Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon (page 8)

had been compelled to endow my shadowy relative with a comfortable little bit of money, in order to account for my devotion; since the powerful mind of my Horatio would have refused to grasp the idea of disinterested affection for an ancient kinswoman.

There was an ominous twinkle in the Captain’s sharp gray eyes when I gave this account of my absence, and I sorely doubt his acceptance of this second volume of the Dorking romance. Ah, what a life it is we lead in the tents of Ishmael, the cast-away! through what tortuous pathways wander the nomad tribes who call Hagar, the abandoned, their mother! what lies, what evasions, what prevarications! Horatio Paget and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark? My dear one’s letter is all sweetness and love. She is coming home; and much as she prefers Yorkshire to Bayswater, she is pleased to return for my sake–for my sake. She leaves the pure atmosphere of that simple country home to become the central point in a network of intrigue; and I am bound to keep the secret so closely interwoven with her fate. I love her more truly, more purely than I thought myself capable of loving; yet I can only approach her as the tool of George Sheldon, a rapacious conspirator, bent on securing the hoarded thousands of old John Haygarth.

Of all men upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,–I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty’s cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte’s fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of a salaried private inquirer.

BOOK THE SEVENTH.

CHARLOTTE’S ENGAGEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

“IN YOUR PATIENCE YE ARE STRONG.”

Miss Halliday returned to the gothic villa at Bayswater with a bloom on her cheeks, and a brightness in her eyes, which surpassed her wonted bloom and brightness, fair and bright as her beauty had been from the hour in which she was created to charm mankind. She had been a creature to adore even in the first dawn of infancy, and in her christening-hood and toga of white satin had been a being to dream of. But now she seemed invested all at once with a new loveliness–more spiritual, more pensive, than the old.

Might not Valentine have cried, with the rapturous pride of a lover: “Look at the woman here with the new soul!” and anon: “This new soul is mine!”

It was love that had imparted a new charm to Miss Halliday’s beauty. Diana wondered at the subtle change as her friend sat in her favourite window on the morning after her return, looking dreamily out into the blossomless garden, where evergreens of the darkest and spikiest character stood up stern and straight against the cold gray sky. Diana had welcomed her friend in her usual reserved manner, much to Charlotte’s discomfiture. The girl so yearned for a confidante. She had no idea of hiding her happiness from this chosen friend, and waited eagerly for the moment in which she could put her arms round Diana’s neck and tell her what it was that had made Newhall so sweet to her during this particular visit.

She sat in the window this morning thinking of Valentine, and languishing to speak of him, but at a loss how to begin. There are some people about whose necks the arms of affection can scarce entwine themselves. Diana Paget sat at her eternal embroidery-frame, picking up beads on her needle with the precision of some self-feeding machine. The little glass beads made a hard clicking sound as they dropped from her needle,–a very frosty, unpromising sound, as it seemed to Charlotte’s hyper-sensitive ear.

There had been an unwonted reserve between the girls since Charlotte’s return,–a reserve which arose, on Miss Halliday’s part, from the contest between girlish shyness and the eager desire for a confidante; and on the part of Miss Paget, from that gloomy discontent which had of late possessed her.

She watched Charlotte furtively as she picked up her beads–watched her wonderingly, unable to comprehend the happiness that gave such spiritual brightness to her eyes. It was no longer the childlike gaiety of heart which had made Miss Halliday’s girlhood so pleasant. It was the thoughtful, serene delight of womanhood.

“She can care very little for Valentine,” Diana thought, “or she could scarcely seem so happy after such a long separation. I doubt if these bewitching women who enchant all the world know what it is to feel deeply. Happiness is a habit with this girl. Valentine’s attentions were very pleasant to her. The pretty little romance was very agreeable while it lasted; but at the first interruption of the story she shuts the book, and thinks of it no more. O, if my Creator had made _me_ like that! If I could forget the days we spent together, and the dream I dreamt!”

That never-to-be-forgotten vision came back to Diana Paget as she sat at her work; and for a few minutes the clicking sound of the beads ceased, while she waited with clasped hands until the shadows should have passed before her eyes. The old dream came back to her like a picture, bright with colour and light. But the airy habitation which she had built for herself of old was no “palace lifting to Italian heavens its marble roof.” It was only a commonplace lodging in a street running out of the Strand, with just a peep of the river from a trim little balcony. An airy second-floor sitting-room, with engraved portraits of the great writers on the newly-papered walls: on one side an office-desk, on the other a work-table. The unpretending shelter of a newspaper hack, who lives _a jour la journee_, and whose wife must achieve wonders in the way of domestic economy in order to eke out his modest earnings.

This was Diana Paget’s vision of Paradise, and it seemed only the brighter now that she felt it was never to be anything more than a supernal picture painted on her brain.

After sitting silent for some little time, eager to talk, but waiting to be interrogated, Charlotte was fain to break silence.

“You don’t ask me whether I enjoyed myself in Yorkshire, Di,” she said, looking shyly down at the little bunch of charms and lockets which employed her restless fingers.

“Didn’t I, really?” replied Diana, languidly; “I thought that was one of the stereotyped inquiries one always made.”

“I hope you wouldn’t make stereotyped inquiries of _me_, Diana.”

“No, I ought not to do so. But I think there are times when one is artificial even with one’s best friends. And you are my best friend, Charlotte. I may as well say my only friend,” the girl added, with a laugh.

“Diana,” cried Charlotte, reproachfully, “why do you speak so bitterly? You know how dearly I love you. I do, indeed, dear. There is scarcely anything in this world I would not do for you. But I am not your only friend. There is Mr. Hawkehurst, whom you have known so long.”

Miss Halliday’s face was in a flame; and although she bent very low to examine the golden absurdities hanging on her watch-chain, she could not conceal her blushes from the eyes that were so sharpened by jealousy.

“Mr. Hawkehurst!” cried Diana, with unspeakable contempt. “If I were drowning, do you think _he_ would stretch out his hand to save me while you were within his sight? When he comes to this house–he who has seen so much poverty, and misery, and shame, and–happiness with me and mine–do you think he so much as remembers my existence? Do you think he ever stops to consider whether I am that Diana Paget who was once his friend and confidante and fellow-wayfarer and companion? or only a lay figure dressed up to fill a vacant chair in your drawing-room?”

“Diana!”

“It is all very well to look at me reproachfully, Charlotte. You must know that I am speaking the truth. You talk of friendship. What is that word worth if it does not mean care and thought for another? Do you imagine that Valentine Hawkehurst ever thinks of me, or considers me?”

Charlotte was fain to keep silence. She remembered how very rarely, in those long afternoons at Newhall farm, the name of Diana Paget had been mentioned. She remembered how, when she and Valentine were mapping out the future so pleasantly, she had stopped in the midst of an eloquent bit of word-painting, descriptive of the little suburban cottage they were to live in, to dispose of Diana’s fate in a sentence,–

“And dear Di can stop at the villa to take care of mamma,” she had said; whereupon Mr. Hawkehurst had assented, with a careless nod, and the description of the ideal cottage had been continued.

Charlotte remembered this now with extreme contrition. She had been so supremely happy, and so selfish in her happiness.

“O, Di,” she cried, “how selfish happy people are!” And then she stopped in confusion, perceiving that the remark had little relevance to Diana’s last observation.

“Valentine shall be your friend, dear,” she said, after a pause.

“O, you are beginning to answer for him already!” exclaimed Miss Paget, with increasing bitterness.

“Diana, why are you so unkind to me?” Charlotte cried, passionately. “Don’t you see that I am longing to confide in you? What is it that makes you so bitter? You must know how truly I love you. And if Mr. Hawkehurst is not what he once was to you, you must remember how cold and distant you always are in your manner to him. I am sure, to hear you speak to him, and to see you look at him sometimes, one would think he was positively hateful to you. And I want you to like him a little for my sake.”

Miss Halliday left her seat by the window as she said this, and went towards the table by which her friend was sitting. She crept close to Diana, and with a half-frightened, half-caressing movement, seated herself on the low ottoman at her feet, and, seated thus, possessed herself of Miss Paget’s cold hand.

“I want you to like Mr. Hawkehurst a little, Di,” she repeated, “for my sake.”

“Very well, I will try to like him a little–for your sake,” answered Miss Paget, in a very unsympathetic tone.

“O, Di! tell me how it was he offended you.”

“Who told you that he offended me?”

“Your own manner, dear. You could never have been so cold and distant with him–having known him go long, and endured so many troubles in his company–if you had not been deeply offended by him.”

“That is your idea, Charlotte; but, you see, I am very unlike you. I am fitful and capricious. I used to like Mr. Hawkehurst, and now I dislike him. As to offence, his whole life has offended me, just as my father’s life has offended me, from first to last. I am not good and amiable and loving, like you; but I hate deceptions and lies; above all, the lies that some men traffic in day after day.”

“Was Valentine’s–was your father’s life a very bad one?” Charlotte asked, trembling palpably, and looking up at Miss Paget’s face with anxious eyes.

“Yes, it was a mean false life,–a life of trick and artifice. I do not know the details of the schemes by which my father and Valentine earned their daily bread–and my daily bread; but I know they inflicted loss upon other people. Whether the wrong done was always done deliberately and consciously upon Valentine’s part, I cannot say. He may have been only a tool of my father’s. I hope he was, for the most part an unconscious tool.”

She said all this in a dreamy way, as if uttering her own thoughts, rather than seeking to enlighten Charlotte.

“I am sure he was an unconscious tool,” cried that young lady, with an air of conviction; “it is not in his nature to do anything false or dishonourable.”

“Indeed! you know him very well, it seems,” said Diana.

Ah, what a tempest was raging in that proud passionate heart! what a strife between the powers of good and evil! Pitying love for Charlotte; tender compassion for her rival’s childlike helplessness; and unutterable sense of her own loss.

She had loved him so dearly, and he was taken from her. There had been a time when he almost loved her–almost! Yes, it was the remembrance of that which made the trial so bitter. The cup had approached her lips, only to be dashed away for ever.

“What did I ask in life except his love?” she said to herself. “Of all the pleasures and triumphs which girls of my age enjoy, is there one that I ever envied? No, I only sighed for his love. To live in a lodging-house parlour with him, to sit by and watch him at his work, to drudge for him, to bear with him–this was my brightest dream of earthly bliss; and she has broken it!”

