!” murmured the girl.

“Just so! A sweet little secret, all our own, and nobody else’s!”

And then the fair head and the dark one came again in juxtaposition, and the rest was lost in—Silence!

CHAPTER VII.

Doctor Phillips had not been in the Hôtel Lion d’Or five minutes before Margaret Pullen took him upstairs to see her baby. She was becoming terribly anxious about her. They encountered Captain Ralph Pullen on the staircase.

“Hullo! young man, and what have you been doing to yourself?” exclaimed the doctor.

He was certainly looking ill. His face was chalky white, and his eyes seemed to have lost their brightness and colour.

“Been up racketing late at night?” continued Doctor Phillips. “What is Miss Leyton about, not to look after you better?”

“No, indeed, Doctor,” replied the young man with a smile, “I am sure my sister-in-law will testify to the good hours I have kept since here. But I have a headache this morning—a rather bad one,” he added, with his hand to the nape of his neck.

“Perhaps this place doesn’t agree with you—it was always rather famous for its smells, if I remember aright! However, I am going to see Miss Ethel Pullen now, and when I have finished with her, I will look after you!”

“No, thank you, Doctor,” said Ralph laughing, as he descended the stairs. “None of your nostrums for me! Keep them for the baby!”

“He is not looking well,” observed Doctor Phillips to Margaret, as they walked on together.

“I don’t think he is, now you point it out to me, but I have not noticed it before,” replied Margaret. “I am sure he has been living quietly enough whilst here!”

The infant was lying as she had now done for several days past—quite tranquil and free from pain, but inert and half asleep. The doctor raised her eyelids and examined her eyeballs—felt her pulse and listened to her heart—but he did not seem to be satisfied.

“What has this child been having?” he asked abruptly.

“Having, Doctor? Why! nothing, of course, but her milk, and I have always that from the same cow!”

“No opium—no soothing syrup, nor quackeries of any kind?”

“Certainly not! You know how often you have warned me against anything of the sort!”

“And no one has had the charge of her, except you and the nurse here? You can both swear she has never been tampered with?”

“O! I think so, certainly, yes! Baby has never been from under the eye of one or the other of us. A young lady resident in the hotel—a Miss Brandt—has often nursed her and played with her, but one of us has always been there at the time.”

“A Miss—what did you say?” demanded the doctor, sharply.

“A Miss Brandt—a very good-natured girl, who is fond of children!”

“Very well then! I will go at once to the pharmacien’s, and get a prescription made up for your baby, and I hope that your anxiety may soon be relieved!”

“O! thank you, Doctor, so much!” exclaimed Margaret “I knew you would do her good, as soon as you saw her!”

But the doctor was not so sure of himself. He turned the case over and over in his mind as he walked to the chemist’s shop, wondering how such a state of exhaustion and collapse could have been brought about.

The baby had her first dose and the doctor had just time to wash and change his travelling suit before they all met at the dinner-table.

Here they found the party opposite augmented by the arrival of Monsieur Alfred Brimont, a young Brussels tradesman, who had come over to Heyst to conduct his sister home. He was trying to persuade Harriet Brandt to accompany Olga and stay a few days with them, but the girl—with a long look in the direction of Captain Pullen—shook her head determinedly.

“O! you might come, Harriet, just for a few days,” argued Olga, “now that the Bataille de Fleurs is over, there is nothing left to stay for in Heyst, and Alfred says that Brussels is such a beautiful place.”

“There are the theatres, and the Parc, and the Quinçonce, and Wauxhall!” said young Brimont, persuasively. “Mademoiselle would enjoy herself, I have no doubt!”

But Harriet still negatived the proposal.

“Why shouldn’t we make up a party and all go together,” suggested the Baroness, “me and the Baron and Bobby and ’Arriet? You would like it then, my dear, wouldn’t you?” she said to the girl, “and you really should see Brussels before we go ’ome! What do you say, Gustave? We’d go to the Hôtel de Saxe, and see everything! It wouldn’t take us more than a week or ten days.”

“Do as you like, mein tear,” acquiesced the Baron.

“And why shouldn’t you come with us, Captain?” continued Madame Gobelli to Ralph. “You don’t look quite the thing to me! A little change would do you good. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! ’Ave you been to Brussels?”

“I lived there for years, Madame, and know every part of it!” he replied.

“Come and renew your acquaintance then, and take me and ’Arriet about!! The Baron isn’t much good when it comes to sight-seeing, are you, Gustave? ’E likes ’is pipe and ’is slippers too well! But you’re young and spry! Well! is it a bargain?”

“I really could not decide in such a hurry,” said Ralph, with a glance at Margaret and Elinor, “but we might all go on to Brussels perhaps, a little later on.”

“I don’t think you must buoy up the hopes of the Baroness and Miss Brandt with that idea,” remarked Miss Leyton, coldly, “because I am sure that Mrs. Pullen has no intention of doing anything of the sort. If you wish to accompany Madame Gobelli’s party, you had better make your arrangements without any reference to us!”

“All right! If you prefer it, I will,” he answered in the same indifferent tone.

“Who is that young lady sitting opposite, with the dark eyes?” demanded Doctor Phillips of Mrs. Pullen.

“The same I spoke to you of, upstairs, as having been kind to baby—Miss Harriet Brandt!”

“I knew a Brandt once,” he answered. “Has she anything to do with the West Indies?”

“O! yes! she comes from Jamaica! She is an orphan, the daughter of Doctor Henry Brandt, and has been educated in the Ursuline Convent there! She is a young lady with an independent fortune, and considered to be quite a catch in Heyst!”

“And you and Miss Leyton are intimate with her?”

“She has attached herself very much to us since coming here. She has few friends, poor girl!”

“Will you introduce me?”

“Miss Brandt, my friend, Doctor Phillips, wishes for an introduction to you.”

The usual courtesies passed between them, and then the doctor said,

“I fancy I knew your father, Miss Brandt, when I was quartered in Jamaica with the Thirteenth Lances. Did he not live on the top of the Hill, on a plantation called Helvetia?”

“That was the name of our place,” replied Harriet, “but I left it when I was only eleven. My trustee, Mr. Trawler, lives there now!”

“Ah! Trawler the attorney! I have no doubt he made as much out of the property as he could squeeze.”

“Do you mean that he cheated me?” asked Harriet, naïvely.

“God forbid! my dear young lady. But he was a great crony of your father’s, and a d—d sharp lawyer, and those sort of gentry generally feather their own nest pretty well, in payment of their friendship.”

“He can’t do me any harm now,” said Harriet, “for I have my property in my own hands!”

“Quite right! quite right! that is, if you’re a business woman,” rejoined the doctor. “And are you travelling all by yourself?”

Harriet was about to answer in the affirmative, when the Baroness took the words out of her mouth.

“No, Sir, she ain’t! She came over with her friend, Mademoiselle Brimont, and now she’s under my chaperonage. She’s a deal too ’andsome, ain’t she? to be travelling about the world alone, with her money-bags under her arm. My name’s the Baroness Gobelli,—this is my ’usband, Baron Gustave Gobelli, and this is my little boy, Bobby Bates—by my first ’usband, you’ll understand—and when you return to London, if you like to come and see Miss Brandt at our ’ouse—the Red ’Ouse, ’Olloway, we shall be very pleased to see you!”

“I am sure, Madame, you are infinitely kind,” replied Doctor Phillips gravely.

“Not at all! You’ll meet no end of swells there, Prince Loris of Taxelmein, and Prince Adalbert of Waxsquiemer, and ’eaps of others. But all the same we’re in trade, the Baron and I—and we’re not ashamed of it either. We make boots and shoes! Our firm is Fantaisie et Cie, of Oxford Street, and though I say it, you won’t find better boots and shoes in all London than ours. No brown paper soles, and rotten uppers! Not a bit of it! It’s all genuine stuff with us. You can take any boot out of the shop and rip it to pieces, and prove what I say! The best materials, and the best workmen, that’s our principle, and it answers. We can’t make ’em fast enough!”

“I have no doubt of it,” again gravely responded the old doctor.

“Ah! you might send some of your patients to us, Doctor, and we’ll pay back by recommending you to our friends. Are you a Gout man? Prince Adalbert ’as the gout awfully! I’ve rubbed ’is feet with Elliman’s Embrocation, by the hour together, but nothing gives ’im relief! Now if you could cure ’im your fortune would be made! ’E says it’s all the English climate, but I say it’s over-eating, and ’e’d attend more to a medical man, if ’e told ’im to diet, than ’e will to me!”

“Doubtless, doubtless!” said the Doctor, in a dreamy manner. He seemed to be lost in a reverie, and Margaret had to touch his arm to remind him that the meal was concluded.

She wanted him to join the others in a promenade and see the beauties of Heyst, but he was strangely eager in declining it.

“No! no! let the youngsters go and enjoy themselves, but I want to speak to you, alone.”

“My dear doctor, you frighten me! Nothing about baby, I hope!”

“Not at all! Don’t be foolish! But I want to talk to you where we cannot be overheard.”

“I think we had better wait till the rest have dispersed then, and go down upon the sands. It is almost impossible to be private in a hotel like this!”

“All right! Get your hat and we will stroll off together.”

As soon as they were out of earshot, he commenced abruptly,

“It is about that Miss Brandt! You seem pretty intimate with her! You must stop it at once. You must have nothing more to do with her.”

