HER FAIRY PRINCE

BY

Gertrude Warden

AUTHOR OF "THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT KEW," "AS A BIRD TO THE SNARE," ETC.

PHILADELPHIA

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1895

Copyright, 1895,
by
J.B. Lippincott Company.

Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

HER FAIRY PRINCE.

CHAPTER I.

"Hallo, Armstrong! Thought you were in Australia!"

"Hallo, Garth! Thought you were in gaol!"

Such were the greetings interchanged in Boulogne market-place on a hot August forenoon by two Englishmen who had not met for five years.

The first speaker, Mr., or Captain Garth, as he styled himself, was a man of medium height, inclined to stoutness and of florid complexion, with bloodshot blue eyes, plentiful prematurely-white hair, a heavy cavalry moustache, and a jovial swaggering manner. His clothes were carefully brushed and darned, his boots beautifully polished, and his chimney-pot hat, set rakishly on one side on his white curls, was suspiciously shiny in its surface. The Captain's red face, overhanging eyebrows, and ferocious moustache were wont to frighten children, of whom he was specially fond; but his features were well-cut and his manners plausible, and most women considered him a very good-looking man for his six-and-fifty years.

Of his companion's claims to personal beauty there could be no doubt, in spite of the air of drink, dissipation, and neglect which hung about him. Wallace Armstrong at six-and-twenty was intended by nature to be a splendid specimen of muscular manhood—tall, broad-shouldered, vigorous, and sinewy, looming enormous over the small French soldiers who slouched in twos and threes across the market-place, and followed where he walked by the admiring glances of the stalwart bare-footed fish-girls trooping up and down to and from the quay.

But already Wallace Armstrong had done his best to injure the heritage of vigour and manly beauty which had devolved upon him at birth. Under his eyes, of a brilliant bluish-gray colour shaded by thick black lashes, late hours and hard drinking had imprinted lines and shadows ill-suited to early manhood; his whole expression was sullen and defiant, as though he distrusted and despised his fellow men and was at little trouble to disguise his feelings towards them. His manner of greeting his old acquaintance was not only insolent as to words, but still more so in the tone he used the while he roughly shook Garth's detaining hand off his coat-sleeve.

"It's of no use to claim acquaintanceship with me now!" Armstrong remarked, harshly. "I'm broke, stone-broke—and, what's more, if I had any money, I know better now than to play cards with you for it!"

Captain Garth's red face grew a shade redder; but he was not sensitive as to snubs, and his tone was altogether friendly when he spoke again.

"We're all broke occasionally," he observed, soothingly; "even I do not absolutely wallow in gold at the present minute. Still, I've a little place up here in the High Town where I can put up a friend in difficulties until things blow over."

"Oh, I'm not wanted by the police, if that's what you mean!" the other interrupted, scornfully. "My early indiscretions have been whitewashed by a visit to Australia, which means that, having got into bad company in England, I was sent across the sea to get into worse company in Australia."

"Have you been back long?" Garth inquired, accommodating with difficulty his footsteps to the long strides of his companion.

"Long enough to spend in Paris the money which was to take me back to England! Look!" And he turned his empty pockets inside out for Garth's edification.

The elder man looked thoughtful, and walked on by his side for some seconds in silence.

"But your uncle?" he suggested at last. "Surely Alexander Wallace's credit should help his nephew in raising the 'needful'?"

"A lot of use when for four years the old skinflint has gone about denouncing me as a ne'er-do-weel, and proclaiming the fact that I shall never get another ha'penny from him. I've written to him from here—it was the only thing to be done; but it won't be any good. The picture I drew in my letter of my sick and starving young wife was enough to melt the heart of a stone! But it won't move Uncle Alec."

"Your wife?" Garth repeated, in surprise.

"Yes. The young, lovely, and pious orphan daughter of a clergyman, who fell in love with me on board ship and decided to take in hand my reformation. There never was such a perfect woman—if, indeed, she's alive still; but as, when I wrote, she'd had nothing to eat for three days—and I can swear she's had nothing since—she may very likely be dead by this time!"

Captain Garth was neither a good nor a scrupulous man, but he had the remnants of a heart about him, and his companion's words shocked and startled him.

"Are you mad or drunk, Armstrong?" he cried. "Do you really mean to tell me your wife is here in Boulogne starving?"

Armstrong turned and looked at him. Then he thrust his hands into his empty pockets and burst out laughing.

"Why, you old idiot," he exclaimed, "she's only my wife on paper! What in the world should I want to burden myself with a wife for? Uncle Alec has always been soft-hearted about women, probably because he's had very little to do with them and doesn't know what fools and plagues they are; so the idea came into my head to pitch this starving-wife story, and see whether that would move him. But I don't hope much from it."

"It would be rather awkward, though, if he took you at your word and asked you to produce her!"

"Nothing less likely. He has frequently stated in the letters of good advice he sent me at Melbourne that he never wished to set eyes on me again; and Heaven knows I am not hungering for a sight of the sanctimonious old bag of bones! My precious cousin is now the darling of his eye, the industrious apprentice and good boy, and all that sort of thing! He has been taken into the bank, and, no doubt, will get the old screw's money when he dies—if he ever will die, which I am beginning to doubt! He never would if I were his heir, for certain. Curse my luck!"

Clearly Armstrong was in a communicative mood as he strode along, every now and then savagely kicking the stones on the pathway. His last franc had been spent on a dose of fiery cognac, which, taken after long fasting, had mounted to his brain and brought on a talkative mood. All the time they conversed the two men were mounting the dusty white road which led to the High Town, Armstrong insensibly and Garth by design.

Captain Garth, as has been said before, was not wholly ill-natured. Five years before he had had some hand in the ruining of Wallace Armstrong, then a high-spirited lad of one-and-twenty, and known to be the favourite nephew of a wealthy Scotch banker. At that time Garth was the secret proprietor of a gambling club, and it was to meet the liabilities contracted there that young Armstrong forged his uncle's name, and was subsequently banished from his native country and his uncle's favour. The gambling club in question had been raided and dispersed long ago; but Garth had evaded the law and taken up his residence abroad. He was now really sorry to note the shabbiness and recklessness of his former dupe, and was casting about in his mind as to whether he could not assist him with possible profit to himself.

"Come up to my diggings!" he said, cheerily. "My little girl will cook us a cutlet and mix a French salad as well as any waiter in Paris!"

"Your little girl? I didn't know you had any family!"

"Mrs. Garth died in England three years ago," returned the Captain. "She was a very good woman, according to her lights; but—h'm—a little narrow, you know! Country rector's sister, kept house for him in a Sussex village, fell in love with a handsome blue-eyed young racing-man she saw in church. I like church—it's an institution that ought to be kept up. And eighteen years ago, Armstrong,—though I say it that shouldn't—there wasn't a better-looking fellow at Goodwood than Randolph Garth. I have always been weak—I own it—where a pretty woman is concerned; and the late Mrs. Garth was certainly pretty, though she was eight-and-twenty when I first met her, and had never had an offer. That sly old brother of hers drove would-be suitors away—wanted to keep her little pittance—just a beggarly life-interest in three hundred a year in the family, d'ye see? But she fell in love, as pretty women will, quarrelled with her family, ran away to London, and met and married me by appointment in an old church in the City. As to the little misunderstandings which followed, no doubt each of us was a little to blame; but Mrs. Garth was a lady, and never made scenes. Our methods of life didn't suit; so ten years ago we parted quite amicably, and my wife settled down with our little girl Laline in a cottage in the Lake district, where I visited them occasionally. Three years ago Mrs. Garth died very suddenly, and her income died with her. So my little girl had to come over and rough it in Boulogne with her father."

Such was the story of his marriage, detailed airily by Captain Garth—a story true in the main, but with many touches omitted which would have lent meaning and pathos to the whole. The story of a good and tender woman's mistake, of her gradual disillusion and growing hopelessness, and of the self-sacrifice by which, at last, she forfeited annually one-third of her little income to her worthless husband, in order that she might keep and educate her child far from the gambling, drinking, and unscrupulous set to which the man she had once so loved belonged.

Possibly, had Wallace Armstrong paid much attention to Garth's story, he might have read between the lines some of these truths; but he was at present too much occupied with his own affairs to trouble himself with the autobiography of a man whom he despised and mistrusted.

The Rue Planché, where Captain Garth's lodgings were situated, was a mean street in the High Town, composed of tumble-down ill-built little houses, painted in various tints of cream-and-mustard colour, one storey high, and furnished with green shutters and little back gardens liberally adorned with clothes to dry.

