MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF

"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1883.

All rights reserved.

Contents

Chap.

I. [Tom Llanyard]
II. [A Disastrous Night]
III. [The Ball]
IV. [The Visit]
V. [Doubting]
VI. [At Aldershot]
VII. [Jerry's Last Appeal]
VIII. [The Games that Two can Play]
IX. ['The Route!']
X. [The Secret of Dalton's Life]
XI. [The Old Love and the New]
XII. [Bevil Goring's Resolution]
XIII. [The Journey]
XIV. [A Snare]
XV. [The Hôtel St. Antoine]
XVI. [In the Rue des Beguines]
XVII. [Ennui and Weariness]
XVIII. [Le Redoute Monstre]
XIX. [The Cafe au Progres]
XX. [Cross Purposes]
XXI. [The Challenge]
XXII. [In the Lunette St. Laurent]
XXIII. [On the March to Prah]

MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT.

CHAPTER I.
TOM LLANYARD.

'Is it it love itself,' asks a writer, 'or the lover that a young girl thinks most of, when she becomes conscious of this dual existence in her heart? I am inclined to think it is the former. The novelty of her own sensations occupies her more than the person to whom she owes their birth and existence.'

It may be thus with some, but it was not so with Alison Cheyne, for she thought of Bevil—Bevil Goring only—as the embodiment of her love and of all she could love.

All idea of going to Madeira had been abandoned, and Cadbury suggested that, after cruising a little in the Channel, they should land in France and visit Paris, Brussels, or some other place, when the change of scene might cause some favourable change in Alison's mind; and when—he was not without the secret and evil hope of contriving to lose or drop Sir Ranald by the way!

Thus, next morning saw the Firefly still hugging the coast of France, and in sight of the Hôtel de Ville of Boulogne, and the hill to the westward thereof, surmounted by the stately column of Napoleon.

Attended by pretty Daisy Prune, who could not make out the situation in any way, so far as her mistress was concerned (and who was the object of much nautical admiration among the yachtsmen forward), Alison came on deck attired in her warm sealskin jacket, with her little hands deep in her muff, and a thick veil tied tightly over her face, and Tom Llanyard hastened aft to give her his hand to a comfortable seat, to place a hassock under her feet, and wrap a couple of railway rugs around her—all of which he did deftly and ere Lord Cadbury could reach her.

Cadbury and her father were below in the cabin writing letters to be posted on shore; thus, for a time, Alison was left to her own reflections.

Now Tom Llanyard was not unused, we have said, to having ladies on board the Firefly; but he knew not what to make of Alison, she was every way, in tone and aspect, so unlike the much be-rouged fair ones with golden locks with whom Cadbury had more than once sought seclusion on the world of waters, or amid the pretty seaports of the Mediterranean.

The rich hue of her abundant hair, the pensive sadness of her sweet face, and the extreme gentleness of her voice, all attracted the honest seaman greatly towards her; and she had little hands and feet that a sculptor might rave about. Her grey-blue, soft, and velvety eyes were gazing dreamily and listlessly at the outlines of the French cliffs with that unseeing expression peculiar to those whose minds are preoccupied.

'What can she be thinking about?' surmised Tom, as he drew near, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his short blue pea-jacket. 'A primrose on the river's brink will be a good deal to her, no doubt; as a writer has it, "she would romance about it, and poetise about it, and weave all sorts of fantastic stories about it to herself, and it would be a very wonderful primrose indeed before she had done with it."'

So thought Tom while watching her, but Alison had one idea in her mind—Bevil Goring, and how he would be construing her sudden disappearance.

The monotonous wash of the waves through which the yacht was running, the hum of the wind through the rigging overhead, and the measured pattering of the reef points on the canvas as the vessel rolled a little, lulled her. That strange sense of a double existence which comes over us at times—especially in those of excitement or sorrow—was with her now, and she seemed to hear the voice of Bevil and be with him again under the shadow of the great beech-trees, where perhaps at that moment he was watching and waiting for her in wonder at her non-appearance, and where so often amid all their love talk he had paid her what a novelist calls 'the best compliment man can pay woman—that of addressing her as a rational being.'

If they never met again, how should she be able to live through all the years of her life without him? Might it not be that in separation Bevil might cease to love her—might only remember her father's insulting conduct to him at Chilcote, and in time learn to love some one else, so that if again they met it could only be as strangers?

Strangers! Then, at the ideas her busy mind conjured up, tears began to ooze slowly from her eyes under the concealment of her veil.

She thought often of the hound she had seen, or imagined she had seen, on that eventful night; the memory of it haunted her painfully; and doubtless she would now have dismissed it from her mind as an optical delusion, but for its appearance being so strangely corroborated by Archie stating that the baying of one in the garden had awakened her father.

In her heart at times fear and pity for the latter struggled with passionate resentment at Lord Cadbury as a schemer who had separated her from her lover. Her father's worldliness was, perhaps, far more a matter of habit and education than nature. He was, however, now like most men of rank—Scottish men of rank, more than any in Europe—selfish to the heart's core; sorry we are to write it, but the history of the past has too often proved this to be the case.

'That is the old castle of Boulogne, Miss Cheyne,' said Tom Llanyard, drawing near her, and finding it impossible not to say something; 'and now we can make out the arched gateways in the ramparts.'

'I have been there,' replied Alison, 'and know the place well—the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, and all the pretty promenades.'

Indeed, she knew the place rather too well, as her father had been compelled to retire there more than once, from motives of prudence and economy.

'Where are we sailing to?' she asked, after a pause.

'I scarcely know, Miss Cheyne; Lord Cadbury's orders are that we are to hug the coast of France and keep under easy sail. I thought, perhaps, you might know,' he added.

'No, I know nothing,' she answered, wearily.

'Surely it can't be that this mere girl is about to chuck herself away on a brute like Cadbury!' thought Tom, as he looked with sympathy on her blanched face and quivering lip.

'Thank you—you are very kind to me,' said Alison, as he readjusted the rugs and wraps about her.

'Kind to you!' ejaculated Tom—'who on earth or sea either would not be kind to you!'

Alison smiled at his blunt energy, and she rather clung to the society of this good, cheery, honest fellow, and felt, when with or near him, a sense of protection.

'It is evident that Cadbury is up to some game,' thought Tom; 'but it is the way of the world—the world in which these people live. Her youth and beauty, poor girl, will be his; his rank and money, the old bloater, will be hers—so the odds are evens, and they are quits.'

In the vexation this reflection gave him Tom took off his naval cap and passed a hand over his forehead. As he did so, Alison for the first time remarked that a deep red scar traversed it from the right temple to the left eyebrow.