Margaret’s eyes opened wide with distress.

“But, Doctor Phillips, for what reason? I don’t see how we could give her up now, unless we leave the place.”

“Then leave the place! You mustn’t know her, neither must Miss Leyton. She comes of a terrible parentage. No good can ever ensue of association with her.”

“You must tell me more than this, Doctor, if you wish me to follow your advice!”

“I will tell you all I know myself! Some twelve or thirteen years ago I was quartered in medical charge of the Thirteenth Lances, and stationed in Jamaica, where I knew of, rather than knew, the father of this girl, Henry Brandt. You called him a doctor—he was not worthy of the name. He was a scientist perhaps—a murderer certainly!”

“How horrible! Do you really mean it?”

“Listen to me! This man Brandt matriculated in the Swiss hospitals, whence he was expelled for having caused the death of more than one patient by trying his scientific experiments upon them. The Swiss laboratories are renowned for being the foremost in Vivisection and other branches of science that gratify the curiosity and harden the heart of man more than they confer any lasting benefit on humanity. Even there, Henry Brandt’s barbarity was considered to render him unfit for association with civilised practitioners, and he was expelled with ignominy. Having a private fortune he settled in Jamaica, and set up his laboratory there, and I would not shock your ears by detailing one hundredth part of the atrocities that were said to take place under his supervision, and in company of this man Trawler, whom the girl calls her trustee, and who is one of the greatest brutes unhung.”

“Are you not a little prejudiced, dear Doctor?”

“Not at all! If when you have heard all, you still say so, you are not the woman I have taken you for. Brandt did not confine his scientific investigations to the poor dumb creation. He was known to have decoyed natives into his Pandemonium, who were never heard of again, which raised, at last, the public feeling so much against him, that I am glad to say that his negroes revolted, and after having murdered him with appropriate atrocity, set fire to his house and burned it and all his property to the ground. Don’t look so shocked! I repeat that I am glad to say it, for he richly deserved his fate, and no torture could be too severe for one who spent his worthless life in torturing God’s helpless animals!”

“And his wife—” commenced Margaret.

“He had no wife! He was never married!”

“Never married! But this girl Harriet Brandt—”

“Has no more right to the name than you have! Henry Brandt was not the man to regard the laws, either of God or man. There was no reason why he should not have married—for that very cause, I suppose, he preferred to live in concubinage.”

“Poor Harriet! Poor child! And her mother, did you know her?”

“Don’t speak to me of her mother. She was not a woman, she was a fiend, a fitting match for Henry Brandt! To my mind she was a revolting creature. A fat, flabby half-caste, who hardly ever moved out of her chair but sat eating all day long, until the power to move had almost left her! I can see her now, with her sensual mouth, her greedy eyes, her low forehead and half-formed brain, and her lust for blood. It was said that the only thing which made her laugh, was to watch the dying agonies of the poor creatures her brutal protector slaughtered. But she thirsted for blood, she loved the sight and smell of it, she would taste it on the tip of her finger when it came in her way. Her servants had some story amongst themselves to account for this lust. They declared that when her slave mother was pregnant with her, she was bitten by a Vampire bat, which are formidable creatures in the West Indies, and are said to fan their victims to sleep with their enormous wings, whilst they suck their blood. Anyway the slave woman did not survive her delivery, and her fellows prophecied that the child would grow up to be a murderess. Which doubtless she was in heart, if not in deed!”

“What an awful description! And what became of her?”

“She was killed at the same time as Brandt, indeed the natives would have killed her in preference to him, had they been obliged to choose, for they attributed all the atrocities that went on in the laboratory to her influence. They said she was ‘Obeah’ which means diabolical witchcraft in their language. And doubtless their unfortunate child would have been slaughtered also, had not the overseer of the plantation carried her off to his cabin, and afterwards, when the disturbance was quelled, to the Convent, where, you say, she has been educated.”

“But terrible as all this is, dear Doctor, it is not the poor girl’s fault. Why should we give up her acquaintance for that?”

“My dear Margaret, are you so ignorant as not to see that a child born under such conditions cannot turn out well? The bastard of a man like Henry Brandt, cruel, dastardly, Godless, and a woman like her terrible mother, a sensual, self-loving, crafty and bloodthirsty half-caste—what do you expect their daughter to become? She may seem harmless enough at present, so does the tiger cub as it suckles its dam, but that which is bred in her will come out sooner or later, and curse those with whom she may be associated. I beg and pray of you, Margaret, not to let that girl come near you, or your child, any more. There is a curse upon her, and it will affect all within her influence!”

“You have made me feel very uncomfortable, Doctor,” replied Mrs. Pullen. “Of course if I had known all this previously, I would not have cultivated Miss Brandt’s acquaintance, and now I shall take your advice and drop her as soon as possible! There will be no difficulty with Miss Leyton, for she has had a strange dislike to the girl ever since we met, but she has certainly been very kind to my baby—”

“For Heaven’s sake don’t let her come near your baby any more!” cried Doctor Phillips, quickly.

“Certainly I will not, and perhaps it would be as well if we moved on to Ostende or Blankenburghe, as we have sometimes talked of doing. It would sever the acquaintance in the most effectual way!”

“By all means do so, particularly if the young lady does not go to Brussels, as that stout party was proposing at dinner time. What an extraordinary person she appears to be! Quite a character!”

“That is just what she is! But, Doctor, there is another thing I should like to speak to you about, concerning Miss Brandt, and I am sure I may trust you to receive it in the strictest confidence. It is regarding my brother-in-law, Ralph Pullen. I am rather afraid, from one or two things I have observed, that he likes Miss Brandt—O! I don’t mean anything particular, for (as you know) he is engaged to be married to Elinor Leyton and I don’t suspect him of wronging her, only—young men are rather headstrong you know and fond of their own way, and perhaps if you were to speak to Ralph—”

“Tell me plainly, has he been carrying on with this girl?”

“Not in the sense you would take it, Doctor, but he affects her company and that of the Gobellis a good deal. Miss Brandt sings beautifully, and Ralph loves music, but his action annoys Elinor, I can see that, and since you think we should break off the intimacy——”

“I consider it most imperatively necessary, for many reasons, and especially in the case of a susceptible young man like Captain Pullen. She has money, you say—”

“Fifteen hundred a year, so I am told!”

“And Miss Leyton has nothing, and Ralph only his pay! O! yes! you are quite right, such an acquaintanceship is dangerous for him. The sense of honour is not so strong now, as it was when I was a boy, and gold is a powerful bait with the rising generation. I will take an early opportunity of talking to Captain Pullen on the subject.”

“You will not wound his feelings, Doctor, nor betray me?”

“Trust me for doing neither! I shall speak from my own experience, as I have done to you. If he will not take my advice, you must get someone with more influence to caution him about it. I hardly know how to make my meaning clear to you, Margaret, but Miss Brandt is a dangerous acquaintance, for all of you. We medical men know the consequences of heredity, better than outsiders can do. A woman born in such circumstances—bred of sensuality, cruelty, and heartlessness—cannot in the order of things, be modest, kind, or sympathetic. And she probably carries unknown dangers in her train. Whatever her fascinations or her position may be, I beg of you to drop her at once and for ever!”

“Of course I will, but it seems hard upon her! She has seemed to crave so for affection and companionship.”

“As her mother craved for food and blood; as her father craved for inflicting needless agony on innocent creatures, and sneered meanwhile at their sufferings! I am afraid I should have little faith in Miss Brandt craving for anything, except the gratification of her own senses!”

They were seated on the lower step of the wooden flight that led from the Digue to the sands, so that whilst they could see what went on above them, they were concealed from view themselves.

Just then, Harriet Brandt’s beautiful voice, accompanied by the silvery strains of the mandoline, was heard to warble Gounod’s “Marguerite” from the open window of the Baroness’s sitting-room. Margaret glanced up. The apartment was brilliantly lighted—on the table were bottles of wine and spirits, with cakes and fruit, and Madame Gobelli’s bulky form might be seen leaning over the dishes. She had assembled quite a little party there that night. The two Brimonts were present, and Captain Pullen’s tall figure was distinctly visible under the lamplight. Harriet was seated on the sofa, and her full voice filled the atmosphere with melody.

“There’s something like a voice!” remarked the old doctor.

“That is the very girl we have been talking of!” replied Mrs. Pullen. “I told you she had a lovely voice, and was an accomplished musician.”

“Is that so?” said Doctor Phillips, “then she is still more dangerous than I imagined her to be! Those tones would be enough to drag any man down to perdition, especially if accompanied by such a nature as I cannot but believe she must have inherited from her progenitors!”

“And see, Doctor, there is Ralph,” continued Margaret, pointing out her brother-in-law! “I left him with Miss Leyton. He must have got rid of her by some means and crept up to the Gobellis. He cannot go for them. He is so refined, so fastidious with regard to people in general, that a woman like the Baroness must grate upon his feelings every time she opens her mouth, and the Baron never opens his at all. He can only frequent their company for the sake of Harriet Brandt! I have seen it for some time past and it has made me very uneasy.”

“He shall know everything about her to-morrow, and then if he will not hear reason—” Doctor Phillips shrugged his shoulders and said no more.

“But surely,” said his companion, “you do not think for a moment that Ralph could ever seriously contemplate breaking his engagement with Elinor Leyton for the sake of this girl! O! how angry Arthur would be if he suspected his brother could be guilty of such a thing—he, who considers that a man’s word should be his bond!”