One worn step only divided No. 7, Rue Planché, from the street. The front door was open as the two men approached, showing a very narrow, brick-paved passage, and the linen-hung garden beyond, in which la mère Bénoîte, the Captain's landlady, was engaged in hanging up clothes. The Captain's rooms comprised a little salon on the right, and a little salle-à-manger on the left of the entrance, and up-stairs two tiny bedrooms; but before now Mr. Garth had put up a friend on the sofa of one of the ground-floor rooms, and he was prepared to offer a similar privilege to the nephew of Alexander Wallace.

The salon was the Captain's special den. Although the window was open, the scent of spirits and stale tobacco hung on the air, a few sporting prints adorned the walls, and the Captain's desk was littered by cuttings from sporting papers. A card-table stood in the middle of the room, and an empty bottle of cognac, half a dozen glasses, and a dirty well-thumbed pack of cards clearly showed the manner in which the Captain had spent the preceding evening. Nothing in this room was removed except by Garth's special permission; but when he caught sight of the sardonic expression on his visitor's face, he shut the door somewhat hastily, and inwardly regretted that he had not ordered the place to be put straight before leaving home that morning.

"At your old tricks, I see," Armstrong observed, an unpleasant smile curving his full lips under his heavy black moustache.

"Oh, just a game with the boys, to charm away homesickness in the evenings. But I must introduce you to my little girl. Laline," he cried, throwing open the door of the salle-à-manger, "I have brought a visitor—Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"

Even Armstrong's clouded senses understood at once the contrast offered by this apartment to the dirty and neglected-looking salon. Here the green shutters were wide open, letting the sunlight flood the shining deal flooring, stained and polished to resemble oak, and the cheap suite of dining-room furniture, which had been beautified in the same manner. An earthenware jug, filled with poppies, marguerites, and cornflowers, stood on the mantelpiece, and a bowl of poppies on the snowy well-darned cloth laid upon the table, which article of furniture was pushed back to allow full space for the gambols of a girl, a cat, and a kitten on the uncarpeted floor.

Laline's back was turned to the two men as they entered. She was kneeling, holding a small black-and-white Persian kitten high above her head, and the sunlight from the window seemed to concentrate and shimmer in the loose masses of her abundant auburn hair, from which a restraining black ribbon had slipped on to the floor. Her dress was a long, loose blouse of dark-blue linen, yoked at the neck and wrists, and falling straight to her ankles, and her slim feet, in blue cashmere stockings, were innocent of shoes, Laline having kicked off her little high-heeled slippers in school-girl fashion, the better to enjoy her game of "romps."

Immediately in front of her sat the mother-cat, watching the struggles of her squeaking kitten with attention, but with no apparent alarm. She was a matron of ripe experience, and was well assured that her young ones would come to no harm in the hands of Laline Garth. The girl was laughing as the door opened, a happy laugh of childish gaiety, which sounded wonderfully sweet to Wallace Armstrong's ears.

"Aren't you frightened, Nell? Aren't you afraid that I shall let your silly scratching little ball of fluff fall and kill itself? Oh, you unnatural mother!"

"Laline," said the Captain again, "here is a gentleman to see us."

She sprang to her feet and faced them, still holding the kitten—a lovely over-grown child, to all appearance, a bright rose-flush mantling in her sunburnt cheeks right up to the long, brown lashes of her hazel eyes. A very, very pretty child, too tall for her short skirts, too long in the arm for her short sleeves, from which her slender brown wrists were thrust out too far. There existed no trace of likeness between the girl and her father. From her mother Laline inherited her slender limbs, her bright hair, broad brow, level eyebrows, and a certain delicate grace which distinguished her even at this half-formed period from other girls of her age. Only one detail of her face suggested that she had experienced more of life's trials than her years warranted—two little perpendicular lines between her eyebrows became clearly marked as her father presented her to this handsome, ill-dressed, unshaved young man, with the loose mouth, square jaw, and singularly-attractive blue eyes.

"Won't you shake hands with me, Miss Laline?" Wallace asked, gently. "Or am I too dirty?"

She held out her small brown hand in silence, looking straight up into his face as she did so. And at the questioning gaze of her dreamy, dark eyes Armstrong's eyes fell. It was absurd, of course, as he told himself afterwards when he recalled this incident, and due to his nerves being in a bad order, but it seemed as though this child's look conveyed a reproach.

"I had no idea, Garth, that your little girl as you called her, would be such a tall, well-grown young lady," he said, turning to Garth to hide his sudden embarrassment. "She looks quite fourteen or fifteen."

"I am sixteen to-day," Laline said, in full, sweet tones.

Laline's voice was unlike any voice which Armstrong had ever heard, with a sound in it which constitutes what the French call une voix voilée, a low-pitched cooing inflection, peculiarly soothing to the ear.

"Have you had any nice presents?" he asked, determining instantly to go down to the town and buy the pretty child some sweets, until, with a hot flush of vexation, he remembered his empty pockets.

"I haven't had any presents," the girl answered; and then, with a little break in her voice, she added, "Papa had forgotten the date!"

"Not at all, my dear, not at all. The fact was I was on my way to choose you some pretty trifle when I met our friend here. And, as soon as you and the good Bénoîte have prepared us a little déjeuner, I will go down to the town and get you some little souvenir. But now a cutlet and a little salad will be acceptable; and here"—he fumbled in his pockets and produced at length a coin—"take this, my child, to Monsieur Desjardins, and bring a bottle of vin ordinaire. He'll let you take it for cash, though we have a little account there."

Laline took a wide-brimmed Zulu straw hat from a nail, slung a basket over her arm, and went pattering down the stone-paved street on the little wooden-heeled shoes, into which she had thrust her feet when disturbed at her play. Wallace Armstrong leaned his elbows on the window-sill and stared after the slim figure in blue with hair that shone gold in the bright sunlight.

"How in the world," he said to Garth, without looking round, "do you come to have a daughter like that? And what are you about letting her potter about dirty little wine-shops in Boulogne?"

"Monsieur Desjardins is our grocer—a most respectable person," returned Captain Garth, joining Armstrong at the window and lighting a cigarette. "Every one knows that Laline and I belong to the upper classes, although we're not very ready with our money just now."

"I'm sorry for the child," was his companion's only comment—"very sorry!"

CHAPTER II.

Laline, for her part, had almost forgotten the time when she had first flushed with indignation at the notion of running errands for her father.

One gets used to a great many things in three years, and it was three years since Laline, a forlorn little figure in deep mourning, had stood on the deck of a Folkestone steamer on her way to her widowed father and her motherless home. Of her father she knew very little indeed at that time, not having seen him for two years. England had become too hot to hold Mr. Garth about that period, and he had taken up his residence permanently in Boulogne; but for many years before he had been practically a stranger in that tiny household in Westmoreland. The late Mrs. Garth had been a gentle, dreamy-eyed lady, of refined but narrow mind, fond of poetry, fancywork, church-decoration, and district-visiting, easily shocked, and thoroughly orthodox in her views on all subjects. Her great aim with regard to her daughter, whom she loved devotedly, was to make of her a refined gentlewoman, and to guard her from all knowledge of, and contact with, the wickedness of the great world outside the hills of Westmoreland.

From this life of watchfulness, this sheltered, peaceful existence under the shadow of the little grey church in the valley, Laline was unexpectedly torn and transferred to an atmosphere of debt, neglect, and shiftlessness, the life of a ruined gamester, exiled from his native country, and earning by his wits a precarious subsistence in a back street of Boulogne.

Before her tears for her mother's loss were dry, Laline had begun to realise that Captain Garth fully intended that she should, in some measure, make up to him for the hundred a year which he had lost by his wife's death. He was kind to her in his manner, but he never for one moment understood her. When he tried to speak to her of her mother, she received his remarks in silence, watching him with great eyes full of wondering pain. His talk jarred on the girl, and it seemed a desecration to hear him discuss his dead wife in his favourite terms.

"A good woman, a very good woman, according to her lights! We didn't quite hit it off together; but I am not blaming her. And no doubt she has done her best with you; no doubt—— Why, my dear, what are you crying for?"

"I would so much rather that you did not talk to me about mother," the girl had said; and Captain Garth had respected her wish without in the least understanding it.

Then began a twofold existence for the dreamy, imaginative child. An indoor life of poverty and hard work—cooking, washing, tidying, dusting, and mending, under the superintendence of Bénoîte, until Laline could replace Aurélie the bonne and spare her father the latter's keep and wages, and an outdoor life of long rambles, sometimes by herself and sometimes in charge of the little Bertins' next door, up to the vallée or down to the sands and along the shore to the neighbouring seaside villages, with her friend the sea lapping the sands at her feet.