'You must at some time have met with a terrible accident, Captain Llanyard,' said she, sympathetically; 'what a pity that wound is in your forehead!'

'I thank you, Miss Cheyne, for the interest it gives me in your eyes. I was in the Queen's service when I got that wound, and nearly lost the number of my mess thereby. Shall I tell you about it?'

'If you please.'

'Eight years ago I was serving with the China squadron, and, having been left sick at Canton, took a passage in the steamer Kent to join my ship, which was lying off Macao. She had a great many male passengers on board—all narrow-eyed, greedy, and ferocious-looking Chinese. They were about thirty in number, and we had barely cleared the Tigris and made a good offing when I discovered, by my knowledge of the lingo, that every one of them was a pirate, and that the whole gang had taken their passage together with the intention of seizing the ship and cargo, after killing every other soul on board.

'Strange to say, as if they had some mysterious prevision of what was about to ensue, a shoal of sharks followed us from the mouth of the Tigris.

'I had barely informed the captain of what I had discovered when we heard a row forward in the forecastle, where they got up a sham disturbance, and all suddenly appeared with arms—swords, pistols, and knives, which they had secreted under their clothes. The mate went forward to quell the noise, but was instantly cut down.

'No one on board had any weapons but myself and the captain. We had both revolvers, and I had my sword; but what could we do among so many? The crew betook themselves to handspikes and boat-hooks, and a close conflict ensued, in which the captain and many shared the fate of the mate; the scene became horrible, and the deck was covered with blood.

'Fighting only to protract life, and not with the hope of escaping death, I made a terrible resistance. The six chambers of my revolver disposed of six of the gang; with my sword I cut down two more, when it broke off at the hilt. I was helpless then, got this cut across my head, and was forced to leap overboard, where, all but blinded by my own blood, I clung to the fore chains, oblivious of the sharks that were gliding stealthily about, while the yells, shouts, and explosion of fire-arms continued on deck until all the crew were disposed of, save a few who contrived to secrete themselves below.

'Then the ship was ransacked from stem to stern; twelve thousand dollars in notes of the Hong Kong banks were taken from repositories of the purser; a hundred cases of rich silk and all the most valuable things that could be found were brought on deck; the boats were hoisted out, and in them, laden with plunder, the pirates departed for the shore, leaving the Kent floating like a log on the water, with the blood trickling from her scuppers into the moonlighted sea.

'I managed to scramble on board, and never shall I forget the sight her decks presented, for the bodies of the dead were hacked and mutilated beyond all recognition. I bound up my wound, when almost fainting with exhaustion and loss of blood. A gunboat bound for Macao overhauled us next day, and with her I rejoined my ship; but the damage done to my figure-head will never pass away, and times there are when it causes me to feel giddy and strange even still.'

Finding that he had procured a listener, though a rather appalled one, Tom told her many other anecdotes of the sea; but they were all of a gloomy and depressing kind, and had reference to wrecks and rafts of starving castaways, of pest-stricken ships found with all their crews dead but one man, of cannibals and sharks, and much more to the same purpose, for no other element is so full of mystery to the imaginative mind as the world of waters; and so thought Alison, as the Firefly floated in her aimless voyage upon it, and she surveyed around her the vastness of the sea, with that strange fascination it possesses—'glorious with light or dreadful with darkness, instinct with silent shadow always gliding over its everlasting motion, it appeals to the senses as a kind of materialised eternity, a wondrous world, barren and lonely, whereon not the giddiest flow of wind that ever crisped its ripples can match the capriciousness of its fathomless and mighty heart.'

Of that capriciousness, and the perils incident to those who traverse its trackless bosom, poor Alison was fated to have a terrible experience ere the dawn of the next day shone upon its rolling waves.

CHAPTER II.
A DISASTROUS NIGHT.

All day the Firefly had run pretty swiftly along the coast of France, and that of Belgium, low, flat, and sandy, was on her lee, when a pitchy darkness fell upon the sea. The sky overhead was black and starless, and most cheerless indeed seemed the gloom amid which the yacht was sailing.

Muffled in her warmest wraps, Alison was lingering on deck, alone, though the night was rather advanced, and she leant on, or rather clung to, Tom Llanyard's arm as she promenaded the now damp and somewhat slippery deck, walking restlessly to and fro, like a caged animal, sometimes muttering to herself—

'Oh, if I could but tire myself out—utterly out—that I might get some deep and dreamless sleep at night!'

The deck at that time was far from comfortable, but she preferred it to the cabin, with the society of Cadbury, who believed in what Hawley Smart calls, 'tobacco and moistened conversation,' and was having a cigarette and brandy and water with Sir Ranald.

To the eastward some faint lights twinkled for a time far off and dim in the distance, with black wave-tops rising opaquely between, indicating the whereabouts of some Flemish village; but even these melted out, and the darkness seemed to become deeper still.

To Alison's eye it was a positive relief to watch from time to time the light of the binnacle-lamp as it streamed on the weather-beaten visage of the man at the wheel, his figure swaying steadily with the motion of the yacht, and his feet planted firmly on a wooden grating; to watch the other light in the skylight of the warm and cosy cabin, and the occasional showers of red sparks that came from the funnel of its fire-place, and melted out, amid the gloom, to leeward.

'And England lies there?' said Alison, turning her face westward.

'Yes, Miss Cheyne,' replied Tom, who was greatly enchanted to have the girl all to himself, and to feel her little hand clinging to his arm. 'I should think that Harwich is well-nigh abeam of us now.'

'And how far off may it be?'

'Some sixty miles or so—too far,' he added, laughing, 'for us to hear the clang of the Bell Buoy.'

'Too far, indeed!'

'Are you anxious to return homeward?'

'Oh, yes, I hope, I do hope we shall do so soon,' exclaimed Alison, with a little sob in her throat.

Tom Llanyard heard the sound, and, kindly patting the hand that lay on his arm, he said, laughingly, 'There is nothing in this world like hope, to a sailor especially. What does the old song say?'

And Tom sung in a low, and not unmusical voice,

'Poor Jack saw his bark on the ocean of life
Now sink, now the billows o'ertop,
When despair would present him a bullet or knife,
He lays hold on the anchor of Hope.

'His chest and his trifles may sink in the wave,
Fore and aft a loved messmate may drop,
He may shed a salt tear for the loss of the brave,
But he leans on the anchor of Hope.

'"Heart of oak," sobs he, bluntly, "your fate I deplore,
Ne'er a smarter could splice me a rope,
Still, my lad, we must keep a good look-out afore,
And depend on the anchor of Hope."

Ere Alison could say a word of compliment to Tom on his singing, one of the watch forward cried out,

'Light ahead!'

'Where away?' asked Tom.

'Right ahead, sir.'

'I can't see it.'