“It is impossible to say, Margaret—I should not like to give an opinion on the subject. When young men are led away by their passions, they lose sight of everything else—and if this girl is anything like her mother, she must be an epitome of lust!”

“O! you will speak to Ralph as soon as ever you can,” cried Margaret, in a tone of distress. “You will put the matter as strongly before him as possible, will you not?”

“You may depend on my doing all I can, Margaret, but as there seems no likelihood of my being able to interview the young gentleman to-night, suppose you and I go to bed! I feel rather tired after my passage over, and you must want to go back to your baby!”

“Doctor,” said Margaret, in a timid voice, as they ascended the hotel staircase together, “you don’t think baby very ill, do you?”

“I think she requires a great deal of care, Margaret!”

“But she has always had that!”

“I don’t doubt it, but I can’t deny that there are symptoms about her case that I do not understand. She seems to have had all her strength drawn out of her. She is in the condition of a child who has been exercised and excited and hurried from place to place, far beyond what she is able to bear. But it may arise from internal causes. I shall be better able to judge to-morrow when my medicine has had its effect. Good-night, my dear, and don’t worry. Please God, we will have the little one all right again in a couple of days.”

But he only said the words out of compassion. In his own opinion, the infant was dying.

Meanwhile, Harriet having finished her songs, was leaning out of the window with Ralph Pullen by her side. She wore an open sleeve and as he placed his hand upon her bare arm, the girl thrilled from head to foot.

“And so you are determined not to go to Brussels,” he whispered in her ear.

“Why should I go? You will not be there! The Baroness wants to stay for a week! What would become of me all that time, moping after you?”

“Are you sure that you would mope? Monsieur Brimont is a nice young man, and seems quite ready to throw himself at your feet! Would he not do as well, pro tem?”

Harriet’s only answer was to cast her large eyes upwards to meet his own.

“Does that mean, ‘No’?” continued Captain Pullen. “Then how would it do, if I joined you there, after a couple of days? Would the Baroness be complaisant, do you think, and a little short-sighted, and let us go about together, and show each other the sights of the town?”

“O! I’m sure she would!” cried Harriet, all the blood in her body flying into her face, “she is so very kind to me! Madame Gobelli!” she continued, turning from the window to the light, “Captain Pullen says that if you will allow him to show us the lions of Brussels, he will come and join us there in a couple of days—”

“If I find I can manage it!” interposed Ralph, cautiously.

“Manage it! Why, of course you can manage it,” said the Baroness. “What’s to ’inder a young man like you doing as ’e chooses? You’re not tied to your sister’s apron-string, are you? Now mind! we shall ’old you to it, for I believe it’s the only thing that will make ’Arriet come, and I think a week in Brussels will do us all good! You’re not looking well yourself, you know, Captain Pullen! You’re as white as ashes this evening, and if I didn’t know you were such a good boy, I should say you’d been dissipating a bit lately! He! he! he!”

“The only dissipating I have indulged in, is basking in the sunshine of your eyes, Madame!” replied Ralph gallantly.

“That’s a good ’un!” retorted the Baroness, “it is more likely you’ve been looking too much in the eyes of my little friend ’ere. You’re a couple of foxes, that’s what you are, and I expect it would take all my time to be looking after you both! And so I suppose it’s settled, Miss ’Arriet, and you’ll come with us to Brussels after all!”

“Yes, Madame, if you’ll take charge of me!” said Miss Brandt.

“We’ll do that for a couple of days, and then we’ll give over charge. Are we to engage a room for you, Captain, at the Hôtel de Saxe?”

“I had better see after that myself, Madame, as the date of my coming is uncertain,” replied Ralph.

“But you will come!” whispered Harriet.

“Need you ask? Would I not run over the whole world, only to find myself by your side? Haven’t you taken the taste out of everything else for me, Harriet?”

CHAPTER VIII.

Doctor Phillips was a man of sixty, and a bachelor. He had never made any home ties for himself, and was therefore more interested in Margaret Pullen (whose father had been one of his dearest friends) than he might otherwise have been. He feared that a heavy trial lay before her and he was unwilling to see it aggravated by any misconduct on the part of her brother-in-law. He could see that the young man was (to say the least of it) not behaving fairly towards his fiancée, Elinor Leyton, and he was determined to open his eyes to the true state of affairs with regard to Harriet Brandt. He spent a sleepless night, his last visit to Margaret’s suffering child having strengthened his opinion as to her hopeless condition, and he lay awake wondering how he should break the news to the poor young mother. He rose with the intention of speaking to Ralph without delay, but he found it more difficult to get a word with him than he had anticipated. The Gobelli party had decided to start with the Brimonts that afternoon, and Captain Pullen stuck to them the entire morning, ostensibly to assist the Baroness in her preparations for departure, but in reality, as anyone could see, to linger by the side of Miss Brandt. Miss Leyton perceived her lover’s defalcation as plainly as the rest, but she was too proud to make a hint upon the subject, even to Margaret Pullen. She sat alone in the balcony, reading a book, and gave no sign of annoyance or discomfiture. But a close observer might have seen the trembling of her lip when she attempted to speak, and the fixed, white look upon her face, which betrayed her inward anxiety. It made Margaret’s kind heart ache to see her, and Dr. Phillips more indignant with Ralph Pullen than before.

The party for Brussels had arranged to travel by the three o’clock train, and at the appointed time the doctor was ready in the balcony to accompany them to the entrepôt. There were no cabs in Heyst, the station being in the town. Luggage was conveyed backwards and forwards in hand carts drawn by the porters, and travellers invariably walked to their destination. The Baroness appeared dressed for her journey, in an amazing gown of blue velvet, trimmed with rare Maltese lace, with a heavy mantle over it, and a small hat on her head, which made her round, flat, unmeaning face, look coarser than before. She used the Herr Baron as a walking-stick as usual, whilst Harriet Brandt, in a white frock and large hat shading her glowing eyes under a scarlet parasol, looked like a tropical bird skimming by her side, with Captain Pullen in close attendance, carrying a flimsy wrap in case she should require it before she reached her journey’s end. The Brimonts, following in the rear, were of no account beside their more brilliant and important friends.

Ralph Pullen did not look pleased when he saw Doctor Phillips join the party.

“Are you also going to the entrepôt?” he exclaimed, “what can you find to interest you there?—a dirty little smutty place! I am going just to help the ladies over the line, as there is no bridge for crossing.”

“Perhaps I am bent on the same errand,” replied the doctor, “do you give me credit for less gallantry than yourself, Pullen?”

“That’s right, Doctor,” said the Baroness, “and I’ve no doubt you’ll be very useful! My Bobby ain’t any manner of good, and the Baron ’as so many traps to carry that ’e ’asn’t got an arm to spare. I only wish you were coming with us! Why don’t you make up your mind to come over with Captain Pullen the day after to-morrow, and ’ave a little ’oliday?”

“I was not aware that Captain Pullen was going to Brussels, madame! I fancy he will have to get Miss Leyton’s consent first!”

At the mention of Miss Leyton’s name in connection with himself, Ralph Pullen flushed uneasily, and Harriet Brandt turned a look of startled enquiry upon the speaker.

“O! ’ang Miss Leyton!” retorted the Baroness, graphically, “she surely wouldn’t stop Captain Pullen’s fun, just because ’e’s staying with ’is sister-in-law! I should call that very ’ard. You can’t always tie a young man to ’is relations’ apron-strings, Doctor!”

“Not always, madame!” he replied, and dropped the subject.

“You wouldn’t let Miss Leyton or Mrs. Pullen keep you from me!” whispered Harriet, to her cavalier.

“Never!” he answered emphatically.

They had reached the little station by this time, and the porters were calling out vociferously that the train was about to start for Brussels, so that in the hurry of procuring their tickets, and conveying the ladies and the luggage across the cinder-besprinkled line, to where the train stood puffing to be off, there was no more time to exchange sentimentalities, or excite suspicion. The party being safely stowed away in their carriage, Ralph Pullen and Doctor Phillips stood on the wooden platform with their hats off, bowing their farewells.

“Mind you don’t put off your coming after Thursday!” screamed the Baroness to Ralph, as she filled up the entire window with her bulky person, “we shall expect you by dinner-time! And I shall bespeak a room for you, whether you will or no! ’Arriet ’ere will break ’er ’eart if you don’t turn up, and I don’t want the responsibility of ’er committing suicide on my ’ands!”

“All right! all right!” responded Ralph, pretending to turn it off as a joke, “None of you shall do that on my account, I promise you!”

“O! well! I ’ope you’re going to keep your word, or we shall come back to ’Eyst in double quick time. Good-bye! Good-bye!” and kissing her fat hand to the two gentlemen, the Baroness was whisked out of Heyst.

Ralph looked longingly after the departing line of carriages for a minute, and then crossed the line again to the road beyond.

Doctor Phillips did not say a word till they were well clear of the station, and then he commenced,

“Of course you’re not in earnest about following these people to Brussels.”

“Why should I not be? I knew Brussels well as a lad, and I should enjoy renewing my acquaintance with the old town.”

“In proper company perhaps, but you can hardly call that party a fit one for you to associate with!”

