Henry Dunbar by M. E. BraddonThe story of an outcast (page 5)

“The sky that shuts in the lawn yonder seems to shut in my life with it. I can’t look forward. If I was going to be parted from Philip to-day, instead of married to him, I don’t think I could feel more miserable than I feel now. Why is it, Elizabeth, dear?”

“My goodness gracious me!” cried Mrs. Madden, “how should I tell, my precious pet? You talk just like a poetry-book, and how can I answer you unless I was another poetry-book? Come and have your breakfast, do, that’s a dear sweet love, and try a new-laid egg. New-laid eggs is good for the spirits, my poppet.”

Laura Dunbar seated herself in the comfortable arm-chair between the fireplace and the little breakfast-table. She made a sort of pretence at eating, just to please her old nurse, who fidgeted about the room; now stopping by Laura’s chair, and urging her to take this, that, or the other; now running to the dressing-table to make some new arrangement about the all-important wedding-toilet; now looking out of the window and perjuring her simple soul by declaring that “it”–namely, the winter sky–was going to clear up.

“It’s breaking up above the elms yonder, Miss Laura,” Elizabeth said; “there’s a bit of blue peepin’ through the clouds; leastways, if it ain’t quite blue, it’s a much lighter black than the rest of the sky, and that’s something. Eat a bit of Perrigorge pie, or a thin wafer of a slice off that Strasbog ‘am, Miss Laura, do now. You’ll be ready to drop with feelin’ faint when you get to the altar-rails, if you persist on bein’ married on a empty stummick, Miss Laura. It’s a moriel impossible as you can look your best, my precious love, if you enter the church in a state of starvation, just like one of them respectable beggars wot pins a piece of paper on their weskits with ‘I AM HUNGRY’ wrote upon it in large hand, and stands at the foot of one of the bridges on the Surrey side of the water. And I shouldn’t think as you would wish to look like _that_, Miss Laura, on your wedding-day? _I_ shouldn’t if _I_ was goin’ to be own wife to a baronet!”

Laura Dunbar took very little notice of her nurse’s rambling discourse; and I am fain to confess that, upon this occasion, Mrs. Madden talked rather more for the sake of talking than from any overflow of animal spirits.

The good creature felt the influence of the cold, wet, cheerless morning quite as keenly as her mistress. Mrs. Madden was superstitious, as most ignorant and simple-minded people generally are, more or less. Superstition is, after all, only a dim, unconscious poetry, which is latent in most natures, except in such very hard practical minds as are incapable of believing in anything–not even in Heaven itself.

Dora Macmahon came in presently, looking very pretty in blue silk and white lace. She looked very happy, in spite of the bad weather, and Miss Dunbar suffered herself to be comforted by her half-sister. The two girls sat at the table by the fire, and breakfasted, or pretended to breakfast, together. Who could really attend to the common business of eating and drinking on such a day as this?

“I’ve just been to see Lizzie and Ellen,” Dora said, presently; “they wouldn’t come in here till they were dressed, and they’ve had their hair screwed up in hair-pins all night to make it wave, and now it’s a wet day their hair won’t wave after all, and their maid’s going to pinch it with the fire-irons–the tongs, I suppose.”

Miss Macmahon had brown hair, with a natural ripple in it, and could afford to laugh at beauty that was obliged to adorn itself by means of hair-pins and tongs.

Lizzie and Ellen were the daughters of a Major Melville, and the special friends of Miss Dunbar. They had come to Maudesley to act as her bridesmaids, according to that favourite promise which young ladies so often make to each other, and so very often break.

Laura did not appear to take much interest in the Miss Melvilles’ hair. She was very meditative about something; but her meditations must have been of a pleasant nature, for there was a smile upon her face.

“Dora,” she said, by-and-by, “do you know I’ve been thinking about something?”

“About what, dear?”

“Don’t you know that old saying about one wedding making many?”

Dora Macmahon blushed.

“What of that, Laura dear?” she asked, very innocently.

“I’ve been thinking that perhaps another wedding may follow mine. Oh, Dora, I can’t help saying it, I should be so happy if Arthur Lovell and you were to marry.”

Miss Macmahon blushed a much deeper red than before.

“Oh, Laura,” she said, “that’s quite impossible.”

But Miss Dunbar shook her head.

“I shall live in the hope of it, notwithstanding,” she said. “I love Arthur almost as much–or perhaps quite as much, as if he were my brother–so it isn’t strange that I should wish to see him married to my sister.”

The two girls might have sat talking for some time longer, but they were interrupted by Miss Dunbar’s old nurse, who never for a moment lost sight of the serious business of the day.

“It’s all very well for you to sit there jabber, jabber, jabber, Miss Dora,” exclaimed the unceremonious Elizabeth; “you’re dressed, all but your bonnet. You’ve only just to pop that on, and there you are. But my young lady isn’t half dressed yet. And now, come along, Miss Laura, and have your hair done, if you mean to have any back-hair at all to-day. It’s past nine o’clock, and you’re to be at the church at eleven.”

“And papa is to give me away!” murmured Laura, in a low voice, as she seated herself before the dressing-table. “I wish he loved me better.”

“Perhaps, if he loved you too well, he’d keep you, instead of giving you away, Miss Laura,” observed Mrs. Madden, with evident enjoyment of her own wit; “and I don’t suppose you’d care about that, would you, miss? Hold your head still, that’s a precious darling, and don’t you trouble yourself about anything except looking your very best this day.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST WHO CAME TO LAURA DUNBAR’S WEDDING.

The wedding was to take place in Lisford church–that pretty, quaint, old church of which I have already spoken.

The wandering Avon flowed through this rustic churchyard, along a winding channel fringed by tall, trembling rushes. There was a wooden bridge across the river, and there were two opposite entrances to the churchyard. Pedestrians who chose the shortest route between Lisford and Shorncliffe went in at one gate and out at another, which opened on to the high-road.

The worthy inhabitants of Lisford were almost as much distressed by the unpromising aspect of the sky as Laura Dunbar and her faithful nurse themselves. New bonnets had been specially prepared for this festive occasion. Chrysanthemums and dahlias, gay-looking China-asters, and all the lingering flowers that light up the early winter landscape, had been collected to strew the pathway beneath the bride’s pretty feet. All the brightest evergreens in the Lisford gardens had been gathered as a fitting sacrifice for the “young lady from the Abbey.”

Laura Dunbar’s frank good-nature and reckless generosity were well remembered upon this occasion; and every creature in Lisford was bent upon doing her honour.

But this aggravating rain balked everybody. What was the use of throwing wet dahlias and flabby chrysanthemums into the puddles through which the bride must tread, heiress though she was? How miserable would be the aspect of two rows of damp charity children, with red noses and no pocket-handkerchiefs! The rector himself had a cold in his head, and would be obliged to omit all the _n_’s and _m_’s in the marriage service.

In short, everybody felt that the Abbey wedding was destined to be more or less a failure. It seemed very hard that the chief partner in the firm of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby could not, with all his wealth, buy a little glimmer of sunshine to light up his daughter’s wedding. It grew so dark and foggy towards eleven o’clock, that a dozen or so of wax-candles were hastily stuck about the neighbourhood of the altar, in order that the bride and bridegroom might be able, each of them, to see the person that he or she was taking for better or worse.

Yes, the dismal weather made everything dismal in unison with itself. A wet wedding is like a wet pic-nic. The most heroic nature gives way before its utter desolation; the wit of the party forgets his best anecdote; the funny man breaks down in the climactic verse of his great buffo song; there is no brightness in the eyes of the beauty; there is neither sparkle nor flavour in the champagne, though the grapes thereof have been grown in the vineyards of Widow Cliquot herself.

There are some things that are more powerful than emperors, and the atmosphere is one of them. Alexander might conquer nations in very sport; but I question whether he could have resisted the influence of a wet day.

Of all the people who were to assist at Sir Philip Jocelyn’s wedding, perhaps the father of the bride was the person who seemed least affected by that drizzling rain, that hopelessly-black sky.

If Henry Dunbar was grave and silent to-day, why that was nothing new: for he was always grave and silent. If the banker’s manner was stern and moody to-day, that stern moodiness was habitual to him: and there was no need to blame the murky heavens for any change in his temper. He sat by the broad fireplace watching the burning coals, and waiting until he should be summoned to take his place by his daughter’s side in the carriage that was to convey them both to Lisford church; and he did not utter one word of complaint about that aggravating weather.

He looked very handsome, very aristocratic, with his grey moustache carefully trimmed, and a white camellia in his button-hole. Nevertheless, when he came out into the hall by-and-by, with a set smile upon his face, like a man who is going to act a part in a play, Laura Dunbar recoiled from him with an involuntary shiver, as she had done upon the day of her first meeting with him in Portland Place.

But he offered her his hand, and she laid the tips of her fingers in his broad palm, and went with him to the carriage. “Ask God to bless me upon this day, papa,” the girl said, in a low, tender voice, as these two people took their places side by side in the roomy chariot.

Laura Dunbar laid her hand caressingly upon the banker’s shoulder as she spoke. It was not a time for reticence; it was not an occasion upon which to be put off by any girlish fear of this stern, silent man.

“Ask God to bless me, father dearest,” the soft, tremulous voice pleaded, “for the sake of my dead mother.”

She tried to see his face: but she could not. His head was turned away, and he was busy making some alteration in the adjustment of the carriage-window. The chariot had cost nearly three hundred pounds, and was very well built: but there was something wrong about the window nevertheless, if one might judge by the difficulty which Mr. Dunbar had, in settling it to his satisfaction.

He spoke presently, in a very earnest voice, but with his head still turned away from Laura.

“I hope God will bless you, my dear,” he said; “and that He will have pity upon your enemies.”

This last wish was more Christianlike than natural; since fathers do not usually implore compassion for the enemies of their children.

But Laura Dunbar did not trouble herself to think about this. She only knew that her father had called down Heaven’s blessing upon her; and that his manner had betrayed such agitation as could, of course, only spring from one cause, namely, his affection for his daughter.

She threw herself into his arms with a radiant smile, and putting up her hands, drew his face round, and pressed her lips to his.