'Can't help that, sir—it was there a moment ago, a point or so on the lee bow.'

Another man of the watch asserted the same thing. Tom Llanyard got his night-glass, and swept the obscurity ahead with it, but in vain.

Intensely dark was the night—intensely black the sea through which the yacht was running. The gurgle and wash of the billows could be heard at the bows and under the counter, but nothing was seen of them. There was no phosphorescent gleam—no pale streak of foam to catch the eye or define the presence of the deep, and the imaginative mind of Alison felt in its fullest sense all the mystery of the hidden miles of water that were around her; while the keen and ceaseless watch kept by those on deck impressed her with a curiously mingled sense of security and danger—security in the skill and courage of the crew; danger in the knowledge that there were shoals and sands about her, and a sea alive with vessels.

Suddenly out of the darkness there came two wavering flames, then a row of red round lights, all in a line, as a steamer swept past, looming huge and dark, with a cloud of red sparks streaming to leeward from her unseen funnel, and the commotion her screw propeller and the pulsing her engines made in the water passed away with her, and there seemed to be a deeper darkness all around the Firefly as she faded into the obscurity astern.

'That was the light you saw?' said Tom to the look-out man forward.

'It was not, sir,' replied the sailor, confidently, 'for there it is again!'

At some undefinable distance a light, like that of a lantern, flickering, feeble, and lambent, seemed to dance for a moment on the waves, and then disappeared.

Suddenly a shout went from stem to stern.

'Something right ahead—something large and black, Captain Llanyard!' cried the look-out man.

'Hard a-port—the helm—hard a-port,' thundered Llanyard, 'or we'll be slap into her!'

Lord Cadbury and Sir Ranald now came rushing on deck, and quitting the arm of Tom, who had now other work to do, Alison clung fearfully to her father, whose arm went instinctively round her.

'Lights—lights alongside—where is she?—what is it, in the name of God?' cried twenty voices, as a dreadful crash, followed by the sound of splintering wood, was heard.

'All hands shorten sail!' cried Tom Llanyard; 'man the fore clew garnets—stand by the top-gallant clew-lines—stand by the peak and throat halyards—down with the jib—lift tacks and sheets—let go and belay—look to the main gaff, and get out lights for God's sake!'

Tom's rapid orders were skilfully and speedily obeyed, and in a very few minutes the sails were reduced and nearly furled, while the cold night wind swept through the open rigging, and the Firefly rose and fell on the long rollers, with a terrible jarring and rasping sound, as she was evidently foul of some vessel, but had not suffered apparently, according to the carpenter's first report on the state of the pumps.

She lay-to with only canvas enough on her for steering purposes.

A great flame now glared upward right under her bows, as the wavering and streaming blaze from a flare-tin showed that she was foul of a great Belgian fishing smack, of a tonnage equal to her own—her deck to all appearance full of men, shrieking and gesticulating as only Frenchmen or Belgians gesticulate and shriek, inspired by terror, their pallid and excited faces, half seen in light, half hidden in shadow, against the surrounding blackness, as the red glare from, the upheld flare-tin fell on them, and on the head or berthing boards of the lugger, which bore her name—Le Chien Noir d'Ostende—The Black Hound of Ostend! The Black Hound! Was there a fatality in this?

Alison was sick with affright; her father looked grimly, sternly, and pitifully on; but my Lord Cadbury's teeth (or what remained of them) were clattering in his jaws like castanets.

'This is no fault of ours, my lord,' said Tom, 'we had our top-light, as you see; these lubbers had none.'

As he spoke the red light from the flare-tin shed one more than usually powerful glare of radiance on the crowd of appalled visages that lined the hull and filled the rigging of the broken and battered lugger, and then expired, leaving all in the blackness of night again.

Every lantern in the Firefly was now brought on deck and bent on to ropes, the boats were cleared away for hoisting out, fenders were hung over the side, and life-buoys and belts cut away. Again came the crashing, rasping sound, as the hull of the lugger, which was evidently stove in, swerved alongside the yacht, across the deck of which her mainmast fell with a crash, bringing down the fore-topmast of the former with all its top hamper, making her for the time also a helpless wreck.

A block swinging at the end of a rope struck Sir Ranald Cheyne and hurled him on the deck. Alison bent over him in despair and terror indescribable and unutterable, feeling scarcely able to restrain the conviction that all this was really happening to herself.

'We are bulged forward, and water is rising fast below now, my lord,' reported the carpenter, rushing up to Cadbury, who seemed paralysed with terror.

'Stand by the fall-tackles, and lower away the boats,' ordered Tom Llanyard, whose voice could scarcely be heard amid the hubbub on board the lugger, which was still alongside.

Fully five minutes elapsed before this was done; one fall-tackle got jammed in the davit-block, another boat was without its plug, and, barely had the two boats of the Firefly touched the water, when, knife in hand, the terrified crew of the lugger began to crowd into them.

By this time poor Alison had fainted, with little Daisy Prune crawling close to her side, and was in blessed unconsciousness of the awful scene around her presented by so many men struggling for life, and drowning, as both vessels began apparently to settle gradually down into the black and silent midnight sea.

CHAPTER III.
THE BALL.

Much about the time of the disaster we have recorded, some other of our dramatis personæ were actors amid a very different scene.

A star-lighted but moonless sky overhung the stately modern mansion of Wilmothurst, and gloomy indeed would the long, wintry avenue have looked, but for the many-coloured lamps that shed a soft radiance from branch to branch, and from one gnarled stem to another, lighting the gravelled way for the fast-rolling carriages that came in quick succession to the Tuscan porte-cochère, setting down the shawled and daintily-shod guests, where a scarlet carpeting extended from the doorway to the terrace.

The great house was all ablaze with lights that glowed from every lofty window, and made the owls wink and blink in the tower of the village church; while a huge fire in the arched fireplace of the entrance-hall sent forth a ruddy glow every time the tall double doors were unfolded to admit a guest.

Bella Chevenix came fully arrayed for conquest. Her dress of sheeny white silk was cut so as to display fully her beautiful throat and shoulders, with short sleeves that left her snowy arms bare. She wore very little jewellery; but among the folds of her skirt were trails of natural flowers, with their fresh green leaves. There was a rich flush on her cheeks, a radiance in her soft hazel eyes, and undoubtedly the girl looked surpassingly bright and beautiful; and among the guests she was glad to see Bevil Goring, Dalton—looking distrait, as he always did now—and other Aldershot men whom she knew, and had met at balls, meets, and garden-parties.

As one handsome girl after another came in, all more or less beautifully attired, bright with smiles and glittering with jewels, Goring looked on the groups that gathered wistfully as one in a dream, thinking where at that precise time was she who might have outshone them all—in his eyes at least.