“You’re alluding to the Baron and Baroness being in trade. Well! as a rule I confess that I do not care to associate intimately with bootmakers and their friends, but one does things abroad that one would not dream of doing in England. And for all her vulgarity, Madame Gobelli is very good-natured and generous, and I really don’t see that I lower my dignity by being on friendly terms with her whilst here!”

“I was not alluding to Madame Gobelli, though I do not think that either she or the Brimonts are fit companions for a man who belongs to the Limerick Rangers, or is engaged to marry the daughter of Lord Walthamstowe. Neither do I admire the spirit which would induce you to hobnob with them in Heyst, when you would cut them in Bond Street. But as far as I know the Baron and his wife are harmless. It is Miss Harriet Brandt that I would caution you against!”

A quick resentment appeared on Ralph Pullen’s features. His eyes darkened, and an ominous wrinkle stood out on his brow.

“And what may you have to say of Miss Brandt?” he demanded, coldly.

“A great deal more than you know, or can possibly imagine! She is not a fit person for Elinor Leyton to associate with, and consequently, one whom it is your duty to avoid, instead of cultivating.”

“I think you exceed your duty, Doctor, in speaking to me thus!”

“I am sorry you should think so, Pullen, but your anger will not deter me from telling you what is in my mind. You must not forget how old a friend I am of both sides of your family. Your brother Arthur is one of my greatest chums, and his wife’s father was, without exception, my dearest friend—added to this, I am on intimate terms with the Walthamstowes. Knowing what I do, therefore, I should hold myself criminal if I left you in ignorance of the truth concerning this young woman.”

“Are you alluding, may I ask, to Miss Brandt?”

“I am alluding to the girl who calls herself by that name, but who is in reality only the bastard daughter of Henry Brandt, one of the most infamous men whom God ever permitted to desecrate this earth, and his half-caste mistress.”

“Be careful what you say, Doctor Phillips!” said Ralph Pullen, with ill-suppressed wrath gleaming in his blue eyes.

“There is no need to be, my dear fellow, I can verify everything I say, and I fear no man’s resentment. I was stationed in Jamaica with my regiment, some fifteen years ago, when this girl was a child of six years old, running half naked about her father’s plantation, uncared for by either parent, and associating solely with the negro servants. Brandt was a brute—the perpetrator of such atrocities in vivisection and other scientific experiments, that he was finally slaughtered on his own plantation by his servants, and everyone said it served him right. The mother was the most awful woman I have ever seen, and my experience of the sex in back slums and alleys has not been small. She was the daughter of a certain Judge Carey of Barbadoes by one of his slave girls, and Brandt took her as his mistress before she was fourteen. At thirty, when I saw her, she was a revolting spectacle. Gluttonous and obese—her large eyes rolling and her sensual lips protruding as if she were always licking them in anticipation of her prey. She was said to be ‘Obeah’ too by the natives and they ascribed all the deaths and diseases that took place on the plantation, to her malign influence. Consequently, when they got her in their clutches, I have heard that they did not spare her, but killed her in the most torturing fashion they could devise.”

“And did the British Government take no notice of the massacre?”

“There was an enquiry, of course, but the actual perpetrator of the murders could not be traced, and so the matter died out. The hatred and suspicion in which Brandt had been held for some time, had a great effect upon the verdict, for in addition to his terrible experiments upon animals—experiments which he performed simply for his own gratification and for no use that he made of them in treating his fellow creatures—he had been known to decoy diseased and old natives into his laboratory, after which they were never seen again, and it was the digging up of human bones on the plantation, which finally roused the negroes to such a pitch of indignation that they rose en masse, and after murdering both Brandt and his abominable mistress, they set fire to the house and burned it to the ground. There is no doubt but that, if the overseer of the plantation, an African negro named Pete, had not carried off the little girl, she would have shared the fate of her parents. And who can say if it would not have been as well if she had!”

“I really cannot see what right you have to give vent to such a sentiment!” exclaimed Captain Pullen. “What has this terrible story got to do with Miss Brandt?”

“Everything! ‘When the cat is black, the kitten is black too!’ It’s the law of Nature!”

“I don’t believe it! Miss Brandt bears no trace in feature or character of the parentage you ascribe to her!”

“Does she not? Your assertion only proves your ignorance of character, or characteristics. The girl is a quadroon, and she shews it distinctly in her long-shaped eyes with their blue whites and her wide mouth and blood-red lips! Also in her supple figure and apparently boneless hands and feet. Of her personal character, I have naturally had no opportunity of judging, but I can tell you by the way she eats her food, and the way in which she uses her eyes, that she has inherited her half-caste mother’s greedy and sensual disposition. And in ten years’ time she will in all probability have no figure at all! She will run to fat. I could tell that also at a glance!”

“And have you any more compliments to pay the young lady?” enquired Captain Pullen, sarcastically.

“I have this still to say, Pullen—that she is a woman whom you must never introduce to your wife, and that it is your bounden duty to separate her, as soon as possible, from your fiancée and your sister-in-law!”

“And what if I refuse to interfere in a matter which, as far as I can see, concerns no one but Miss Brandt herself?”

“In that case, I regret to say that I shall feel it my duty, to inform your brother Colonel Pullen and your future father-in-law, Lord Walthamstowe of what I have told you! Come, my dear boy, be reasonable! This girl has attracted you, I suppose! We are all subject to a woman’s influence at times, but you must not let it go further. You must break it off, and this is an excellent opportunity to do so! Your sister’s infant is, I fear, seriously ill. Take your party on to Ostende, and send the Baroness a polite note to say that you are prevented from going to Brussels, and all will be right! You will take my advice—will you not?”

“No! I’ll be hanged if I will,” exclaimed the young man, “I am not a boy to be ordered here and there, as if I were not fit to take care of myself. I’ve pledged my word to go to Brussels and to Brussels I shall go. If Miss Leyton doesn’t like it, she must do the other thing! She does not shew me such a superfluity of affection as to prevent the necessity of my seeking for sympathy and friendship elsewhere.”

“I am sorry to hear you speak like that, Pullen. It does not augur well for the happiness of your married life!”

“I have thought more than once lately, that I shall not be married at all—that is to Miss Leyton!”

“No! no! don’t say so. It is only a passing infidelity, engendered by the attraction of this other girl. Consider what your brother would say, and what Lord Walthamstowe would think, if you committed the great mistake at this late hour, of breaking off your engagement!”

“I cannot see why my brother’s opinion, or Lord Walthamstowe’s thoughts, should interfere with the happiness of my whole life,” rejoined Ralph, sullenly. “However, let that pass! The question on the tapis is, my acquaintance with Miss Brandt, which you consider should be put a stop to. For what reason? If what you bring against her is true, it appears to me that she has all the more need of the protection and loyalty of her friends. It would be cowardly to desert a girl, just because her father and mother happened to be brutes. It is not her fault!”

“I quite allow that! Neither is it the fault of a madman that his progenitors had lunacy in their blood, nor of a consumptive, that his were strumous. All the same the facts affect their lives and the lives of those with whom they come in contact. It is the curse of heredity!”

“Well! and if so, how can it concern anyone but the poor child herself?”

“O! yes, it can and it will! And if I am not greatly mistaken, Harriet Brandt carries a worse curse with her even than that! She possesses the fatal attributes of the Vampire that affected her mother’s birth—that endued her with the thirst for blood, which characterised her life—that will make Harriet draw upon the health and strength of all with whom she may be intimately associated—that may render her love fatal to such as she may cling to! I must tell you, Pullen, that I fear we have already proofs of this in the illness of your little niece, whom, her mother tells me, was at one time scarcely ever out of Miss Brandt’s arms. I have no other means of accounting for her sudden failure of strength and vitality. You need not stare at me, as if you thought I do not know what I am talking about! There are many cases like it in the world. Cases of persons who actually feed upon the lives of others, as the deadly upas tree sucks the life of its victim, by lulling him into a sleep from which he never wakens!”

“Phillips, you must be mad! Do you know that you are accusing Miss Brandt of murder—of killing the child to whom she never shewed anything but the greatest kindness. Why! I have known her carry little Ethel about the sands for a whole afternoon.”

“All the worse for poor little Ethel! I do not say she does harm intentionally or even consciously, but that the deadly attributes of her bloodthirsty parents have descended on her in this respect, I have not a shadow of doubt! If you watch that young woman’s career through life, you will see that those she apparently cares for most, and clings to most, will soonest fade out of existence, whilst she continues to live all the stronger that her victims die!”

“Rubbish! I don’t believe it!” replied Ralph sturdily. “You medical men generally have some crotchet in your brains, but this is the most wonderful bee that ever buzzed in a bonnet! And all I can say is, that I should be quite willing to try the experiment!”

“You have tried it, Pullen, in a mild form, and it has had its effect on you! You are not the same fellow who came over to Heyst, though by all rules, you should be looking better and stronger for the change. And Margaret has already complained to me of the strange effect this girl has had upon her! But you must not breathe a suspicion to her concerning the child’s illness, or I verily believe she would murder Miss Brandt!”

“Putting all this nonsense aside,” said Ralph, “do you consider Margaret’s baby to be seriously ill?”

“Very seriously. My medicines have not had the slightest effect upon her condition, which is inexplicable. Her little life is being slowly sapped. She may cease to breathe at any moment. But I have not yet had the courage to tell your sister the truth!”

“How disappointed poor Arthur will be!”

“Yes! but his grief will be nothing to the mother’s. She is quite devoted to her child!”