But, as on the day in Portland Place, a chill crept through her veins, as she felt the deadly coldness of her father’s hands lifted to push her gently from him.

It is a common thing for Anglo-Indians to be quiet and reserved in their manners, and strongly adverse to all demonstrations of this kind. Laura remembered this, and made excuses to herself for her father’s coldness.

The rain was still falling as the carriage stopped at the churchyard. There were only three carriages in this brief bridal train, for Mr. Dunbar had insisted that there should be no grandeur, no display.

The two Miss Melvilles, Dora Macmahon, and Arthur Lovell rode in the same carriage. Major Melville’s daughters looked very pale and cold in their white-and-blue dresses, and the north-easter had tweaked their noses, which were rather sharp and pointed in style. They would have looked pretty enough, poor girls, had the wedding taken place in summer-time; but they had not that splendid exceptional beauty which can defy all changes of temperature, and which is alike glorious, whether clad in abject rags or robed in velvet and ermine.

The carriages reached the little gate of Lisford churchyard; Philip Jocelyn came out of the porch, and down the narrow pathway leading to the gate.

The drizzling rain descended on him, though he was a baronet, and though he came bareheaded to receive his bride.

I think the Lisford beadle, who was a sound Tory of the old school, almost wondered that the heavens themselves should be audacious enough to wet the uncovered head of the lord of Jocelyn’s Rock.

But it went on raining, nevertheless.

“Times has changed, sir,” said the beadle, to an idle-looking stranger who was standing near him. “I have read in a history of Warwickshire, that when Algernon Jocelyn was married to Dame Margery Milward, widow to Sir Stephen Milward, knight, in Charles the First’s time, there was a cloth-of-gold canopy from the gate yonder to this porch here, and two moving turrets of basket-work, each of ’em drawn by four horses, and filled with forty poor children, crowned with roses, lookin’ out of the turret winders, and scatterin’ scented waters on the crowd; and there was a banquet, sir, served up at noon that day at Jocelyn’s Rock, with six peacocks brought to table with their tails spread; and a pie, served in a gold dish, with live doves in it, every feather of ’em steeped in the rarest perfume, which they was intended to sprinkle over the company as they flew about here and there. But–would you believe in such a radical spirit pervadin’ the animal creation?–every one of them doves flew straight out of the winder, and went and scattered their perfumes on the poor folks outside. There’s no such weddin’s as that nowadays, sir,” said the old beadle, with a groan. “As I often say to my old missus, I don’t believe as ever England has held up its head since the day when Charles the Martyr lost his’n.”

Laura Dunbar went up the narrow pathway by her father’s side; but Philip Jocelyn walked upon her left hand, and the crowd had enough to do to stare at bride and bridegroom.

The baronet’s face, which was always a handsome one, looked splendid in the light of his happiness. People disputed as to whether the bride or bridegroom was handsomest; and Laura forgot all about the wet weather as she laid her light hand on Philip Jocelyn’s arm.

The churchyard was densely crowded in the neighbourhood of the pathway along which the bride and bridegroom walked. In spite of the miserable weather, in defiance of Mr. Dunbar’s desire that the wedding should be a quiet one, people had come from a very long distance in order to see the millionaire’s beautiful daughter married to the master of Jocelyn’s Rock.

Amongst the spectators who had come to witness Miss Dunbar’s wedding was the tall gentleman in the high white hat, who was known in sporting circles as the Major, and who had exhibited so much interest when the name of Henry Dunbar was mentioned on the Shorncliffe racecourse. The Major had been very lucky in his speculations on the Shorncliffe races, and had gone straight away from the course to the village of Lisford, where he took up his abode at the Hose and Crown, a bright-looking hostelry, where a traveller could have his steak or his chop done to a turn in one of the cosiest kitchens in all Warwickshire. The Major was very reserved upon the subject of his sporting operations when he found himself among unprofessional people; and upon such occasions, though he would now and then condescend to lay the odds against anything with some unconscious agriculturalist or village tradesman, his innocence with regard to all turf matters was positively refreshing.

He was a traveller in Birmingham jewellery, he told the land lady of the quiet little inn, and was on his way to that busy commercial centre to procure a fresh supply of glass emeralds, and a score or so of gigantic rubies with crinkled tinsel behind them. The Major, usually somewhat silent and morose, contrived to make himself very agreeable to the jovial frequenters of the comfortable little public parlour of the Rose and Crown.

He took his dinner and his supper in that cosy apartment; and he sat there all the evening, listening to and joining in the conversation of the Lisfordians, and drinking sixpenn’orths of gin-and-water, with the air of a man who could consume a hogshead of the juice of the juniper-berry without experiencing any evil consequences therefrom. He ate and drank like a man of iron; and his glittering black eyes kept perpetual watch upon the faces of the simple country people, and his eager ears drank in every word that was spoken. Of course a great deal was said about the event of the next morning. Everybody had something to say about Miss Dunbar and her wealthy father, who lived so lonely and secluded at the Abbey, and whose ways were altogether so different from those of his father before him.

The Major listened to every syllable, and only edged-in a word or two now and then, when the conversation flagged, or when there was a chance of the subject being changed.

By this means he contrived to keep the Lisfordians constant to one topic all the evening, and that topic was the manners and customs of Henry Dunbar.

Very early on the morning of the wedding the Major made his appearance in the churchyard. As for the incessant rain, that was nothing to _him_; he was used to it; and, moreover, the wet weather gave him a good excuse for buttoning his coat to the chin, and turning the poodle collar over his big red ears.

He found the door of the church ajar, early though it was, and going in softly, he came upon the Tory beadle and some damp charity children.

The Major contrived to engage the Tory beadle in conversation, which was not very difficult, seeing that the aforesaid beadle was always ready to avail himself of any opportunity of hearing his own voice. Of course the loquacious beadle talked chiefly of Sir Philip Jocelyn and the banker’s daughter; and again the sporting gentleman from London heard of Henry Dunbar’s riches.

“I _have_ heerd as Mr. Dunbar is the richest man in Europe, exceptin’ the Hemperore of Roosia and Baron Rothschild,” the beadle said; “but I don’t know anythink more than that he’s got a deal more money than he knows what to do with, seein’ that he passes the best part of his days sittin’ over the fire in his own room, or ridin’ out after dark on horseback, if report speaks correct.”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” said the Major; “as I am in Lisford,–and, to be candid with you, Lisford’s about the dullest place it was ever my bad luck to visit,–why, I’ll stay and have a look at this wedding. I suppose you can put me into a quiet pew, back yonder in the shadow, where I can see all that’s going on, without any of your fine folks seeing me, eh?”

As the Major emphasized this question by dropping half-a-crown into the beadle’s hand, that official answered it very promptly,–

“I’ll put you into the comfortablest pew you ever sat in,” answered the official.

“You might do that easily,” muttered the sporting gentleman, below his breath; “for there’s not many pews, or churches either, that _I_’ve ever sat in.”

The Major took his place in a corner of the church whence there was a very good view of the altar, where the feeble flames of the wax-candles made little splashes of yellow light in the fog.

The fog got thicker and thicker in the church as the hour for the marriage ceremony drew nearer and nearer, and the light of the wax-candles grew brighter as the atmosphere became more murky.

The Major sat patiently in his pew, with his arms folded upon the ledge, where the prayer-books in the corner of the seats were wont to rest during divine service. He planted his bristly chin upon his folded arms, and closed his eyes in a kind of dog-sleep.

But in this sleep he could hear everything going on. He heard the hobnailed soles of the charity children pattering upon the floor of the church; he heard the sharp rustling of the evergreens and wet flowers under the children’s figures; and he could hear the deep voice of Philip Jocelyn, talking to the clergyman in the porch, as he waited the arrival of the carriages from Maudesley Abbey.

The carriages arrived at last; and presently the wedding-train came up the narrow aisle, and took their places about the altar-rails. Henry Dunbar stood behind his daughter, with his face in shadow.

The marriage-service was commenced. The Major’s eyes were wide open now. Those sharp eager black eyes took notice of everything. They rested now upon the bride, now upon the bridegroom, now upon the faces of the rector and his curate.

Sometimes those glittering eyes strove to pierce the gloom, and to see the other faces, the faces that were farther away from the flickering yellow light of the wax-candles; but the gloom was not to be pierced even by the sharpest eyes.

The Major could only see four faces;–the faces of the bride and bridegroom, the rector, and his curate. But by-and-by, when one of the clergymen asked the familiar question–“_Who giveth this woman to be married, to this man?_” Henry Dunbar came forward into the light of the wax-candles, and gave the appointed answer.

The Major’s folded arms dropped off the ledge, as if they had been suddenly paralyzed. He sat, breathing hard and quick, and staring at Mr. Dunbar.

“Henry Dunbar?” he muttered to himself, presently–“Henry Dunbar!”

Mr. Dunbar did not again retire into the shadow. He remained during the rest of the ceremony standing where the light shone full upon his handsome face.

When all was over, and the bride and bridegroom had signed their names in the vestry, before admiring witnesses, the sporting gentleman rose and walked softly out of the pew, and along one of the obscure side-aisles.

The wedding-party passed out of the church-porch. The Major followed slowly.

Philip Jocelyn and his bride went straight to the carriage that was to convey them back to the Abbey.

Dora Macmahon and the two pale Bridesmaids, with areophane bonnets that had become hopelessly limp from exposure to that cruel rain, took their places in the second carriage. They were accompanied by Arthur Lovell, whom they looked upon with no very great favour; for he had been silent and melancholy throughout the drive from Maudesley Abbey to Lisford Church, and had stared at them with vacant indifference, while handing them out of the carriage with a mechanical kind of politeness that was almost insulting.

The two first carriages drove away from the churchyard-gate, and the mud upon the high-road splashed the closed windows of the vehicles as the wheels went round.

The third carriage waited for Henry Dunbar, and the crowd in the churchyard waited to see him get into it.

He had his foot upon the lowest step, and his hand upon the door, when the Major went up to him, and tapped him lightly upon the shoulder.

The spectators recoiled, aghast with indignant astonishment.