The great dancing-room was some ninety feet long, and its walls were hung with many old family portraits, between which were vacant spaces once occupied by the Rubens, Titians, Vandycks, and other really valuable pictures, all of which had been sold in the lifetime of Jerry's father—perhaps before the fatal mortgages had been contracted.

In a corridor beyond was the band of the Wilmothurst Rifle Volunteers to furnish music for the dancers, who speedily began to arrange themselves, while the programme cards were fast filling up.

Under the watchful eyes of his mother and his cousin Emily, Jerry inscribed his name more than once upon that of Bella Chevenix, but took care that it should be for dances further on in the night.

Jerry opened the ball with the Countess of Ashcombe, the 'head lady' of the evening, after which he went near her no more, or—as his mother phrased it—'neglected her shamefully for that Chevenix girl,' whose father stood apart in a corner watching with fondness and admiration the beauty of Bella, the grace with which she floated through a succession of waltzes, and seemed to be enjoying herself to the full, especially when she had her first dance with Jerry, who eventually brought her panting and breathless to the side of her father, just as the latter was addressing Lady Wilmot, who chanced to be near him.

'The young fellows of our time, my lady,' said he, in a fidgety way, feeling the necessity for saying something, 'were better at this sort of work than those of the present; they don't seem equal to dancing, somehow.'

'I do not understand you, Mr. Chevenix,' said Lady Wilmot, with one of her calm stares.

'I mean that we fogies saw something like dancing at country balls in our time; what "Sir Rogers" we danced, cross hands and down the middle, and all that sort of thing, before, as now, we became anxious about draughts and damp linen, and all that sort of thing, my lady.'

Lady Wilmot smiled disdainfully, and found herself looking as if she failed to comprehend him.

'Yes,' said Jerry, uncomfortably, 'Hampshire people did cling to these fashions, Mr. Chevenix, and, when they danced, meant it in no mistake.'

Though, in his pre-occupation of mind, Bevil Goring was far from enjoying himself, he was too good a dancer not to have plenty of partners, but there was more than one pair of lovers there that night who sought the corridors, the staircase, or the aisles of the great conservatory, and he regarded them enviously, as he thought of her from whom he was as yet so hopelessly, and, as it seemed, cruelly and absurdly separated.

But, as for the ball, it is chiefly as regards Jerry's affair that we refer to it. As a ball it was undoubtedly a success. There was a sprinkling of titled people, a number of the squirearchy, a large proportion of gentleman farmers, and blooming dowagers blessed with broods of pert, pretty, marriageable daughters, and Jerry had brought a considerable male contingent from the camp, so 'all went merry as a marriage bell.'

As for Bella, she was never without partners, as those who danced with her once always came back again.

'Jerry has actually introduced Lord Twesildown to that girl!' said Lady Wilmot behind her fan to Cousin Emily, who grew pale with annoyance. We may mention that the peer in question took his title from the highest mountain which overlooks Aldershot. But after a turn or two they observed that the pair took a promenade round the room.

'Is this your first visit to the district?' asked Lord Twesildown.

'Oh, no,' replied Bella, 'I live here.'

'Live here, at Wilmothurst!'

'Yes—at the village.'

'How funny!' drawled his lordship, rather puzzled. 'Oh, Chevenix—I remember the name now.'

'Lead me to a seat, please,' said Bella, curtly, on which he conducted her to one near Lady Wilmot, and retired into a corner.

'Tired already, Miss Chevenix?' asked Lady Wilmot.

'Oh, no—I never tire of the waltz when I have a good partner,' replied Bella.

'And Lord Twesildown?'

'Oh, he can't dance a bit.'

'Heavens!—surely you did not tell him so?'

'Well, I hinted as much.'

'Oh, Miss Chevenix, what will he think?'

'He said he thought he would adapt his step to mine, but he had no step to adapt.'

'But to say this to a man of his position!'

The haughty Bella, who resented Lady Wilmot's tone and expression of eye, only fanned herself and laughed, as if she thought an earl's son might be 'snubbed' as well as that of a yeoman.

Her hostess now turned her back on Bella, and never addressed her again.

As Jerry was again drawing near, Lady Wilmot approached him, and said,

'Do you mean to dance with no one but Miss Chevenix to-night?'

'Mother, I have only danced with her twice as yet, and I have done my duty to everyone else, so I think I may please myself now. Our waltz, I think, Miss Chevenix,' he added, as his arm went round her, and they disappeared among the whirling circles that swept over the polished floor to the music of the military band.

Bella had been—nay, was still—a good deal of a flirt, perhaps in a very innocent way, but a something now in the expression of Jerry's eyes, in the tone of his voice, nay, in the very touch of his hand, startled her hitherto careless heart from its girlish unconsciousness and gave it a thrill, 'too sweet for fever, too timid for joy,' or developed still further the new sensations to which it had been awakening.

And Jerry, with his arm caressingly around her and her breath on his cheek, smiled at himself as he thought of his past jealousy of Dalton and Mrs. Trelawney—Dalton, the good-natured cynic!

He had still too much command over himself, and, though young, was too much a man of the world to let those around him read his thoughts with reference to Bella; but his watchful mother could detect that it was into Bella's eyes he looked with passion when near her, that it was Bella he took in to supper, and with whom he sat in the conservatory after, where the flashing fountain played amid the softly veiled light, and half concealed his utterances by the sound of its waters.

And Jerry was proudly conscious that Bella's beauty had excited much comment—envy among the women, and admiration among the men.

'Miss Chevenix—introduce me to her,' had been dinned into his ear half the night; 'is she rich, an heiress, or what; is there anything singular about her besides her beauty, Jerry?'

Amid all the gaiety around him Jerry's heart was a heavy one. He now felt that he loved Bella passionately; but the memory of those mortgages, and the view that they would inevitably cause Mr. Chevenix, Bella herself, and all who knew of their peculiarity and existence to take of his love and his attentions, fettered his tongue, and caused him, even when he had the lovely girl all to himself in the solitude of the conservatory, to speak dubiously and enigmatically; thus leading her, in her pride and hauteur, to fear that he was viewing her through the medium of his mother and with her aristocratic eyes; and thus, with all the love of him in her heart, Bella felt that heart revolt at the situation and swell a little with anger.

He shrank from uttering the words that loaded his tongue—the longed for declaration his attentions had given Bella an undoubted right to expect—and she resented because she misunderstood the reason of his not doing so. She dreaded that he had taught her to love him, while looking down upon her position in the world—at least, the world in which he and his mother moved.

'Do you know that all our fellows from the camp, and indeed all my mother's guests, are quite wild in their admiration of you!' he said, in a low voice.