By mutual consent, they had dropped the subject of Harriet Brandt, and now spoke only of family affairs. Ralph was a kind-hearted fellow under all his conceit, and felt very grave at the prospect held out in regard to his baby niece.

The fulfilment of the prophecy came sooner than even Doctor Phillips had anticipated. As they were all sitting at dinner that evening, Madame Lamont, her eyes over-brimming with tears, rushed unceremoniously into the salle à manger, calling to Margaret.

“Madame! Madame! please come up to your room at once! The dear baby is worse!”

Margaret threw one agonised glance at Doctor Phillips and rushed from the room, followed by himself and Elinor Leyton. The high staircase seemed interminable—more than once Margaret’s legs failed under her and she thought she should never reach the top. But she did so all too soon. On the bed was laid the infant form, limp and lifeless, and Martin the nurse met them at the door, bathed in tears.

“Oh! Ma’am!” she cried, “it happened all of a minute! She was lying on my lap, pretty dear, just as usual, when she went off in a convulsion and died.”

“Died, died!” echoed Margaret in a bewildered voice, “Doctor Phillips! who is it that has died?”

“The baby, Ma’am, the dear baby! She went off like a lamb, without a struggle! O! dear mistress, do try to bear it!”

“Is my baby—dead?” said Margaret in the same dazed voice, turning to the doctor who had already satisfied himself that the tiny heart and pulse had ceased to beat.

“No! my dear child, she is not dead—she is living—with God! Try to think of her as quite happy and free from this world’s ill.”

“O! but I wanted her so—I wanted her,” exclaimed the bereaved mother, as she clasped the senseless form in her arms, “O! baby! baby! why did you go, before you had seen your father?”

And then she slid, rather than sank, from the bedside, in a tumbled heap upon the floor.

“It is better so—it will help her through it,” said Doctor Phillips, as he directed the nurse to carry the dead child into Elinor Leyton’s room, and placed Margaret on her own bed. “You will not object, Miss Leyton, I am sure, and you must not leave Mrs. Pullen to-night!”

“Of course I shall not,” replied Elinor; “I have been afraid for days past that this would happen, but poor Margaret would not take any hints.”

She spoke sympathetically, but there were no tears in her eyes, and she did not caress, nor attempt to console her friend. She did all that was required of her, but there was no spontaneous suggestion on her part, with regard either to the mother, or the dead child, and as Doctor Phillips noted her coolness, he did not wonder so much at Ralph’s being attracted by the fervour and warmth of Harriet Brandt.

As soon as poor Margaret had revived and had her cry out, he administered a sleeping draught to her, and leaving her in charge of Elinor Leyton, he went downstairs again to consult Captain Pullen as to what would be the best thing for them to do.

Ralph was very much shocked to hear of the baby’s sudden death, and eager to do all in his power for his brother’s wife. There was no Protestant cemetery in Heyst, and Doctor Phillips proposed that they should at once order a little shell, and convey the child’s body either to Ostende or England, as Margaret might desire, for burial. The sooner she left the place where she had lost her child, he said, the better, and his idea was that she would wish the body to be taken to Devonshire and buried in the quiet country churchyard, where her husband’s father and mother were laid to sleep. He left Ralph to telegraph to his brother in India and to anyone the news might concern in England—also to settle all hotel claims and give notice to the Lamonts that they would leave on the morrow.

“But supposing Margaret should object,” suggested Ralph.

“She will not object!” replied the Doctor, “she might if we were not taking the child’s body with us, but as it is, she will be grateful to be thought, and acted, for. She is a true woman, God bless her! I only wish He had not seen fit to bring this heavy trial on her head!”

Not a word was exchanged between the two men about Harriet Brandt. Ralph, remembering the hint the doctor had thrown out respecting her being the ultimate cause of the baby’s illness, did not like to bring up her name again—felt rather guilty with respect to it, indeed—and Doctor Phillips was only too glad to see the young man bestirring himself to be useful, and losing sight of his own worry in the trouble of his sister-in-law. Of course he could not have refused, or even demurred, at accompanying his party to England on so mournful an errand—and to do him justice, he did not wish it to be otherwise. Brussels, and its anticipated pleasures, had been driven clean out of his head by the little tragedy that had occurred in Heyst, and his attitude towards Margaret when they met again, was so quietly affectionate and brotherly that he was of infinite comfort to her. She quite acquiesced in Doctor Phillips’ decision that her child should be buried with her father’s family, and the mournful group with the little coffin in their midst, set out without delay for Devonshire.

CHAPTER IX.

Harriet Brandt set off for Brussels in the best of spirits. Captain Pullen had pledged himself to follow her in a couple of days, and had sketched with a free hand the pleasure they would mutually enjoy in each other’s company, without the fear of Mrs. Pullen, or Miss Leyton, popping on them round the corner. Madame Gobelli also much flattered her vanity by speaking of Ralph as if he were her confessed lover, and prospective fiancé, so that, what with the new scenes she was passing through, and her anticipated good fortune, Harriet was half delirious with delight, and looked as “handsome as paint” in consequence.

Olga Brimont, on the contrary, although quietly happy in the prospect of keeping house for her brother, did not share in the transports of her Convent companion. Alfred Brimont, observed, more than once, that she seemed to visibly shrink from Miss Brandt, and took an early opportunity of asking her the reason why. But all her answer was conveyed in a shrug of the shoulders, and a request that he would not leave her at the Hotel de Saxe with the rest of the party, but take her home at once to the rooms over which she was to preside for him. In consequence, the two Brimonts said good-bye to the Gobellis and Harriet Brandt at the Brussels station, and drove to their apartments in the rue de Vienne, after which the others saw no more of them. The Baroness declared they were “a good riddance of bad rubbish,” and that she had never liked that pasty-faced Mademoiselle Brimont, and believed that she was jealous of the brilliancy and beauty of her dear ’Arriet. The Baroness had conceived one of her violent, and generally short-lived, fancies for the girl, and nothing, for the time being, was too good for her. She praised her looks and her talents in the most extravagant manner, and told everyone at the Hotel that the Baron and she had known her from infancy—that she was their ward—and that they regarded her as the daughter of the house, with various other falsehoods that made Harriet open her dark eyes with amazement, whilst she felt that she could not afford to put a sudden end to her friendship with Madame Gobelli, by denying them. Brussels is a very pretty town, full of modern and ancient interest, and there was plenty for them to see and hear during their first days there. But Harriet was resolved to defer visiting the best sights until Captain Pullen had joined them.

She went to the concerts at the Quinçonce and Wauxhall, and visited the Zoological Gardens, but she would not go to the Musée nor the Académie des Beaux Arts, nor the Cathedral of Sainte Gudule, whilst Ralph remained in Heyst. Madame Gobelli laughed at her for her reticence—called her a sly cat—said she supposed they must make up their minds to see nothing of her when the handsome Captain came to Brussels—finally sending her off in company of Bobby to walk in the Parc, or visit the Wiertz Museum. The Baroness was not equal to much walking at the best of times, and had been suffering from rheumatism lately, so that she and the Baron did most of their sight-seeing in a carriage, and left the young people to amuse themselves. Bobby was very proud to be elected Miss Brandt’s cavalier, and get out of the way of his formidable Mamma, who made his table-d’hôte life a terror to him. He was a well-grown lad and not bad-looking. In his blue eyes and white teeth, he took after his mother, but his hair was fair, and his complexion delicate. He was an anæmic young fellow and very delicate, being never without a husky cough, which, however, the Baroness seemed to consider of no consequence. He hardly ever opened his mouth in the presence of his parents, unless it were to remonstrate against the Baroness’s strictures on his appearance, or his conduct, but Harriet Brandt found he could be communicative enough, when he was alone with her. He gave her lengthy descriptions of the Red House, and the treasures which it contained—of his Mamma’s barouche lined with satin—of the large garden which they had at Holloway, with its greenhouses and hot-houses, and the numbers of people who came to visit them there.

“O! yes!” rejoined Harriet, “the Baroness has told me about them, Prince Adalbert and Prince Loris and others! She said they often came to the Red House! I should like to know them very much!”

The youth looked at her in a mysterious manner.

“Yes! they do come, very often, and plenty of other people with them; the Earl of Watherhouse and Lord Drinkwater, and Lady Mountacue, and more than I know the names of. But—but—did Mamma tell you why they come?”

“No! not exactly! To see her and the Baron, I suppose!”

“Well! yes! for that too perhaps,” stammered Bobby. “But there is another reason. Mamma is very wonderful, you know! She can tell people things they never knew before. And she has a room where—but I had better not say any more. You might repeat it to her and then she would be so angry.” The two were on their way to the Wiertz Museum at the time, and Harriet’s curiosity was excited.

“I will not, I promise you, Bobby,” she said, “what has the Baroness in that room?”

Bobby drew near enough to whisper, as he replied,

“O! I don’t know, I daren’t say, but horrible things go on there! Mamma has threatened sometimes to make me go in with her, but I wouldn’t for all the world. Our servants will never stay with us long. One girl told me before she left that Mamma was a witch, and could raise up the dead. Do you think it can be true—that it is possible?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet, “and I don’t want to know! There are no dead that I want to see back again, unless indeed it were dear old Pete, our overseer. He was the best friend I ever had. One night our house was burned to the ground and lots of the things in it, and old Pete wrapped me up in a blanket and carried me to his cabin in the jungle, and kept me safe until my friends were able to send me to the Convent. I shall never forget that. I should like to see old Pete again, but I don’t believe the Baroness could bring him back. It wants ‘Obeah’ to do that!”