It was thus Diana argued with herself, as she sat looking down at the bright creature who had done her this worst, last wrong which one woman can do to another. This passionate heart, which ached with such cruel pain, was prone to evil, and to-day the scorpion Jealousy was digging his sharp tooth into its very core. It was not possible for Diana Paget to feel kindly disposed towards the girl whose unconscious hand had shattered the airy castle of her dreams. Was it not a hard thing that the bright creature, whom every one was ready to adore, must needs steal away this one heart?

“It has always been like this,” thought Diana. “The story of David and Nathan is a parable that is perpetually being illustrated. David is so rich–he is lord of incalculable flocks and herds; but he will not be content till he has stolen the one little ewe lamb, the poor man’s pet and darling.”

“Diana,” said Miss Halliday very softly, “you are so difficult to talk to this morning, and I have so much to say to you.”

“About your visit, or about Mr. Hawkehurst?”

“About–Yorkshire,” answered Charlotte, with the air of a shy child who has made her appearance at dessert, and is asked whether she will have a pear or a peach.

“About Yorkshire!” repeated Miss Paget, with a little sigh of relief. “I shall be very glad to hear about your Yorkshire friends. Was the visit a pleasant one?”

“Very, very pleasant!” answered Charlotte, dwelling tenderly on the words.

“How sentimental you have grown, Lotta! I think you must have found a forgotten shelf of Minerva Press novels in some cupboard at your aunt’s. You have lost all your vivacity.”

“Have I?” murmured Charlotte; “and yet I am happier than I was when I went away. Whom do you think I met at Newhall, Di?”

“I have not the slightest idea. My notions of Yorkshire are very vague. I fancy the people amiable savages; just a little in advance of the ancient Britons whom Julius Caesar came over to conquer. Whom did you meet there? Some country squire, I suppose, who fell in love with your bright eyes, and wished you to waste the rest of your existence in those northern wilds.”

Miss Paget was not a woman to bare her wounds for the scrutiny of the friendliest eyes. Let the tooth of the serpent bite never so keenly, she could meet her sorrows with a bold front. Was she not accustomed to suffer–she, the scapegoat of defrauded nurses and indignant landladies, the dependent and drudge of her kinswoman’s gynaeceum, the despised of her father? The flavour of these waters was very familiar to her lips. The draught was only a little more acrid, a little deeper, and habit had enabled her to drain the cup without complaining, if not in a spirit of resignation. To-day she had been betrayed into a brief outbreak of passion; but the storm had passed, and a more observant person than Charlotte might have been deceived by her manner.

“Now you are my own Di again,” cried Miss Halliday; somewhat cynical at the best of times, but always candid and true.

Miss Paget winced ever so little as her friend said this.

“No, dear,” continued Charlotte, with the faintest spice of coquetry; “it was not a Yorkshire squire. It was a person you know very well; a person we have been talking of this morning. O, Di, you must surely have understood me when I said I wanted you to like him for my sake!”

“Valentine Hawkehurst!” exclaimed Diana.

“Who else, you dear obtuse Di!”

“He was in Yorkshire?”

“Yes, dear. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. He marched up to Newhall gate one morning in the course of his rambles, without having the least idea that I was to be found in the neighbourhood. Wasn’t it wonderful?”

“What could have taken him to Yorkshire?”

“He came on business.”

“But what business?”

“How do I know? Some business of papa’s, or of George Sheldon’s, perhaps. And yet that can’t be. He is writing a book, I think, about geology or archaeology–yes, that’s it, archaeology.”

“Valentine Hawkehurst writing a book on archaeology!” cried Miss Paget. “You must be dreaming, Charlotte.”

“Why so? He does write, does he not?”

“He has been reporter for a newspaper. But he is the last person to write about archaeology. I think there must be some mistake.”

“Well, dear, it may be so. I didn’t pay much attention to what he said about business. It seemed so strange for him to be there, just as much at home as if he had been one of the family. O, Di, you can’t imagine how kind aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe were to him! They like him so much –and they know we are engaged.”

Miss Halliday said these last words almost in a whisper.

“What!” exclaimed Diana, “do you mean to say that you have promised to marry this man, of whom you know nothing but what is unfavourable?”

“What do I know in his disfavour? Ah, Diana, how unkind you are! and what a dislike you must have for poor Valentine! Of course, I know he is not what people call a good match. A good match means that one is to have a pair of horses, whose health is so uncertain that I am sure their lives must be a burden to them, if we may judge by our horses; and a great many servants, who are always conducting themselves in the most awful manner, if poor mamma’s experience is any criterion; and a big expensive house, which nobody can be prevailed on to dust. No, Di! that is just the kind of life I hate. What I should like is a dear little cottage at Highgate or Wimbledon, and a tiny, tiny garden, in which Valentine and I could walk every morning before he began his day’s work, and where we could drink tea together on summer evenings–a garden just large enough to grow a few rose-bushes. O. Di! do you think I want to marry a rich man?”

“No, Charlotte; but I should think you would like to marry a good man.”

“Valentine is good. No one but a good man could have been so happy as he seemed at Newhall farm. That simple country life could not have been happiness for a bad man.”

“And was Valentine Hawkehurst really happy at Newhall?”

“Really–really–really! Don’t try to shake my faith in him, Diana; it is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that–to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone a change since he has known me. What am I that I should work so good a change in my dear one? It is very foolish, is it not, Di?”

“Yes, Charlotte,” replied the voice of reason from the lips of Miss Paget; “it is all foolishness from beginning to end, and I can foresee nothing but trouble as the result of such folly. What will your mamma say to such an engagement? or what will Mr. Sheldon say?”

“Yes, that is the question,” returned Charlotte, very seriously. “Dear mamma is one of the kindest creatures in the world, and I’m sure she would consent to anything rather than see me unhappy. And then, you know, she likes Valentine very much, because he has given her orders for the theatres, and all that kind of thing. But, whatever mamma thinks, she will be governed by what Mr. Sheldon thinks; and of course he will be against our marriage.”

“Our marriage!” It was a settled matter, then–a thing that was to be sooner or later; and there remained only the question as to how and when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she dare not cry aloud.

“Mr. Sheldon is the last man in the world to permit such a marriage,” she said presently.

“Perhaps,” replied Charlotte; “but I am not going to sacrifice Valentine for Mr. Sheldon’s pleasure. Mr. Sheldon has full power over mamma and her fortune, but he has no real authority where I am concerned. I am as free as air, Diana, and I have not a penny in the world. Is not that delightful?”

The girl asked this question in all good faith, looking up at her friend with a radiant countenance. What irony there was in the question for Diana Paget, whose whole existence had been poisoned by the lack of that sterling coin of the realm which seemed such sordid dross in the eyes of Charlotte!

“What do you mean, Charlotte?”

“I mean, that even his worst enemies cannot accuse Valentine of any mercenary feeling. He does not ask me to marry him for the sake of my fortune.”

“Does he know your real position?”

“Most fully. And now, Diana, tell me that you will try to like him, for my sake, and that you will be kind, and will speak a good word for me to mamma by-and-by, when I have told her all.”

“When do you mean to tell her?”

“Directly–or almost directly. I scarcely know how to set about it. I am sure it has been hard enough to tell you.”

“My poor Charlotte! What an ungrateful wretch I must be!”

“My dear Diana, you have no reason to be grateful. I love you very dearly, and I could not live in this house without you. It is I who have reason to be grateful, when I remember how you bear with mamma’s fidgety ways, and with Mr. Sheldon’s gloomy temper, and all for love of me.”

“Yes, Lotta, for love of you,” Miss Paget answered, with a sigh; “and I will do more than that for love of you.”

She had her arm round her happy rival’s beautiful head, and she was looking down at the sweet upturned face with supreme tenderness. She felt no anger against this fair enslaver, who had robbed her of her little lamb. She only felt some touch of anger against the Providence which had decreed that the lamb should be so taken.

No suspicion of her friend’s secret entered Charlotte Halliday’s mind. In all their intercourse Diana had spoken very little of Valentine; and in the little she had said there had been always the same half-bitter, half-disdainful tone. Charlotte, in her simple candour, accepted this tone as the evidence of Miss Paget’s aversion to her father’s _protege_.

“Poor Di does not like to see her father give so much of his friendship to a stranger while she is neglected,” thought Miss Halliday; and having once jumped at this conclusion, she made no further effort to penetrate the mysteries of Diana’s mind.

She was less than ever inclined to speculation about Diana’s feelings now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could not quite escape that taint of egotism which is the ruling vice of fortunate lovers. Her mind was not wide enough to hold much more than one image, which demanded so large a space.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. SHELDON ACCEPTS HER DESTINY.

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs. Sheldon’s dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers, and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon’s best anchorage in this world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth endurance for this poor weak little woman; and they were more real to her than her daughter, because more easy to realise. The beautiful light-hearted girl was a being whose existence had been always something of a problem for Georgina Sheldon. She loved her after her own feeble fashion, and would have jealously asserted her superiority over every other daughter in the universe; but the power to understand her or to sympathise with her had not been given to that narrow mind. The only way in which Mrs. Sheldon’s affection showed itself was unquestioning indulgence and the bestowal of frivolous gifts, chosen with no special regard to Charlotte’s requirements, but rather because they happened to catch Mrs. Sheldon’s eye as they glittered or sparkled in the windows of Bayswater repositories.

Mr. Sheldon happened to be dining out on this particular evening. He was a guest at a great City feast, to which some of the richest men upon ‘Change had been bidden; so Miss Halliday had an excellent opportunity for making her confession.

Poor Georgy was not a little startled by the avowal.

“My darling Lotta!” she screamed, “do you think your papa would ever consent to such a thing?”

“I think my dear father would have consented to anything likely to secure my happiness, mamma,” the girl answered sadly.

She was thinking how different this crisis in her life would have seemed if the father she had loved so dearly had been spared to counsel her.

“I was not thinking of my poor dear first husband,” said Georgy. This numbering of her husbands was always unpleasant to Charlotte. It seemed such a very business-like mode of description to be applied to the father she so deeply regretted. I was thinking of your step-papa,” continued Mrs. Sheldon.

“He would never consent to your marrying Mr. Hawkehurst, who really seems to have nothing to recommend him except his good looks and an obliging disposition with regard to orders for the theatres.”

“I am not bound to consult my stepfather’s wishes. I only want to please you, mamma.”

“But, my dear, I cannot possibly consent to anything that Mr. Sheldon disapproves.”

“O, mamma, dear kind mamma, do have an opinion of your own for once in a way! I daresay Mr. Sheldon is the best possible judge of everything connected with the Stock Exchange and the money-market; but don’t let him choose a husband for me. Let me have your approval, mamma, and I care for no one else. I don’t want to marry against your will. But I am sure you like Mr. Hawkehurst.”

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head despondingly.

“It’s all very well to like an agreeable young man as an occasional visitor,” she said, “especially when most of one’s visitors are middle-aged City people. But it is a very different thing when one’s only daughter talks of marrying him. I can’t imagine what can have put such an idea as marriage into your head. It is only a few months since you came home from school; and I fancied that you would have stopped with me for years before you thought of settling.”

Miss Halliday made a wry face.

“Dear mamma,” she said, “I don’t want to ‘settle.’ That is what one’s housemaid says, isn’t it, when she talks of leaving service and marrying some young man from the baker’s or the grocer’s? Valentine and I are not in a hurry to be married. I am sure, for my own part, I don’t care how long our engagement lasts. I only wish to be quite candid and truthful with you, mamma; and I thought it a kind of duty to tell you that he loves me, and that–I love him–very dearly.”

These last words were spoken with extreme shyness.

Mrs. Sheldon laid down her hair-brushes while she contemplated her daughter’s blushing face. Those blushes had become quite a chronic affection with Miss Halliday of late.

“But, good gracious me, Charlotte,” she exclaimed, growing peevish in her sense of helplessness, “who is to tell Mr. Sheldon?”

“There is no necessity for Mr. Sheldon to be enlightened yet awhile, mamma. It is to you I owe duty and obedience–not to him. Pray keep my secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and–and ask Valentine to come and see you now and then.”

“Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon’s wish. I am sure I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if one has it all done by Birch’s people, one’s cook gives warning next morning,” added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent perplexities. “I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I’m sure the Hyley tea-parties were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon’s dinners, with those solemn City people, who can’t exist without clear turtle and red mullet.”

“Ah, mother dear, our lives were altogether happier in those days. I delight in the Yorkshire tea-parties, and the matrimony cakes, and all the talk and laughter about the fourpenny-piece and the ring. I remember getting the fourpenny-piece at Newhall last year. And that means that one is to die an old maid, you know. And now I am engaged. As to the dinners, mamma, Mr. Sheldon may keep them all for himself and his City friends. Valentine is the last person in the world to care for clear turtle. If you will let him drop in sometimes of an afternoon– say once a week or so–when you, and I, and Diana are sitting at our work in the drawing-room, and if you will let him hand us our cups at our five-o’clock tea, he will be the happiest of men. He adores tea. You’ll let him come, won’t you, dear? O, mamma, I feel just like a servant who asks to be allowed to see her ‘young man.’ Will you let my ‘young man’ come to tea once in a way?”

“Well, Charlotte, I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sheldon, with increasing helplessness. “It’s really a very dreadful position for me to be placed in.”

“Quite appalling, is it not, mamma? But then I suppose it is a position that people afflicted with daughters must come to sooner or later.”

“If it were the mere civility of asking him to tea,” pursued poor Georgy, heedless of this flippant interruption, “I’m sure I should be the last to make any objection. Indeed, I am under a kind of obligation to Mr. Hawkehurst, for his polite attention has enabled us to go to the theatres very often when your papa would not have thought of buying tickets. But then, you see, Lotta, the question in point is not his coming to our five-o’clock tea–which seems really a perfect mockery to any one brought up in Yorkshire–but whether you are to be engaged to him.”

“Dear mamma, _that_ is not a question at all, for I am already engaged to him.”

“But, Charlotte–“

“I do not think I could bring myself to disobey you, dear mother,” continued the girl tenderly; “and if you tell me, of your own free will, and acting on your conviction, that I am not to marry him, I must bow my head to your decision, however hard it may seem. But one thing is quite certain, mamma: I have given my promise to Valentine; and if I do not marry him, I shall never marry at all; and then the dreadful augury of the fourpenny-piece will be verified.”

Miss Halliday pronounced this determination with a decision of manner that quite overawed her mother. It had been the habit of Georgy’s mind to make a feeble protest against all the mutations of life, but in the end to submit very quietly to the inevitable; and since Valentine Hawkehurst’s acceptance as Charlotte’s future husband seemed inevitable, she was fain to submit in this instance also.

Valentine was allowed to call at the Lawn, and was received with a feeble, half-plaintive graciousness by the lady of the house. He was invited to stop for the five-o’clock tea, and availed himself rapturously of this delightful privilege. His instinct told him what gentle hand had made the meal so dainty and home-like, and for whose pleasure the phantasmal pieces of bread-and-butter usually supplied by the trim parlour-maid had given place to a salver loaded with innocent delicacies in the way of pound-cake and apricot jam.

Mr. Hawkehurst did his uttermost to deserve so much indulgence. He scoured London in search of free admissions for the theatres, hunting “Ragamuffins” and members of the Cibber Club, and other privileged creatures, at all their places of resort. He watched for the advent of novels adapted to Georgy’s capacity–lively records of croquet and dressing and love-making, from smart young Amazons in the literary ranks, or deeply interesting romances of the sensation school, with at least nine deaths in the three volumes, and a comic housemaid, or a contumacious “Buttons,” to relieve the gloom by their playful waggeries. He read Tennyson or Owen Meredith, or carefully selected “bits” from the works of a younger and wilder bard, while the ladies worked industriously at their prie-dieu chairs, or Berlin brioches, or Shetland couvrepieds, as the case might be. The patroness of a fancy fair would scarcely have smiled approvingly on the novel effects in _crochet a tricoter_ produced by Miss Halliday during these pleasant lectures.

“The rows will come wrong,” she said piteously, “and Tennyson’s poetry is so very absorbing!”

Mr. Hawkehurst showed himself to be possessed of honourable, not to say delicate, feelings in his new position. The gothic villa was his paradise, and the gates had been freely opened to admit him whensoever he chose to come. Georgy was just the sort of person from whom people take ells after having asked for inches; and once having admitted Mr. Hawkehurst as a privileged guest, she would have found it very difficult to place any restriction upon the number of his visits. Happily for this much-perplexed matron, Charlotte and her lover were strictly honourable. Mr. Hawkehurst never made his appearance at the villa more than once in the same week, though the “once a week or so” asked for by Charlotte might have been stretched to a wider significance.

When Valentine obtained orders for the theatre, he sent them by post, scrupulously refraining from making them the excuse for a visit.

“That was all very well when I was a freebooter,” he said to himself, “only admitted on sufferance, and liable to have the door shut in my face any morning. But I am trusted now, and I must prove myself worthy of my future mother-in-law’s confidence. Once a week! One seventh day of unspeakable happiness–bliss without alloy! The six other days are very long and dreary. But then they are only the lustreless setting in which that jewel the seventh shines so gloriously. Now, if I were Waller, what verses I would sing about my love! Alas, I am only a commonplace young man, and can find no new words in which to tell the old sweet story!”

If the orders for stalls and private boxes were not allowed to serve as an excuse for visits, they at least necessitated the writing of letters; and no human being, except a lover, would have been able to understand why such long letters must needs be written about such a very small business. The letters secured replies; and when the order sent was for a box, Mr. Hawkehurst was generally invited to occupy a seat in it. Ah, what did it matter on those happy nights how hackneyed the plot of the play, how bald the dialogue, how indifferent the acting! It was all alike delightful to those two spectators: for a light that shone neither on earth nor sky brightened everything they looked on when they sat side by side.

And during all these pleasant afternoons at the villa, or evenings at the theatre, Diana Paget had to sit by and witness the happiness which she had dreamed might some day be hers. It was a part of her duty to be present on these occasions, and she performed that duty punctiliously. She might have made excuses for absenting herself, but she was too proud to make any such excuses.

“Am I such a coward as to tell a lie in order to avoid a little pain more or less? If I say I have a headache, and stay in my own room while he is here, will the afternoon seem any more pleasant or any shorter to me? The utmost difference would be the difference between a dull pain and a sharp pain; and I think the sharper agony is easier to bear.” Having argued with herself thus, Miss Paget endured her weekly martyrdom with Spartan fortitude.

“What have I lost?” she said to herself, as she stole a furtive glance now and then at the familiar face of her old companion. “What is this treasure, the loss of which makes me seem to myself such an abject wretch? Only the love of a man who at his best is not worthy of this girl’s pure affection, and at his worst must have been unworthy even of mine. But then at his worst he is dearer to me than the best man who ever lived upon this earth.”

CHAPTER III.

MR. HAWKEHURST AND MR. GEORGE SHELDON COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING.

There was no such thing as idleness for Valentine Hawkehurst during these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who love their wives and children, and go to their parish church on Sundays. He had an incentive to steady industry, which had hitherto been wanting in his life. He was beloved, and any shame that came to him would be a still more bitter humiliation for the woman who loved him.

He felt that the very first step in the difficult path of respectability would be a step that must separate him from Captain Paget; but just now separation from that gentleman seemed scarcely advisable. If there was any mischief in that Ullerton expedition, any collusion between the Captain and the Reverend Goodge, it would assuredly be well for Valentine to continue a mode of life which enabled him to be tolerably well informed as to the movements of the slippery Horatio. In all the outside positions of life expedience must ever be the governing principle, and expedience forbade any immediate break with Captain Paget.

“Whatever you do, keep your eye upon the Captain,” said George Sheldon, in one of many interviews, all bearing upon the Haygarth succession. “If there is any underhand work going on between him and Philip, you must be uncommonly slow of perception if you can’t ferret it out. I’m very sorry you met Charlotte Halliday in the north, for of course Phil must have heard of your appearance in Yorkshire, and that will set him wondering at any rate, especially as lie will no doubt have heard the Dorking story from Paget. He pretended he saw you leave town the day you went to Ullerton, but I am half inclined to believe that was only a trap.”

“I don’t think Mr. Sheldon has heard of my appearance in Yorkshire yet.”

“Indeed! Miss Charlotte doesn’t care to make a confidant of her stepfather, I suppose. Keep her in that mind, Hawkehurst. If you play your cards well, you ought to be able to get her to marry you on the quiet.” “I don’t think that would be possible. In fact, I am sure Charlotte would not marry without her mother’s consent,” answered Valentine, thoughtfully.

“And of course that means my brother Philip’s consent,” exclaimed George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. “What a slow, bungling fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you, and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if you were going to the dentist’s to have a tooth drawn. You’ve fallen into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don’t seem to have the smallest capability of appreciating your good luck.”

“Well, perhaps I am rather slow to realise the idea of my good fortune,” answered Valentine, still very thoughtfully. “You see, in the first place, I can’t get over a shadowy kind of feeling with regard to that Haygarthian fortune. It is too far away from my grasp, too large, too much of the stuff that dreams and novels are made of. And, in the second place, I love Miss Halliday so fondly and so truly that I don’t like the notion of making my marriage with her any part of the bargain between you and me.”

Mr. Sheldon contemplated his confederate with unmitigated disdain. “Don’t try that sort of thing with me, Hawkehurst,” he said; “that sentimental dodge may answer very well with some men, but I’m about the last to be taken in by it. You are playing fast-and-loose with me, and you want to throw me over–as my brother Phil would throw me over, if he got the chance.”

“I am not playing fast-and-loose with you,” replied Valentine, too disdainful of Mr. Sheldon for indignation. “I have worked for you faithfully, and kept your secret honourably, when I had every temptation to reveal it. You drove your bargain with me, and I have performed my share of the bargain to the letter. But if you think I am going to drive a bargain with you about my marriage with Miss Halliday, you are very much mistaken. That lady will marry me when she pleases, but she shall not be entrapped into a clandestine marriage for your convenience.” “O, that’s your ultimatum, is it, Mr. Joseph Surface?” said the lawyer, biting his nails fiercely, and looking askant at his ally, with angry eyes. “I wonder you don’t wind up by saying that the man who could trade upon a virtuous woman’s affection for the advancement of his fortune, deserves to–get it hot, as our modern slang has it. Then I am to understand that you decline to precipitate matters?”

“I most certainly do.”

“And the Haygarth business is to remain in abeyance while Miss Halliday goes through the tedious formula of a sentimental courtship?”

“I suppose so.”

“Humph! that’s pleasant for me.”

“Why should you make the advancement of Miss Halliday’s claims contingent on her marriage? Why not assert her rights at once?”

“Because I will not trust my brother Philip. The day that you show me the certificate of your marriage with Charlotte Halliday is the day on which I shall make my first move in this business. I told you the other day that I would rather make a bargain with you than with my brother.”

“And what kind of bargain do you expect to make with me when Miss Halliday is my wife?”

“I’ll tell you, Valentine Hawkehurst,” replied the lawyer, squaring his elbows upon his desk in his favourite attitude, and looking across the table at his coadjutor; “I like to be open and above-board when I can, and I’ll be plain with you in this matter. I want a clear half of John Haygarth’s fortune, and I think that I’ve a very fair claim to that amount. The money can only be obtained by means of the documents in my possession, and but for me that money might have remained till doomsday unclaimed and unthought of by the descendant of Matthew Haygarth. Look at it which way you will, I think you’ll allow that my demand is a just one.”

“I don’t say that it is unjust, though it certainly seems a little extortionate,” replied Valentine. “However, if Charlotte were my wife, and were willing to cede half the fortune, I’m not the man to dispute the amount of your reward. When the time comes for bargain-driving, you’ll not find me a difficult person to deal with.

“And when may I expect your marriage with Miss Halliday?” asked George Sheldon, rapping his hard finger-nails upon the table with suppressed impatience. “Since you elect to conduct matters in the grand style, and must wait for mamma’s consent and papa’s consent, and goodness knows what else in the way of absurdity, I suppose the delay will be for an indefinite space of time.” “I don’t know about that. I’m not likely to put off the hour in which I shall call that dear girl my own. I asked her to be my wife before I knew that she had the blood of Matthew Haygarth in her veins, and the knowledge of her claim to this fortune does not make her one whit the dearer to me, penniless adventurer as I am. If poetry were at all in your line, Mr. Sheldon, you might know that a man’s love for a good woman is generally better than himself. He may be a knave and a scoundrel, and yet his love for that one perfect creature may be almost as pure and perfect as herself. That’s a psychological mystery out of the way of Gray’s Inn, isn’t it?”

“If you’ll oblige me by talking common sense for about five minutes, you may devote your powerful intellect to the consideration of psychological mysteries for a month at a stretch,” exclaimed the aggravated lawyer.

“O, don’t you see how I struggle to be hard-headed and practical!” cried Valentine; “but a man who is over head and ears in love finds it rather hard to bring all his ideas to the one infallible grindstone. You ask me when I am to marry Charlotte Halliday. To-morrow, if our Fates smile upon us. Mrs. Sheldon knows of our engagement, and consents to it, but in some manner under protest. I am not to take my dear girl away from her mother for some time to come. The engagement is to be a long one. In the mean time I am working hard to gain some kind of position in literature, for I want to be sure of an income before I marry, without reference to John Haygarth; and I am a privileged guest at the villa.”

“But my brother Phil has been told nothing?”

“As yet nothing. My visits are paid while he is in the City; and as I often went to the villa before my engagement, he is not likely to suspect anything when he happens to hear my name mentioned as a visitor.”

“And do you really think he is in the dark–my brother Philip, who can turn a man’s brains inside out in half an hour’s conversation? Mark my words, Valentine Hawkehurst, that man is only playing with you as a cat plays with a mouse. He used to see you and Charlotte together before you went to Yorkshire, and he must have seen the state of the case quite as plainly as I saw it. He has heard of your visits to the villa since your return, and has kept a close account of them, and made his own deductions, depend upon it. And some day, while you and pretty Miss Charlotte are enjoying your fool’s paradise, he will pounce upon you just as puss pounces on poor mousy.”

This was rather alarming, and Valentine felt that it was very likely to be correct.

“Mr. Sheldon may play the part of puss as he pleases,” he replied after a brief pause for deliberation; “this is a case in which he dare not show his claws. He has no authority to control Miss Halliday’s actions.”

“Perhaps not, but he would find means for preventing her marriage if it was to his interest to do so. He is not _your_ brother, you see, Mr. Hawkehurst; but he is mine, and I know a good deal about him. His interest may not be concerned in hindering his stepdaughter’s marriage with a penniless scapegrace. He may possibly prefer such a bridegroom as less likely to make himself obnoxious by putting awkward questions about poor Tom Halliday’s money, every sixpence of which he means to keep, of course. If his cards are packed for that kind of marriage, he’ll welcome you to his arms as a son-in-law, and give you his benediction as well as his stepdaughter. So I think if you can contrive to inform him of your engagement, without letting him know of your visit to Yorkshire, it might be a stroke of diplomacy. He might be glad to get rid of the girl, and might hasten on the marriage of his own volition.”

“He might be glad to get rid of the girl.” In the ears of Valentine Hawkehurst this sounded rank blasphemy. Could there be any one upon this earth, even a Sheldon, incapable of appreciating the privilege of that divine creature’s presence?

CHAPTER IV.

MR. SHELDON IS PROPITIOUS

It was not very long before Valentine Hawkehurst had reason to respect the wisdom of his legal patron. Within a few days of his interview with George Sheldon he paid his weekly visit to the villa. Things were going very well with him, and life altogether seemed brighter than he had ever hoped to find it. He had set himself steadily to work to win some kind of position in literature. He devoted his days to diligent study in the reading-room of the British Museum, his nights to writing for the magazines. His acquaintance with press-men had stood him in good stead; and already he had secured the prompt acceptance of his work in more than one direction. The young _litterateur_ of the present day has not such a very hard fight for a livelihood, if his pen has only a certain lightness and dash, a rattling vivacity and airy grace. It is only the marvellous boys who come to London with epic poems, Anglo-Saxon tragedies, or metaphysical treatises in their portmanteaus, who must needs perish in their prime, or stoop to the drudgery of office or counting-house.

Valentine Hawkehurst had no vague yearnings after the fame of a Milton, no inner consciousness that he had been born to stamp out the footprints of Shakespeare on the sands of time, no unhealthy hungering after the gloomy grandeur of Byron. He had been brought up amongst people who treated literature as a trade as well as an art;–and what art is not more or less a trade? He knew the state of the market, and what kind of goods were likely to go off briskly, and it was for the market he worked. When gray shirtings were in active demand, he set his loom for gray shirtings; and when the buyers clamoured for fancy goods, he made haste to produce that class of fabrics. In this he proved himself a very low-minded and ignominious creature, no doubt; but was not one Oliver Goldsmith glad to take any order which good Mr. Newberry might give him, only writing the “Traveller” and the story of Parson Primrose _pour se distraire_?

Love lent wings to the young essayist’s pen. It is to be feared that in roving among those shelves in Great Russell-street he showed himself something of a freebooter, taking his “bien” wherever it was to be found; but did not Moliere frankly acknowledge the same practice? Mr. Hawkehurst wrote about anything and everything. His brain must needs be a gigantic storehouse of information, thought the respectful reader. He skipped from Pericles to Cromwell, from Cleopatra to Mary Stuart, from Sappho to Madame de Sable; and he wrote of these departed spirits with such a charming impertinence, with such a delicious affectation of intimacy, that one would have thought he had sat by Cleopatra as she melted her pearls, and stood amongst the audience of Pericles when he pronounced his funeral oration. “With the De Sable and the Chevreuse, Ninon and Marion, Maintenon and La Valliere, Anne of Austria and the great Mademoiselle of France, he seemed to have lived in daily companionship, so amply did he expatiate upon the smallest details of their existences, so tenderly did he dwell on their vanished beauties, their unforgotten graces.”

The work was light and pleasant; and the monthly cheques from the proprietors of a couple of rival periodicals promised, to amount to the income which the adventurer had sighed for as he trod the Yorkshire moorland. He had asked Destiny to give him Charlotte Halliday and three hundred a year, and lo! while yet the wish was new, both these blessings seemed within his grasp. It could scarcely be a matter for repining it the Fates should choose to throw in an odd fifty thousand pounds or so.

But was not all this something too much of happiness for a man whose feet had trodden in evil ways? Were not the Fates mocking this travel-stained wayfarer with bright glimpses of a paradise whose gates he was never to pass?

This was the question which Valentine Hawkehurst was fain to ask himself sometimes; this doubt was the shadow which sometimes made a sudden darkness that obscured the sunshine.

Happily for Charlotte’s true lover, the shadow did not often come between him and the light of those dear eyes which were his pole-stars.

The December days were shortening as the year drew to its close, and afternoon tea seemed more than ever delightful to Charlotte and her betrothed, now that it could be enjoyed in the mysterious half light; a glimmer of chill gray day looking coldly in at the unshrouded window like some ghostly watcher envying these mortals their happiness, and the red glow of the low fire reflected upon every curve and facet of the shining steel grate.

To sit by the fire at five o’clock in the afternoon, watching the changeful light upon Charlotte’s face, the rosy glow that seemed to linger caressingly on broad low brow and sweet ripe lips, the deep shadows that darkened eyes and hair, was bliss unspeakable for Mr. Hawkehurst. The lovers talked the prettiest nonsense to each other, while Mrs. Sheldon dozed placidly behind the friendly shelter of a banner-screen hooked on to the chimney-piece, or conversed with Diana in a monotonous undertone, solemnly debating the relative wisdom of dyeing or turning in relation to a faded silk dress.

Upon one special evening Valentine lingered just a little longer than usual. Christmas was near at hand, and the young man had brought his liege lady tribute in the shape of a bundle of Christmas literature. Tennyson had been laid aside in favour of the genial Christmas fare, which had the one fault, that it came a fortnight before the jovial season, and in a manner fore-stalled the delights of that time-honoured period, making the season itself seem flat and dull, and turkey and plum-pudding the stalest commodities in the world when they did come. How, indeed, can a man do full justice to his aunt Tabitha’s plum-pudding, or his uncle Joe’s renowned rum-punch, if he has quaffed the steaming-bowl with the “Seven Poor Travellers,” or eaten his Christmas dinner at the “Kiddleawink” a fortnight beforehand? Are not the chief pleasures of life joys as perishable as the bloom on a peach or the freshness of a rose?

Valentine had read the ghastliest of ghost-stories, and the most humorous of word-pictures, for the benefit of the audience in Mrs. Sheldon’s drawing-room; and now, after tea, they sat by the fire talking of the ghost-story, and discussing that unanswerable question about the possibility of such spiritual appearances, which seems to have been debated ever since the world began.

“Dr. Johnson believed in ghosts,” said Valentine.

“O, please spare us Dr. Johnson,” cried Charlotte, with seriocomic intensity. “What is it that obliges magazine-writers to be perpetually talking about Dr. Johnson? If they must dig up persons from the past, why can’t they dig up newer persons than that poor ill-used doctor?”

The door opened with a hoarse groan, and Mr. Sheldon came into the room while Miss Halliday was making her playful protest. She stopped, somewhat confused by that sudden entrance.

There is a statue of the Commandant in every house, at whose coming hearts grow cold and lips are suddenly silent. It was the first time that the master of the villa had interrupted one of these friendly afternoon teas, and Mrs. Sheldon and her daughter felt that a domestic crisis was at hand.

“How’s this?” cried the stockbroker’s strong hard voice; “you seem all in the dark.”

He took a wax-match from a little gilt stand on the mantelpiece and lighted two flaring lamps. He was the sort of man who is always eager to light the gas when people are sitting in the gloaming, meditative and poetical. He let the broad glare of common sense in upon their foolish musings, and scared away Robin Goodfellow and the fairies by means of the Western Gaslight Company’s illuminating medium.

The light of those two flaring jets of gas revealed Charlotte Halliday looking shyly at the roses on the carpet, and trifling nervously with one of the show-books on the table. The same light revealed Valentine Hawkehurst standing by the young lady’s chair, and looking at Mr. Sheldon with a boldness of countenance that was almost defiance. Poor Georgy’s face peered out from behind her favourite banner-screen, looking from one to the other in evident alarm. Diana sat in her accustomed corner, watchful, expectant, awaiting the domestic storm.

To the surprise of every one except Mr. Sheldon, there was no storm, not even the lightest breeze that ever blew in domestic hemispheres. The stockbroker saluted his stepdaughter with a friendly nod, and greeted her lover with a significant grin.

“How d’ye do, Hawkehurst?” he said, in his pleasantest manner. “It’s an age since I’ve seen you. You’re going in for literature, I hear; and a very good thing too, if you can make it pay. I understand there are some fellows who really do make that sort of thing pay. Seen my brother George lately? Yes, I suppose you and George are quite a Damon and What’s-his-name. You’re going to dine here to-night, of course? I suppose we may go in to dinner at once, eh, Georgy?–it’s half-past six.”

Mr. Hawkehurst made some faint pretence of having a particular engagement elsewhere; for, supposing Sheldon to be unconscious, he scorned to profit by that gentleman’s ignorance. And then, having faltered his refusal, he looked at Charlotte, and Charlotte’s eyes cried “Stay,” as plainly as such lovely eyes can speak. So the end of it was, that he stayed and partook of the Sheldonian crimped skate, and the Sheldonian roast-beef and tapioca-pudding, and tasted some especial Moselle, which, out of the kindliness of his nature, Mr. Sheldon opened for his stepdaughter’s betrothed.

After dinner there were oranges and crisp uncompromising biscuits, that made an explosive noise like the breaking of windows whenever any one ventured to tamper with them; item, a decanter of sherry in a silver stand; item, a decanter of port, which Mr. Sheldon declared to be something almost too good to be drunk, and to the merits of which Valentine was supremely indifferent. The young man would fain have followed his delight when she accompanied her mamma and Diana to the drawing-room; but Mr. Sheldon detained him.

“I want a few words with you, Hawkehurst,” he said; and Charlotte’s cheeks flamed red as peonies at sound of this alarming sentence. “You shall go after the ladies presently, and they shall torture that poor little piano to their hearts’ delight for your edification. I won’t detain you many minutes. You had really better try that port.”

Valentine closed the door upon the departing ladies, and went back to his seat very submissively. If there were any battle to be fought out between him and Philip Sheldon, the sooner the trumpet sounded to arms the better.

“His remarkable civility almost inclines me to think that he does really want to get rid of that dear girl,” Valentine said to himself, as he filled his glass and gravely awaited Mr. Sheldon’s pleasure.

“Now then, my dear Hawkehurst,” began that gentleman, squaring himself in his comfortable arm-chair, and extending his legs before the cheery fire, “let us have a little friendly chat. I am not given to beating about the bush, you know, and whatever I have to say I shall say in very plain words. In the first place, I hope you have not so poor an opinion of my perceptive faculties as to suppose that I don’t see what is going on between you and Miss Lotta yonder.”

“My dear Mr. Sheldon, I–“

“Hear what I have to say first, and make your protestations afterwards. You needn’t be alarmed; you won’t find me quite as bad as the stepmother one reads about in the story-books, who puts her stepdaughter into a pie, and all that kind of thing. I suppose stepfathers have been a very estimable class, by the way, as it is the stepmother who always drops in for it in the story-books. You’ll find mo very easy to deal with, Mr. Hawkehurst, always provided that you deal in a fair and honourable manner.”

“I have no wish to be underhand in my dealings,” Valentine said boldly. And indeed this was the truth. His inclination prompted him to candour, even with Mr. Sheldon; but that fatal necessity which is the governing principle of the adventurer’s life obliged him to employ the arts of finesse.

“Good,” cried Mr. Sheldon, in the cheery, pleasant tone of an easy-going man of the world, who is not too worldly to perform a generous action once in a way. “All I ask is frankness. You and Charlotte have fallen in love with one another–why, I can’t imagine, except on the hypothesis that a decent-looking young woman and a decent-looking young man can’t meet half a dozen times without beginning to think of Gretna-green, or St. George’s, Hanover-square. Of course a marriage with you, looked at from a common-sense point of view, would be about the worst thing that could happen to my wife’s daughter. She’s a very fine girl” (a man of the Sheldonian type would call Aphrodite herself a fine girl), “and might marry some awfully rich City swell with vineries and pineries and succession-houses at Tulse-hill or Highgate, if I chose to put her in the way of that sort of thing. But then, you see, the worst of it is, a man seldom comes to vineries and pineries at Tulse-hill till he is on the shady side of forty; and as I am not in favour of mercenary marriages, I don’t care to force any of my City connection upon poor Lotta. In the neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange there is no sharper man of business than your humble servant; but I don’t care to bring business habits to Bayswater. Long before Lotta left school, I had made up my mind never to come between her and her own inclination in the matrimonial line; therefore, if she truly and honestly loves you, and if you truly and honestly love her, I am not the man to forbid the bans.”

“My dear Mr. Sheldon, how shall I ever thank you for this!” cried Valentine, surprised into a belief in the purity of the stockbroker’s intentions.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” replied that gentleman coolly; “you haven’t heard me out yet. Though I may consent to take the very opposite line of conduct which I might be expected to take as a man of the world, I am not going to allow you and Charlotte to make fools of yourselves. There must be no love-in-a-cottage business, no marrying on nothing a year, with the expectation that papa and mamma will make up the difference between that and a comfortable income. In plain English, if I consent to receive you as Charlotte’s future husband, you and she must consent to wait until you can, to my entire satisfaction, prove yourself in a position to keep a wife.” Valentine sighed doubtfully.

“I don’t think either Miss Halliday or I are in an unreasonable hurry to begin life together,” he said thoughtfully; “but there must be some fixed limit to our probation. I am afraid the waiting will be a very long business, if I am to obtain a position that will satisfy you before I ask my dear girl to share my fate.”

“Are your prospects so very black?”

“No; to my mind they seem wonderfully bright. But the earnings of a magazine-writer will scarcely come up to your idea of an independence. Just now I am getting about ten pounds a month. With industry, I may stretch that ten to twenty; and with luck I might make the twenty into thirty–forty–fifty. A man has only to achieve something like a reputation in order to make a handsome living by his pen.”

“I am very glad to hear that,” said Mr. Sheldon; “and when you can fairly demonstrate to me that you are earning thirty pounds a month, you shall have my consent to your marriage with Charlotte, and I will do what I can to give you a fair start in life. I suppose you know that she hasn’t a sixpence in the world, that she can call her own?”

This was a trying question for Valentine Hawkehurst, and Mr. Sheldon looked at him with a sharp scrutinising glance as he awaited a reply. The young man flushed crimson, and grew pale again before he spoke.

“Yes,” he said, “I have long been aware that Miss Halliday has no legal claim on her father’s fortune.”

“There you have hit the mark,” cried Mr. Sheldon. “She has no claim to a sixpence in law; but to an honourable man that is not the question. Poor Halliday’s money amounted in all to something like eighteen thousand pounds. That sum passed into my possession when I married my poor friend’s widow, who had too much respect for me to hamper my position as a man of business by any legal restraints that would have hindered my making the wisest use of her money. I have used that money, and I need scarcely tell you that I have employed it with considerable advantage to myself and Georgy. I therefore can afford to be generous, and I mean to be so; but the manner in which I do things must be of my own choosing. My own children are dead, and there is no one belonging to one that stands in Miss Halliday’s way. When I die she will inherit a handsome fortune. And if she marries with my approval, I shall present her with a very comfortable dowry. I think you will allow that this is fair enough.”

“Nothing could be fairer or more generous,” replied Valentine with enthusiasm.

Mr. Sheldon’s agreeable candour had entirely subjugated him. Despite of all that George had said to his brother’s prejudice, he was ready to believe implicitly in Philip’s fair dealing.

“And in return for this I ask something on your part,” said Mr. Sheldon. “I want you to give me your promise that you will take no serious step without my knowledge. You won’t steal a march upon me. You won’t walk off with Charlotte some fine morning and marry her at a registry-office, or anything of that kind, eh?”

“I will not,” answered Valentine resolutely, with a very unpleasant recollection of his dealings with George Sheldon.

“Give me your hand upon that,” cried the stockbroker.

Upon this the two men shook hands, and Valentine’s fingers were almost crushed in the cold hard grip of Mr. Sheldon’s muscular hand. And now there came upon Valentine’s ear the sound of one of Mendelssohn’s _Lieder ohne Worte_, tenderly played by the gentle hands he knew so well. And the lover began to feel that he could no longer sit sipping the stockbroker’s port with a hypocritical pretence of appreciation, and roasting himself before the blazing fire, the heat whereof was multiplied to an insufferable degree by grate and fender of reflecting steel.

Mr. Sheldon was not slow to perceive his guest’s impatience, and having made exactly the impression he wanted to make, was quite willing that the interview should come to an end.

“You had better be off to the drawing-room,” he said, good naturedly; “I see you are in that stage of the fever in which masculine society is only a bore. You can go and hear Charlotte play, while I read the evening papers and write a few letters. You can let her know that you and I understand each other. Of course we shall see you very often. You’ll eat your Christmas turkey with us, and so on; and I shall trust to your honour for the safe keeping of that promise you made me just now,” said Mr. Sheldon.

“And I shall keep an uncommonly close watch upon you and the young lady, my friend,” added that gentleman, communing with his own thoughts as he crossed the smart little hall, where two Birmingham iron knights in chain armour bestrode their gallant chargers, on two small tables of sham malachite.

Mr. Sheldon’s library was not a very inspiring apartment. His ideas of a _sanctum sanctorum_ did not soar above the commonplace. A decent square room, furnished with plenty of pigeon-holes, a neat brass scale for the weighing of letters, a copying-press, a waste-paper basket, a stout brass-mounted office inkstand capable of holding a quart or so of ink, and a Post-office Directory, were all he asked for his hours of leisure and meditation. In a handsome glazed bookcase, opposite his writing-table, appeared a richly-bound edition of the _Waverley_ _Novels_, Knight’s _Shakespeare_, Hume and Smollett, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Gibbon; but, except when Georgy dusted the sacred volumes with her own fair hands, the glass doors of the bookcase were never opened.

Mr. Sheldon turned on the gas, seated himself at his comfortable writing-table, and took up his pen. A quire of office note-paper, with his City address upon it, lay ready beneath his hand; but he did not begin to write immediately. He sat for some time with his elbows on the table, and his chin in his hands, meditating with dark fixed brows.

“Can I trust her?” he asked himself. “Is it safe to have her near me– after—after what she said to me in Fitzgeorge-street? Yes, I think I can trust her, up to a certain point; but beyond that I must be on my guard. She might be more dangerous than a stranger. One thing is quite clear–she must be provided for somehow or other. The question is, whether she is to be provided for in this house or out of it; and whether I can make her serve me as I want to be served?”

This was the gist of Mr. Sheldon’s meditations; but they lasted for some time. The question which he had to settle was an important one, and he was too wise a man not to contemplate a subject from every possible point of sight before arriving at his decision. He took a letter-clip from one side of his table, and turned over several open letters in search of some particular document.

He came at last to the letter he wanted. It was written on very common note-paper, with brown-looking ink, and the penmanship was evidently that of an uneducated person; but Mr. Sheldon studied its contents with the air of a man who is dealing with no unimportant missive.

This was the letter which so deeply interested the stockbroker:–

“HONORED SIR–This coms hopping that You and Your Honored ladie are well has it leevs me tho nott so strong has i coud wish wich his nott too bee expect at my time off life my pore neffew was tooke with the tyfus last tewsday weak was giv over on thirsday and we hav berried him at kensil grean Honored Mr. Sheldon I hav now no home my pore neece must go hout into survis. Luckly there har no Childring and the pore gurl can gett hur living as housmade wich she were in survis hat hi gate befor she marrid my pore Joseff Honored sir i ham trewly sorry too trubbel you butt i think for hold times you will forgiv the libertey off this letter i would nott hintrewd on you iff i had enny frend to help me in my old aig,

“Your obeddient survent.”

“17 Litle Tottles-yarde lambeft.”

AN WOOLPER

“No friend to help her in her old age,” muttered Mr. Sheldon; “that means that she intends to throw herself upon me for the rest of her life, and to put me to the expense of burying her when she is so obliging as to die. Very pleasant, upon my word! A man has a servant in the days of his poverty, pays her every fraction he owes her in the shape of wages, and wishes her good speed when she goes to settle down among her relations; and one fine morning, when he has got into a decent position, she writes to inform him that her nephew is dead, and that she expects him to provide for her forthwith. That is the gist of Mrs. Woolper’s letter; and if it were not for one or two considerations, I should be very much inclined to take a business-like view of the case, and refer the lady to her parish. What are poor-rates intended for, I should like to know, if a man who pays four-and-twopence in the pound is to be pestered in this sort of way?”

And then Mr. Sheldon, having given vent to his vexation by such reflections as these, set himself to examine the matter in another light.

“I must manage to keep sweet with Nancy Woolper somehow or other, that’s very clear; for a chattering old woman is about as dangerous an enemy as a man can have. I might provide for her decently enough out of doors for something like a pound a week; and that would be a cheap enough way of paying off all old scores. But I’m not quite clear that it would be a safe way. A life of idleness might develop Mrs. Woolper’s latent propensity for gossip–and gossip is what I want to avoid. No, that plan won’t do.”

For some moments Mr. Sheldon meditated silently, with his brows fixed even more sternly than before. Then he struck his hand suddenly on the morocco-covered table, and uttered his thoughts aloud.

“I’ll risk it,” he said; “she shall come into the house and serve my interests by keeping a sharp watch upon Charlotte Halliday. There shall be no secret marriage between those two. No, my friend Valentine, you may be a very clever fellow, but you are not quite clever enough to steal a march upon me.”

Having arrived at this conclusion, Mr. Sheldon wrote a few lines to Nancy Woolper, telling her to call upon him at the Lawn.

CHAPTER V.

MR. SHELDON IS BENEVOLENT.

Nancy Woolper had lost little of her activity during the ten years that had gone by since she received her wages from Mr. Sheldon, on his breaking up his establishment in Fitzgeorge-street. Her master had given her the opportunity of remaining in his service, had she so pleased; but Mrs. Woolper was a person of independent, not to say haughty, spirit, and she had preferred to join her small fortunes with those of a nephew who was about to begin business as a chandler and general dealer in a very small way, rather than to submit herself to the sway of that lady whom she insisted on calling Miss Georgy.

“It’s so long since I’ve been used to a missus,” she said, when announcing her decision to Mr. Sheldon, “I doubt if I could do with Miss Georgy’s finnickin ways. I should feel tewed like, if she came into the kitchen, worritin’ and asking questions. I’ve been used to my own ways, and I don’t suppose I could do with hers.”

So Nancy departed, to enter on a career of unpaid drudgery in the household of her kinsman, and to lose the last shilling of her small savings in the futile endeavour to sustain the fortunes of the general dealer. His death, following very speedily upon his insolvency, left the poor soul quite adrift; and in this extremity she had been fain to make her appeal to Mr. Sheldon. His reply came in due course, but not without upwards of a week’s delay; during which time Nancy Woolper’s spirits sank very low, while a dreary vision of a living grave–called a workhouse–loomed more and more darkly upon her poor old eyes. She had well-nigh given up all hope of succour from her old master when the letter came, and she was the more inclined to be grateful for very small help after this interval of suspense. It was not without strong emotion that Mrs. Woolper obeyed her old master’s summons. She had nursed the hard, cold man of the world whom she was going to see once more, after ten years of severance; and though it was more difficult for her to imagine that Philip Sheldon, the stockbroker, was the same Philip she had carried in her stout arms, and hushed upon her breast forty years ago, than it would have been to fancy the dead who had lived in those days restored to life and walking by her side, still, she could not forget that such things had been, and could not refrain from looking at her master with more loving eyes because of that memory.

A strange dark cloud had arisen between her and her master’s image during the latter part of her service in Fitzgeorge-street; but, little by little, the cloud had melted away, leaving the familiar image clear and unshadowed as of old. She had suffered her mind to be filled by a suspicion so monstrous, that for a time it held her as by some fatal spell; but with reflection came the assurance that this thing could not be. Day by day she saw the man whom she had suspected going about the common business of life, coldly serene of aspect, untroubled of manner, confronting fortune with his head erect, living quietly in the house where he had been wont to live, haunted by no dismal shadows, subject to no dark hours of remorse, no sudden access of despair, always equable, business-like, and untroubled; and she told herself that such a man could not be guilty of the unutterable horror she had imagined.

For a year things had gone on thus, and then came the marriage with Mrs. Halliday. Mr. Sheldon went down to Barlingford for the performance of that interesting ceremony; and Nancy Woolper bade farewell to the house in Fitzgeorge-street, and handed the key to the agent, who was to deliver it in due course to Mr. Sheldon’s successor.

To-day, after a lapse of more than ten years, Mrs. Woolper sat in the stockbroker’s study, facing the scrutinising gaze of those bright black eyes, which had been familiar to her of old, and which had lost none of their cold glitter in the wear and tear of life.

“Then you think you can be of some use in the house, as a kind of overlooker of the other servants, eh, Nancy–to prevent waste, and gadding out of doors, and so on?” said Mr. Sheldon, interrogatively.

“Ay, sure, that I can, Mr. Philip,” answered the old woman promptly; “and if I don’t save you more money than I cost you, the sooner you turn me out o’ doors the better. I know what London servants are, and I know their ways; and if Miss Georgy doesn’t take to the housekeeping, I know as how things must be hugger-mugger-like below stairs, however smart and tidy things may be above.”

“Mrs. Sheldon knows about as much of housekeeping as a baby,” replied Philip, with supreme contempt. “She’ll not interfere with you; and if you serve me faithfully–“

“That I allers did, Mr. Philip.”

“Yes, yes; I daresay you did. But I want faithful service in the future as well as in the past. Of course you know that I have a stepdaughter?”

“Tom Halliday’s little girl, as went to school at Scarborough.”

“The same. But poor Tom’s little girl is now a fine young woman, and a source of considerable anxiety to me. I am bound to say she is an excellent girl–amiable, obedient, and all that kind of thing; but she is a girl, and I freely confess that I am not learned in the ways of girls; and I’m very much inclined to be afraid of them.”

“As how, sir?”

“Well, you see, Nancy, they come home from school with their silly heads full of romantic stuff, fit for nothing but to read novels and strum upon the piano; and before you know where you are, they fall over head and ears in love with the first decent-looking young man who pays them a compliment. At least, that’s my experience.”

“Meaning Miss Halliday, sir?” asked Nancy, simply. “Has she fallen in love with some young chap?”

“She has, and with a young chap who is not yet in a position to support a wife. Now, if this girl were my own child, I should decidedly set my face against this marriage; but as she is only my stepdaughter, I wash my hands of all responsibility in the matter. ‘Marry the man you have chosen, my dear,’ say I; ‘all I ask is, that you don’t marry him until he can give you a comfortable home.’ ‘Very well, papa,’ says my young lady in her most dutiful manner, and ‘Very well, sir,’ says my young gentleman; and they both declare themselves agreeable to any amount of delay, provided the marriage comes off some time between this and doomsday.”

“Well, sir?” asked Nancy, rather at a loss to understand why Philip Sheldon, the closest and most reserved of men, should happen to be so confidential to-day.

“Well, Nancy, what I want to prevent is any underhand work. I know what very limited notions of honour young men are apt to entertain nowadays, and how intensely foolish a boarding-school miss can be on occasion. I don’t want these young people to run off to Gretna-green some fine morning, or to steal a march upon me by getting married on the sly at some out-of-the-way church, after having invested their united fortunes in the purchase of a special license. In plain words, I distrust Miss Halliday’s lover, and I distrust Miss Halliday’s common sense; and I want to have a sensible, sharp-eyed person in the house always on the look-out for any kind of danger, and able to protect my stepdaughter’s interests as well as my own.”

“But the young lady’s mamma, sir–she would look after her daughter, I suppose?”

“Her mamma is foolishly indulgent, and about as capable of taking care of her daughter as of sitting in Parliament. You remember pretty Georgy Cradock, and you must know what she was–and what she is. Mrs. Sheldon is the same woman as Georgy Cradock–a little older, and a little more plump and rosy; but just as pretty, and just as useless.”

The interview was prolonged for some little time after this, and it ended in a thorough understanding between Mr. Sheldon and his old servant. Nancy Woolper was to re-enter that gentleman’s service, and over and above all ordinary duties, she was to undertake the duty of keeping a close watch upon all the movements of Charlotte Halliday. In plain words, she was to be a spy, a private detective, so far as this young lady was concerned; but Mr. Sheldon was too wise to put his requirements into plain words, knowing that even in the hour of her extremity Nancy Woolper would have refused to fill such an office had she clearly understood the measure of its infamy.

Upon the day that followed his interview with Mrs. Woolper, the stockbroker came home from the City an hour or two earlier than his custom, and startled Miss Halliday by appearing in the garden where she was walking alone, looking her brightest and prettiest in her dark winter hat and jacket, and pacing briskly to and fro among the bare frost-bound patches of earth that had once been flower-beds.

“I wan’t a few minutes’ quiet talk with you, Lotta,” said Mr. Sheldon. “You’d better come into my study, where we’re pretty sure not to be interrupted.”

The girl blushed crimson as she acceded to this request, being assured that Mr. Sheldon was going to discuss her matrimonial engagement. Valentine had told her of that very satisfactory interview in the dining-room, and from that time she had been trying to find an opportunity for the acknowledgment of her stepfather’s generosity. As yet the occasion had not arisen. She did not know how to frame her thanksgiving, and she shrank shyly from telling Mr. Sheldon how grateful she was to him for the liberality of mind which had distinguished his conduct in this affair.

“I really ought to thank him,” she said to herself more than once. “I was quite prepared for his doing his uttermost to prevent my marriage with Valentine; and instead of that, he volunteers his consent, and even promises to give us a fortune. ‘I am bound to thank him for such generous kindness.”

Perhaps there is no task more difficult than to offer grateful tribute to a person whom one has been apt to think of with a feeling very near akin to dislike. Ever since her mother’s second marriage Charlotte had striven against an instinctive distaste for Mr. Sheldon’s society, and an innate distrust of Mr. Sheldon’s affectionate regard for herself; but now that he had proved his sincerity in this most important crisis of her life, she awoke all at once to the sense of the wrong she had done.

“I am always reading the Sermon on the Mount, and yet in my thoughts about Mr. Sheldon I have never been able to remember those words, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ His kindness touches me to the very heart, and I feel it all the more keenly because of my injustice.”

She followed her stepfather into the prim little study. There was no fire, and the room was colder than a vault on this bleak December day. Charlotte shivered, and drew her jacket more tightly across her chest as she perched herself on one of Mr. Sheldon’s shining red morocco chairs. “The room strikes cold,” she said; “very, very cold.”

After this there was a brief pause, during which Mr. Sheldon took some papers from the pocket of his overcoat, and arranged them on his desk with an absent manner, as if he were rather deliberating upon what he was going to say than thinking of what he was doing. While he loitered thus Charlotte found courage to speak.

“I wish to thank you, Mr. Sheldon–papa,” she said, pronouncing the “papa” with some slight appearance of effort, in spite of her desire to be grateful: “I–I have been wishing to thank you for the last day or two; only it seems so difficult sometimes to express one’s self about these things.”

“I do not deserve or wish for your thanks, my dear. I have only done my duty.”

“But, indeed, you do deserve my thanks, and you have them in all sincerity, papa. You have been very, very good to me–about–about Valentine. I thought you would be sure to oppose our marriage on the ground of imprudence, you know, and—-“

“I do oppose your marriage in the present on the ground of imprudence, and I am only consentient to it in the future on the condition that Mr. Hawkehurst shall have secured a comfortable income by his literary labours. He seems to be clever, and he promises fairly—-“

“O yes indeed, dear papa,” cried the girl, pleased by this meed of praise for her lover; “he is more than clever. I am sure you would say so if you had time to read his article on Madame de Sevigne in the _Cheapside_.”

“I daresay it’s very good, my dear; but I don’t care for Madame de Sevigne—-“

“Or his sketch of Bossuet’s career in the _Charing Cross_.”

“My dear child, I do not even know who Bossuet was. All I require from Mr. Hawkehurst is, that he shall earn a good income before he takes you away from this house. You have been accustomed to a certain style of living, and I cannot allow you to encounter a life of poverty.”

“But, dear papa, I am not in the least afraid of poverty.”

“I daresay not, my dear. You have never been poor,” replied Mr. Sheldon, coolly. “I don’t suppose I am as much afraid of a rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. I have only a vague idea that a cobra de capello is an unpleasant customer; but depend upon it, those foreign fellows feel their blood stagnate and turn to ice at sight of the cold slimy-looking monster. Poverty and I travelled the same road once, and I know what the gentleman is. I don’t want to meet him again.” Mr. Sheldon lapsed into silence after this. His last words had been spoken to himself rather than to Charlotte, and the thoughts that accompanied them seemed far from pleasant to him.

Charlotte sat opposite her stepfather, patiently awaiting his pleasure. She looked at the gaudily-bound books behind the glass doors, and wondered whether any one had ever opened any of the volumes.

“I should like to read dear Sir Walter’s stories once more,” she thought; “there never, never was so sweet a romance as the ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’ and I cannot imagine that one could ever grow weary of reading it. But to ask Mr. Sheldon for the key of that bookcase would be quite impossible. I think his books must be copies of special editions, not meant to be read. I wonder whether they are real books, or only upholsterer’s dummies?”

And then her fancies went vagabondising off to that little archetype of a cottage on the heights of Wimbledon-common, in which she and Valentine were to live when they were married. She was always furnishing and refurnishing this cottage, building it up and pulling it down, as the caprice of the moment dictated. Now it had bow-windows and white stuccoed walls–now it was Elizabethan–now the simplest, quaintest, rose-embowered cottager’s dwelling, with diamond-paned casements, and deep thatch on the old gray roof. This afternoon she amused herself by collecting a small library for Valentine, while waiting Mr. Sheldon’s next observation. He was to have all her favourite books, of course; and they were to be bound in the prettiest, most girlish bindings. She could see the dainty volumes, primly ranged on the little carved oak bookcase, which Valentine was to “pick up” in Wardour-street. She fancied herself walking down that mart of bric-a-brac arm-in-arm with her lover, intent on “picking up.” Ah, what happiness! what dear delight in the thought! And O, of all the bright dreams we dream, how few are realised upon this earth! Do they find their fulfilment in heaven, those visions of perfect bliss?

Mr. Sheldon looked up from his desk at last. Miss Halliday remarked to herself that his face was pale and haggard in the chill wintry sunlight; but she knew how hard and self-denying a life he led in his stern devotion to business, and she was in no manner surprised to see him looking ill.

“I want to say a few words to you on a matter of business, Lotta,” he began, “and I must ask you to give me all your attention.”

“I will do so with pleasure, papa, but I am awfully stupid about business.”

“I shall do my best to make matters simple. I suppose you know what money your father left, including the sums his life had been insured for?”

“Yes, I have heard mamma say it was eighteen thousand pounds. I do so hate the idea of those insurances. It seems like the price of a man’s life, doesn’t it? I daresay that is a very unbusiness-like way of considering the question, but I cannot bear to think that we got money by dear papa’s death.”

These remarks were too trivial for Mr. Sheldon’s notice. He went on with what he had to say in the cold hard voice that was familiar to his clerks and to the buyers and sellers of shares and stock who had dealings with him.

“Your father left eighteen thousand pounds; that amount was left to your mother without reservation. When she married me, without any settlement, that money became mine, in point of law–mine to squander or make away with as I pleased. You know that I have made good use of that money, and that your mother has had no reason to repent her confidence in my honour and honesty. The time has now come in which that honour will be put to a sharper test. You have no legal claim on so much as a shilling of your father’s fortune.”

“I know that, Mr. Sheldon,” cried Charlotte, eagerly, “and Valentine knows also; and, believe me, I do not expect—-“

“I have to settle matters with my own conscience as well as with your expectations, my dear Lotta,” Mr. Sheldon said, solemnly. “Your father left you unprovided for; but as a man of honour I feel myself bound to take care that you shall not suffer by his want of caution. I have therefore prepared a deed of gift, by which I transfer to you five thousand pounds, now invested in Unitas Bank shares.”

“You are going to give me five thousand pounds!” cried Charlotte, astounded.

“Without reservation.”

“You mean to say that you will give me this fortune when I marry, papa?” said Charlotte, interrogatively.

“I shall give it to you immediately,” replied Mr. Sheldon. “I wish you to be thoroughly independent of me and my pleasure. You will then understand, that if I insist upon the prudence of delay, I do so in your interest and not in my own. I wish you to feel that if I am a hindrance to your immediate marriage, it is not because I wish to delay the disbursement of your dowry.”

“O, Mr. Sheldon, O, papa, you are more than generous–you are noble! It is not that I care for the money. O, believe me, there is no one in the world who could care less for that than I do. But your thoughtful kindness, your generosity, touches me to the very heart. O, please let me kiss you, just as if you were my own dear father come back to life to protect and guide me. I have thought you cold and worldly. I have done you so much wrong.”

She ran to him, and wound her arms about his neck before he could put her off, and lifted up her pretty rosy mouth to his dry hot lips. Her heart was overflowing with generous emotion, her face beamed with a happy smile. She was so pleased to find her mother’s husband better than she had thought him. But, to her supreme astonishment, he thrust her from him roughly, almost violently, and looking up at his face she saw it darkened by a blacker shadow than she had ever seen upon it before. Anger, terror, pain, remorse, she knew not what, but an expression so horrible that she shrunk from him with a sense of alarm, and went back to her chair, bewildered and trembling.

“You frightened me, Mr. Sheldon,” she said faintly.

“Not more than you frightened me,” answered the stockbroker, walking to the window and taking his stand there, with his face hidden from Charlotte. “I did not know there was so much feeling in me. For God’s sake, let us have no sentiment!”

“Were you angry with me just now?” asked the girl, falteringly, utterly at a loss to comprehend the change in her stepfather’s manner.

“No, I was not angry. I am not accustomed to these strong emotions,” replied Mr. Sheldon, huskily; “I cannot stand them. Pray let us avoid all sentimental discussion. I am anxious to do my duty in a straightforward, business-like way. I don’t want gratitude–or fuss. The five thousand pounds are yours, and I am pleased to find you consider the amount sufficient. And now I have only one small favour to ask of you in return.”

“I should be very ungrateful if I refused to do anything you may ask,” said Charlotte, who could not help feeling a little chilled and disappointed by Mr. Sheldon’s stony rejection of her gratitude.

“The matter is very simple. You are young, and have, in the usual course of things, a long life before you. But–you know there is always a ‘but’ in these cases–a railway accident–a little carelessness in passing your drawing-room fire some evening when you are dressed in flimsy gauze or muslin–a fever–a cold–any one of the many dangers that lie in wait for all of us, and our best calculations are falsified. If you were to marry and die childless, that money would go to your husband, and neither your mother nor I would ever touch a sixpence of it, Now as the money, practically, belongs to your mother, I consider that this contingency should be provided against–in her interests as well as in mine. In plain words, I want you to make a will leaving that money to me.”

“I am quite ready to do so,” replied Charlotte.

“Very good, my dear. I felt assured that you would take a sensible view of the matter. If you marry your dear Mr. Hawkehurst, have a family by-and-by, we will throw the old will into the fire and make a new one; but in the mean time it’s just as well to be on the safe side. You shall go into the City with me to-morrow morning, and shall execute the will at my office. It will be the simplest document possible–as simple as the will made by old Serjeant Crane, in which he disposed of half a million of money in half a dozen lines–at the rate of five thousand pounds per word. After we’ve settled that little matter, we can arrange the transfer of the shares. The whole affair won’t occupy an hour.” “I will do whatever you wish,” said Charlotte, meekly. She was not at all elated by the idea of coming suddenly into possession of five thousand pounds; but she was very much impressed by the new view of Mr. Sheldon’s character afforded her by his conduct of to-day. And then her thoughts, constant to one point as the needle to the pole, reverted to her lover, and she began to think of the effect her fortune might have upon his prospects. He might go to the bar, he might work and study in pleasant Temple chambers, with wide area windows overlooking the river, and read law-books in the evening at the Wimbledon cottage for a few delightful years, at the end of which he would of course become Lord Chancellor. That he should devote such intellect and consecrate such genius as his to the service of his country’s law-courts, and _not_ ultimately seat himself on the Woolsack, was a contingency not to be imagined by Miss Halliday. Ah, what would not five thousand pounds buy for him! The cottage expanded into a mansion, the little case of books developed into a library second only to that of the Duc d’Aumale, a noble steed waited at the glass door of the vestibule to convey Mr. Hawkehurst to the Temple, before the minute-hand of Mr. Sheldon’s stern skeleton clock had passed from one figure to another: so great an adept was this young lady in the art of castle-building.

“Am I to tell mamma about this conversation?” asked Charlotte, presently.

“Well, no, I think not,” replied Mr. Sheldon, thoughtfully. “These family arrangements cannot be kept too quiet. Your mamma is a talking person, you know, Charlotte; and as we don’t want every one in this part of Bayswater to know the precise amount of your fortune, we may as well let matters rest as they are. Of course you would not wish Mr. Hawkehurst to be enlightened?”

“Why not, papa?”

“For several reasons. First and foremost, it must be pleasant to you to be sure that he is thoroughly disinterested I have told him that you will get something as a gift from me; but he may have implied that the something would be little more than a couple of hundreds to furnish a house. Secondly, it must be remembered, that he has been brought up in a bad school, and the best way to make him self-reliant and industrious is to let him think he has nothing but his own industry to depend upon. I have set him a task. When he has accomplished that, he shall have you and your five thousand pounds to boot. Till then I should strongly advise you to keep this business a secret.

“Yes,” answered Charlotte, meditatively; “I think you are right. It would have been very nice to tell him of your kindness; but I want to be quite sure that he loves me for myself alone–from first to last– without one thought of money.”

“That is wise,” said Mr. Sheldon, decisively; and thus ended the interview.

Charlotte accompanied her stepfather to the city early next morning, and filled in the blanks in a lithographed form, prepared for the convenience of such testators as, being about to dispose of their property, do not care to employ the services of a legal adviser.

The will seemed to Charlotte the simplest possible affair. She bequeathed all her property, real and personal, to Philip Sheldon, without reserve. But as her entire fortune consisted of the five thousand pounds just given her by that gentleman, and as her personal property was comprised in a few pretty dresses and trinkets, and desks and workboxes, she could not very well object to such an arrangement.

“Of course, mamma would have all my books and caskets, and boxes and things,” she said thoughtfully; “and I should like Diana Paget to have some of my jewellery, please, Mr. Sheldon. Mamma has plenty, you know.”

“There is no occasion, to talk of that, Charlotte,” replied the stockbroker. “This will is only a matter of form.”

Mr. Sheldon omitted to inform his stepdaughter that the instrument just executed would, upon her wedding-day, become so much waste paper, an omission that was not in harmony with the practical and careful habits of that gentleman.

“Yes, I know that it is only a form,” replied Charlotte; “but, after making a will, one feels as if one was going to die. At least I do. It seems a kind of preparation for death. I don’t wonder people rather dislike doing it.

“It is only foolish people who dislike doing it,” said Mr. Sheldon, who was in his most practical mood to-day. “And now we will go and arrange a more agreeable business–the transfer of the shares.”

After this, there was a little commercial juggling, in the form of signing and countersigning, which, was quite beyond Charlotte’s comprehension: which operation being completed, she was told that she was owner of five thousand pounds in Unitas Bank shares, and that the dividends accruing from time to time on those shares would be hers to dispose of as she pleased.

“The income arising from your capital will be more than you can spend so long as you remain under my roof,” said Mr. Sheldon. “I should therefore strongly recommend you to invest your dividends as they arise, and thus increase your capital.”

“You are so kind and thoughtful,” murmured Charlotte; “I shall always be pleased to take your advice.” She was strongly impressed by the kindness of the man her thoughts had wronged.

“How difficult it is to understand these reserved, matter-of-fact people!” she said to herself. Because my stepfather does not talk sentiment, I have fancied him hard and worldly; and yet he has proved himself as capable of doing a noble action as if he were the most poetical of mankind.

Mrs. Sheldon had been told that Charlotte was going into the City to choose a new watch, wherewith to replace the ill-used little Geneva toy that had been her delight as a schoolgirl; and as Charlotte brought home a neat little English-made chronometer from a renowned emporium on Ludgate-hill, the simple matron accepted this explanation in all good faith.

“I’m sure, Lotta, you must confess your stepfather is kindness itself in most matters,” said Georgy, after an admiring examination of the new watch. “When I think how kindly he has taken this business about Mr. Hawkehurst, and how disinterested he has proved himself in his ideas about your marriage, I really am inclined to think him the best of men.”

Georgy said this with an air of triumph. She could not forget that there were people in Barlingford who had said hard things about Philip Sheldon, and had prophesied unutterable miseries for herself and her daughter as the bitter consequence of the imprudence she had been guilty of in her second marriage.

“He has indeed been very good, mamma,” Charlotte replied gravely, “and, believe me, I am truly grateful. He does not like fuss or sentiment; but I hope he knows that I appreciate his kindness.”

CHAPTER VI.

RIDING THE HIGH HORSE.

Never, in his brightest dreams, had Valentine Hawkehurst imagined the stream of life so fair and sunny a river as it seemed to him now. Fortune had treated him so scurvily for seven-and-twenty years of his life, only to relent of a sudden and fling all her choicest gifts into his lap.

“I must be the prince in the fairy tale who begins life as a revolting animal of the rhinoceros family, and ends by marrying the prettiest princess in Elfindom,” he said to himself gaily, is he paced the broad walks of Kensington-gardens, where the bare trees swung their big black branches in the wintry blast, and the rooks cawed their loudest at close of the brief day.

What, indeed, could this young adventurer demand from benignant Fortune above and beyond the blessings she had given, him? The favoured suitor of the fairest and brightest woman he had ever looked upon, received by her kindred, admitted to her presence, and only bidden to serve a due apprenticeship before he claimed her as his own for ever. What more could he wish? what further boon could he implore from the Fates?

Yes, there was one thing more–one thing for which Mr. Hawkehurst pined, while most thankful for his many blessings. He wanted a decent