Day-dreams for ever filled her mind, sharing it with recollections of her happy childhood among the hills. Her soft, near-sighted eyes could never with bare vision perceive the coast of England; but the eldest Bertin boy possessed a telescope, by the aid of which she could distinguish with a bounding heart the white cliffs of her native land. All that she knew of joy and peace, of tender love and gentle sympathy, of refinement and of culture, came from her English experiences; her present life, half drudgery, half solitary wandering, was lonely and hard by comparison. In England she had been the one thought of her mother's mind, the vicar's favourite pupil, the village pet, "little Miss Garth," daughter of a lady known and honoured by all. Here, in the Rue Planché, she was "la p'tite Gart," who ran errands, begged for credit from tradespeople, and looked after the ménage with deaf and irascible old Bénoîte.

Of her beauty Laline was unconscious; a few artists had sketched her from memory, and she had seen the sketches, and wondered whether her hair really looked like that in the sunshine. But she had read Ivanhoe and other novels by Walter Scott, and her ideal of loveliness was the black-haired type with sloping shoulders, alabaster brow, eyes black as night, and the smallest possible mouth.

French romances, except some especially goody-goody stories avowedly intended for the very young, were altogether unknown to her. Captain Garth respected the child-like innocence of his daughter's mind and locked up his amusing paper-covered novels. Of her father's sporting and card-playing associates Laline knew but little. Captain Garth received visitors in his den, which the girl never entered unless her father was the sole occupant of the room. He would have wished to pose before her as a high-minded, hardworking, and honourable gentleman, driven from his country and his equals by the envious spite of a cabal and the undeserved blows of "outrageous fortune;" but when he vapoured to his little girl concerning his high principles and unrecognised genius, Laline said never a word, and contented herself with scanning him with soft eyes which saw outer things but dimly, but which seemed to have the gift at times of divining the hidden spirit beyond.

Walking down the rough stone-paved street on this particular midsummer day, Laline's thoughts busied themselves with the figure of Wallace Armstrong the tallest, handsomest Englishman to whom she had ever yet spoken. No self-consciousness touched her mind; she knew quite well that both Mr. Armstrong and her father regarded her as a child, and she had not the slightest wish to develop into a "young lady," fenced in with conventional proprieties. Captain Garth so seldom introduced any of his associates to her that that fact alone was sufficient to attract her notice; and then this powerfully-built young man with the black brows, drooping black moustache, brilliant eyes, and saturnine expression at once interested the girl from his resemblance to her ideal of the Templar in Ivanhoe.

Mr. Wallace Armstrong could not be very good, she decided. Her knowledge of evil was limited, but she opined that he played cards, and put money on horses and swore when they lost, and that he drank cognac, and perhaps did not pay his bills. His voice had sounded gentle enough in speaking to her, but rough and scornful when he addressed her father. Just so must Brian de Bois-Guilbert's voice have rung out, harsh and imperious, when he rated Rebecca's father. And yet Laline began to wonder at the fair Jewess's invincible dislike against the Templar. Meantime her little high-heeled feet had taken her to Monsieur Desjardins's, and the old man behind the counter, grumbling, took the money she proffered, and bade her remind her father that his little account had long been unsettled.

"La p'tite Gart is growing too tall for her short skirts," his wife remarked, as Laline left the shop. "She becomes une très-jolie fille, and will soon be wanting a nice little beau."

"Bah! It is a child!" responded her husband. "In England they do not think of love and marriage until they are old maids of five- or six-and-twenty. Mam'selle Laline has a good ten years yet."

Déjeuner at Rue Planché was a success that day. Laline cooked to perfection, and waited at table deftly. At the latter arrangement Wallace Armstrong demurred. He disliked to see so pretty a girl made into a household drudge; but Laline explained that Bénoîte's snuff-taking proclivities rendered her an undesirable waitress. She did not add that the household resources were at so low an ebb that cutlets at luncheon were a luxury she could not permit herself; she contented herself with assuring Mr. Armstrong that she had already partaken of luncheon, dignifying by that name a plate of thin vegetable soup and a piece of stale bread in the kitchen.

Eating made Wallace more hopeful. After all, as Captain Garth reminded him, he was six-and-twenty, and nephew to one of the richest men in London. No man was worthy the name, so the elder declared, who had not "sown his wild oats;" and the prodigal son, or prodigal nephew, as the case might be, was always the favourite in the end. Card-playing was not an exciting pastime between two men, neither of whom possessed any money or any immediate certainty of procuring any; but habit made them gamble away the sunny hours of a midsummer afternoon until five o'clock, when Armstrong suggested that they should stroll down to the hotel where he had been staying since his arrival in Boulogne three days before, and ascertain whether by chance there was any answer to his appeal to his uncle.

With characteristic improvidence, Wallace Armstrong had put up at an hotel which, although not specially dear as summer seaside prices go, was most certainly far beyond his means. Since his arrival at this establishment, which was under French management and faced the Museum in the Grand Rue, the big shabby young Englishman had consumed hardly any food, but a large amount of drinks, and the patron within the office in the hall eyed him askance as he approached and inquired for letters.

"Mais, oui, Monsieur; il y a bien une lettre."

Wallace seized it, and the blood rushed to his face. The address was in his uncle's handwriting, and the letter was registered!

"Come outside," he said, after he had signed the receipt, thrusting his hand within Garth's arm. "I don't want these prying foreigners to get wind of my affairs."

Standing under an awning in front of a shop, Wallace tore open his uncle's letter, and Garth, watching him furtively under his white eyebrows, noted the swift changes of expression which passed over his face. First astonishment, then amusement, and finally a baffled and angered look characterised his features as he thrust the letter into the hands of his companion.

"Read it," he said, "and see if your infernal cunning can get me out of the scrape! It beats me!"

Alexander Wallace's handwriting was small and cramped, but perfectly legible. His letter was written from his London office, and ran as follows,—

"Dear Nephew,—If it be true that a pious and virtuous lady has been so misguided as to link her fate with such an idle and dissipated ne'er-do-weel as I fear you have become, your wife has my heartiest sympathy. But I have a belief which is almost unlimited in the capability of a good woman for reforming a man, however deeply he be sunk in depravity, and I intend, for your wife's sake, to give you yet another chance. To this end I send you ten pounds to relieve your present necessities; and within a week, if your wife is strong enough to travel, I will forward the money wherewith you may at once make your way to my house in London. But understand—my future dealings with you will depend upon your absolute truthfulness and candour in the matter. If I find that Mrs. Wallace Armstrong is indeed what you describe—a gentle, high-minded, romantic, and unworldly young lady, your equal in birth, of truly Christian training, devoted to you, and believing in your higher capabilities, I will take both her and you into my house, which sadly needs the sweetening presence of a daughter for my old age. More than that; upon your arrival with your wife at my office—armed, of course, with all necessary credentials, such as your marriage-certificate and such papers as shall show your wife's position and home-training before you married her—I will provide you with immediate employment, and I will settle upon your wife, whose name, by-the-way, you do not mention, the sum of three hundred pounds a year, to be paid quarterly for her sole use and benefit, and to be increased in a given time to five hundred if I deem it expedient. On receipt of this letter and enclosure I must ask you to pay at once all that you owe at the hotel, to provide your wife with food and necessaries, and to send on to me full receipts for all amounts you may disburse from the enclosed ten pounds. Will you also tell me at what date I may expect you and your wife, and you shall receive by return the necessary sum for your fares and other expenses incidental on your journey. Remember, I had not meant, nor had I wished, to see your face again; but, if a good woman has been brought to believe in you, and to link her fate with yours, I will try to forget your past conduct, and will give you yet one more chance of attaining that position which, but for your follies and vices, should be yours already.

"Your uncle,
"Alexander Wallace."

Captain Garth read the letter twice through. Then he returned it to its owner and began pulling reflectively at his white moustache.

"My boy," he observed, "it is a poser—certainly a poser! But the chance is not one to let slip. Three hundred a year going begging for want of a wife. We must have a petit verre together at the nearest café out of this sunshine and think it over. Three hundred a year!"

Oddly enough, as he reflected, it was the exact amount of the late Mrs. Garth's life-interest, which had passed away on her death to her own family. A third of that had been his; and although two pounds a week was an absurd trifle for a gentleman of his taste and social position, yet, with only himself to keep, it had often sufficed in bad times to keep the wolf from the door. And times grew worse instead of better, and the three hundred would probably soon be increased to five—more than that, if once Wallace Armstrong was restored to his uncle's favour, the lion's share of old Wallace's wealth might well be his some day, since, of the banker's two nephews, he had undoubtedly at that time been the best-loved. Such a chance must by no means be allowed to slip from this young man's grasp.