“What is ‘Obeah,’ Miss Brandt?”

“Witchcraft, Bobby!”

“Is it wicked?”

“I don’t know. I know nothing about it! But let us talk of something else. I don’t believe your Mamma can do anything more than other people, and she only says it to frighten you. But you mustn’t tell her I said so. Is this the Wiertz Museum? I thought it would be a much grander place!”

“I heard father say that it is the house Wiertz lived in, and he left it with all his pictures to the Belgian Government on condition they kept it just as it was.”

They entered the gallery, and Harriet Brandt, although not a great lover of painting in general, stood enwrapt before most of the pictures. She passed over the “Bouton de Rose” and the sacred paintings with a cursory glance, but the representation of Napoleon in Hell, being fed with the blood and bones of his victims—of the mother in a time of famine devouring her child—and of the Suicide between his good and evil angels, appeared to absorb all her senses. Her eyes fixed themselves upon the canvasses, she stood before them, entranced, enraptured, and when Bobby touched her arm as a hint to come and look at something else, she drew a long breath as though she had been suddenly aroused from sleep. Again and again she returned to the same spot, the pictures holding her with a strange fascination, which she could not shake off, and when she returned to the Hotel, she declared the first thing she should do on the following morning, would be to go back to the Wiertz Museum and gaze once more upon those inimitable figures.

“But such ’orrid subjects, my dear,” said the Baroness, “Bobby says they were all blood and bones!”

“But I like them—I like them!” replied Harriet, moving her tongue slowly over her lips, “they interest me! They are so life-like!”

“Well! to-morrow will be Thursday, you know, so I expect you will have somebody’s else’s wishes to consult! You will ’ave a letter by the early post, you may depend upon it, to say that the Captain will be with us by dinner-time!”

Harriet Brandt flushed a deep rose. It was when the colour came into her usually pale cheeks, and her eyes awakened from their slumbers and sparkled, that she looked beautiful. On the present occasion as she glanced up to see Bobby Bates regarding her with steadfast surprise and curiosity, she blushed still more.

“You’ll be ’aving a fine time of it together, you two, I expect,” continued the Baroness facetiously, “and Bobby, ’ere, will ’ave to content ’imself with me and his Papa! But we’ll all go to the theatre together to-morrow night. I’ve taken five seats for the Alcazar, which the Captain said was the house he liked best in Brussels.”

“How good you are to me!” exclaimed Harriet, as she wound her slight arms about the uncouth form of the Baroness.

“Good! Nonsense! Why! Gustave and I look upon you as our daughter, and you’re welcome to share everything that is ours. You can come and live altogether at the Red ’Ouse, if you like! But I don’t expect we shall keep you long, though I must say I should be vexed to see you throw yourself away upon an army Captain before you have seen the world a bit!”

“O! don’t talk of such a thing, pray don’t!” said the girl, hiding her face in the Baroness’s ample bosom, “you know there is nothing as yet—only a pleasant friendship.”

“He! he! he!” chuckled Madame Gobelli, “so that’s what you call a pleasant friendship, eh? I wonder what Captain Pullen calls it! I expect we shall ’ear in a few days. But what ’e thinks is of no consequence, so long as you don’t commit yourself, till you’ve looked about you a little. I do want you to meet Prince Adalbert! ’Is ’air’s like flax—such a nice contrast to yours. And you speaking French so well! You would get on first-rate together!”

Bobby did not appear to like this conversation at all.

“I call Prince Adalbert hideous,” he interposed. “Why! his face is as red as a tomato, and he drinks too much. I’ve heard Papa say so! I am sure Miss Brandt wouldn’t like him.”

“’Old your tongue,” exclaimed the Baroness, angrily, “’Ow dare you interrupt when I’m speaking to Miss Brandt? A child like you! What next, I wonder! Just mind your own business, Bobby, or I’ll send you out of the room. Go away now, do, and amuse yourself! We don’t want any boys ’ere!”

“Miss Brandt is going into the Parc with me,” said Bobby sturdily.

“Ah! well, if she is going to be so good, I ’ope you won’t worry ’er, that’s all! But if you would prefer to come out in the carriage with the Baron and me, my dear, we’ll take a drive to the Bois de Cambres.”

“All right, if Bobby can come too,” acquiesced Harriet.

“Lor! whatever do you want that boy to come with us for? ’E’ll only take up all the room with ’is long legs.”

“But we mustn’t leave him alone,” said the girl, kindly, “I shouldn’t enjoy my drive if we were to do so!”

The lad gave her a grateful glance through eyes that were already moist with the prospect of disappointment.

“Very well then,” said Madame Gobelli, “if you will ’ave your own way, ’e may come, but you must take all the trouble of ’im, ’Arriet, mind that!”

Bobby was only too happy to accompany the party, even in these humiliating circumstances, and they all set out together for the Bois de Cambres. The next day was looked forward to by Harriet Brandt as one of certain happiness, but the morning post arrived without bringing the anticipated notice from Ralph Pullen that he should join them as arranged in the afternoon. The piteous eyes that she lifted to the Baroness’s face as she discovered the defalcation, were enough to excite the compassion of anyone.

“It’s all right!” said her friend, across the breakfast table, “’E said ’e would come, so there’s no need of writing. Besides, it was much safer not! ’E couldn’t stir, I daresay, without one of those two cats, Mrs. Pullen or Miss Leyton, at ’is elbow, so ’e thought they might find out what ’e was after, and prevent ’is starting. Say they wanted to leave ’Eyst or something, just to keep ’im at their side! You mark my words, I’ve means of finding out things that you know nothing of, and I’ve just seen it written over your ’ead that ’e’ll be ’ere by dinner time, so you can go out for your morning’s jaunt in perfect comfort!”

Harriet brightened up at this prophecy, and Bobby had never had a merrier time with her than he had that morning.

But the prophecy was not fulfilled. Ralph Pullen was by that time in England with his bereaved sister-in-law, and the night arrived without the people in Brussels hearing anything of him. He had not even written a line to account for his failure to keep his engagement with them. The fact is that Captain Pullen, although as a rule most punctilious in all matters of courtesy, felt so ashamed of himself and the folly into which he had been led, that he felt that silence would be the best explanation that he had decided to break off the acquaintanceship. He had no real feeling for Harriet Brandt or anybody (except himself)—with him “out of sight” was “out of mind”—and the sad occurrence which had forced him to return to England seemed an excellent opportunity to rid himself of an undesirable entanglement. But Harriet became frantic at the nonfulfilment of his promise. Her strong feelings could not brook delay. She wanted to rush back to Heyst to demand the reason of his defalcation—and in default of that, to write, or wire to him at once and ascertain what he intended to do. But the Baroness prevented her doing either.

“Look ’ere, ’Arriet!” she said to the girl, who was working herself up into a fever, “it’s no use going on like this! ’E’ll come or ’e won’t come! Most likely you’ll see ’im to-morrow or next day, and if not, it’ll be because ’is sister won’t let ’im leave ’er, and the poor young man doesn’t know what excuse to make! Couldn’t you see ’ow that Doctor Phillips was set against the Captain joining us? ’E went most likely and told Mrs. Pullen, and she ’as dissuaded her brother from coming to Brussels. It’s ’ard for a man to go against ’is own relations, you know!”

“But he should have written,” pleaded Harriet, “it makes me look a fool!”

“Not a bit of it! Captain Pullen thinks you no fool. ’E’s more likely to be thinking ’imself one. And, after all, you know, we shall be going back to ’Eyst in a couple more days, and then you can ’ave ’im all to yourself in the evenings and scold ’im to your ’eart’s content!”

But the girl was not made of the stuff that is amenable to reason. She pouted and raved and denounced Ralph Pullen like a fury, declaring she would not speak to him when they met again,—yet lay awake at night all the same, wondering what had detained him from her side, and longing with the fierceness of a tigress for blood, to feel his lips against her own and to hear him say that he adored her. Bobby Bates stood by during this tempestuous time, very sorrowful and rather perplexed. He was not admitted to the confidence of his mother and her young friend, so that he did not quite understand why Harriet Brandt should have so suddenly changed from gay to grave, just because Captain Pullen was unable to keep his promise to join them at Brussels. He had so enjoyed her company hitherto and she had seemed to enjoy his, but now she bore the gloomiest face possible, and it was no pleasure to go out with her at all. He wondered if all girls were so—as capricious and changeable! Bobby had not seen much of women. He had been kept in the schoolroom for the better part of his life, and his Mamma had not impressed him with a great admiration for the sex. So, naturally, he thought Harriet Brandt to be the most charming and beautiful creature he had ever seen, though he was too shy to whisper the truth, even to himself. He tried to bring back the smiles to her face in his boyish way, and the gift of an abnormally large and long sucre de pomme really did achieve that object better than anything else. But the defalcation of Captain Pullen made them all lose their interest in Brussels, and they returned to Heyst a day sooner than they had intended.