'How kind—how excessively condescending of them?' exclaimed Bella, sharply, opening and shutting her fan again and again.

He regarded her with a little perplexity, and felt his cheek colour.

'And Lady Wilmot—does she share in that gust of admiration?' she asked, with an unmistakable curl on her lovely lip.

'Bella—oh, permit me to call you so, as of old? What has come to you—what has offended you?'

'Nothing has come to me—nothing has offended me; but I should not have come here to-night, and you have no right to call me Bella now!'

'I beg your pardon—the name came naturally to my lips—we were such good friends of old.'

'Your mother does not view us as such. Her friendship consists of loftily patronising me, while looking down upon me and my father too. You know this as well as I do, Captain Wilmot.'

Jerry was silent, and thought.

'I came here to talk, perhaps of love, and now, by Jove, it seems we are quarrelling!'

His face expressed this and the pain her words gave him; and Bella, ever a creature of impulse, felt that she was froward, petulant, and foolishly irritable; but his mother's haughty manner had stung her keenly more than once that night.

Jerry sighed and rose from his seat.

'Pardon me,' said she, in her sweet, low voice, and with an upward glance of her light brown eyes that was irresistible; 'I know that I am very cross with you, and—and I don't know why.'

'Miss Chevenix——'

'Call me Bella!' said she, impetuously, as she bit the feathers of her fan.

'Oh, Bella, you know not how I am situated with regard to you!' he began, as he thought of the mortgages.

'Oh, I understand it precisely,' said she, flushing deeply. 'You are very fond of me, perhaps—admire me very much, of course; but it is an affair of proud relations—high position in the county on the one hand, and the granddaughter of the farmer of Langley Park on the other—that is it? So let us drop our acting; you your mock love-making——'

'Mock love-making!' he exclaimed, sorrowfully and reproachfully.

'Yes; and I shall drop my flirty way. And now let us go back to the dancers; I want papa, and wish to go home.'

'Oh, Bella, you know not—may never, never know—what my mind is struggling with!' he began, in a low and hurried voice, and then paused; for it was strange that jolly Jerry, usually cool, calm, self-reliant in the tumult of the betting-ring, in the business transactions of life, in the hurly-burly of a field-day in the Long Valley, with a dozen of aides-de-camp all bellowing contrary orders to him at once, should be wanting in confidence when alone with Bella Chevenix; and yet perhaps it was not strange, when those infernal mortgages, which made her an heiress and him a half ruined man, are remembered.

Young Twesildown's profound admiration for Bella—notwithstanding her snub—admiration openly expressed to himself, and that of more than one other man, had made Jerry feel uncomfortable and savage—all the more that he had begun to assume or feel a right of proprietary in her that in itself was very delightful; but it is said that 'a man head over ears in love would feel jealous of his charmer's uncle, not knowing him to be such;' and certainly Jerry Wilmot was in that submerged condition.

'With what is your mind struggling?' asked Bella, with reference to his broken words.

'I know not how to explain.'

'You do look troubled, Captain Wilmot. In your usually merry face one never sees such an expression as it wears now,' said she, surveying his features with her sweet and earnest eyes, full of great and sudden sympathy. 'What—amid a scene like this to-night—this gay world of yours, rank and luxury around you—what mental pain have you to struggle with?'

Jerry felt her slender fingers trembling in his hand, and he pressed them softly and caressingly.

'You know not all I have endured of doubt and love too, Bella, since—since—'

'Since when?' she asked, impatiently, but in a low voice.

'That interview I had with your father.'

Her dilated eyes expressed great wonder at this unexpected reply.

'What passed between you?' she asked.

'I cannot tell you—now at least—and so infuse an aspect of selfishness, with bitterness too, in the sweetness of a moment like this.'

'Jerry!' exclaimed the girl, bewildered by his manner.

His name escaped her lips almost unconsciously, but the sound of it then again, as in his boyish days, made every pulse quicken and his heart to thrill.

'Bella, my darling! I love you. You know that I have always loved you, and never anyone else.' (Though this was not precisely the case, just then Jerry thought it was.) 'I have struggled against that love till I can do so no longer'—(Why? thought Bella, with anger growing in her breast)—'struggled against it, but it has overpowered me at last; and though the world I live in might view the avowal with contempt and derision, and utterly mistake the spirit in which I make it, I do love you dearly, Bella,' he added in a low, beseeching voice.

All unknown to himself, this speech in its phraseology was about the most blundering he could have addressed to the haughty Bella Chevenix!

Her beautiful eyes were sparkling with indignation now; her face was blanched and very pale, for she loved Jerry dearly, though at that moment only anger and bitterness were swelling in her breast. She snatched her hand from his clasp, and, cresting up her head, said proudly,

'This world of yours shall never know from me at least that you have condescended to address me thus. You deem it condescension; I an insult!'

'An insult, Bella?'

'Enough of this: let us rejoin the dancers.'

Jerry was utterly bewildered, and led her from the conservatory, on emerging from which the first eyes that met them were those of Lady Wilmot, and they wore an expression at once cold, inquiring, and reprehensive, which added to the annoyance of Bella, who hurriedly, and without a word of adieu to Jerry, took the arm of her father.

The latter had been enjoying himself after his own fashion during a protracted visit to the supper-room, and was by no means yet prepared to withdraw.

She danced with Goring, with Dalton, and in quick succession with all the men who again and again pressed round her, and whose names were on her card, including even the slighted Lord Twesildown, to whom several bumpers of champagne had given fresh courage, while the crushed and bewildered Jerry watched her from the doorway; and none who saw her there in all the radiance of her rare beauty, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushing, her whole face wreathed with smiles, would have imagined the turmoil of angry thoughts surging in her snow-white bosom.

On one hand Lady Wilmot was intensely irritated to see Jerry looking so distrait—'put out'—after his too evident confabulation in the conservatory with Miss Chevenix, and on the other she was exasperated to see the fast and furious love and flirtation between that young lady and the vapid Lord Twesildown, as she had views of her own regarding him and Cousin Emily, so Lady Wilmot was sorely worried by the general results of Jerry's birthday ball.

At last the guests began to depart, and Bella's father led her away; Twesildown shawled her in the hall, and handed her into their snug family brougham, and she was driven home through the familiar country lanes and roads like one in a dream.

That Jerry Wilmot, whom, in her secret heart she actually loved so dearly, should have insulted her in that supreme moment of declaring his passion by inference, as she thought, by broadly hinting of her humbler origin and the disparity of their position in society—a disparity his proud mother had often made her feel keenly—stung the impulsive and naturally warm-hearted girl.