How dared this shabby-looking man, with clumsy boots that were queer about the heels, and a mangy fur collar, like the skin of an invalid French poodle, to his threadbare coat–how in the name of all that is audacious, dared such a low person as this lay his dirty fingers upon the sacred shoulder of Henry Dunbar of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby’s banking-house, St. Gundolph Lane, City?

The millionaire turned, and grew as ashy pale at sight of the shabby stranger as he could have done if the sheeted dead had risen from one of the graves near at hand. But he uttered no exclamation of horror or surprise. He only shrank haughtily away from the Major’s touch, as if there had been some infection to be dreaded from those dirty finger-tips.

“May I be permitted to know your motive for this intrusion, sir?” the banker asked, in a cold, repellent voice, looking the shabby intruder full in the eyes as he spoke.

There was something so resolute, so defiant, in the rich man’s gaze, that it is a wonder the poor man did not shrink from encountering it.

But he did not: he gave back look for look.

“Don’t say you’ve forgotten me, Mr. Dunbar,” he said; “don’t say you’ve forgotten a very old acquaintance.”

This was spoken after a pause, in which the two men had looked at each other as earnestly as if each had been trying to read the inmost secrets of the other’s soul.

“Don’t say you’ve forgotten me, Mr. Dunbar,” repeated the Major.

Henry Dunbar smiled. It was a forced smile, perhaps; but, at any rate, it was a smile.

“I have a great many acquaintances,” he said; “and I fancy you must have gone down in the world since I knew you, if I may judge from appearances.”

The bystanders, who had listened to every word, began to murmur among themselves. “Yes, indeed, they should rather think so:–if ever this shabby stranger had known Mr. Dunbar, and if he was not altogether an impostor, he must have been a very different sort of person at the time of his acquaintance with the millionaire.”

“When and where did I know you?” asked Henry Dunbar, with his eyes still looking straight into the eyes of the other man.

“Oh, a long time ago–a very long way off!”

“Perhaps it was–somewhere in India–up the country?’ said the banker, very slowly.

“Yes, it was in India–up the country,” answered the other.

“Then you won’t find me slow to befriend you,” said Mr. Dunbar. “I am always glad to be of service to any of my Indian acquaintances–even when the world has treated them badly. Get into my carriage, and I’ll drive you home. I shall be able to talk to you by-and-by, when all this wedding business is over.”

The two men seated themselves side by side upon the spring cushions of the banker’s luxurious carriage; and the vehicle drove rapidly away, leaving the spectators in a rapture of admiration at Henry Dunbar’s condescension to his shabby Indian acquaintance.

CHAPTER XXV.

AFTER THE WEDDING.

The banker and the man who was called the Major talked to each other earnestly enough throughout the short drive between Lisford churchyard and Maudesley Abbey; but they spoke in low confidential whispers, and their conversation was interlarded by all manner of strange phrases; the queer, outlandish words were Hindostanee, no doubt, and were by no means easy to comprehend.

As the carriage drove up to the grand entrance of the Abbey, the stranger looked out through the mud-spattered window.

“A fine place!” he exclaimed; “a splendid place!”

“What am I to call you here?” muttered Mr. Dunbar, as he got out of the carriage.

“You may call me anything; as long as you do not call me when the soup is cold. I’ve a two-pair back in the neighbourhood of St. Martin’s Lane, and I’m known _there_ as Mr. Vavasor. But I’m not particular to a shade. Call me anything that begins with a V. It’s as well to stick to one initial, on account of one’s linen.”

From the very small amount of linen exhibited in the Major’s toilette, a malicious person might have imagined that such a thing as a shirt was a luxury not included in that gentleman’s wardrobe.

“Call me Vernon,” he said: “Vernon is a good name. You may as well call me Major Vernon. My friends at the Corner–not the Piccadilly corner, but the corner of the waste ground at the back of Field Lane–have done me the honour to give me the rank of Major, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t retain the distinction. My proclivities are entirely aristocratic: I have no power of assimilation with the _canaille_. This is the sort of thing that suits me. Here I am in my element.”

Mr. Dunbar had led his shabby acquaintance into the low, tapestried room in which he usually sat. The Major rubbed his hands with a gesture of enjoyment as he looked at the evidences of wealth that were heedlessly scattered about the apartment. He gave a long sigh of satisfaction as he dropped with a sudden plump upon the spring cushion of an easy-chair on one side of the fireplace.

“Now, listen to me,” said Mr. Dunbar. “I can’t afford to talk to you this morning; I have other duties to perform: When they’re over, I’ll come and talk to you. In the meantime, you may sit here as long as you like, and have what you please to eat or drink.”

“Well, I don’t mind the wing of a fowl, and a bottle of Burgundy. It’s a long time since I’ve tasted Burgundy. Chambertin, or Clos de Vougeot, at twelve bob a bottle–that’s the sort of tipple, I rather flatter myself–eh?”

Henry Dunbar drew himself up with a slight shudder, as if repelled and disgusted by the man’s vulgarity.

“What do you want of me?” he asked. “Remember that I am waited for. I am quite ready to serve you–for the sake of ‘auld lang syne!'”

“Yes,” answered the Major, with a sneer; “it’s so pleasant to remember ‘auld lang syne!'”

“Well,” asked Mr. Dunbar, impatiently, “what is it you want of me?”

“A bottle of Burgundy–the best you have in your cellar–something to eat, and–that which a poor man generally asks of his rich friends–his fortunate friends–MONEY!”

“You shall not find me illiberal towards you. I’ll come back by-and-by, and write you a cheque.”

“You’ll make it a thumping one?”

“I’ll make it as much as you want.”

“That’s the sort of thing. There always was something princely and magnificent about you, Mr. Dunbar.”

“You shall not have any reason to complain,” answered the banker, very coldly.

“You’ll send me the lunch?”

“Yes. You can hold your tongue, I suppose? You won’t talk to the servant who waits upon you?”

“Has your friend the manners of a gentleman, or has he not? Hasn’t he had the eminent advantage of a collegiate education–I may say, a prolongued course of collegiate study? But look here, since you’re so afraid of my putting my foot in it, suppose I go back to Lisford now, and I can return to you to-night after dark. Our business will keep. I want a long talk, and a quiet talk; but I must suit my convenience to yours. It’s the dee-yuty of the poor-r-r dependant to wait upon the per-leasure of his patron,” exclaimed Major Vernon, in the studied tones of the villain in a melodrama.

Henry Dunbar gave a sigh of relief.

“Yes, that will be much better,” he said. “I can talk to you comfortably after dinner.”

“Ta-ta, then, old boy. ‘Oh, reservoir!’ as we say in the classics.”

Major Vernon extended a brawny hand of rather doubtful purity. The millionaire touched the broad palm with the tips of his gloved fingers.

“Good-bye,” he said; “I shall expect you at nine o’clock. You know your way out?”

He opened the door as he spoke, and pointed through a vista of two or three adjoining rooms to the hall. It was rather a broad hint. The Major pulled the poodle collar still higher above his ears, and went out with only his nose exposed to the influence of the atmosphere.

Henry Dunbar shut the door, and walked to one of the windows. He leaned his forehead against the glass, and looked out, watching the tall figure of the Major, as he walked rapidly along the broad carriage-drive that skirted the lawn.

The banker watched his shabby acquaintance until Major Vernon was quite out of sight. Then he went back to the fireplace, dropped heavily into his chair, and gave a long groan. It was not a sigh, it was a groan–a groan that seemed to come from a bosom that was rent by all the agony of despair.

“This decides it!” he muttered to himself. “Yes, this decides it! I’ve seen it for a long time coming to a crisis. But _this_ settles everything.”

He got up, passed his hand across his forehead and over his eyelids, like a man who had just been awakened from a long sleep; and then went to play his part in the grand business of the day.

There is a very wide difference between the feelings of the poor adventurer–who, by some lucky accident, is enabled to pounce upon a rich friend–and the sentiments of the wealthy victim who is pounced upon. Nothing could present a stronger contrast than the manner of Henry Dunbar, the banker, and the gentleman who had elected to be called Major Vernon. Whereas Mr. Dunbar seemed plunged into the uttermost depths of despair by the sudden appearance of his old acquaintance, the worthy Major exhibited a delight that was almost uproarious in its manifestation.

It was not until he found himself in a very lonely part of the park, where there were no other witnesses than the timid deer, lurking here and there under the poor shelter of a clump of leafless elms,–it was not till Major Vernon felt himself quite alone, that he gave way to the full exuberance of his spirits.

“It’s a gold-mine!” he cried, rubbing his hands; “it’s a regular California!”

He executed a grim caper in his delight, and the scared deer fled away from the neighbourhood of his path; perhaps they took him for some modern gnome, dancing wild dances in the wet woodland. He laughed aloud, with a hollow, fiendish-sounding laugh, and then clapped his hands together till the noise of his brawny palms echoed in the rustic silence.

“Henry Dunbar,” he said to himself; “Henry Dunbar! He’ll be a milch cow–nothing but a milch cow. If–” he stopped suddenly, and the triumphant grin upon his face changed to a thoughtful expression. “If he doesn’t run away,” he said, standing quite still, and rubbing his chin slowly with the palm of his hand. “What if he should give me the slip? He _might_ do that!”

But, after a moment’s pause, he laughed aloud again, and walked on briskly.

“No, he’ll not do that,” he said; “it won’t serve his turn to run away.”

While Major Vernon went back to Lisford, Henry Dunbar took his seat at the breakfast-table, with Laura Lady Jocelyn by his side.

There was very little more gaiety at the wedding-breakfast than there had been at the wedding. Everything was very elegant, very subdued, and aristocratic. Silent footmen glided noiselessly backwards and forwards behind the chairs of the guests; champagne, Moselle, hock, and Burgundy sparkled in shallow glasses that were shaped like the broad leaf of a water-lily. Dresden-china shepherdesses, in the centre of the oval table, held up their chintz-patterned aprons filled with some forced strawberries that had cost about half-a-crown apiece. Smirking shepherds supported open-work baskets, laden with tiny Algerian apples, China oranges, and big purple hothouse grapes.

The bride and bridegroom were very happy; but theirs was a subdued and quiet happiness that had little influence upon those around them. The wedding-breakfast was a very silent meal, for the face of the giver of the feast was as gloomy as the sky above Maudesley Abbey; and every now and then, in awkward pauses of the conversation, the pattering of the incessant raindrops sounded upon the windows.

At last the breakfast was finished. A knife had been cunningly inserted in the outer-wall of the splendid cake, and a few morsels of the rich interior, which looked like a kind of portable Day-and-Martin, had been eaten by one of the bridesmaids. Laura Jocelyn rose and left the table, attended by the three young ladies.

Elizabeth Madden was waiting in the bride’s dressing-room with Lady Jocelyn’s travelling-dress laid in state upon a big sofa. She kissed her young Miss, and cried over her a little, before she was equal to begin the business of the toilette: and then the voices of the bridesmaids broke loose, and there was a pleasant buzz of congratulation, which beguiled the time while Laura was exchanging her bridal costume for a long rustling dress of dove-coloured silk, a purple-velvet cloak trimmed and lined with sable, and a miraculous fabric of pale-pink areophane, and starry jasmine-blossoms, which the Parisian milliner facetiously entitled “a bonnet.”

She went down stairs presently in this rich attire, looking like a Russian empress, in all the glory of her youth and beauty. The travelling-carriage was standing at the door; Arthur Lovell and Mr. Dunbar were in the hall with the two clergymen. Laura went up to her father to bid him good-bye.

“It will be a long time before we see each other again, papa dear,” she said, in tones that were only loud enough for Mr. Dunbar to hear; “say ‘God bless you!’ once more before I go.”

Her head was on his breast, and her face lifted up towards his own as she said this.

The banker looked straight before him with a forced smile upon his face, that was little more than a nervous contraction of the muscles about the lips.

“I will give you something better than my blessing, Laura,” he said aloud; “I have given you no wedding-present yet, but I have not forgotten. The gift I mean to present to you will take some time to prepare. I shall give you the handsomest diamond-necklace that was ever made in England. I shall buy the diamonds myself, and have them set according to my own design.”

The bridesmaids gave a little murmur of delight.

Laura pressed the speaker’s cold hand.

“I don’t want any diamonds, papa,” she whispered; “I only want your love.”

Mr. Dunbar did not make any response to that entreating whisper. There was no time for any answer, perhaps, for the bride and bridegroom had to catch an appointed train at Shorncliffe station, which was to take them on the first stage of their Continental journey; and in the bustle and confusion of their hurried departure, the banker had no opportunity of saying anything more to his daughter. But he stood in the Gothic porch, watching the departing carriage with a kind of mournful tenderness in his face.

“I hope that she will be happy,” he muttered to himself as he went back to the house. “Heaven knows I hope she may be happy.”

He did not stop to make any ceremonious adieu to his guests, but walked straight to his own apartments. People were accustomed to his strange manners, and were very indulgent towards his foibles.

Arthur Lovell and the three bridesmaids lingered a little in the blue drawing-room. The Melvilles were to drive home to their father’s house in the afternoon, and Dora Macmahon was going with them. She was to stay at their father’s house a few weeks, and was then to go back to her aunt in Scotland.

“But I am to pay my darling Laura an early visit at Jocelyn’s Rock,” she said, when Arthur made some inquiry about her arrangements; “that has been all settled.”

The ladies and the young lawyer took an afternoon tea together before they left Maudesley, and were altogether very sociable, not to say merry. It was upon this occasion that Arthur Lovell, for the first time in his life, observed that Dora Macmahon had very beautiful brown eyes, and rippling brown hair, and the sweetest smile he had ever seen–except in one lovely face, which was like the splendour of the noonday sun, and seemed to extinguish all lesser lights.

The carriage was announced at last; and Mr. Lovell had enough to do in attending to the three young ladies, and the stowing away of all those bonnet-boxes, and shawls, and travelling-bags, and desks, and dressing-cases, and odd volumes of books, and umbrellas, parasols, and sketching-portfolios, which are the peculiar attributes of all female travellers. And then, when all was finished, and he had bowed for the last time in acknowledgment of those friendly becks and wreathed smiles which greeted him from the carriage-window till it disappeared in the curve of the avenue, Arthur Lovell walked slowly home, thinking of the business of the day.

Laura was lost to him for ever. The dreadful grief which had so long brooded darkly over his life had come down upon him at last, and the pang had not been so insupportable as he had expected it to be.

“I never had any hope,” he thought to himself, as he walked along the soddened road between the gates of Maudesley and the old town that lay before him. “I never really hoped that Laura Dunbar would be my wife.”

John Lovell’s house was one of the best in the town of Shorncliffe. It was a queer old house, with a sloping roof, and gable-ends of solid oak, adorned here and there by grim devices, carved by a skilful hand. It was a large house; but low and straggling; and unpretending in its exterior. The red light of a fire was shining in a wainscoted chamber, half sitting-room, half library. The crimson curtains were not yet drawn across the diamond-paned window. Arthur Lovell looked into the room as he passed, and saw his father sitting by the fire, with a newspaper at his feet.

There was no need to bolt doors against thieves and vagabonds in such a quiet town as Shorncliffe. Arthur Lovell turned the handle of the street door and went in. The door of his father’s sitting-room was ajar, and the lawyer heard his son’s step in the hall.

“Is that you, Arthur?” he asked.

“Yes, father,” the young man answered, going into the room.

“I want to speak to you very particularly. I suppose this wedding at Maudesley Abbey has put all serious business out of your head.”

“What serious business, father?”

“Have you forgotten Lord Herriston’s offer?”

“The offer of the appointment in India? Oh, no, father, I have not forgotten, only—-“

“Only what?”

“I have not been able to decide.”

As he spoke, Arthur Lovell thought of Laura Dunbar. No; she was Laura Jocelyn now. It was a hard thing for the young man to think of her by that new name. Would it not be better for him to go away–to put immeasurable distance between himself and the woman he had loved so dearly? Would it not be better and wiser to go away? And yet what if by so doing he turned his back upon another chance of happiness? What if a lesser star than that which had gone down in the darkness might now be rising dim and distant in the pale grey sky?

“There is no reason that I should decide in a hurry,” the young man said, presently. “Lord Herriston told you that I might take twelve months to think about his offer.”

“He did,” answered John Lovell; “but half of the time is gone, and I’ve had a letter from Lord Herriston by this afternoon’s post. He wants your decision immediately; for a connection of his own has applied to him for the appointment. He still holds to his promise, and will give you the preference; but you must make up your mind at once.”

“Do you wish me to go to India, father?”

“Do I wish you to go to India! Of course not, my dear boy, unless your own ambition takes you there. Remember, you are an only son. You have no occasion to leave this place. You will inherit a very good practice and a comfortable fortune. I thought you were ambitious, and that Shorncliffe was too narrow a sphere for your ambition, or else I should never have entertained any idea of this Indian appointment.”

“And you will not be sorry if I remain in England?”

“Sorry! No, indeed; I shall be very glad. Do you suppose, when a man has only one son, a handsome, clever, high-minded young fellow, whose presence is like sunshine in his father’s gloomy old house–do you think the father wants to get rid of the lad? If you do think so, you must have a very small idea of parental affection.”

“Then I’ll refuse the appointment, father.”

“God bless you, my boy!” exclaimed the lawyer.

The letter to Lord Herriston was written that night; and Arthur Lovell resigned himself to a perpetual residence in that quiet town; within a mile of which the towers of Jocelyn’s Rock crowned the tall cliff above the rushing waters of the Avon.

Mr. Dunbar had given all necessary directions for the reception of his shabby friend.

The Major was ushered at once to the tapestried room, where the banker was still sitting at the dinner-table. He had that meal laid upon a round table near the fire, and the room looked a very picture of comfort and luxury as Major Vernon went into it, fresh from the black foggy night, and the leafless avenue, where the bare trunks of the elms looked like gigantic shadows looming through the obscurity.

The Major’s eyes were almost dazzled by the brightness of that pleasant chamber. This man was a reprobate; but he had begun life as a gentleman. He remembered such a room as this long ago, across a dreary gulf of forty ill-spent years. The sight of this room brought back the memory of a pretty lamplit parlour, with an old man sitting in a high-backed easy-chair: a genial matron bending over her work; two fair-faced girls; a favourite mastiff stretched full length upon the hearth; and, last of all, a young man at home from college, yawning over a sporting newspaper, weary to death of all the simple innocent delights of home, sick of the companionship of gentle sisters, the love of a fond mother, and wishing to be back again at the old uproarious wine-parties, the drunken orgies, the card-playing and prize-fighting, the extravagance and debauchery of the bad set in which he was a chief.

The Major gave a profound sigh as he looked round the room. But the melancholy shadow on his face changed into a grim smile, as he glanced from the tapestried walls and curtained window, with a great Indian jar of hothouse flowers standing upon an inlaid table before it, and filling the room with a faint perfume of jasmine and almond, to the figure of Henry Dunbar.

“It’s comfortable,” said Major Vernon; “to say the least of it, it’s very comfortable. And with a balance of half a million or so at one’s banker’s, or in one’s own bank–which is better still perhaps–one is not so badly off, eh, Mr. Dunbar?”

“Sit down and eat one of those birds,” answered the banker. “I’ll talk to you by-and-by.”

The Major obeyed his friend; he unwound three or four yards of dingy woollen stuff from his scraggy throat, turned down the poodle collar, pulled his chair close to the table, squared his brows, and began business. He made very light of a brace of partridges and a bottle of sparkling Moselle.

When the table had been cleared, and the two men left alone together, Major Vernon stretched his long legs upon the hearth-rug, plunged his hands deep down in his trousers’ pockets, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.

“And now,” said Mr. Dunbar, filling his glass from the starry crystal claret-jug, “what is it that you want to say to me, Stephen Vallance, or Major Vernon, or whatever ridiculous name you may call yourself–what is it you’ve got to say?”

“I’ll tell you that in a very few words,” answered the Major, quietly; “I want to talk to you about the man who was murdered at Winchester some months ago.”

The banker’s hand lost its steadiness, the neck of the claret-jug knocked against the thin lip of the glass, and shivered it into half-a-dozen pieces.

“You’ll spill your wine,” said Major Vernon. “I’m very sorry for you if your nerves are no better than that.”

* * * * *

When Major Vernon that night left his friend, he carried away with him half-a-dozen cheques for different amounts, making in all two thousand pounds, upon that private banking-account which Mr. Dunbar kept for himself in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby.

It was after midnight when the banker opened the hall-door, and passed out with the Major upon the broad stone flags under the Gothic porch. There was no rain now; but it was very dark, and the north-easterly winds were blowing amongst the leafless branches of giant oaks and elms.

“Shall you present those cheques yourself?” Henry Dunbar asked, as the two men were about to part.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Dress yourself decently, then, before you do so,” said the banker; “they’d wonder what dealings you and I could have together, if you were to show yourself in St. Gundolph Lane in your present costume.”

“My friend is proud,” exclaimed the Major, with a mock tragic accent; “he is proud, and he despises his humble dependant.”

“Good night,” said Mr. Dunbar, rather abruptly; “it’s past twelve o’clock, and I’m tired.”

“To be sure. You’re tired. Do you–do you–sleep well?” asked Major Vernon, in a whisper. There was no mock solemnity in his tone now.

The banker turned away from him with a muttered oath. The light of a lamp suspended from the groined roof of the porch shone upon the two men’s faces. Henry Dunbar’s countenance was overclouded by a black frown, and was by no means agreeable to look upon; but the grinning face of the Major, the thin lips wreathed into a malicious smile, the small black eyes glittering with a sinister light, looked like the face of a Mephistopheles.

“Good night,” repeated the banker, turning his back upon his friend, and about to re-enter the house.

Major Vernon laid his bony fingers upon Henry Dunbar’s shoulder, and stopped him before he could cross the threshold.

“You’ve given me two thou’,” he said; “that’s liberal enough to start with; but I’m an old man; I’m tired of the life of a vagabond, and I want to live like a gentleman;–not as you do, of course; _that’s_ out of the question; it isn’t everybody that has the good luck to be a millionaire, like Henry Dunbar; but I want a bottle of claret with my dinner, a good coat upon my back, and a five-pound note in my pocket constantly. You must do as much as that for me; eh, dear boy?”

“I don’t refuse to do it, do I?” asked Henry Dunbar, impatiently; “I should think what you’ve got in your pocket already is a pretty good beginning.”

“My dear fellow, it’s a stupendous beginning!” exclaimed Major Vernon; “it’s a princely beginning; it’s a Napoleonic beginning. But that two thou isn’t meant for a blind, is it? It’s not to be the beginning, middle, and the end? You’re not going to do the gentle bolt–eh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to run away? You’re not going to renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and make an early expedition across the herring-pond–eh, friend of my soul?”

“Why should I run away?” asked Henry Dunbar, sternly.

“That’s the very thing I say myself, dear boy. Why should you? A wise man doesn’t run away from landed estates, and fine houses, and half a million of money. But when you broke that claret-glass after dinner, it struck me somehow that you were–shall I venture the word?–_rather_ nervous! Nervous people do all manner of things. Give me your word that you’re not going to bolt, and I’m satisfied.”

“I tell you, I have no such idea in my mind,” Mr. Dunbar answered, with increasing impatience. “Will that do?”

“It will, dear boy. Your hand upon it! What a cold hand you’ve got! Take care of yourself; and once more–good night!”

“You’re going to London?”

“Yes–to cash the cheques, and make a few business arrangements.”

Mr. Dunbar bolted the great door as the footsteps of his friend the Major died away upon the gravelled walk, which had been quickly dried by the frosty wind. The banker had dismissed his servants at ten o’clock that night; so there was nobody to wait upon him, or to watch him, when he went back to the tapestried room.

He sat by the low fire for a little time, thinking, with a settled gloom upon his face, and drinking Burgundy out of a tumbler. Then he went to bed; and the light of the night-lamp shining upon his face as he slept, showed it distorted by strange shadows, that were not altogether the shadows of the draperies above his head.

Major Vernon walked briskly down the long avenue leading to the lodge-gates.

“Two thou’ is comfortable,” he muttered to himself; “very satisfactory for a first go-in at the gold-diggin’s! but I shall expect my California to produce a little more than that before we close the shaft, and retire upon the profits of the speculation. I _think_ my friend is safe–I don’t think he’ll run away. But I shall keep my eye upon him, nevertheless. The human eye is a great institution; and I shall watch my friend.”

In spite of a natural eagerness to transform those oblong slips of paper–the cheques signed with the well-known name of Henry Dunbar–into the still more convenient and flimsy paper circulating medium dispensed by the Old Lady in Threadneedle Street, or the yellow coinage of the realm, Major Vernon did not seem in any very great hurry to leave Lisford.

A great many of the Lisfordians had seen the shabby stranger take his seat in Henry Dunbar’s carriage, side by side with the great banker. This fact became universally known throughout the parish of Lisford and two neighbouring parishes, before the shadows of night came down upon the day of Laura Dunbar’s wedding, and the Major was respected accordingly.

He was shabby, certainly; queer-about the heels of his boots; and very mangy with regard to the poodle collar. His hat was more shiny than was consistent with the hat-manufacturing interest. His bony hands were red and bare, and only one miserable mockery of a glove dangled between his thumb and finger as he swaggered along the village street.

But he had been seen riding in Henry Dunbar’s carriage, and from that moment he had become invested with a romantic interest. He was a reduced gentleman, who had seen better days; or he was a miser, perhaps–an eccentric individual, who wore shabby boots and shiny hats for his own love and pleasure.

People paid respect, therefore, to the stranger at the Rose and Crown, and touched their hats to him as he went in and out, and were glad to answer any questions he chose to put to them as he loitered about the village. He contrived to find out a good deal in this way about things in general, and the habits of Henry Dunbar in particular. The banker had given his shabby acquaintance a handful of sovereigns for present use, as well as the cheques; and the Major was able to live upon the best the Rose and Crown could afford, and pay liberally for all he consumed.

“I find the Warwickshire air agree with me remarkably well,” he said to the landlord, as he sat at breakfast in the bar-parlour, upon the second day after his interview with Henry Dunbar; “and if you know of any snug little box in the neighbourhood that would suit a lonely old bachelor with a comfortable income, and nobody to help him spend it, why, I really should have a very great inclination to take it, and furnish it.”

The landlord scratched his head, and reflected for a few minutes. Then he slapped his leg with a sounding and triumphant slap.

“I know the very thing as would suit you, Major Vernon,” he said–the Major had assumed the name of Vernon, as agreed upon between himself and Henry Dunbar–“the very thing,” repeated the landlord; “you might say it had been made to order like. There’s a sale comes off next Thursday. Mr. Grogson, the Shorncliffe auctioneer, will sell, at eleven o’clock precisely, the furniture and lease of the snuggest little box in these parts–Woodbine Cottage it’s called–a sweet pretty little place, as was the property of old Admiral Manders. The admiral died in the house, and having been a bachelor, and his money having gone to distant relatives, the lease and furniture of the cottage will be sold. But I should think,” added the landlord, gravely, looking rather doubtfully at his guest as he spoke, “I should think the lease and furniture, pictures and plate, will fetch a matter of eight hundred to a thousand pound; and perhaps you mightn’t care to go to that?”

The landlord could not refrain from glancing furtively at the white and shining aspect of the cloth that covered the sharp knees of his customer, which were exactly under his eyes as the two men sat opposite to each other beside the snug little round table.

“You mightn’t care to go to that price,” he repeated, as he helped himself to about three-quarters of a pound of cold ham.

The Major lifted his bristly eyebrows with a contemptuous twitch.

“If the cottage suits me,” he said, “I don’t mind a thousand for it. To-day’s Saturday;–I shall run up to town to-morrow, or Monday morning, to settle a bit of business I’ve got on hand, and come back here in time to attend the sale.”

“My wife and me was thinkin’ of goin’ sir,” the landlord answered, with, unwonted reverence in his voice; and, if it was agreeable, we could drive you over in a four-wheel shay. Woodbine Cottage is about a mile and a half from here, and little better than a mile from Maudesley Abbey. There’s a copper coal-scuttle of the old admiral’s as my wife has got rather a fancy for. But p’raps if you was to make a hoffer previous to the sale, the property might be disposed of as it stands by private contrack.”

“I’ll see about that,” answered Major Vernon. “I’ll stroll over to Shorncliffe, this, morning, and look in upon Mr. Grogson–Grogson, I think you said was the auctioneer’s name?”

“Yes, sir; Peter Grogson, and very much looked up to be is, and a warm man, folks do say. His offices is in Shorncliffe High Street, sir; next door but two from Mr. Lovell’s, the solicitor’s, and not more than half-a-dozen yards from St. Gwendoline’s Church.”

Major Vernon, as he now chose to call himself, walked from Lisford to Shorncliffe. He was a very good walker, and, indeed, had become pretty well used to pedestrian exercise in the course of long weary trampings from one racecourse to another, when he was so far down on his luck as to be unable to pay his railway fare. The frost had set in for the first time this year; so the roads were dry and hard once more, and the sound of horses’ hoofs and rolling wheels, the jingling of bells, the occasional barking of a noisy sheep-dog, and sturdy labourers’ voices calling to each other on the high-road, travelled far in the thin frosty air.

The town of Shorncliffe was very quiet to-day, for it was only on market-days that there was much life or bustle in the queer old streets, and Major Vernon found no hindrance to the business that had brought him from Lisford.

He went straight to Mr. Grogson, the auctioneer, and from that gentleman heard all particulars respecting the pending sale at Woodbine Cottage. The Major offered to take the lease at a fair price, and the furniture, as it stood, by valuation.

“All I want is a comfortable little place that I can jump into without any trouble to myself,” Major Vernon said, with the air of a man of the world. “I like to take life easily. If you can honestly recommend the place as worth seven or eight hundred pounds, I’m willing to pay that money for it down on the nail. I’ll take it at your valuation, if the present owners are agreeable to sell it on those terms, and I’ll pay a deposit of a couple of hundred or so on Tuesday afternoon, to show that my proposition is a _bona fide_ one.”

A little more was said, and then Mr. Grogson pledged himself to act for the best in the interests of Major Vernon, consistently with his allegiance to the present owners of the property.

The auctioneer had been at first a little doubtful of this tall, shabby stranger in the napless dirty-white beaver and the mangy poodle collar; but the offer of a deposit of two hundred pounds or so gave a different aspect to the case. There are always eccentric people in the world, and appearances are very apt to be deceptive. There was a confident air about the Major which seemed like that of a man with a balance at his banker’s.

The Major went back to the Rose and Crown, ate a comfortable little dinner, which he had ordered before setting out for Shorncliffe, paid his bill, and made all arrangements for starting by the first train for London on the following morning. It was nearly ten o’clock by the time he had done this: but late as it was, Major Vernon put on his hat, turned his poodle collar up about his ears, and went out into Lisford High Street.

There was scarcely one glimmer of light in the street as the Major walked along it. He took the road leading to Maudesley Abbey, and walked at a brisk pace, heedless of the snow, which was still falling thick and fast.

He was covered from head to foot with snow when he stopped before the stone porch, and rang a bell, that made a clanging noise in the stillness of the night. He looked like some grim white statue that had descended from its pedestal to stalk hither and thither in the darkness.

The servant who opened the door yawned undisguisedly in the face of his master’s friend.

“Tell Mr. Dunbar that I shall be glad to speak to him for a few minutes,” the Major said, making as if he would have passed into the hall.

“Mr. Dunbar left the habbey uppards of a hour ago,” the footman answered, with supreme hauteur; “but he left a message for you, in case you was to come. The period of his habsence is huncertain, and if you wants to kermoonicate with him, you was to please to wait till he come back.”

Major Vernon pushed aside the servant, and strode into the hall. The doors were open, and through two or three intermediate rooms the Major saw the tapestried chamber, dark and empty.

There was no doubt that Henry Dunbar had given him the slip–for the time, at least; but did the banker mean mischief? was there any deep design in this sudden departure?–that was the question.

“I’ll write to your master,” the Major said, after a pause; “what’s his London address?”

“Mr. Dunbar left no address.”

“Humph! That’s no matter. I can write to him at the bank. Good night.”

Major Vernon stalked away through the snow. The footman made no response to his parting civility, but stood watching him for a few moments, and then closed the door with a bang.

“Hif that’s a spessermin of your Hinjun acquaintances, I don’t think much of Hinjur or Hinjun serciety. But what can you expect of a nation as insults the gentleman who waits behind his employer’s chair at table by callin’ him a kitten-muncher?”

CHAPTER XXVI.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BACK PARLOUR OF THE BANKING-HOUSE.

Henry Dunbar arrived in London a couple of hours after Mr. Vernon left the Abbey. He went straight to the Clarendon Hotel. He had no servant with him, and his luggage consisted only of a portmanteau, a dressing-case, and a despatch-box; the same despatch-box whose contents he had so carefully studied at the Winchester hotel, upon the night of the murder in the grove.

The day after his arrival was Sunday, and all that day the banker occupied himself in reading a morocco-bound manuscript volume, which he took from the despatch-box.

There was a black fog upon this November day, and the atmosphere out of doors was cold and bleak. But the room in which Henry Dunbar sat looked the very picture of comfort and elegance.

He had drawn his chair close to the fire, and on a table near his elbow were arranged the open despatch-box, a tall crystal jug of Burgundy, with a goblet-shaped glass, on a salver, and a case of cigars.

Until long after dark that evening, Henry Dunbar sat by the fire, smoking and drinking, and reading the manuscript volume. He only paused now and then to take pencil-notes of its contents in a little memorandum-book, which he carried in the breast-pocket of his coat.

It was not till seven o’clock, when the liveried servant who waited upon him came to inform him that his dinner was served in an adjoining chamber, that Mr. Dunbar rose from his seat and put away the book in the despatch-box. He laid down the volume on the table while he replaced other papers in the box, and it fell open at the first page. On that first page was written, in Henry Dunbar’s bold, legible hand–

“_Journal of my life in India, from my arrival in 1815 until my departure in 1850._”

This was the book the banker had been studying all that winter’s day.

At twelve o’clock the next day he ordered a brougham, and was driven to the banking-house in St. Gundolph Lane. This was the first time that Henry Dunbar had visited the house in St. Gundolph Lane since his return from India.

Those who knew the history of the present chief partner of the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, were in nowise astonished by this fact. They knew that, as a young man, Henry Dunbar had contracted the tastes and habits of an aristocrat, and that, if he had afterwards developed into a clever and successful man of business, it was only by reason of the force of circumstances, which had thrust him into a position that he hated.

It was by no means wonderful, then, that, after becoming possessor of the united fortunes of his father and his uncle, Henry Dunbar should keep aloof from a place that had always been obnoxious to him. The business had gone on without him very well during his absence, and it went on without him now, for his place in India had been assumed by a very clever man, who for twenty years had acted as cashier in the Calcutta house.

It may be that the banker had an unpleasant recollection of his last visit to St. Gundolph Lane, upon the day when the existence of the forged bills was discovered by Percival and Hugh Dunbar. All the width of thirty-five years between the present hour and that day might not be wide enough to separate the memory of the past from the thoughts which were busy this morning in the mind of Henry Dunbar.

Be it as it might, Mr. Dunbar’s reflections this day were evidently not of a pleasant nature. He was very pale as he rode citywards, in the comfortable brougham, from the Clarendon; and his face had a stern, fixed look, like a man who has nerved himself to meet some crisis, which he knows is near at hand.

There was a stoppage upon Ludgate Hill. Great wooden barricades and mountains of uprooted paving-stones, amidst which sturdy navigators disported themselves with spades and pickaxes, and wheelbarrows full of rubbish, blocked the way; so the brougham turned into Farringdon Street, and went up Snow Hill, and under the grim black walls of dreadful Newgate.

The vehicle travelled very slowly, for the traffic was concentrated in this quarter by reason of the stoppage on Ludgate Hill, and Mr. Dunbar was able to contemplate at his leisure the black prison-walls, and the men and women selling dogs’-collars under their dismal shadows.

It may be that the banker’s face grew a shade paler after that contemplation. The corners of his mouth twitched nervously as he got out of the carriage before the mahogany doors of the banking-house in St. Gundolph Lane. But he drew a long breath, and held his head proudly erect as he pushed open the doors and went in.

Never since the day of the discovery of the forged bills had that man entered the banking-house. Dark thoughts came back upon his mind, and the shadows deepened on his face as he gave one rapid glance round the familiar office.

He walked straight towards the private parlour in which that well-remembered scene had occurred five-and-thirty years ago. But before he arrived at the door leading from the public offices to the back of the house, he was stopped by a gentlemanly-looking man, who came forward from a desk in some shadowy region, and intercepted the stranger.

This man was Clement Austin, the cashier.

“Do you wish to see Mr. Balderby, sir?” he asked.

“Yes. I have an appointment with him at one o’clock. My name is Dunbar.”

The cashier bowed and opened the door. The banker passed across the threshold, which he had not crossed for five-and-thirty years until to-day.

But as Mr. Dunbar went towards the familiar parlour at the back of the banking-house, he stopped for a minute, and looked at the cashier.

Clement Austin was scarcely less pale than Henry Dunbar himself. He had heard of the banker’s intended visit to St. Gundolph Lane, and had looked forward with strange anxiety to a meeting with the man whom Margaret Wilmot declared to be the murderer of her father. Now that the meeting had come to pass, he looked at Henry Dunbar with an earnest, scrutinizing gaze, as if he would fain have discovered the secret of the man’s guilt or innocence in his countenance.

The banker’s face was pale, and grave, and stern; but Clement Austin knew that for Henry Dunbar there were very humiliating and unpleasant circumstances connected with the offices in St. Gundolph Lane, and it was scarcely to be expected that a man would come smiling into a place out of which he had gone five-and-thirty years before a disgraced and degraded creature.

For a few moments the two men paused in the passage between the public offices and the private parlour, looking at each other.

The banker’s gaze never flinched during that encounter. It is taken as a strong proof of a man’s innocence that he should look you full in the face with a steadfast gaze when you look at him with suspicion plainly visible in your eyes; but would he not be the poorest villain if he shirked that encounter of glances when he knows full surely that he is in that moment put to the test? It is rather innocence whose eyelids drop when you peer too closely into its eyes, for innocence is appalled by the stern, accusing glances which it is unprepared to meet. Guilt stares you boldly in the face, for guilt is hardened and defiant, and has this one grand superiority over innocence–that it is _prepared for the worst_.

Clement Austin opened the door of Mr. Balderby’s parlour; Mr. Dunbar went in unannounced. The cashier closed the parlour-door and returned to his desk in the public office.

The junior partner was sitting at an office table near the fire writing, but he rose as the banker entered the room, and went forward to meet him.

“You are very punctual, Mr. Dunbar,” he said.

“Yes, I am generally punctual.”

The two men shook hands, and Mr. Balderby wheeled forward a morocco-covered arm-chair for his senior partner, and then took his seat opposite to him, with only the small office table between them.

“It may seem late in the day to bid you welcome to the bank, Mr. Dunbar,” said the junior partner, “but I do so, nevertheless–most heartily!”

There was a flatness in the accent in which these two last words were spoken, which was like the sound of a false coin when it falls dead upon a counter and proclaims itself spurious.

Henry Dunbar did not return his partner’s greeting. He was looking round the room, and remembering the day upon which he had last seen it. There was very little alteration in the appearance of the dismal city chamber. There was the same wire-blind before the window, the same solitary tree, leafless, in the narrow courtyard without. The morocco-covered arm-chairs had been re-covered, perhaps, during that five-and-thirty years; but if so, the covering had grown shabby again. Even the Turkey carpet was in the very stage of dusky dinginess that had distinguished the carpet on which Henry Dunbar had stood five-and-thirty years before.

“I received your letter announcing your journey to London, and your desire for a private interview, on Saturday afternoon,” Mr. Balderby said, after a pause. “I have made arrangements to assure our being undisturbed so long as you may remain here. If you wish to make any investigation of the affairs of the house, I—-“

Mr. Dunbar waved his hand with a deprecatory air.

“Nothing is farther from my thoughts than any such design,” he said. “No, Mr. Balderby, I have only been a man of business because all chance of another career, which I infinitely preferred, was closed upon me five-and-thirty years ago. I am quite content to be a sleeping-partner in the house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby. For ten years prior to my father’s death he took no active part in the business. The house got on very well without his aid; it will get on equally well without mine. The business that brings me to London is an entirely personal matter. I am a rich man, but I don’t exactly know how rich I am, and I want to realize rather a large sum of money.”

Mr. Balderby bowed, but his eyebrows went up a little, as if he found it impossible to control some slight evidence of his surprise.

“Previous to my daughter’s marriage I settled upon her the house in Portland Place and the Yorkshire property. She will have all my money when I die; and, as Sir Philip Jocelyn is a rich man, she will perhaps be one of the wealthiest women in England. So far so good. Neither Laura nor her husband will have any reason for dissatisfaction. But this is not quite enough, Mr. Balderby. I am not a demonstrative man, and I have never made any great fuss about my love for my daughter; but I do love her, nevertheless.”

Mr. Dunbar spoke very slowly here, and stopped once or twice to pass his handkerchief across his forehead, as he had done in the hotel at Winchester.

“We Anglo-Indians have rather a magnificent way of doing things, Mr. Balderby” he continued, “when we take it into our heads to do them at all. I want to give my daughter a diamond-necklace as a wedding present, and I want it to be such as an Eastern prince or a Rothschild might offer to his only child. You understand?”

“Oh, perfectly,” answered Mr. Balderby; “I shall be most happy to be of any use to you in the matter.”

“All I want is a large sum of money at my command. I may go rather recklessly to work and make a large investment in this necklace; it will be something for Lady Jocelyn to bequeath to her children. You and John Lovell, of Shorncliffe, were the executors to my father’s will. You signed an order for the transfer of my father’s money to my account some time in last September.”

“I did, in concurrence with Mr. Lovell.”

“Precisely; Lovell wrote me a letter to that effect. My father kept two accounts here, I believe–a deposit and a drawing account?”

“He did.”

“And those two accounts have gone on since my return in the same manner as during his lifetime?”

“Precisely. The income which Mr. Percival Dunbar set aside for his own use was seven thousand a year. He rarely, spent as much as that; sometimes he spent less than half. The balance of this income, and his double share in the profits of the business, went to the credit of his deposit account, and various sums have been withdrawn from time to time, and duly invested under his order.”

“Perhaps you can let me see the ledgers containing those two accounts?”

“Most certainly.”

Mr. Balderby touched the spring of a handbell upon his table.

“Ask Mr. Austin to bring the daily balance and deposit accounts ledgers,” he said to the person who answered his summons.

Clement Austin appeared five minutes afterwards, carrying two ponderous morocco-bound volumes.

Mr. Balderby opened both ledgers, and placed them before his senior partner. Henry Dunbar looked at the deposit account. His eyes ran eagerly down the long row of figures before him until they came to the sum total. Then his chest heaved, and he drew a long breath, like a man who feels almost stifled by some internal oppression.

The last figures in the page were these:

_137,926l. 17s. 2d._

One hundred and thirty-seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-six pounds seventeen shillings and twopence. The twopence seemed a ridiculous anti-climax; but business-men are necessarily as exact in figures as calculating-machines.

“How is this money invested?” asked Henry Dunbar, pointing to the page. His fingers trembled a little as he did so, and he dropped his hand suddenly upon the ledger.

“There’s fifty thousand in India stock,” Mr. Balderby answered, as indifferently as if fifty thousand pounds more or less was scarcely worth speaking of; “and there’s five-and-twenty in railway debentures, Great Western. Most of the remainder is floating in Exchequer bills.”

“Then you can realize the Exchequer bills?”

Mr. Balderby winced as if some one had trodden upon one of his corns. He was a banker heart and soul, and he did not at all relish the idea of any withdrawal of the bank’s resources, however firm that establishment might stand.

“It’s rather a large amount of capital to withdraw from the business,” he said, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully.

“I suppose the bank can afford it!” Mr. Dunbar exclaimed, with a tone of surprise.

“Oh, yes; the bank can afford it well enough. Our calls are sometimes heavy. Lord Yarsfield–a very old customer–talks of buying an estate in Wales; he may come down upon us at any moment for a very stiff sum of money. However, the capital is yours, Mr. Dunbar; and you’ve a right to dispose of it as you please. The Exchequer bills shall be realized immediately.”

“Good; and if you can dispose of the railway bonds to advantage, you may do so.”

“You think of spending—-“

“I think of reinvesting the money. I have an offer of an estate north of the metropolis, which I think will realize cent per cent a few years hence: but that is an after consideration. At present we have only to do with the diamond-necklace for my daughter. I shall buy the diamonds myself, direct from the merchant-importers. You will hold yourself ready after Wednesday, we’ll say, to cash some very heavy cheques on my account?”

“Certainly, Mr. Dunbar.”

“Then I think that is really all I have to say. I shall be happy to see you at the Clarendon, if you will dine with me any evening that you are disengaged.”

There was very little heartiness in the tone of this invitation; and Mr. Balderby perfectly understood that it was only a formula which Mr. Dunbar felt himself called upon to go through. The junior partner murmured his acknowledgment of Henry Dunbar’s politeness; and then the two men talked together for a few minutes on indifferent subjects.

Five minutes afterwards Mr. Dunbar rose to leave the room. He went into the passage between Mr. Balderby’s parlour and the public offices of the bank. This passage was very dark; but the offices were well lighted by lofty plate-glass windows. Between the end of the passage and the outer doors of the bank, Henry Dunbar saw the figure of a woman sitting near one of the desks and talking to Clement Austin.

The banker stopped suddenly, and went back to the parlour.

He looked about him a little absently as he re-entered the room.

“I thought I brought a cane,” he said.

“I think not,” replied Mr. Balderby, rising from before his desk. “I don’t remember seeing one in your hand.”

“Ah, then, I suppose I was mistaken.”

He still lingered in the parlour, putting on his gloves very slowly, and looking out of the window into the dismal backyard, where there was a dingy little wooden door set deep in the stone wall.

While the banker loitered near the window, Clement Austin came into the room, to show some document to the junior partner. Henry Dunbar turned round as the cashier was about to leave the parlour.

“I saw a woman just now talking to you in the office. That’s not very business-like, is it, Mr. Austin? Who is the woman?”

“She is a young lady, sir.”

“A young lady?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What brings her here?”

The cashier hesitated for a moment before he replied, “She–wishes to see you, Mr. Dunbar,” he said, after that brief pause.

“What is her name?–who–who is she?”

“Her name is Wilmot–Margaret Wilmot.”

“I know no such person!” answered the banker, haughtily, but looking nervously at the half-opened door as he spoke.

“Shut that door, sir!” he said, impatiently, to the cashier; “the draught from the passage is strong enough to cut a man in two. Who is this Margaret Wilmot?”

“The daughter of that unfortunate man, Joseph Wilmot, who was cruelly murdered at Winchester!” answered the cashier, very gravely.

He looked Henry Dunbar full in the face as he spoke.

The banker returned his look as unflinchingly as he had done before, and spoke in a hard, unfaltering voice as he answered: “Tell this person, Margaret Wilmot, that I refuse to see her to-day, as I refused to see her in Portland Place, and as I refused to see her at Winchester!” he said, deliberately. “Tell her that I shall always refuse to see her, whenever or wherever she makes an attack upon me. I have suffered enough already on account of that hideous business at Winchester, and I shall most resolutely defend myself from any further persecution. This young person can have no possible motive for wishing to see me. If she is poor and wants money of me, I am ready and willing to assist her. I have already offered to do so–I can do no more. But if she is in distress—-“

“She is not in distress, Mr. Dunbar,” interrupted Clement Austin. “She has friends who love her well enough to shield her from that.”

“Indeed; and you are one of those friends, I suppose, Mr. Austin?”

“I am.”

“Prove your friendship, then, by teaching Margaret Wilmot that she has a friend and not an enemy in me. If you are–as I suspect from your manner–something more than a friend: if you love her, and she returns your love, marry her, and she shall have a dowry that no gentleman’s wife need be ashamed to bring to her husband.”

There was no anger, no impatience in the banker’s voice now, but a tone of deep feeling. Clement Austin locked at him, astonished by the change in his manner.

Henry Dunbar saw the look, and it seemed as if he endeavoured to answer it.

“You have no need to be surprised that I shrink from seeing Margaret Wilmot,” he said. “Cannot you understand that my nerves may be none of the strongest, and that I cannot endure the idea of an interview with this girl, who, no doubt, by her persistent pursuit of me, suspects me of her father’s murder? I am an old man, and I have been thirty-five years in India. My health is shattered, and I have a horror of all tragic scenes. I have not yet recovered from the shock of that horrible business at Winchester. Go and tell Margaret Wilmot this: tell her that I will be her true friend if she will accept that friendship, but that I will not see her until she has learned to think better of me.”

There was something very straightforward, very simple, in all this. For a time, at least, Clement Austin’s mind wavered. Margaret was, perhaps, wrong, after all, and Henry Dunbar might be an innocent man.

It was Clement who had informed Margaret of Mr. Dunbar’s expected presence here upon this day; and it was on the strength of that information that the girl had come to St. Gundolph Lane, with the determination of seeing the man whom she believed to be the murderer of her father.

Clement returned to the office, where he had left Margaret, in order to repeat to her Mr. Dunbar’s message.

No sooner had the door of the parlour closed upon the cashier than Henry Dunbar turned abruptly to his junior partner.

“There is a door leading from the yard into a court that connects St. Gundolph Lane with another lane at the back,” he said, “is there not?”

He pointed to the dark little yard outside the window as he spoke.

“Yes, there is a door, I believe.”

“Is it locked?”

“No; it is seldom locked till four o’clock; the clerks use it sometimes, when they go in and out.”

“Then I shall go out that way,” said Mr. Dunbar, who was almost breathless in his haste. “You can send the carriage back to the Clarendon by-and-by. I don’t want to see that girl. Good morning.”

He hurried out of the parlour, and into a passage leading to the yard, followed by Mr. Balderby, who wondered at his senior partner’s excitement. The door in the yard was not locked. Henry Dunbar opened it, went out into the court, and closed the door behind him.

So, for the third time, he escaped from an interview with Margaret Wilmot.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CLEMENT AUSTIN’S WOOING.

For the third time Margaret Wilmot was disappointed in the hope of seeing Henry Dunbar. Clement Austin had on the previous evening told her of the banker’s intended visit to the office in St. Gundolph Lane, and the young music-mistress had made hasty arrangements for the postponement of her usual duties, in order that she might go to the City to see Henry Dunbar.

“He will not dare to refuse you,” Clement Austin said; “for he must know that such a refusal would excite suspicion in the minds of the people about him.”

“He must have known that at Winchester, and yet he avoided me there,” answered Margaret Wilmot; “he must have known it when he refused to see me in Portland Place. He will refuse to see me to-day, if I ask for an interview with him. My only chance will be the chance of an accidental meeting with Him. Do you think that you can arrange this for me, Mr. Austin?”

Clement Austin readily promised to bring about an apparently accidental meeting between Margaret and Mr. Dunbar, and this is how it was that Joseph Wilmot’s daughter had waited in the office in St. Gundolph Lane. She had arrived only five minutes after Mr. Dunbar entered the banking-house, and she waited very patiently, very resolutely, in the hope that when Henry Dunbar returned to his carriage she might snatch the opportunity of speaking to him, of seeing his face, and discovering whether he was guilty or not.

She clung to the idea that some indefinable expression of his countenance would reveal the fact of his guilt or innocence. But she could not dispossess herself of the belief that he was guilty. What other reason could there be for his persistent avoidance of her?

But, for the third time, she was baffled; and she went home very despondently, haunted by the image of her dead father; while Henry Dunbar went back to the Clarendon in a common hack cab, which he picked up in Cornhill.

Margaret Wilmot found one of her pupils waiting in the pretty little parlour in the cottage at Clapham, and she was obliged to sit down to the piano and listen to a fantasia, very badly played, keeping sharp watch upon the pupil’s fingers, for an hour or so, before she was free to think her own thoughts.

Margaret was very glad when the lesson was over. The pupil was a very vivacious young lady, who called her music-mistress “dear,” and would have been glad to waste half an hour or so in an animated conversation about the last new style in bonnets, or the shape of the fashionable winter mantle, or the popular novel of the month. But Margaret’s pale face seemed a mute appeal for compassion; so Miss Lamberton drew on her gloves, settled her bonnet before the glass over the mantel-piece, and tripped away.

Margaret sat by the little round table, with an open book before her. But she could not read, though the volume was one that had been lent her by Clement, and though she took a peculiar pleasure in reading any book that was a favourite of his. She did not read; she only sat with her eyes fixed, and her face very pale, in the dim light of two candles that flickered in the draught from the window.

She was aroused from her despondent reverie by a double knock at the door below, and presently the neat little maid-servant ushered Mr. Austin into the room.

Margaret started up, a little confused at the advent of this unexpected visitor. It was the first time that Clement had ever called upon her alone. He had often been her guest; but, until to-night, he had always come under his mother’s wing to see the pretty music-mistress.

“I am afraid I startled you, Miss Wilmot,” he said.

“Oh, no; not at all,” answered Margaret; “I was sitting here, quite idle, thinking—-“

“Thinking of your failure of to-day, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, during which Margaret seated herself once more by the little table, while Clement Austin walked up and down the room thinking.

Presently he stopped suddenly, with his elbow leaning upon the corner of the mantel-piece, opposite Margaret, and looked down at the girl’s thoughtful face. She had blushed when the cashier first entered the room; but she was very pale now.

“Margaret,” said Clement Austin,–it was the first time he had called his mother’s _protegee_ by her Christian name, and the girl looked up at him with a surprised expression,–“Margaret, that which happened to-day makes me think that your conviction is only the horrible truth, and that Henry Dunbar, the sole surviving kinsman of those two men whom I learnt to honour and revere long ago, when I was a mere boy, is indeed guilty of your father’s death. If so, the cause of justice demands that this man’s crime should be brought to light. I am something of Shakspeare’s opinion; I cannot but believe that ‘murder will out,’ somehow or other, sooner or later. But I think that, in this business, the police have been culpably supine. It seems as if they feared to handle the case to closely, lest the clue they followed should lead them to Henry Dunbar.”

“You think they have been, bribed?”

“No; I don’t think that. There seems to be a popular belief, all over the world, that a man with a million of money can do no wrong. I don’t believe the police have been culpable; they have only been faint-hearted. They have suffered themselves to be discouraged by the difficulties of the case. Other crimes have been committed, other work has arisen for them to do, and they have been obliged to abandon an investigation which seemed hopeless. This is how criminals escape–this is how murderers are suffered to be at large; not because discovery is impossible, but because it can only be effected by a slow and wearisome process in which so few men have courage to persevere. While the country is ringing with the record of a great crime–while the murderer is on his guard night and day, waking and sleeping–the police watch and work: but by-and-by, when the crime is half forgotten–when security has made the criminal careless–when the chances of detection are ten-fold–the police have grown tired, and there is no eye to watch the guilty man’s movements. I know nothing of the science of detection, Margaret; but I believe that Henry Dunbar was the murderer of your father; and I will do my uttermost, with God’s help, to bring this crime home to him.”

The girl’s eyes flashed with a proud light, as Clement Austin finished speaking.

“Will you do this?” she said; “will you bring to light the mystery of my father’s death? Will you bring punishment upon his murderer? It seems a horrible thing, perhaps, for a woman to wish detection to overtake any man, however base; but surely it would be more horrible if I were content to let my father’s murder remain unavenged. My poor father! If he had been a good man, I do not think it would grieve me so much to remember his cruel death: but he was not a good man–he was not a good man.”

“Let him have been what he may, Margaret, his murderer shall not go unpunished if I can aid the cause of justice,” said Clement Austin. “But it was not to say this alone that I came here to-night, Margaret. I have something more to say to you.”

There was a tenderness in the cashier’s voice as he said these last words, that brought the blushes back to Margaret’s pale cheeks.

“You know that I love you, Margaret,” Clement said, in a low, earnest voice; “you must know that I love you: or if you do not, it is because there is no sympathy between us, and in that case my love is indeed hopeless. I have loved you from the first, dear–yes, from the very first summer twilight in which I saw your pale, pensive face in the dusky little garden at Wandsworth. The tender interest which I then felt in you was the first mysterious dawn of love, though I, in my infinite wisdom, put it down to an artistic admiration for your peculiar beauty. It was love, Margaret; and it has grown and strengthened in my heart ever since that summer evening, until it leads me here to-night to tell you all, and to ask you if there is any hope. Ah, Margaret, you must have known my love all along! You would have banished me had you felt that my love was hopeless: you could not have been so cruel as to deceive me.”

Margaret looked up at her lover with a frightened face. Had she done wrong, then, to be happy in his society, if she did not love him–if she did not love him! But surely this sudden thrill of triumph and delight which filled her breast, as Clement spoke to her, must be in some degree akin to love.

Yes, she loved him; but the bright things of this world were not for her. Love and Duty fought for the mastery of her pure Soul: and Duty was the conqueror.

“Oh, Clement!” she said, “do you forget who I am? Do you forget that letter which I showed you long ago, a letter addressed to my father when he was a transported felon, suffering the penalty of his crime? Do you forget who I am, and the taint that is in my blood; the disgrace that stains my name? I am proud to think that you have loved me, Clement Austin; but I am no fitting wife for you!”

“You are a noble, true-hearted woman, Margaret; and as such you are a fitting wife for a king. Besides, I am not such a grandee that I need look for high lineage in the wife of my choice. I am only a working man, content to accept a salary for my services; and looking forward by-and-by to a junior partnership in the house I serve. Margaret, my mother loves you; and she knows that you are the woman I seek to win as my wife. Forget the taint upon your dead father’s name as freely as I forget it, dearest; and only answer me one question; Is my love hopeless?”

“I will never consent to be your wife, Mr. Austin!” Margaret answered, in a low voice.

“Because you do not love me?”

“Because I will never cause you to blush for the history of your wife’s girlhood.”

“That is no answer to my question, Margaret,” said Clement Austin, seating himself by her side, and taking both her hands in his. “I must ask you to look me full in the face, Miss Wilmot,” he added, laughingly, drawing her towards him as he spoke; “for I begin to fancy you’re addicted to prevarication. Look me in the face, Madge darling, and tell me that you love me.”

But the blushing face would not be turned towards his own. Margaret’s head was still averted.

“Don’t ask me,” she pleaded; “don’t ask me. The day would come when you would regret your choice. I could not endure that. It would be too bitter. You have been very kind to me; and it would be a poor return for your kindness, if—-“

“If you were to make me unutterably happy, eh, Margaret? I think it would be only a proper act of gratitude. Haven’t I run all over Clapham, Brixton, and Wandsworth–to say nothing of an occasional incursion upon Putney–in order to procure you half-a-dozen pupils? And the very first favour I demand of you, which is only the gift of this clever little hand, you have the audacity to refuse me point-blank.”

He waited for a few moments, in the hope that Margaret would say something; but her face was still averted, and the trembling hand which Mr. Austin was holding struggled to release itself from his grasp.

“Margaret,” he said, very gravely, “perhaps I have been foolish and presumptuous in this business. In that case I fully deserve to be disappointed, however bitter the disappointment may be. If I have been wrong, Margaret; if I have been deceived by your sweet smile, your gentle words; for pity’s sake tell me that it is so, and I will forgive you for having involuntarily deceived me, and will try to cure myself of my folly. But I will not leave this room, I will not abandon the dear hope that has brought me here to-night, until you tell me plainly that you do not love me. Speak, Margaret, and speak fearlessly.”

But Margaret was still silent, only in the silence Clement Austin heard a low, sobbing sound.

“Margaret darling, you are crying. Ah! I know now that you love me, and I will not leave this room except as your plighted husband.”

“Heaven help me!” murmured Joseph Wilmot’s daughter; “Heaven lead me right! for I do love you, Clement, with all my heart”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BUYING DIAMONDS.