As the train neared the station, Harriet’s forgotten smiles began to dimple her face again, and she peered eagerly from the windows of the carriage, as if she expected Ralph Pullen to be on the platform to meet them. But from end to end, she saw only cinders, Flemish country women with huge baskets of fish or poultry on their arms, priests in their soutanes and broad-brimmed hats, and Belgians chattering and screaming to each other and their children, as they crossed the line. Still, she alighted with her party, expectant and happy, and traversed the little distance between the entrepôt and the Hotel, far quicker than the Baroness and her husband could keep up with her. She rushed into the balcony and almost fell into the arms of the proprietaire, Madame Lamont.

“Ah! Mademoiselle!” she cried, “welcome back to Heyst, but have you heard the desolating news?”

“What news?” exclaimed Harriet with staring eyes and a blanched cheek.

“Why! that the English lady, cette Madame, si tranquille, si charmante, lost her dear bébé the very day that Mademoiselle and Madame la Baronne left the Hotel!”

“Lost,” repeated Harriet, “do you mean that the child is dead?”

“Ah! yes, I do indeed,” replied Madame Lamont, “the dear bébé was taken with a fit whilst they were all at dinner, and never recovered again. C’était une perte irréparable! Madame was like a creature distracted whilst she remained here!”

“Where is she then? Where has she gone?” cried Harriet, excitedly.

“Ah! that I cannot tell Mademoiselle. The dear bébé was taken away to England to be buried. Madame Pullen and Mademoiselle Leyton and Monsieur Phillippe and le beau Capitaine all left Heyst on the following day, that is Wednesday, and went to Ostende to take the boat for Dover. I know no more!”

“Captain Pullen has gone away—he is not here?” exclaimed Miss Brandt, betraying herself in her disappointment. “Oh! I don’t believe it! It cannot be true! He has gone to Ostende to see them on board the steamer, but he will return—I am sure he will?”

Madame Lamont shrugged her shoulders.

“Monsieur paid everything before he went and gave douceurs to all the servants—I do not think he has any intention of returning!”

At that juncture the Baron and Baroness reached the hotel. Harriet flew to her friend for consolation.

“I cannot believe what Madame Lamont says,” she exclaimed; “she declares that they are all gone for good, Mrs. Pullen and Miss Leyton and Captain Pullen and the doctor! They have returned to England. But he is sure to come back, isn’t he? after all his promises to meet us in Brussels! He couldn’t be so mean as to run off to England, without a word, or a line, unless he intended to come back.”

She clung to Madame Gobelli with her eyes wide open and her large mouth trembling with agitation, until even the coarse fibre of the Baroness’s propriety made her feel ashamed of the exhibition.

“’Ould up, ’Arriet!” she said, “you don’t want the ’ole ’ouse to ’ear what you’re thinking of, surely! Let me speak to Madame Lamont! What is all the row about, Madame?” she continued, turning to the proprietaire.

“There is no ‘row’ at all, Madame,” was the reply, “I was only telling Mademoiselle Brandt of the sad event that has taken place here during your absence—that that chère Madame Pullen had the great misfortune to lose her sweet bébé, the very day you left Heyst, and that the whole party have quitted in consequence and crossed to England. I thought since Mademoiselle seemed so intimate with Madame Pullen and so fond of the dear child, that she would be désolée to hear the sad news, but she appears to have forgotten all about it, in her grief at hearing that the beau Capitaine accompanied his family to England where they go to bury the petite.”

And with rather a contemptuous smile upon her face, Madame Lamont re-entered the salle à manger.

“Now, ’Arriet, don’t make a fool of yourself!” said the Baroness. “You ’eard what that woman said—she’s laughing at you and your Captain, and the story will be all over the Hotel in half an hour. Don’t make any more fuss about it! If ’e’s gone, crying won’t bring ’im back. It’s much ’arder for Mrs. Pullen, losing her baby so suddenly! I’m sorry for ’er, poor woman, but as for the other, there’s as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it!”

But Harriet Brandt only answered her appeal by rushing away down the corridor and up the staircase to her bedroom like a whirlwind. The girl had not the slightest control over her passions. She would listen to no persuasion, and argument only drove her mad. She tumbled headlong up the stairs, and dashing into her room, which had been reserved for her, threw herself tumultuously upon the bed. How lonely and horrible the corridor, on which her apartment opened, seemed. Olga Brimont, Mrs. Pullen, Miss Leyton, and Ralph, all gone! No one to talk to—no one to walk with—except the Baroness and her stupid husband! Of course this interpreted simply, meant that Captain Pullen had left the place without leaving a word behind him, to say the why or wherefore, or hold out any prospect of their meeting again. Of course it was impossible but that they must meet again—they should meet again, Harriet Brandt said to herself between her closed teeth—but meanwhile, what a wilderness, what a barren, dreary place this detestable Heyst would seem without him!

The girl put her head down on the pillow, and taking the corner of the linen case between her strong, white teeth, shook it and bit it, as a terrier worries a rat! But that did not relieve her feelings sufficiently, and she took to a violent fit of sobbing, hot, angry tears coursing each other down her cheeks, until they were blurred and stained, and she lay back upon the pillow utterly exhausted.

The first dinner bell rang without her taking any notice of it, and the second was just about to sound, when there came a low tap at her bedroom door. At first she did not reply, but when it was repeated, though rather timidly, she called out,

“Who is it? I am ill. I don’t want any dinner! I cannot come down!”

A low voice answered.

“It is I, dear Miss Brandt, Bobby! May I come in? Mamma has sent me to you with a message!”

“Very well! You can enter, but I have a terrible headache!” said Harriet.

The door opened softly, and the tall lanky form of Bobby Bates crept silently into the room. He held a small bunch of pink roses in his hand, and he advanced to the bedside and laid them without a word on the pillow beside her hot, inflamed cheek. They felt deliciously cool and refreshing. Harriet turned her face towards them, and in doing so, met the anxious, perturbed eyes of Bobby.

“Well!” she said smiling faintly, “and what is your Mamma’s message?”

“She wishes to know if you are coming down to dinner. It is nearly ready!”

“No! no! I cannot! I am not hungry, and my eyes are painful,” replied Harriet, turning her face slightly away.

The lad rose and drew down the blind of her window, through which the setting sun was casting a stream of light, and then captured a flacon of eau de Cologne from her toilet-table, and brought it to her in his hand.

“May I sit beside you a little while in case you need anything?” he asked.

“No! no! Bobby! You will want your dinner, and your Mamma will want you. You had better go down again at once, and tell her that if my head is better, I will meet her on the Digue this evening!”

“I don’t want any dinner, I could not eat it whilst you lie here sick and unhappy. I want to stay, to see if I can help you, or do you any good. I wish—I wish I could!” murmured the lad.

“Your roses have done me good already,” replied Harriet, more brightly. “It was sweet of you to bring them to me, Bobby.”

“I wish I had ten thousand pounds a year,” said Bobby feverishly, “that I might bring you roses, and everything that you like best!”

He laid his blonde head on the pillow by the side of hers and Harriet turned her face to his and kissed him.

The blood rushed into his face, and he trembled. It was the first time that any woman had kissed him. And all the feelings of his manhood rushed forth in a body to greet the creature who had awakened them.

As for Harriet Brandt, the boy’s evident admiration flattered and pleased her. The tigress deprived of blood, will sometimes condescend to milder food. And the feelings with which she regarded Captain Pullen were such as could be easily replaced by anyone who evinced the same reciprocity. Bobby Bates was not a beau sabreur, but he was a male creature whom she had vanquished by her charms, and it interested her to watch his rising passion, and to know that he could never possibly expect it to be requited. She kissed and fondled him as he sat beside her with his head on the pillow—calling him every nice name she could think of, and caressing him as if he had been what the Baroness chose to consider him—a child of ten years old.

His sympathy and entreaties that she would make an effort to join them on the Digue, added to his lovelorn eyes, the clear childish blue of which was already becoming blurred with the heat of passion, convinced her that all was not lost, although Ralph Pullen had been ungrateful and impolite enough to leave Heyst without sending her notice, and presently she persuaded the lad to go down to his dinner, and inform the Baroness that she had ordered a cup of tea to be sent up to her bedroom, and would try to rise after she had taken it, and join them on the Digue.

“But you will keep a look-out for me, Bobby, won’t you?” she said in parting. “You will not let me miss your party, or I shall feel so lonely that I shall come straight back to bed!”

“Miss you! as if I would!” exclaimed the boy fervently, “why, I shall not stir from the balcony until you appear! O! Miss Brandt! I love you so. You cannot tell—you will never know—but you seem like part of my life!”

“Silly boy!” replied Harriet, reproachfully, as she gave him another kiss. “There, run away at once, and don’t tell your mother what we’ve been about, or she will never let me speak to you again.”

Bobby’s eyes answered for him, that he would be torn to pieces before he let their precious secret out of his grasp, as he took his unwilling way down to the table d’hôte.

“Well! you ’ave made a little fool of yourself, and no mistake,” was the Baroness’s greeting, as Harriet joined her in the balcony an hour later, “and a nice lot of lies I’ve ’ad to tell about you to Mrs. Montague and the rest. But luckily, they’re all so full of the poor child’s death, and the coffin of white cloth studded with silver nails that was brought from Bruges to carry the body to England in, that they ’ad no time to spare for your tantrums. Lor! that poor young man must ’ave ’ad enough to do, I can tell you, from all accounts, without writing to you! Everything was on ’is ’ands, for Mrs. Pullen wouldn’t let the doctor out of ’er sight! ’E ’ad to fly off to Bruges to get the coffin and to wire half over the world, besides ’aving the two women to tow about, so you mustn’t be ’ard on ’im. ’E’ll write soon, and explain everything, you may make sure of that, and if ’e don’t, why, we shall be after ’im before long! Aldershot, where the Limerick Rangers are quartered, is within a stone’s throw of London, and Lord Menzies and Mr. Nalgett often run over to the Red ’Ouse, and so can Captain Pullen, if he chooses! So you just make yourself ’appy, and it will be all right before long.”