She threw off her ball-dress in hot and angry haste, tossed her few ornaments from her, and, casting herself upon her bed, wept bitterly in her sense of disappointment and humiliation, while the dim, grey hours of the winter morning stole slowly over the landscape and the silent village of Wilmothurst.

CHAPTER IV.
THE VISIT.

Bella Chevenix took an early opportunity of questioning her father, though apparently in a casual way, as to the nature of the interview that had taken place between him and Jerry Wilmot—the interview to which the latter had referred so mysteriously and in broken accents.

Mr. Chevenix told her all about it, adding, when he saw how she changed colour, and seemed deeply moved by his information:

'Why do you ask, Bella?'

'Because—I never have secrets from you, papa—he referred to his interview in a very remarkable manner in the conservatory.'

'Did he propose to you?'

'No, papa,' said Bella, colouring painfully now; 'but he nearly—very nearly did so.'

'A nice move towards paying off the mortgages truly!' said Mr. Chevenix, with a rather contemptuous laugh.

'He condescended to express his love for me,' thought Bella, 'and a proposal would, of course, have followed; he would seek to marry me that thereby the encumbrances might be cleared from his estate!'

Her thoughts were very bitter indeed, for now most anxious doubts of the purity and honesty of Jerry's intentions were implanted in her mind; and yet she loved Jerry on one hand quite as much as she—honest girl—derided and despised the inborn and constitutional selfishness of his haughty mother, and all such 'aristocratic snobs,' as she called them in the angry bitterness of her heart. But she resolved to show Jerry her indifference, and treat him as she thought he deserved to be.

'His selfishness apart, it is the old story,' she muttered, 'the old story of the earthen pot that sought to swim with those of brass. In his mind, I suppose, I am the earthenware.'

At other times, when her real regard for Jerry prevailed, she would think—

'Oh, that papa would throw these horrid mortgages in the fire, that I might be poor, and so test the truth of Jerry's love for me. How strange that my money and his lands should keep us apart; but for this involvement, would he ever have loved me for myself alone?'

If Jerry actually meant all he said, he was certainly not influenced by his mother, whose frigid hauteur to Bella was never concealed; and, if he did mean it, she, Bella Chevenix, might be mistress of Wilmothurst, and send Lady Wilmot to vegetate at the dower house of Langley Park; but to accept him would be at the price of lowering herself to the level on which he received her.

'No, no,' thought Bella, bitterly, as she recalled what she deemed Jerry's most galling speech; 'the derision and contempt of the world you live in shall never be excited by hearing my name coupled with yours, Captain Wilmot.'

Hitherto Jerry had paid her great, very great and marked attention, but until the night of the ball, and with it that ill-omened tête-à-tête in the conservatory, he had gone no farther.

Should she pay a ceremonious call with her father now, or simply send her card to Lady Wilmot?

Bella was sorely perplexed—pride struggled with love—so she went for an afternoon call after the recent festivity, but resolved to be guarded; and, while giving Jerry no opportunity of recurring to the past, show him how utterly she was indifferent to him.

On riding over to Wilmothurst, she and her father were received by Lady Wilmot and 'Cousin Emily' in the drawing-room, from whence Jerry—greatly to her relief—drew her father and Bevil Goring away to his own particular sanctum, and she was left with the two ladies, whose conversation after the prospects of the weather and events of the ball were discussed, speedily took a turn that poor Bella knew was meant for her edification.

'You made quite a conquest of Lord Twesildown, Miss Chevenix,' said Lady Wilmot, with one of her company smiles.

'And of Jerry too,' added Miss Wilmot.

'We are old friends,' said Bella, faintly smiling.

'But Jerry is such a flirt!' exclaimed Lady Wilmot, remembering the visit to the conservatory. 'He has been a worry to me ever since he left Eton, and then I was only too glad to get him off to his regiment.'

'Why?'

'The silly boy fell quite in love with a little waiting-maid I had. He regards all women as puppets, and is never in earnest about any of them; seven years of him, I fear, wouldn't prove that Jerry had a heart.'

'Jerry always burns much incense at some shrine or other,' added Cousin Emily (at whose shrine he had never burned any); 'his goddess generally changes with the season or the locality; and we all know how in country quarters the most silly things are developed.'

'To make love to the lips that are near has always been poor silly Jerry's way. He is such an incorrigible flirt!'

Bella knew quite enough of the world to know what prompted these remarks, and many more that followed, together with the memory of a subtle, soft, and sympathetic manner towards herself that galled her by its implication.

With all her apparent sweetness of manner, Cousin Emily was a good hater; so she hated Bella Chevenix, and felt that if she could traverse Jerry's too probable love affair with, or penchant for, that young lady she would do so; she was too well-bred, or too careful, to show her hand, and yet she showed a dexterity almost devilish in implanting in Bella's mind serious thoughts of poor Jerry, and of adding to, or confirming, those which existed there already.

There was a slight, yet decided contraction of Bella's forehead as she listened to these speeches; a slight twitching, too, of the lovely lips; but a proud disdain of the speakers was chiefly what she felt.

Lady Wilmot could detect that much of Bella's natural verve and vivacity were gone; yet she was compelled, mentally, to admit that Bella was a splendid-looking girl—bright, beautiful, and graceful to a degree—as she sat there in her well-fitted riding habit, than which few costumes are more becoming to a pretty woman.

During a country-house visit of nearly half an hour she thought she had heard enough, and more than enough, of Jerry's fickleness and flirtations, and rose to withdraw; but a storm of snow rendered departure impossible just then; her own and her father's horse had been taken round to the stable-yard; she had now the dread of being perhaps some hours in the society of Jerry, and deeply deplored her weakness in coming, feeling that she would require some art to show the indifference she had resolved to exhibit; thus, when the gentlemen joined them again, she spoke almost exclusively to Bevil Goring and Lord Twesildown, or remained silent, for she was intensely anxious to be gone.

If the usually gay Bella said little generally in Lady Wilmot's presence, she observed keenly, and her somewhat shy and haughty manner to her hostess was to a certain extent assumed, as the result of her secret resentment of the mode in which that dame was disposed to view and treat her.

'Cousin Emily' had been more than once painfully conscious that when 'the agent's daughter' was present she was relegated completely to the background, and that even Jerry cared not to flirt or make fun with her, so much was he absorbed in Bella Chevenix; and, though in some respects rather a nice girl, she began to conceive, as we have said, an animosity against her, and to consider how she could bring about a rupture between them before Jerry's leave of absence expired. 'We do not,' says a writer, 'resort to such clumsy expedients as daggers and poisoned bowls in the nineteenth century; but vindictive people deal out as cruel reprisals, even now-a-days, in good society, though it is etiquette to receive the fatal thrust with an easy smile, and wrestle with your anguish in the silence of your chamber.'