It must not be supposed that Captain Garth's solicitude on Armstrong's behalf was wholly unselfish. At fifty-six Captain Garth was almost incapable of formulating any plan into which self-interest entered not, and he clearly wanted, in his own parlance, to "make a good thing out of" Wallace Armstrong. He set then to work drawing up a mental inventory of the potential brides with any one of whom, at the shortest possible notice, he might unite his young friend in matrimony.

"There is only one thing to be done, of course," he said, sipping the cognac Armstrong had ordered on the strength of his uncle's remittance, and jotting down names in pencil on his cuff under the awning of the café—"there is only one thing to be done. You must get married."

Wallace stared at him, and then laughed contemptuously.

"If that's all you've got to suggest," he observed, "I can dispense with your advice!"

"Now, my boy, be reasonable! With a wife you can get your fare to England at once advanced, return to the bosom of your family with everything forgotten and forgiven, enjoy the fatted calf, obtain in all probability a position in your uncle's bank, live in his house rent-free, pocket a tidy little income, and eventually succeed to the bulk of your uncle's property. Without a wife—well, I don't want to be too personal, but you know best the details of your present financial position."

"You talk as if getting married were as easy as putting on one's coat!" Armstrong broke out impatiently. "I've had a rough time of it lately, but, thank Heaven, I've never been dragged down by a nagging, whining woman. I've never yet met the woman who was worth spending half an hour's thought upon—an extravagant, capricious, vain, mercenary, hypocritical crew——"

"Perhaps your experiences have been unfortunate?" suggested Garth, soothingly. "There are plenty of nice girls about, plenty, if one knows where to find them."

"Nice girls," sneered Armstrong, "who would be ready at a moment's notice to marry a penniless scamp with scarcely a rag to his back who hasn't even the decency to pretend to be in love with them!"

"Nice girls," Garth repeated, imperturbably, "who are not very happy at home, and who would be glad enough to make a good wife to a fine handsome young fellow, nephew to old Alexander Wallace, who would provide them with a comfortable home and a liberal allowance of pocket-money."

"You mean that I can buy a wife with all the domestic virtues for this promised three hundred a year?" Armstrong inquired, harshly.

"Well, yes—that's one way of putting it, if you like!" returned Garth, his patience beginning to give way. "Great Scot, man! You can't expect to have sentiment thrown in, too, in matters of this kind! What do most girls marry for? Why, a comfortable home, of course. And when they marry for anything else, such as a fine figure or a twinkling eye or a handsome pair of moustaches, what is the result? When the tax-collector and the butcher's and baker's bills come in at the door, love flies out at the window. It's all a matter of money and expediency. They manage these things much better here in France."

"You forget," said Wallace, "that, when I wrote to my uncle a week ago, I described myself as already married. Even if this paragon of a bride can be discovered, there would be, I suppose, some necessary delay before the ceremony could be performed——"

"About three weeks."

"Just so. And my wily old uncle has requested me to bring my certificate with me."

"That might be arranged. A little mistake as to the date, and the necessary delay before your wife is strong enough to travel—remember, you said she was starving, and a girl doesn't get over that in a day."

"And, after all this, where is the girl?"

The Captain recommenced pulling his white moustache and glanced at the initials scrawled in pencil on his cuff.

"I have a friend in the town," he began again, after a few seconds' reflection. "Talented man—Oxford man—but down on his luck. His daughters are good-looking girls and very much admired. The younger one is really handsome, a big blonde, very fine girl indeed—Nanny Westbrook. I could take you round this evening and introduce you."

"How old is she?"

"Oh, ha—one can never tell a woman's age! Not more than thirty, and looks much less. A very good amateur actress, and could do all the parson's-orphan-daughter-business thoroughly well. A really jolly girl, full of fun, with no nonsense about her. The best waltzer in the town, too. Last carnival ball here she went as a Pierrette, and I assure you she was the belle of the room. Didn't look more than eighteen, on my honour."

"None of your carnival-ball hacks for me!" said Armstrong, in a tone of disgust. "I know the type, and I hate it! If I've got to put up with a wife at all, I'll have one who'll stay at home and behave decently and give me no trouble. I don't think they grow them among your Boulogne acquaintances."

Two Frenchmen, who were sipping coffee and absinthe at an adjoining table, broke at this moment into lively expressions of admiration at sight of a young girl coming up from the quay.

"Look well, Jules! Is she not ravishing, the little English girl? She is English assuredly; no French girl so pretty as that would be promenading about all alone. It is not often that the English have such pretty feet. But, sapristi, what a dress! It is rather like a blue-bag than a gown! These English girls have no coquetry!"

The object of their remarks was none other than Laline Garth, fresh from a long swim out to sea, her loose auburn hair drying on her shoulders in the sun, the low, level rays of which shone in her soft, dark eyes and lit up the bright tints of her cheeks and lips. Hers was the beauté du diable which nothing can spoil—not even shapeless gowns, ill-fitting silk-gloves, and a Zulu hat which cost fifty centimes—the sparkling evanescent loveliness of a child merging into a maiden.

Wallace Armstrong turned in his seat at the Frenchman's words and looked fixedly under his level, black brows at Laline as she climbed the hill with swift, springing steps.

"Garth," he said, suddenly, "I've made up my mind to take your advice. And I'll marry your daughter Laline."

CHAPTER III.

Captain Garth's second petit verre of cognac almost dropped from his fingers on its way to his lips in his astonishment at his young friend's proposition.

"Laline," he repeated, blankly—"you marry Laline? Why, man, she's a child—a baby!"

"She is sixteen," Armstrong repeated, coolly, "and she'd look older if you dressed her properly. French girls of all classes marry at sixteen."

"So do English-factory-hands!" Garth broke in, bluntly. "But the daughters of English gentlemen haven't left the schoolroom at that age."

"Your daughter has. What are you making of her? A household drudge—nothing more or less! It's no good coming any of the parental love-business with me, Garth. I've got to marry apparently, and my wife must be a pretty, young English girl of blameless reputation, connected with the clergy, and all that sort of thing. Well, from what you tell me of your little girl, her mother brought her up in a way that would be quite after my old psalm-singing uncle's heart. I don't pretend to be in love with her; but I've never seen a prettier or sweeter face than hers; and, even if she can't be a wife or a companion to me at first, we shall no doubt grow as fond of each other in due time as most married people. She has just the face and voice to get round Uncle Alec. I'm hanged if I can understand how she comes to be your daughter? She's not in the least like you, or, you may take my word for it, I shouldn't want to marry her! Of course I don't expect you to agree to anything that isn't to your own advantage. Your daughter can't be worse off than she is here; and I'm ready to offer you compensation for the loss of her services. Once she's married me, she's got to be an orphan, and you've got to be a dead clergyman; but, as you'll be paid something for keeping quiet, that won't matter."

Captain Garth glanced at his proposed son-in-law under his white eyebrows, and his expression was by no means friendly. A lifetime of snubs and shifts had not succeeded in destroying the man's conceit and self-importance, and only the thought of old Alexander Wallace's millions checked his desire to resent Mr. Armstrong's studied insolence of tone and words. Even now he would at once have rejected the young man's proposal from sheer personal dislike but for the fact that the little household in Rue Planché was financially in a very bad way indeed, and that the precarious living which the self-styled captain earned as bookmaker, gambler, speculator in antiques and curios, cicerone, and money-lender, had of late brought in less and less grist to the mill. Yet somewhere in Randolph Garth's tortuous mind there lurked an appreciation for what is good and pure, and he heartily wished that some other man's daughter and not his own could be sacrificed to Wallace Armstrong.

For it would be a sacrifice. Garth knew it, with his experience of the seamy side of life and the worst qualities of his fellow-men. He could read it in the fierceness and sullenness of Armstrong's expression, in the puffiness of the skin under his eyes and their bloodshot whites, in the shakiness of the strong brown hand which raised the glass to his lips, and in the lips themselves, over-full and sensual in outline, perpetually curving in an ugly sneer.

As if to emphasise the contrast between her and the man who had asked her hand in marriage, Laline herself stopped on the opposite side of the street and began talking and laughing with a group of French children, comprising the little Bertins and others of her neighbours. The little white-headed, brown-faced, toddling things pulled at her hands; evidently they all wished her to go down again to the sands with them, and she was as plainly pleading her household duties as her excuse.

"Voyons donc, Laline! Viens avec nous!"

Laline laughed and shook her head. Her small, regular teeth shone white as a child's between her parted red lips. The two Frenchmen beneath the café awning sat up, twirled their moustaches, and wasted many an ogle over the road, tributes to her beauty which Laline was too shortsighted to see, and which, if she had seen them, would have filled her with wonder.

The sight of his daughter seemed to trouble Garth's conscience. It was almost as though he heard the voice of her dead mother in his ear, begging him to remember his trust and to guard Laline against such men as the one who sat by his side.

"It is nonsense," he muttered, suddenly, "to talk of marrying a child like that! It is not as if she were even precocious—she has scarcely left off playing with her dolls. In a year or two's time it will be quite early enough for her to think of sweethearts. Besides, she wouldn't dream of leaving me and her home for a stranger; and the days of a stern parent coercing his child into a hated marriage are over, if they ever existed."

"Will you let me try and persuade her?" suggested Armstrong. "You don't see the best side of me; but then I have an old grudge against you. And I can be very nice when I choose."

Before Garth could answer, Armstrong had risen and crossed the sunny street to where the girl stood talking to the laughing children. His long shadow fell across Laline's face as she stooped to kiss the youngest Bertin, and a sudden silence came upon the erstwhile animated group.

"I wanted to know, Miss Garth," Wallace began, in a tone of genial kindness, "whether you and your young friends would like some sweets and pastry, because I am going to buy some myself at a certain fascinating shop at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, and, as I am certain to make myself ill if I go in all by myself, I propose that you should all come with me and protect me."

The children's shyness vanished at such a proposition; and very soon Captain Garth, from his seat before the café, saw a little procession pass down towards the quay; in front, two little Bertin boys and Maggie Royston, aged eleven, from No. 15, Rue Planché, and, a little way behind them, Laline, leading two smaller Bertins by the hand, while a younger Royston trotted contentedly by the side of the big shabbily-dressed young man with the blue eyes and the black moustache, and grasped his fingers confidingly.

After all, the Captain told himself, there must be a lot of good in a man so fond of children as Armstrong appeared to be. He was still little more than a boy, and would probably settle down now that he was given another chance, and become quite a respectable member of society. Reformed rakes proverbially make the best husbands; and it was not so easy nowadays to marry a girl without a penny to her name that she could afford to be over-particular as to the character of her suitors. Besides, what was there against Armstrong? A little over-partiality for cards, for drink, and for fast society, a little mistake as to a certain signature on a certain cheque; mere trifles these, such as could easily be lived down and forgotten by any man with a decent balance at his banker's. Laline would be kindly treated—Alexander Wallace would see to that. The old gentleman was clearly longing to fold a daughter to his heart; and, once Laline was installed in his house, there was little doubt but that she would soon become indispensable to his happiness.

"She's a good girl, an excellent little girl," the Captain said to himself; "and, 'pon my soul, I think it's the best thing I can do for her! She seems quite to take to the fellow. He's a gentleman, and may some day be worth his twenty-five thousand a year. She's getting too tall and too pretty for those childish pinafore frocks, and I can't afford to dress her well. I wonder how much he means to offer me? He's deucedly hard and sharp for a young man; but, if I let him marry Laline, he couldn't surely think of putting me off with less than three pounds a week, to be raised to two hundred a year later on. I must have it all down in black and white, though, for it's my belief he's a slippery customer. Curse his impudent airs!"

From which soliloquy it may be gathered that Captain Garth was gradually reconciling himself to the prospect of parting from his only child.

He did not attempt to join his daughter and her companions. If Armstrong really could contrive to impress Laline favourably, he should have a fair field and no favour; and, with this idea in his mind, the Captain presently betook himself to his favourite billiard-table in the town, where he talked largely to his customary acquaintances of his young friend Wallace Armstrong, godson and favourite nephew of old Alexander Wallace the banker, and certain heir to his vast fortune; and, on the strength of Armstrong's future wealth, he succeeded in borrowing five francs from one of the habitués of the table.

At a quarter to seven it occurred to him that Wallace Armstrong must stand him a dinner out of his uncle's cheque; so, putting down his billiard-cue, he thrust his fingers jauntily through his white curls before a looking-glass, set his hat a little on one side, and sallied forth on his young friend's track. He judged that Laline and the children had probably gone home, and was therefore greatly surprised at hearing his own name cried from a fiacre which was being driven through the principal street of the town with the rapid and zigzag course of the Gallic cabman. Within were seated Wallace Armstrong and Laline in the places of honour, and on Wallace's knee was placed the youngest Mademoiselle Bertin, hugging a new doll and eating sweets from a paper bag. Three more children with their backs to the horses, and the eldest Bertin boy on the box, all looked equally hot, tired, and happy, and laden with sweets and toys, while Laline's eyes shone like stars in her excitement and delight.

The toys and sweets had not cost very much, and even the enchanting drive was not an unreasonably-priced item. But this good fairy of a Mr. Armstrong had confided to Laline that he owed her father a great deal of money, and had been by him authorised to spend a part of it upon her. As a result, she was wearing her first beautiful shop-made hat of black open-work straw and black lace, with a wreath of small, pink rosebuds outlining her fresh, young face, and other rosebuds decorating the crown. Fifteen francs had been the price of this triumph of millinery; and in all her life afterwards Laline never again derived from any clothes the absolute joy the wearing of this first smart hat afforded her.

Sweets and cakes, too, she loved, as do all girls of sixteen; and, most of all, she enjoyed having her small friends about her to participate in these unexpected favours of fortune. Her frank gratitude made Wallace wince more than once; and, when she thanked him for his goodness, he interrupted her almost roughly.

"Don't, Miss Garth, please! I am not good, and I don't like it!"

At his tone a startled look came into her eyes, and, seeing it, he bent towards her, speaking very gently.

"The fact is, I am very fond of children—small ones like these, and grown-up ones like you."

"Oh, but you wouldn't call me grown up, even in this hat, would you?" she asked, with a happy little laugh. "I think I'm a tiresome sort of age—neither the one thing nor the other."

"And which would you rather be?"

"A child, if I could be a child as I used to be. I was so happy! But that seems a long time ago. I shouldn't like to be a child again as things are now!"

He noted the sadness of her tone, and instantly divined that she was thinking with regret of the old days when her mother was still alive. But he was too tactful to try to seek her confidence as yet.

"I suppose you don't often have treats, since such simple things please you?" he presently suggested.

"Oh, never!" she answered, promptly. "You see papa has to work very hard, and cannot afford it. But this has been a most beautiful birthday; and, thanks to you, Mr. Armstrong, I feel a regular Cinderella, and you are the good fairy."

"I would rather be the prince."

"Would you?"

"Yes. You see he married Cinderella."

His tone was so entirely playful that Laline attached no importance to his words, though she remembered them long afterwards. Her freedom from self-consciousness interested and pleased him. He began to feel regretful that he could not wait until this sweet, childish frankness developed into a maturer charm. This was a school-girl to pet and caress, not a woman to love as a wife. But, half-fledged bird as she was, she was yet the prettiest thing he had ever seen; and to Armstrong, who had no domestic tastes, the idea of an unworldly, unsuspicious little creature, who would obey implicitly, exact nothing in return, and contentedly spend her time alone with her needlework by her own fireside, was more agreeable than the prospect of the love and companionship of the wisest and the most helpful and devoted wife ever sent by Heaven to bless a lonely man's career.

CHAPTER IV.

That was a gala day in Laline's life, a day towards which, in after years, she often looked back with a swift pain at her heart.

How kind they had all seemed! Wallace Armstrong was gentleness itself, and there was in his manner towards her a blending of protecting care with playful admiration peculiarly flattering to a girl in her early teens. Her father, too, was unusually indulgent; and, when he got into the fiacre at Wallace's invitation, and drove back with them to the High Town and the Rue Planché, it was quite a triumphal journey, and the arrival at number seven created considerable sensation. Even Bénoîte was almost civil. Decidedly, she told herself, Monsieur le Capitaine had got hold of a rich and foolish young man, to whom gold was as dross—a riche Anglais eccentrique, who might very possibly be coaxed into paying the arrears of monsieur's rent. So that Bénoîte, like every one else, saw everything couleur de rose that evening. And when Laline at last went to bed, after a dinner—a real substantial dinner, with good red wine—her first dinner at a restaurant—and in her new hat, too, with her father and his friend—she laid her head upon her pillow, convinced of her mistake in supposing that Wallace Armstrong was a Brian de Bois-Guilbert, a morose and evil-minded Templar, when in reality he was a Prince Charming!

And, while Laline slept peacefully above, dreaming of triumphal drives, of marvellous new hats, and unlimited bonbons and toys for her friends the children, Mr. Wallace Armstrong and her father, in the shabby smoke-laden salon below, concocted between them the following letter for the delectation of Mr. Alexander Wallace in London,—

"My Dear Uncle Alec,—I can't tell you how grateful I felt at receiving your letter and enclosure. Things were at a pretty bad pass for me and my poor Laline when your unexpected help arrived. I say unexpected, because I know quite well I didn't deserve it; but you have given me another chance, and I mean to profit by it. Unfortunately, I fear that it will be quite a fortnight before my wife is fit to travel. You see, owing to my ill-luck, she has had a rough time of it lately, and she is young—very little more than a child, in fact—and un-used to privations. Happily the doctor, whom I at once fetched in on receiving your kindly help, declares her constitution to be so good that with rest and nourishing food she will be herself again in a very short time. But he strongly recommends me to defer our journey for a fortnight or ten days, at the least. My wife's maiden name was Laline Garth; her mother was a country rector's daughter, and she has been most carefully trained in all womanly virtues, besides being an excellent little cook and housekeeper. She is wonderfully pretty, although very thin, poor child! She is not yet eighteen, and knows next to nothing of the world. In short, she is much, very much too good for me! I am not sending you the receipts you ask for, as at every moment I find some new thing we are in need of. Poor Laline and I haven't even decent clothing yet. You may well say that under the circumstances it was madness to marry. I admit that perhaps it was; but such madness might well be inspired by such a girl as Laline. However, you must see her yourself and judge whether I have over-praised her, and whether among my many faults there may not be counted unto me the saving virtue of knowing and loving a good women when I see one.

"Always your affectionate nephew,
"Wallace Armstrong."

"The difficulty now is," observed Wallace, as he fastened the letter and addressed the envelope, after studying the contents with his mentor and friend, "to coach Miss Laline up in her part of the business. She seems somehow or other to possess a good deal of the awkward George Washington faculty. It will be a delicate matter to make her understand that you were an estimable clergyman, and that you are slumbering peaceful within the tomb."

"The best plan," advised the Captain, thoughtfully sipping at his cognac, "is to warn her that your uncle disapproves of all men connected with the turf, and to beg her to think of me as dead. Of course it is not a particularly pleasant experience for an affectionate father——"

"You are going to be paid for it!" Wallace interrupted, with his usual brutal directness. "It is not as though you were being asked to do anything for nothing!"

"And, by-the-bye, the sum was never fixed," said Garth, resting his elbows on the table and scanning his prospective son-in-law sharply. "I must have all that clearly settled before I make that call with you on the Consul to-morrow morning."

And here a difference of opinion was made manifest which seemed to threaten a serious breach between the worthy pair. Wallace Armstrong was inclined to dismiss his future father-in-law's pretensions with the offer of a pound a week for life, or so long as he should retain his uncle's favour. But Laline's father had prepared a fixed scale of charges, from which nothing would induce him to depart. He was making a great sacrifice, he declared; he was relinquishing the love, companionship, and services of his only living relative, the pride of his heart, the legacy of his lost wife, and, out of sheer kindness and compassion for an old friend in difficulties, he was giving her in marriage to a man who he greatly feared would never make her truly happy.

"And if you should grow tired of her or become unkind to her, where would the poor child fly but to me, her old father, whom she has been forced to consider dead, but who, in his old age, must at least be sufficiently well off to provide her with a home when all else fails her!"

Tears stood in Captain Garth's eyes at his own eloquence, to which the younger man listened quite unmoved.

Two pounds a week, to be paid quarterly from the date of the marriage, three pounds a week when the income allowed by Alexander Wallace should be raised to five hundred a year; and in the event of the banker dying and leaving a will favourable to Armstrong, an income for Garth of two hundred and fifty a year for the remainder of his life.

Until fully three o'clock the two men sat smoking and drinking cognac, while they quarrelled and haggled and finally out cards over the settlement of the elder man's allowance in the event of his giving his daughter in marriage to the ex-forger and family scapegrace before him. Not until the early sunrise forced its rays through the green shutters did they part, Randolph Garth having won all he demanded, and retiring to bed in high good humour; while Wallace, disdainfully refusing the offer of a "shake-up" in the salle-à-manger, took his way down to the town and his hotel, cursing his future father-in-law for a swindling old reprobate, and his uncle for a narrow-minded old skinflint and imbecile.

The bargain was effected, a bargain which was to transfer the charge of a girl—young, beautiful, innocent, and friendless—from an old scamp to a young one. Garth and Armstrong had arranged their visit to the English Consul after they had renovated their toilets with the remainder of Alexander Wallace's gift; and at the Consul's office due notice was given of the marriage between Laline Garth, aged seventeen, daughter of Randolph Garth, an English subject residing in Boulogne, and Wallace Armstrong, aged twenty-six, of no occupation, whose present address was the Hôtel Mendon, Boulogne.

The one part of the affair which both men appeared to shirk was breaking to Laline the news that she was to be married in three weeks' time. Captain Garth in some measure paved the way for the announcement by taking her into his confidence concerning his state of hopeless insolvency, a thing he had never before done. Laline sat on the window-sill opposite to him in the little salle-à-manger, listening very quietly to the tale of his embarrassments, her soft dark eyes fixed intently on his face. She knew quite well, to her bitter mortification, the ever-increasing amounts they owed to Bénoîte and to the tradespeople, whose patience was in several cases altogether exhausted. She herself ate little but bread and butter, and drank nothing but water; but her father was extremely fond of the pleasures of the table, and invariably spent his last franc on wine or tempting charcuterie for his own delectation.

At the end of his recital of his debts and difficulties, which were real enough, Laline looked up suddenly.

"Papa," she said, "I have an idea. It's not the first time it has come into my mind, but I didn't like to speak of it to you before! Why shouldn't I go out and earn some money as a nursery governess? I speak French as well as English, and I'm very fond of children. Then the money I earned would help to pay the bills."

"My dear child," her father began, rather nonplussed by her offer and by the earnestness of her tone, which taught him that this plan had become fixed in her mind, "do you look like a nursery governess? No one would engage you!"

"But Mr. Armstrong took me to Madame Caillard's shop yesterday and made me order a gray cashmere dress and be measured for it—a proper grown-up dress, touching the ground all around; he said he owed you money, and you had told him to buy me what I liked. You can't think how grown-up I shall look in it. And he told me to look in the hair-dresser's shops and notice how hair was dressed now, because I am growing too tall to wear my hair tied back with a ribbon. And I thought all the time of this nursery-governess idea, and was delighted, for I am longing to pay off the bills!"

"My dear little girl," put in her father, who had been listening with ill-concealed impatience, "if you had the least idea of a nursery-governess's duties and salary, you wouldn't entertain such a project for a moment. Nursery governesses are treated much worse than nursemaids, are worked about thirteen hours a day, and paid from fifteen to twenty pounds a year. You, at your age, and without experience, could not hope to receive more than about twelve or fourteen pounds a year to start with, and you would be simply a nurse-girl, a servant, to take your orders from some vulgar and domineering nurse. Even if by a miracle you received the highest possible salary for such a situation, of what use would twenty pounds a year be to me? Five hundred francs, out of which your washing and clothes must come—and we owe about eight thousand francs, at least. No, no, my dear, it's not to be thought of! They must come and carry off our poor little sticks, I suppose, as they have done before; and, if the very worst comes, they can put me in prison."

This conversation impressed and pained Laline deeply. She was greatly disappointed at the manner in which her father disparaged the possible help she was capable of affording him, and fell to wondering if there was no other way out of their difficulties. Down to the pier she wandered, late on a hot afternoon, to think over the subject that was troubling her. In appearance she was a little more sedate than she had been on her first introduction to Wallace Armstrong twelve days before. Her abundant hair was looped up, and her pink cotton frock, fashioned by her own hands, made some attempt to follow the lines of her slim figure. Wallace Armstrong had bought her a pair of long Suède gloves, of which she was extremely proud; so that, with these additions to her toilet, and her new black-lace hat with the rosebuds, she looked a very different being to "la p'tite Gart," with the flying hair and blue cotton blouse of a few days ago.

It was of Wallace the girl was thinking as she sat at the end of the pier, looking down into the shining green water. He seemed so rich and so kind; would he not help her father out of his difficulties, especially as he owed him money, on his own confession? She grew suddenly hot and unhappy when she thought of the many francs she had allowed Mr. Armstrong to waste over sweets and trifles to herself, while all the time there was such desperate need of money at home. Was it possible that her father was too proud to ask for help from his friend? But no; she at once dismissed that idea as unlikely. From her knowledge of her father she was not inclined to think that motives of delicacy would ever restrain him from borrowing money wherever he could. Laline was not in the least suspicious, but in her dreamy, half-childish, half-womanly nature there lurked a strange intuition, which illuminated more than any reasoning powers could the natures of those around her.

Of the mercenary plot by which she was to be made the means of supplying her father and Wallace Armstrong with money for their vices and extravagances by her marriage with the latter, she had not the slightest suspicion. More than once she had been startled by the troubled and remorseful expression which crept into Mr. Armstrong's face when she raised her clear eyes to his. The young man had the saving grace to realise the paltry part he was playing, and for three days now he had avoided Laline, and had spent his time in bars and billiard-rooms of the town. He was fully determined to marry her, and to play the part of a kindly and affectionate brother until she could grow to love him. That she would do this sooner or later he took as a foregone conclusion, sharing, as he did with most men, the idea that any woman married to him was bound in time to love him. But meanwhile he did not care to meet the long trustful gaze of her soft dark eyes; and it was almost with a feeling of vexation that this afternoon, as he strolled down the pier, smoking a cigar, with his hands in his pockets and his straw hat tilted over his eyes to protect them from the sun, he found himself face to face with Laline, and saw the look of pleasure on her face as she recognised him.

"We haven't seen you for three days," she said, as he took a seat by her side. "I began to think you must have left Boulogne."

"Without saying 'Good-bye' to you? Was that likely?"

He was to be married to this girl in ten days—they were to pass their future lives together. And yet, seated here by her side in the sunshine, Wallace Armstrong, ordinarily the most self-possessed of men, felt tongue-tied and abashed before her.

She was wonderfully pretty, but her very freshness and fairness became a reproach. He knew that he did not love her—knew, too, that her attraction for him lay chiefly in the utter dissimilarity between her and such women as he had heretofore chiefly noticed. The thought of his own unworthiness, while it failed to turn him from his purpose, served to render him morose and discontented. Laline saw his heavy black eyebrows contract into an ugly frown, and involuntarily drew back from him.

"Are you vexed with us in any way?" she asked, timidly. "With my father or myself, I mean?"

"Don't talk of your father in the same breath with yourself!" he said, harshly. "I never think of you as in any way akin."

Laline flushed painfully.

"Please remember," she said, in a low voice, "that he is my father."

"Do you love him for that, simply because you are told it is your duty?"

"I hope I do," she answered very low. "But I cannot love him as I loved her—my mother."

"Well, you will leave him some day, of course, and will find some one who will appreciate you better. Tell me, Miss Laline—have you any sweethearts in the town?"

She opened her dark eyes wide and laughed.

"Dear, no!" she answered, without the least hesitation. "How should I have time for such things? I am always busy, you know."

"Spoiling your pretty hands with rough housework!"

"Ah, but I remember what you said the other day, and am going to take great care of my nails. And mother always taught me to wear gloves in housework."

"Don't you sometimes want to go back to England?"

Such a transfiguration took place in her face at the words! Her eyes shone, her cheeks flushed, her lips quivered.

"Ah!" she whispered, "I try not to think how much I want to go back there!"

"Would you thank any one who would take you?"

"As a governess, do you mean? But it would put papa to such expense if I were to leave him. And I think—I think there is something or some one that prevents his ever going back there at all."

"But if, for your sake, some one came forward and paid all your father's debts, and provided for him comfortably, and then sailed away with you in one of those nice white-funnelled steamers, and gave you a beautiful home in England, and surrounded you with everything that money and forethought could provide, and all for love of you, what would you say?"

"Why, who would do such a thing?"

"Some one who is very fond of you. Some one not very good, but who believes you could make him better by your sweet influence. Some one whose home is very lonely without a bright-faced Laline to look after things, and to sing about the house as I have heard you sing at the Rue Planché. Some one who loves you, Laline."

She stared into his face with wondering eyes which betrayed no self-consciousness.

"It sounds like a fairy-tale," she said.

"It is true, all the same. You are Cinderella, and I am a degenerate Fairy Prince, Laline!"

CHAPTER V.

Thus far had Wallace Armstrong proceeded in his unique love-making, when the lady he meant to wed in a few days' time disconcerted him by bursting into a hearty peal of laughter.

"Look at my hand," she said, pulling off her glove and showing a soft pink palm. "I had my fortune told several months ago, and I am not to fall in love until I am years older than I am now."

"Give me your hand," he said. "I know something of palmistry, too."

This statement was absolutely untrue. But, as he meant to leave no means untried to gain his end, and could see that the girl half believed in the fortune told by her hand, he resolved to practise on her childish credulity and superstition. In truth, he did not know one line from another, and could only decide that it was a nice soft girl's hand and eminently kissable.

"Show me your line of fate!" he said, peremptorily.

Laline eagerly pointed it out.

"As I suspected," he said, crumpling her hand together to emphasise the lines and looking absorbed in the study of them; "very early in your career you fall under the influence of a man of far stronger will than yours. His line of fate and yours run side by side, and only death can separate them!"

He spoke with much solemnity, but, more than his words, the magnetism of his touch affected Laline's sensitive nature. She shivered and turned pale.

"Can you really read that in my hand?" she asked, fearfully.

"Clearly. This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him. Before you are seventeen you will be his wife."

"Oh, it's impossible!"

"Not at all. It's inevitable," he said—"written indelibly, for all who understand to read, here in the centre of your hand!"

And, as he spoke in slow impressive tones, he pointed his finger at random into her upturned palm. Looking up to see the effect of his prophecy, he found that she was leaning back in her seat, pale to the lips.

"What is the matter, child?" he exclaimed.

"You will laugh," she answered, in a low troubled tone, "but, as you held my hand and told me these things, something flashed into my head that you were right, and that there would be in my life a will against which I should fight in vain. The feeling terrified me, and I can't forget it!"

She raised her hands to her eyes, in which tears were shining, and pressed them close. Wallace Armstrong watched her, surprised and amused by what he considered her folly and weak-mindedness. In reality Laline was neither foolish nor specially weak-minded, only abnormally sensitive to influences to which a coarser nature would have been impervious. Looking into Wallace Armstrong's bold bright eyes, in the depths of which a scornful smile was lurking, the young girl seemed to read there, better than any fortune-teller could inform her, a will, selfish, resolute, and cruel, a nature attracted by and yet strongly antagonistic to her own, a personality she might grow to fear and even, it might be, to hate, but which she would never be able to regard with indifference.

Not in so many words did these convictions come upon her, but the sense of them grew as she gazed, her soft, near-sighted eyes, that had something of the wistfulness of a dumb animal, straining to realize what she saw.

At last Wallace broke the silence with a laugh.

"If we sit so still, staring at each other, people will think that I am mesmerising you," he said. "And, by-the-way, I believe I could."

"Please don't try!" she exclaimed, starting from her seat and pushing her hair from her forehead with a quick nervous gesture peculiar to her. "I must be getting back home now to see after papa's dinner."

"I will walk up with you," he said; "but you haven't yet told me whether you would like to go back to England, leaving your father comfortably settled here, provided for for life, and with all his bills paid."

"Why do you ask me such questions," she said, "when you know what you suggest is impossible?"

Then an inspiration seized Armstrong. In his pocket was another advance from his uncle to provide his niece Laline with medicines, new clothes, and other necessaries. Wallace directed his steps to the Rue Royale.

"Come and look in this jeweller's shop-window," he said, "and tell me whether you are fond of trinkets."

"Very fond," she answered, "and I often look in here."

"Don't you want to have some of the pretty things?"

"I should, I dare say, if I had any money. But I have never had any jewelry except my dear mother's gold watch and chain. I hope I shall never part with that; but I don't wear it, because it is a great deal out of repair, and I can't afford to have it put right."

"Come inside and look at the things," he said. "Oh, it's all right," he added, seeing that she hesitated; "I have to buy something for myself!"

Once within the jeweller's shop, Wallace approached the attendant and held towards him Laline's hand.

"I want a very pretty ring for this young lady," he said in French. "Take off your glove, Laline."

In her astonishment she did not notice that, for the first time, he called her by her name without any prefix. Before she could do more than stammer a few words of inquiry, Wallace had deftly unbuttoned her glove and drawn it off, and the smiling attendant was showing her a trayful of rings.

"Here is one suitable to mademoiselle," the man suggested, showing her two tiny pearl hearts intertwined with a true-lover's knot.

"They are all too large!" Wallace complained. "No—I can't wait for one to be altered. Have you nothing smaller?"

A turquoise heart, surrounded by very small diamonds, proved so small that, once it was thrust upon the girl's finger, it could hardly be withdrawn. Wallace beat the price down to a hundred francs, and paid the money over the counter before Laline could do more than gasp an astonished protest.

"Now that you are formally engaged to me," he said, "I may as well order the wedding-ring, too."

This he proceeded to do, and, having at length discovered one of suitable smallness, he slipped the little parcel into his pocket, after paying for it, and left the shop, drawing Laline's arm through his in an authoritative manner as he did so.

"We will fetch your father," he said, "and we will all dine in the town together to celebrate our engagement."

"But, Mr. Armstrong," gasped Laline, "you must be in fun! Do you know that I am only sixteen?"

"Well, plenty of your friends over here get married at sixteen," he returned, "and my own mother was married before her seventeenth birthday!"

"But I don't want to marry you!"

"Not to go to England, to live in a big, beautiful house under my care and that of my old uncle, one of the worthiest and kindest old gentlemen alive, who is simply longing to welcome you as his daughter, and writes to me about you nearly every day?"

"Why, what can you mean?" she was beginning, when he drew from his pocket the letter from his uncle which he had received that morning, and, carefully folding down one portion, held it before her eyes.

The lines which the girl read ran thus:—

"Give my love to Laline, and tell her how much I look forward to welcoming her in my house. If she is like your description, she must indeed be a sweet and womanly young creature. Be sure to buy her all that she requires. I want my niece to enter her new home in the style that befits a lady of gentle birth and careful training."

"I can't understand it!" exclaimed Laline, bewildered. "You never told me that you had been writing about me to your uncle. And what does he mean by calling me his niece?"

"I told him I hoped to marry you very shortly."

"But you never even asked me!"

"You are too young to know your own mind, so it had to be made up for you," he said, laughing. "Now listen, Laline dear. As soon as I saw you it went to my heart to think that you were wasting your youth and beauty and refinement among such coarse and sordid surroundings. An atmosphere of unpaid bills and greasy cards and cognac was not suited for so fresh and sweet a flower. I know your father thoroughly well. I won't talk about him lest I should hurt your feelings. But he is not the man to be entrusted with the care of a girl like you; and, had your dear mother lived to see you degraded into a half-starved kitchen drudge, friendless and neglected——"

"Don't—ah, don't!" cried Laline, passionately. "I can't bear it!"

By that outburst he understood how keenly the girl felt her position, and how well-timed had been his allusion to her lost mother. At once he followed up his advantage.

"You want a home, my dear little girl," he continued, drawing her hand through his arm and patting it affectionately. "This is not the place for you, and these are not the surroundings you ought to have. In my home you will enjoy what should be your position by right—that of an English lady! You will be petted and loved and cared for, you will have your own rooms and your own furniture, pocket-money to spend on pretty frocks and little presents for your friends, plenty of books to read, ample leisure and servants to wait upon you. My uncle, Alexander Wallace, is one of the richest bankers in London, and I am his favourite nephew and heir. You will have just what money you want now; and, later on, you will be an extremely rich woman, able to buy diamonds and horses and carriages and everything that you wish for in the world."

She turned her wondering eyes upon him.

"And what makes you offer me all these things?" she asked, simply.

"Because I love you," was the answer on the tip of his tongue; and he was angry with both her and himself because he could not speak it. Something in her absolute innocence and candour disarmed him. Almost for one moment he wished that he could tell her the whole truth in words of brutal frankness—"Because I am a ruined and dishonoured good-for-nothing, and my only hope of help consists in the immediate production of a wife at my rich uncle's house! I have chosen you because you are very pretty, and too young and ignorant of the world to disbelieve my lying statements. Also because you have a mercenary scamp of a father, who has sold you to me for my wife for a consideration! I don't pretend to love you; much of your society would bore me to death. But I don't intend to have much of your society; and you are just the good, sweet-faced, refined sort of a little girl to get round my uncle, and coax money out of him for my extravagances!"

This is what Wallace Armstrong longed for one brief moment to say. He felt that he should despise himself less than if he were successful in deceiving her. But he was not in the habit of following good impulses when they stood in the way of his interests; and he slipped again into lying, and cleverly affecting a kindly and tender interest in the girl, until Rue Planché was reached and they entered the street together.

Then suddenly Laline, who had been listening to him in silence, stopped. She had something she wished to say to him before she entered the house. Her tones were low and earnest, and her eyes were grave.

"It is all very strange and wonderful," she said, "that you, who have known me so short a time, and your uncle, who has never seen me, should love me and want me to be with you always. I don't deserve it, and I don't understand it! There must be so many beautiful girls who would be much more suitable to you than I can be. And—I can't understand why, and it seems dreadfully ungrateful—but all the time you are talking I seem to hear whispered in my ear, 'Don't listen; he does not mean what he says!' And though you are so kind, and though I long to go back to England, and cannot bear the life here, I—I am afraid of you!"

Although she half whispered the last words, there was no mistaking the startled look in her eyes. At that moment Armstrong positively disliked her, although her slight opposition only had the effect of making him more than ever determined to carry through his project.

What business had this ignorant child with intuitions warning her against him? Was it possible that under her demure and child-like exterior there lurked a spirit which would not easily be swayed and mastered by his own? Some hint of this flashed upon him as he watched her and listened to her faltering confession.

"You need never be afraid of me," he said, gently. "My ways are unpolished, I know. I have been knocking about in Australia for nearly five years, roughing it in the Bush and among miners. I wanted to see something of the world before marrying and settling down in England. But you shall cure my uncouth ways, and correct all my other defects, too, my dear Laline!"

Once in the house, and alone with Captain Garth in his den, Wallace's tone changed.

"For Heaven's sake give me a drop of brandy to wash out of my mouth the taste of all the lies I've been telling!" he cried, irritably. "It's my opinion, Garth, that little bread-and-butter prig of yours will be dear at the price!"

"She's a good child, and won't give you any trouble," Laline's father assured him, soothingly. "Have you broached the subject of the marriage to her yet?"

"Your fingers are itching to touch the two 'quid' a week, I see!" sneered Armstrong, as he tossed off a glass of neat cognac. "Oh, it's safe enough! She's delighted at the idea, which is more than I am. However, it's got to be gone through with. Unluckily, I've promised to take her and you to dine with me in the town this evening. Can't we put her off?"

Garth shook his head dubiously.

"Better not," he said. "If she's left alone, she'll get thinking—she's a great one for thinking and dreaming and fancying. Now that the thing's settled, she had better not be left alone this evening."

"As you like. But, mind, I've had enough of nursery courtship; and she mustn't expect to see much of me during the next few days. On the third, as soon as the ceremony is over, we will cross by the midday boat; and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Armstrong will proceed to London and dine on fat veal, au Fils Prodigue! It will be time enough to tell Laline the day when her frocks are ready."

"Here's to your happy married life!" observed Garth, pouring himself out some brandy. "I hope you'll be kind to her, Armstrong, when I am not by to look after her!"

Up-stairs in her own room, Laline was kneeling before her little dressing-table of painted deal, gazing earnestly at her dead mother's portrait.

"Mother," she murmured, with tears in her eyes, "if you could only speak to me and advise me! Is it your voice which seems to tell me not to listen to Mr. Armstrong? And yet he seems so kind, and he is going to be so good and generous to papa! Such a fairy prince to such a poor little penniless Cinderella! How good it is of him to be so sorry for me—to sympathise with me so deeply about losing you, and to understand how much it would hurt you to know just how things have been since you left me! I remember how you once said to me, while I sat reading at your feet and you smoothed my hair, 'I hope and pray that my little girl may some day marry a good man, who will love her for herself, as a woman should be loved!' I have not remembered that speech until to-day. I wanted to wait for years before I thought of love and marriage for myself. There is no one to help me and advise me. Oh, mother, if you could only come back for one moment and tell me what to do!"

But the wills of two unscrupulous men were warring against the vague intuitions of an inexperienced girl; and every day the net was drawn more closely about Laline's feet, until the dawn of the thirtieth of August, her wedding-morning.

CHAPTER VI.

"Happy is the bride the sun shines on!"

Laline had heard the words somewhere, and remembered them as she woke very early on the thirtieth of August and saw the rain pouring in a steady flood upon the sun-dried earth.