“O! I’m all right!” cried Harriet, gaily, “I was only a little startled at the news, so would anyone have been. Come along, Bobby! Let us walk over the dunes to the next town. This cool air will do my head good. Good-bye, Baroness! You needn’t expect us till you see us! Bobby and I are going for a good long walk!”

And tucking the lad’s arm under her own, she walked off at a tremendous pace, and the pair were soon lost to view.

“I wish that Bobby was a few years older,” remarked the Baroness thoughtfully to her husband, as they were left alone, “she wouldn’t ’ave made a bad match for him, for she ’as a tidy little fortune, and it’s all in Consols. But perhaps it’s just as well there’s no chance of it! She ain’t got much ’eart—I couldn’t ’ave believed that she’d receive the news of that poor baby’s death, without a tear or so much as a word of regret, when at one time she ’ad it always in ’er arms. She quite forgot all about it, thinking of the man. Drat the men! They’re more trouble than they’re worth, but ’e’s pretty sure to come after ’er as soon as ’e ’ears she’s at the Red ’Ouse!”

“But to what good, mein tear,” demanded the Baron, “when you know he is betrothed to Miss Leyton?”

“Yes! and ’e’ll marry Miss Leyton, too. ’E’s not the sort of man to let the main chance go! And ’Arriet will console ’erself with a better beau. I can read all that without your telling me, Gustave. But Miss Leyton won’t get off without a scratch or two, all the same, and that’s what I’m aiming at. I’ll teach ’er not to call me a female elephant! I’ve got my knife into that young woman, and I mean to turn it! Confound ’er impudence! What next?”

And having delivered herself of her feelings, the Baroness rose and proceeded to take her evening promenade along the Digue.

CHAPTER X.

The Red House at Holloway was, like its owner, a contradiction and an anomaly. It had lain for many years in Chancery, neglected and uncared-for, and the Baroness had purchased it for a song. She was very fond of driving bargains, and sometimes she was horribly taken in. She had been known to buy a house for two thousand pounds for a mere caprice, and exchange it, six months afterwards, for a dinner service. But as a rule she was too shrewd to be cheated, for her income was not a tenth part of what she represented. When she had concluded her bargain for the Red House, which she did after a single survey of the premises, and entered on possession, she found it would take double the sum she had paid to put it into proper repair. It was a very old house of the Georgian era standing in its own grounds of about a couple of acres, and containing thirty rooms, full of dust, damp, rats, and decay. The Baroness, however, having sent for a couple of workmen from the firm, to put the tangled wilderness which called itself a garden, into something like order, sent in all her household gods, and settled down there, with William and two rough maid servants, as lady of the Manor. The inside of the Red House presented an incongruous appearance. This extraordinary woman, who could not sound her aspirates and could hardly write her own name, had a wonderful taste for old china and pictures, and knew a good thing from a bad one. Her drawing-room was heaped with valuables, many of them piled on rickety tables which threatened every minute to overturn them upon the ground. The entrance hall was dingy, bare, and ill-lighted, and the breakfast-room to the side was furnished with the merest necessities. Yet the dressing-table in the Baroness’s sleeping apartment was draped in ruby velvet, and trimmed with a flounce of the most costly Brussels lace, which a Princess might not have been ashamed to wear. The bed was covered with a duvet of the thickest satin, richly embroidered by her own hand, whilst the washing-stand held a set of the commonest and cheapest crockery. Everything about the house was on the same scale; it looked as though it belonged to people who had fallen from the utmost affluence to the depths of poverty. Harriet Brandt was terribly disappointed when she entered it, Bobby’s accounts of the magnificence of his home having led her to expect nothing short of a palace.

The Baroness had insisted on her accompanying them to England. She had taken one of her violent fancies to the girl, and nothing would satisfy her but that Harriet should go back with her husband and herself to the Red House, and stay there as long as she chose.

“Now look ’ere,” she said in her rough way, “you must make the Red ’Ouse your ’ome. Liberty ’All, as I call it! Get up and go to bed; go out and come in, just when you see fit—do what you like, see what you like, and invite your friends, as if the ’ouse was your own. The Baron and I are often ’alf the day at the boot shop, but that need make no difference to you. I daresay you’ll find some way to amuse yourself. You’re the daughter of the ’ouse, remember, and free to do as you choose!”

Harriet gladly accepted the offer. She had no friends of her own to go to, and the prospect of living by herself, in an unknown city, was rather lonely. She was full of anticipation also that by means of the Red House and the Baroness’s influence, she would soon hear of, or see, Captain Pullen again—full of hope that Madame Gobelli would write to the young man and force him to fulfil the promises he had made to her. She did not want to know Prince Adalbert or Prince Loris—at the present moment, it was Ralph and Ralph only, and none other would fill the void she felt at losing him. She was sure there must be some great mistake at the bottom of his strange silence, and that they had but to meet, to see it rectified. She was only too glad then, when the day for their departure from Heyst arrived. Most of the English party had left the Lion d’Or by that time. The death of Mrs. Pullen’s child seemed to have frightened them away. Some became nervous lest little Ethel had inhaled poisonous vapours from the drainage—others thought that the atmosphere was unhealthy, or that it was getting too late in the year for the seaside, and so the visitors dwindled, until the Baroness Gobelli found they were left alone with foreigners, and elected to return to England in consequence.

Harriet had wished to write to Captain Pullen and ask for an explanation of his conduct, but the Baroness conjured her not to do so, even threatened to withdraw her friendship, if the girl went against her advice. The probabilities were, she said, that the young man was staying with his sister-in-law wherever she might be, and that the letter would be forwarded to him from the Camp, and fall into the hands of Mrs. Pullen, or Miss Leyton. She assured Harriet that it would be safer to wait until she had ascertained his address, and was sure that any communication would reach him at first hand.

“A man’s never the worse for being let alone, ’Arriet,” she said. “Don’t let ’im think ’e’s of too much consequence and ’e’ll value you all the more! Our fellows don’t care for the bird that walks up to the gun. A little ’olesome indifference will do my gentleman all the good in the world!”

“O! but how can I be indifferent, when I am burning to see him again, and to hear why he never wrote to say that he could not come to Brussels,” exclaimed Harriet, excitedly. “Do you think it was all falsehoods, Madame Gobelli? Do you think that he does not want to see me any more?”

Her eyes were flashing like diamonds—her cheeks and hands were burning hot. The Baroness chuckled over her ardour and anxiety.

“He! he! he! you little fool, no, I don’t! Anyone could see with ’alf an eye, that he took a fancy for you! You’re the sort of stuff to stir up a man and make ’im forget everything but yourself. Now don’t you worry. ’E’ll be at the Red ’Ouse like a shot, as soon as ’e ’ears we’re back in London. Mark my words! it won’t be long before we ’ave the ’ole lot of ’em down on us, like bees ’umming round a flower pot.”

After this flattering tale, it was disheartening to arrive in town on a chilly September day, under a pouring rain, and to see the desolate appearance presented by the Red House.

It was seven in the evening before they reached Holloway, and drove up the dark carriage drive, clumped by laurels, to the hall door.

After the grand description given by Bobby of his Mamma’s barouche lined with olive green satin, Harriet was rather astonished that they should have to charter cabs from the Victoria Station to Holloway, instead of being met by the Baroness’s private carriage. But she discovered afterwards that though there was a barouche standing in the coach-house, which had been purchased in a moment of reckless extravagance by Madame Gobelli, there were no horses to draw it, and the only vehicle kept by the Baroness was a very much patched, not to say disreputable looking Victoria, with a spavined cob attached to it, in which William drove the mistress when she visited the boot premises.

The chain having been taken down, the hall door was opened to them by a slight, timid looking person, whom Harriet mistook for an upper housemaid.

“Well, Miss Wynward,” exclaimed the Baroness, as she stumped into the hall, “’ere we are, you see!”

“Yes! my lady,” said the person she addressed, “but I thought, from not hearing again, that you would travel by the night boat! Your rooms are ready,” she hastened to add, “only—dinner, you see! I had no orders about it!”

“That doesn’t signify,” interrupted the Baroness, “send out for a steak and give us some supper instead! ’Ere William, where are you? Take my bag and Miss Brandt’s up to our rooms, and, Gustave, you can carry the wraps! Where’s that devil Bobby? Come ’ere at once and make yourself useful! What are you standing there, staring at ’Arriet for? Don’t you see Miss Wynward? Go and say ‘’ow d’ye do’ to ’er?”

Bobby started, and crossing to where Miss Wynward stood, held out his hand. She shook it warmly.

“How are you, Bobby?” she said. “You don’t look much stronger for your trip. I expected to see you come back with a colour!”

“Nonsense!” commenced the Baroness testily, “what rubbish you old maids do talk! What should you know about boys? ’Ow many ’ave you got? ’Ere, why don’t you kiss ’im? You’ve smacked ’im often enough, I know!”