But to Emily's great surprise she found that Jerry and Miss Chevenix scarcely addressed each other; that there was a complete change in their bearing; that the latter chatted gaily with Goring and others, and seemed at times utterly oblivious of Jerry's presence.

She was much exercised in her mind by this discovery. What did it import?

Jerry seemed reserved and distrait, while at times Miss Chevenix seemed gayer than ever, and when she was in the billiard-room with him, Goring, and Twesildown, and ever so many more men, she actually acted somewhat like a romp, while showing how many times she could hit running off the red ball—'a nice accomplishment for a young lady!' as Lady Wilmot remarked when she was told of it after.

But all the gentlemen were enchanted with Bella, and were full of admiration at the grace and contour of her figure as she handled her cue with hands of matchless form and whiteness; and when she did take her departure it was Twesildown that assisted her to mount, and adjusted her skirt and reins, but Jerry remained behind in the porte-cochère, and simply lifted his hat, while a heavy load lay on his heart. Her reception of his love-making on the one hand, her wounded pride on the other, and the knowledge that she was under the keen and cynical eyes of Lady Wilmot and his cousin, had combined to make the protracted visit a most painful one to both. So two of the actors in our little drama separated, sore with each other and bitter in heart—no longer en rapport.

'I am glad that girl is gone at last,' remarked his mother. 'She is not fit for polished society, or to associate with Emily.'

'I have heard,' said that young lady, 'that when at Brighton she tried to become a professional beauty, by having her photo in every shop-window.'

'How wonderfully well you well-bred women can make those you hate or envy feel that you look down upon them,' said Jerry, angrily.

'I have no doubt she feels amply compensated for all that by the flattery and attention of the gentlemen; she is quite a kind of garrison beauty,' retorted Emily.

'Why are all your remarks on that girl so dashed with vinegar—decided Chili?' asked Jerry.

'She gives herself airs far above her station in life.'

'Tush; we are all descended from Adam and Eve—a gardener and his wife.'

'You will never convince me that there is not good and bad blood in this world,' exclaimed Lady Wilmot.

'Bravo, mater—cast the scheme of creation anew! What are the odds so long as we are happy. But I think the time has now come when you should know the influence this young lady's father may have in our affairs.'

Jerry now put before his horrified mother—horrified to hear of their necessity—the matter of the mortgages, and the full extent of these, and urged that she should show Bella some more marked attention, and less hauteur or supercilious indifference, and have her more often at the mansion house, to the guests at which she—a handsome girl, full of natural gaiety, and with a decided turn for charades, tableaux-vivants, private theatricals, lawn tennis, and games of all kinds—would prove invaluable.

But Lady Wilmot heard him in silence, with a knit of her pencilled eyebrows and a droop in the corners of her handsome mouth. She could only think of these horrible mortgages, and the awful humiliation of half the estate being in the hands of Mr. Chevenix.

'The estate seems to be quite slipping from me,' said Jerry, after a gloomy pause.

'Slipping?'

'Yes, it is guineas to gooseberries that the rest will follow Langley Park and so forth.'

'Terrible to think—not to be thought of at all! Why, the estate has been the home of the Wilmots for four hundred years!'

'We can never recover what has been lost.'

'Unless you make a wealthy marriage, Jerry dear—such as you have every right to look forward to.'

Jerry shrugged his shoulders, and pulled dreamily at his cigar after flicking the white ash off it.

'Let the mortgaged land go!' he exclaimed. 'I do not mean to dedicate my life by clearing that for others, which others did not clear for me.'

'Jerry!'

'Remember, mater dear, I have had only a little, and not all, to do in bringing matters to this pass with Wilmothurst, and I decline to act the part of a family martyr.'

'What will society say?'

'Society be hanged! I have read in a book, and I know it to be truth, that "Society at its best will entertain you if you amuse it, and will drop you, as a rule, upon the first suspicion of your wanting a twenty-pound note. Society saps your energy, snaps your finances, and half-a-dozen good attorneys are fifty times more valuable acquaintances than half the peerage would be at present."

'Where on earth do you pick up such detestable opinions, Jerry Wilmot?' exclaimed his mother, holding up her white hands in dismay, while she began seriously to consider where a suitable bride with a long purse could be found and urged upon his attention.

He meanwhile was chiefly engaged in remembering how, at the ball, Miss Chevenix had—after that rather sensational interview in the conservatory—gone off at once into an incipient flirtation with 'that utter oaf,' young Twesildown; but where is the woman who, believing herself to be treated as Bella thought she had been, would have thrown away a chance of retaliation and revenge, when a handsome young man of rank seemed disposed to devote himself to her?

CHAPTER V.
DOUBTING.

Prior to that affair in the conservatory, Bella had been to him all that a man had a right to expect—that is, a man who had not definitely declared himself; now that he had done so, she had thrown him completely over.

'What strong running I might make with her beyond a doubt, but for those accursed mortgages!' said Jerry to Bevil Goring, as they lounged in the smoking-room. 'She thinks I do not want her for herself, but to rid me of these, and values my love accordingly—despises me, in short,' added Jerry, bitterly, 'and I am without the means of undeceiving her.'

'He despises me for my humble origin, and even as much as admitted that his friends would view a mésalliance with contempt—yes, that was the word,' was the thought of Bella; 'yet his debts and the mortgages together made his royal highness stoop to act the lover to me. Surely, after the past, I deserved something better than this!'

He knew and she knew that for some time before their affair had been looked upon as 'a case;' that men began to make way for him whenever she was concerned, and that, in short, they would soon get talked about if they did not come to terms or separate; and now the separation had come to pass in a way neither could have foreseen.

A man like Jerry, who rode to hounds and at hurdle races, who shot, fished, rowed, and did everything else with such hearty good-will, was little likely 'to play the fool with his little girl,' thought Mr. Chevenix, from whom Bella had no concealments. He could not be base enough, but Mr. Chevenix knew not what to think, and in the first transport of his anger, but for her piteous appeals, would have foreclosed the mortgages, and perhaps thus have forced Jerry out of the Queen's service.

Any way, she must try not to love him now; love was over, she thought, and she would never, never love again.

Jerry would no doubt marry some one else—especially if money was his object, as she doubted not it was; and they—who were so near being very dear to each other—might meet in years to come as mere acquaintances, if even that! Her eyes filled with tears, and she drummed her little foot passionately on the floor at the visions she conjured up, and felt how difficult it is to obliterate or transfer affection at a moment's notice.

One moment she would say to herself that she never wished to see her lover's face again, especially if all, or even a half, were true that his mother and cousin hinted of his character, and all she suspected of his selfishness and pride; and the next moment she did so long to see him once more, and made herself utterly miserable with the fear that he might return to Aldershot without visiting the village again.

And so these two, who certainly loved each other well, and might have done so fondly and dearly for life, were both making themselves miserable through a very natural mistake—Bella deeming Jerry selfish and vain, Jerry deeming her views of him unjust, or that his love was what she suspected it to be, the outcome of cold-blooded policy, crushing inborn and absurd pride of family and position!

So Bella's mind was in a whirl of contending emotions; one time striving to believe in her lover's good faith, and the next endorsing the opinion of her good, easy, and affectionate father: that he had but one object in view—those horrible mortgages.

It was while the latter views were upper-most in her angry thoughts that Jerry Wilmot—his leave having expired, and he and Bevil Goring on the eve of their return to Aldershot camp—rode over to the village to pay a farewell call.

Bella saw him from the window riding down the village street and across the green, and her heart beat wildly as she gave breathlessly a hurried message to one of the servants, and then rushed upstairs to her room. She heard Jerry inquire for Mr. Chevenix. He was from home. Then he asked for Miss Chevenix, and was told that she was at home, but had a headache, and was unable to receive visitors.

Jerry hesitated; he knew well enough that in society 'a headache,' when ladies were concerned, meant 'not at home;' and, leaving a card with P.P.C. pencilled in a corner thereof, turned his horse's head, and, quitting the village at a canter, never once looked back.

Thus Bella, by yielding to a momentary gust of pride and temper, prompted by her then mood of mind, lost the only opportunity that might ever occur of having the cloud that hovered between them dispelled, and some explanation perhaps made.

But 'lovers from time immemorial have always shown much dexterity in the mismanagement of their own affairs,' says a novelist, and thus this pair were no exception to the general rule.

'Well,' he muttered, as his canter increased to a gallop, 'absence is a curative process; and absence in Africa will be an exciting addition thereto.'

Bella, as she wept on seeing him disappear, was not aware of one circumstance that made Jerry spur his horse viciously. As he entered the village at one end he had seen Lord Twesildown riding out of it at the other, and, not unnaturally, he connected Bella's 'headache' with that circumstance; but the young lord's appearance there was, in reality, the merest chance contingency in the world.

'He was not one bit in love with me,' thought Bella, when days succeeded each other in slow and monotonous succession, and Jerry came no more. 'Well, he has inflicted a sore blow upon my woman's vanity.'

She became moped and full of ennui; day followed day in monotonous succession, and she sat by a window with a novel in her hand unread, or some piece of feminine work forgotten, listlessly watching the leafless and dripping trees, for the season was dreary, wet, and stormy; the mist crept up from the adjacent stream and whitened all the gardens and the village green; and a cold, a sheeny, a wan crescent moon came out over Wilmot Woods.

'What a life I live just now!' sighed Bella; 'one might as well be in one's grave as here at Wilmothurst.'

CHAPTER VI.
AT ALDERSHOT.

Some weeks had now passed since Bevil Goring last saw Alison Cheyne—weeks that seemed as ages to him!

If weeks seem interminable when a pair of hopeful lovers are thus separated and can count to a day when they shall meet again, absence 'making their hearts grow fonder,' what must they seem to those who are hopelessly apart and kept in utter ignorance of each other's movements, thoughts, and plans!

Mrs. Trelawney at Chilcote Grange heard nothing of her young friend, or of Lord Cadbury, and though the movements of the 'upper ten' are pretty accurately chronicled in the society papers, as they are named, no record was given of those in the yacht, which Goring attributed to its voyaging in the Mediterranean; yet he thought it most singular that it had not been heard of turning up at Naples, Palermo, Civita Vecchia, Malta, or elsewhere affected by tourists and travellers.

Had Alison by this time bent to the circumstances that surrounded her—bent to her father's influence, and, in utter weariness of heart and despair of escape, accepted Lord Cadbury—been married to him perhaps?

The public prints would in these days of watchful and incessant paragraphing have duly announced such an event; but now to be destined for foreign service, and for a protracted and doubtful period, the dangers of war and climate apart, rendered the chances of their ever meeting again extremely problematical.

If there is any place in the world where lasting or temporary care might find an antidote, it is the great camp at Aldershot, with its thousands of horse, foot, and artillery, the incessant parading and marching, bugling and drumming, and amid the sociality of a regiment, with its merry mess, 'the perfection of dinner society,' as Lever calls it; but Bevil Goring shrank from it as soon as he could, and often preferred the solitude of his leaky hut—we say leaky, for those residences erected by the economical John Bull admit both wind and rain most freely through their felt roofs and red-painted wooden walls. And therein he chummed with Jerry, now a changed and somewhat moody fellow, addicted to heavy smoking and frequent brandy and sodas.

Dalton, too, would seem not to have made much progress with the gay widow during their absence at Wilmothurst, and seemed to have seen but little of her lately.

Ere long, unless the regiment departed betimes, they would have the spring drills before them; but there was every prospect of a speedy move, so their comrades congratulated themselves on the chance of escaping being perhaps under canvas in the North Camp, days of toil in the Long Valley, when the eyes, nose, and ears—yea, the pores of the skin, were often filled with dust—often being under arms from 9 a.m. till 4.30 p.m., with no other rations than a mouthful of Aldershot sand. Even the prospect of fighting in the dense African bush was deemed better work than that.

One morning after tubbing, and lingering over coffee and cigars in their patrol jackets, with O'Farrel in attendance, before morning parade, the corporal who acted as regimental postman brought Goring and Jerry their letters. There was only one for the former, but several for the latter, who regarded them ruefully, and said,

'What the devil is the use of opening them—they are all to amount of account rendered—blue envelopes,' and, after glancing leisurely at each, he cast it into the fire. 'I thought so! That —— tailor in the Strand. I gave him a remittance two years ago; should be thankful if he is ever paid at all. Account for a bracelet—got that in Bond Street for Emily; that vet's account for my horse; Healy's for boots of all kinds—pomades, gloves—no fellow can do without them; but then there is the interest accumulating on these mortgages, and as I won't pick up much prize money, though it is the Gold Coast we are bound for, I'll be up a tree one of these days. But, hollo, Bevil, old man, what does your solitary epistle contain?' he suddenly exclaimed, when, on glancing at his friend, he saw that the latter had changed colour, that he became very pale and then flushed red, while, as he read over his letter for the third time, his hands trembled so much that the paper rustled.

Goring then passed one hand across his forehead as if a little bewildered, and handed the document to Jerry, saying,

'Read for yourself.'

'Does it concern Miss Cheyne?' asked Jerry.

'Please God it may in time,' was the curious reply of Goring, as he put a dash of brandy into his coffee, and then looked over the shoulder of Jerry to re-peruse his letter again.

It ran thus: