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Title: Under the Red Dragon: A Novel

Author: James Grant

Release date: January 2, 2017 [eBook #53874]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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RED DRAGON: A NOVEL ***

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(Cornell University Library)

UNDER THE RED DRAGON.

A Novel.

By JAMES GRANT,

AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "ONLY AN ENSIGN," ETC.

LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,

THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.
1873.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. THE INVITATION.
II. THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE.
III. BY EXPRESS.
IV. WINNY AND DORA LLOYD.
V. CRAIGADERYN COURT.
VI. THREE GRACES.
VII. PIQUE.
VIII. SUNDAY AT CRAIGADERYN.
IX. THE INITIALS.
X. A PERILOUS RAMBLE.
XI. THE FETE CHAMPETRE.
XII. ON THE CLIFFS.
XIII. A PROPOSAL.
XIV. THE UNFORESEEN.
XV. WHAT THE MOON SAW.
XVI. THE SECRET ENGAGEMENT.
XVII. WHAT FOLLOWED IT.
XVIII. GUILFOYLE.
XIX. TWO LOVES FOR ONE HEART.

XX. FEARS.
XXI. GEORGETTE FRANKLIN.
XXII. GEORGETTE FRANKLIN'S STORY.
XXIII. TURNING THE TABLES.
XXIV. BITTER THOUGHTS.
XXV. SURPRISES.
XXVI. WITHOUT PURCHASE.
XXVII. RECONCILIATION.
XVIII. ON BOARD THE URGENT.
XXIX. "ICH DIEN."
XXX. NEWS OF BATTLE.
XXXI. UNDER CANVAS.
XXXII. IN THE TRENCHES.
XXXIII. THE FLAG OF TRUCE.
XXXIV. GUILFOYLE REDIVIVUS.
XXXV. THE NIGHT BEFORE INKERMANN.
XXXVI. THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.
XXXVII. THE ANGEL OF HORROR.
XXXVIII. THE CAMP AGAIN.
XXXIX. A MAIL FROM ENGLAND.
XL. A PERILOUS DUTY.
XLI. THE CARAVANSERAI.
XLII. THE TCHERNIMORSKI COSSACKS.
XLIII. WINIFRED'S SECRET.
XLIV. THE CASTLE OF YALTA.
XLV. EVIL TIDINGS.
XLVI. DELILAH.
XLVII. VALERIE VOLHONSKI.
XLVIII. THE THREATS OF TOLSTOFF.
XLIX. BETROTHED.
L. CAUGHT AT LAST.
LI. FLIGHT.

LII. BEFORE SEBASTOPOL STILL.
LIII. NEWS FROM CRAIGADERYN.
LIV. THE ASSAULT.
LV. INSIDE THE REDAN.
LVI. A SUNDAY MORNING IN THE CRIMEA.
LVII. IN THE MONASTERY OF ST. GEORGE.
LVIII. HOME.
"A DREAM WHICH WAS NOT ALL A
LIX.
DREAM."
LX. A HONEYMOON.
LXI. "FOR VALOUR."

UNDER THE RED DRAGON.

CHAPTER I.--THE INVITATION.

"And she is to be there--nay, is there already; so one more chance is
given me to meet her. But for what?--to part again silently, and more
helplessly bewitched than ever, perhaps. Ah, never will she learn to love me
as I love her!" thought I, as I turned over my old friend's letter, not
venturing, however, to give utterance to this aloud, as the quizzical eyes of
Phil Caradoc were upon me.

"A penny for your thoughts, friend Harry?" said he, laughing; "try
another cigar, and rouse yourself. What the deuce is in this letter, that it
affects you so? Have you put a pot of money on the wrong horse?"

"Been jilted, had a bill returned, or what?" suggested Gwynne.

"Neither, fortunately," said I; "it is simply an invitation from Sir Madoc
Lloyd, which rather perplexes me."

At this time our regiment was then in the East, awaiting with the rest of
the army some movement to be made from Varna, either towards Bessarabia
or the Crimea--men's minds were undecided as to which, while her
Majesty's Ministers seemed to have no thought on the subject. Our depôt
belonged to the provisional battalion at Winchester, where Caradoc,
Gwynne, two other subalterns, and I, with some two hundred rank and file,
expected ere long the fiat of the fates who reign at the Horse Guards to send
us forth to win our laurels from the Russians, or, what seemed more
probable, a grave where the pest was then decimating our hapless army, in
the beautiful but perilous vale of Aladdyn, on the coast of Bulgaria. We had
just adjourned from mess, to have a quiet cheroot and glass of brandy-and-
water in my quarters, when I received from my man, Owen Evans, the letter
the contents of which awakened so many new hopes and tantalising wishes
in my heart, and on which so much of my fate in the future might hinge.

The bare, half-empty, or but partially-furnished single room accorded by
the barrack authorities to me as a subaltern, in that huge square edifice built
of old by Charles II. for a royal residence, seemed by its aspect but little
calculated to flatter the brilliant hopes in question. Though ample in size, it
was far from regal in its appurtenances--the barrack furniture, a camp-bed,
my baggage trunks piled in one corner, swords and a gun-case in another,
books, empty bottles, cigar-boxes, and a few pairs of boots ostentatiously
displayed in a row by Evans, making up its entire garniture, and by very
contrast in its meagreness compelling me to smile sadly at myself for the
ambitious ideas the letter of my old friend had suggested; and thus, for a
minute or so ignoring, or rather oblivious of, the presence of my two
companions, my eye wandered dreamily over the far-extended mass of old
brick houses and the gray church towers of the city, all visible from the
open window, and then steeped in the silver haze of the moonlight.

Sipping their brandy-and-water, each with a lighted cheroot between his
fingers, their shell-jackets open, and their feet unceremoniously planted on
a hard wooden chair, while they lounged back upon another, were Phil
Caradoc and Charley Gwynne. The first a good specimen of a handsome,
curly-haired, and heedless young Englishman, who shot, fished, hunted,
pulled a steady oar, and could keep his wicket against any man, while
shining without effort in almost every manly sport, was moreover a finished
gentleman and thorough good fellow. Less fashionable in appearance and
less dashing in manner, though by no means less soldier-like, Gwynne was
his senior by some ten years. He was more grave and thoughtful, for he had
seen more of the service and more of the world. Already a gray hair or so
had begun to mingle with the blackness of his heavy moustache, and the
lines of thought were traceable on his forehead and about the corners of his
keen dark-gray eyes; for he was a hard-working officer, who had been
promoted from the ranks when the regiment lay at Barbadoes, and was
every inch a soldier. And now they sat opposite me, waiting, with a half-
comical expression, for farther information as to their queries; and though
we were great friends, and usually had few secrets from each other, I began
to find that I had one now, and that a little reticence was necessary.

"You know Sir Madoc's place in North Wales?" said I.

"Of course," replied Caradoc; "there are few of ours who don't. Half the
regiment have been there as visitors at one time or other."

"Well, he wishes me to get leave between returns--for even longer if I
can--and run down there for a few weeks. 'Come early, if possible,' he adds;
'the girls insist on having an outdoor fête, and a lot of nice folks are coming.
Winny has arranged that we shall have a regimental band--the Yeomanry
one too, probably; then we are to have a Welsh harper, of course, and an
itinerant Merlin in the grotto, to tell every one's fortune, and to predict your
promotion and the C.B., if the seer remains sober. While I write, little Dora
is drawing up a programme of the dances, and marking off, she says, those
which she means to have with you.'"

Here I paused; but seeing they expected to hear more, for the writer was
a friend of us all, I read on coolly, and with an air of as much
unconsciousness as I could assume:

"Lady Estelle Cressingham is with us--by the way, she seems to know
you, and would, I think, like to see more of you. She is a very fine girl,
though not pure Welsh; but that she cannot help--it is her misfortune, not
her fault. We have also a fellow here, though I don't quite know how he got
introduced--Hawkesby Guilfoyle, who met her abroad at Ems, or Baden-
Baden, or one of those places where one meets everybody, and he seems
uncommonly attentive--so much so, that I wonder her mother permits it; but
he seems to have some special power or influence over the old lady, though
his name is not as yet, or ever likely to be, chronicled by Burke or Debrett.
In lieu of the goat which your regiment lost in Barbadoes, Winifred has a
beautiful pet one, a magnificent animal, which she means to present to the
Welsh Fusileers. Tell them so. And now, for yourself, I will take no refusal,
and Winny and Dora will take none either; so pack your traps, and come off
so soon as you can get leave. You need not, unless you choose, bring
horses; we have plenty of cavalry here. Hope you will be able to stay till the
12th, and have a shot at the grouse. Meanwhile, believe me, my dear
Hardinge, yours, &c., Madoc Meredyth Lloyd.'"

"Kindly written, and so like the jolly style of the old Baronet," said
Gwynne. "I have ridden with him once or twice in the hunting-field--on a
borrowed mount, of course," added poor Charley; who had only his pay,
and, being an enthusiast in his profession, was no lounger in the service.

"But what is there in all this that perplexes you?" asked Caradoc, who, I
suppose, had been attentively observing me. As he spoke, I coloured visibly,
feeling the while that I did so.

"The difficulty about leave, perhaps," I stammered.

"You'll go, of course," said Caradoc. "His place--Craigaderyn Court--is
one of the finest in North Wales; his daughters are indeed charming; and
you are certain to meet only people of the best style there."

"Yet he seems to doubt this--what is his name?--Guilfoyle, however,"
said I.

"What of that? One swallow--you know the adage. I should go, if I had
the invitation. His eldest daughter has, I have heard, in her own right, no

end of coal-mines somewhere, and many grassy acres of dairy farms in the
happy hunting-grounds of the midland counties."

"By Jove," murmured Gwynne, as he lit a fresh cigar; "she should be the
girl for me."

"But I have another inducement than even the fair Winny," said I.

"Oho! Lady--"

"Sir Madoc," said I hastily, "is an old friend of my family, and having
known me from infancy, he almost views me as a son. Don't mistake me," I
added, reddening with positive annoyance at the hearty laugh my admission
elicited; "Miss Lloyd and I are old friends too, and know each other a
deuced deal too well to tempt the perils of matrimony together. We have no
draughts ready for the East, nor will there be yet awhile; even our last
recruits are not quite licked into shape."

"No," sighed Gwynne, who had a special charge of the said "licking into
shape."

"And so, as the spring drills are over, I shall try my luck with old R----."

The person thus bluntly spoken of was the lieutenant-colonel of the
depôt battalion--one who kept a pretty tight hand over us all in general, and
the subalterns in particular.

"Stay," I exclaimed suddenly; "here is a postscript. 'Bring Caradoc of
yours with you, and Gwynne, too, if you can. Winny has mastered the duet
the former sent her, and is anxious to try it over with him."

"Caradoc will only be too happy, if the genius who presides over us in
the orderly-room is propitious," said Phil, colouring and laughing.

"Thank Sir Madoc for me, old fellow," said Gwynne, half sadly. "Tell
him that the Fates have made me musketry instructor, and that daily I have
that

'Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot'--

to set up Taffy and Giles Chawbacon in the Hythe position, and drill them
to fire without closing both eyes and blazing in the air."

"'In the lawn,' adds Sir Madoc, 'we are to have everything--from
waltzing to croquet (which, being an old fellow, and being above insteps
and all that sort of thing, I think the slowest game known), and from cliquot
and sparkling hock to bottled stout and bitter beer--unlimited flirtation too,
according to that wag, Dora.'"

"A tempting bill of fare, especially with two such hostesses," said
Gwynne; "but for me to quit Winchester is impossible. Even the stale dodge
of 'urgent private affairs' won't serve me. Such droll ideas of the service old
Sir Madoc must have, to think that three of us could leave the depôt, and all
at once too!"

"I shall try my luck, however."

"And I too," rejoined Caradoc. "I am entitled to leave. Price of ours will
take my guards for me. Wales will be glorious in this hot month. I did all
the dear old Principality last year--went over every foot of Snowdonia,
leaving nothing undone, from singing 'Jenny Jones' to dancing a Welsh jig
at a harvest-home."

"But you didn't go over Snowdonia with such a girl as Winifred Lloyd?"

"No, certainly," said he, laughing, and almost reddening again. "Nature,
even in my native Wales, must be more charming under such bright
auspices and happy influence. So Wales be it, if possible. London, of
course, is empty just now, and all who can get out of it will be yachting at
Cowes, shooting in Scotland, fishing in Norway, backing the red at Baden-
Baden, climbing the Matterhorn, or, it may be, the Peter Botte; killing
buffaloes in America, or voyaging up the Nile in canoes. Rotten-row will be
a desert, the opera a place of silence and cobwebs; and the irresistible desire
to go somewhere and be doing something, no matter what, which inspires

all young Britons about this time, renders Sir Madoc's invitation most
tempting and acceptable."

"Till the route comes for the East," said I.

"Potting the Ruskies, and turning my musketry theory into practice, are
likely to be my chief relaxations and excitement," said Gwynne, with a
good-natured laugh, as he applied his hand to the brandy bottle. "At present
I have other work in hand than flirting with countesses, or visiting
heiresses. But I envy you both, and heartily wish you all pleasure," he
added, as he shook hands and left us early, as he had several squads to put
through that most monotonous of all drill (shot drill perhaps excepted)--a
course of musketry--betimes in the morning.

We knew that Gwynne, who was a tall, thin, close-flanked, and square
shouldered, but soldier-like fellow, had nothing but his pay; and having a
mother to support, he was fain to slave as a musketry instructor, the five
shillings extra daily being a great pecuniary object to him. He was very
modest withal, and feared that, nathless his red coat and stalwart figure, his
chances of an heiress, even in Cottonopolis, were somewhat slender.

CHAPTER II.--THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE.

Philip Caradoc, perceiving that I was somewhat dull and disposed to
indulge in reverie, soon retired also, and we separated, intending to mature
our plans after morning parade next day, as I knew that secretly Caradoc
was very much attached to Winifred Lloyd, though that young lady by no
means reciprocated his affection. But I, seized by an irresistible impulse,
could not wait for our appointed time; so, the moment he was gone, I
opened my desk, wrote my application for leave, and desiring Evans to take

it to the orderly-room among his first duties on the morrow, threw open a
second window to admit the soft breeze of the summer night, lit another
cigar, and sat down to indulge in the train of thought Sir Madoc's
unexpected letter had awakened within my breast.

Yet I was not much given to reflection--far from it, perhaps; and it is
lucky for soldiers that they rarely indulge much in thought, or that the
system of their life is apt to preclude time or opportunity for it. I had come
home on a year's sick-leave from the West Indies, where the baleful night-
dews, and a fever caught in the rainy season, had nearly finished my career
while stationed at Up Park Camp; and now, through the friendly interest of
Sir Madoc, I had been gazetted to the Welsh Fusileers, as I preferred the
chances of the coming war and military service in any part of Europe to
broiling uselessly in the land of the Maroons. Our army was in the East, I
have said, encamped in the vale of Aladdyn, between Varna and the sea.
There camp-fever and the terrible cholera were filling fast with graves the
grassy plain and all the Valley of the Plague, as the Bulgarians so aptly
named it; and though I was not sorry to escape the perils encountered where
no honour could be won, I was pretty weary of the daily round at
Winchester, of barrack life, of in-lying pickets, guards, parades, and drill. I
had been seven years in the service, and deemed myself somewhat of a
veteran, though only five-and-twenty. I was weary too of belonging to a
provisional battalion, wherein, beyond the narrow circle of one's own depôt,
no two men have the slightest interest in each other, or seem to care if they
ever meet again, the whole organisation being temporary, and where the
duties of such a battalion--it being, in effect, a strict military school for
training recruits--are harassing to the newly-fledged, and a dreadful bore to
the fully-initiated, soldier. So, till the time came when the order would be,
"Eastward, ho!" Sir Madoc had opportunely offered me a little relaxation
and escape from all this; and though he knew it not, his letter might be
perhaps the means of doing much more--of opening up a path to happiness
and fortune, or leaving one closed for ever behind me in sorrow,
mortification, and bitterness of heart.

Good old Sir Madoc (or, as he loved to call himself, Madoc ap Meredyth
Lloyd) had in his youth been an unsuccessful lover of my mother, then the
pretty Mary Vassal, a belle in her second season; and now, though she had

long since passed away, he had a strong regard for me. For her sake he had
a deep and kindly interest in my welfare; and as he had no son (no heir to
his baronetcy, with all its old traditional honours,) he quite regarded me in
the light of one; and having two daughters, desired nothing more than that I
should cut the service and become one in reality. So many an act of
friendship and many a piece of stamped paper he had done for me, when in
the first years of my career, I got into scrapes with rogues upon the turf, at
billiards, and with those curses of all barracks, the children of Judea. Had I
seen where my own good fortune really lay, I should have fallen readily
into the snare so temptingly baited for me, a half-pennyless sub.; for
Winifred Lloyd was a girl among a thousand, so far as brilliant attractions
go, and, moreover, was not indisposed to view me favourably (at least, so
my vanity taught me). But this world is full of cross purposes; people are
too often blind to their profit and advantage, and, as Jaques has it, "thereby
hangs a tale."

All the attractions of bright-eyed Winny Lloyd, personal and pecuniary,
were at that time as nothing to me. I had casually, when idling in London,
been introduced to, and had met at several places, this identical Lady
Cressingham, whom my friend had mentioned so incidentally and in such
an offhand way in his letter; and that sentence it was which brought the
blood to my temples and quickened all the pulses of my heart.

She was very beautiful--as the reader will find when we meet her by-
and-by--and I had soon learned to love her, but without quite venturing to
say so; to love her as much as it was possible for one without hope of
ultimate success, and so circumstanced as I was--a poor gentleman, with
little more in the world save my sword and epaulettes. Doubtless she had
seen and read the emotion with which she had inspired me, for women have
keen perceptions in such matters; and though it seems as if it was on her
very smile that the mainspring of my existence turned, the whole affair
might be but a source of quiet amusement, of curiosity, or gratified vanity to
her. Yet, by every opportunity that the chances and artificial system of
society in town afforded, I had evinced this passion, the boldness of which
my secret heart confessed. Her portrait, a stately full-length, was in the
Academy, and how often had I gazed at it, till in fancy the limner's work
seemed to become instinct with life! Traced on the canvas by no unskilful

hand, it seemed to express a somewhat haughty consciousness of her own
brilliant beauty, and somehow I fancied a deuced deal more of her own
exalted position, as the only daughter of a deceased but wealthy peer, and as
if she rather disdained alike the criticism and the admiration of the crowd of
middle-class folks who thronged the Academy halls.

Visions of her--as I had seen her in the Countess's curtained box at the
opera, her rare and high-class beauty enhanced by all the accessories of
fashion and costume, by brilliance of light and the subtle flash of many a
gem amid her hair; when galloping along the Row on her beautiful satin-
skinned bay; or while driving after in the Park, with all those appliances and
surroundings that wealth and rank confer--came floating before me, with
the memory of words half-uttered, and glances responded to when eye met
eye, and told so much more than the tongue might venture to utter. Was it
mere vanity, or reality, that made me think her smile had brightened when
she met me, or that when I rode by her side she preferred me to the many
others who daily pressed forward to greet her amid that wonderful place,
the Row? Her rank, and the fact that she was an heiress, had no real weight
with me; nor did these fortuitous circumstances enhance her merit in my
eyes, though they certainly added to the difficulty of winning her. Was it
possible that the days of disinterested and romantic love, like those of
chivalry, were indeed past--gone with the days when

"It was a clerk's son, of low degree,
Loved the king's daughter of Hongarie?"

With the love that struggled against humble fortune in my heart, I had that
keenly sensitive pride which is based on proper self-respect. Hope I seemed
to have none. What hope could I, Harry Hardinge, a mere subaltern, with
little more than seven-and-sixpence per diem, have of obtaining such a wife
as Lady Estelle Cressingham, and, more than all, of winning the good
wishes of her over-awing mamma? Though "love will venture in when it
daurna weel be seen," I could neither be hanged nor reduced to the ranks for
my presumption, like the luckless Captain Ogilvie; who, according to the
Scottish ballad, loved the Duke of Gordon's bonnie daughter Jean. Yet
defeat and rejection might cover me with certain ridicule, leaving the stings
of wounded self-esteem to rankle all the deeper, by thrusting the partial

disparity of our relative positions in society more unpleasantly and
humiliatingly before me and the world; for there is a snobbery in rank that
is only equalled by the snobbery of wealth, and here I might have both to
encounter. And so, as I brooded over these things, some very levelling and
rather democratic, if not entirely Communal, ideas began to occur to me.
And yet, for the Countess and those who set store upon such empty facts, I
could have proved my descent from Nicholas Hardinge, knight, of King's
Newton, in Derbyshire; who in the time of Henry VII. held his lands by the
homely and most sanitary tenure of furnishing clean straw for his Majesty's
bed when he and his queen, Elizabeth of York, passed that way, together
with fresh rushes from the margin of the Trent wherewith to strew the floor
of the royal apartment. But this would seem as yesterday to the fair Estelle,
who boasted of an ancestor, one Sir Hugh Cressingham, who, as history
tells us, was defeated and flayed by the Scots after the battle of Stirling;
while old Sir Madoc Lloyd, who doubtless traced himself up to Noah ap
Lamech, would have laughed both pedigrees to scorn.

Leaving London, I had striven to stifle as simply absurd the passion that
had grown within me, and had joined at Winchester in the honest and
earnest hope that ere long the coming campaign would teach me to forget
the fair face and witching eyes, and, more than all, the winning manner that
haunted me; and now I was to be cast within their magic influence once
more, and doubtless to be hopelessly lost. To have acted wisely, I should
have declined the invitation and pleaded military duty; yet to see her once,
to be with her once again, without that cordon of guardsmen and cavaliers
who daily formed her mounted escort in Rotten-row, and with all the
chances our quiet mutual residence in a sequestered country mansion, when
backed by all the influence and friendship of Sir Madoc, must afford me,
proved a temptation too strong for resistance or for my philosophy; so, like
the poor moth, infatuated and self-doomed, I resolved once more to rush at
the light which dazzled me.

"She seems to know you, and would like to see more of you," ran the
letter of Sir Madoc. I read that line over and over again, studying it
minutely in every way. Were those dozen words simply the embodiment of
his own ideas, or were they her personally expressed wish put literally into
writing? Were they but the reflex of some casual remark? Even that

conviction would bring me happiness. And so, after my friends left me, I sat
pondering thus, blowing long rings of concentric smoke in the moonlight;
and on those words of Sir Madoc raising not only a vast and aerial castle,
but a "bower of bliss," as the pantomimes have it at Christmas time.

But how about this Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle? was my next thought.
Could his attentions be tolerated by such a stately and watchful dowager as
the Countess of Naseby? Could Sir Madoc actually hint that such as he
might have a chance of success, when I had none? The idea was too
ridiculous; for I had heard whispers of this man before, in London and
about the clubs, where he was generally deemed to be a species of
adventurer, the exact source of whose revenue no one knew. One fact was
pretty certain: he was unpleasantly successful at billiards and on the turf. If
he--to use his own phraseology--was daring enough to enter stakes for such
a prize as Lord Cressingham's daughter, why should not I?

Thus, in reverie of a somewhat chequered kind, I lingered on, while the
shadows of the cathedral, its lofty tower and choir, the spire of St.
Lawrence, and many other bold features of the view began to deepen or
become more uncertain on the city roofs below, and from amid which their
masses stood upward in a flood of silver sheen. Ere long the full-orbed
moon--that seemed to float in beauty beneath its snow-white clouds,
looking calmly down on Winchester, even as she had done ages ago, ere
London was a capital, and when the white city was the seat of England's
Saxon, Danish, and Norman dynasties, of Alfred's triumphs and Canute's
glories--began at last to pale and wane; and the solemn silence of the
morning--for dewy morning it was now--was broken only by the chime of
the city bells and clocks, and by the tread of feet in the gravelled barrack-
yard, as the reliefs went round, and the sentinels were changed.

The first red streak of dawn was beginning to steal across the east; the
bugles were pealing reveilles, waking all the hitherto silent echoes of the
square; and just about the time when worthy and unambitious Charley
Gwynne would be parading his first squad for "aiming drill" at sundry
bull's-eyes painted on the barrack-walls, I retired to dream over a possible
future, and to hope that if the stars were propitious, at the altar of that
somewhat dingy fane, St. George's, Hanover-square, I might yet become the

son-in-law of the late Earl of Naseby, Baron Cressingham of Cotteswold, in
the county of Northampton, and of Walcot Park in Hants, Lord-lieutenant,
custos rotulorum, and so forth, as I had frequently and secretly read in the
mess-room copy of Sir Bernard Burke's thick royal octavo; "the
Englishman's Bible" according to Thackeray, and, as I greatly feared, the
somewhat exclusive libro d'oro of Mamma Cressingham, who was apt to
reverence it pretty much as the Venetian nobles did the remarkable volume
of that name.

CHAPTER III--By EXPRESS.

Leave granted, our acceptance of Sir Madoc's invitation duly
telegraphed--"wired," as the phrase is now--our uniforms doffed and mufti
substituted, the morning of the second day ensuing saw Caradoc and myself
on the Birmingham railway en route for Chester; the exclusive occupants of
a softly cushioned compartment, where, by the influence of a couple of
florins slipped deftly and judiciously into the palm of an apparently
unconscious and incorruptible official, we could lounge at our ease, and
enjoy without intrusion the Times, Punch, or our own thoughts, and the
inevitable cigar. Though in mufti we had uniform with us; we believed in it
then, and in its influence; for certain German ideas of military tailoring
subsequent to the Crimean war had not shorn us of our epaulettes, and
otherwise reduced the character of our regimentals to something akin to the
livery of a penny postman or a railway guard.

Somehow, I felt more hopeful of my prospects, when, with the bright
sunshine of July around us, I found myself spinning at the rate of fifty miles
per hour by the express train--the motion was almost as imperceptible as the
speed was exhilarating--and swiftly passed the scenes on either side, the
broad green fields of growing grain, the grassy paddocks, the village

churches, the snug and picturesque homesteads of Warwick and
Worcestershire. We glided past Rugby, where Caradoc had erewhile conned
his tasks in that great Elizabethan pile which is built of white brick with
stone angles and cornices, and where in the playing fields he had gallantly
learned to keep his wicket with that skill which made him our prime
regimental bat and bowler too. Coventry next, where of course we laughed
as we thought of "peeping Tom" and Earl Leofric's pretty countess, when
we saw its beautiful and tapering spires rise over the dark and narrow
streets below. Anon, we paused amid the busy but grimy world of
Birmingham, which furnishes half the world with the implements of
destruction; Stafford, with its ruined castle on a well-wooded eminence; and
ere long we halted in quaint old Chester by the Dee, where the stately red
stone tower of the cathedral rises darkly over its picturesque thoroughfares
of the middle ages. There the rail went no farther then; but a carriage sent
by Sir Madoc awaited us at the station, and we had before us the prospect of
a delightful drive for nearly thirty miles amid the beautiful Welsh hills ere
we reached his residence.

"This whiff of the country is indeed delightful!" exclaimed Caradoc, as
we bowled along on a lovely July evening, the changing shadows of the
rounded hills deepening as the sun verged westward; "it makes one half
inclined to cut the service, and turn farmer or cattle-breeding squire--even
to chuck ambition, glory, and oneself away upon a landed heiress, if such
could be found ready to hand."

"Even upon Winifred Lloyd, with her dairy-farms in the midland
counties, eh?"

Phil coloured a little, but laughed good-humouredly as he replied,

"Well, I must confess that she is somewhat more than my weakness--at
present."

At Aber-something we found a relay of fresh horses, sent on by Sir
Madoc, awaiting us, the Welsh roads not being quite so smooth as a billiard-
table; and there certain hoarse gurgling expletives, uttered by ostlers and
stable-boys, might have warned us that we were in the land of Owen and
Hughes, Griffiths and Davies, and all the men of the Twelve Royal Tribes,

even if there had not been the green mountains towering into the blue sky,
and the pretty little ivy-covered inn, at the porch of which sat a white-haired
harper (on the watch for patrons and customers), performing the invariable
"Jenny Jones" or Ar-hyd-y-nos (the live-long night), and all the while
keeping a sharp Celtic eye to the expected coin.

Everything around us indicated that we were drawing nearer to the abode
of Sir Madoc, and that ere long--in an hour or so, perhaps--I should again
see one who, by name as well as circumstance, was a star that I feared and
hoped would greatly influence all my future. The Eastern war, and, more
than all, the novelty of any war after forty years of European peace,
occupied keenly the minds of all thinking people. My regiment was already
gone, and I certainly should soon have to follow it. I knew that, individually
and collectively, all bound for the seat of the coming strife had a romantic
and even melancholy interest, in the hearts of women especially; and I was
not without some hope that this sentiment might add to my chances of
finding favour with the rather haughty Estelle Cressingham.

It was a glorious summer evening when our open barouche swept along
the white dusty road that wound by the base of Mynedd Hiraethrog, that
wild and bleak mountain chain which rises between the Dee and its
tributaries the Elwey and the Aled. Westward in the distance towered blue
Snowdon, above the white floating clouds of mist, with all its subordinate
peaks. In the immediate foreground were a series of beautiful hills that were
glowing, and, to the eye, apparently vibrating, under a burning sunset. The
Welsh woods were in all the wealth of their thickest foliage--the
umbrageous growth of centuries; and where the boughs cast their deepest
shadows, the dun deer and the fleet hare lurked among the fragrant fern, and
the yellow sunlight fell in golden patches on the passing runnel, that leaped
flashing from rock to rock, to mingle with the Alwen, or crept slowly and
stealthily under the long rank grass towards Llyn-Aled.

That other accessories might not be wanting to remind us that we were in
the land of the Cymri, we passed occasionally the Carneddau, or heaps of
stones that mark the old places of battle or burial; and perched high on the
hills the Hafodtai or summer farms, where enormous flocks of sheep--the
boasted Welsh mutton--were pasturing. Then we heard at times the

melancholy sound of the horn, by which inmates summon the shepherds to
their meals, and the notes of which, when waking the echoes of the silent
glen, have an effect so weird and mournful.

"By Jove, but we have a change here, Phil," said I, "a striking change,
indeed, from the hot and dusty gravelled yard of Winchester barracks, the
awkward squads at incessant drill with dumb-bell, club, or musket; the
pipeclay, the pacing-stick, and the tap of the drum!"

Through a moss-grown gateway, the design of Inigo Jones, we turned
down the long straight avenue of limes that leads to Craigaderyn; a fine old
mansion situated in a species of valley, its broad lawn overlooked by the
identical craig from which it takes its name, "the Rock of Birds," a lofty and
insulated mass, the resort of innumerable hawks, wood-pigeons, and even
of hoarse-croaking cormorants from the cliffs about Orme's Head and
Llandulas. On its summit are the ruins of an ancient British fort, wherein Sir
Jorwerth Goch (i. e. Red Edward) Lloyd of Craigaderyn had exterminated a
band of Rumpers and Roundheads in the last year of Charles I., using as a
war-cry the old Welsh shout of "Liberty, loyalty, and the long head of hair!"
On either side of the way spread the lawn, closely shorn and carefully
rolled, the turf being like velvet of emerald greenness, having broad
winding carriage-ways laid with gravel, the bright red of which contrasted
so strongly with the verdant hue of the grass. The foliage of the timber was
heavy and leafy, and there, at times, could be seen the lively squirrel leaping
from branch to branch of some ancient oak, in the hollow of which lay its
winter store of nuts; the rabbit bounding across the path, from root to fern
tuft; and the bela-goed, or yellow-breasted martin (still a denizen of the old
Welsh woods), with rounded ears and sharp white claws, the terror of the
poultry-yard, appeared occasionally, despite the gamekeeper's gun. In one
place a herd of deer were browsing near the half-leafless ruins of a mighty
oak--one so old, that Owen Glendower had once reconnoitred an English
force from amid its branches.

We had barely turned into the avenue, when a gentleman and two ladies,
all mounted, came galloping from a side path to meet us. He and one of his
companions cleared the wire fence in excellent style by a flying leap; but
the other, who was less pretentiously mounted, adroitly opened the iron gate

with the handle of her riding switch, and came a few paces after them to
meet us. They proved to be Sir Madoc and his two daughters, Winifred and
Dora.

"True in the direction of time, 'by Shrewsbury clock'!" said he, cantering
up; "welcome to Craigaderyn, gentlemen! We were just looking for you."

He was a fine hale-looking man, about sixty years old, with a ruddy
complexion, and a keen, clear, dark eye; his hair, once of raven blackness,
was white as silver now, though very curly or wavy still; his eyebrows were
bushy and yet dark as when in youth. He was a Welsh gentleman, full of
many local prejudices and sympathies; a man of the old school--for such a
school has existed in all ages, and still exists even in ours of rapid progress,
scientific marvels, and moneymaking. His manners were easy and polished,
yet without anything either of style or fashion about them; for he was
simple in all his tastes and ways, and was almost as plainly attired as one of
his own farmers. His figure and costume, his rubicund face, round merry
eyes, and series of chins, his amplitude of paunch and stunted figure, his
bottle-green coat rather short in the skirts, his deep waistcoat and low-
crowned hat, were all somewhat Pickwickian in their character and tout-
ensemble, save that in lieu of the tights and gaiters of our old friend he wore
white corded breeches, and orthodox dun-coloured top-boots with silver
spurs, and instead of green goggles had a gold eyeglass dangling at the end
of a black-silk ribbon. Strong riding-gloves and a heavy hammer-headed
whip completed his attire.

"Glad to see you, Harry, and you too, Mr. Caradoc," resumed Sir Madoc,
who was fond of remembering that which Phil--more a man of the world--
was apt to forget or to set little store on--that he was descended from Sir
Matthew Caradoc, who in the days of Perkin Warbeck (an epoch but as
yesterday in Sir Madoc's estimation) was chancellor of Glamorgan and
steward of Gower and Helvie; for what true Welshman is without a
pedigree? "Let me look at you again, Harry. God bless me! is it possible
that you, a tall fellow with a black moustache, can be the curly fair-haired
boy I have so often carried on my back and saddle-bow, and taught to make
flies of red spinner and drakes' wings, when we trouted together at Llyn
Cwellyn among the hills yonder?"

"I think, papa, you would be more surprised if you found him a curly-
pated boy still," said Miss Lloyd.

"And it is seven years since he joined the service; what a fine fellow he
has grown!"

"Papa, you are quite making Mr. Hardinge blush!" said Dora, laughing.

"Almost at the top of the lieutenants, too; there is luck for you!" he
continued.

"More luck than merit, perhaps; more the Varna fever than either, Sir
Madoc," said I, as he slowly relinquished my hand, which he had held for a
few seconds in his, while looking kindly and earnestly into my face.

It was well browned by the sun and sea of the Windward Isles, tolerably
well whiskered and moustached too; so I fear that if the good old gentleman
was seeking for some resemblance to the sweet Mary Vassal of the past
times, he sought in vain. Our horses were all walking now; Sir Madoc rode
on one side of the barouche, and his two daughters on the other.

"You saw my girls last season in town," said he; "but when you were last
here, Winifred was in her first long frock, and Dora little more than a baby."

"But Craigaderyn is all unchanged, though we may be," said Winifred,
whose remark had some secret point in it so far as referred to me.

"And Wales is unchanged too," added Dora; "Mr. Hardinge will find the
odious hat of the women still lingers in the more savage regions; the
itinerant harper and the goat too are not out of fashion; and we still wear our
leek on the first of March."

"And long may all this be so!" said her father; "for since those pestilent
railways have come up by Shrewsbury and Chester, with their tides of
tourists, greed, dissipation, and idleness are on the increase, and all our
good old Welsh customs are going to Caerphilly and the devil! Without the
wants of over-civilisation we were contented; but now--Gwell y chydig gait
rad, na llawr gan avrard," he added with something like an angry sigh,

quoting a Welsh proverb to the effect that a little with a blessing is better
than much with prodigality.

CHAPTER IV.--WINNY AND DORA LLOYD.

Both girls were very handsome, and for their pure and brilliant
complexion were doubtless indebted to the healthful breeze that swept the
green sides of the Denbigh hills, together with an occasional soupçon of
that which comes from the waters of the Irish Sea.

It is difficult to say whether Winifred could be pronounced a brunette or
a blonde, her skin was so exquisitely fair, while her splendid hair was a
shade of the deepest brown, and her glorious sparkling eyes were of the
darkest violet blue. Their normal expression was quiet and subdued; they
only flashed up at times, and she was a girl that somehow every colour
became. In pure white one might have thought her lovely, and lovelier still,
perhaps, in black or blue or rose, or any other tint or shade. Her fine lithe
figure appeared to perfection in her close-fitting habit of dark-blue cloth,
and the masses of her hair being tightly bound up under her hat, revealed
the contour of her slender neck and delicately formed ear.

Dora was a smaller and younger edition of her sister--more girlish and
more of a hoyden, with her lighter tresses, half golden in hue, floating loose
over her shoulders and to beneath her waist from under a smart little hat, the
feather and fashion of which imparted intense piquancy to the character of
her somewhat irregular but remarkably pretty face and--we must admit it--
rather retroussé nose.

Pride and a little reserve were rather the predominant style of the elder
and dark-eyed sister; merriment, fun, and rather noisy flirtation were that of

Dora, who permitted herself to laugh at times when her sister would barely
have smiled, and to say things on which the other would never have
ventured; but this espièglerie and a certain bearing of almost rantipole--if
one may use such a term--were thought to become her.

Winifred rode a tall wiry nag, a hand or two higher than her father's stout
active hunter; but Dora preferred to scamper about on a beautiful Welsh
pony, the small head, high withers, flat legs, and round hoofs of which it no
doubt inherited, as Sir Madoc would have said, from the celebrated horse
Merlin.

"Hope you'll stay with us till the twelfth of next month," said he. "The
grouse are looking well."

"Our time is doubtful, our short leave conditional, Sir Madoc," replied
Phil Caradoc, who, however, was not looking at the Baronet, but at
Winifred, in the hope that the alleged brevity of his visit might find him
some tender interest in her eyes, or stir some chord by its suggestiveness in
her breast; but Winny, indifferent apparently to separation and danger so far
as he was concerned, seemed intent on twirling the silky mane of her horse
with the lash of her whip.

"Then, in about a fortnight after, we shall be blazing at the partridges,"
resumed Sir Madoc, to tempt us. "But matters are looking ill for the
pheasants in October, for the gamekeeper tells me that the gapes have been
prevalent among them. The poults were hatched early, and the wet weather
from the mountains has made more havoc than our guns are likely to do."

"Long before that time, Sir Madoc, I hope we shall be making havoc
among the Russians," replied Phil, still glancing covertly at Miss Lloyd.

"Ah, I hope not!" said she, roused apparently this time. "I look forward
to this most useless war with horror and dismay. So many dear friends have
gone, so many more are going, it makes one quite sad! O, I shall never
forget that morning in London when the poor Guards marched!"

This was addressed, not to Phil Caradoc, but to me.

"We knew that we should meet you," said she, colouring, and adding a
little hastily, "We asked Lady Estelle to accompany us; but--"

"She is far too--what shall I call it?--aristocratic or unimpressionable to
think of going to meet any one," interrupted her sister.

"Don't say so, Dora! Yet I thought the loveliness of the evening would
have tempted her. And Bob Spurrit the groom has broken a new pad
expressly for her, by riding it for weeks with a skirt."

So there was no temptation but "the loveliness of the evening," thought
I; while Dora said,

"But she preferred playing over to Mr. Guilfoyle that piece of German
music he gave her yesterday."

All this was not encouraging. She knew that I was coming--a friend in
whom she could not help having, from the past, rather more than a common
interest--and yet she had declined to accompany those frank and kindly
girls. Worse than all, perhaps she had at that moment this Mr. Hawkesby
Guilfoyle hanging over her admiringly at the piano, while she played his
music, presented to her doubtless with some suggestive, secret or implied,
meaning in the sentiment or the title of it. Jealousy readily suggested much
of this, and a great deal more. That Lady Estelle was at Craigaderyn Court
had been my prevailing idea when accepting so readily my kind friend's
invitation. Then I should see her in a very little time now! I had been
resolved to watch well how she received me, though it would be no easy
task to read the secret thoughts of one so well and so carefully trained to
keep all human emotions under perfect control, outwardly at least--a
"Belgravian thoroughbred," as I once heard Sir Madoc term her; but if she
changed colour, however faintly, if there was the slightest perceptible
tremor in her voice, or a flash of the eye, which indicated that which, under
the supervision of the usually astute dowager her mother, she dared scarcely
to betray--an interest in one such as me--it would prove at least that my
presence was not indifferent to her. Thus much only did I hope, and of such
faint hope had my heart been full until now, when I heard all this; and if I
was piqued by her absence, I was still more by the cause of it; though had I
reflected for a moment, I ought to have known that the very circumstances

under which I had last parted from her in London, with an expected avowal
all but uttered and hovering on my lips when leading her to the carriage,
were sufficient to preclude a girl so proud as she from coming to meet me,
even in the avenue, and when accompanied by Winifred and Dora Lloyd.

"Is Mr. Guilfoyle a musician?" I asked.

"A little," replied Dora; "plays and sings too; but I can't help laughing at
him--and it is so rude."

"He says that he is a friend of yours, Harry Hardinge; is he so?' asked Sir
Madoc, with his bushy brows depressed for a moment.

"Well, if losing to him once at pool mysteriously, also on a certain horse,
while he scratched out of its engagements another on which I stood sure to
win, make a friend, he is one. I have met him at his club, and should think
that he--he--"

"Is not a good style of fellow, in fact," said Sir Madoc in a low tone, and
rather bluntly.

"Perhaps so; nor one I should like to see at Craigaderyn Court." I cared
not to add "especially in the society of Lady Cressingham," after whom he
dangled, on the strength of some attentions or friendly services performed
on the Continent.

"And so you lost money to him? We have a Welsh proverb beginning,
Dyled ar bawb--"

"We shall have barely time to dress, dear papa," said Miss Lloyd,
increasing the speed of her horse, as she seemed to dread the Welsh
proclivities of her parent; "and remember that we have quite a dinner-party
to-day."

"Yes," added Dora; "two country M.P.s are coming; but, O dear! they
will talk nothing but blue-book with papa, or about the crops, fat pigs, and
the county pack; and shake their heads about ministerial policy and our
foreign prestige, whatever that may be. Then we have an Indian colonel

with only half a liver, the doctor says, and two Indian judges without any at
all."

"Dora!" exclaimed Miss Lloyd in a tone of expostulation. "Well, it is
what the doctor said," persisted Dora; "and if he is wrong can I help it?"

"But people don't talk of such things."

"Then people shouldn't have them."

"A wild Welsh girl this," said Sir Madoc; "neither schooling in
Switzerland nor London has tamed her."

"And we are to have several county gentlemen who are great in the
matters of turnips, top-dressing, and Welsh mutton; four young ladies, each
with a flirtation on hand; and four old ones, deep in religion and scandal,
flannel and coals for the poor; so, Mr. Hardinge, you and Mr. Caradoc will
be quite a double relief to us--to me, certainly."

"O, Dora, how your tongue runs on!" exclaimed Winifred.

"And then we have Lady Naseby to act as materfamilias, and play
propriety for us all in black velvet and diamonds. Winny, eldest daughter of
the house, is evidently unequal to the task."

"And the coming fête," said I, "is it in honour of anything in particular?"

"Yes, something very particular indeed," replied Dora.

"Of what?"

"Me."

"You!"

"My birthday--I shall be eighteen," she added, shaking back the heavy
masses of her golden hair.

"And she has actually promised to have one round dance with Lord
Pottersleigh," said Winny, laughing heartily.

"I did but promise out of mischief; I trust, however, the Viscount will
leave off his goloshes for that day, though we are to dance on the grass, or I
hope he may forget all about it. Old Potter, I call him," added the young
lady in a sotto-voce to me, "at least, when the Cressinghams are not
present."

"Why them especially?"

"Because he is such a particular friend of theirs."

This was annoyance number two; for this wealthy but senile old peer had
been a perpetual adorer of Lady Estelle, favoured too, apparently, by her
mother, and had been on more than one occasion a bête noire to me; and
now I was to meet him here again!

"Papa has told you that I mean to part with my poor pet goat--Carneydd
Llewellyn, so called from the mountain whence he came. He is to be sent to
the regiment--in your care, too."

"Why deprive yourself of a favourite? Why deprive it of such care as
yours? Among soldiers," said I, "the poor animal will sorely miss the
kindness and caresses you bestow upon it."

"I shall be so pleased to think that our Welsh Fusileers, in the lands to
which they are going, will have something so characteristic to remind them
of home, of the wild hills of Wales, perhaps to make them think of the
donor. Besides, papa says the corps has never been without this emblem of
the old Principality since it was raised in the year of the Revolution."

"Most true; but how shall I--how shall we--ever thank you?"

I could see that her nether lip--a lovely little pouting lip it was--quivered
slightly, and that her eyes were full of strange light, though bent downward
on her horse's mane; and now I felt that, for reasons apparent enough, I was
cold, even unkind, to this warm-hearted girl; for we had been better and

dearer friends before we knew the Cressinghams. She checked her horse a
little abruptly, and began to address some of the merest commonplaces to
Phil Caradoc; who, with his thick brown curly hair parted in the middle, his
smiling handsome face and white regular teeth, was finding great favour in
the eyes of the laughing Dora. But now we were drawing near Craigaderyn
Court. The scenery was Welsh, and yet the house and all its surroundings
were in character genuinely English, though to have hinted so much might
have piqued Sir Madoc. The elegance and comfort of the mansion were
English, and English too was the rich verdure of the velvet lawn and the
stately old chase, the trees of which were ancient enough--some of them at
least--to have sheltered Owen Glendower, or echoed to the bugle of
Llewellyn ap Seisalt, whose tall grave-stone stands amid the battle-mounds
on grassy Castell Coch.

At a carved and massive entrance-door we alighted, assisted the ladies to
dismount, and then, gathering up their trains, they swept merrily up the
steps and into the house, to prepare for dinner; while Sir Madoc, ere he
permitted us to retire, though the first bell had been rung, led us into the
hall; a low-ceiled, irregular, and oak-panelled room, decorated with deers'
antlers, foxes' brushes crossed, and stuffed birds of various kinds, among
others a gigantic golden eagle, shot by himself on Snowdon. This long
apartment was so cool that, though the season was summer, a fire burned in
the old stone fireplace; and on a thick rug before it lay a great, rough, red
eyed staghound, that made one think of the faithful brach that saved
Llewellyn's heir. The windows were half shaded by scarlet hangings; a
hunting piece or two by Sneyders, with pictures of departed favourites,
horses and dogs, indicated the tastes of the master of the house and of his
ancestors; and there too was the skull of the last wolf killed in Wales, more
than a century ago, grinning on an oak bracket. The butler, Owen Gwyllim,
who occasionally officiated as a harper, especially at Yule, was speedily in
attendance, and Sir Madoc insisted on our joining him in a stiff glass of
brandy-and-water, "as a whet," he said; and prior to tossing off which he
gave a hoarse guttural toast in Welsh, which his butler alone understood,
and at which he laughed heartily, with the indulged familiarity of an old
servant.

I then retired to make an unusually careful toilette; to leave nothing
undone or omitted in the way of cuffs, studs, rings, and so forth, in all the
minor details of masculine finery; hearing the while from a distance the
notes of a piano in another wing of the house come floating through an
open window. The air was German;--could I doubt whose white fingers
were gliding over the keys, and who might be standing by, and feeling
himself, perhaps, somewhat master of the situation?

CHAPTER V.--CRAIGADERYN COURT.

Apart from Welsh fable and tradition, the lands of Craigaderyn had been
in possession of Sir Madoc's family for many ages, and for more
generations of the line of Lloyd; but the mansion, the Court itself, is not
older than the Stuart times, and portions of it were much more recent,
particularly the library, the shelves of which were replete with all that a
gentleman's library should contain; the billiard-room and gun-room, where
all manner of firearms, from the old long-barrelled fowling-piece of Anne's
time down to Joe Manton and Colt's revolver, stood side by side on racks;
the kennels, where many a puppy yelped; and the stable-court, where hoofs
rang and stall-collars jangled, and where Mr. Bob Spurrit--a long-bodied,
short-and-crooked legged specimen of the Welsh groom--reigned supreme,
and watered and corned his nags by the notes of an ancient clock in the
central tower--a clock said to have been brought as spoil from the church of
Todtenhausen, by Sir Madoc's grandfather, after he led the Welsh Fusileers
at the battle of Minden. Masses of that "rare old plant, the ivy green,"
heavy, leafy, and overlapping each other, shrouded great portions of the
house. Oriels, full of small panes and quaint coats of arms, abutted here and
there; while pinnacles and turrets, vanes, and groups of twisted, fluted, or
garlanded stone chimney stacks, rose sharply up to break the sky-line and
many a panel and scutcheon of stone were there, charged with the bend,

ermine, and pean of Lloyd--the lion rampant wreathed with oak, and armed
with a sword--and the heraldic cognizance of many a successive
matrimonial alliance.

Some portions of the house, where the walls were strong and the lower
storey vaulted, were associated, of course, with visits from Llewellyn and
Owen Glendower; and there also abode--a ghost. The park, too, was not
without its old memories and traditions. Many of its trees were descendants
of an ancient grove dedicated to Druidic worship; and bones frequently
found there were alleged by some to be the relics of human sacrifice, by
others to be those of Roman or of Saxon warriors slain by the sturdy
Britons who, under Cadwallader, Llewellyn of the Torques, or some other
hero of the Pendragonate, had held, in defiance of both, the caer or fort on
the summit of Craigaderyn. But the woodlands on which Sir Madoc mostly
prided himself were those of the old acorn season, when Nature planted her
own wild forests, and sowed the lawn out of her own lawns, as some writer
has it. They were unquestionably the most picturesque, but the trim and
orderly chase was not without its beauties too, and there had many grand
Eisteddfoddiau been held under the auspices of Sir Madoc, and often fifty
harpers at a time had made the woods ring to "The noble Race of Shenkin,"
or "The March of the Men of Harlech."

The old Court and its surroundings were such as to make one agree with
what Lord Lyttelton wrote of another Welsh valley, where "the mountains
seemed placed to guard the charming retreat from invasions; and where,
with the woman one loves, the friend of one's heart, and a good library, one
might pass an age, and think it a day."

The ghost was a tall thin figure, dressed somewhat in the costume of
Henry VIII.'s time; but his full-skirted doublet with large sleeves, the cap
bordered with ostrich feathers, the close tight hose, and square-toed shoes,
were all deep black, hence his, or its, aspect was sombre in the extreme,
shadowy and uncertain too, as he was only visible in the twilight of eve, or
the first dim and similarly uncertain light of the early dawn; and these
alleged appearances have been chiefly on St. David's day, the 1st of March,
and were preceded by the sound of a harp about the place--but a harp
unseen. He was generally supposed to leave, or be seen quitting, a portion

of the house, where the old wall was shrouded with ivy, and to walk or glide
swiftly and steadily, without casting either shadow or foot-mark on the
grass, towards a certain ancient tree in the park, where he disappeared--
faded, or melted out of sight. On the wall beneath the ivy being examined, a
door--the portion of an earlier structure--was discovered to have been built
up, but none knew when or why; and tradition averred that those who had
seen him pass--for none dared follow--towards the old tree, could make out
that his figure and face were those of a man in the prime of life, but the
expression of the latter was sad, solemn, resolute, and gloomy.

The origin of the legend, as told to me by Winifred Lloyd, referred to a
period rather remote in history, and was to the following effect. Some
fifteen miles southward from Craigaderyn is a quaint and singular village
named Dinas Mowddwy, situated very strangely on the shelf of a steep
mountain overlooking the Dyfi stream--a lofty spot commanding a view of
the three beautiful valleys of the Ceryst; but this place was in past times the
abode and fortress of a peculiar and terrible tribe, called the Gwylliad
Cochion, or Red-haired Robbers, who made all North Wales, but more
particularly their own district, a by-word and reproach, from the great
extent and savage nature of the outrages they committed by fire and sword;
so that to this day, we are told, there may be seen, in some of the remote
mountain hamlets, more especially in Cemmaes near the sea, the well-
sharpened scythe-blades, which were placed in the chimney-corners
overnight, to be ready for them in case of a sudden attack. They were great
crossbowmen, those outlaws, and never failed in their aim; and so, like the
broken clans upon the Highland border, they levied black mail on all, till the
night of the 1st of March, 1534; when, during a terrific storm of thunder,
lightning, and wind, Sir Jorwerth Lloyd of Craigaderyn, John Wynne ap
Meredydd, and a baron named Owen, scaled the mountain at the head of
their followers, fell on them sword in hand, and after slaying a great
number, hung one hundred of them in a row. One wretched mother, a red-
haired Celt, begged hard and piteously to have her youngest son spared; but
Sir Jorwerth was relentless, so the young robber perished with the rest.
Then the woman rent her garments, and laying bare her bosom, said it had
nursed other sons and daughters, who would yet wash their hands in the
blood of them all. Owen was waylaid and slain by them at a place named to
this day Llidiart-y-Barwn, or the Baron's Gate, and Meredydd fell soon

after; but for Lloyd the woman, who was a reputed witch, had prepared
another fate, as if aiming at the destruction of his soul as well as his body;
for after his marriage with Gwerfyl Owen, he fell madly in love with a
golden-haired girl whom he met when hunting in the forest near
Craigaderyn; and as he immediately relinquished all attendance at church
and all forms of prayer, and seemed to be besotted by her, the girl was
averred to be an evil spirit, as she was never seen save in his company, and
then only (by those who watched and lurked) "in the glimpses of the moon."

On the third St. David's eve after the slaughter at Dinas Mowddwy, he
was seated with Gwerfyl in her chamber, listening to a terrific storm of
wind and rain that swept through the valley, overturning the oldest trees,
and shaking the walls of the ancient house, while the lightning played above
the dim summits of Snowdon, and every mountain stream and rhaidr, or
cataract, rolled in foam and flood to Llyn Alwen or the Conway.

On a tabourette near his knee she sat, lovingly clasping his hand between
her own two, for he seemed restless, petulant, and gloomy, and had his
cloak and cap at hand, as if about to go forth, though the weather was
frightful.

"Jorwerth," said she softly, "the last time there was such a storm as this
was on that terrible night--you remember?"

"When we cut off the Gwylliad Cochion--yes, root and branch, sparing,
as we thought, none, while the rain ran through my armour as through a
waterspout. But why speak of it, to-night especially? Yes, root and branch,
even while that woman vowed vengeance," he added, grinding his teeth.
"But what sound is that?"

"Music," she replied, rising and looking round with surprise; but his
tremulous hand, and, more than that, the sudden pallor of his face, arrested
her, while the strains of a small harp, struck wildly and plaintively, came at
times between the fierce gusts of wind that shook the forest trees and the
hiss of the rain on the window-panes without. Louder they seemed to come,
and to be more emphatic and sharp; and, as he heard them, a violent
trembling and cold perspiration came over all the form of Sir Jorwerth
Lloyd.

"Heaven pity the harper who is abroad to-night!" said Gwerfyl, clasping
her white hands.

"Let Hell do so, rather!" was the fierce response of her husband, as his
eyes filled with a strange light.

At that moment a hand knocked on the window, and the startled wife, as
she crouched by her husband's side, could see that it was small and delicate,
wondrously beautiful too, and radiant with gems or glittering raindrops; and
now her husband trembled more violently than ever.

Gwerfyl crossed herself, and rushed to the window.

"Strange," said she; "I can see no one."

"No one in human form, perhaps," replied her husband gloomily, as he
lifted his cloak. "Look again, dear wife."

The lady did so, and fancied that close to the window-pane she could see
a female face--anon she could perceive that it was small and beautiful, with
hair of golden red, all wavy, and, strange to say, unwetted by the rain, and
with eyes that were also of golden red, but with a devilish smile and glare,
and glitter in them and over all her features, as they appeared, but to vanish,
as the successive flashes of lightning passed. With terror and foreboding of
evil, she turned to her startled husband. He was a pale and handsome man,
with an aquiline nose, a finely-cut mouth and chin; but now his lips were
firmly compressed, a flashing and fiery light seemed to sparkle in his eyes,
his forehead was covered with lines, and the veins of his temples were
swollen, while his black hair and moustache seemed to have actually
become streaked with gray. What unknown emotion caused all this? There
were power and passion in his bearing; but something strange, and dark,
and demon-like was brooding in his soul. The white drops glittered on his
brow as he threw his cloak about him, and then the notes of the harp were
heard, as if struck triumphantly and joyously.

"Stay, stay! leave me not!" implored his wife on her knees, in a sudden
access of terror and pity, that proved greater even than love.

"I cannot--I cannot! God pardon me and bless you, dear, dear wife, but
go I must!"

("Exactly like Rudolph, as we saw him last night in the opera, breaking
away from his followers when he heard the voice of Lurline singing amid
the waters of the Rhine," added Winifred in a parenthesis, as she laid her
hand timidly on my arm.)

She strove on her knees to place in his hand the small ivory-bound
volume of prayers which ladies then carried slung by a chain at their girdle,
even as a watch is now; but he thrust it aside, as if it scorched his fingers.
Then he kissed her wildly, and broke away.

She sprang from the floor, but he was gone--gone swiftly into the forest;
and with sorrow and prayer in her heart his wife stealthily followed him. By
this time the sudden storm had as suddenly ceased; already the gusty wind
had died away, and no trace of it remained, save the strewn leaves and a
quivering in the dripping branches; the white clouds were sailing through
the blue sky, and whiter still, in silvery sheen 'the moonlight fell aslant in
patches through the branches on the glittering grass. Amid that sheen she
saw the dark figure of her husband passing, gliding onward to the old oak
tree, and Gwerfyl shrunk behind another, as the notes of the infernal harp--
for such she judged it to be--fell upon her ear.

"You have come, my beloved," said a sweet voice; and she saw the same
strangely-beautiful girl with the red-golden hair, her skin of wondrous
whiteness, and eyes that glittered with devilish triumph, though to Jorwerth
Du they seemed only filled with ardour and the light of passionate love,
even as the beauty of her form seemed all round and white and perfect; but
lo! to the eyes of his wife, who was under no spell, that form was fast
becoming like features in a dissolving view, changed to that of extreme old
age--gray hairs and wrinkles seemed to come with every respiration; for this
mysterious love, who had bewitched her husband, was some evil spirit or
demon of the woods.

"How long you have been!" said she reproachfully, for even the
sweetness of her tone had suddenly passed away; "so long that already age
seems to have come upon me."

"Pardon me; have I not sworn to love you for ever and ever, though
neither of us is immortal?"

"You are ready?" said she, laying her head on his breast.

"Yes, my own wild love!"

"Then let us go."

All beauty of form had completely passed away, and now Gwerfyl saw
her handsome husband in the arms of a very hag; hollow-cheeked,
toothless, almost fleshless, with restless shifty eyes, and grey elf-locks like
the serpents of Medusa; a hag beyond all description hideous: and her long,
lean, shrivelled arms she wound lovingly and triumphantly around him. Her
eyes gleamed like two live coals as he kissed her wildly and passionately
from time to time, the full blaze of the moonlight streaming upon both their
forms.

Gwerfyl strove to pray, to cry aloud, to move. But her tongue refused its
office, and her lips were powerless; all capability of volition had left her,
and she was as it were rooted to the spot. A moment more, and a dark cloud
came over the moon, causing a deeper shadow under the old oak tree. Then
a shriek escaped her, and when again the moon shone forth on the green
grass and the gnarled tree, Gwerfyl alone was there--her husband and the
hag had disappeared. Neither was ever seen more. North Wales is the most
primitive portion of the country, and it is there that such fancies and
memories still linger longest; and such was the little family legend told me
by Winifred Lloyd. I was thinking over it now, recalling the earnest
expression of her bright soft face and intelligent eyes, and the tone of her
pleasantly modulated voice, when she, half laughingly and half seriously,
had related it, with more point than I can give it, while we sat in a corner
and somewhat apart from every one--on the first night I met the
Cressinghams--in a crowded London ballroom, amid the heat, the buzz, and
crush of the season--about the last place in the world to hear a story of
diablerie; and "the old time" seemed to come again, as I descended to the
drawing-room, to meet her and Lady Estelle.

CHAPTER VI.--THREE GRACES.

Already having met and been welcomed by my host and his daughters,
my first glances round the room were in search of Lady Estelle and her
mother. About eighteen persons were present, mostly gentlemen, and I
instinctively made my way to where she I sought was seated, idling over a
book of prints. Two or three gentlemen were exclusively in conversation
with her; Sir Madoc, who was now in evening costume, for one.

"Come, Harry," said he, "here is a fair friend to whom I wish to present
you."

"You forget, Sir Madoc, that I said we had met before; Mr. Hardinge and
I are almost old friends--the friends of a season, at least," said Lady Estelle,
presenting her hand to me with a bright but calm and decidedly
conventional smile, and with the most perfect self-possession.

"It makes me so very happy to meet you again," said I in a low voice, the
tone of which she could not mistake.

"Mamma, too, will be so delighted--you were quite a favourite with her."

I bowed, as if accepting for fact a sentiment of which I was extremely
doubtful, and then after a little pause she added,--

"Mamma always preferred your escort, you remember."

Of that I was aware, when she wished to leave some more eligible parti--
old Lord Pottersleigh, for instance--to take charge of her daughter.

"I am so pleased that we are to see a little more of you, ere you depart
for the East; whence, I hear, you are bound," said she after a little pause.

Simple though the words, they made my heart beat happily, and I
dreaded that some sharp observer might read in my eyes the expression
which I knew could not be concealed from her; and now I turned to look for
some assistance from Winifred Lloyd; but, though observing us, she was
apparently busy with Caradoc; luckily for me, perhaps, as there was
something of awkwardness in my position with her. I had flirted rather too
much at one time with Winny--been almost tender--but nothing more. Now
I loved Lady Estelle, and that love was indeed destitute of all ambition,
though the known difficulties attendant on the winning of such a hand as
hers, added zest and keenness to its course.

When I looked at Winifred and saw how fair and attractive she was, "a
creature so compact and complete," as Caradoc phrased it, with such
brilliance of complexion, such deep violet eyes and thick dark wavy hair;
and when I thought of the girl's actual wealth, and her kind old father's great
regard for me, it seemed indeed that I might do well in offering my heart
where there was little doubt it would be accepted; but the more stately and
statuesque beauty, the infinitely greater personal attractions of Lady Estelle
dazzled me, and rendered me blind to Winny's genuine goodness of soul
The latter was every way a most attractive girl Dora was quite as much so,
in her own droll and jolly way; but Lady Estelle possessed that higher style
of loveliness and bearing so difficult to define; and though less natural
perhaps than the Lloyds, she had usually that calm, placid, and unruffled or
settled expression of features so peculiar to many Englishwomen of rank
and culture, yet they could light up at times; then, indeed, she became
radiant; and now, in full dinner dress, she seemed to look pretty much as I
had seemed to see her in that haughty full-length by the President of the
R.A., with an admiring and critical crowd about it.

The three girls I have named were all handsome--each sufficiently so to
have been the belle of any room; yet, though each was different in type
from the other, they were all thoroughly English; perhaps Sir Madoc would
have reminded me that two were Welsh. The beauty of Winifred and Dora
was less regular; yet, like Lady Estelle, in their faces each feature seemed

so charmingly suited to the rest, and all so perfect, that I doubt much the
story that Canova had sixty models for his single Venus, or that Zeuxis of
Heraclea had even five for his Helen. Lady Estelle Cressingham was tall
and full in form, with a neck that rose from her white shoulders like that of
some perfect Greek model; her smile, when real, was very captivating; her
eyes were dark and deep, and softly lidded with long lashes; they had
neither the inquiring nor soft pleading expression of Winifred's, nor the
saucy drollery of Dora's, yet at times they seemed to have the power of
both; for they were eloquent eyes, and, as a writer has it, "could light up her
whole personnel as if her whole body thought." Her colour was pale, almost
creamy; her features clearly cut and delicate. She had a well-curved mouth,
a short upper lip and chin, that indicated what she did not quite possess--
decision. Her thick hair, which in its darkness contrasted so powerfully with
her paleness, came somewhat well down, in what is called "a widow's
peak," on a forehead that was broad rather than low. Her taste was perfect in
dress and jewelry; for though but a girl in years, she had been carefully
trained, and knew nearly as much of the world--at least of the exclusive
world in which she lived--as her cold and unimpressionable mamma, who
seemed to be but a larger, fuller, older, and more stately version of herself;
certainly much more of that selfish world than I, a line subaltern of seven
years' foreign service, could know.

A few words more, concerning my approaching departure for the East,
were all that could pass between us then; for the conversation was, of
course, general, and of that enforced and heavy nature which usually
precedes a dinner-party; but our memories and our thoughts were
nevertheless our own still, as I could see when her glance met mine
occasionally.

War was new to Britain then, and thus, even in the society at
Craigaderyn Court, Caradoc and I, as officers whose regiment had already
departed--more than all, as two of the Royal Welsh Fusileers--found
ourselves rather objects of interest, and at a high premium.

"Ah, the dooce! Hardinge, how d'you do, how d'you do? Not off to the
seat of war" (he pronounced it waw), "to tread the path of glory that leads
to--where does old Gray say it leads to?" said a thin wiry-looking man of

more than middle height and less than middle age, his well-saved hair
carefully parted in the centre, a glass in his eye, and an easy insouciance
that bordered on insolence in his tone and bearing, as he came bluntly
forward, and interrupted me while paying the necessary court to "Mamma
Cressingham," who received me with simple politeness, nothing more. I
could not detect the slightest cordiality in her tone or eye. Though in the
Army List, my name was unchronicled by Debrett, and might never be.

I bowed to the speaker, who was the identical Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle
of whom I have already spoken, and with whom I felt nettled for presuming
to place himself on such a footing of apparent familiarity with me, from the
simple circumstance that I had more than once--I scarcely knew how--lost
money to him.

"I am going Eastward ere long, at all events," said I; "and I cannot help
thinking that some of you many idlers here could not do better than take a
turn of service against the Russians too."

"It don't pay, my dear fellow; moreover, I prefer to be one of the
gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease. I shall be quite satisfied
with reading all about it, and rejoicing in your exploits."

I smiled and bowed, but felt that he was closely scrutinising me through
his glass, which he held in its place by a muscular contraction of the left
eye; and I felt moreover, instinctively and intuitively, by some magnetic
influence, that this man was my enemy, and yet I had done him no wrong.
The aversion was certainly mutual. It was somewhat of the impulse that led
Tom Brown of old to dislike Dr. Fell, yet, in my instance, it was not exactly
without knowing "why."

I had quickly read the character of this Mr. Guilfoyle. He had cold,
cunning, and shifty eyes of a greenish yellow colour. They seldom smiled,
even when his mouth did, if that can be called a smile which is merely a
grin from the teeth outwards. He was undoubtedly gentlemanlike in air and
appearance, always correct in costume, suave to servility when it suited his
purpose, but daringly insolent when he could venture to be so with
impunity. He had that narrowness of mind which made him counterfeit
regret for the disaster of his best friend, while secretly exulting in it, if that

friend could serve his purposes no more; the praise or success of another
never failed to excite either his envy or his malice; and doating on himself,
he thought that all who knew him should quarrel with those against whom
he conceived either spleen or enmity. A member of a good club in town, he
was fashionable, moderately dissipated, and rather handsome in person. No
one knew exactly from what source his income was derived; but vague
hints of India stock, foreign bonds, and so forth, served to satisfy the few--
and in the world of London few they were indeed--who cared a jot about
the matter. Such was Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle, of whom the reader shall
hear more in these pages.

"And so you don't approve of risking your valuable person in the service
of the country?" said I, in a tone which I felt to be a sneering one.

"No; I am disposed to be rather economical of it--think myself too good-
looking, perhaps, to fill a hole in a trench. Ha, ha! Moreover, what the
deuce do I want with glory or honour?" said he, in a lower tone; "are not
self-love or interest, rather than virtue, the true motives of most of our
actions?"

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, by Jove! I do."

"A horrid idea, surely!"

"Not at all. Besides, virtues, as they are often called, are too often only
vices disguised."

"The deuce!" said Caradoc, who overheard us; "I don't understand this
paradox."

"Nor did I intend you to do so," replied the other, in a tone that, to say
the least of it, was offensive, and made Phil's eyes sparkle. "But whether in
pursuit of vice or virtue, it is an awkward thing when the ruling passion
makes one take a wrong turn in life."

"The ruling passion?" said I, thinking of the money I had lost to him.

"Yes, whether it be ambition, avarice, wine, or love," he replied, his eyes
going involuntarily towards Lady Estelle; "but at all times there is nothing
like taking precious good care of number one; and so, were I a king, I
should certainly reign for myself."

"And be left to yourself," said I, almost amused by this avowed cynicism
and selfishness.

"Well, as Prince Esterhazy said, when he did me the honour to present
me with this ring," he began, playing the while with a splendid brilliant,
which sparkled on one of his fingers.

But what the Prince had said I was never fated to know; for the
aphorisms of Mr. Guilfoyle were cut short by the welcome sound of the
dinner-gong, and in file we proceeded through the corridor and hall to the
dining-room, duly marshalled between two rows of tall liverymen in
powder and plush, Sir Madoc leading the way with the Countess on his arm,
her long sweeping skirt so stiff with brocade, that, as Caradoc whispered, it
looked like our regimental colours.

Lady Estelle was committed to the care of a stout old gentleman, who
was the exact counterpart of our host, and whose conversation, as it
evidently failed to amuse, bored her. Miss Lloyd was led by Caradoc, and
Dora fell to my care. Of the other ladies I took little heed; neither did I
much of the sumptuous dinner, which passed away as other dinners do,
through all its courses, with entrées and relays of various wines, the serving
up of the latter proving in one sense a nuisance, from the absurd breaks
caused thereby in the conversation. The buzz of voices was pretty loud at
times, for many of the guests were country gentlemen, hale and hearty old
fellows some of them, who laughed with right good will, not caring whether
to do so was good ton or not. But while listening to the lively prattle of
Dora Lloyd, I could not refrain from glancing ever and anon to where
Estelle Cressingham, looking so radiant, yet withal "so delicately white" in
her complexion, her slender throat and dazzling shoulders, her thick dark
hair and tiny ears, at which the diamond pendants sparkled, sat listening to
her elderly bore, smiling assents from time to time out of pure
complaisance, and toying with her fruit knife when the dessert came, her
hands and arms seeming so perfect in form and colour, and on more than

one occasion--when her mamma was engrossed by courteous old Sir
Madoc, who could "talk peerage," and knew the quartering of arms better
than the Garter King or Rouge Dragon--giving me a bright intelligent smile,
that made my heart beat happily; all the more so that I had been afflicted by
some painful suspicion of coldness in her first reception of me--a coldness
rather deduced from her perfect self-possession--while I had been farther
annoyed to find that her somewhat questionable admirer, Guilfoyle, was
seated by her side, with a lady whose presence he almost ignored in his
desire to be pleasing elsewhere. Yet, had it been otherwise, if anything
might console a man for fancied coldness in the woman he loved, or for a
partial separation from her by a few yards of mahogany, it should be the
lively rattle of a lovely girl of eighteen; but while listening and replying to
Dora, my thoughts and wishes were with another.

"I told you how it would be, Mr. Hardinge," whispered Dora; "that the
staple conversation of the gentlemen, if it didn't run on the county pack,
would be about horses and cattle, sheep, horned and South Down; or on the
British Constitution, which must be a very patched invention, to judge by
all they say of it."

I confessed inwardly that much of what went on around me was so
provincial and local--the bishop's visitation, the--parish poor, crops and
game, grouse and turnips--and proved such boredom that, but for the
smiling girl beside me, with her waggish eyes and pretty ways, and the
longing and hope to have more of the society of Lady Estelle, I could have
wished myself back at the mess of the depôt battalion in Winchester. Yet
this restlessness was ungrateful; for Craigaderyn was as much a home to me
as if I had been a son of the house, and times there were when the girls, like
their father, called me simply "Harry," by my Christian name.

The long and stately dining-room, like other parts of the house, was well
hung with portraits. At one end was a full-length of Sir Madoc in his scarlet
coat and yellow-topped boots, seated on his favourite bay mare, "Irish
Jumper," with mane and reins in hand, a brass horn slung over his shoulder,
and looking every inch like what he was--the M.F.H. of the county, trotting
to cover. Opposite, of course, was his lady--it might almost have passed for
a likeness of Winifred--done several years ago, her dress of puce velvet cut

low to show her beautiful outline, but otherwise very full indeed, as she
leaned in the approved fashion against a vase full of impossible flowers
beside a column and draped curtain, in what seemed a windy and draughty
staircase, a view of Snowdon in the distance. "Breed and blood," as Sir
Madoc used to say, "in every line of her portrait, from the bridge of her nose
to the heel of her slipper;" for she was a lineal descendant of y Marchog
gwyllt o' Cae Hywel, or "the wild Knight of Caehowel," a circumstance he
valued more than all her personal merits and goodness of heart.

Some of Dora's remarks about the family portraits elicited an occasional
glance of reprehension from the Dowager of Naseby, who thought such
relics or evidences of descent were not to be treated lightly. On my
enquiring who that lady in the very low dress with the somewhat
dishevelled hair was, I had for answer, "A great favourite of Charles II., Mr.
Hardinge--an ancestress of ours. Papa knows her name. There was some
lively scandal about her, of course. And that is her brother beside her--he in
the rose-coloured doublet and black wig. He was killed in a duel about a
young lady--run clean through the heart by one of the Wynnes of
Llanrhaidr, at the Ring in Hyde Park."

"When men risked their lives so, love must have been very earnest in
those days," said Lady Estelle.

"And very fearful," said the gentler Winny. "It is said the lady's name
was engraved on the blade of the sword that slew him."

"A duel! How delightful to be the heroine of a duel!" exclaimed the
volatile Dora.

"And who is that pretty woman in the sacque and puffed cap?" asked
Caradoc, pointing to a brisk-looking dame in a long stomacher. She was
well rouged, rather décolletée, had a roguish kissing-patch in the corner of
her mouth, and looked very like Dora indeed.

"Papa's grandmother, who insisted on wearing a white rose when she
was presented to the Elector at St. James's," replied Dora; "and her marriage
to the heir of Craigaderyn is chronicled in the fashion of the Georgian era,
by gossipping Mr. Sylvanus Urban, as that of 'Mistress Betty Temple, an

agreeable and modest young lady with 50,000l. fortune, from the eastward
of Temple Bar.' I don't think people were such tuft-hunters in those days as
they are now. Do you think so, Mr. Guilfoyle? O, I am sure, that if all we
read in novels is true, there must have been more romantic marriages and
much more honest love long ago than we find in society now. What do you
say to this, Estelle?"

But the fair Estelle only fanned herself, and replied by a languid smile,
that somehow eluded when it might have fallen on me. So while we
lingered over the dessert (the pineapples, peaches, grapes, and so forth
being all the produce of Sir Madoc's own hothouses), Dora resumed:

"And so, poor Harry Hardinge, in a few weeks more you will be far
away from us, and face to face with those odious Russians--in a real battle,
perhaps. It is something terrible to think of! Ah, heavens, if you should be
killed!" she added, as her smile certainly passed away for a moment.

"I don't think somehow there is very much danger of that--at least I can
but hope--"

"Or wounded! If you should lose a leg--two legs perhaps--"

"He could scarcely lose more," said Mr. Guilfoyle.

"And come home with wooden ones!" she continued, lowering her voice.
"You will look so funny! O, I could never love or marry a man with wooden
stumps!"

"But," said I, a little irritated that she should see anything so very
amusing in this supposed contingency, "I don't mean to marry you."

"Of course not--I know that. It is Winny, papa thinks--or is it Estelle
Cressingham you prefer?"

Lowly and whispered though the heedless girl said this, it reached the
ears of Lady Estelle, and caused her to grow if possible paler, while I felt
my face suffused with scarlet; but luckily all now rose from the table, as the
ladies, led by Winifred, filed back alone to the drawing-room; and I felt that

Dora's too palpable hints must have done much to make or mar my cause--
perhaps to gain me the enmity of both her sister and the Lady Estelle.

Sir Madoc assumed his daughter's place at the head of the table, and
beckoned me to take his chair at the foot. Owen Gwyllim replenished the
various decanters and the two great silver jugs of claret and burgundy, and
the flow of conversation became a little louder in tone, and of course less
reserved. I listened now with less patience to all that passed around me, in
my anxiety to follow the ladies to the drawing-room. Every moment spent
out of her presence seemed doubly long and doubly lost. The chances of the
coming war--where our troops were to land, whether at Eupatoria or
Perecop, or were to await an attack where they were literally rotting in the
camp upon the Bulgarian shore; their prospects of success, the proposed
bombardment of Cronstadt, the bewildering orders issued to our admirals,
the inane weakness and pitiful vacillation, if not worse, of Lord Aberdeen's
government, our total want of all preparation in the ambulance and
commissariat services, even to the lack of sufficient shot, shell, and
gunpowder--were all freely descanted on, and attacked, explained, or
defended according to the politics or the views of those present; and
Guilfoyle--who, on the strength of having been attaché at the petty German
court of Catzenelnbogen, affected a great knowledge of continental affairs--
indulged in much "tall talk" on the European situation till once more the
county pack and hunting became the chief topic, and then too he
endeavoured, but perhaps vainly, to take the lead.

"You talk of fox-hunting, gentlemen," said he, raising his voice after a
preliminary cough, "and some of the anecdotes you tell of wonderful leaps,
mistakes, and runs, with the cunning displayed by reynard on various
occasions, such as hiding in a pool up to the snout, feigning death--a notion
old as the days of Olaus Magnus--throwing dogs off the scent by traversing
a running stream, and so forth, are all remarkable enough; but give me a
good buck-hunt, such as I have seen in Croatia! When travelling there
among the mountains that lie between Carlstadt and the Adriatic, I had the
good fortune to reside for a few weeks with my kind friend Ladislaus Count
Mosvina, Grand Huntsman to the Emperor of Austria, and captain of the
German Guard of Arzieres, and who takes his title from that wine-growing
district, the vintage of which is fully equal to the finest burgundy. The

season was winter. The snow lay deep among the frightful valleys and
precipices of the Vellibitch range, and an enormous rehbock, or roebuck,
fully five feet in height to the shoulder, with antlers of vast size--five feet, if
an inch, from tip to tip--driven from the mountains by the storm and la
bora, the biting north-east wind, took shelter in a thicket near the house.
Several shots were fired; but no one, not even I, could succeed in hitting
him, till at last he defiantly and coolly fed among the sheep, in the yard of
the Count's home farm, where, by the use of his antlers, he severely
wounded and disabled all who attempted to dislodge him. At last four of the
Count's farmers or foresters--some of those Croatian boors who are liable to
receive twenty-five blows of a cudgel yearly if they fail to engraft at least
twenty-five fruit-trees--undertook to slay or capture the intruder. But though
they were powerful, hardy, and brave men, this devil of a rehbock, by
successive blows of its antlers, fractured the skulls of two and the thigh-
bones of the others, smashing them like tobacco-pipes, and made an escape
to the mountains. A combined hunt was now ordered by my friend Mosvina,
and all the gentlemen and officers in the generalat or district commanded
by him set off, mounted and in pursuit. There were nearly a thousand
horsemen; but the cavalry there are small and weak. I was perhaps the best-
mounted man in the field. We pursued it for twenty-five miles, by rocky
hills and almost pathless woods, by ravines and rivers. Many of our people
fell. Some got staked, were pulled from their saddles by trees, or tumbled
off by running foul of wild swine. Many missed their way, grew weary, got
imbogged in the half-frozen marshes, and so forth, till at last only the Count
and I with four dogs were on his track, and when on it, we leaped no less
than four frozen cataracts, each at least a hundred feet in height--'pon
honour they were. We had gone almost neck and neck for a time; but the
Grand Huntsman's horse began to fail him now (for we had come over
terrible ground, most of it being uphill), and ultimately it fell dead lame.
Then whoop--tally-ho! I spurred onward alone. Just as the furious giant was
coming to bay in a narrow gorge, and, fastening on his flanks and neck, the
maddened dogs were tearing him down, their red jaws steaming in the
frosty air, the Count came up on foot, breathless and thoroughly blown, to
have the honour of slaying this antlered monarch of the Dinovian Alps. But
I was too quick for him. I had sprung from my horse, and with my
unsheathed hanshar or Croatian knife had flung myself, fearlessly and
regardless of all danger, upon the buck, eluding a last and desperate butt

made at me with his pointed horns. Another moment saw my knife buried to
the haft in his throat, and a torrent of crimson blood flowing upon the snow,
then I courteously tendered my weapon by the hilt to the Count, who, in
admiration of my adroitness, presented me with this ring--a very fine
brilliant, you may perceive--which his grandfather had received from the
Empress Maria Theresa, and the pure gold of which is native, from the sand
upon the banks of the Drave."

And as he concluded his anecdote, which he related with considerable
pomposity and perfect coolness, he twirled round his finger this remarkable
ring, of which I was eventually to hear more from time to time.

"So, out of a thousand Croatian horsemen, you were the only one in at
the death! It says little for their manhood," said an old fox-hunter, as he
filled his glass with burgundy, and pretty palpably winked to Sir Madoc,
under cover of an épergne.

"This may all be true, Harry, or not--only entre nous, I don't believe it
is," said Phil Caradoc aside to me; "for who here knows anything of
Croatia? He might as well talk to old Gwyllim the butler, or any chance
medley Englishman, of the land of Memnon and the hieroglyphics. This
fellow Guilfoyle beats Munchausen all to nothing; but did he not before tell
something else about that ring?"

"I don't remember; but now, Phil, that you have seen her," said I, in a
tone of tolerably-affected carelessness, "what do you think of la belle
Cressingham?"

"She is very handsome, certainly," replied Phil, in the same undertone,
and luckily looking at his glass, and not at me, "a splendid specimen of her
class--a proud and by no means a bashful beauty."

"Most things in this world are prized just as they are difficult of
attainment, or are scarce. I reckon beauty among these, and no woman
holds it cheap," said I, not knowing exactly what to think of Caradoc's
criticism. "There is Miss Lloyd, for instance--"

"Ah," said he, with honest animation, "she is a beauty too, but a gentle
and retiring one--a girl that is all sweetness and genuine goodness of heart."

"With some dairy-farms in the midland counties, eh?"

"The graces of such a girl are always the most attractive. We men are so
constituted that we are apt to decline admiration where it is loftily courted
or seemingly expected--as I fear it is in the case of Lady Cressingham--and
to bestow it on the gentle and retiring."

I felt there was much truth in my friend's remarks, and yet they piqued
me so that I rather turned from him coldly for the remainder of the evening.

"Her mother is haughty, intensely ambitious, and looks forward to a title
for her as high, if not higher, than that her father bore," I heard Sir Madoc
say to a neighbour who had been talking on the same subject--the beauty of
Lady, Estelle; "the old lady is half Irish and half Welsh."

"Rather a combustible compound, I should think," added Guilfoyle, as,
after coffee and curaçoa, we all rose to join the ladies in the drawing-room.

CHAPTER VII.--PIQUE.

The moment I entered the drawing-room, where Winifred Lloyd had
been doing her utmost to amuse her various guests till we came, and where
undoubtedly the ladies' faces grew brighter when we appeared, I felt
conscious that the remark of the hoydenish Dora had done me some little
mischief. I could read this in the face of the haughty Estelle, together with
her fear that others might have heard it; thus, instead of seating myself near
her, as I wished and had fully intended, I remained rather aloof, and leaving
her almost exclusively to the industrious Guilfoyle, divided my time

between listening to Winifred, who, with Caradoc, proceeded to perform the
duet he had sent her from the barracks, and endeavouring to make myself
agreeable to the Countess--a process rather, I am sorry to say, somewhat of
a task to me. Though her dark hair was considerably seamed with gray, her
forehead was without a line, smooth and unwrinkled as that of a child--care,
thought, reflection, or sorrow had never visited her. Wealth and rank, with a
naturally aristocratic indolence and indifference of mind, had made the
ways of life and of the world--at least, the world in which she lived--easy,
soft, and pleasant, and all her years had glided brilliantly but monotonously
on. She had married the late earl to please her family rather than herself,
because he was undoubtedly an eligible parti; and she fully expected their
only daughter to act exactly in the same docile manner. Her mien and air
were stately, reserved, and uninviting; her eyes were cold, inquiring, and
searching in expression, and I fancied that they seemed to watch and follow
me, as if she really and naturally suspected me of "views," or, as she would
have deemed them, designs.

Amid the commonplaces I was venturing to utter to this proud, cold, and
decidedly unpleasant old dame, whose goodwill and favour I was
sedulously anxious to gain, it was impossible for me to avoid hearing some
remarks that Sir Madoc made concerning me, and to her daughter.

"I am so glad you like my young friend, Lady Estelle," said the bluff
baronet, leaning over her chair, his rubicund face beaming with smiles and
happiness; for he was in best of moods after a pleasant dinner, with
agreeable society and plenty of good wine.

"Who told you that I did so?" asked she, looking up with fresh
annoyance, yet not unmixed with drollery, in her beautiful face.

"Dora and Winny too; and I am so pleased, for he is an especial friend of
ours. I love the lad for his dead mother's sake--she was an old flame of mine
in my more romantic days--and doesn't he deserve it? What do you think
the colonel of his old corps says of him?"

"Really, Sir Madoc, I know not--that he is quite a ladykiller, perhaps; to
be such is the ambition of most young subalterns."

"Better than that. He wrote me, that young Hardinge is all that a British
officer ought to be; that he has a constitution of iron--could sleep out in all
weathers, in a hammock or under a tree--till the fever attacked him at least.
If provisions were scanty, he'd share his last biscuit with a comrade; on the
longest and hottest march he never fell out or became knocked up; and
more than once he has been seen carrying a couple of muskets, the arms of
those whose strength had failed them. 'I envy the Royal Welsh their
acquisition, and regret that we have lost him'--these were the colonel's very
words."

Had I fee'd or begged him to plead my cause, he could not have been
more earnest or emphatic.

"For heaven's sake, Sir Madoc, do stop this overpowering eulogium,"
said I; "it is impossible for one not to overhear, when one's own name is
mentioned. But did the colonel really say all this of me?"

"All, and more, Harry."

"It should win him a diploma of knight-bachelor," said Lady Estelle,
laughing, "a C.B., perhaps a baronetcy."

"Nay," said Sir Madoc; "such rewards are reserved now for toad-eaters,
opulent traders, tuft-hunters, and ministerial tools; the days when true merit
was rewarded are gone, my dear Lady Estelle."

The duet over, Phil Caradoc drew near me, for evidently he was not
making much progress with Miss Lloyd.

"Well, Phil," said I, in a low voice, "among those present have you seen
your ideal of woman?"

"Can't say," said he, rather curtly; "but you have, at all events, old fellow,
and I think Sir Madoc has done a good stroke of business for you by his
quotation of the colonel's letter. I heard him all through our singing--the old
gentleman has no idea of a sotto voce, and talks always as if he were in the
hunting-field. By Jove, Harry, you grow quite pink!" he continued,
laughing. "I see how the land lies with you; but as for 'la mère

Cressingham,' she is an exclusive of the first water, a match-maker by
reputation; and I fear you have not the ghost of a chance with her."

"Hush, Caradoc," said I, glancing nervously about me "remember that
we are not at Winchester, or inside the main-guard, just now. But see, Lady
Estelle and that fellow Guilfoyle are about to favour us," I added, as the
pale beauty spread her ample skirts over the piano-stool, with an air that,
though all unstudied, seemed quite imperial, and ran her slender fingers
rapidly over the white keys, preluding an air; while Guilfoyle, who had a
tolerable voice and an intolerable amount of assurance, prepared to sing by
fussily placing on the piano a piece of music, on the corner of which was
written in a large and bold hand, evidently his own--"To Mr. H. Guilfoyle,
from H.S.H. the Princess of Catzenelnbogen."

"You must have been a special favourite with this lady," said Estelle, "as
most of your German music is inscribed thus."

"Yes, we were always exchanging our pieces and songs," said he,
languidly and in a low voice close to her ear, yet not so low as to be
unheard by me. "I was somewhat of a favourite with her, certainly; but then
the Princess was quite a privileged person."

"In what respect?"

"She could flirt farther than any one, and yet never compromise herself.
However, when she bestowed this ring upon me, on the day when I saved
her life, by arresting her runaway horse on the very brink of the Rhine, I
must own that his Highness the Prince was the reverse of pleased, and
viewed me with coldness ever after; so that ultimately I resigned my office
of attaché, just about the time I had the pleasure--may I call it the joy?--of
meeting you."

"O fie, Mr. Guilfoyle! were you actually flirting with her?"

"Nay, pardon me; I never flirt."

"You were in love then?"

"I was never in love till--"

A crash of notes as she resumed the air interrupted whatever he was
about to say; but his eye told more than his bold tongue would perhaps have
dared to utter in such a time or place; and, aware that they had met on the
Continent, and had been for some time together in the seclusion of
Craigaderyn, I began to fear that he must have far surpassed me in the
chances of interest with her.. Moreover, Dora's foolish remark might
reasonably lead her to suppose that I was already involved with Winifred;
and now, with a somewhat cloudy expression in my face (as a mirror close
by informed me), and a keen sense of pique in my heart, I listened while she
played the accompaniment to his pretty long German song, the burden of
which seemed to be ever and always--

"Ach nein! ach nein! ich darf es nich.
Leb wohl! Leb' wohl! Leb' wohl!"

Sir Madoc, who had listened with some secret impatience to this most
protracted German ditty, now begged his fair guest to favour him with
something Welsh; but as she knew no airs pertaining to the locality, she
resigned her place to Winifred, whom I led across the room, and by whose
side I remained. After the showy performances of Lady Estelle, she was
somewhat reluctant to begin: all the more so, perhaps, that her friend--with
rather questionable taste, certainly--was wont, in a spirit of mischief or
raillery--but one pardons so much in lovely woman, especially one of rank--
to quiz Wales, its music and provincialism; just as, when in the Highlands,
she had laughed at the natives, and voted "their sham chiefs and gatherings
as delightfully absurd." Finding that his daughter lingered ere she began,
and half suspecting the cause, Sir Madoc threatened to send for Owen
Gwyllim, the butler, with his harp. Owen had frequently accompanied her
with his instrument; but though that passed well enough occasionally
among homely Welsh folks, it would never do when Lady Naseby and
certain others were present.

"It is useless for an English girl to sing in a foreign language, or attempt
to rival paid professional artists, by mourning like Mario from the turret, or
bawling like Edgardo in the burying-ground, or to give us 'Stride la vampa'

in a fashion that would terrify Alboni," said Sir Madoc, "or indeed to
attempt any of those operatic effusions with which every hand organ has
made us familiar. So come, Winny, a Welsh air, or I shall ring for Owen."

This rather blundering speech caused Lady Estelle to smile, and
Guilfoyle, whose "Leb' wohl" had been something of the style objected to,
coloured very perceptibly. Thus urged, Winifred played and sang with great
spirit "The March of the Men of Harlech;" doubtless as much to
compliment Caradoc and me as to please her father; for it was then our
regimental march; and, apart from its old Welsh associations, it is one of the
finest effusions of our old harpers. Sir Madoc beat time, while his eyes lit
up with enthusiasm, and he patted his daughter's plump white shoulders
kindly with his weather-brown but handsome hands; for the old gentleman
rather despised gloves, indoors especially, as effeminate.

Winifred had striven to please rather than to excel; and though tremulous
at times, her voice was most attractive.

"Thank you," said I, in a low and earnest tone; "your execution is just of
that peculiar kind which leaves nothing more to be wished for, and while it
lasts, Winny, inspires a sense of joy in one's heart."

"You flatter me much--far too much," replied Miss Lloyd, in a lower and
still more tremulous tone, as she grew very pale; for some girls will do so,
when others would flush with emotion, and it was evident that my praise
gave her pleasure; she attached more to my words than they meant.

An undefinable feeling of pique now possessed me--a sensation of
disappointment most difficult to describe; but it arose from a sense of doubt
as to how I really stood in the estimation of the fair Estelle. Taking an
opportunity, while Sir Madoc was emphatically discussing the points and
pedigrees of certain horses and harriers with Guilfoyle and other male
friends, while the Countess and other ladies were clustered about Winifred
at the piano, and Dora and Caradoc were deep in some affair of their own, I
leaned over her chair, and referring--I forget now in what terms--to the last
time we met, or rather parted, I strove to effect that most difficult of all
moves in the game of love--to lead back the emotions, or the past train of
thought, to where they had been dropped, or snapped by mischance, to the

time when I had bid her lingeringly adieu, after duly shawling and handing
her to the carriage, at the close of a late rout in Park-lane, when the birds of
an early June morning were twittering in the trees of Hyde Park, when the
purple shadows were lying deep about the Serpentine, when the Ring-road
was a solitude, the distant Row a desert, and the yawning footmen in plush
and powder, and the usually rubicund coachmen, looking weary, pale, and
impatient, and when the time and place were suited neither for delay nor
dalliance. Yet, as I have elsewhere said, an avowal of all she had inspired
within me was trembling on my lips as I led her through the marble
vestibule and down the steps, pressing her hand and arm the while against
my side; but her mother's voice from the depths of the carriage (into which
old Lord Pottersleigh had just handed her) arrested a speech to which she
might only have responded by silence, then at least; and I had driven, viâ
Piccadilly, to the Junior U.S., when Westminster clock was paling out like a
harvest moon beyond the Green Park, cursing my diffidence, that delayed
all I had to say till the carriage was announced, thereby missing the chance
that never might come again. And then I had but the memory of a lovely
face, framed by a carriage window, regarding me with a bright yet wistful
smile, and of a soft thrilling pressure returned by an ungloved hand, that
was waved to me from the same carriage as it rolled away westward. The
night had fled, and there remained of it only the memory of this, and of
those glances so full of tenderness, and those soft attentions or half
endearments which are so charming, and so implicitly understood, as
almost to render language, perhaps, un necessary.

"You remember the night we last met, and parted, in London?" I
whispered.

"Morning, rather, I think it wash" said she, fanning herself; "but night or
morning, it was a most delightful ball. I had not enjoyed myself anywhere
so much that season, and it was a gay one."

"Ah, you have not forgotten it, then," said I, encouraged.

"No; it stands out in my memory as one night among many happy ones.
Day was almost breaking when you led me to the carriage, I remember."

"Can you remember nothing more?' I asked, earnestly.

"You shawled me most attentively--"

"And I was whispering--"

"Something foolish, no doubt; men are apt to do so at such times," she
replied, while her white eyelids quivered and she looked up at me with her
calm, bright smile.

"Something foolish!" thought I, reproachfully; "and then, as now, my
soul seemed on my lips."

"Do you admire Mr. Guilfoyle's singing?" she asked, after a little pause,
to change the subject probably.

"His voice is unquestionably good and highly cultured," said I, praising
him truthfully enough to conceal the intense annoyance her unexpected
question gave me; "but, by the way, Lady Estelle, how does it come to pass
that he has the honour of knowing you--to be here, too?"

"How--why--what do, you mean, Mr. Hardinge?" she asked, and I could
perceive that after colouring slightly she grew a trifle paler than before. "He
is a visitor here, like you or myself. We met him abroad first; he was most
kind to us when mamma lost all her passports at the Berlin Eisenbahnhof,
and he accompanied us to the Alte Leipziger Strasse for others, and saw us
safely to our carriage. Then, by the most singular chances, we met him
again at the new Kursaal of Ems, at Gerolstein, when we were beginning
the tour of the Eifel, and at Baden-Baden. Lastly, we met him at Llandudno,
on the beach, quite casually, when driving with Sir Madoc, to whom he said
that he knew you--that you were quite old friends, in fact."

"Knew me, by Jove! that is rather odd. I only lost some money to him;
enough to make me wary for the future."

"Wary?" she asked, with dilated eyes.

"Yes."

"An unpleasant expression, surely. Sir Madoc, who is so hospitable,
asked him here to see the lions of Craigaderyn, and has put a gun at his
disposal for the twelfth."

"How kind of unthinking Sir Madoc! A most satisfactory explanation,"
said I, cloudily, while gnawing my moustache. Guilfoyle had too evidently
followed them.

"If any explanation were necessary," was the somewhat haughty
response, as the mother-of-pearl fan went faster than ever, and she looked
me full in the face with her clear, dark, and penetrating eyes, to the sparkle
of which the form of their lids, and their thick fringe of black lash, served to
impart a softness that was indeed required. "Do you know anything of
him?" she added.

"No; that is--"

"Anything against him?"

"No, Lady Estelle."

"What then?" she asked, a little petulantly.

"Simply that I, pardon me, think a good deal."

"More than you would say?"

"Perhaps."

"This is not just. Mamma is somewhat particular, as you know; and our
family solicitor, Mr. Sharpus, who is his legal friend also, speaks most
warmly of him. We met him in the best society--abroad, of course; but, Mr.
Hardinge, your words, your manner, more than all, your tone, imply what I
fear Mr. Guilfoyle would strongly resent. But please go and be attentive to
mamma--you have scarcely been near her to-night," she added quickly, as a
flush of anger crossed my face, and she perceived it. I bowed and obeyed,
with a smile on my lips and intense annoyance in my heart. I knew that the
soft eyes of Winifred Lloyd had been on us from time to time; but my little

flirtation with her was a thing of the past now, and I was reckless of its
memory. Was she so? Time will prove. I felt jealousy of Guilfoyle, pique at
Lady Estelle, and rage at my own mismanagement. I had sought to resume
the tenor of our thoughts and conversation on the occasion of our parting
after that joyous and brilliant night in Park-lane, when my name on her
engagement card had appeared thrice for that of any one else; but if I had
touched her heart, even in the slightest degree, would she have become, as
it seemed, almost warm in defence of this man, a waif picked up on the
Continent? Yet, had she any deeper interest in him than mere
acquaintanceship warranted, would she have spoken of him so openly, and
so candidly, to me?

Heavens! we had actually been covertly fencing, and nearly quarrelling!
Yet, if so, why should she be anxious for me to win the estimation of
"mamma"? Lady Naseby had been beautiful in her time, and the utter
vacuity and calm of her mind had enabled her to retain much of that beauty
unimpaired; and I thought that her daughter, though with more sparkle and
brilliance, would be sure to resemble her very much at the same years. She
was not displeased to meet with attention, but was shrewd enough to see,
and disdainful enough to resent, its being bestowed, as she suspected it was
in my instance, on account of her daughter; thus I never had much success;
for on the night of that very rout in London my attentions in that quarter,
and their apparent good fortune, had excited her parental indignation and
aristocratic prejudices against me.

After all the visitors had withdrawn (as horses or carriages were
announced in succession), save one or two fox-hunters whom Guilfoyle had
lured into the billiard-room for purposes of his own, when the ladies left us
at night Lady Estelle did not give me her hand. She passed me with a bow
and smile only, and as she swept through the gilded folding doors of the
outer drawing-room, with an arm round Dora's waist, her backward glances
fell on all--but me. Why was this? Was this coldness of manner the result of
Guilfoyle's influence, fear of her mamma, her alleged engagement with old
Lord Pottersleigh, pique at myself caused by Dora's folly, or what? It was
the old story of "trifles light as air." I felt wrathful and heavy at heart, and
repented bitterly the invitation I had accepted, and the leave I had asked; for

Lady Estelle seemed so totally unconcerned and indifferent to me now,
considering the empressement with which we had parted in London.

The "family solicitor," too! He had been introduced as a mutual friend in
the course of affairs--in the course of a friendship that had ripened most
wonderfully. Was this Hawkesby Guilfoyle a fool, or a charlatan, or both?
His various versions of the diamond ring would seem to show that he was
the former. What fancy had the Countess for him, and why was he tolerated
by Sir Madoc? Familiar though I was with my old friend, I felt that I could
not, without a violation of good taste, ask a question about a guest,
especially one introduced by the Cressinghams. His voice was soft in tone;
his manner, when he chose, was suave; his laugh at all times, even when he
mocked and sneered, which was not unfrequent, silvery and pleasing; yet he
was evidently one who could "smile and smile and be"--I shall not exactly
say what. While smoking a cigar, I pondered over these and other
perplexing things in my room before retiring for the night, hearing ever and
anon the click of the billiard-balls at the end of the corridor. Had I not the
same chance and right of competition as this Guilfoyle, though unknown to
the "family solicitor"? How far had he succeeded in supplanting me, and
perhaps others? for that there were others I knew. How far had he gone in
his suit--how prospered? How was I to construe the glances I had seen
exchanged, the half speech so bluntly made, and so adroitly drowned at the
piano? Who was he? what was he? The attaché of the mock embassy at a
petty German Court! Surely my position in society was as good, if not
better defined than his; while youth, appearance, health, and strength gave
me every advantage over an "old fogie" like Viscount Pottersleigh.

As if farther to inflame my pique, and confirm the chagrin and irritation
that grew within me on reflection, Phil Caradoc, smoothing his moustache,
came into my room, which adjoined his, to have, as he said, "a quiet weed
before turning in." He looked ruffled; for he had lost money at billiards--
that was evident--and to the object of my jealousy, too.

"That fellow Guilfoyle is a thorough Bohemian if ever there was one!"
said he, as he viciously bit off the end of his cigar prior to lighting it, "with
his inimitable tact, his steady stroke at billiards, his scientific whist, his
coolness and perfect breeding: yet he is, I am certain, unless greatly

mistaken, a regular free-lance, without the bravery or brilliance that
appertained to the name of old--a lawless ritter of the gaming-table, and one
that can't even act his part well or consistently in being so. He has been
spinning another story about that ring, with which I suppose, like Claude
Melnotte's, we shall hear in time his grandfather, the Doge of Venice,
married the Adriatic I am certain," continued Caradoc, who was unusually
ruffled, "that though a vainglorious and boasting fellow, he is half knave,
half fool, and wholly adventurer!"

"This is strong language, Phil. Good heavens! do you really think so?" I
asked, astonished to find him so boldly putting my own thoughts into
words.

"I am all but convinced of it," said he, emphatically. "But how in such
society?"

"Ah, that is the rub, and the affair of Sir Madoc, and of Lady Naseby,
and of Lady Estelle, too, for she seems to take rather more than an interest
in him--they have some secret understanding. . By Jove! I can't make it out
at all."

Caradoc's strong convictions and unusual bluntness added fuel to my
pique and chagrin, and I resolved that, come what might, I would end the
matter ere long; and I thought the while of the song of Montrose--

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all!"

CHAPTER VIII.--SUNDAY AT CRAIGADERYN.

The following day was Sunday; and ere it closed, there occurred a little
contretemps which nearly lost me all chance of putting to the issue whether
I was "to gain or lose it all" with Estelle Cressingham.

I felt that it was quite possible, if I chose, to have my revenge through
the sweet medium of Winifred Lloyd; yet, though Lady Estelle's somewhat
pointed defence of Guilfoyle rankled in my memory, and Caradoc's hints
had added fuel to the flame, I shrunk from such a double game, and hoped
that the chances afforded by propinquity in general, and the coming fête in
particular, would soon enable me to come to a decision. My mind was full
of vague irritation against her; yet when I rose in the morning, my one and
predominant thought was that I should see her again. Carriages and horses
had been ordered from the stable for our conveyance to Craigaderyn
church, a three miles' drive through lovely scenery, and I resolved to
accompany the sisters in the barouche, leaving whom fate directed to take
charge of Lady Estelle; yet great was my contentment when she fell to the
care of Sir Madoc in the family carriage. Lady Naseby did not appear, her
French soubrette, Mademoiselle Babette Pompon, announcing that she was
indisposed. Guilfoyle and Caradoc rode somewhat unwillingly together, and
I sat opposite Winny, who insisted on driving, and was duly furnished with
the smartest of parasol whips--pink, with a white fringe. Quitting the park,
we skirted a broad trout stream, the steep banks of which were clad with

light-green foliage, and name Nant-y-belan, or the "Martens' dingle." At the
bottom the river foamed along over broken and abutting rocks, or flowed in
dark and noiseless pools, where the brown trout lurked in the shade, and
where the overarching trees and grassy knolls were reflected downward in
the depth.

Hawkesby Guilfoyle sat his horse--one of Sir Madoc's hunters, fully
sixteen hands high--so well, and looked so handsome and gentlemanly, his
riding costume was so complete, even to his silver spurs, well-fitting buff
gloves, and riding switch, that I felt regret in the conviction that some cloud
hung over the fellow's antecedents, and present life too, perhaps; but with
all that I could not forgive him his rivalry and, as I deemed it, presumption,
with the strong belief that he was, in his secret heart; my enemy. He and
Caradoc rode behind the open carriage; we led the way in the barouche; and
a very merry and laughing party we were, as we swept by the base of the
green hills of Mynedd Hiraethrog, and over the ancient bridge that spans
Llyn Aled, to the church of Craigaderyn, where the entrance of Sir Madoc's
family and their visitors caused periodically somewhat of a sensation
among the more humble parishioners who were there, and were wont to
regard with a species of respectful awe the great square pew, which was
lined with purple velvet, and had a carved-oak table in the centre, and over
the principal seat the lion's head erased, and the shield of Lloyd per bend
sinister, ermine and pean, a lion rampant, armed with a sword.

With a roof of carved oak, brought from some other place (the invariable
account of all such roofs in Wales), and built by Jorwerth ap Davydd Lloyd,
in 1320, the church was a picturesque old place, where many generations of
the Craigaderyn family had worshipped long before and since the
Reformation, and whose bones, lapped in lead, and even in coffins of stone,
lay in the burial vaults below. The oaken pews were high and deep, and
were covered with dates, coats-of-arms, and quaint monograms. In some
places the white slabs indicated where lay the remains of those who died
but yesterday. Elsewhere, with helmet, spurs, and gloves of steel hung
above their stony effigies, and covered by cobwebs and dust, lay the men of
ages past and gone, their brasses and pedestal tombs bearing, in some
instances, how stoutly and valiantly they had fought against the Spaniard,
the Frenchman, and the Scot. One, Sir Madoc ap Meredyth Lloyd, whose

sword hung immediately over my head, had wielded it, as his brass
recorded, "contra Scotos apud Flodden et Musselboro;" and now the spiders
were busy spinning their cobwebs over the rusted helmet through which this
old Welsh knight had seen King James's host defile by the silver Till, and
that of his fated granddaughter by the banks of the beautiful Esk. In other
places I saw the more humble, but curious Welsh mode of commemorating
the dead, by hanging up a coffin-plate, inscribed with their names, in the
pews where they were wont to sit. Coats-of-arms met the eye on all sides--
solid evidences of birth and family, which more than once evoked a covert
sneer from Guilfoyle, who to his other bad qualities added the pride and the
envy of such things, that seem inseparable from the character of the
parvenu. There were two services in Craigaderyn church each Sunday, one
in Welsh, the other in English. Sir Madoc usually attended the former; but
in courtesy to Lady Estelle, he had come to the latter to-day.

Over all the details of the village fane my eyes wandered from time to
time, always to rest on the face of Estelle Cressingham or of Winifred
Lloyd, who was beside me, and who on this day, as I had accompanied her,
seemed to feel that she had me all to herself. We read off the same book, as
we had done years before in the same pew and place; ever and anon our
gloved fingers touched; I felt her silk dress rustling against me; her long
lashes and snowy lids, with the soft pale beauty of her downcast face, and
her sweetly curved mouth, were all most pleasing and attractive; but the
sense of Estelle's presence rendered me invulnerable to all but her; and my
eyes could not but roam to where she stood or knelt by the side of burly Sir
Madoc, her fine face downcast too in the soft light that stole between the
deep mullions and twisted tracery of an ancient stained-glass window, her
noble and equally pure profile half seen and half hidden by a short veil of
black lace; her rounded chin and lips rich in colour, and beautiful in
character as those of one of Greuze's loveliest masterpieces. There, too,
were the rich brightness of her hair, and the proud grace that pervaded all
her actions, and even her stillness.

Thus, even when I did not look towards her, but in Winifred's face, or on
the book we mutually held, and mechanically affected to read, a perception,
a dreamy sense of Estelle's presence was about me, and I could not help
reverting to our past season in London, and all that has been described by a

writer as those "first sweet hours of communion, when strangers glide into
friends; that hour which, either in friendship or in love, is as the bloom to
the fruit, as the daybreak to the day, indefinable, magical, and fleeting;" the
hours which saw me presented as a friend, and left me a lover. The day was
intensely hot, and inside the old church, though some of the arched recesses
and ancient tombs looked cool enough, there was a blaze of sunshine, that
fell in hazy flakes or streams of coloured light athwart the bowed heads of
the congregation. With heat and languor, there was also the buzz of insect
life; and amid the monotonous tones of the preacher I loved to fancy him
reading the marriage service for us--that is, for Estelle and myself--fancied
it as an enthusiastic school-girl might have done; and yet how was it that,
amid these conceits, the face and form of Winifred Lloyd, with her pretty
hand in the tight straw-coloured kid glove, that touched mine, filled up the
eye of the mind? Was I dreaming, or only about to sleep, like so many of
the congregation--those toilers afield, those hardy hewers of wood and
drawers of water, whose strong sinews, when unbraced, induced them to
slumber now--the men especially, as the study of each other's toilets served
to keep the female portion fully awake. When the clergyman prayed for the
success of our arms in the strife that was to come, Winifred's dark eyes
looked into mine for a moment, quick as light, and I saw her bosom swell;
and when he prayed, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," her voice became
earnest and tremulous in responding; and I could have sworn that I saw a
tear oozing, but arrested, on the thick black eyelash of this impulsive Welsh
girl, whom this part of the service, by its association and the time, seemed
to move; but Lady Estelle was wholly intent on having one of her gloves
buttoned by Guilfoyle, whose attendance she doubtless preferred to that of
old Sir Madoc.

"Look!" said Winifred Lloyd, in an excited whisper, as she lightly
touched my hand.

I followed the direction of her eye, and saw, seated at the end of the
central aisle, modestly and humbly, among the free places reserved for the
poor, a young woman, whose appearance was singularly interesting. Poorly,
or rather plainly, attired in faded black, her face was remarkably handsome;
and her whole air was perfectly ladylike. She was as pale as death, with a
wild wan look in all her features; disease, or sorrow, or penury--perhaps all

these together--had marked her as their own; her eyes, of clear, bright, and
most expressive gray, were haggard and hollow, with dark circles under
them. Black kid gloves showed her pretensions to neatness and gentility;
but as they were frayed and worn, she strove to conceal her hands nervously
under her gathered shawl.

"She is looking at you, Winifred," said Dora.

"No--at Estelle."

"At us all, I think," resumed Dora, in the same whispered tone; "and she
has done so for some time past. Heavens! she seems quite like a spectre."

"Poor creature!" said Winifred; "we must inquire about her."

"Do you know her, Mr. Hardinge?" asked Dora.

"Nay, not I; it is Mr. Guilfoyle she is looking at," said I.

Guilfoyle, having achieved the somewhat protracted operation of
buttoning Lady Estelle's lavender kid glove, now stuck his glass in his eye,
and turned leisurely and languidly in the direction that attracted us all, just
as the service was closing; but the pale woman quickly drew down her veil,
and quitted the church abruptly, ere he could see her, as I thought; and this
circumstance, though I took no heed of it then, I remembered in the time to
come.

Winifred frankly took my arm as we left the church.

"You promised to come with me after luncheon and see the goat I have
for the regiment," said she.

"Did I?--ah, yes--shall be most happy, I'm sure," said I, shamefully
oblivious of the promise in question, as we proceeded towards the carriages,
the people making way for us on all sides, the women curtseying and the
men uncovering to Sir Madoc, who was a universal favourite, especially
with the maternal portion of the parish, as he was very fond of children and
flattered himself not a little on his power of getting on with them, being

wont to stop mothers on the road or in the village street, and make knowing
remarks on the beauty, the complexions, or the curly heads of their
offspring while he was never without a handful of copper or loose silver for
general distribution; and now it excited some surprise and even secret
disdain in Guilfoyle--a little petulance in Lady Estelle too--to find him
shaking hands and speaking in gutteral Welsh with some of the men
cottagers, or peasant-women with jackets and tall odd hats. But one
anecdote will suffice to show the character of Sir Madoc.

In the very summer of my visit, it had occurred that he had to serve on a
jury when a property of some three thousand pounds or so was at issue; and
when the jury retired, he found that they were determined to decide in such
manner as he did not deem equitable, and which in the end would inevitably
ruin an honest farmer named Evan Rhuddlan, father of a sergeant in my
company of Welsh Fusileers, who dwelt at a place called Craig Eryri, or
"the Rock of Eagles." Finding that they were resolute, he submitted, or
affected to acquiesce in their decision; but on announcing it to the court he
handed the losing party a cheque on Coutts and Co. for the whole sum in
litigation, and became more than ever the idol of the country people.

"Romantic old place--casques, cobwebs, and all that sort of thing," said
Guilfoyle, as he handed Lady Estelle into the carriage, and took the bridle
of his horse from Bob Spurrit, the groom; "I thought Burke had written the
epitaph of chivalry and all belonging to it."

"Yes, but romance still exists, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Winifred, whose face
was bright with smiles.

"And love too, eh, Estelle?" added Dora, laughing.

"Even in the region of Mayfair, you think?" said she.

"Yes; and wherever there is beauty, that is rarest," said I.

But she only replied by one of her calm smiles; for she had a reticence of
manner which there seemed to be no means of moving.

"Talking of love and romance, I should like to know more of that pale
woman we saw in church to-day," said Dora.

"Why so?" asked Guilfoyle, curtly.

"Because I saw she must have some terrible story to tell.--What was the
text, Mr. Caradoc?" she asked, as we departed homewards.

"Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied Phil.

"O fie!--or the subject?"

"No," said Caradoc, reddening a little; for he had been intent during the
whole service on Winifred Lloyd.

"It was all about Jacob's ladder, of which we have had a most inaccurate
notion hitherto," said Dora, as we drove down the long lime avenue, to find
that, as the day was so sultry, luncheon had been laid for us by Owen
Gwyllim under the grand old trees in the lawn, about thirty yards from the
entrance-hall, under the very oak where the spectre of Sir Jorwerth Du was
alleged to vanish, the oak of Owen Glendower; and where that doughty
Cymbrian had perhaps sought to summon spirits from the vasty deep, we
found spirits of another kind--brandy and seltzer, clicquot and sparkling
moselle cooling in silver ice-pails on the greensward; and there too,
awaiting us, sat Lady Naseby, smiling and fanning herself under the
umbrageous shadows of the chase.

Over her stately head was pinned a fall of rich Maltese lace, that hung in
lappets on each side--a kind of demi-toilette that well became her lingering
beauty and matronly appearance.

In a mother-of-pearl basket by her side, and placed on the luncheon-
table, lay Tiny, her shock, a diminutive cur, white as snow, spotless as
Mademoiselle Babette with perfumed soap could make it, its long woolly
hair dangling over its pink eyes, giving it, as Sir Madoc said, "a most
pitiable appearance;" for with all his love of dogs, he disliked such
pampered, waddling, and wheezing pets as this, and thought manhood never
looked so utterly contemptible as when a tall "Jeames" in livery, with

whiskers and calves, cane and nosegay, had the custody of such a
quadruped, while his lady shopped in Regent-street or Piccadilly.

CHAPTER IX.-THE INITIALS.

While we were at luncheon, and the swollen champagne-corks were
flying upward into the green foliage overhead, and while Owen Gwyllim
was supplying us with iced claret-cup from a great silver tankard presented
to Sir Madoc's uncle by his regiment, the Ancient Britons, after the Irish
rebellion of 1798, and with which he, Sir Madoc, had been wont to dispense
swig or "brown Betty" on St. David's day, when at Cambridge--Dora, with
her hair flying loose, her eyes sparkling, and her face radiant with
excitement and merriment came tripping down the perron from the entrance
hall, and across the lawn towards us, with the contents of the household
post-bag. She seemed to have letters for every one, save me--letters which
she dropped and picked up as she came along. There was quite a pile of
notes for herself, on the subject of her approaching fête; and how busy her
pretty little hands immediately became!

After the usual muttered apologies, all began to read.

There was a letter for Guilfoyle, on reading which he grew very white,
exhibited great trepidation, and thrust it into his coat-pocket.

"What is up, sir?" asked Sir Madoc, pausing with a slice of cold fowl on
his fork; "nothing unpleasant, I hope?'

"Sold on a bay mare--that is all," he replied, with an affected laugh, as if
to dismiss the subject.

"How?" asked Sir Madoc, whom a "horsey" topic immediately
interested.

"Like many other handicap 'pots' this season, my nag came in worse than
second."

"A case of jockeying?"

"Pure and simple."

"When?"

"O, ah--York races."

"Why, man alive, they don't come off for a month yet!" responded Sir
Madoc, somewhat dryly; but perceiving that his guest was awkwardly
placed, he changed the subject by saying, "But your letter, Lady Estelle,
gives you pleasure, I am glad to see."

"It is from Lord Pottersleigh. He arrives here to-morrow and hopes his
rooms have a southern exposure."

"The fête-day--of course. His comforts shall be fully attended to."

"Why did he write to her about this, and not to Sir Madoc or Miss
Lloyd?" thought I.

"He is such an old friend," remarked Lady Estelle, as if she divined my
mental query.

"Yes, rather too old for my taste," said the somewhat mischievous Dora.
"He wears goloshes in damp weather, his hat down on the nape of his neck;
is in an agony of mind about exposures, draughts, and currents of air; makes
his horse shy every time he attempts to mount, and they go round in circles,
eyeing each other suspiciously till a groom comes; and when he does
achieve his saddle, he drops his whip or his gloves, or twists his stirrup-
leather. And yet it is this old fogie whose drag at Epsom or the Derby makes
the greatest show, has the finest display of lovely faces, fans, bonnets, and
parasols--a moving Swan and Edgar, with a luncheon spread that Fortnum

and Mason might envy, and champagne flowing as if from a fountain; but
withal, he is so tiresome!"

"Dora, you quite forget yourself," said Winifred, while I could have
kissed her for this sketch of my rival, at which Sir Madoc, and even Estelle
Cressingham, laughed; but Lady Naseby said, with some asperity of tone,

"Lord Pottersleigh is one of our richest peers, Miss Dora, and his
creation dates from Henry VIII."

"And he is to dance with me," said the heedless girl, still laughing. "O,
won't I astonish his nerves if we waltz!"

"Your cousin Naseby is to visit us, Estelle, at Walcot Park, so soon as we
return, if he can," said the Countess, turning from Dora with a very dubious
expression of eye, and closing a letter she had received; "his love-affair
with that odious Irish girl is quite off, thank heaven!"

"How?--love of change, or change of love?"

"Neither."

"What then, mamma?"

"The Irish girl actually had a mind of her own, and preferred some one
else even to a peer, an English peer!"

"I drain this clicquot to the young lady's happiness," said Sir Madoc.

"But all this is nothing to me, mamma," said Lady Estelle, coldly.

But I could see at a glance, that if it was unimportant to her, it was not so
to her mother, his aunt, who would rather have had the young earl for her
son-in-law than the old viscount, even though the patent of the latter had
been expede by the royal Bluebeard, most probably for services that
pertained more to knavery than knighthood.

"Well, Caradoc," said I, "is your despatch from the regiment?"

"Yes; from Price of ours. Nothing but rumours of drafts going eastward
to make up the death-losses at Varna, and he fears our leave may be
cancelled. 'Deuced awkward if we go soon,' he adds, 'as I have a most
successful affaire du c[oe]ur on hand just now.'"

"When is he ever without one?" said I; and we both laughed.

Winifred's eyes were on me, and Caradoc's were on her, while I was
sedulously attending to Lady Estelle. As for Guilfoyle, since the advent of
his letter he had become quite silent. We were at the old game of cross-
purposes; for it seems to be in love, as with everything else in life, that the
obstacles in the way, and the difficulty of attainment, always enhance the
value of the object to be won. Yet in the instance of Lady Estelle I was not
so foolish as poor Price of ours, the butt of the mess, who always fell in
love with the wrong person--to whom the pale widow, inconsolable in her
first crape; the blooming bride, in her clouds of tulle and white lace; the girl
just engaged, and who consequently saw but one man in the world, and that
man her own fiancé; or any pretty girl whom he met just when the route
came and the mess-plate was packed prior to marching--became invested
with remarkable charms, and a sudden interest that made his susceptible
heart feel sad and tender.

The ladies' letters opened up quite a budget of town news and gossip. To
Sir Madoc, a genuine country gentleman, full only of field-sports, the
prospects of the turnip crop and the grouse season, the county-pack and so
forth, a conversation that now rose, chiefly on the coming fête on dresses,
music, routs and Rotten-row, kettledrums and drawing-rooms, and the town
in general, proved somewhat of a bore. He fidgeted, and ultimately left for
the stables, where he and Bob Spurrit had to hold a grave consultation on
certain equine ailments. The ladies also rose to leave us; but Caradoc,
Guilfoyle, and I lingered under the cool shadow of the oaks, and lit our
cigars. With his silver case for holding the last-named luxuries, Guilfoyle
unconsciously pulled forth a letter, which fell on the grass at my feet.
Picking it up, I restored it to him; but brief though the action, I could not
help perceiving it to be the letter he had just received, that it was addressed
in a woman's hand, and had on the envelope, in coloured letters, the name
"Georgette."

"Thanks," said he, with sudden irritation of manner, as he thrust it into a
breast-pocket this time; "a narrow squeak that!" he added, slangily, with a
half-muttered malediction.

I felt certain that there was a mystery in all this; that he feared something
unpleasant might have been revealed, had that identical letter fallen into
other hands, or under more prying eyes; and I remembered those trivial
circumstances at a future, and to me rather harassing, time. I must own that
this man was to me a puzzle. With all his disposition to boast, he never
spoke of relations or of family; yet he seemed in perfectly easy
circumstances; his own valet, groom, and horses were at Craigaderyn; he
could bear himself well and with perfect ease in the best society; and it was
evident that, wherever they came from, he was at present a man of pretty
ample means. He possessed, moreover, a keen perception for appreciating
individuals and events at their actual value; his manners were, when he
chose, polished, his coolness imperturbable, and his insouciance sometimes
amusing. For the present, it had left him.

"Beautiful brilliant that of yours, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Caradoc, to fish
for another legend of the ring; but in vain, for Guilfoyle was no longer quite
himself, though he had policy enough to feed the snarling cur Tiny in her
basket, with choice morsels of cold fowl, as Lady Naseby's soubrette,
Mademoiselle Babette, was waiting to carry it away. Since the remarks or
contretemps concerning the York races he had been as mute as a fish; and
now, when he did begin to speak in the absence of Sir Madoc, I could
perceive that gratitude for kindness did not form an ingredient in the strange
compound of which his character was made up. Perhaps secret irritation at
Sir Madoc's queries about the letter which so evidently disturbed his usual
equanimity might have been the real spirit that moved him now to sneer at
the old baronet's Welsh foibles, and particularly his weakness on the subject
of pedigrees.

"You are to stay here for the 1st, I believe?" said I.

"Yes; but, the dooce! for what? Such a labour to march through miles of
beans and growing crop, to knock over a few partridges and rabbits"
(partwidges and wabbits, he called them), "which you can pay another to do
much better for you."

"Sturdy Sir Madoc would hear this with incredulous astonishment," said
I.

"Very probably. Kind fellow old Taffy, though," said he, while smoking
leisurely, and lounging back in an easy garden-chair; "has a long pedigree,
of course, as we may always remember by the coats-of-arms stuck up all
over the house. 'County people' in the days of Howel Dha; 'county ditto' in
the days of Queen Victoria, and likely to remain so till the next flood forms
a second great epoch in the family history. Very funny, is it not? He reminds
me of what we read of Mathew Bramble in Humphry Clinker--a gentleman
of great worth and property, descended in a straight line by the female side
from Llewellyn, Prince of Wales."

I was full of indignation on hearing my old friend spoken of thus, if not
under his own roof, under his ancient ancestral oaks; but Philip Caradoc,
more Celtic and fiery by nature, anticipated me by saying sharply, "Bad
taste this, surely in you, Mr. Guilfoyle, to sneer thus at our hospitable
entertainer; and believe me, sir, that no one treats lightly the pedigree of
another who--who--"

"Ah, well--who what?"

"Possesses one himself," added Phil, looking him steadily in the face.

"Bah! I suppose every one has had a grandfather."

"Even you, Mr. Guilfoyle?" continued Caradoc, whose cheek began to
flush; but the other replied calmly, and not without point,

"There is a writer who says, that to pride oneself on the nobility of one's
ancestors is like looking among the roots for the fruit that should be found
on the branches."

Finding that the conversation was taking a decidedly unpleasant turn,
and that, though his tone was quiet and his manner suave, a glassy glare
shone in the greenish-gray eyes of Guilfoyle, I said, with an assumed laugh,

"We must not forget the inborn ideas and the national sentiments of the
Welsh--call them provincialisms if you will. But remember that there are
eight hundred thousand people inspired by a nationality so strong, that they
will speak only the language of the Cymri; and it is among those chiefly
that our regiment has ever been recruited. But if the foibles--I cannot deem
them folly--of Sir Madoc are distasteful to you, the charms of the scenery
around us and those of our lady friends cannot but be pleasing."

"Granted," said he, coldly; "all are beautiful, even to Miss Dora, who
looks so innocent."

"Who is so innocent by nature, Mr. Guilfoyle," said I, in a tone of
undisguised sternness.

"Then it is a pity she permits herself to say--sharp things."

"With so much unintentional point, perhaps?"

"Sir!"

"Truth, then--which you will," said I, as we simultaneously rose to leave
luncheon-table.

And now, oddly enough, followed by Winifred, Dora herself came again
tripping down the broad steps of the perron towards us, exclaiming,

"Is not papa with you?--the tiresome old dear, he will be among the
harriers or the stables of course!"

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"Only think, Mr. Hardinge, that poor woman we saw at church this
morning, looking so pretty, so pale, and interesting, was found among the
tombstones by Farmer Rhuddlan, quite in a helpless faint, after we drove
away--so the housekeeper tells me; so we must find her out and succour her
if possible."

"But who is she?" asked Caradoc.

"No one knows; she refused obstinately to give her name or tell her story
ere she went away; but at her neck hangs a gold locket, with a crest, the
date, 1st of September, on one side, and H. G. beautifully enamelled on the
other. How odd--your initials, Mr. Guilfoyle!"

"You are perhaps not aware that my name is Henry Hawkesby
Guilfoyle," said he, with ill-concealed anger, while he played nervously
with his diamond ring.

"How intensely odd!" resumed his beautiful but unwitting tormentor; "H.
H. G. were the three letters on the locket!"

"Did no one open it?" he asked.

"No; it was firmly closed."

"By a secret spring, no doubt."

Guilfoyle looked ghastly for a moment, or it might have been the effect
of the sunlight flashing on his face through the waving foliage of the trees
overhead; but he said laughingly,

"A droll coincidence, which under some circumstances, might be very
romantic, but fortunately in the present has no point whatever. If my initials
hung at your neck instead of hers, how happy I should be, Miss Dora!"

And turning the matter thus, by a somewhat clumsy compliment or bit of
flattery, he ended an unpleasant conversation by entering the house with her
and Caradoc.

Winifred remained irresolutely behind them.

"We were to visit my future comrade," said I.

"Come, then," said she, with a beautiful smile, and a soft blush of
innocent pleasure.

CHAPTER X.--A PERILOUS RAMBLE.

Winifred Lloyd was, as Caradoc had said, a very complete and perfect
creature. The very way her gloves fitted, the handsome form of her feet, the
softness of her dark eyes, the tender curve of her lips, and, more than all,
her winning manner--the inspiration of an innocent and guileless heart--
made her a most desirable companion at all times; but with me, at present,
poor Winifred was only the means to an end; and perhaps she secretly felt
this, as she lingered pensively for a moment by the marble fountain that
stood before Craigaderyn Court, and played with her white fingers in the
water, causing the gold and silver fish to dart madly to and fro. Above its
basin a group of green bronze tritons were spouting, great Nile lilies floated
on its surface, and over all was the crest of the Lloyds, also in bronze, a
lion's head, gorged, with a wreath of oak. The notes of a harp came softly
towards us through the trees as we walked onward, for old Owen Gwyllim
the butler was playing in that most unromantic place his pantry, and the air
was the inevitable "Jenny Jones."

From the lawn I led her by walks and ways forgotten since my boyhood,
and since I had gone the same route with her birdnesting and nutting in
those glorious Welsh woods, by hedgerows that were matted and
interwoven with thorny brambles and bright wild-flowers, past laden
orchards and picturesque farms, nooks that were leafy and green, and little
tarns of gleaming water, that reflected the smiling summer sky; past
meadows, where the sleek brown, or black, or brindled cattle were chewing
the cud and ruminating knee-deep among the fragrant pasture; and dreamily
I walked by her side, touching her hand from time to time, or taking it fairly
in mine as of old, and occasionally enforcing what I said by a pressure of
her soft arm within mine, while I talked to her, saying heaven knows what,
but most ungratefully wishing all the time that she were Estelle
Cressingham. All was soft and peaceful around us. The woods of
Craigaderyn, glowing in the heat of the August afternoon, were hushed and

still, all save the hum of insects, or if they stirred it was when the soft west
wind seemed to pass through them with a languid sigh; and so some of the
influences of a past time and a boyish love came over me; a time long
before I had met the dazzling Estelle--a time when to me there had seemed
to be but one girl in the world, and she was Winifred Lloyd--ere I joined the
--th in the West Indies, or the Welsh Fusileers, and knew what the world
was. I dreaded being betrayed into some tenderness as a treason to Lady
Estelle; and fortunately we were not without some interruptions in our walk
of a mile or so to visit her horned pet, whom she had sent forth for a last run
on his native hills.

We visited Yr Ogof (or the cave) where one of her cavalier ancestors had
hidden after the battle of Llandegai, in the Vale of the Ogwen, during the
wars of Cromwell, and now, by local superstition, deemed an abode of the
knockers, those supernatural guardians of the mines, to whom are known all
the metallic riches of the mountains; hideous pigmy gnomes, who, though
they can never be seen, are frequently heard beating, blasting, and boring
with their little hammers, and singing in a language known to themselves
only. Then we tarried by the heaped-up cairn that marked some long-
forgotten strife; and then by the Maen Hir, a long boulder, under which
some fabled giant lay; and next a great rocking stone, amid a field of beans,
which we found Farmer Rhuddlan--a sturdy specimen of a Welsh Celt, high
cheek-boned and sharp-eyed--contemplating with great satisfaction. High
above the sea of green stalks towered that wizard altar, where whilom an
archdruid had sat, and offered up the blood of his fellow-men to gods whose
names and rites are alike buried in oblivion; but Strabo tells us that it was
from the flowing blood of the victim that the Druidesses--virgins supposed
to be endowed with the gift of prophecy--divined the events of the future;
and this old stone, now deemed but a barrier to the plough, had witnessed
those terrible observances.

Poised one block upon the other, resting on the space a sparrow alone
might occupy, and having stood balanced thus mysteriously for uncounted
ages, lay the rocking stone. The farmer applied his strong hand to the
spheroidal mass, and after one or two impulses it swayed most perceptibly.
Then begging me not to forget his son, who was with our Fusileers far away
at Varna, he respectfully uncovered his old white head, and left us to

continue his tour of the crops, but not without bestowing upon us a peculiar
and knowing smile, that made the blood mantle in the peachlike cheeks of
Winifred.

"How strange are the reflections these solemn old relics excite!" said
she, somewhat hastily; "if, indeed, one may pretend to value or to think of
such things in these days of ours, when picturesque superstition is dying
and poetry is long since dead."

"Poetry dead?"

"I think it died with Byron."

"Poetry can never die while beauty exists," said I, smiling rather
pointedly in her face.

My mind being so filled with Estelle and her fancied image, caused me
to be unusually soft and tender to Winifred. I seemed to be mingling one
woman's presence with that of another. I regarded Winifred as the dearest of
friends; but I loved Estelle with a passion that was full of enthusiasm and
admiration.

"No two men have the same idea of beauty," said Winifred, after a pause.

"True, nor any two nations; it exists chiefly, perhaps, in the mind of the
lover."

"Yet love has nothing exactly to do with it."

"Prove this," said I, laughing, as I caught her hand in mine.

"Easily. Ask a Chinese his idea of loveliness, and he will tell you, a
woman with her eyebrows plucked out, the lids painted, her teeth
blackened, and her feet shapeless; and what does the cynical Voltaire say?--
'Ask a toad what is beauty, the supremely beautiful, and he will answer you,
it is his female, with two round eyes projecting out of its little head, a broad
flat neck, a yellow breast, and dark-brown back.' Even red hair is thought
lovely by some; and did not Duke Philip the Good institute the order of the

Golden Fleece of Burgundy in honour of a damsel whose hair was as
yellow as saffron; and now, Harry Hardinge, what is your idea?"

"Can you ask me?" I exclaimed, with something of ardour, for she
looked so laughingly bright and intelligent as she spoke; then divining that I
was thinking of another, not of her, "for there is a thread in our thoughts
even as there is a pulse in our hearts, and he who can hold the one knows
how to think, and he who can move the other knows how to feel," she said,
with a point scarcely meant.

"The eye may be pleased, the vanity flattered, and ambition excited by a
woman of beauty, especially if she is one of rank; yet the heart may be won
by one her inferior. Talking of beauty, Lady Naseby has striven hard to get
the young earl, her nephew, to marry our friend, Lady Estelle."

"Would she have him?" I asked, while my cheek grew hot.

"I cannot say--but he declined," replied Winifred, pressing a wild rose to
her nostrils.

"Declined--impossible!"

"Why impossible? But in her fiery pride Estelle will never, never forgive
him; though he was already engaged to one whom he, then at least, loved
well."

"Ah--the Irish girl, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Winifred, with a short little sigh, as she looked down.

"Such a girl as Estelle Cressingham must always find admirers."

"Hundreds; but as the estates, like the title, have passed to the next male
heir, and Lady Naseby has only a life-rent of the jointure house in Hants--
Walcot Park, a lovely place--she is anxious that her daughter should make a
most suitable marriage."

"Which means lots of tin, I suppose?" said I, sourly.

"Exactly," responded Winifred, determined, perhaps, if I had the bad
taste to speak so much of Estelle, to say unpleasant things; "and the
favoured parti at present is Viscount Pottersleigh, who comes here to-
morrow, as his letter informed her."

"Old Pottersleigh is sixty if he is a day!" said I, emphatically.

"What has age to do with the matter in view? Money and position are
preferable to all fancies of the heart, I fear."

"Nay, nay, Winifred, you belie yourself and Lady Estelle too; love is
before everything!"

She laughed at my energy, while I began to feel that, next to making
love, there is nothing so pleasant or so suggestive as talking of it to a pretty
girl; and I beg to assure you, that it was somewhat perilous work with one
like Winifred Lloyd; a girl who had the sweetest voice, the most brilliant
complexion, and the softest eyes perhaps in all North Wales. She now drew
her hand away; till then I had half forgot it was her hand I had been
holding.

"Remember that oft-quoted line in the song of Montrose," said she,
pretty pointedly.

"Which? for I haven't an idea."

"'Love one--and love no more.'"

"The great marquis was wrong," said I; "at least, if, according to a more
obscure authority in such matters, Price of ours, one may love many times
and always truly."

"Indeed!" Her lip curled as she spoke.

"Yes; for may not the same charms, traits, manner, and beauty which lure
us to love once, lure us to love again?"

Winifred actually sighed, with something very like irritation, as she said,
"I think all this the most abominable sophistry, Mr. Hardinge, and I feel a

hatred for 'Price of ours,' whoever he may be."

"Mister! Why I was Harry a moment ago."

"Well, here is the abode of Cameydd Llewellyn; and you must tell me
what you think of your future Welsh comrade; his beard may be to the
regimental pattern, though decidedly his horns and moustaches are not."

As she said this, again laughingly, we found ourselves close to a little hut
that abutted on a thatched cottage and cow-house, in a most secluded place,
a little glen or dell, over which the trees were arching, and so forming a
vista, through which we saw Craigaderyn Court, as if in a frame of foliage.
She opened a little wicket, and at the sound of her voice the goat came
forth, dancing on his hind legs--a trick she had taught him--or playfully
butting her skirts with his horns, regarding me somewhat dubiously and
suspiciously the while with his great hazel eyes. He was truly a splendid
specimen of the old Carnarvonshire breed of goats, which once ran wild
over the mountains there, and were either hunted by dogs or shot with the
bullet so lately as Pennant's time. His hair, which was longer than is usual
with those of England, led me to fancy there was a Cashmerian cross in his
blood; his black horns were two feet three inches long, and more than two
feet from one sharp tip to the other. He was as white as the new-fallen snow,
with a black streak down the back, and his beard was as venerable in
proportion and volume as it was silky in texture.

"He is indeed a beautiful creature--a noble fellow!" I exclaimed, with
genuine admiration.

"And just four years old. I obtained him when quite a kid."

"I am so loth that the Fusileers should deprive you of him."

"Talk not of that; but when you see my goat, my old pet Carneydd
Llewellyn, marching proudly at their head, and decked with chaplets on St.
David's day, when you are far, far away from us, you will--" she paused.

"What, Winifred?"

"Think sometimes of Craigaderyn--of to-day--and of me, perhaps," she
added, with a laugh that sounded strangely unlike one.

"Do I require aught to make me think of you?" said I, patting kindly the
plump, ungloved hand with which she was caressing the goat's head, and
which in whiteness rivalled the hue of his glossy coat; and thereon I saw a
Conway pearl, in a ring I had given her long ago, when she was quite a little
girl.

"I hope not--and papa--I hope not."

The bright beaming face was upturned to me, and, as the deuce would
have it, I kissed her: the impulse was irresistible.

She trembled then, withdrew a pace or two, grew very pale, and her eyes
filled with tears.

"You should not have done that, Harry--I mean, Mr. Hardinge."

There was something wild and pitiful in her face.

"Tears?" said I, not knowing very well what to say; for "people often do
say very little, when they mean a great deal."

"My old favourite will know the black ladders of Carneydd Llewellyn no
more," said she, stooping over the goat caressingly to hide her confusion.

"But, Winifred--Miss Lloyd--why tears?"

"Can you ask me?" said she, her eyes flashing through them.

"Why, what a fuss you make! I have often done so--when a boy!"

"But you are no longer a boy; nor am I a girl, Mr. Hardinge."

"Do please call me Harry, like Sir Madoc," I entreated. "Not now--after
this; and here comes Lady Estelle."

"Estelle!"

At that moment, not far from us, we saw Lady Naseby, driven in a pony-
phaeton by Caradoc, and Lady Estelle with Guilfoyle a little way behind
them, on horseback, and unaccompanied by any groom, coming sweeping
at a trot down the wooded glen.

Such is the amusing inconsistency of the human heart--the male human
heart, perhaps my lady readers will say--that though I had been more than
flirting with Winifred Lloyd--on the eve of becoming too tender, perhaps--I
felt a pang of jealousy on seeing that Guilfoyle was Lady Estelle's sole
companion, for Dora was doubtless immersed in the details of her
forthcoming fête.

Had she seen us?

Had she detected in the distance that little salute? If so, in the silly,
kindly, half-flirting, and half-affectionate impulse which led me to kiss my
beautiful companion and playfellow of the past years--the mere impulse of
a moment--if mistaken, I might have ruined myself with her--perhaps with
both.

"A lovely animal'! I hope you are gratified, Mr. Hardinge?" said Lady
Estelle, with--but perhaps it was fancy--a curl on her red lip, as she reined-
in her spirited horse sharply with one firm hand, and caressed his arching
neck gracefully with the other, while he rose on his hind legs, and her veil
flew aside.

Already dread of the future had chased away my first emotion of pique,
nor was it possible to be long angry with Estelle; for with men and women
alike, her beauty made her irresistible. Some enemies among the latter she
undoubtedly had; they might condemn the regularity of her features as too
classically severe, or have said that at times the flash of her dark eyes was
proud or defiant; but the smile that played about her lip was so soft and
winning that its influence was felt by all. Her perfect ease of manner
seemed cold--very cold, indeed, when compared to the thoughts that burned
in my own breast at that moment--dread that I might have been trifling with
Winifred Lloyd, for whom I cherished a sincere and tender friendship;
intense annoyance lest my friend Caradoc, who really loved her, might
resent the affair; and, more than all, that she for whom I would freely have

perilled limb and life might also resent, or mistake, the situation entirely.
And in this vague mood of mind I returned with the little party to the house,
where the bell had rung for tea, before dinner, which was always served at
eight o'clock. As we quitted the goat, its keeper, an old peasant dame,
wearing a man's hat and coat, with a striped petticoat and large spotted
handkerchief, looked affectionately after Miss Lloyd, and uttered an
exclamation in Welsh, which Caradoc translated to me as being,

"God bless her! May feet so light and pretty never carry a heavy heart!"

CHAPTER XI.--THE FÊTE CHAMPETRE.

How wild and inconceivable, abrupt, yet quite practicable, were the
brilliant visions I drew, the projects I formed! Mentally I sprang over all
barriers, cleared at a flying leap every obstacle. In fancy I achieved all my
desires. I was the husband of Estelle; the chosen son-in-law of her mother--
the man of all men to whom she would have entrusted the future happiness
of her only daughter. The good old lady had sacrificed pride, ambition, and
all to love. Time, life-usage, all became subservient to me when in these
victorious moods. I had distanced all rivals--she was mine; I hers. I had cut
the service, bidden farewell to the Royal Welsh; she, for a time at least, to
London, the court, the Row, "society," the world itself for me; and were
rusticating hand-in-hand, amid the woods of Walcot Park, or somewhere
else, of which I had a very vague idea. But from these daydreams I had to
rouse myself to the knowledge that, so far from being accepted, I had not
yet ventured to propose; that I had more than one formidable rival; that
other obstacles were to be overcome; and that Lady Naseby was as cold and
proud and unapproachable as ever.

The day of Dora's fête proved a lovely one. The merry little creature--for
she was much less in stature than her elder sister--with her bright blue eyes
and wealth of golden hair, was full of smiles, pleasure, and impatience; and
was as radiant with gems, the gifts of friends, as a young bride. I welcomed
the day with vague hopes that grew into confidence, though I could scarcely
foresee how it was to close for me, or all that was to happen. Though
Caradoc and I had come from Winchester ostensibly to attend this fête, I
must glance briefly at many of the details of it, and confine myself almost
to the dramatis personæ. Suffice it to say that there was a militia band on
one of the flower-terraces; there was a pretty dark-eyed Welsh gipsy, with
black, dishevelled hair, who told fortunes, and picked up, but omitted to
restore, certain stray spoons and forks; there was an itinerant Welsh harper,
whom the staghound Brach, the same stately animal which I had seen on
the rug before the hall-fire, inspired by that animosity which all dogs seem
to have for mendicants, assailed about the calf of the leg, for which he
seemed to have a particular fancy. So Sir Madoc had to plaster the bite with
a fifty-pound note. Then there was a prophetic hermit, in a moss-covered
grotto, cloaked like a gray friar, and bearded like the pard; a wizard yclept
Merlin, who, having imbibed too much brandy, made a great muddle of the
predictions and couplets so carefully entrusted to him for judicious
utterance; and who assigned the initials of Lady Estelle Cressingham to the
portly old vicar, as those of his future spouse, and those of his lady, a stout
matron with eight bantlings, to me, and so on.

The company poured in fast; and after being duly received by Sir Madoc
and Miss Lloyd in the great drawing-room, literally crowded all the
beautiful grounds, the band in white uniform on the terrace being a rival
attraction to the great refreshment tent or marquee--a stately polychromed
edifice, with gilt bells hanging from each point of the vandyked edging--
wherein a standing luncheon was arranged, under the care of Owen
Gwyllim; and over all floated a great banner, ermine and pean, with the lion
rampant of the Lloyds. A ball was to follow in the evening. The floor of the
old dining-hall had been waxed till it shone like glass for the dancers. Its
walls were hung with evergreens and coloured lamps, and a select few were
invited; but Fate ordained that neither Lady Estelle nor I were to figure in
this, the closing portion of the festivities. A number of beautiful girls in
charming toilettes were present. People of the best style, too, mingled with

humble middle-class country folks--tenants and so forth. There were some
officers from the detachments quartered in Chester, and several little half-
known parsons, in Noah's-ark coats, who came sidling in, and intrenched
themselves beside huge mammas in quiet corners, to discuss parish matters
and general philanthropy through the medium of iced claret-cup and
sparkling moselle. And there were present, too, as Guilfoyle phrased it,
"some of those d--d fellows who write and paint, by Jove!"

On this day Guilfoyle, though he had carefully attired himself in correct
morning costume, seemed rather preoccupied and irritable. The presence of
Pottersleigh and so many others placed his society somewhat at a discount;
and, glass in eye, he seemed to watch the arrival of the lady guests,
especially any who were darkly attired, with a nervous anxiety, which,
somehow, I mentally connected with the pale woman in church, and Dora's
story of the initials. There was undoubtedly some mystery about him.
Viewed from the perron of the house, the scene was certainly a gay one--the
greenness of the closely-mown lawn, dotted by the bright costumes of the
ladies, and a few scarlet coats (among them Caradoc's and mine); the
brilliance and the perfume of flowers were there; the buzz of happy voices,
the soft laughter of well-bred women, and the strains of the band, as they
ebbed and flowed on the gentle breeze of the sunny noon. Every way it was
most enjoyable. Here on one side spread an English chase, with oaks as old,
perhaps, as the days when "Beddgelert heard the bugle sound," leafy, crisp,
and massive, their shadows casting a tint that was almost blue on the soft
greensward, with the sea rippling and sparkling about a mile distant, where
a portion of the chase ended at the edge of some lofty cliffs. On the other
side rose the Welsh mountains, with all their gray rocks, huge boulders, and
foaming waterfalls--mountains from where there seemed in fancy to come
the scent of wild flowers, of gorse, and blackberries, to dispel the
fashionable languor of the promenaders on the lawn. The leaves, the
flowers, the trees of the chase, the ladies' dresses, and the quaint façade of
the old Tudor mansion were all warm with sunshine.

Old Morgan Roots the gardener, to his great disgust, had been compelled
to rifle the treasures of his hothouses, and to strip his shelves of the most
wonderful exotics, to furnish bouquets for the ladies; for Morgan was proud
of his floral effects, and when displaying his slippings from Kew and all the

best gardens in England, tulips from Holland and the Cape, peonies from
Persia, rhododendrons from Asia, azaleas from America, wax-like
magnolias, and so forth, he was wont to exult over his rival, the vicar's
Scotch gardener, whom he stigmatised as "a sassenach;" and not the least of
his efforts were some superb roses, named the "Dora," in honour of the fair-
haired heroine of the day. And Caradoc--who was a good judge of
everything, from cutlets and clicquot to horses and harness, and had a
special eye for ankles, insteps, and eyelashes, style, and colour, &c.--
declared the fête to be quite a success. As I looked around me, I could not
but feel how England is pre-eminently, beyond all others, the land of fair
women and of beauty. Lady Estelle, with her pale complexion and thick
dark hair, her dress of light-blue silk, over which she wore a white
transparent tunique, her tiny bonnet of white lace, her gloves and parasol of
the palest silver-gray, seemed a very perfect specimen of her class; but until
Lord Pottersleigh appeared, which was long after dancing had begun on the
sward (by country visitors chiefly), she sat by the side of mamma, and
declined all offers from partners. The Viscount--my principal bête noire--
had arrived over-night in his own carriage from Chester, but did not appear
at breakfast next morning, nor until fully midday, as he had to pass--so Dora
whispered to me--several hours in an arm-chair, with his gouty feet
enveloped in flannel, while he regaled himself by sipping colchicum and
warm wine-whey, though he alleged that his lameness was caused by a kick
from his horse; and now, when with hobbling steps he came to where Lady
Naseby and her stately daughter were seated, he did not seem--his coronet
and Order of the Garter excepted--a rival to be much dreaded by a smart
Welsh Fusileer of five and twenty.

Fully in his sixtieth year, and considerably wasted--more, perhaps, by
early dissipation than by time--the Viscount was a pale, thin, and feeble-
looking man, hollow-chested and slightly bent, with an unsteadiness of gait,
an occasional querulousness of manner and restlessness of eye, as if
nervous of the approach of many of those among whom he now found
himself, and whom he viewed as "bumpkins in a state of rude health."
Guilfoyle, of whom he evidently had misgivings, he regarded with a cold
and aristocratic stare, after carefully adjusting a gold eyeglass on his thin,
aquiline nose, and yet they had been twice introduced elsewhere. His
features were good. In youth he had been deemed a handsome man; but

now his brilliant teeth were of Paris, and what remained of his hair was
carefully dyed a clear dark brown, that consorted but ill with the wrinkled
aspect of his face, and the withered appearance of his thin white hands,
when he ungloved, which was seldom. His whole air and style were so
different from those, of hearty and jolly Sir Madoc, whose years were the
same, and who was looking so bland, so bald, and shiny in face and brow,
so full and round in waistcoat, with one of the finest camellias in his button-
hole, "just like Morgan Roots the gardener going to church on Sunday," as
Dora had it, while he watched the dancers, and clapped his hands to the
music.

"Ha, Pottersleigh," said he, "you and I have done with this sort of thing
now; but I have seen the day, when I was young, less fleshy, and didn't ride
with a crupper, I could whirl in the waltz like a spinning jenny."

To this awkward speech the Viscount, who affected juvenility, responded
by a cold smile; and as he approached and was welcomed by Lady Naseby
and her daughter, the latter glanced at me, and I could detect an undefinable
expression, that savoured of amusement, or disdain, or annoyance, or all
together, ending with a haughty smile, hovering on her dark and ever-
sparkling eyes; for she knew by past experience, that from thenceforward,
with an air of proprietary that was very provoking, he would be certain to
hover constantly beside her; and now, after paying the usual compliments to
the two ladies, his lordship condescended to honour me with a glance and a
smile, but not with his hand.

"Ah, how do you do, Mr. Hardinge--or shall I have the pleasure of
saying Captain Hardinge?" said he.

"Fortune has not so far favoured me--I am only a sub still."

"So was Wellington in his time," said Sir Madoc, tapping me on the
shoulder.

"Ah, but you'll soon be off to the East now, I suppose." (His eyes
expressed the words, "I hope.") "We shall soon come to blows with those
Russian fellows, and then promotions will come thick and fast. I have it as a

certainty from Aberdeen himself, that a landing somewhere on the enemy's
coast cannot be much longer delayed now."

"And with one-half our army dead, and the other half worn out by camp-
fever, cholera, and sufferings at Varna, we shall take the field with winter
before us--a Russian winter, too!" said Sir Madoc, who was a bitter
opponent of the ministry.

Ere Pottersleigh could reply, to avert any discussion of politics, the
Countess spoke.

"I trust," said she, "that the paragraph in the Court Journal and other
papers, which stated that your title is about to be made an earldom, is
something more than mere rumour?"

"Much more, I have the pleasure to inform you," mumbled this
hereditary legislator. "I have already received official notice of the honour
intended me by her Majesty. I supported the Aberdeen ministry so
vigorously throughout this Russian affair, clearing them, so far as in me lay,
from the allegations of vacillation, that in gratitude they were bound to
recognise my services."

He played with his eyeglass, and glanced at Estelle. She seemed to be
looking intently at the shifting crowd; yet she heard him, for a slight colour
crossed her cheek.

"So Potter is to be an earl," thought I; "and she perhaps is contrasting his
promotion with that which I have to hope for."

Even this brief conversation by its import made me fear that my dreams
might never come to pass--that my longings were too impossible for
fulfilment. I envied Caradoc, who, having no distinction of rank to contend
with in his love affair, seemed, to be getting on very well with Winifred
Lloyd, who, to his great delight, had made him her aide-de-camp, and
useful friend during the day.

"Our troops will find it tough work encountering the Russians, I expect,"
said Lord Pottersleigh; "for although the rank and file are utter barbarians,

Mr. Hardinge, many of their officers are men of high culture, and all regard
the Czar as a demigod, and Russia as holy."

"I met some of them when I was in the north of Europe," said Guilfoyle-
-who, being rather ignored by Pottersleigh, felt ruffled, if not secretly
enraged and disposed to contradict him; "and though I think all foreigners
usually absurd--"

"Ah, that is a thoroughly English and somewhat provincial idea," said
his lordship, quietly interrupting him; "but I have read of an old Carib who
said, 'The only obstinate savages I have met are the English; they adopt
none of our customs.'"

"To adopt their dress might have been difficult in those days; but all
foreigners, and especially Russians, are somewhat strange, my lord, when
judged by an English standard. I can relate a curious instance of attempted
peculation in a Russian official, such as would never occur with one
occupying a corresponding position here. When attaché at the court of
Catzenelnbogen, I once visited a wealthy Russian landowner, a Count
Tolstoff, who lived near Riga, at a time when he was about to receive the
sum of eighty thousand silver roubles from the imperial treasury, for hemp,
timber, and other produce of his estate, sold for the use of the navy. Ivan
Nicolaevitch, the Pulkovnich commanding the marine infantry stationed in
the fortress of Dunamunde, was to pay this money; but that official
informed Tolstoff verbally--he was too wary to commit anything to paper--
that unless six thousand of the roubles were left in his hands, the whole
might be lost by the way, as my friend's residence was in a solitary place,
and the neighbourhood abounded with lawless characters.

"On Tolstoff threatening to complain to the Emperor, the Pulkovnich
most unwillingly handed over the entire sum, which was delivered in great
state by a praperchich, or ensign, and six soldiers; and there we thought the
matter would end. But that very night, as we sat at supper, smoking our
meerschaums to digest a repast of mutton with mushrooms, compote of
almonds and stuffed carrots--carrots scooped out like pop-guns, and loaded
with mincemeat--the dining-room was softly entered by six men dressed
like Russian peasants, with canvas craftans and rope girdles, bark shoes and
long beards, their faces covered with crape. They threatened me with instant

death by the pistol if I dared to stir; and pinioning my friend to a chair,
placed the barrel of another to his head, and demanded the treasure, or to be
told where it was.

"Tolstoff, who was a very cool fellow, gave me a peculiar smile, and told
me in French to open the lower drawer of his escritoire, and give them
every kopec I found there.

"On obtaining permission from the leader, I crossed the room, and found
in the drawer indicated no money, but a brace of revolver pistols. With
these, which luckily were loaded and capped, I shot down two of the
intruders, and the rest fled. On tearing the masks from the fallen men, we
discovered them to be--whom think you? The Pulkovnich Nicholaevitch
and the praperchich of the escort! There was an awful row about the affair,
as you may imagine; but in a burst of gratitude my friend gave me this
valuable ring, a diamond one, which I have worn ever since."

"God bless my soul, what a terrible story!" exclaimed Pottersleigh,
regarding the ring with interest; for Guilfoyle usually selected a new
audience for each of these anecdotes, by which he hoped to create an
interest in himself; and certainly he seemed to do so for a time in the mind
of the somewhat simple old lord, who now entered into conversation with
him on the political situation, actually took his arm, and they proceeded
slowly across the lawn together. I was sorry Caradoc had not overheard the
new version of the ring, and wondered how many stories concerning it the
proprietor had told to others, or whether he had merely a stock on hand, for
chance narration. Was it vanity, art, or weakness of intellect that prompted
him? Yet I have known a Scotch captain of the line, a very shrewd fellow,
who was wont to tell similar stories of a ring, and, oddly enough, over and
over again to the same audience at the mess-table.

Being rid of both now, I resolved to lose no time in taking advantage of
the situation. Sir Madoc and "mamma" were in the refreshment tent, where
I hoped they were enjoying themselves; Dora was busy with a young sub
from Chester--little Tom Clavell of the 19th--who evidently thought her fête
was "awfully jolly;" Caradoc had secured Winifred for one dance--she
could spare him but one--and his usual soldierly swing was now reduced to

suit her measure, as they whirled amid the throng on the smoothly-shorn
turf.

CHAPTER XII.--ON THE CLIFFS.

Lady Estelle received me with a welcome smile, for at that time all
around her were strangers; and I hoped--nay, felt almost certain--that
pleasure to see me inspired it, for on my approach she immediately rose
from her seat, joined me, and as if by tacit and silent consent, we walked
onward together. Pottersleigh's presence at Craigaderyn Court, and the
rumours it revived; something cool and patronising in his manner towards
me, for he had not forgotten that night in Park-lane; Lady Naseby's
influence against me; the chances that some sudden military or political
contingency might cut short my leave of absence; the certainty that ere long
I should have to "go where glory waited" me, and perhaps something less
pleasant in the shape of mutilation--the wooden leg which Dora referred to-
-a coffinless grave in a ghastly battle trench--all rendered my anxiety to
come to an understanding with Lady Estelle irrepressible. My secret was
already known to Phil Caradoc, fully occupied though he was with his own
passion for Winifred Lloyd; and I felt piqued by the idea of being less
successful than I honestly hoped he was, for Phil was the king of good
fellows, and one of my best friends.

"You have seemed very triste to-day--looking quite as if you lived in
some thoughtful world of your own," said Lady Estelle, when she left her
seat; "neither laughing nor dancing, scarcely even conversing, and certainly
not with me. Why is this?"

"You have declined all dancing, hence the music has lost its zest for me."

"It is not brilliant; besides, it is somewhat of a maypole or harvest-home
accomplishment, dancing on the grass; pretty laborious too! And then, as
Welsh airs predominate, one could scarcely waltz to the Noble Race of
Shenkin."

"You reserve yourself for the evening, probably?"

"Exactly. I infinitely prefer a well-waxed floor to a lawn, however well
mown and rolled. But concerning your--what shall I term it--sadness!"

"Why ask me when you may divine the cause, though I dare not explain-
-here at least?"

After a little pause she disengaged two flowers from her bouquet, and
presenting them to me with an arch and enchanting smile--for when beyond
her mother's ken, she could at times be perfectly natural--she said,

"At this floral fête champêtre, I cannot permit you to be the only
undecorated man."

"Being in uniform, I never thought of such an ornament."

"Wear these, then," said she, placing them in a button-hole.

"As your gift and for your sake?"

"If you choose, do so."

"Ah, who would not but choose?" said I, rendered quite bright and gay
even by such a trifle as this. "But Lady Estelle, do you know what these are
emblematic of?"

"In the language of the flowers, do you mean?"

"Of course; what else could he mean?" said a merry voice; and the bright
face of Dora, nestled amid her golden hair, appeared, as she joined us,
flushed with her dancing, and her breast palpitating with pleasure, at a time
when I most cordially wished her elsewhere. "Yes," she continued, "there is

a pansy; that's for thought, as Ophelia says--and a rosebud; that is for
affection."

"But I don't believe in such symbolism, Dora; do you. Mr. Hardinge?"

"At this moment I do, from my soul."

She laughed, or affected to laugh, at my earnestness; but it was not
displeasing to her, and we walked slowly on. Among the multitude of
strangers--to us they were so, at least--to isolate ourselves was
comparatively easy now. Besides, it is extremely probable that under the
eyes of so many girls she had been rather bored by the senile assiduity of
her old admirer; so, avoiding the throng around the dancers, the band, and
the luncheon marquee, we walked along the terraces towards the chase,
accompanied by Dora, who opened a wicket in a hedge, and led us by a
narrow path suddenly to the cliffs that overhung the sea. Here we were quite
isolated. Even the music of the band failed to reach us; we heard only the
monotonous chafing of the waves below, and the sad cry of an occasional
sea-bird, as it swooped up or down from its eyrie. The change from the
glitter and brilliance of the crowded lawn to this utter solitude was as
sudden as it was pleasing. In the distance towered up Great Orme's Head,
seven hundred and fifty feet in height; its enormous masses of limestone
rock abutting against the foam, and the ruins of Pen-y-Dinas cutting the
sky-line. The vast expanse of the Irish Sea rolled away to the north-
westward, dotted by many a distant sail; and some eighty feet below us the
surf was rolling white against the rocky base of the headland on which we
stood.

"We are just over the Bôd Mynach, or 'monk's dwelling,'" said Dora.
"Have you not yet seen it, Estelle?"

"No; I am not curious in such matters."

"It is deemed one of the most interesting things in North Wales, quite as
much so as St. Tudno's Cradle, or the rocking-stone on yonder promontory.
Papa is intensely vain of being its proprietor. Gruffyd ap Madoc hid here,
when he fled from the Welsh after his desertion of Henry III.; so it was not
made yesterday. Let us go down and rest ourselves in it."

"Down the cliffs?' exclaimed Lady Estelle, with astonishment.

"Yes--why not? There is an excellent path, with steps hewn in the rock.
Harry Hardinge knows the way, I am sure."

"As a boy I have gone there often, in search of puffins' nests; but
remember that Lady Estelle--"

"Is not a Welsh girl of course," said Dora.

"Nor a goat, like Carneydd Llewellyn," added her friend. "But with Mr.
Hardinge's hand to assist you," urged Dora. "Well, let us make the essay at
once, nor lose time, ere we be missed," said the other, her mind no doubt
reverting to mamma and Lord Pottersleigh.

I began to descend the path first, accepting with pleasure the office of
leading Lady Estelle, who for greater security drew off a glove and placed
her hand in mine, firmly and reliantly, though the path, a ladder of steps cut
in the living rock, almost overhung the sea, and the descent was not without
its perils. The headland was cleft in two by some throe of nature, and down
this chasm poured a little stream, at the mouth of which, as in a diminutive
bay, a gaily-painted pleasure-boat of Sir Madoc's, named the "Winifred,"
was moored, and it seemed to be dancing on the waves almost beneath us.

We had barely proceeded some twenty feet down the cliff when Dora,
instead of following us, exclaimed that she had dropped a bracelet on the
path near the wicket, but we were to go on, and she would soon rejoin us.
As she said this she disappeared, and we were thus left alone. To linger
where we stood, almost in mid-air, was not pleasant; to return to the edge of
the cliff and await her there, seemed a useless task. Why should we not
continue to descend, as she must soon overtake us? I could read in the
proud face of Lady Estelle, as we paused on that ladder of rock, with her
soft and beautiful hand in mine, that she felt in a little dilemma. So did I,
but my heart beat happily; to have her so entirely to myself, even for ten
minutes, was a source of joy.

While lingering thus, I gradually led our conversation up to the point I
wished, by talking of my too probable speedy departure for another land; of

the happy days like the present, which I should never forget; of herself. My
lips trembled as my heart seemed to rise to them; and forgetting the perilous
place in which we stood, and remembering only that her hand was clasped
in mine, I began to look into her face with an expression of love and
tenderness which she could not mistake; for her gaze soon became averted,
her bosom heaved, and her colour came and went; and so, as the minutes
fled, we were all unaware that Dora had not yet returned; that the sultry
afternoon had begun to darken as heavy dun clouds rolled up from the
seaward, and the air become filled with electricity; and that a sound alleged
to be distant thunder had been heard at Craigaderyn Court, causing some of
the guests to prepare, for departure, despite Sir Madoc's assurances that no
rain would fall, as the glass had been rising.

Dora was long in returning; so long that, instead of waiting or retracing
our steps, proceeding hand in hand, and more than once Lady Estelle
having to lean on my shoulder for support, we continued to descend the
path in the face of the cliff--a path that ultimately led us into a terrible
catastrophe.

CHAPTER XIII.--A PROPOSAL.

A long time elapsed and we did not return, but amid the bustle that
reigned in and around Craigaderyn Court, our absence was not observed so
soon as it might otherwise have been, the attention of the many guests being
fully occupied by each other. The proposal of Dora's health devolved upon
Lord Pottersleigh as the senior bachelor present, and it was drunk amid such
cheers as country gentlemen alone can give. Then Sir Madoc, who had a
horror of after-dinner speeches in general, replied tersely and forcibly
enough, because the words of thanks and praise for his youngest girl came
straight from his affectionate heart; but his white handkerchief was freely

applied to the nervous task of polishing his forehead, which gave him a
sense of relief; for the worthy old gentleman was no orator, and closed his
response by drinking to the health of all present in Welsh.

"Our good friend's ideas are somewhat antiquated," said Pottersleigh to
Guilfoyle, who now stuck to him pretty closely; "but he is a thorough
gentleman of an old school that is passing away."

His lordship, however, looked the older man of the two.

"Antiquated! By Jove, I should think so," responded the other, who
instinctively disliked his host; "ideas old as the days when people made war
without powder and shot, went to sea without compasses, and pegged their
clothes for lack of buttons; but he is an hospitable old file, and his wine--
this Château d'Yquem, for instance, is excellent."

Pottersleigh gave the speaker a quiet stare, and then, as if disliking this
style of comment, turned to Lady Naseby for the remainder of the repast.

The overcasting of the day and a threatening of rain had put an end to
much of the dancing on the flower-terrace, and of the promenading in the
garden and grounds. The proposal of Dora's health had been deemed the
close of the fête; the servants had begun to prepare for the ball, and many of
the guests, whose invitation did not include that portion of the festivities--
for the grounds of course, would hold more than the hall--were beginning to
depart, while a few still lingered in the conservatories, the library, or the
picture gallery; thus, though Caradoc was looking through them for me,
with a shrewd idea that I was with Lady Estelle, he could not for the life of
him imagine where; besides, Phil was anxious to make the most of his time
with Miss Lloyd.

The breaking of the guests into groups caused our absence to be long
unnoticed, especially while carriages, gigs, drags, wagonnettes, and saddle-
horses were brought in succession to the door; cloaks and shawls put on,
ladies handed in, and the stream of vehicles went pouring down the long
lime avenue and out of the park.

"You have danced but once to-day with Mr. Caradoc, he has told me,"
said Dora in a low voice, as she passed her sister.

"I had so many to dance with--so many to introduce; and then, think of
the evening before us."

"He loves you quite passionately, I think, Winny dear; more than words
can tell."

"So it would seem," replied Winifred, smiling over her fan. "Why--
how?"

"He has never spoken to me on the subject."

"He will do so before this evening is over, or I am no true prophetess,"
said Dora, as she threw back the bright masses of her hair.

"That I don't believe."

"Why?"

"Because he wears at his neck a gold locket, the contents of which no
one has seen; and Mr. Guilfoyle assures me that it holds the likeness of a
lady."

"Well time will prove," replied Dora, as she was again led away by her
new admirer, the little sub from Chester; but her prediction came true.

Winifred felt instinctively that she was the chief attraction to Caradoc,
and was exciting in his breast emotions to which she could not respond.
Again and again when asking her to dance, she had urged in reply, that he
would please her more by dancing with others, as there were present plenty
of country girls to whom a red coat was quite a magnet; so poor Caradoc
found plenty of work cut out for him. Pressed at last by him, Winifred said,
while fanning herself,

"Do excuse me; to-night I shall reward you fully; but meanwhile we may
take a little promenade. I think all who are to remain must know each other
pretty well now;" and taking his arm they passed from the great marquee

along the now deserted terrace, to find that the sky was so overcast and the
wind so high, that they turned into an alley of the conservatory, where she
expected to find some of their friends, but it was empty; and as Caradoc's
face, and the tremulous inflections of his voice, while he was uttering mere
commonplaces about the sudden change of the weather, the beauty of the
flowers, the elegance of the conservatory, and so forth, told her what was
passing in his mind, she became perplexed annoyed with herself, and said
hurriedly,

"Let us seek Lady Naseby; I fear that we are quite neglecting her--and
she is somewhat particular."

"One moment, Miss Lloyd, ere we go; I have so longed for an
opportunity to speak with you--alone, I mean--for a moment--even for a
moment," said he.

Winifred Lloyd knew what was coming; there was a nervous quivering
of her upper lip, which was a short one, and showed a small portion of her
white teeth, usually imparting an expression of innocence to her face, while
its normal one was softness combined with great sweetness. Caradoc had
now possessed himself of her right hand, thus without breaking away from
him, and making thereby a species of "scene" between them, an episode to
be avoided, she could not withdraw, but stood looking shyly and blushingly
half into his handsome face, while he spoke to her with low and broken but
earnest utterances.

"I have decoyed you hither," said he, "and you will surely pardon me for
doing so, when you think how brief is my time now, here, in this happy
home of yours--even in England itself; and when I tell you how anxious I
have been to--to address you--"

"Mr. Caradoc," interrupted the girl, now blushing furiously behind her
fan, "your moments will soon become minutes!"

"Would that the minutes might become hours, and the hours, days and
years, could I but spend them with you! Listen to me, Miss Lloyd--"

"Not at present--do, pray, excuse me--I wish to speak with Dora."

But instead of having her hand released, it was now pressed by Caradoc
between both of his.

"I will not detain you very long," said he, sadly, almost reproachfully;
"you know that I love you; every time my eyes have met yours, every time I
have spoken, my voice must have told you that I do dearly, and if the
fondest emotions of my heart--"

"A soldier's heart, of which little scraps and shreds have been left in
every garrison town?"

"Do not laugh at my honest earnestness!" urged Caradoc, with a deep
sigh.

"Pardon me, I do not laugh; O think not that I could be guilty of such a
thing!" replied Winifred, colouring deeper than ever.

Beautiful though she was, and well dowered too, this was the first
proposal or declaration that had been made to her. The speaker was
eminently handsome, his voice and eyes were full of passion and
earnestness, and she could not hear him without a thrill of pleasure and
esteem.

"I know that I am not worthy of you, perhaps; but--"

"I thank you, dear Mr. Caradoc, but--but--more is impossible."

"Impossible--why?"

She grew quite pale now, but he still retained her hand; and her change
of colour was, perhaps, unseen by him, for there was little light in the
conservatory, the evening clouds being dark and dense without.

"Miss Lloyd--Winifred--dearest Winifred--I love you, love you with all
my heart and soul!"

"Do not say so, I implore you!" said she in an agitated voice, and turning
away her head.

"Do you mean to infer that you are already engaged?"

"No."

"Or that you love another?"

"That is not a fair question," she replied, with a little hauteur of manner.

"It is, circumstanced as I am, and after the avowal I have made."

"Well, I do--not."

"And yet you cannot love me? Alas, I am most unfortunate!"

"Let this end, dear Mr. Caradoc," said Winifred, almost sobbing, and
deeply repenting that she had taken his arm for a little promenade that was
to end in a proposal. Phil, being in full uniform, played with, or swung
somewhat nervously, the tassels of his crimson sash, a favourite resort of
young officers when in any dubiety or dilemma. After a little pause--

"May I speak to Sir Madoc on the subject?" he asked.

"No."

"Perhaps my friend Harry Hardinge might advise--"

"Nay, for Heaven's sake don't confer with him on the matter at all!"

"Why?" said he, startled by her earnestness.

"Would you make love to me through him--through another?"

"You entirely mistake my meaning."

"What do you mean?"

"Simply what I have said; that I love you, esteem and admire you; that
you are, indeed, most dear to me, and that if I had the approval--"

"Of the lady whose likeness is in your locket; so treasured that a secret
spring secures it!" said she, suddenly remembering Dora's words as a means
of escape.

"Yes, especially with her approval. I should then be happy, indeed. I
know not how you came to know of it; but shall I show you the likeness?"

"If you choose," said Winifred, thinking in her heart, "Poor fellow, it
must be his mother's miniature;" but when Phil touched a spring and the
locket flew open she beheld a beautiful coloured photo of herself.

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "how came you by this?"

"Hardinge had two in the barracks, and I begged one from him."

"Hardinge--Harry Hardinge! That was most unfair of him," said she, her
agitation increasing; "he is one of our oldest friends."

"May I be permitted to keep it?"

"O, no; not there--not there, in a locket at your neck."

"Be it so; your slightest wish is law to me; but be assured, Miss Lloyd,
the heart near which it lies was never offered to woman before."

"I can well believe you; but--hush, here are people coming!"

Sir Madoc and Lady Naseby entered the conservatory somewhat
hurriedly, followed by two or three of the guests.

"Lady Estelle! Is Lady Estelle here?" they asked, simultaneously.

"No," replied Caradoc.

"Nor Harry Hardinge?"

"We are quite alone, papa," said Winifred, in a voice the agitation of
which, at another time, must have been apparent to all; for no woman can
hear a declaration of love or receive a proposal quite unconcerned,

especially from a handsome young fellow who was so earnest as Philip
Caradoc; around whom the coming departure for the seat of war shed a halo
of melancholy interest, and who, by the artless production of the locket,
proved that he had loved her for some time past, and secretly too.

"What the deuce is the meaning of this?" exclaimed Sir Madoc, with an
expression of comicality, annoyance, and alarm mingling in his face; "the
servants can nowhere find her!"

"Find who?" asked Lord Pottersleigh, opening his snuffbox as he
shambled forward.

"Why, Lady Estelle."

His lordship took a pinch, paused for the refreshing titillation of a
sneeze, and then said,

"Indeed--surprising--very!"

"And Hardinge is missing, too, you say?" said Phil. "How odd!"

"Odd! egad, I think it is odd; they have not been seen by any one for
more than two hours, and a regular storm has come on!"

Phil and Miss Lloyd had been too much occupied, or they must have
remarked the bellowing of the wind without and the sudden darkening of
the atmosphere.

"O papa, papa!" exclaimed Dora, now rushing in from the lawn,
"something dreadful must have happened. I left them on the verge of the
cliffs; returning to look for the bracelet you gave me, I met my partner, Mr.
Clavell of the 19th; we began dancing again, and I forgot all about them."

"On the cliffs!" exclaimed several voices, reprehensibly and fearfully.

"Yes," continued Dora, beginning to weep; "I took them through the park
wicket, and suggested a visit to the Bôd Mynach."

"Suggested this to Estelle! She is not, as we are, used to such paths and
places, and you tell us of it only now!" exclaimed Winifred, with an
expression of reproach and anguish sparkling in her eyes.

"My God, an accident must have occurred! The wind--weather--compose
yourself, Lady Naseby; Gwyllim, ring the house-bell, and summon every
one," cried Sir Madoc; "not a moment is to be lost."

"O, what is all this you tell me now, Dora?" exclaimed Winifred, as she
started from the conservatory, with her lips parted, her dark eyes dilated,
and her hair put back by both her trembling hands.

Poor Phil Caradoc and his proposal were alike forgotten now; and he
began to fear that, like Hugh Price of ours, in making love he had made
some confounded mistake.

Querulous, and useless so far as searching or assisting went, Lord
Pottersleigh nevertheless saw the necessity of affecting to do something, as
a man, as a gentleman, and a very particular friend of the Naseby family.
Accoutred in warm mufflings by his valet, with a mackintosh, goloshes, and
umbrella, he left the house half an hour after every one else, and pottered
about the lawn, exclaiming from time to time,

"Such weather! such a sky! ugh, ugh! what the devil can have
happened?" till a violent fit of coughing, caused by the keen breeze from
the sea, and certain monitory twinges of gout, compelled him to return to
his room, and wait the event there, making wry faces and sipping his
colchicum, while sturdy old Sir Madoc conducted the search on horseback,
galloping knee-deep among fern, searching the vistas of the park, and
sending deer, rabbits, and hares scampering in every direction before him.
Above the bellowing of the stormy wind, that swept the freshly torn leaves
like rain against the walls and mullioned windows of the old house, or
down those long umbrageous vistas where ere long the autumn spoil would
be lying thick, rose and fell the clangour of the house-bell. Servants,
grooms, gamekeepers, and gardeners were despatched to search, chiefly in
the wild vicinity of the now empty Bôd Mynach; but no trace could be
found of Lady Estelle or her squire, save a white-laced handkerchief,

which, while a low cry of terror escaped her, Lady Naseby recognised as
belonging to her daughter. On it were a coronet and the initials of her name.

It had been found by Phil Caradoc with the aid of a lantern, when
searching along the weedy rocks between the silent cavern and the seething
sea, which was now black with the gathered darkness and a mist from the
west.

There was no ball at Craigaderyn Court that night.

CHAPTER XIV.--THE UNFORESEEN.

In this world, events unthought of and unforeseen are always happening;
so, as I have hinted, did it prove with me, on the epoch of Dora's birthday
fête. It was not without considerable difficulty and care on my side,
trepidation and much of annoyance at Dora on that of Lady Estelle, mingled
with a display of courage which sprang from her pride, that I conducted her
by the hand down the old and time-worn flight of narrow steps--which had
been hewn, ages ago, by some old Celtic hermit in the face of the cliff--till
at last we stood on the little plateau that lies between the mouth of his abode
and the sea, which was chafing and surging there in green waves, that the
wind was cresting with snowy foam.

On our right the headland receded away into a wooded dell, that formed
part of Craigaderyn Park. There a little rhaidr or cascade came plashing
down a fissure in the limestone rocks, and fell into a pool, where a pointed
pleasure-boat, named the Winifred, was moored. On our left the headland,
that towered some eighty feet above us, formed part of the bluffs or sea-
wall that stretched away to the eastward, and, sheer as a rampart, met the
waves of the wide Irish Sea. Before us opened the arched entrance of the

monk's abode--a little cavern or cell, that had been hollowed by no mortal
hand. Its echoes are alleged to be wonderful; and it has been of old used as
a hiding-place in times of war and trouble, and by smugglers for storing
goods, where the knights of Craigaderyn could find them without paying to
the king's revenue. It has evidently been what its name imports--the chapel
and abode of some forgotten recluse. A seat of stones goes round the
interior, save at the entrance. A stone pillar or altar had stood in its centre. A
font or stone basin is there, and from it there flows a spring of clear water,
with which the follower of St. David was wont to baptise the little savages
of Britannia Secunda; and where now, in a more pleasant and prosaic age, it
has supplied the tea and coffee kettles of many a joyous party, who came
hither boating or fishing from Craigaderyn Court; and above that stone
basin the hermit's hand has carved the somewhat unpronounceable Welsh
legend:

"Heb Dduw, heb ddim."[1]

"A wonderful old place! But I have seen caverns enough elsewhere, and
this does not interest me. I am no archæologist," said Lady Estelle--
"besides, where is Dora?" she added, looking somewhat blankly up the
ladder of steps in the cliff, by which we were to return: and she speedily
became much less alive to the beauty of the scenery than to a sense of
danger and awkwardness in her position.

There was no appearance of Dora Lloyd, and we heard no sound in that
secluded place, save the chafing of the surf, the equally monotonous
pouring of the waterfall, and the voices of sea-birds as they skimmed about
us.

I thought that Lady Estelle leant upon my arm a little heavier than usual,
and remembered that, when I took her hand in mine to guide her down, she
left it there firmly and confidingly.

"May I show you the grotto?" said I; and my heart beat tumultuously
while I looked in her face, the rare beauty of which was now greatly
enhanced by a flush, consequent on our descent and the sea-breeze.

"O no, no, thanks very much; but let us return to the park ere we be
missed. Give me your hand, Mr. Hardinge. If we came down so quickly,
surely we may as quickly ascend again."

"Shall I go first?"

"Please, do. The caves of Fingal, or Elephanta and Ellora to boot, were
not worth this danger."

"I have come here many a time for a few sea-birds' eggs," said I,
laughing, to reassure her.

But the ascent proved somehow beyond her power. The wind had risen
fast, and was sweeping round the headland now, blowing her dress about
her ankles, and impeding her motions. She had only ascended a little way
when giddiness or terror came over her. She lost all presence of mind, and
began to descend again. Thrice, with my assistance, she essayed to climb
the winding steps that led to the summit, and then desisted. She was in tears
at last. As all confidence had deserted her, I proposed to bind her eyes with
a handkerchief; but she declined. I also offered, if she would permit me to
leave her for a few minutes, to reach the summit and bring assistance; but
she was too terrified to remain alone on the plateau of rock, between the
cell and the water.

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, when, like myself, perhaps she thought
of Lady Naseby, "what shall I do? And all this has been brought about by
the heedless suggestions of Dora Lloyd--by her folly and impulsiveness!
Will she never return to advise us?"

Nearly half-an-hour had elapsed, and a dread that she, that I--that both of
us--must now be missed, and the cause of surmise, roused an anger and
pride in her breast, that kindled her eye and affected her manner, thus
effectually crushing any attempt to intrude my own secret thoughts upon
her.

"What are we to do, Mr. Hardinge? Here we cannot stay; I dare not
climb; not a boat is to be seen; the sun has almost set, and see, how dense a
mist is coming on!"

I confess that I had not observed this before, so much had I been
occupied by her own presence, by her beauty, and by entreating that she
would "screw her courage to the sticking-point," and ascend where I had
seen the two pretty Lloyds trip from step to step in their mere girlhood, to
the horror, certainly, of their French governess; but knowing that a fog from
the sea was rolling landward in dense masses, and that the evening would
be a stormy one, I felt intense anxiety for Lady Estelle, and certainly left
nothing unsaid to reassure her, firmly yet delicately--for good breeding
becomes a second nature, and is not forgotten even in times of dire
emergency; then how much less so when we love, and love as I did Estelle
Cressingham?--but all my arguments were in vain. There was in her dark
eyes a wild and startled brilliance, a hectic spot on each pale cheek. Her
innate pride remained, but her courage was gone. She trembled, and her
breath came short and quick as she said,

"Who would have dreamt that I--I should have acted thus? More
heedlessly even than Dora, for she is a Welsh girl, and, like a goat, is used
to such places. And now there is no aid--not even the smallest boat in
sight!"

"Of what have I been thinking!" I exclaimed. "The pleasure-boat which
belongs to the grotto is moored yonder in the creek, where some visitor,
who preferred the short cut up the cliff, has evidently left it. If you will
permit me to place you in it, I can row across the mouth of the waterfall to
the other side, where a Chinese bridge will enable us at once to reach the
lawn."

"Why did you not think of this before?" she asked, with something of
angry reproach almost flashing in her eyes.

"Will you make the attempt?"

"Of course. O, would that you had thought of it before!"

"Come, then, though the wind has risen certainly; and among so many
guests, our absence may have been unnoticed yet."

I reached the boat--a gaudily-painted shallop, seated for four oars. There
were but two, however; these were enough; but as ill-luck would have it,
she was moored to a ring-bolt in the rocks by a padlock and chain, which I
had neither the strength nor the means of breaking. This was a fresh source
of delay, and Lady Estelle's whole frame seemed to quiver and vibrate with
impatience, while every moment she raised her eyes to the cliff, by which
she expected succour or searchers to come. What the deuce was she--were
we--to say to all this? With a girl possessed of more nerve and firmness of
mind this matter could never have taken such a turn, and the delay had
never occurred. This malheur or mishap--this variation from the strict rules
laid down by such matrons as the Countess of Naseby--looked so like a
scheme, that I felt we were in a thorough scrape, and knew there was not a
moment to be lost in making our appearance at the Court. By a stone I
smashed the padlock, and casting loose the boat, brought it to where Lady
Estelle stood, beating the rock impatiently with her foot; and, handing her
on board, seated her in the stern-sheets, but with some difficulty, as the west
wind was rolling the waves with no small fury now past the headland, in
which the black Bôd Mynach gaped.

"Pull with all your strength, Mr. Hardinge. Dear Mr. Hardinge, let us
only be back in time, and I shall ever thank you!" she exclaimed.

"All that man can do I shall," was my enthusiastic reply.

I could pull a good stroke-oar, and had done so steadily in many a
regimental and college boat-race and regatta; but now there ensued what I
never could have calculated upon. Excited by the desire of pleasing Lady
Estelle by landing her on the opposite side of the tiny bay with all speed--
desirous, when seated opposite to her, face to face, of appearing to some
advantage by an exhibition of strength and skill--at each successive stroke,
as I shot the light boat seaward, I almost lifted it out of the water. I had to
clear a rock, over which the water was foaming and gleaming in green and
gold amid the sinking sunshine, ere I headed her due westward, and in
doing so I cleared also the headland, which rose like a tower of rock from
the sea, crowned by a clump of old elms, wherein some rooks had taken up
their quarters in times long past.

"O, Mr. Hardinge," said Lady Estelle, while grasping the gunwale with
both hands, and looking up, "how had I ever the courage to come down
such a place? It looks fearful from this!"

Ere I could reply, the oar in my right hand broke in the iron rowlock with
a crash. The wood had been faulty. By this mishap I lost my balance, and
was nearly thrown into the sea, as the boat careered over on a wave. Thus
the other was torn from my grasp, and swept far beyond my reach. I was
powerless now--powerless to aid either her or myself. The tide was ebbing
fast. The strong west wind, and the current running eastward, influenced by
the flow of the Clwyde, and even of the Dee, ten miles distant, swept the
now useless boat past the abutting headland, and along the front of those
cliffs which rise like a wall of rock from the sea, and where, as the mist
gathered round us, our fate would be unseen, whether we were dashed
against the iron shore or swept out into the ocean.

The red sunset was fading fast on distant Orme's Head, where myriads of
sea-birds are ever revolving, like gnats in the light amid its grand and
inaccessible crags. It was dying, too, though tipping them with flame, on
Snowdon's peaks, the eyrie of the golden eagle and the peregrine falcon,
and on the smaller range of Carneydd Llewellyn. Purple darkness was
gathering in the grassy vales between, and blue and denser grew those
shadows as the cold gray mist came on, and the sombre glow of a stormy
sunset passed away. Soon the haze of the twilight blurred, softened, and
blended land and sea to the eastward. The sharp edge of the new moon was
rising from a dark and trembling horizon, whence the mist was coming
faster and more fast, and the evening star, pale Hesperus, shone like a tiny
lamp amid the opal tints of a sky that was turning fast to dun and darkness.
The rolling mist soon hid the star and the land, too, and I only knew that we
were drifting helplessly away.

CHAPTER XV.--WHAT THE MOON SAW.

The absence of the boat from its mooring-place was soon observed, and
surmises were rife that we must infallibly have gone seaward. But why? It
seemed unaccountable--and at such a time, too! The idea that Lady Estelle's
heart should fail her in attempting to return by the cliff never occurred to
any save Winifred, who knew more of her friend's temperament than the
rest, and for a time, with others, the ardent and courageous girl searched the
shore, and several boats were put forth into the mist; but in vain, and ere
long the strength and violence of the wind drove even Sir Madoc and all his
startled guests to the shelter of the house. Muffled in silk cloaks and warm
shawls or otter-skin jackets, the ladies had lingered long on the terraces, on
the lawn and avenues, while the lights of the searchers were visible, and
while their hallooing could be heard at times from the rocks and ravines,
where they swung their lanterns as signals, in hopes that the lost ones might
see them.

Lord Pottersleigh snuffed and ejaculated from time to time, and ere long
had betaken himself to his room. Caradoc, Guilfoyle--who seemed
considerably bewildered by the affair--young Clavel of the 19th, and other
gentlemen, with Gwyllim the butler, Morgan Roots the gardener, Bob
Spurrit, and the whole male staff of the household, manfully continued their
search by the shore. There the scene was wild and impressive. Before the
violence of the bellowing wind, the mist was giving place to the pall-like
masses of dark clouds, which rolled swiftly past the pale face of the new
moon, imparting a weird-like aspect to the rocky coast, against which the
sea was foaming in white and hurrying waves, while the sea-birds, scared
alike by the shouts and the light of the searchers, quite as much as by the
storm, screamed and wheeled in wild flights about their eyries. Moments
there were when Caradoc thought the search was prosecuted in the wrong
direction, and that, as there had probably been an elopement, this prowling
along the seashore was absurd.

"Can it be," said he, inaudibly, "that the little boy who cried for the moon
has made off with it bodily? If so, this will be rather a 'swell' affair for the
mess of the Royal Welsh."

Slowly passed the time, and more anxious than all the rest--Lady Naseby
of course excepted--the soft-hearted Winifred was full of dismay that any
catastrophe should occur to two guests at Craigaderyn, and she listened like
a startled fawn to every passing sound.

Dora, as deeming herself the authoress of the whole calamity, was
completely crushed, and sat on a low stool with her head bowed on Lady
Naseby's knee, sobbing bitterly ever and anon, when the storm-gusts
howled among the trees of the chase, shook the oriels of the old mansion,
and made the ivy leaves patter on the panes, or shuddering as she heard the
knell-like ding-dong of the house-bell occasionally. The masses of her
golden hair had been dishevelled by the wind without; but she forgot all
about that, as well as about her two solemn engagements made with Tom
Clavell for the morrow; one, the mild excitement of fishing for sticklebacks
in the horse-pond, and the other, a gallop to the Marine Parade of
Llandudno, attended by old Bob Spurrit; for the little sub of the 1st York
North Riding was, pro tem., the bondsman of a girl who was at once
charming and childish, petulant and more than pretty. Heavily and
anxiously were passed the minutes, the quarters, and the hours. Messenger
after messenger to the searchers by the shore went forth and returned. Their
tidings were all the same; nothing had been seen or heard of the boat, of
Lady Estelle, or of her companion. Nine o'clock was struck by the great old
clock in the stable court, and then every one instinctively looked at his or
her watch. Half-past nine, ten, and even midnight struck, without tidings of
the lost. By that time the mist had cleared away, the tide had turned, and the
west wind was rolling the incoming sea with mightier fury on the rock-
bound shore.

The first hours of the morning passed without intelligence, and alarm,
dismay, and grief reigned supreme among the pallid group at Craigaderyn
Court. All could but hope that with the coming day a revelation might come
for weal or woe; and as if to involve the disappearance of the missing ones
in greater mystery, if it did not point to a terrible conclusion, the lost
pleasure-boat was discovered by a coastguardsman, high and dry, and
bottom up, on a strip of sandy beach, some miles from Craigaderyn; but of
its supposed occupants not a trace could be found, save a lace cuff,
recognised as Lady Estelle's, wedged or washed into the framework of the

little craft, thus linking her fate with it. Ours was, indeed, a perilous
situation. We were helplessly adrift on a stormy sea, off a rock-bound coast,
in a tiny boat, liable to swamping at any moment, without oars or covering,
the wind rising fast, while the darkness and the mist were coming down
together. I had no words to express my anxiety for what one so delicately
nurtured as Estelle might suffer. My annoyance at the surmises and wonder
naturally excited by our protracted absence; quizzical, it might be
equivocal, inferences drawn from it--I thought nothing of these. I was
beyond all such minor considerations, and felt only solicitude for her safety
and a terror of what her fate might be. All other ideas, even love itself--
though that very solicitude was born of love--were merged for the time in
the tenderest anxiety. If her situation with me was perilous, what had it been
if with Lord Pottersleigh? But had she been with him, no such event as a
descent to that unlucky pleasure grotto could have been thought of. Though
pale and terrified, not a tear escaped her now; but her white and beautiful
face was turned, with a haggard aspect, to mine. A life-buoy happened to be
in the boat, and without a word I tied it to her securely.

"Is there not one for you?" she asked, piteously, laying a hand on mine.

"Think not of me, Lady Estelle; if you are saved, what care I for
myself?"

"You swim, then?"

"A little, a very little; scarcely at all."

"You are generous and noble, Mr. Hardinge! O, if kind God permits me
to reach the land safely, I shall never be guilty of an act of folly like this
again. Mamma says--poor mamma!--that it is birth, or blood, which carries
people through great emergencies; but who could have foreseen such a
calamitous contretemps as this? And who could have been a greater coward
than I? I should have made a steady attempt at yonder pitiful cliff; to fail
was most childish, and I have involved you in this most fatal peril."

She sobbed as she spoke, and her eyes were full of light; but her lips
were compressed, and all her soft and aristocratic loveliness seemed for a
time to grow different in expression; to gather sternness, as a courage now

possessed her, of which she had seemed deficient before, or it might be an
obstinacy born of despair; for the light boat was swept hither and thither
helplessly, by stem and stern alternately, on each successive wave; tossed
upward on the crest of one watery ridge, or sunk downward between two
that heaved up on each side as if to engulf us; while the spoondrift, salt and
bitter, torn from their tops, flew over us, as she clung with one hand to the
gunwale of the tiny craft, and with the other to me.

That we were not being drifted landward was evident, for we could no
longer hear the voices of the sea-birds among the rocks; and to be drifted
seaward by ebb tide or current was only another phase of peril. The voice of
Lady Estelle came in painful gasps as she said,

"O, Mr. Hardinge, Mr. Hardinge, we shall perish most miserably; we
shall certainly be drowned! Mamma, my poor mamma, I shall never see her
more!"

Though striving to reassure her I was, for a time, completely bewildered
by anxiety for what she must suffer by a terror of the sudden fate that might
come upon her; and I was haunted by morbid visions of her, the brilliant
Estelle, a drowned and sodden corpse, the sport of the waves--of myself I
never thought--tossing unburied in the deep, or, it might be, cast mutilated
on the shore; and she looked so beautiful and helpless as she clung to me
now, clasping my right arm with all her energy, her head half reclined upon
my shoulder, and the passing spray mingling with her tears upon her cheek.
"The drowning man is said to be confronted by a ghostly panorama of his
whole life." It may be so generally; but then I had only the horror of losing
Estelle, whom I loved so tenderly. We were now together and alone, so
completely, suddenly, and terribly alone, it might be for life or for death--
the former short indeed, and the latter swift and sudden, if the boat upset, or
we were washed out of it into the sea; and yet in that time of peril she
possessed more than ever for me that wondrous and undefinable charm and
allurement which every man finds in the woman he loves, and in her only.

"God spare us and help us!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Hardinge, I am filled
with unutterable fear;" and then she added, unconsciously quoting some
poet, "I find the thought of death, to one near death, most dreadful!"

"With you, Estelle, love might make it indeed a joy to die!" I exclaimed,
with a gush of enthusiasm and tenderness that, but for the terrible situation,
had been melodramatic.

"I did not think that you loved me so," said she, after a little pause; and
my arm now encircled her waist, while something of an invocation to
heaven rose to my lips, and I repeated,

"Not think that I loved you! Do not be coquettishly unwilling to admit
what you must know, that since that last happy night in London you have
never been absent from my thoughts; and here, Estelle, dear, dear Estelle,
when menaced by a grave amid these waters, I tell you that I loved you
from the first moment that I knew you! Death stares us in the face, but tell
me truly that you--that you--"

"Love you in return? I do, indeed, dear Harry!" she sobbed, and then her
beloved face, chilled and damp with tears and spray, came close to mine.

"God bless you, O my darling, for this avowal!" said I in a thick voice,
and even the terrors of our position could not damp the glow of my joy.

In all my waking dreams of her had Estelle seemed beautiful; but never
so much so as now, when I seemed on the eve of losing her for ever, and my
own life, too; when each successive wave that rolled in inky blackness
towards us might tear her from my clasp! How easily under some
circumstances do we learn the language of passion! and now, while clasping
her fast with one arm, as with both of hers she clung to me, I pressed her to
my breast, and told her again and again how fondly I loved her, while--as it
were in a dream, a portion of a nightmare--our boat, now filling fast with
water, was tossed madly to and fro. And like a dream, too, it seemed, the
fact that I had her all to myself--for life or death, as it were--this brilliant
creature so loved by many, so prized by all, and hitherto apparently so
unattainable; she who, by a look, a glance, a smile, by a flirt of her fan, by
the dropping of a glove, or the gift of a flower, selected with point from her
bouquet, had held my soul in thrall by all the delicious trifles that make up
the sum and glory of love to the lover who is young. And where were we
now? Alone on the dark, and ere long it was the midnight, sea! Alone, and
with me; I who had so long eyed her lovingly and longingly, even as Schön

Rohtrant, the German king's daughter, was gazed at and loved by the
handsome page, who dared not to touch or kiss her till he gathered courage
one day, as the ballad tells us, when they were under a shady old oak.

"If God spares us to see her," said Lady Estelle, "what will mamma think
of this terrible fiasco of ours?"

While Estelle loved me, I felt that I did not care very much for the
dowager's views of the matter, especially at that precise moment. When on
terra firma there would be sufficient time to consider them.

"And you are mine, darling?" said I, tenderly.

"I am yours, Harry, and yours only."

"Never shall I weary of hearing this admission; but the rumour of an
engagement to Lord Pottersleigh?'

"Absurd! It has grown out of his dangling after me and mamma's wish,
as I won't have my cousin Naseby."

"And you do not hold yourself engaged--"

"Save to you, Harry, and you alone."

And as her head again sank upon my shoulder, her pride and my doubts
fled together; but now a half-stifled shriek escaped her, as the frail boat was
nearly overturned by a larger wave than usual, which struck it on the
counter. We were drenched and chilled, so ours was, indeed, love-making
under difficulties; and the time, even with her reclining in my arms, passed
slowly. How many a prayer and invocation, all too deep for utterance, rose
to my lips for her! The hours drew on. Would day never dawn? With all the
sweet but now terrible companionship of love--for it was love combined
with gloomy danger--this was our utmost craving.

The new moon, as she rose pale and sharp, like a silver sickle, from the
Irish Sea, when the fog began to disperse, tipped for a little time with light
the wave-tops as they rose or sank around us; but clouds soon enveloped

her again; and when the tide turned, the sea ran inward, and broke wildly on
the tremendous headlands of the coast. That our boat was not swamped
seemed miraculous; but it was very buoyant, being entirely lined with cork,
and had air-tight compartments under the seats. A gray streak at the far
horizon had spread across a gap of pale green, announcing that the short
August night was past, and rapidly it broadened and brightened into day,
while crimson and gold began to tip the wave-tops with a fiery hue, the
whole ocean seeming to be mottled, as it were; and I could see the coast-
line, as we were not quite a mile from it. In the distance were plainly visible
the little town of Abergele, and those hills where Castell Cawr and the Cefn
Ogo are, tinged with pink, as they rose above the white vapour that rolled
along the shore.

The more distant mountain ranges seemed blue and purple against a sky
where clouds of pearly-pink were floating. Estelle was exhausted now. Her
pallor added to my misery. So many hours of pitiless exposure had proved
too much for her strength, and with her eyes closed she lay helpless in my
arms, while wave after wave was now impelling us shoreward, and, most
happily it would seem, towards a point where the rocks opened and the
water shoaled. One enormous breaker, white-crested and overarching, came
rolling upon us. A gasp, a mutual cry to heaven, half-stifled by the bitter
spray, and then the mighty volume of it engulfed us and our boat. We had a
momentary sense of darkness and blindness, a sound as of booming thunder
mingled with the clangour of bells in our ears, and something of the feeling
of being swept by an express train through a tunnel filled with water, for we
were fairly under the latter; but I clung to the boat with one hand and arm,
while the other went round Estelle with a death-like embrace, that
prevented her from being swept or torn from me.

For some moments I knew not whether we were on the land or in the
sea; but, though stunned by the shock, I acted mechanically. Then I
remember becoming conscious of rising through the pale-green water, of
inhaling a long breath, a gasping respiration, and of seeing the sunshine on
the waves. Another shock came, and we were flung on the flat or sloping
beach, to be there left by the receding sea. Instead of in that place, had we
been dashed against the impending rocks elsewhere, all had then been over
with us. I still felt that my right arm was clasped around Estelle; but she

was motionless, breathless, and still; and though a terror that she was dead
oppressed me, a torpor that I could not resist spread over all my faculties,
and I sank into a state of perfect unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XVI.--THE SECRET ENGAGEMENT.

In making a circuit of his farm on the morning after the storm, Farmer
Rhuddlan, while traversing a field that was bounded by a strip of the sea
shore, on which the ebbing surf still rolled heavily, was very much scared to
find lying there, and to all appearance but recently cast up from the ocean,
among starfish, weed, and wreck, an officer in full dress, and a lady (in
what had been an elegant demi-toilette of blue silk and fine lace), fair and
most delicately white, but drenched, sodden, and to all appearance, as he
thought, "dearanwyl--drowned"--as she was quite motionless, with her
beautiful dark hair all dishevelled and matted among the sand.

He knew me--in fact, he had known me since boyhood, having caught
me many a time in his orchard at Craig Eryri--and thought he recognized
the lady. Moreover, he had heard of the search overnight, and lost no time in
spurring his fat little cob in quest of succour. Some wondering rustics
promptly came from a neighbouring barnyard, and by the time they arrived,
Estelle and I had recovered consciousness, and struggled into a sitting
position on some stones close by, whence we were beginning to look about
us.

A benumbed sensation and total lack of power in my right arm warned
me that an accident had occurred, and I endeavoured to conceal the
circumstance from Estelle, but in vain; for when murmuring some thanks to
God for our preservation, she suddenly lifted her face from my breast, and

exclaimed, "You cannot move this arm! You have been hurt, darling! Tell
me about it--speak!"

"I think it is broken, Estelle," said I, with a smile; for while I felt
something almost of pleasure in the conviction that I had undergone this in
saving her, thereby giving me a greater title to her interest and sympathy, I
could not forget my short leave from Winchester, the war at hand, the
regiment already abroad, and the active duties that were expected of me.

"Broken?" she repeated, in a faint voice.

"My sword-arm--on the eve of marching for foreign service. Awkward,
isn't it?"

"Awkward! O Harry, it is horrible! And all this has occurred through me
and my childish folly!"

"One arm is at your service, dearest, still," said I, while placing it round
her, and assisting her to rise, as the kind old farmer returned with his
people, joyful to find that we were living, after all, and that by assisting us
he might in some degree repay Sir Madoc Lloyd a portion of that debt of
gratitude which he owed to him.

After despatching a mounted messenger to Craigaderyn with tidings of
our safety, he had us at once conveyed to his farm-house at Craig Eryri,
where dry clothing was given us, and a doctor summoned to attend me.

"You knew that we were missing--lost?" said I.

"Too well, sir," replied the farmer, as he produced a brandy-bottle from
an ancient oak cupboard. "With all my lads I assisted in the search," he
continued in Welsh, as he could scarcely speak a word of English. "A
gentleman came here over night with a groom, both mounted, to spread the
news of you and a lady having been lost somewhere below the Bôd
Mynach."

"A gentleman mounted--Mr. Caradoc, perhaps?"

"Caradoc is one of ourselves," said the farmer, his keen eyes twinkling;
"this one was a Sassenach--he Sir Madoc gave that lovely ring to, with a
diamond as big as a horse-bean, for winning a race at Chester."

"O, Mr. Guilfoyle."

"Yes, sir, that is his name, I believe," replied Rhuddlan; and despite the
gnawing agony of my arm I laughed outright, for the quondam German
attaché would seem to have actually found time to relate something new
about his brilliant to the simple old farmer, and while the fate of Lady
Estelle was yet a mystery. As for mine, I shrewdly suspected he cared little
about that.

Attired by the farmer's wife in the best clothing with which she could
provide her, Lady Estelle, pale, wan, and exhausted, was seated near a fire
to restore warmth to her chilled frame, while I retired with the medical man,
who found my unlucky arm broken above the elbow; fortunately, the
fracture was simple, and in no way a compound one. The bones were
speedily set, splinted, and bandaged; and clad in a suit provided for me by
Farmer Rhuddlan--to wit, a pair of corduroy knee-breeches, a deeply-
flapped double-breasted waistcoat, which, from its pattern, seemed to have
been cut from a chintz bedcover, so gorgeous were the roses and tulips it
displayed, a large loose coat of coarse gray Welsh frieze, with horn buttons
larger than crown pieces, each garment "a world too wide"--I presented a
figure so absurd and novel that Estelle, in spite of all the misery and danger
we had undergone, laughed merrily as she held out to me in welcome a
hand of marvellous form and whiteness, the hand that was to be mine in the
time to come; and I seated myself by her side, while the farmer and his wife
bustled about, preparing for the certain arrival of Sir Madoc and others from
the Court.

"How odd it seems!" said Estelle, in a low voice, and after a long pause,
as she lay back in the farmer's black-leather elbow chair, where his wife had
kindly placed and pillowed her; and while she spoke, her eyes were half
closed and her lips were wreathed with smiles; "engaged to be married--and
to you, Harry! I can scarcely' realise it. Is this the end of all our ballroom
flirtations, our Park drives, and gallops in the Row?"

"Nay, not the end of any; but a continuance of them all, I hope."

"Scarcely; people don't flirt after marriage--together, at least. But it will
be the end of all mamma's grand schemes for me. She always hoped I
should twine strawberry leaves with my marriage wreath. Heavens, how
nearly I was having a wreath of seaweed!" she added, with a shudder and a
little gasping laugh as I kissed her hand. "O, my poor Harry, with an arm
broken, and by my means I shall never forgive myself--never!"

"Better an arm than if my heart had been broken by your means, Estelle,"
said I, in a low voice. After a little she said calmly and in an earnest tone,
while her colour came and went more than once,

"We must be secret, secret as we are sincere; and yet such a system is
repugnant to me, and to my pride of heart."

"Secret, Estelle!" (How delicious to call her simply Estelle!) "Why?"

"It is most necessary--yet awhile, at least."

"Your mamma's objections?"

"More than that."

"What--more?"

"By papa's will mamma has entire control over all her fortune and mine,
too, and should I marry without her full approbation and consent, she may
bequeath both if she pleases to my cousin Naseby, leaving but a pittance to
me."

"But what will not one undergo for love?" said I, gazing tenderly into her
eyes.

She smiled sadly, but made no response; perhaps she thought of what
love might have of luxury on a subaltern's pay and his "expectations."

"Fear not, Estelle," said I, "for your sake our engagement shall be a
secret one."

All my doubts and fears had already given place to the confidence of
avowed and reciprocated affection, and in the security of that I was blindly
happy. How my heart had been wont to throb when I used mentally to
imagine the last interview I should have with her ere going forth to the East,
with the story of my love untold; leaving her in ignorance, or partially so, of
the sweet but subtle link that bound my existence to hers! Now, the love
was told; the link had become a tie, and pain of the anticipated parting
became all the more keen apparently, and I prospectively reckoned one by
one the weeks, the days, yea, almost the hours I might yet spend in the
society of Estelle. I was not much given to daydreams or illusions, but, I
asked of myself, was not all this most strange if I was not dreaming now?
Could it be that, within a few hours--a time so short--Estelle and I had
braved such peril together, and that I had achieved her plight, her troth; the
promise of her hand; the acknowledgment of her love, and that all was
fulfilled; the coveted and dearest object of my secret thoughts and tenderest
wishes!

Whether our engagement were secret or not mattered little to me now.
Assured of her regard, I felt in her presence and society all that calm delight
and sense of repose which were so pleasing after my late tumult of anxiety,
pique, jealousy, and uncertainty. By chance or some intuition the farmer and
his wife left us for a time alone, while waiting the arrival of our friends; and
never while life lasts shall I forget the joy of that calm morning spent alone
with Estelle in Rhuddlan's quaint little drawing-room, the windows of
which faced the green Denbigh hills, on which the warm August sun shone
cheerily; and often did the memory of it come back to me when I was far
away, when I was shivering amid the misery of the half-frozen trenches
before Sebastopol, or relieving the out pickets, when Inkermann lights were
waxing pale and dim as dawn stole over those snow-clad wastes, where so
thick lay the graves of men and horses, while the eternal boom and flash
went on without ceasing from the Russian bastions and the allied batteries. I
felt as if I had gained life anew, and with it Estelle Cressingham. Great,
indeed, was the revulsion of feeling after such peril undergone; after a night
of such horror and suffering, to sit by her side, to hang over her, inspired to
the full by that emotion of tenderness and rapture which no man can feel
but once in life, when the first woman he has really loved admits that he has
not done so in vain. I placed on her finger--the engaged finger--an emerald-

and-diamond ring that I valued highly, as it had once been my mother's, and
in its place took one of hers, a single pearl set in blue-and-gold enamel. The
once proud beauty seemed so humble, gentle, and loving now, as she
reclined with her head on my shoulder, and looked at me from time to time
with a sweet quiet smile in the soft depths of her dark eyes I forgot that she
was an earl's daughter, with a noble dowry and an ambitious mother, and
that I was but a sub of the Royal Welsh, with little more than his pay. I
forgot that the route for Varna hung over my head like the sword of
Damocles; that a separation, certain and inevitable, was hourly drawing
closer and closer, though the accident which had occurred might protract it
a little now.

Estelle Cressingham was a grand creature, certainly. She naturally
seemed to adopt statuesque positions, and thus every movement, however
careless and unstudied, was full of artistic grace. Even the misshapen
garments of Mrs. Evan Rhuddlan could not quite disfigure her. The turn of
her head was stately, and at times her glance, quick and flashing, had a
pride in it that she was quite unconscious of. She was, as Caradoc had said,
"decidedly a splendid woman--young lady, rather--but of the magnificent
order." But there were tender and womanly touches, a gentler nature, in the
character of Estelle, that lay under the artificial strata of that cumbrous
society in which she had been reared. She had many pets at home in
London and at Walcot Park--birds and dogs, which she fed with her own
hands, and little children, who were her pensioners; and if her nose seemed
a proud one, with an aristocratic curve of nostril, her short upper lip would
quiver occasionally when she heard a tale of sorrow or cruelty. And now,
from our mutual daydream, we were roused by the sound of wheels, of
hoofs, and several voices, as some of our friends from the Court arrived.

CHAPTER XVII.--WHAT FOLLOWED IT.

To expatiate upon the joy of all when we found ourselves safe in
Craigaderyn Court again were a needless task. Lady Estelle was conveyed
at once to her own room, and placed in charge of Mademoiselle Pompon.
For two entire days I saw nothing of her, and could but hover on the terrace
which her windows overlooked, in the hope of seeing her; but the same
doctor who came daily to dress my arm had to attend her, as she was weak,
feverish, and rather hysterical after all she had undergone; while I, with my
broken limb, found myself somewhat of a hero in our little circle.

"This adventure of yours will make the Bôd Mynach the eighth wonder
of Wales, if it gets into print," said Sir Madoc.

This chance was Lady Naseby's fear. She was "full of annoyance and
perplexity," as she said, "lest some of those busybodies who write for the
ephemeral columns of the daily press should hear of the affair, and ventilate
it in some manner that was garbled, sensational, and, what was worse than
either, unpunishable."

She thanked me with great courtesy, but without cordiality, for having
saved her daughter's life at the expense of a broken limb, as it was by sheer
strength that I prevented Estelle being torn from the boat and me. Her
ladyship, however, soon dismissed the subject, and now Tiny, the snappish
white shock, which for some hours had been forgotten and shamefully
neglected, came in for as many caresses as her daughter, if not more.

Anxious, for many obvious reasons, to gain the esteem of this cold and
unapproachable dowager--even to love her, for her daughter's sake, most
unlovable though she was--I was ever assiduous in my attentions; and these

seemed to excite quietly the ridicule of Winifred Lloyd, while Dora said
that she believed Lady Estelle must have quarrelled with me, and that I had
transferred my affections to her mamma.

But little Dora saw and knew more than I supposed. On the second day
after the affair, when she came with her light tripping step down the perron
of the mansion, and joined me on the terrace, where I was idling with a
cigar, I said,

"By the bye, why did you leave us, Dora, in that remarkable manner, and
not return?"

"Mr. Clavell overtook me, and insisted upon my keeping an engagement
to him. Moreover," she added, waggishly, "under my music-master I have
learned that many a delightful duet becomes most discordant when
attempted as a trio."

"And for that reason you left us?"

"Precisely," replied the lively girl, as she removed her hat, and permitted
the wealth of her golden hair to float out on the wind. "Save for your poor
arm being broken, and the terrible risks you ran, I might laugh at the whole
affair; for it was quite romantic--like something out of a play or novel; but it
quite put an end to the ball."

"And now that Tom Clavell has gone back to his depôt at Chester, you
can scarcely forgive me?"

"I saw that you were dying to be alone with Lady Estelle," she retorted,
"and now don't you thank me?"

I certainly felt a gratitude I did not express, but doubted whether her
elder sister would have approved of Dora's complicity in the matter; and
affecting to misunderstand her I said,

"Why thank you now?"

"Because," said Dora, looking at me, with her blue eyes half closed, "if
on the top of a mountain an acquaintance ripens fast, good heavens, how
must it have been with you two at the bottom of the sea!"

And she laughed merrily at her own conceit, while swinging her hat to
and fro by its ribbons. Lord Pottersleigh shook his head as if he disliked the
whole affair, and nervously scanned the daily papers with spectacles on his
thin aquiline nose, in expectation of seeing some absurd, perhaps
impertinent, paragraph about it; and such was the old man's aristocratic
vanity, that I verily believe, had he seen such, he would there and then have
relinquished all his expectations--for he undoubtedly had them--of making
Estelle Lady Pottersleigh, and the partner of his higher honours that were to
come.

"Lady Naseby owes you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Hardinge, for saving the
life of her daughter--and I, too," he added, "owe you an everlasting debt of
gratitude."

"You, my lord?" said I, turning round in the library, where we happened
to be alone.

"Yes; for in saving her you saved one in whom I have the deepest
interest. So, my dear Mr. Hardinge," he continued, pompously, looking up
from the Times, "if I can do aught for you at the Horse Guards, command
me, my young friend, command me."

"Thanks, my lord," said I, curtly; for his tone of patronage, and the cause
thereof, were distasteful to me.

"You have of course heard the rumour of--of an engagement?"

"With Lady Estelle Cressingham?"

"Exactly," said he, laughing till he brought on a fit of coughing--
"exactly--ha, ha--ugh, ugh! How the deuce these things ooze out at clubs
and in society, I cannot conceive; for even the world of London seems like a
village in that way. Ah, nowhere out of our aristocracy could a man find
such a wife as Lady Estelle!"

"I quite agree with you; but there is a point beyond that."

"Indeed! what may that be?"

"To get her!" said I, defiantly, enraged by the old man's cool
presumption.

Was this reference to "a rumour" merely his senile vanity, or had Estelle
ignored something that really existed?

Caradoc's congratulations, though I carefully kept my own counsel, were
as warm in reality as those of Guilfoyle were in pretence.

"Wish you every joy," said the latter, in a low tone, as we met in the
billiard-room, where he was practising strokes with Sir Madoc.

"I don't quite understand."

"You hold the winning-cards now, I think," said he, with a cold glare in
his eye.

"Sir?"

"I congratulate you on escaping so many perils with the Lady Estelle,
and being thereby a winner."

I had just left Pottersleigh, and was not disposed to endure much from
Guilfoyle.

"The winner of what?" I asked.

"The future esteem of the Countess," he sneered.

"Perhaps she will present me with a diamond ring on the head of it," said
I, turning on my heel, while Sir Madoc laughed at the hit; but whatever he
felt, Guilfoyle cloaked it pretty well by laughing, and, as a Parthian shot,
quoting, with some point, and with unruffled exterior, a line or two from the
fourth book of the Æneid, concerning the storm which drew Dido and her
hero into the cave.

The bearing of Winifred Lloyd now became somewhat of a riddle to me;
and on the morning of the third day, when we all met at the breakfast table
(which was littered by cards and notes of congratulation), and when Lady
Estelle appeared, looking so pale and beautiful, declining Mademoiselle
Babette's cosmetics and pearl-powder alike, in the loveliest morning-dress
that Swan and Edgar could produce, I was conscious that she watched us
with an interest that seemed wistful, tearful, and earnest. Whether I had a
tell-tale face, I know not. Nothing, however, could be gathered from that of
Estelle, or her mode of greeting me and inquiring about the progress of my
broken arm towards recovery. My ring was on her finger; but as she wore
several, it passed unnoticed, and even Dora's quick eye failed to detect it.

Winifred had become very taciturn; and when I asked her to drive with
me in the open carriage--as for a time I could not ride--she declined rather
curtly, and with something of petulance, even disdain, in her tone. She
never had the usual inquiries made by others concerning my fracture, nor
joined with Dora in the playful rivalry of the ladies cutting for me, if no
servant was near; for at table I was of course helpless. She smiled seldom,
but laughed frequently; and yet it struck me there was something unwonted
in the ring of her laughter, as if it came not from her heart. The girl had a
secret sorrow evidently. Was Master Phil Caradoc at the bottom of this? If
not, who then? I watched her from time to time, and observed that once,
when our eyes met, she seemed confused, and coloured perceptibly.

"Surely," thought I, "she is not resenting my half-flirtation with her the
other day, when we visited her pet goat!"

She was restless, absent, listlessly indifferent, and occasionally
preoccupied in manner; and in vain did I say to her more than once,

"Miss Lloyd--Winifred--what troubles you? what has vexed you?"

"Nothing troubles me, Mr. Hardinge."

"Mr.?"

"Well, then, Harry--and nothing vexes me. What leads you to think so?"

Her full-fringed dark eyes looked clearly into mine; they seemed moist,
yet defiant, and she tossed her pretty little head wilfully and petulantly. I
felt that I had in some way displeased her; but dared not press the matter,
for, with all her softness of heart, she had a little Welsh temper of her own.

Phil Caradoc gave me his entire confidence, especially after dinner,
when men become full of talk, and inspired by bland and generous
impulses. He related, without reserve, the whole episode that occurred in
the conservatory; and I felt some compunction or annoyance that
circumstances prevented me from having the same frankness with him, for
none would have rejoiced in my success more warmly than he.

"For the life of me, Harry, I can't make out what Miss Lloyd means,"
said Phil, in a low voice, as he made his Cliquot effervesce, by stirring it
with a macaroon; "she was ready enough to love me as a friend, and all that
sort of thing."

"You have asked her, then?"

"Pointedly--hardly know what I said, though--one feels so deuced queer
when making love--in earnest, I mean."

"A man can do no more than ask."

"Except asking again; but tell me, old fellow, have I a chance?"

"How should I know, Phil? But I think that the pattern sub of the Royal
Welsh Fusileers, made up, like Don Juan,

"'By love, by youth, and by an army tailor,'

should have a particularly good chance."

"You can afford to laugh at me, Harry."

"Far from it, Phil; I haven't such a thought, believe me."

"Seeing how friendly you are with these girls--with her especially--I
thought you might know this. Is any other fellow spooney upon Miss
Lloyd?"

"A good many may well be; she is lovely."

"Well, does any one stand in her good graces?"

"Can't say, indeed, Caradoc," said I, as my thoughts reverted to that
episode at the goat's-house, and others not dissimilar, with some emotions
of compunction, as I looked into Phil's honest brown eyes.

He fancied that Winifred avoided him. In that idea he erred. She admired
and loved him as a friend--a gentleman who had done her great honour; but
she never thought of analysing his emotions farther than to wish him well,
and to wish him away from Craigaderyn, after that scene in the
conservatory; and remembering it in all its points, she was careful not to
trust herself alone with him, lest the subject might be renewed; and yet she
found the necessity of approaching it one day, when a sudden recollection
struck her, as they were riding home together, and had cantered a little way
in advance of their party.

"Now that I think of it, Mr. Caradoc," said she, "you must give me that
likeness which you wear. I really cannot permit you to keep it, even in jest."

"Jest!" repeated Phil, sadly and reproachfully; "do you think so meanly
of me as to imagine that I would jest with you or with it?"

"But I can see no reason why you should retain it."

"Perhaps there is none--and yet, there is. It is the face of one I shall
never, never forget; and it is a memento of happy days spent with you--a
memento that other eyes than mine shall never look upon."

"Do not speak thus, Mr. Caradoc, I implore you!" said Winifred, looking
down on her horse's mane.

"You will permit me to keep it?"

"For a time," said she, trying to smile, but her lips quivered, "Thank you,
dear Winifred."

"If shown to none."

"'While I live none shall see; and if I die in action--as many shall surely
do, and why not I as well as happier fellows?--it will be heard of no more?"

Caradoc's voice became quite tremulous, either because of Miss Lloyd's
obduracy, or that he felt, as many people do, rather pathetic at the thought
of his own demise. He had already possessed himself of her whip-hand,
when her horse began to rear, and in a minute more they were in the lime
avenue; and this proved the last opportunity he had of reasoning with her on
the subject that was nearest his heart. He now wished that he had never met
Winifred Lloyd, or that, having met, and learned to love her--oddly enough,
when his passion was not returned--he could be what her ideal was. "In
what," thought he, "am I wanting? Am I too rough, too soldierly, too blunt,
unwinning, or what?" It was none of these; for Caradoc was a well-
mannered, courteous, gentle, and pleasing young fellow, and by women
unanimously deemed handsome and distingué. All that day he was
unusually cast down and taciturn, though he strove to take an interest in the
conversation around him.

"By Jove, Hardinge," said he, "I wish you had never brought me here, to
renew the hopes I had begun to entertain in London."

"Don't lose heart yet, Phil," said I.

"But I have to leave for the seat of war--leave her to the chance of being
loved by others, without even a promise--"

"To what troubles we are exposed in life!" said I, sententiously, and
feeling perhaps selfishly secure in my own affair.

"Greater troubles perhaps in death," added Phil, gloomily, as he gnawed
his moustache. "I sometimes wonder whether man was made for the world,
or the world was made for man."

"In what respect," said I, surprised by the train of thought so unusual in
him.

"Look at the newly-born infant, and you will find it difficult to
determine. 'He begins his life,' as Pliny says, 'in punishment, and only for
being born.'"

"Come Phil," said I, "don't get into the blues; and as for Pliny, I left him
with Euclid, Straith's Fortification, and gunnery, at Sandhurst."

The morning mail brought letters from the depôt-adjutant to Phil and me.
Their official aspect, as Owen Gwyllim laid them on the breakfast table,
attracted the attention of all. The eyes of Winifred were on me, and mine
turned instinctively and sadly to Lady Estelle, who grew ashy pale, but
seemed intent on some letters of her own. The adjutant's epistles were brief.
Caradoc was requested to join at once, his short leave being cancelled, as he
had to go with a draft of eighty rank-and-file for the East. My leave was,
extended for a fortnight, in consequence of a medical certificate received
concerning the accident that had befallen me.

So that night saw poor good-hearted Phil depart; and the memory of his
thick brown hair and handsome brown moustache, his clear hazel eyes and
honest English face dwelt not in the thoughts of her with whom he had left
his heart behind.

He had the regimental goat in his custody; and when Winifred caressed
and kissed her pet, ere it was lifted into the vehicle that was to convey it to
Chester, Phil eyed her wistfully; and I knew that he would have given the
best of his heart's blood to have felt but one of those kisses on his nut-
brown cheek!

CHAPTER XVIII.--GUILFOYLE.

My Lord Pottersleigh and the adventurer Hawkesby Guilfoyle--for an
artful, presumptuous, and very singular adventurer he eventually proved to
be--could not detect that there was a secret understanding, and still less that
there was any engagement, between Lady Estelle and me; yet both were
sharp enough to fancy that there was something wrong so far as they were
concerned--something understood by us which to them was
incomprehensible; and the latter now referred in vain to Baden, Berlin,
Catzenelnbogen, and other places where they had met so pleasantly on the
Continent. Engaged solemnly and tenderly to Estelle, I had yet the absurd
annoyance of beholding Pottersleigh, who was assured of her mother's
countenance and favour (though he would have been a more seemly suitor
for herself), and whose years and position gave him perfect confidence,
hovering or shambling perpetually about her, absorbing her time if not her
attention, mumbling his overstrained compliments into her unwilling ear,
touching her hand or tapered arm, and even patting her lovely white
shoulders from time to time with his withered paws, and every way giving
himself such fatherly and lover-like airs of proprietary oddly mingled that I
could with pleasure have punched his aristocratic old head. We frequently
laughed at all this even when he was present; for by a glance rather than a
word, Estelle could convey to me all she thought and felt. There was
something delightful in this secret understanding, this secret community of
thought and interest, with one so young and beautiful--more than all, when
blended with it was the charm of the most perfect success in a first affair of
love; and I thought myself one of the happiest fellows in the world.

Superb as her toilettes were at all times, she seemed to make little
Babette Pompon take extra pains with them now, and I felt delighted
accordingly, for such infinite care seemed to express a desire to please me.
Our next departure from the Court was Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle, whom Sir
Madoc and all his visitors had begun to view with a coolness and disfavour
of which the party in question found it convenient to seem quite oblivious;
but it reached its culminating point through a very small matter. One day
after luncheon we had gone so far as Penmaen Mawr. The four ladies were
in the open carriage; I occupied the rumble; Sir Madoc, Lord Pottersleigh,
and Guilfoyle were mounted, and we were all enjoying to the fullest extent

that glorious combination of marine and mountain scenery peculiar to the
Welsh coast; the air was full of ozone and the sky was full of sunshine. We
were all happy, and even Winifred seemed in unusually high spirits; as for
Dora, she was never otherwise. The well-hung carriage rolled pleasantly
along, between the beautiful green hills, past quiet villages and ancient
churches, vast yawning slate quarries, green mounds and gray stones that
marked where battles had been, with occasional glimpses of the Irish Sea,
that stretched away to the dim horizon like a sheet of glittering glass.
Estelle, by arrangement, sat with her back to the horses, so that she and I
could freely converse with our eyes, from time to time, under the shade of
her skilfully-managed parasol.

Sir Madoc on this day was peculiarly enthusiastic, and having mounted
what the girls called his "Welsh hobby," was disposed to give it full rein.
We halted in a little sequestered glen, a lovely spot embosomed among
trees, on the southern slope of the hill. The horses were unbitted; Owen
Gwyllim had put the champagne' bottles to cool in a runnel, where their
long gilded necks and swollen corks stood invitingly up amid the rich green
grass that almost hid the murmuring water. We had come by Caerhun,
through an old and little-frequented road, where Sir Madoc insisted on
pointing out to us all the many erect old battle-stones by the wayside; for
his mind was now full of quaint stories, and the memory of heroes with
barbarous names. Thus when Owen uncorked the Cliquot, he drank more
than one guttural Welsh toast, and told us how, often in his boyhood, the
road had been obstructed for weeks by masses of rock that fell thundering
from the mountain above; and in his love of the olden time or detestation of
change, I believe he would have preferred such barriers to progress still,
rather than have seen the lines of road and rail that now sweep between the
mountain and the sea on the way to Holyhead.

"It was in this dell or glyn," said Sir Madoc, as he seated his sturdy
figure on the grass, though the ladies did not leave the carriage, "that
Llewellyn ap Jorwerth took prisoner the luckless William de Breas, whom
he hanged at Aber, in the time of Henry III."

"Why did he hang him?" asked Guilfoyle, holding his glass for Owen to
refill it.

"Because he was a handsome fellow, and found too much favour in the
eyes of his princess, whom he dragged to the window that she might see his
body hanging lifeless on the gibbet."

"Deuced hard lines," said Guilfoyle, laughing. "I thought he might have
been hung because he hadn't a pedigree, or some other enormity in Welsh
eyes." As Sir Madoc looked at the speaker his eyes sparkled, for the remark
was a singularly gratuitous one.

"You English," said he, "laugh at what you are pleased to consider our
little weakness in that respect; and yet the best names in the peerage are apt
to be deduced from some corporal or sergeant of William's Norman rabble."

"Heavens, papa! when I change my name of Lloyd, I hope it won't be for
that of Mrs. John Smith or Robinson?" said Dora, merrily, as she heard that
Sir Madoc's tone was sharp.

"Well, but you must admit that these fortuitous circumstances are
deemed of small account now; for as Dick Cypher sings,

"'A peer and a 'prentice now dress much the same, And you can't tell the
difference excepting by name.'"

"I don't know who your friend Dick Cypher may be," replied Sir Madoc,
quietly, though evidently greatly ruffled, "but Burke and Debrett record as
ancient, names we deem but those of yesterday, and when compared with
ours are as the stunted gorsebush to pine or oak--yes, sir! or as the donkey
that crops thistles by the wayside when compared to the Arab horse!"

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Pottersleigh, letting his hat sink farther
on the nape of his neck, as he placed his gold glasses on his long thin nose
and gazed at Sir Madoc, who tossed an empty bottle into the runnel, and
continued:--"In Wales we have the lines of Kynaston, who descend from
Rhodric Mawr, King of all Wales, and the daughter and coheir of the
Bloody Wolf; the Mostyns, from the Lord of Abergeleu who founded the
eighth noble tribe; the Vaughans, who come from that King Rhodric who
married the daughter of Meuric ap Dyfnwall ap Arthur ap Sitsylt, though
that was only in the year 800; and we have the Lloyds----"

"O, papa," exclaimed Winifred, seeing that Estelle was laughing heartily,
"we cannot listen to more; and I am sure that your muster-roll of terrible
names must have quite convinced Mr. Guilfoyle of his error."

"If it ever existed--I did but jest," said he, bowing and smiling as he
turned to her.

Sir Madoc's gust of patriotic ire passed away at the sound of his
daughter's voice; but from that moment his manner to Guilfoyle underwent
a marked change, for he had already more than once contrived to wound
him on this his most tender point. So the usually suave and kind old man
became very cool to him as they rode homeward; and early that evening
Guilfoyle retired to his room, alleging that he had to write letters.

After dinner, as we idled for a little time in the smoking-room prior to
joining the ladies, Lord Pottersleigh led the conversation gradually back to
our evening excursion, and with some hesitation began to speak of
Guilfoyle.

"You will pardon me, my dear Sir Madoc, for venturing to speak
slightingly of any friend of yours; but----"

"Mr. Guilfoyle is no friend of mine," said the other, hastily; "he dropped
among us from the clouds, as it were. When with Lady Naseby I met him
on the beach at Llandudno. He had done her some service on the Continent,
at Catzeneln--what's-its-name?--I invited him on the strength of their past
acquaintance--that's all."

"Then, briefly, get rid of him if you can."

"What do you say, Harry?"

"I say with Lord Pottersleigh."

Sir Madoc fidgeted, for his Welsh ideas of hospitality were somewhat
shocked by the idea of "getting rid" of a guest.

"I assure you, Sir Madoc," resumed the peer, "that he is quite out of his
place amongst us, quite; and despite his usually assumed suavity--for it is
assumed--he lacks intensely l'odeur de la bonne société, though he affects
it; and I overheard two of your late guests making some very dubious
remarks concerning him."

"The deuce you did!" exclaimed Sir Madoc, tossing away his half-
smoked cigar.

"They spoke quite audibly, as if they cared not who might hear them."

"Who were they?"

"Officers of the 19th, from Chester. 'Guilfoyle!' I heard that fast boy
Clavell exclaim, as if with surprise, to another; 'is that fellow, who--' 'The
very same.' 'Then how comes he to be a guest here?' 'Just what I was asking
of myself, as he is tabooed everywhere. You know they say--' 'They--who?'
'O, that ubiquitous and irresponsible party so difficult to grapple with--that
though he was attaché at some German place, he has been in several
conspiracies to pigeon young muffs just come of age. There was
particularly one poor fellow of ours whom he rooked at Hamburg of every
sixpence, and who was afterwards found drowned in the Alster. And lately I
have heard that he was proprietor, or part proprietor, of a gaming-hell in
Berlin.' 'By Jove!' exclaimed little Clavell, but can all this be proved?' 'No.'
'Why?' 'He lays his plans too deeply and surely.' Then they walked towards
the marquee, and I thought I had hear, enough--quite," added his lordship,
snuffing.

Long before Pottersleigh was done, Sir Madoc had blushed purple with
stifled rage and mortification. He said,

"My lord, you should have mentioned all this instantly."

"Truth is, I knew not how to approach the subject."

"And I have introduced this fellow to my daughters, to my friends, and
to Craigaderyn! D--n me, I shall choke!" he exclaimed, as he started from
his chair. "He is deep as Llyn Tegid! I have already lost considerable sums

to him at billiards, and I always thought his success at cards miraculous.
But an end shall be put to this instantly!--Owen! Owen Gwyllim!"

He kicked a spittoon to the other end of the room, rang the bell furiously
for the butler, and dashed off a note to Mr. Guilfoyle. It was sufficiently curt
and pointed. He expressed "regret that a gun would not be at his service on
the coming 1st of September; but that the carriage would await his orders,
for Chester or elsewhere."

Guilfoyle had doubtless been accustomed to meet with affronts such as
this. Desiring his baggage to be sent after him, he departed that night with
his two horses, his groom (and diamond ring); but, prior to doing so, he had
the effrontery to leave P.P.C. cards for Lady Naseby and Estelle, saying that
"he should not forget their kind invitation to Walcot Park;" and rode off,
scheming vengeance on me, to whom he evidently attributed the whole
matter, as he informed Owen Gwyllim that he "would yet repay me, through
his solicitor, perhaps, for the interest I had taken in his affairs."

This threw a temporary cloud over our little party, and good Sir Madoc
felt a kind of sorrow for Guilfoyle as he surmised how little money he
might have in his purse, forgetting that he was proprietor of a pair of horses.
To prevent her amour propre being wounded, we most unfortunately did not
reveal this man's real character to Lady Naseby; thus, to Sir Madoc's hot
temper was attributed his sudden departure.

Though Lady Estelle was excessively provoked that, through her and her
mother, whom his service on the Continent had prejudiced in his favour,
and through his alleged acquaintance with me, he had become Sir Madoc's
guest, in a day or two the whole contretemps was forgotten; but I was fated
not to have seen or heard the last of Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle.

CHAPTER XIX.--TWO LOVES FOR ONE HEART.

By the peculiarity of our position kept much apart, or seldom finding
opportunities, even in a house like Craigaderyn Court, for being alone, as it
was perpetually thronged by visitors, we had to content ourselves with the
joy of stolen glances that lit up the eye with an expression we alone could
read, or that was understood by ourselves only; by tender touches of the
hand that thrilled to the heart; and by inflections of the voice, which, do as
we might, would at times become soft and tremulous. Our life was now full
of petty stratagems and pretty lover-like enigmas, especially when in the
presence of Lady Naseby; and now I also became afraid of Winifred Lloyd,
who, unoccupied, so far as I could see, by any love-affair of her own, was
almost certain, I thought, to see through mine. "There is no conquest
without the affections," said Ninon de l'Enclos; "and what mole is so blind
as a woman in love?" Yet Estelle was careful to a degree in her bearing, and
never permitted her fondness of me to lull her into a sense of security from
observation. I learned, however, from my ally Dora, that Lady Naseby was
so provoked by what Estelle not inaptly termed our "late fiasco," that, save
for the weight such a proceeding might have given it, they and the Viscount,
too, would have quitted Craigaderyn Court, So they remained; but, thought
I, what right had he to be concerned in the matter? And unless I greatly
erred, I felt certain that the Countess cared not how soon I received my
marching orders for that fatal shore where so many of us were to leave our
bones.

Yet many a stolen kiss and snatched caress or pressure of the hand, many
a whispered assurance of love, made Estelle and me supremely happy,
while the few days that remained of my leave glided quickly--ah, too
quickly!--past; and all desire for "glory" apart, I was not sorry when I saw
that my fractured arm would prevent my being sent with the next draft, and
cause my retention for a little time longer in England. "They who love must
drink deeply of the cup of trembling," says some one; "for at times there
will arise in their hearts a nameless terror, a sickening anxiety for the future,
whose brightness all depends upon this one cherished treasure, which often
proves a foreboding of some real anguish looming in the distant hours."

As yet no forebodings came to mar my happiness; it was without alloy,
save the prospect of a certain and, as we trusted to Providence, a temporary
separation; yet it was well that I saw not the future, or what those distant
hours had in store for me.

"Estelle," said I, one day when a happy chance threw us together for a
few minutes in an arbour of the garden, where we sometimes met at a
certain hour, and separated after by different paths, like a pair of
conspirators, "when shall a period be put to all this mystery--this painful,
though joyous, false position in which we find ourselves?"

"We can but wait and hope, Harry--wait and hope!" said she, while her
head drooped on my shoulder, and my arm went round her.

"Wait and hope, dearest, for what? My promotion?"

"That would bring the end no nearer," said she, with a sad, sickly smile.

"No, certainly; even to be colonel of the Royal Welsh instead of a mere
sub would not enhance my value much in Lady Naseby's estimation," said I,
with some bitterness. "For what then, darling?"

"Some change in mamma's views regarding me."

"She will never change!"

"You know, Harry, that were you rich, I might marry you now--yes, and
go to Turkey with you, too!" said she, with a brightness in her eyes.

"Would to Heaven, then, that I were rich! But being poor--"

"It is impossible."

And we both sighed heavily.

"I am under orders for the East, and must take my turn of duty there,
risking all the chances of war, ere I can think of home or marriage, Estelle;
but when we part, if I am not to write to you, how shall I ever know that

you think of me? how hear of your health and welfare? that you remain true
to me--"

"O, doubt not that!"

"Nor do I; but it would be so sweet to see your writing, and imagine your
voice reiterating the troth you plighted to me in that terrible time."

"I shall write to you, dear, dear Harry, for I can do that freely and openly;
but of you, alas! alas! I can only hear through our friends at the Court here,
for you can neither write to me in London nor at Walcot Park."

"May I not ask Miss Lloyd to receive enclosures for you? I shall be
writing to her, and we are such old friends that she would think nothing of
it."

"Too old friends, I fear," said she, with a half-smiling but pointed glance;
"but for Heaven's sake think not of that. She would never consent, nor
should I wish her to do so. I can of course receive what letters I choose; but
servants will pry, and consider what certain coats of arms, monograms, and
postal marks mean; so my Crimean correspondent would be shrewdly
suspected, and myself subjected to much annoyance by mamma and her
views."

"Her views! This is the second time you have referred to them," said I,
anxiously; "and they are--"

"That I should marry my cousin Naseby, whom I always disliked," said
Estelle, in a sad and sweetly modulated voice; "or Lord Pottersleigh, whose
wealth and influence are so great that a short time must see him created an
earl; but he has no chance now, dear Harry!"

Long, lovingly, and tenderly she gazed into my eyes, and her glance and
her manner seemed so truthful and genuine that I felt all the rapture of
trusting her fearlessly, and that neither time nor distance would alter or
lessen her regard for me; and a thousand times in "the distant hours" that
came did I live over and over again that scene in the arbour, when the warm
flush of the August evening was lying deep on the Welsh woods and

mountains, when all the mullioned windows of the quaint old mansion were
glittering in light, and the soft coo of the wild pigeons was heard as they
winged their way to the summit of Craigaderyn, which is usually alive with
them, and there the fierce hawk and the ravenous cormorant know well
when to find their prey.

The time for my departure drew near; and already but a day remained to
me. Caradoc and Charley Gwynne had already sailed in a troopship for
Varna, from which the entire army was about to embark for a landing on the
Russian coast, and ill or well, my presence with the regimental depôt was
imperative. My bullock trunks had been packed by Owen Gwyllim, and the
carriage was ordered to convey me next evening, after an early dinner. The
latter passed slowly and heavily enough, and afterwards, instead of
remaining all together, as might have been expected, circumstances
separated us for an hour or so. Lady Naseby was indisposed; so was Lord
Pottersleigh, whom his old enemy had confined by the feet to this rooms,
yet he hoped to be in service order, to enact the sportsman on the coming
1st of September, a period to which he looked forward with disgust and
horror, as involving an enormous amount of useless fatigue, with the
chances of shooting himself or some one else. Sir Madoc had certain
country business to attend; and on the three young ladies retiring to the
drawing-room, I was left to think over my approaching departure through
the medium of burgundy and a cigar.

My sword arm was nearly well now; but still I should have made but a
poor affair of it, if compelled to resort to inside and outside cuts, to point
and parry, with a burly Muscovite. To know that I had but a few hours left
me now, and not to spend them with Estelle Cressingham, seemed
intolerable! Before me, from the window, spread the far extent of grassy
chase steeped in the evening sunshine; above the green woods were the
peaks of Snowdon and Carneydd Llewellyn, dim and blue in the distance;
and while gazing at them wistfully, I reflected on all I should have to see
and undergo, to hope and fear and suffer--the miles I should have to
traverse by sea and land--ere I again heard, if ever, the pleasant rustle of the
leaves in these old woods, the voice of the wild pigeon or the croak of the
rooks among the old Tudor gables and chimneys of Craigaderyn. And then
again I thought of Estelle.

"I must see her, and alone, too, at all risks; perhaps dear little Dora will
assist me," I muttered, and went towards the drawing-room, which was now
considerably involved in shadow, being on the western side of the Court;
and I felt with the tender Rosalind, when her lover said, "For these two
hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee," "Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two
hours."

I entered the room and found only Winifred Lloyd. She was seated in the
deep bay of a very picturesque old oriel window, which seemed to frame
her as if in a picture. Her chin was resting in the hollow of her left hand,
and she was gazing outward dreamily on vacancy, or along the flower-
terraces of the house; but she looked hastily round, and held out a hand to
me as I approached.

I caressed the pretty hand, and then dropped it; and not knowing very
well what to say, leaned over the back of her chair.

"I suppose," she began, "you are thinking--thinking--"

"How far more pleasing to the eye are a pair of fair white shoulders to
the same amount of silk or satin," said I smilingly, as I patted her neck with
my glove.

She shrugged the white shoulders in question, and said petulantly, with
half averted face,

"Is it possible that your departure has no place in your thoughts?"

"Alas, yes! for do I not leave Craigaderyn by sunset? and its golden
farewell rays are lingering on blue Snowdon even now," said I, with a
forced smile; for though I had come in quest of Estelle, something--I know
not what--drew me to Winifred just then.

Her eyebrows were very black, but slightly arched, and they almost met
over her nose; and I gazed into the orbs below them, so dark, so clear, and
beautiful--eyes that could neither conceal the emotions of her heart, nor the
pleasure or sorrow she felt; and I thought how easily a man might be lured
to forget the world for her, as friendship between the sexes--especially in

youth--is perilous; and some such thought, perhaps, occurred to her, for she
turned her face abruptly from me.

"You are surely not angry with me?" said I, bending nearer her ear.

"Angry--I with you?"

"Yes."

"Why should I be so?" she asked, looking down upon her folded hands
that trembled in her lap--for she was evidently repressing some emotion;
thinking, perhaps, of poor Phil Caradoc, who was then ploughing the waters
of the Mediterranean with Carneydd Llewellyn to console him.

"You should not have come here," said she, after a pause.

"Not into the drawing-room?"

"Unless to meet Estelle Cressingham."

"Do not say this," said I, nervously and imploringly, in a low voice;
"what is Estelle to me?"

"Indeed!" said the little scornful lip. "Her mamma summoned her, but
she may be here shortly."

Doubtless Lady Naseby had some dread of the leave-taking.

"I shall be so glad to see her once again ere I go."

"Of course."

"I hope that you and she will often think and speak of me when I am
gone."

"You are a delightful egotist, Harry Hardinge; but I trust our memories
may be reciprocal."

"We have ever been such friends, and must be, you know, Winifred."

"Yes, Harry; why should we not be friends?" she asked, with a dash of
passionate earnestness in her tone, while she gazed at me with a curious
expression in her large, soft, and long-lashed eyes.

"Have you any message for--for----"

"Whom?" she asked, sharply.

"Philip Caradoc."

"None."

"None!"

"Save kindest regards and warmest wishes. What is Mr. Caradoc to me?"
Then she gave a little shiver, as she added, "Our conversation is taking a
very strange tone."

"I cannot conceive in how I have annoyed you," said I, with something
of sorrow and wonder in my heart.

"Perhaps; but you have not annoyed me, though you are not quite what
you used to be; and none are so blind as those who will not see."

"I am quite perplexed. I think we know each other pretty well,
Winifred?" said I, very softly.

"I know you certainly," was the dubious response.

"Well--and I you?" said I, laughing.

"Scarcely. Woman, you should be aware, is a privileged enigma."

"Well, I was about to say that, whatever happens, we must ever be dear
friends, and think of each other kindly and tenderly, for the pleasant times
that are past and gone."

"What can happen to make us otherwise?" she asked, in a strange voice.

"I--may be killed," said I, not knowing very well what to say or suggest;
"so, while there is a chance of such a contingency, let us part kindly; not so
coldly as this, dear Winifred; and kiss me ere I go."

Her lips, warm and tremulous, touched mine for an instant; but her eyes
were sad and wild, and her poor little face grew ashy white as she hastened
away, leaving me with Estelle, who was approaching through the long and
shaded room; and when with her, Winifred Lloyd and the momentary
emotion that had sprung up--emotion that I cared not and dared not then to
analyse--were utterly forgotten.

Our interview was a very silent one. We had barely time for a few words,
and heavy on my heart as lead weighed the conviction that I had to part
from her--my love so recently won, so firmly promised and affianced. I
knew that the days of my sojourn at Winchester must be few now; and with
the chances of war before me, and temptations and aristocratic ambition left
behind with her, how dubious and how remote were the chances of our
meeting again!

Moments there were when I felt blindly desperate, and with my arms
round Estelle.

When returning, would she still love me, as Desdemona loved her Moor,
for the dangers I had dared? The days of chivalry and romance have gone;
but the "old, old story" yet remains to us, fresh as when first told in Eden.

"For life or death, for good or for evil, for weal or woe, darling Estelle, I
leave my heart in your keeping!" said I, in a low passionate whisper; "in
twelve months, perhaps, I may claim you as my wife."

"L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose," said she, quietly and tenderly. "I
yet hope to see you, were it but for a day, at Walcot Park, ere you sail."

"Bless you for the hope your words give me!" said I, as Owen Gwyllim
came to announce that the carriage was at the door, and to give me Lady
Naseby's and Lord Pottersleigh's cards and farewell wishes. And from that

moment all the rest of my leave-taking seemed purely mechanical; and not
only Sir Madoc, his two daughters, and Estelle, were on the terrace of the
mansion to bid me adieu, but all the hearty, hot-tempered, high-cheekboned
old Welsh domestics, most of whom had known me since boyhood, were
also there.

The impulsive Dora brought me my courier-bag, a flask filled with
brandy, and dainty sandwiches cut and prepared by Winifred's own kind
little hands (for in doing this for me she would trust neither the butler nor
Mrs. Gwenny Davis the housekeeper), and then she held up her bright face
to be kissed; but inspired by I know not what emotion of doubt or dread, I
only touched with my lips the hands of Lady Estelle and Miss Lloyd. Both
girls stood a little apart from each other, pale as death, tremulous with
suppressed emotion, and with their lashes matted and their eyes filled with
tears, that pride and the presence of others restrained from falling. They
were calm externally, but their hearts were full of secret thoughts, to which
I was long in getting the clue. In the eyes of Estelle there was that glance or
expression of loving intensity which most men have seen once--it may be
twice--in a woman's eye, and have never, never forgotten.

Sir Madoc's brown manly hand shook mine heartily, and he clapped me
on the back.

"I hope to see you yet ere you leave England, my boy, and such hopes
always take the sting from an adieu," said he, with a voice that quivered
nevertheless. "Sorry you can't stay for the 1st of September--the partridges
will be in splendid order; but there is shooting enough of another kind in the
preserves you are going to."

"And may never come back from," was the comforting addendum of old
Mrs. Davis, as she applied her black-silk apron to her eyes.

"Ah, Harry," said Sir Madoc, "you gave a smile so like your mother just
now! She was handsome; but you will be never like her, were you as
beautiful as Absalom."

"It is well that poor mamma can't hear all this," said Dora, laughing
through her tears.

"Your dear mamma, my girl, was very fond of her and of him, too," said
honest Sir Madoc; and then he whispered, "If ever you want cash, Harry,
don't forget me, and Coutts and Co.--the dingy den in the Strand. Farewell--
anwylbach!--good-bye!"

A few minutes more and all the tableau on the steps had passed away. I
was bowling along the tall lime avenue and down the steep mountain road,
up which Phil Caradoc and I had travelled but a few weeks before. How
much had passed since then! and how much was inevitably to pass ere I
should again see these familiar scenes! What had I said, or left unsaid?
What had I done, what had passed, or how was it, that as the train sped with
me beyond brave old Chester, on and on, on and on, monotonously
clanking, grinding, jarring, and occasionally shrieking, while intrenched
among railway rugs, with a choice cigar between my teeth, and while I was
verging into that pleasant frame of mind when soft and happy visions are
born of the half-drowsy brain, lulled as it were by rapidity of motion and
the sameness of recurring sounds--how was it, I say, that the strange,
unfathomable expression I had seen in the soft pleading eyes of dear
Winifred--distance was already making her "dear"--mingled in my memory
with the smileless, grave, and tender farewell glance of my pale Estelle; and
that the sweet innocent kiss of the former was remembered with sadness
and delight?

I strove to analyse my ideas, and then thrust them from me, as I lowered
the carriage window and looked forth upon the flying landscape and the
starry night, and muttered,

"Poor Winny--God bless her! But two loves for one heart will never,
never do. I have been at Craigaderyn too long!"

And I pictured to myself the drawing-room there: Estelle, perhaps, at the
piano to conceal her emotions; or listening, it might be, to the twaddle of
old Pottersleigh. Winny gazing out upon the starlit terrace, trying to realise
the prospect--as women proposed to will do--if she had married Phil
Caradoc; or thinking of--heaven knows what! And old Sir Madoc in his
arm-chair, and dreaming, while Dora nestled by his side, of the old times,
and the boy--to wit, myself--he loved so well.

CHAPTER XX.-FEARS.

Caradoc and many other good fellows were gone eastward, and save
Hugh Price and a newly-fledged ensign, I was the only officer with the
depôt, and being senior had the command. The former had always some
affair of the heart on the tapis; the latter was a mere boy, fresh from Harrow,
so neither was companion for me. Back once more to the prosaic life of
heavy drill and much useless duty in Winchester barracks, the picturesque
and joyous past at Craigaderyn--after I had written a letter to Sir Madoc full
of remembrances to the ladies-- seemed somewhat like a dream.

My engagement with Estelle--our rides, drives, and rambles by the wild
green hills of Mynedd Hiraethrog; in the chase and long lime avenue; our
chance meetings in the garden arbour; by the fountain, where the lilies
floated and the gold fish shot to and fro; over all, that wild boat adventure,
by which our lives were to be knit up as one in the future--seemed too like a
dream, of which her ring on my finger alone remained to convince me of
the reality, as no letters could pass between us--at least none from me to her.
Thus I grew fond of courting solitude after the duties of the day were over,
and I could fling sword, sash, and belt aside; and usually I quitted early the
jollity of the battalion mess, that I might indulge in visions and conjure up
bright fancies amid the gray smoke wreaths of a quiet cigar, in that humble
bachelor's quarter already described; while the moonlight silvered the spires
and red-tiled roofs of Winchester, and when all became still in the crowded
barrack, after the tattoo-drums had beaten, and the notes of the last bugle
had warned--like the Norman curfew of old--the extinction of all lights and
fires.

I had seen many a drama and read many a romance; but now I seemed to
be personally the hero of either one or other. Engaged to the daughter of an

earl; but in secret, and unknown to all! And how or when was that
engagement to end--to be brought to a successful issue? On these points my
ideas were painfully vague and full of anxiety. Were we yet to meet--were it
but for an hour--ere war separated us more completely, by sea as well as
land? Returning, it might be mutilated and disfigured, should I still find her
loving, tender, and true? and if I fell in action, how long might I hope to be
remembered ere Estelle--But I could not with patience contemplate the
chances of another replacing or supplanting me. Occasionally, as if to kill
time, I was seized by fits of unwonted zeal, and found plenty of work to do,
apart from parades, guards, sword-exercise, and revolver-pistol practice--for
hourly recruits, many of whom could not speak a word of English, were
coming in to replace those that had sailed with Phil Caradoc; and it is one of
the essential parts of the duty of the officer commanding a regimental depôt
to see after the arms, accoutrements, and clothing of his men; and also, that
so far as drill goes, they are made perfect soldiers. Few or none of these
recruits were natives of the counties outside Offa's Dyke; but when the
news of the Alma came, and all England thrilled with the story of the uphill
charge of the Royal Welsh, more than one London paper enviously spread
the rumour, that our regiment was Cambrian only in name; till it was flatly
contradicted by the colonel--but the story nearly gave hot peppery Sir
Madoc a fit of apoplexy.

Besides other duties there was no small number of books--goodly sized
folios--of which I had the supervision, ten at least exactly similar to those
which are kept at headquarters; and all these tasks were varied by an
occasional ball or rout such as a cathedral and garrison town can furnish; or
a court-martial, or one of inquiry, concerning Mrs. Private Jones resenting--
vi et armis--that the canteen-keeper should cut her bacon and tobacco,
butter and bread, with the same knife; or to give some Giles Chawbacon
fifty lashes about daybreak for a violation of the Red-book, in a hollow
square, where men's teeth chattered in the chilly air, or they yawned behind
their glazed stocks and shivered with disgust, at a punishment for which the
army was indebted to William of Orange, and which is now happily a thing
of the past. So the month of August drew to a close, and a box of partridges
duly came from Sir Madoc--the spoil of his gun on the slopes of Mynedd
Hiraethrog, perhaps; with a letter which acquainted me that Lady Naseby
and her daughter had been for fully a fortnight at Walcot Park in

Hampshire, but that he supposed I was probably aware of the circumstance,
and that Pottersleigh was with them.

Fully a fortnight, and neither letter nor card of invitation, though they
knew that I was in Winchester! How or why was this? A chill came over
me, though I certainly had no fear of the Viscount's influence; but then I
reflected that Estelle could not, and that Lady Naseby would not, invite me-
-each for reasons of her own. What, then, remained for me to do, but wait
the event with patience, or endeavour to seek her out, by throwing myself in
her way? I writhed at the idea of a fortnight having escaped us, while the
coming of the fatal route for the East hung over me. There was something
revolting and humiliating to my spirit in acting the part of a prowler about
Walcot Park; but who is a more humble slave than a lover? The declaration
of war had animated the services, both by sea and land, with a new or
revived interest for all, with women especially. Thus our parades, reviews,
and even our marches of exercise were frequently witnessed by all the
beauty and fashion of the city and county; and among them I always looked
in vain for the carriage and liveries of the Countess. Was Estelle ill, or was
their absence from these spectacles part of a system to be pursued by the
former?

Walcot Park was, I knew, only a few miles from the barracks on the
Whitchurch-road. I had spent many an hour riding there merely to see the
place which was associated with Estelle, when she had been absent from it
in London or elsewhere; and now I had doubly an attraction to make me
turn my horse's head in that direction, after Sir Madoc's letter came; so the
second day saw me take the way northward from the old cathedral city, in
mufti, to elude observation. The evening was a lovely one, and those
swelling hills and fertile valleys, wide expanses of woodland already
becoming crisp by the heat of the past summer, with clumps of birch and
elder, the wild ash and the oak, which make up the staple features of
Hampshire scenery, were in all their autumnal beauty and repose. The
tinkling of the waggoner's bells on the dusty highway, was still heard,
though the shrill whistle of the locomotive seemed to hint that, like the old
stage-coachman, he should ere long find his occupation gone; and
mellowed on the soft and ambient air there came the merry evening chimes
from more than one quaint, village-church--the broad square Norman tower

of which stood--the landmark of its district--in outline distinct and dark
against the golden flush of the western sky. Dusk was almost closing when I
crossed that noted trouting-stream, the Teste; and passed through
Whitchurch.

As I trotted leisurely along the single street of which the little market
borough is chiefly composed, at the door of a small inn I perceived a stable-
boy holding by their bridles a black horse and a roan mare. The form of the
latter seemed familiar to me. I could not mistake the height of forehead, the
depth of chest, and roundness of barrel, or a peculiar white spot on the off-
shoulder, and in the former recognised the roadster which Guilfoyle had
brought with him to Craigaderyn. On seeing that I drew my reins and
looked rather scrutinisingly at the animal, the groom, stable helper, or
whatever he was, touched his cap, on which I inquired,

"Whose nag is this, my man?"

"Can't say as I knows, sir; but the gentleman, with another, is inside the
bar, having a drop of summut," was the answer.

"Does he reside hereabout?"

"At Walcot Park he do."

"Walcot Park!"

"My Lady Naseby's place; he's been there for a couple of days at least,
with Mr. Sharpus, my lady's lawyer from London."

I rode on and spurred my horse to a maddening pace for some distance,
and then permitting the reins to drop on his neck, gave way to the tide of
perplexing, harassing, and exasperating thoughts that flowed upon me. I
remembered that we had arranged at Craigaderyn not to inform Lady
Naseby of the real character of her chosen continental acquaintance, a
foolish and fatal mistake, as the fellow would seem to have had sufficient
presumption to present himself at Walcot Park, and there remain until
exposed and expelled. But how came it to pass that such as he was
patronised and fostered, as it were, by "the family solicitor," and patented

by being his companion? Surely a legal man, however great a rascal
professionally and personally, was too wary to adopt openly a blackleg as
his friend and protégé!

I felt that Lady Naseby should instantly be warned of Guilfoyle's real
character; but by whom was this to be done? Tied up by my secret
arrangements with Estelle, I could neither write nor call uninvited; but why
had she not, as she had promised, written to me, or given me some sign of
her being so near Winchester as Walcot Park? When I recalled her apparent
preference for this man, when Caradoc and I first went to Wales, their
frequent recurrence to past companionship abroad, their duets together, and
so forth, her angry defence of him to myself, together with an interest he
had acquired in the eyes of her usually unapproachable mother, something
of my old emotions of pique and doubt, and a jealousy for which I blushed,
began to mingle with my perplexity and mortification, and the fear that he
could have any influence on her destiny or mine!

I recalled all the conversation overheard by Pottersleigh, and greater
grew my astonishment and indignation. I felt it imperative that something
should be done instantly, and resolved to telegraph or write to Sir Madoc,
requesting him to procure the dismission of this intruder from Walcot Park
as promptly as he had despatched him from Craigaderyn. From a part of the
road where it wound over an upland slope I could see the Jointure House
which formed the residence of Lady Naseby and of that Estelle who was a
law, a light, a guiding star to me, and towards whom every thought and
aspiration turned. Walcot Park was a spacious domain, and studded by
clumps of stately old trees, which had been planted after the Revolution of
1688 by a peer of the Naseby family, who was one of the first to desert his
hereditary king at Rochester. The mansion itself dated from the same
stormy period, and was built entirely of red brick with white stone corners
and cornices. Its peristyle of six Ionic columns glistened white in the
moonlight, and was distinctly visible from where I sat on horseback. The
shadow of the square façade of the entire edifice fell purple and dark far
across the park. There were lights in several of the windows, and I knew
that my Estelle must be in one of those rooms--but which?

At that moment all my soul yearned for her; could I but for an instant
have seen her, or heard her voice! She dwelt there, visible to and
approachable by others, and yet I dared not visit her. The fact of her
presence there seemed to pervade and charm all the place, and with a sad,
loving, and yet exasperated interest, I continued to survey it. I was hovering
there, but aimlessly, and without any defined purpose, other than the vague
chance of seeing or being near her. Walcot I knew was her favourite place,
and there she kept all her pets, for she had many: a parrot sent from the
Cape by the captain of a frigate to whom she had spoken but once at a ball;
a spaniel from Malta, the gift of some forgotten rifleman; a noble
staghound, given by a Highland officer who had danced with her once--
once only--and never forgot it; a squirrel, the gift of Sir Madoc; and an old
horse or two, her father's favourite hacks, turned loose in the park as
perpetual pensioners.

Could she really have loved me as she said she did, if she was already
behaving so coldly to me now? No letter or note, no invitation--she had
surely influence enough with her mother to have procured me that!--no
notice taken of my vicinity, of my presence with the depôt again! What
shadow was this that seemed already to be falling on our sunny love?
Whence the doubt that had sprung up within me, and the coldness that
seemed between us? Full of these thoughts, I was gazing wistfully at the
house, when I perceived the dark figures of two horsemen riding leisurely
along the winding approach that led to the white peristyle, and felt certain
that they were Guilfoyle and his legal friend Mr. Sharpus (of Sharpus and
Juggles) mounted on the identical nags I had seen at the inn-door; and
inspired by emotions of a very mingled character, I galloped back to the
barracks, never drawing my bridle for the entire twelve miles of the way,
until I threw it to my man Evans; and hurrying to my room, wrote instantly
a most pressing letter to Sir Madoc, informing him of what I had seen and
heard. I was not without thoughts of communicating with Lord Pottersleigh;
but, for obvious reasons, shrunk from his intervention in the Cressingham
family circle.

I knew that it would be delivered at Craigaderyn on the morrow, and
deemed that now twenty-four hours must be the utmost limit of Mr.
Hawkesby Guilfoyle's sojourn in his present quarters, and in a sphere which

he insulted by his presence; but three, four, even five days passed, and no
reply came from Sir Madoc, who was then, though I knew it not, shooting
with some friends in South Wales, and did not receive my epistle until it
was somewhat late for him to act on it. During these intervening days I was
in a species of fever. One Sunday I incidentally heard, at mess, that Lady
Naseby's party, now a pretty numerous one, had been at service in the
cathedral, and to hear the bishop preach. She had come in state, in the
carriage, attended by several gentlemen on horseback, and two tall fellows
in livery, one carrying her prayer-books, the other a long cane and huge
nosegay; and there I might have met them all face to face, and seen Estelle
once more, had my evil destiny not assigned to me the command of the
main guard, and thus detained me in barracks; but Price of ours--susceptible
as the Tupman of Pickwick--had seen her, and came to mess raving about
her beauty.

Every hour I could spare from duty was spent in hovering, like a spectre
or a spy--an unquiet spirit certainly--in the vicinity of Walcot Park, till the
lodge-keepers, who had been wont to touch their hats civilly at first, began
ere long to view me with mistrust; and my horse knew every crook and turn
of the Whitchurch-road quite as well as the way to his own stable. On the
evening of the fifth day after I had written to Sir Madoc--a pleasant evening
in the first days of September--I was again riding leisurely among the deep
green lanes that border on Walcot Park, and which lay between dark green
hedgerows then studded by scarlet dogberries, and the overarching branches
of apple, pear, and damson trees, my heart, as usual, full of vague doubts,
decided longings, and most undecided intentions, when I began slowly to
walk my horse up a long, steep, and picturesque road, the vista of which
was closed by an old village church, in the low and moss-grown wall
surrounding which was a green wicket. It was on just such an evening as the
last I have described, when the farewell gleam of the sun shone level along
the fields, when the many-coloured foliage rustled in the gentle wind, and
the voices of the blackbird, the thrush, and the lark came sweetly at times
from the darkening copsewood, and when, as Clare writes in his rhyming
calendar,

"The wagons haste the corn to load,
And hurry down the dusty road;
The driving boy with eager eye

Watches the church clock, passing by--
Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun--
To see how far the hours have run;
Right happy in the breathless day,
To see time wearing fast away."

Nearly covered with ivy, the square tower of the little church--a fane old
as the days when the Saxons bent their bows in vain at Hastings; yea, old as
the time of St. Ethelwold (the famous architect and Bishop of Winchester)--
peeped up amid the rich autumnal foliage that almost hid it from the view.
At the wicket, some hundred yards from me, in the twilight--for though the
sun had not set, the density of the copsewood about the place rendered the
light rather dim and obscure--were a lady and gentleman, the latter
mounted, and the former on foot. At first they seemed to be in close and
earnest conversation; then the lady gesticulated earnestly, raising her hands
and face to him imploringly; but twice he thrust her back, almost violently,
with the handle of his whip. This was a strange and unpleasant episode to
encounter. I knew not whether to advance or retire. I feared to intrude on
what I supposed was something more than a lovers' quarrel, or, from the
man's utter indifference, was perhaps a matrimonial squabble; and I was
equally loth to retire, and leave a woman--a lady evidently--to the violence
or passion of this person, upon whose love or mercy--it might be both--by
her gestures and even the distant tones of her voice, she was so evidently
throwing herself in vain.

I checked my horse's pace, and, amid the thick rank grass of the narrow
lane, his footsteps were unheeded by the two actors in this scene; moreover,
without backing him well into one of the thick hedges, I could not have
turned to retrace my way.

Her hands were clasped now; she had dropped her parasol, and her face,
a very white one, was upturned pleadingly to his; but to whatever she said,
this horseman, whose back was to me, replied scornfully and derisively by a
low mocking laugh, which somehow I seemed to have heard before, but
when, or where, I quite failed to remember. Anon she drew something from
her bosom, and, kissing it, held it towards him, as if seeking to influence
him, by an appeal through it to some past time of love, or truth, or
happiness, or all together. Whatever it was she thus displayed, he snatched

it roughly, even fiercely, from her with a curse, and, again thrusting her
violently from him--so violently, that I believe he must have used his foot
and the off-stirrup iron---she fell heavily against the low wall, which, at the
same moment, he cleared by a flying leap, and then disappeared in the
network of lanes, orchards, and hedgerows that lie about the churchyard. A
low wail escaped her; and when I came cantering up, and dismounted, she
was lying on the path beside the churchyard wicket in tears and despair. Her
appearance was perfectly ladylike, and most prepossessing; yet I knew not
very clearly what to say or how to interfere in the matter, though manhood
and courtesy rendered some action imperatively necessary.

"I trust you are not hurt," said I, taking her hand and assisting her to rise.

"Thank you, sir--not bodily hurt," she replied, in a low and broken voice,
while scarcely venturing to look at me, and pressing her left hand upon her
heart, as if to restrain emotion, or as if she felt a pain there.

"Did that person rob you?" asked I.

"O no, no, sir," she answered, hurriedly.

"But he seemed to snatch or wrench something from you?"

"Yes," said she, with hesitation.

"By violence, too?"

She did not reply, but covered her face with her handkerchief, and bit it,
apparently in efforts to control her sobs.

"Can I assist you--be of service to you in any way?" I urged, in a
pleading tone; for her whole air and appearance interested me.

"No, sir; none can assist me now."

"None?"

"Save God, and even He seems to abandon me."

"What is the meaning of this despair?" I asked, after a pause. "It is a
lovers' quarrel, I presume; and if so--"

"O no, sir; he is no lover of mine--now, at least."

"He--who?"

"The gentleman who has just left me," said she, evasively. "But permit
me to pass you, sir; I must return to Whitchurch."

I bowed, and led my horse aside, that she might pass down the lane.

"I thank you, sir, for your kindness," said she, bowing, as I lifted my hat;
and then she seemed to totter away weakly and feebly, supporting or
guiding herself, as if blind, by the rude low wall; and I could perceive that
her left hand, which was now ungloved, was small, delicate, and of
exceeding beauty in form. Her manner and air were hurried; her voice and
eyes were agitated; she seemed a ladylike little creature, but plainly and
darkly attired in a kind of second mourning. Her figure, if petite, was very
graceful and girlish, too, though she was nearer thirty, perhaps, than twenty.
Her face was delicate in feature, and charmingly soft and feminine in
expression. Her eyes were of that clear dark gray which seems almost black
at night, and their lashes were long and tremulous, lending a chastened or
Madonna tone to her face, which, when taken together with her sadness of
manner and a certain languor that seemed to be the result of ill-health,
proved very prepossessing. With all this there was something, I thought, of
the widow in her aspect and dress; but this was merely fancy.

Ere I remounted, and while observing her, I perceived that she tottered,
as if overcome by weakness, emotion, or both. She sank against the
churchyard wall, and nearly fell; on this, I again approached, and said with
all softness and respect:

"Pardon me, and do not deem me, though a stranger, intrusive; you are ill
and weary, and unable to walk alone. Permit me to offer my arm, for a little
way at least, down this steep and rugged road."

"Thanks," she replied; "you are very kind, sir; once at the foot of this
lane, I shall easily make my way alone. I am not afraid of strangers," she
added, with a strange smile; "I have been much cast among them of late."

"You reside at Whitchurch?" said I, as we proceeded slowly together,
occasionally treading the fallen apples under foot among the long grass.

"Yes."

"It is, then, your home?"

"I have no other--at present," said she, in a choking voice, and scarcely
making an effort to restrain her tears, while I detected on a finger of the
ungloved hand, the beauty of which I so much admired, a plain gold hoop--
the marriage ring. So she was a wife; and the unseemly quarrel I had seen
must have been a matrimonial one. Thus I became more assured in my
manner.

"I am almost a stranger here," said I, "as I belong to the garrison at
Winchester."

"You are an officer?"

"Yes, madam, of the Royal Welsh Fusileers."

She simply bowed, but did not respond to my information by saying who
she was.

"Though a soldier, sir," said she, after a pause, "I dare say you will be
aware that the hardest battles of this world are not fought in the field."

"Where then?"

"Where we might least look for struggles of the soul: in many a well-
ordered drawing-room; in many a poor garret; in many a lovely bower and
sunny garden, or in a green and shady lane like this; fought in secrecy and
the silence of the heart, and in tears that are hot and salt as blood!"

She is very pretty, thought I; but I hope she won't become melodramatic,
hysterical, or anything of that sort!

"Darkness will be set in ere you can reach Whitchurch, at our present
rate of progression," said I; "and your--your--" (I was about to say husband)
"relations or friends will be anxious about you."

"Alas, no, sir! I have no one to miss or to regret me," she replied,
mournfully; "but I must not intrude selfishly my sorrows on a stranger."

"There is no appearance of the--the person who annoyed you returning,"
said I, looking backward up the long narrow lane we were descending.

"Little chance is there of that," said she, bitterly; "he will return no
more."

"You are certain of that?"

"Too fatally certain!"

"You have quarrelled, then?"

"No; it is worse than a quarrel," said she, with her pale lips quivering.

"He is an enemy?"

"My enemy?--my tempter--my evil spirit--he is my husband!"

"Pardon me; I did not mean to be curious, when I have no right to be so;
but here is the highway; I too am going towards Whitchurch--my way to the
barracks lies in that direction; and I shall have much pleasure in escorting
you to your home, if you will permit me," said I, seized by an impulse of
gallantry, humanity, or both, which I ere long had cause to repent.

"Sir, I thank you, and shall detain you no longer," she replied, hurriedly;
"I am something of a wanderer now, and my rooms are at the ivy-clad inn
by the roadside."

This was the place where I had seen Guilfoyle's roan mare, an evening or
so past.

We had now reached the end of the narrow and secluded lane, a famous
one in that locality as the trysting-place of lovers, and were standing
irresolutely near the main road that leads to Whitchurch and Winchester,
when a large and handsome carriage, drawn by a pair of spanking dark gray
horses, approached us rapidly.

Throwing my nag's bridle over my left arm, I was in the act of offering
my right hand to this mysterious lady in farewell, when her eyes caught
sight of the carriage; a half-stifled sob escaped her; she reeled again, and
would have fallen, had I not thrown my arm round her, and by its firm
support upheld her. At that moment the carriage bowled past. The face of a
lady was at the open window, looking out upon us with wonder and interest,
as she saw a lady and gentleman to all appearance embracing, or at least on
very good terms with each other, at the corner of a shady lane, a little way
off the Queen's highway; and something like an exclamation of dismay
escaped me on recognising the colourless haughty face, the dark eyes, the
black hair, and bonnet of that orange tint so becoming to one of her
complexion--she of whom my whole soul was full, Lady Estelle
Cressingham!

CHAPTER XXI .-GEORGETTE FRANKLIN.

Had Estelle recognised me? If so, what might she--nay, what must she--
think, and how misconstrue the whole situation? Should I ride after the
carriage, or write at all risks, and explain the matter, or commit the event to
fate? That might be perilous. She may not have recognised me, I thought:
the twilight, the shade, the place might have concealed my identity; but if

not, they were all the more against me. I was now in greater and more
horrible perplexity than ever, and I wished the unhappy little woman, the
cause of all, in a very warm climate indeed.

Thus, while longing with all the energies of my life to see Estelle, to be
seen by her there, at a time so liable to misconception if left unexplained,
might be death to my dearest hopes, and destruction to the success I had
achieved.

"Why were you so agitated by the sight of Lady Naseby's carriage?" I
asked, with an annoyance of tone that I cared not to conceal.

"Giddiness, perhaps; but was I agitated?"

"Of course you were--nearly fell; would have fallen flat, indeed, but for
me."

"I thank you, sir," was the gentle reply; for my asperity of manner was
either unnoticed or unheeded by her; "but you seemed scarcely less so."

"I, madam!--why the deuce should I have been agitated?"

"Unless I greatly err, you were, and are so still."

"Indeed!"

"Do you know the ladies?"

"Were there two?" asked I, with increased annoyance.

"The Countess and her daughter."

"I saw but one."

"And--O, pardon my curiosity, dear sir--you know them?"

"Intimately;--and what then?" I asked, with growing irritation.

"Intimately!" she repeated, with surprise.

"There is nothing very singular in that, I suppose?"

"And, sir, you visit them?"

"I have not as yet, but hope to do soon. We were all together in the same
house in North Wales."

"Ah! at Craigaderyn Court?"

"Yes; Sir Madoc Lloyd's. Do you know Sir Madoc?"

"I have not that pleasure."

"Who, then, that you are acquainted with knows him?"

"My husband."

"Your husband!" said I, glancing at the plain hoop on the delicate little
hand, which she was now gloving nervously.

"He was there with you; must have been conversing with you often. I
saw you all at church together one Sunday afternoon, and frequently on the
terraces and on the lawn; while!"--she covered her face with her hands--
"while I loitered and lurked like an outcast!"

"Your husband, madam?" I queried again.

"Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle."

Whew! Here was a discovery: it quite took my breath away, and I looked
with deeper interest on the sweet and pale and patient little face.

I now remembered the letter I had picked up and returned to him; his
confusion about it, and the horse he alleged to have lost by at a race that had
not come off; his irritation, the postal marks, and the name of Georgette.

After such a termination to his visit to Craigaderyn, I could fancy that his
situation as a guest or visitor at Walcot Park, even after he found the ladies
there were ignorant of the nature of Sir Madoc's curt note to him, must be

far from enviable, for such as he must live in hourly dread of insult, slight,
or exposure; but how was I now situated with regard to her I loved?

Deemed, perhaps, guilty in her eyes, and without a crime; and if aware
of the situation, the malevolent Guilfoyle would be sure to avail himself of
it to the fullest extent.

"Lady Estelle is very lovely, as I could see," said my companion.

"Very; but you saw her--when?"

"In Craigaderyn church, most fully and favourably."

And now I recalled the pale-faced little woman in black, who had been
pointed out to me by Winifred Lloyd, and who had been found in a swoon
among the gravestones by old Farmer Rhuddlan.

In all this there was some mystery, which I felt curious enough to probe,
as Guilfoyle had never by word or hint at any time given those among
whom he moved reason to believe he was aught else than a bachelor, and a
very eligible one, too; for if my once rival, as I believed him to be, was not
a creditable, he was certainly a plausible, one; and here lay with me the
means of an exposé beyond even that which had taken place at Craigaderyn
Court.

"You are his wife, madam, and yet--does he, for purposes of his own,
disavow you?" said I, after a pause, not knowing very well how to put my
leading question.

"It is so, sir--for infamous purposes of his own."

"But you have him in your power; you have all the air of a lady of birth
and education--why not come forward and assert your position?"

The woman's soft gray eyes were usually filled by an expression of great
and deep sadness; but there were times when, as she spoke, they flashed
with fire, and there were others, when her whole face seemed to glitter with

"the white light of passion" as she thought of her wrongs. Restraining her
emotion, she replied,

"To assert my claims; that is exactly what I cannot do--now at least."

"Why?"

"Because he has destroyed all the proofs that existed of our unhappy and
most miserable marriage."

"Destroyed them! how?"

"Very simply, by putting them in the fire before my face."

"But a record--a register--must exist somewhere."

"We were married at sea, and the ship, in the chaplain's books of which
the marriage I have no doubt was recorded, perished. Proofs I have none.
But tell me, sir, is it true, that--that he is to be married to the daughter of
Lady Naseby?"

"To Estelle Cressingham?" I exclaimed, while much of amusement
mingled with the angry scorn of my manner.

"Yes," she replied, eagerly.

"No, certainly not; what on earth can have put such an idea into your
head, my good woman?"

My hauteur of tone passed unheeded, as she replied:

"I saw her portrait in the Royal Academy, and heard a gentleman who
stood near me say to another, that it was so rumoured; that he--Mr.
Guilfoyle--had come with her from the Continent, and that he was going
after her down to North Wales. He had said so at the club."

I almost ground my teeth on hearing this. That his contemptible name
should have been linked with hers by empty gossips in public places like

the Royal Academy and "his club," where none dared think of mine, was
intolerable.

"I followed him to Wales," she continued. "I saw nothing at Craigaderyn
church, or elsewhere, on her part to justify the story; when I met my
husband on the lawn at the fête--for I was there, though uninvited--he
laughed bitterly at the rumour, and said she was contracted to Lord
Pottersleigh, who, as I might perceive, was ever by her side. He then gave
me money, which I flung on the earth; ordered me on peril of my life to
leave the place, lest he might give notice to the police that I had no right to
be there. But though I have long since ceased to love, I cannot help
hovering near him, and from Wales I followed him here; for I know that
now he is at Walcot Park."

"I can assure you, for your ease, that the Lady Estelle is engaged, but to
a very different person from old Lord Pottersleigh," said I, twirling the ends
of my moustache with undisguised satisfaction, if not with a little
superciliousness; "your husband, however, seems a man of means, Mrs.
Guilfoyle."

She gave me a bitter smile, as she replied, "Yes, at times; and drawn
from various resources. He laughs to scorn now my marriage ring; and yet
he wears the diamond one which I gave him in the days when we were
engaged lovers, and which had once been my dear father's."

The diamond which she gave him! Here, then, was another, and the most
probable version of the history of that remarkable brilliant.

"Of what was it that he deprived you by force, before his horse leaped
the wall?"

"A locket which I wore at my neck, suspended by a ribbon," said she, as
her tears began to fall again.

"He has the family solicitor with him at Walcot Park, I understand," said
I.

"They are visiting there together. Mr. Sharpus came on business, and my
husband accompanied him."

"Why not appeal to this legal man?

"I have done so many times."

"And he--"

"Fears Mr. Guilfoyle and dare not move in the matter, or affects to
disbelieve me."

"What power has this--your husband, over him?"

"God alone knows--I do not," she replied, clasping her hands; "but Mr.
Sharpus quails like a criminal under the eye of Hawkesby Guilfoyle, who
seems also to possess some strange power over Lady Naseby, I think."

Could such really be? It seemed impossible; everything appeared to
forbid it; and yet I was not insensible to a conviction that the dowager
countess was rather pleased with, than influenced by, him. Could he have
acted in secret the part of lover to her, and so flattered her weakness by
adulation? Old women and old men, too, are at times absurd enough for
anything; and now the words of Caradoc, on the night he lost money to
Guilfoyle at billiards, recurred to me, when in his blunt way he averred they
had all some secret understanding, adding, "By Jove! I can't make it out at
all." My mind was a kind of chaos as I walked onward with my new friend,
and leading my horse by the bridle we entered Whitchurch together. In the
dusk I left her at the inn door, promising to visit her on the morrow, and
consult with her on the means for farther exposing her husband; for
although her story--for all I knew to the contrary--might be an entire
fabrication, I was not then in a mood of mind to view it as such. As I bade
her adieu, a dog-cart, driven by a servant,--whose livery was familiar to me,
passed quickly. Two women were in it, one of whom mentioned my name. I
looked up and recognised Mademoiselle Babette Pompon, Lady Naseby's
soubrette, who had evidently been shopping; and a natural dread that she,
out of a love of gossip, or the malevolence peculiar to her class, might
mention having seen me at the inn porch with a fair friend, was now added

to the annoyance caused by the episode at the lane end--an episode to which
the said parting would seem but an addendum or sequel; and I galloped
home to my quarters in a frame of thought far from enviable, and one which
neither brandy nor seltzer at the mess-house could allay.

CHAPTER XXII.--GEORGETTE FRANKLIN'S STORY.

Next day I heard the stranger's story, and it was a sad one. Georgette
Franklin--for such was her unmarried name--was the last surviving child of
George Franklin, a decayed gentleman, who dwelt in Salop, near the Welsh
border--we need not precisely say where, but within view of the green hills
of Denbigh; for the swelling undulations of the beautiful Clwydian range
formed the background to the prospect from the windows of that quaint old
house which was nearly all that survived of his hereditary patrimony. Stoke
Franklin--so named as it occupied the site of a timber dwelling of the Saxon
times, coeval perhaps with Offa's Dyke--was still surrounded by a defensive
ditch or moat, where now no water lay, but where, in the season, the
primroses grew in golden sheets on the emerald turf. It was an isolated
edifice, built of dark-red brick, with stone corners, stone mullions to its
quaint old sunken windows, and ogee pediments or gables above them, also
of stone. From foundation to chimneys it was quaint in style, ancient in
date, and picturesque in aspect. Long lines of elms, and in some places
pollard willows, marked the boundaries of what had been the demesne of
the Franklins; but piecemeal it had passed away to more careful neighbours,
and now little remained to George Franklin but the ground whereon the old
mansion-house stood, and that sombre green patch in God's-acre, the
neighbouring churchyard, where his wife and their four children lay, near
the ancient yew, the greenery of which had decorated the altar in the yule
feasts of centuries ago, and whose sturdy branches had furnished bow-

staves for the archers who shot under his ancestors at Bosworth, at
Shrewsbury, and Flodden Field.

George Franklin was not a misanthrope; far from it; but he lived very
much alone in the old house. His oaken library, so solemnly tranquil, with
its heavy dark draperies and book-hidden walls, when the evening sun stole
through the deep mullions of the lozenged and painted windows, was his
favourite resort. And a cozy room it proved in winter, when the adjacent
meres were frozen, and the scalp of Moel Fammau was powdered with
snow. There he was wont to sit, with Georgette by his knee, he reading and
she working; a bright-faced, brown-haired, and lively girl, whose golden
canaries and green love-birds hung in every window; for the house was
quite alive with her feathered pets, and was as full of sound as an aviary
with their voices in summer. One warm evening in autumn, when Georgette
was verging on her eighteenth year, she and her father were seated near the
house-door, under a shady chestnut-tree. The sunshine lay bright on the
greensward, and on the wilderness of flowers and shrubs that grew close to
the massive red walls of the old mansion. Mr. Franklin was idly lingering
over a book and sipping a glass of some dark and full-bodied old port--
almost the last bottle that remained in his now but ill-replenished cellar.
And a very perfect picture the old man made. His thin but stately figure; his
features so patrician in profile; his dress somewhat old in fashion; his
hands, though faded, so shapely, with a diamond ring on one finger, the
diamond ring of which we have heard so much lately; and the handsome
girl who hovered about him, attending to his little wants, varying her kind
offices with playful caresses, while her white neck and her golden-brown
hair glittered in the sunshine--all this seemed to harmonise well with the old
house that formed the background to the picture. The evening was quiet and
still. The voices of Georgette's birds, her caged canaries and piping
bullfinches, came through the open windows; but there were no other
sounds, save once or twice when the notes of a distant hunting-horn,
prolonged and sad, came on the passing wind, and then the old man would
raise his head, and his clear eye would sparkle,
"As he thought of the days that had long since gone by,
When his spirit was bold and his courage was high;"

and when he, too, had followed that sound, and ridden across the stiffest
country, neck and neck with the best horsemen in Salop and Cheshire.

Suddenly there came a shout, and a huntsman in red, minus his black
velvet cap, was seen to clear a beech-hedge on the border of the lawn; and
ere an exclamation of annoyance or indignation could escape old George
Franklin, that his privacy should be invaded, even by a sportsman, in this
unwonted manner, a cry of terror escaped Georgette; for it was evident that
the gentleman's horse had become quite unmanageable, as the bridle-rein
had given way; and after its terrible leap, it came tearing at a mad pace
straight towards the house, and dashing itself head foremost against a tree,
hurled the rider senseless on the ground. He rolled to the very feet of
Georgette and her father, both of whom were full of pity and compassion,
the former all the more so that the stranger was undoubtedly a handsome
man, and barely yet in the prime of life. Aid was promptly summoned, and
the village doctor, anxious to serve, for a time at least, one whom he
deemed a wealthy patient, earnestly seconded, and even enforced, the
suggestion of the hospitable George Franklin, that the sufferer, whose head
was contused, and whose shoulder-blade had narrowly escaped fracture,
should neither be removed nor disturbed. Hence he was at once assigned a
room in the old mansion, with Georgette's old Welsh nurse, now the
housekeeper, to attend him. He was a man, however, of a strong
constitution, "one of those fellows who are hard to kill," as he phrased it;
thus, on the third morning after the accident, he was well enough to make
his way to the breakfast room.

Georgette, attired in a most becoming muslin dress, and looking fresh,
rosy, and innocent, as a young girl can only look who has left her couch
after a healthy slumber to greet the sunny morning, was standing on a chair
in an oriel, attending to the wants of one of her feathered pets; suddenly the
chair slipped, and she was about to fall, when a strong arm, in the sleeve of
a scarlet hunting-coat, encircled and supported her. This little contretemps
made both parties at once at home, and on easy terms.

"Mr. Guilfoyle!" exclaimed the girl, for it was he.

"Miss Franklin, I presume?"

"Are you well already?" she asked.

"Nearly so," said he, smilingly, as he took in all the girl's beauty at a
glance, together with the pleasant view beyond the antique oriel, where the
morning sun came down on the shining leaves, covering all the dewy
ground, as it were, with drops of golden light; and the quaint old house, he
thought, seemed such a pleasant home.

"How happy papa will be!" said the young lady, colouring slightly under
his somewhat critical gray--or rather green--eye. "I should have nursed you
myself, instead of old nurse Wynne," she added, archly.

"In that case I should have been in no hurry to announce my
convalescence," said he, rather pointedly; "may I ask your name--the first
one, I mean? Somehow, I fancy that I can judge of character by the name."

"Georgette Franklin."

"Georgette!"

"I am called after papa."

"A charming name!" he exclaimed, but in a low tone.

Naturally frank and honest, purely innocent, and assured of her own
position, and of that of her father--for though poor now, he was one of
England's old untitled aristocracy--the girl felt neither awkwardness nor
shyness with her new friend, who, though polished in manner, easy, and not
ungraceful, was a thorough man of the world, and selfishly ready to take
advantage of every place and person who came in his way; and a very
simple one, indeed, was the kind old gentleman who now came to welcome
his visitor, to express fears that he had left his couch too soon; and critically
and keenly this hawk, who was now in the dove's nest, eyed him, and saw,
by the thinness of his hair, his spare figure and wrinkled face, "delicately
lined by such characters as a silver stylus might produce upon a waxen
tablet," that his years could not be many now; yet his keen gray eyes were
full of bright intelligence still, and were shaded by lashes as long and silky
as those of his daughter.

Hunting and breakfast were discussed together. Mr. Guilfoyle seemed, or
affected to be, an enthusiast in old English sports, professing that he loved
them for themselves and from their associations; and quite won George
Franklin's heart by stigmatising the "iron horse" of civilisation, which was
now bearing all before it; and his host seemed to grow young again, as he
recurred to the field exploits of his earlier years, over the same ground
which Mr. Guilfoyle--who had been on a visit to the house of some friend
twenty miles distant--had hunted so recently: round beautiful Ellesmere, by
Halston and Hordley, by the flat fields of Creamore, by the base of wooded
Hawkstone, where he had made many a terrible flying leap, and away by
Acton Reynald; all this ground had Guilfoyle gone over but lately, and, as
the event proved, almost fatally for his own bones, and more fatally for his
future peace of mind, as he pretty plainly indicated to Miss Franklin on
every available opportunity, in the softest and most well-chosen language.
Though able to leave his room, he was neither permitted to leave the house
nor attempt to mount; so he wrote to his friend, had some of his wardrobe
sent over to Stoke Franklin, and, encouraged by the hearty hospitality of its
owner, took up his quarters there for an indefinite period; at least, until his
hunting friend should depart for Madeira, whither he had promised to
accompany him; for Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle seemed somewhat of a
cosmopolitan, and rather peripatetic in his habits. He had been over one half
the world, according to his own accounts, and fully intended to go over the
other; so he proved a very agreeable companion to the hitherto lonely father
and daughter in that secluded mansion in Salop. Merciful it is, indeed, that
none of us can lift the veil that hides the future; thus little could George
Franklin foresee the influence this man was to exert over the fate of his
daughter and himself, when he listened to his plausible anecdotes, or sat
alone and happy in his shady old library, communing pleasantly with his
ancient favourites--with Geoffrey Chaucer, the knightly pages of Froissart,
Dame Juliana Berners on hunting and hawking, and works, rare as
manuscripts, that came from the antique press of Caxton and De Worde. Mr.
Guilfoyle found himself in very pleasant quarters, indeed. It was ever his
principle to improve the occasion or the shining hour. Georgette was highly
accomplished, and knew more than one language; so did he; so week after
week stole pleasantly away.

By them the touching airs of Wales, the merry chansons of Wronger,
were played and sung together; and she it was, and no Princess of
Catzenelnbogen, who taught him that wild German farewell, with its burden
of "Leb'wohl! Leb'wohl!" we had heard at Craigaderyn Court. Even
Petrarch was not omitted by them; for he knew, or pretended to know, a
smattering of Italian, and translated the tenderest speeches of Laura's lover
with a point that caused the young girl's heart to vibrate with new and
strange emotions. And now, ever and anon, there was a heightened flush on
her soft cheek, a bright sparkle in her dark gray eye, a lightness in all her
motions; she had moments of merry laughter, alternated by others of
dreamy sadness--that yet was not all sadness--which showed that Georgette
was in love.

And Guilfoyle, in his own fashion, loved her, too; but he had learned that
of all George Franklin's once noble estate, the house alone remained, and
that at his death even it must inevitably go to the spoiler; so, though to love
Georgette was very pleasant and sweet, matrimony with her was not to be
thought of. Money was the god of Guilfoyle's idolatry, and he thought of the
wonder of his "fast" friends when they asked, "What did he get with his
wife?" and how they should laugh if they heard he had married for love. Yet
Georgette had become besotted--there is no other word for it, save
infatuated--by him; by one who had made flippant love with strange facility
to many. By degrees he artfully strove to warp or poison the girl's mind; but
finding that instinctively her innocence took the alarm after a time, though
she long misunderstood him, he quite as artfully changed his tactics, and
spoke sorrowfully of his imperative and approaching departure for Madeira,
of the agony such a separation would cause him; "it might be for years, and
it might be for ever," and so forth, while, reclining in tears on his breast, the
girl heard him. Taking the right time, when she was thoroughly subdued or
softened by love, and fear lest she should lose him, he prayed her to elope
or consent to a private marriage--he was not without hopes that his hunting
friend might officiate as parson. This, he urged, would keep them true to
each other until his return and their final reunion; but to this measure she
would not consent.

"Come with me, then, to Madeira; we shall be back in a month, at latest."

"But think of dear papa--my poor old papa," replied Georgette,
piteously; "worn as he is with years and infirmity, I cannot leave him even
for so short a time; for who will soothe his pillow when I am gone?"

"Old moth--Mrs. Wynne can do all that; at least, until we return," said
he, almost impatiently.

"But must you really go to Madeira?" pleaded the gentle voice.

"I must, indeed: business of the first importance compels me; in fact, my
funds are there," he added, with charming candour, as his hunting friend
had promised to frank him to Funchal and back again to London. "We shall
be gone but a short time, and when we return this dear old house shall be
brighter than ever, and together we shall enliven his old age. We shall kneel
at his feet, darling Georgie, and implore--"

"Why not kneel now," urged Georgette, "and beg his consent and
blessing?"

"Nay, that would be inopportune, absurd, melodramatic, and all that sort
of thing. Returning, we shall be linked in the fondest affection; returning, he
will be unable to resist our united supplications. Come, darling, come with
me. Let us despise the silly rules of society, and the cold conventionalities
of this heartless world! Let us live but for each other, Georgie; and O, how
happy we shall be, when we have passed, through the medium of romance,
into the prose of wedded life; though that life, my darling, shall not be
altogether without romance to us!"

Overcome by the intensity of her affection for this man, her first and
only lover, the poor girl never analysed the inflated sophistries he poured
into her too willing ear, but sank, half fainting with delight, upon his
shoulder. Guilfoyle clasped her fondly in his arms; he covered her brow, her
eyes--and handsome eyes they were--her lips, and braided hair, with kisses,
and in his forcible but somewhat fatuous language, poured forth his
raptures, his love, and his vows of attachment.

Suddenly a terror came over her, and starting from his arm, she half
repulsed him, with a sudden and sorrowful expression of alarm in her eye.

"Leave me, Hawkesby," said she, "leave me, I implore you; I cannot
desert papa, now especially, when most he needs my aid. O, I feel faint,
very faint and ill! I doubt not your love, O, doubt not mine; but--but--'

"I must and do doubt it," said he, sadly and gloomily. "But enough of
this; to-morrow I sail from Liverpool, and then all shall be at an end."

"O God, how lonely I shall be!" wailed the girl; "I would, dear
Hawkesby, that you had never come here."

"Or had broken my neck when my horse cleared yonder hedge," said he,
as his arm again went round her, and the strong deep love with which he
had so artfully succeeded in inspiring her, triumphed over every sentiment
of filial regard, of reason, and humanity. She forgot the old parent who
doted on her; the stately old ancestral home, that was incrusted with the
heraldic honours of the past; she forgot her position in the world, and fled
with the parvenu Guilfoyle.

That night the swift express from Shrewsbury to Birkenhead, as it swept
through the beautiful scenery by Chirk and Oswestry, while the wooded
Wrekin sank flat and far behind, bore her irrevocably from her home; but
her father's pale, white, and wondering face was ever and always
upbraidingly before her. As Guilfoyle had foreseen, no proper marriage
could be celebrated at Liverpool ere the ship sailed from the Mersey. He
hurried her on board, and his hunting friend--a dissipated man of the world,
ordered to Madeira for the benefit of his health--received the pale,
shrinking, and already conscience-stricken girl in the noisy cabin of the
great steamer with a critical eye and remarkably knowing smile, while his
manner, that for the time was veiled by well-bred courtesy, might have
taught the poor dove that she was in the snares of an unscrupulous fowler.

But ere the great ship had made the half of her voyage--about six days--
in her sickness of body and soul, the girl had made a friend and confidant of
the captain, a jolly and good-hearted man, who had girls of his own at
home; and he, summoning a clergyman who chanced to be on board, under
some very decided threats compelled Guilfoyle to perform the part he had
promised; so he and Georgette were duly wedded in the cabin, while, under
sail and steam, the vessel cleft the blue waves of the western ocean, and her

ensign was displayed in honour of the event. But there the pleasure and the
honour ended, too; and Guilfoyle soon showed himself in his true colours,
as a selfish and infamous roué.

"Alas!" said she, weeping, "he no longer called me the pet names I loved
so well; or made a fuss with me, and caressed me, as he was wont to do
among the pleasant woods of Stoke Franklin. I felt that, though he was my
husband, he was a lover no longer! We had not been a fortnight at Madeira
when we heard that the vessel, on board of which we were married, had
perished at sea with all on board, including her temporary chaplain. Then it
was that Mr. Guilfoyle tore from me the sole evidence of that solemn
ceremony given to me by the clergyman, and cast it in the flames before my
face, declaring that then he was free! Of our past love I had no relic but a
gold locket containing his likeness and bearing a date, the 1st of September,
the day on which we were married, with our initials, H. H. and G., and even
that he rent from me yesterday. Alas for the treachery of which some human
hearts are capable! We were one no longer now, as the old song has it:

That time!--'tis now "long, long ago!"
Its hopes and joys all passed away!
On life's calm tide three bubbles glow;
And pleasure, youth, and love are they,
Hope paints them bright as bright can be,
Or did, when he and I were we!'

As a finishing stroke to his cruelty and perfidy, he suddenly quitted
Madeira, after some gambling transaction which brought the alcalde of
Funchal and other authorities upon him. He effected his escape disguised as
a vendor of sombreros and canary birds, and got clear off, leaving a note by
the tenor of which he bequeathed me to his friend, with whom he left me at
a solitary quinta among the mountains."

Though dissipated and "fast" by nature and habit, the latter was at heart
an English gentleman; and pitying the forlorn girl abandoned in a foreign
colony under circumstances so terrible, he sent her home; and one day,
some six months after her flight, saw her once more standing irresolutely at
the closed gate of the old manor-house of Stoke Franklin.

The latter was empty now; the windows were closed, the bird-cages
hung there no more; the golden and purple crocuses she had planted were
peeping up from the fragrant earth, untended now; the pathways were
already covered with grass and mosses; untrimmed ivy nearly hid the now
unopened door; the old vanes creaked mournfully in the wind; and save the
drowsy hum of the bees, all spoke to her hopeless, despairing, and
remorseful heart of the silence and desolation that follow death. The odour
of last year's dead leaves was heavy on the air. After a time she learned how
rapidly her father had changed in aspect, and how he had sunk after her
disappearance--her desertion of him; and how there came a time when the
fine old gentleman, whose thin figure half stooping, with his head bent
forward musingly, his scant white hair floating over the collar of his
somewhat faded coat, his kindly but wrinkled face, his tasselled cane
trailing behind him from his folded hands, whilom so familiar in the green
lanes about Stoke Franklin, and who was always welcomed by the children
that gambolled on the village green or around the old stone cross, and the
decayed wooden stocks that stood thereby, appeared no more. A sudden
illness carried him off, or he passed away in his sleep, none knew precisely
which; and then another mound under the old yew-tree was all that
remained to mark where the last of the Franklins, the last of an old, old
Saxon line, was laid.

I promised to assist her if I could, though without the advice of a legal
friend I knew not very clearly what to do; besides, knowing what lawyers
usually are, I had never included one in the circle even of my
acquaintances. Estelle's long silence, and the late episode in the lane,
chiefly occupied my thoughts while riding back to the barracks, where
somewhat of a shock awaited me.

CHAPTER XXIII.--TURNING THE TABLES.

Though the dower-house of Walcot Park dated from the days of Dutch
William, when taste was declining fast in England, internally it had all the
comforts of modern life, and its large double drawing-room was replete
with every elegance that art could furnish or luxury require--gilt china, and
buhl cabinets, and console mirrors which reproduced again and again, in far
and shadowy perspectives, the winged lions of St. Mark in verde antique;
Laocoon and his sons writhing in the coils of the serpents; Majolica vases,
where tritons, nymphs, and dolphins were entwined; Titian's cavaliers
sallow and sombre in ruffs and half-armour, with pointed moustachios and
imperious eyes; or red-haired Venetian dames with long stomachers, long
fingers, and Bologna spaniels; or Rubens' blowsy belles, all flesh and bone,
with sturdy limbs, and ruddy cheeks and elbows; but the mirrors reflected
more about the very time that I was lingering at Whitchurch; to wit, a
group, a trio composed of Lady Naseby, her daughter, and Mr. Guilfoyle;
and within that room, so elegant and luxurious, was being fought by Estelle,
silently and bitterly, one of those struggles of the heart, or battles of life,
which, as poor Georgette Franklin said truly, were harder than those which
were fought in the field by armed men. Guilfoyle was smiling, and looking
very bland and pleased, indeed, to all appearance; Lady Naseby's usually
calm and unimpressionable face, so handsome and noble in its contour,
wore an expression of profound disdain and contempt; while that of Lady
Estelle was as pale as marble. She seemed to be icy cold; her pink nostrils
were dilated, her lips and eyelids were quivering; but with hands folded
before her, lest she should clench them and betray herself, she listened to
what passed between her mother and their visitor.

"It was, as you say, a strange scene, of course, Mr. Guilfoyle, the woman
fainting--"

"Reclining."

"Well, yes, reclining in the arms of Mr. Hardinge in that lonely lane,"
said the Countess; "but we need refer to it no more. He must be a very
reckless person, as Pompon saw him take leave of this creature with great
tenderness, she says, at the door of that obscure inn at Whitchurch; so that
explains all."

"Not quite," replied Guilfoyle.

"Perhaps not; but then it is no affair of ours, at all events, I must own that
I always wondered what the Lloyds--Sir Madoc especially--saw in that
young man, a mere subaltern of the line!"

"Precisely my view of the matter, Lady Naseby."

"Besides, your little baronet people are great sticklers for rank and
dignity, and often affect a greater exclusiveness than those who rank above
them."

"But as for this unfortunate woman," resumed Guilfoyle, who was loth
to quit the subject.

"We have heard of her in our neighbourhood before," said Lady Naseby;
"at least, Pompon has. She is good to all, especially the poor."

"Ah, doesn't care to hide her candle under a bushel, eh?"

"What do you mean, Mr. Guilfoyle?"

"Simply that vanity is often mistaken for generosity, profusion for
benevolence."

"You are somewhat of a cynic, I know."

"Nay, pardon me, I hope not."

"She is too poorly clad in general, Pompon says, to be able to indulge in
profusion," continued Lady Naseby, while Lady Estelle glanced at the
speakers alternately, in silence and with apparent calmness.

But Guilfoyle, who read her eyes and heart, and knew her secret
thoughts, gloated on the pain she was enduring.

"No doubt the unfortunate creature is much to be pitied," said he; "but
when a woman has lost respect for herself, she cannot expect much of it
from others. The poor little soiled love-bird has probably left some pretty
semi-detached villa at Chertsey or St. John's Wood to follow its faithless

redcoat to Hampshire, and hence the touching tableau in the lane," he
added, with his mocking and strangely unreal laugh.

"Mr. Guilfoyle!" said the Countess, in a tone of expostulation, while her
daughter darted a glance of inexpressible scorn at him. But he continued
coolly, "Well, perhaps I should not speak so slightingly of her, after what
she has given herself out to be."

"And what is that?" asked Lady Naseby.

"Only--his wife."

"His wife!" exclaimed Estelle, starting in spite of herself. "Yes, Lady
Estelle; but it may not be, nay, I hope is not, the case."

"You should rather hope that it is so."

"But we all know what military men are--never particular to a shade; and
though excuses must be made for the temptations that surround them, and
also for youth, I approve of the continental system, which generally
excludes subaltern officers from society."

"Wife!" repeated Estelle; "O, it cannot be!"

"What is it to you--to us?" asked mamma, with a slight asperity of tone.

"Well, wife or not, she certainly wears a wedding-ring, and he has been
more than once to visit her in that inn at Whitchurch. Of one visit our
mutual friend Mr. Sharpus is cognisant. If you doubt this, ask him, and he
will not contradict me."

"I have not said that I doubt you, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Estelle, with
intense hauteur, while for a moment--but a moment only--her eyes flashed,
her breast heaved, her hands were clenched, a burning colour suffused her
face, and her feet were firmly planted on the carpet; yet she asked quietly,
"Why do we hear this scandalous story at all? What is it to mamma--what to
me?"

"More, perhaps, than you care to admit," said he, in a low voice, as the
Countess rose to place Tiny in his mother-of-pearl basket.

Guilfoyle at Craigaderyn had acted as eavesdropper, and on more than
one occasion had watched and followed, overseen and overheard us, and
knew perfectly all about our secret engagement, her mother's views and
opposition to any alliance save a noble or at least a moneyed one; and of all
the stories he had the unblushing effrontery to tell, the present was perhaps
the most daring. He had contrived, during the short visit he had paid to
Walcot Park, under the wing of Mr. Sharpus, to let Estelle know by covert
hints and remarks all he knew, and all he might yet disclose to her mother,
to the young Earl of Naseby, to Lord Pottersleigh, Sir Madoc, and others;
and feeling herself in his power, with all her lofty spirit the poor girl
cowered before him, and he felt this instinctively, as he turned his green
eyes exultingly upon her. But for a delicate, proud, and sensitive girl to
have the secrets of her heart laid bare, and at the mercy of a man like this,
was beyond all measure exasperating. And this strange narrative of his,
coming after what she had seen, and all that Pompon with French
exaggeration had related, crushed her completely for the time.

"I have another little item to add to our Hardinge romance," said he, with
his strange, hard, dry, crackling laugh, and a smile of positive delight in his
shifty green eyes, while he toyed with the long ears of Tiny the shock,
which had resumed its place in Lady Naseby's lap. "You remember the
locket with the initials 'H. H. G.' and the date 1st September which Miss
Dora Lloyd mentioned when we were at Craigaderyn?"

"I have some recollection of it," replied Lady Naseby, languidly.

"Curiously enough, as I rode past the spot where you saw that touching
and interesting interview--the lane, I mean--I perceived something glittering
among the grass. Dismounting, I picked up that identical locket, which
doubtless the lady had dropped, thus losing it within a few days of its
bestowal, if we are to judge by the date."

"And you have it?"

"Here."

Opening his leather portemonnaie, he drew from it a gold locket, to
which a black-velvet ribbon was attached, and said with the utmost
deliberation, "The initials represent those of Henry Hardinge and his
inamorata, and behold!"

Pressing a spring, the secret of which he knew very well, the locket flew
open, and within it were seen the photograph of the pale woman whom they
saw in Craigaderyn church, and opposite to it one of me, inserted by
himself, pilfered from the album of Winifred Lloyd, as we afterwards
ascertained.

"Aha! the moral Mr. Henry Hardinge with his petite femme entretenue,
as the French so happily term it."

Lady Estelle was quite calm now in her demeanour, and she surveyed the
locket with a contemptuous smile; but her face was as white as marble. She
felt conscious that it was so, and hence sat with her back to the nearest
window, lest her mother should perceive that she was affected.

Guilfoyle, smilingly, stood by her, stroking his dyed moustache.

"This must be restored to its owner," said he.

"Permit me to do so," said Lady Estelle.

"You, Estelle--you!" exclaimed her usually placid mother, becoming
almost excited now; "why should you touch the wretched creature's
ornament?"

"As an act of charity it should be restored to her, or to him," she added,
through her clenched teeth; and taking the locket, she left the room for her
own, ere her mother could reply; and there she gave way to a paroxysm of
tears, that sprang from sorrow, rage, and shame that she had for a moment
permitted herself to have been deluded by me, and thus be placed in the
power of Guilfoyle. Her lips, usually of a rosy tint, were colourless now;
her upper one quivered from time to time, as she shuddered with emotions
she strove in vain to repress; and her proud hot blood flowed furiously
under her transparent skin, as she threw open her desk, and sought to apply

herself to the task of writing me that which was to be her first, her last, and
only letter. For her heart swelled with thoughts of love and disappointment,
pride, reproach, disdain, and hate, as she spoiled and tore up sheet after
sheet of note-paper in her confusion and perplexity, and at last relinquished
the idea of writing at all.

Thus, while I was scheming how to expose Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle,
and have him cast forth from that circle in which he was an intruder, he
turned the tables with a vengeance, and provided me with a wife to boot.
But finding, or suspecting, that he was beginning to be viewed with doubt,
that very day, after having done all possible mischief, he quitted Walcot
Park with Lady Naseby's solicitor, who, strange to say, seemed to be his
most particular friend. He had made no impression favourable to himself on
the heart of Estelle; but he hoped that he had succeeded in ruining me, as I
could neither write nor clear myself of an allegation of which I was then, of
course, ignorant. She was unjust to me; but she certainly--whatever came to
pass in the gloomy and stormy future--loved me then.

CHAPTER XXIV.--BITTER THOUGHTS.

As yet I knew nothing of all that has been detailed in the foregoing
chapter, consequently the entire measure of my vengeance against Guilfoyle
was not quite full. I had, however, a revival of my old doubts, anxiety, and
perplexity, in not hearing from Walcot Park in some fashion, by an
invitation, or otherwise privately from Estelle herself, as, by our
prearrangement, there was nothing to prevent her writing to me; and to
these were added now a dread of what they had seen on that unlucky
evening, and the reasonable misconstructions to which the scene was liable.
More than one of my mess-room friends had received cards of invitation

from Lady Naseby; why then was I, whom she had met so recently,
apparently forgotten?

After the relation of her story, I left Mrs. Guilfoyle in such a state of
mental prostration and distress, that I was not without well-founded fears
that she might commit some rash act, perhaps suicide, to add to the vile
complication of our affairs. Next day I was detailed for guard, and could not
leave the barracks, either to consult with my new unhappy acquaintance, or
for my accustomed canter in the vicinity of Walcot Park. A presentiment
that something unpleasant would happen ere long hung over me, and a day
and a night of irritation and hot impatience had to be endured, varied only
by the exceedingly monotonous duties that usually occupy the attention of
the officer who commands a guard, such as explaining all the standing
orders to the soldiers composing it, inspecting the reliefs going out to their
posts and those returning from them, and going the round of those posts by
night; but on this occasion, the routine was varied by a fire near Winchester,
so we were kept under arms for some hours in a torrent of rain, with the
gates barricaded, till the barrack engines returned. On the following
morning, just when dismissing my old guard after being relieved by the new
one, I perceived a servant in the well-known Naseby livery--light-blue and
silver--ride out of the barracks; and with a fluttering in my heart, that was
born of hope and apprehension, I hastened to my room.

"Packet for you, sir," said my man Evans, "just left by a flunkey in red
breeches."

"You mean a servant of Lady Naseby's."

"I mean, sir," persisted Evans, "a flunky who eyed me very
superciliously, and seemed to think a private soldier as low and pitiful as
himself," added the Welshman, whom the pompous bearing of the knight of
the shoulder-knot had ruffled.

"You were not rude to him, I hope."

"O no, sir. I only said that, though the Queen didn't like bad bargains, I'd
give him a shilling in her name to play the triangles."

"That will do; you may go," said I, taking from his hand a small packet
sealed in pink paper, and addressed to me by Lady Estelle; and my heart
beat more painfully than ever with hope and fear as I tore it open.

A locket dropped out--the locket just described--in which I was
bewildered to find a likeness of myself, and with it the ring I had placed on
the hand of Estelle in Rhuddlan's cottage--the emerald encircled by
diamonds--on the morning after our escape from a terrible fate! I have said
that a shock awaited me at the barrack; but that the locket should come to
me, accompanied by Estelle's ring, so astonished and perplexed me, that
some time elapsed before I perceived there was a little note in the box
which contained them.

It ran thus:

"Lady E. Cressingham begs that Mr. Hardinge will return the
accompanying locket and ring to the lady to whom they properly belong--
she whom he meets in the lane near Walcot Park, and whom he should lose
no time in presenting to the world in her own character. Farther
communications are unnecessary, as Mr. Guilfoyle has explained all, and
Lady E. Cressingham leaves to-day for London."

The handwriting was very tremulous, as if she had written when under
no ordinary excitement; and now, as the use to which the two episodes, at
the lane and the inn-door, had been put by the artful Guilfoyle became plain
to me, I was filled by a dangerous fury at the false position in which they
placed me with her I loved and with whom I had been so successful. For a
minute the room seemed to swim round me, each corner in pursuit of the
other. We had both been wronged--myself chiefly; and though I knew that
Guilfoyle had been at work, I could not precisely know how; but I thought
the Spartan was right when, on being asked if his sword was sharp, he
replied, "Yes, sharper even than calumny!" This wretched fellow had
daringly calumniated me, and to clear that calumny, to have an instant
interview with Estelle, became the immediate and burning desire of my
heart. I rushed to my desk, and opened it with such impulsive fury that I
severely injured my arm, so recently broken--broken in her service--and as
yet but scarcely well. I spread paper before me, but my fingers were
powerless; if able to hold the pen, I was now unable to write, and the whole

limb was alternately benumbed and full of acute agony; and though Hugh
Price of ours was a very good fellow, I had no friend--at least, none like
Phil Caradoc--in the dépôt battalion in whom I could confide or with whom
consult, in this emergency.

I despatched Evans for the senior surgeon, who alleged that the original
setting, dressing, and so forth of my fractured limb had been most
unsatisfactory; that if I was not careful, inflammation might set in, and if so,
that instant amputation alone could save my life. Being almost in a fever, he
placed me on the sick-list, with orders not to leave my room for some days,
and reduced me to claret-and-water.

"A pleasant predicament this!" thought I, grinding my teeth.

Estelle, through whom all this came to pass, lost to me, apparently
through no fault of my own, and I unable to communicate with her or
explain anything; for now she was in London, where I feared she might, in
pique or rage, take Pottersleigh, Naseby, or even, for all I knew, accept
Guilfoyle, a terrible compromise of her name. But she had plenty of other
admirers, and disappointed women marry every day in disgust of some one.
Next I thought of the regiment abroad wondering "when that fellow
Hardinge would join"--promotion, honour, profession, and love in the
balance against health, and all likely to be lost!

"Rest, rest," said the battalion Sangrado, whom my condition rather
perplexed; "don't worry yourself about anything. Rest, mental and bodily,
alone can cure you."

"It is a fine thing to talk," I muttered, while tossing on my pillow; for I
was confined to bed in my dull little room, and for three days was left
entirely to my own corroding thoughts.

I had but one crumb of comfort, one lingering hope. She had not asked
me to return her ring, nor did I mean to do so, if possible. Once again my
arm was slung in a black-silk scarf, which Estelle had insisted on making
for me at Craigaderyn. Alas! would the joys of that time ever return to us
again? I sent Evans, in uniform and not in my livery, to Whitchurch with the
locket, after extracting my likeness therefrom; but he returned with it,

saying that the lady had left the inn for London, having no doubt followed
her husband. I knew not exactly of what I was accused--a liaison of some
kind apparently, of which the strongest proofs had been put before the
Cressinghams. If, when able, I wrote to explain that the two meetings with
Mrs. Guilfoyle were quite fortuitous, would Estelle believe me? Without
inquiry or explanation, she had coldly and abruptly cast me off; and it was
terrible that one I loved so well should think evil or with scorn of me. What
would honest old Sir Madoc's view of the matter be, and what the kind and
noble-hearted Winifred's, who loved me as a sister, if they heard of this
story, whatever it was?

Vengeance--swift, sudden, and sure--was what I panted for; and
moments there were when I writhed under the laws that prevented me from
discovering and beating to a jelly this fellow Guilfoyle, or even shooting
him down like a mad dog, though I would gladly have risked my own life to
punish him in the mode that was no longer approved of now in England;
and I pictured to myself views of having him over in France, in the Bois de
Boulogne, or on the level sands of Dunkirk, the spire of St. Eloi in the
distance, the gray sky above us, the sea for a background, no sound in our
ears but its chafing on the long strip of beach, and his villainous face
covered by my levelled pistol at ten paces, or less--yea, even after I had let
him have the first shot, by tossing or otherwise. And as these fierce thoughts
burned within me, all the deeper and fiercer that they were futile and found
no utterance, I glanced longingly at my sword, which hung on the wall, or
handled my pistols with grim anticipative joy; and reflected on how many
there are in this world who, in the wild sense of justice, or the longing for a
just revenge on felons whom the laws protect, fear the police while they
have no fear of God, even in this boasted age of civilisation; and I
remembered a terrible duel à la mort in which I had once borne a part in
Germany.

A July evening was closing in Altona, when I found myself in the garden
of Rainville's Hotel, which overlooks the Elbe. The windows of the house,
an edifice of quaint aspect, occupied successively in years past by General
Dumourier and gossiping old Bourienne, were open, and lights and music,
the din of many voices--Germans are always loud and noisy--and the odour
of many cigars and meerschaums, came forth, to mingle with the fragrance
of the summer flowers that decked the tea-garden, the trees of which were
hung with garlands of coloured lanterns. A golden haze from the quarter
where the sun had set enveloped all the lazy Elbe, and strings of orange-
tinted lights showed here and there the gas-lamps of Hamburg reflected in
its bosom.

In dark outline against that western flush were seen the masts and hulls
of the countless vessels that covered the basin of the river and the
Brandenburger Hafen. Waiters were hurrying about with coffee, ices, and
confectionery, lager-beer in tankards, and cognac in crystal cruets; pretty
Vierlander girls, in their grotesque costume, the bodice a mass of golden
embroidery, were tripping about coyly, offering their bouquets for sale; and
to the music of a fine German band, the dancing had begun on a prepared
platform. There were mingling lovely Jewesses of half-Teutonic blood,
covered with jewels; spruce clerks from the Admiralit-strasse, and stout
citizens from the Neuer-wall; officers and soldiers from the Prussian
garrison; girls of good style from the fashionable streets about the
Alsterdamm, and others that were questionable from the quarter about the
Grosse Theater Strasse.

I was seated in an arbour with a young Russian officer named Paulovitch
Count Volhonski, who was travelling like myself, and whom I had met at
the table-d'hôte of the Rolandsburg, in the Breitestrasse. As an Englishman,
apt at all times to undervalue the Russian character, I was agreeably
surprised to find that this young captain of the Imperial Guard could speak
several European, and at least two of the dead, languages with equal
facility. He was a good musician, sang well, and was moreover remarkably
handsome, though his keen dark eyes and strongly marked brows, with a
most decided aquiline nose, required all the softness that a mouth well

curved and as delicately cut as that of a woman could be, to relieve them,
and something of pride and hauteur, if not of sternness, that formed the
normal expression of his face. His complexion was remarkably pure and
clear, his hair was dark and shorn very short, and he had a handsome
moustache, well pointed up. We had frequented several places of
amusement together, and had agreed to travel in company so far as Berlin,
and this was to be our last night in Altona. The waiter had barely placed our
wine upon the table and poured it out, when there entered our arbour, and
seated himself uninvited beside us, a great burly German officer in undress
uniform, and who in a stentorian voice ordered a bottle of lager-beer, and
lighting his huge meerschaum without a word or glance of courtesy or
apology, surveyed us boldly with a cool defiant stare. This was so offensive,
that Volhonski's usually pale face flushed crimson, and we instinctively
looked at each other inquiringly.

The German next lay back in his seat, coughed loudly, expectorated in
all directions in that abominable manner peculiar to his country, placed his
heavy military boots with a thundering crash upon two vacant chairs, drank
his beer, and threw down the metal flagon roughly on the table, eyeing us
from time to time with a sneering glance that was alike insulting and
unwarrantable. But this man, whom we afterwards learned to be a noted
bully and duellist, Captain Ludwig Schwartz, of the Prussian 95th or
Thuringians, evidently wished to provoke a quarrel with either or both of
us, as some Prussian officers and Hamburg girls, who were watching his
proceedings from an alley of the garden, seemed to think, and to enjoy the
situation. But for their presence and mocking bearing, Volhonski and I
would probably, for the sake of peace, have retired and gone elsewhere;
however, their laughter and remarks rendered the intrusive insolence of
their friend the more intolerable. It chanced that a little puff of wind blew
the ashes of Volhonski's cigar all over the face and big brown beard of the
German, who, while eyeing him fiercely, slowly extricated the pipe from
his heavy dense moustache, and striking his clenched hand on the table so
as to make everything thereon dance, he said, imperiously, "The Herr Graf
will apologise?"

"For what?" asked Volhonski, haughtily.

"For what!--der Teufel!--do you ask for what?"

"Ja, Herr Captain."

"For permitting those cigar ashes to go over all my person."

"In the first place, your precious person had no right to be there; in the
second, appeal to the wind, and fight with it."

"I shall not fight with it!" thundered the German; "and I demand an
instant apology."

"Absurd!" replied Volhonski, coolly; "I have no apology to make, fellow.
Apologise to another I might; but certainly not to such as you."

"You dare to jest--to--to--to trifle with me?" spluttered the German,
gasping and swelling with rage.

"I never jest or trifle with strangers; do you wish to quarrel?"

"No, Herr Graf," sneered the German; "do you?"

"Then how am I to construe your conduct and words?"

"As you please. But know this, Herr Graf: that though I ever avoid
quarrelling, I instantly crush or repel the slightest appearance of insult, and
you have insulted me."

"Ja, ja!" muttered the German officers, in blue surtouts and brass
shoulder-scales, who now crowded about us.

Volhonski smiled disdainfully, and drew from his pocket a richly-inlaid
card-case; then taking from it an enamelled card, with a bow that was
marked and formal, yet haughty, he presented it to Captain Ludwig
Schwartz, who deliberately tore it in two, and said, in a low fierce voice,

"Bah! I challenge you, Schelm, to meet me with pistols, or hand to hand
without masks, and without seconds, if you choose."

"Agreed," replied Volhonski, now pale with passion, knowing well that
after such a defiance as that, and before such company, it would be a duel
without cessation, a combat à la mort. "Where?" he asked, briefly.

"The Heiligengeist Feld."

"When?"

"To-morrow at daybreak"

"Agreed; till then adieu, Herr Captain;" and touching their caps to each
other in salute, they separated.

Next morning, when the dense mists, as yet unexhaled by the sun, lay
heavy and frouzy about the margin of the Elbe, and were curling up from
the deep moats and wooded ramparts of the Holstein Thor of Hamburg, we
met on the plain which lies between that city and Altona; it is open, grassy,
interspersed with trees, and is named the Field of the Holy Ghost. A
sequestered place was chosen; Volhonski was attended by me, Captain
Schwartz by another captain of his regiment; but several of his brother
officers were present as spectators, and all these wore the tight blue surtout,
buttoned to the throat, with the shoulder-scales, adopted by the Prussians
before Waterloo; and they wore through their left skirt a sword of the same
straight and spring shell-hilted fashion, used in the British service at
Fontenoy and Culloden, and retained by the Prussians still. The morning
was chill, and above the gray wreaths of mists enveloping the plain rose, on
one side, the red brick towers and green coppered spires of St. Michael, St.
Nicolai, and other churches. Opposite were the pointed roofs of Altona, and
many a tall poplar tree. Volhonski, being brave, polite, and scrupulous in all
his transactions, was naturally exasperated on finding himself in this
dangerous and unsought-for predicament, after being so grossly and
unwarrantably insulted on the preceding night. He was pale, but assumed a
smiling expression, as if he thought it as good a joke as any one else to be
paraded thus at daybreak, when we quitted our hackney droski at the corner
of the great cemetery and traversed the field, luckily reaching the appointed
spot the same moment as our antagonists.

We gravely saluted each other. While I was examining and preparing the
pistols, Volhonski gave me a sealed letter, saying, quite calmly, "I have but
one relation in the world--my little sister Valérie, now at St. Petersburg.
See," he added, giving me the miniature of a beautiful young girl, golden-
haired and dark-eyed; "if I am butchered by this beer-bloated Teuton, you
will write to her, enclosing this miniature, my letter, and all my rings."

I pressed his hand in silence, and handed our pistols for inspection to the
other second, a captain, named Leopold Döpke, of the Thuringian Infantry.

"Now, Herr Graf, we fight till one, at least, is killed," said Schwartz,
grimly.

Volhonski bowed in assent.

"Be quick, gentlemen," said the German officers; "already the rising sun
is gilding the vane of St. Michael's."

Volhonski glanced at it earnestly, and his fine dark eyes clouded for a
moment. Perhaps he was thinking of his sister, or of how and where he
might be lying when the sun's rays were lower down that lofty brick spire,
which is a hundred feet higher than the cross of St. Paul's in London. In the
German fashion a circle was drawn upon the greensward, on which the
diamond dew of a lovely summer morning glittered. Volhonski and
Schwartz were placed within that circle, from which they were not
permitted to retire; neither were they to fire until the signal was given.

"Mein Herren," said Captain Döpke, who seemed to think no more of the
affair than if it had been a pigeon match, "when I give the signal by
throwing up my glove and uttering the word you may fire at discretion, or
as soon as you have your aim, and at what distance you please; but it must
be within the circumference of this ring. The first who steps beyond it falls
by my hand, as a violation of the laws of the duel."

"Be quick," growled Schwartz; "for the night watch in St. Michael's
tower have telescopes, and the Burgher Guard are already under arms at the
Holstein Thor."

Twelve paces apart within that deadly ring stood Volhonski and
Schwartz, facing each other. The former wore a black surtout buttoned up to
the throat; the latter his uniform and spike helmet. He untied and cast aside
his silver gorget, lest it might afford a mark for his adversary's pistol. His
face was flushed with cruelty, triumph, and the lust of blood, that came
from past successful duels. Volhonski looked calm; but his eyes and heart
were glowing with hatred and a longing for a just revenge.

"Fire!" cried Captain Döpke, as if commanding a platoon, and tossing up
his pipe-clayed glove.

Both pistols exploded at the same instant, and Schwartz uttered a cruel
and insulting laugh as Volhonski wheeled round and staggered wildly; his
left arm was broken by a ball.

"Fresh pistols!" cried Schwartz.

"Is not this enough for honour?" said I, starting forward. "No--stand
back!" exclaimed Captain Döpke.

"Ach Gott! Herr Englander, your turn will come next," thundered
Schwartz, as we gave them other pistols and proceeded deliberately to
reload the first brace, yet warm after being discharged.

No word of command was expected now; both duellists aimed steadily.
Schwartz fired first and a terrible curse, hoarse and guttural, escaped him,
as his ball whistled harmlessly past the left ear of Volhonski, whose face
was now ghastly with pain, rage, and hatred. Drawing nearer and nearer, till
the muzzle of his pistol was barely two feet from the forehead of Schwartz,
he gave a grim and terrible smile for a moment. We were rooted to the spot;
no one stirred; no one spoke, or seemed to breathe; and just as a cold
perspiration flowed in beadlike drops over the face of the merciless
Schwartz; it seemed to vanish with his spike helmet in smoke, as Volhonski
fired and--blew his brains out! We sprang into the droski, and I felt as if a
terrible crime had been committed when we drove at full speed across the
neutral ground, called the Hamburgerburg, which lies between the city and
the river gate of Altona, along a street of low taverns and dancing-rooms;
and there, when past the sentinels in Danish uniform, the Lion of Denmark

and the red-striped sentry boxes indicated that we were safe within the
frontier of Holstein. So intense were our feelings then, that the few short
fleeting moments crowded into that short compass of time seemed as an
age, so full were they of fierce, exciting, and revolting thoughts; but these
were past and gone; and now, as I recalled this merciless episode, times
there were when I felt in my heart that I could freely risk my life in the
same fashion to kill Guilfoyle, even as Volhonski killed the remorseless
German bully Schwartz.

CHAPTER XXV.--SURPRISES.

Supposing her to have left Walcot Park, as her letter informed me, I rode
in that direction no more; and though I knew the family address in London,
I could neither write in exculpation of myself nor procure leave to follow
her. All furloughs were now forbidden or withdrawn, as the new
detachments for the East expected hourly the order to depart. Thus I passed
my days pretty much as one may do those which precede or follow a
funeral. I performed all my military duties, went to mess, rose and retired to
bed, mechanically, my mind occupied by one thought--the anxious longing
to do something by which to clear myself and regain Estelle; and feeling in
Winchester Barracks somewhat as Ixion might have felt on his fabled
wheel, or the son of Clymene on his rock; and so I writhed under the false
position in which another's art and malice had placed me; writhed aimlessly
and fruitlessly, save that, although tied up by my promise of secrecy to
Estelle, I had written a full and candid detail of the whole affair to Sir
Madoc, and entreated his good offices for me. Vainly did Price, little Tom
Clavell (the 19th depôt had come in), Raymond Mostyn of the Rifles, and
other friends say, when noticing my preoccupation, "Come, old fellow,
rouse yourself; don't mope. Are you game for pool to-day?"

"Pool with a recently-broken arm!" I would reply.

"True--I forgot. Well, let us take Mostyn's drag to Southampton to-
morrow--it is Sunday, no drill going--cross to the Isle of Wight, dine at the
hotel, and with our field-glasses--the binoculars--see the girls bathing at
Freshwater."

"I don't approve of gentlemen overlooking ladies bathing."

"What the deuce do you approve of?"

"Being let alone, Price; as the girls say to you, I suspect."

"Not always--not always, old fellow," replied Hugh, with a very self-
satisfied smile, as he caressed and curled his fair moustache.

"Nor the married ones either," added Mostyn, a tall showy officer in a
braided green patrol jacket; "for when you were in North Wales, Hardinge,
our friend Price got into a precious mess with a selfish old sposo, who
thought he should keep his pretty wife all to himself, or at least from flirting
with a redcoat."

"Perhaps he was less irritated by the rifle green."

"Come with me into the city," urged Clavell; "the Dean's lady gives a
kettledrum before mess, and I can take a friend."

"Parish scandal, cathedral-town gossip, coffee, ices, and Italian
confectionery. Thanks, Tom, no."

"I have met some very pretty girls there," retorted Clavell, "and it is
great fun to lean over their chairs and see them look up at one over their
fans shyly, half-laughing at, and half-approving of, the balderdash poured
into their ears."

"A sensible way of winning favour and spending time."

"I vote for the Isle of Wight," continued Clavell; "I saw la belle
Cressingham taking a header there the other day in splendid style. Only

fancy that high-born creature taking a regular header!"

"Who did you say?" said I, turning so suddenly that little Tom was
startled, and let the glass drop from his eye.

"Lady Estelle Cressingham; you remember her of course. She had on a
most becoming bathing-costume; I could make that out with my glass from
the cliffs."

"Clavell, she is in London," said I, coldly; "and moreover is unlikely to
indulge in headers, as she can't swim."

"I know better, excuse me," said Mostyn, who, I knew, had dined but
lately at Walcot Park; "she told me that she had been recently bathing, and
had studied at the Ecole de Natation on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris."

"It is more than she ever told me," thought I, as my mind reverted to our
terrible adventure. I became silent and perplexed, and covertly looked with
rather sad envy on the handsome and unthinking Mostyn, who had enjoyed
the pleasure of seeing and talking to Estelle since I had done so.

"It is difficult," says David Hume, "for a man to speak long of himself
without vanity; therefore I will be short;" and having much to narrate, I feel
compelled to follow the example of the Scottish historian, for events now
came thick and fast.

I had barely got rid of my well-meaning comrades, and was relapsing
into gloomy reverie in my little room, when I heard voices, and heavy
footsteps ascending the wooden stair that led thereto. Some one was
laughing, and talking to Evans in Welsh; till the latter threw open the door,
and, with a military salute, ushered in Sir Madoc Lloyd, looking just as I
had seen him last, save that the moors had embrowned him, in his riding-
coat, white-corded breeches, and yellow-topped boots, and whip in hand,
for his horse was in the barrack yard.

"Welcome, Sir Madoc.--That will do, Evans; be at hand when I ring.--So
kind of you, this; so like you!" I exclaimed.

"Not at all, not at all, Harry. So these are your quarters? Plain and
undecorated, certainly; boots, bottles, boxes, a coal-scuttle--her Majesty's
property by the look of it--a sword and camp-bed; humble splendour for the
suitor of an earl's daughter, and the rival of a rich viscount. Ah, you sly dog,
you devilish sly dog!" he added, as he seated himself on the edge of the
table, winked portentously, and poked me under the small ribs with the
shank of his hunting-whip, "I suspected that something of this kind would
follow that aquatic excursion of yours; and Winifred says she always knew
of it."

"Winifred--Miss Lloyd!" said I, nervously.

"Why didn't you speak to me, and consult with me, about the matter
when at Craigaderyn? I am certain that I should have made all square with
the Countess. Egad, Harry, I will back you to any amount, for the sake of
those that are dead and gone," he added, shaking my hand warmly, while
his eyes glistened under the shaggy dark brows that in hue contrasted so
strongly with the whiteness of his silky hair.

"You got my letter, Sir Madoc?"

"Yes, and I am here in consequence. It cut short my shooting, though."

"I am so sorry--"

"Tush; no apologies. The season opened gloriously; but I missed you
sorely, Harry, when tramping alone over turnip fields, through miles of
beans and yellow stubble, though I had some jolly days of it down in South
Wales. Lady Naseby--

"She knows nothing of the secret engagement?" said I, hurriedly and
anxiously.

"Nothing as yet."

"As yet! Must she be told?"

"Of course; but I shall make all that right, by-and-by. She believes now
in the real character of her attaché, Mr. Guilfoyle, who intruded himself
among us, and who has disappeared. Your perfect innocence has been
proved alike to her and her daughter, and now you may win at a canter. The
photo of you in the locket was abstracted from Winifred's album, and has
her name written on the back of it. You are to ride over with me to Walcot
Park, where I have left Winifred, as she refused flatly to come to
Winchester--why, I know not. She will afford you an opportunity of
slipping the ring again on your fair one's finger, and doing anything else
that may suggest itself at such a time--you comprehend, eh? Winny bluntly
asked Lady Naseby's permission to invite you, as you were so soon to leave
England."

"The dear girl! God bless her!"

"So say I. Lady Naseby said at first that though you had been maligned,
there had also been a contretemps of which even her French maid was
cognisant; that she hated all contretemps and so forth; but Winny--you
know how sweet the girl is, and how irresistible--carried her point, so you
spend this evening there. Tell Evans to have your nag ready within the hour.
That fellow is not forgetting his mother-tongue among the Sassenachs. He
comes from our namesake's place, Dolwrheiddiog, 'the meadow of the
salmon.' I know it well."

"If I could but meet Guilfoyle--" I was beginning.

"Forget him. I cannot comprehend how he found such favour in the sight
of Lady Naseby; but when I called him a thoroughbred rascal, she quietly
fanned herself, and fondling her beastly little cur said, 'My dear Sir Madoc,
this teaches us how careful we ought to be in choosing our acquaintance,
and how little we really know as to the true character, the inner life and
habits of our nearest friends. But our mutual legal adviser Mr. Sharpus
always spoke of Mr. Guilfoyle as a man of the greatest probity, and of
excellent means.' 'Probably,' said I; 'but I never liked that fellow Sharpus; he
always looked like a man who has done something of which he is ashamed,
and that is not the usual expression of a legal face.'"

So poor Winifred Lloyd had been my chief good angel; yet she was the
last whom I should have chosen as ambassadress in a love affair of mine.
She was a volunteer in the matter, and a most friendly one to boot. Were
this a novel, and not "an owre true tale," I think I should have loved Winny;
for "how comes it," asks a writer, "that the heroes of novels seem to have in
general a bad taste by their choice of wives? The unsuccessful lady is the
one we should have preferred. Rebecca is infinitely more calculated to
interest than Rowena."

My heart was brimming with joy, and with gratitude to Sir Madoc and
his elder daughter; the cloud that overhung me had been exhaled in
sunshine, and all again was happiness. I was about to pour forth my thanks
to my good old friend, whose beaming and rubicund face was as bright as it
could be with pleasure, when there came a sharp single knock on the door
of my room.

"Come in!" said I, mechanically.

My visitor was the sergeant-major of the dépôt battalion, a tall thin old
fellow who had burned powder at Burmah and Cabul, and who instantly
raised his hand to his forage-cap, saying,

"Beg pardon, sir; the adjutant's compliments--the route has just come for
your draft of the Royal Welsh, and all the others, for the East."

"Is this certain!" asked Sir Madoc, hurriedly.

"Quite, sir; it will be in orders this evening. They all embark to-morrow
at midday."

"Where?" asked I.

"At Southampton, as usual. The first bugle will sound after réveil to-
morrow."

The door closed on my formal visitor, who left me a little bewildered by
this sudden sequel to the visit of Sir Madoc, who wrung my hand warmly
and said,

"Heaven bless and protect you, Harry! I feel for you like a son of my
own going forth in this most useless war. And so we are actually to lose
you, and so soon, too!"

"But only for a little time, I hope, Sir Madoc," said I, cheerfully, thinking
more of my early meeting with Estelle than the long separation the morrow
must inevitably bring about. I ordered Evans to pack up and prepare
everything, to leave my P.P.C. cards with a few persons I named; and
avoiding Price, Clavell, Mostyn, and others, rode with Sir Madoc towards
Walcot Park, as my mind somehow foreboded, amid all my joy and
excitement, for what I feared would be the last time.

CHAPTER XXVI.--WITHOUT PURCHASE.

Close to, and yet quietly secluded from, the mighty tide of busy
humanity that daily surges to and fro between the Bank and the Mansion
House, all up Cheapside and Cornhill, in a small dark court off the latter,
was the office of Messrs. Sharpus and Juggles, solicitors. The brick edifice
towered to the height of many stories; a score of names appeared on each
side of the doorway in large letters; and many long dark passages and
intricate stairs led to the two dingy rooms where those human spiders sat
and spun the webs and meshes of the law. Their dens had a damp and
mouldy odour; no ray from heaven ever fell into them, but a cold gray
reflected light came from the white encaustic tiles, with which the opposite
wall of the court was faced for that purpose; and of that borrowed light even
the lower room, where their half-starved clerks worked into the still hours
of the night--a veritable cave of Trophonius, if one might judge by their sad,
seedy, and dejected appearance--was deprived from its situation; and in all
these courts and chambers gas was burned daily in those terrible seasons
when the London fogs assume somewhat the solidity and hue of pea-soup.

Mr. Sharpus sat in his private room, surrounded by boxes of wood or
japanned tin and ticketed dockets of papers, that were mouldy and dirty--as
their contents too probably were--while fly-blown prospectuses, plans, and
advertisements of lands, houses, and messuages for sale, and so forth,
covered the discoloured walls.

Juggles, his partner, was a suave, slimy, and meekly-mannered man,
"with the eye of a serpent and the voice of a dove;" but our present business
is with the former, who was a thin round-shouldered individual, with a cold
keen face, an impending forehead, sunken dark gray eyes, the expression of
which varied between cunning and solemnity, pride, vulgar assurance, and
occasionally restlessness. Shrewd of head and stony of heart, he was not
quite the kind of man at whose mercy one would wish to be. He had a hard-
worked and sometimes worried aspect; but now an abject white fear, with
an unmistakably hunted expression, came over his face, when one of the
clerks from the lower den ushered in, without much ceremony, Mr.
Guilfoyle, who had in his hand a sporting paper, which he was reading as he
entered.

"You here again?" exclaimed Sharpus, laying down his pen, and carefully
closing the door.

"Yes, by Jove, again!" replied Guilfoyle, with barely a nod, and seating
himself with his hat on.

"So soon!" groaned Sharpus; and reseating himself, he eyed, with an
expression of haggard hate, Guilfoyle, who continued to read from the
paper hurriedly, excitedly, and half aloud, some report of a steeplechase.

"The Devil--threw his rider--remounted; at the next fence Raglan took
the lead, followed by Fairy and Beauty, and Beau, the Devil lying next; last
fence but one taken by the quintette almost simultaneously, when Raglan,
Beauty, and Beau came away together, the first-named winning a very fine
race by half a length--Beauty being third, and close upon Beau, but Fairy
was nowhere. D--nation! there is a pot of money gone, or not won, which
amounts to the same thing in the end!" and crushing up the paper, he threw
it on the writing-table of Sharpus.

"Wanting more money?" said the latter, in a hollow voice.

"Precisely so; out at the elbows--in low water--phrase it as you will. I
have sold even my horse at last," replied the other, folding his arms, and
regarding the lawyer mockingly.

"And the ring given you by--by the King of Bavaria?" said Sharpus, with
a sickly smile.

"I retain but a paste imitation of that remarkable brilliant; and that I may
present you as a mark of my regard and esteem."

"I thought you had made something by a mercantile transaction, as you
phrased it, when last on the Continent?"

"So I did; 'the mercantile transaction' being nothing less than breaking
the bank at Homburg, by steadily and successfully backing the red, and
sending home all those who came for wool most decidedly shorn."

"You should have saved some of those ill-gotten gains for future
contingencies," said Sharpus.

"How much easier it is to advise and to speculate than to act with care
and decision!" sneered Guilfoyle.

"I pity your poor wife," said the lawyer, sincerely enough.

"She has no documentary proof that she is such," replied Guilfoyle,
angrily. "Pshaw! what is pity? an emotion that is often at war with reason
and with sense, too; for a handsome face or a well-turned ankle may make
us pity the most undeserving object."

The lawyer sighed, and at that moment sincerely pitied himself; for it
had chanced that, in earlier years, an intimacy with Guilfoyle led to the
latter discovering that which gave him such absolute power as to reduce
him--Sharpus--to be his very slave. This was nothing less than the forgery
of a bill in the name of Guilfoyle; who, before relinquishing the privilege of
prosecution, on retiring the document, had obtained a complete holograph

confession of the act, which he now retained as a wrench for money, and
held over the head of Sharpus, thereby compelling him to act as he pleased.
After a minute's silence, during which the two men had been surveying each
other, the one with hate and fear, the other with malignant triumph,
Guilfoyle said, "I did Lady Naseby, as you know, a service at Berlin, when
at very low water; being seen with her won me credit, which I failed not to
turn to advantage. I followed her and her daughter through all Germany--at
Ems, Gerolstein, Baden, and then to Wales, where I was in clover at
Craigaderyn. I was a fool to fly my hawks at game so high as the peerage;
and I feel sure it was that beast of a fellow Hardinge, of the Royal Welsh,
who blew the gaff upon me, and prevented me from entering stakes, as I
intended to do, for one of the daughters of that horse-and-cow-breeding old
Welsh baronet; and they are, bar one, the handsomest girls in England."

"And that one?"

"Is Lady Estelle Cressingham."

Even the ghastly lawyer smiled at his profound assurance.

"Have you no remorse when you think of Miss Franklin?"

"No more than you have, when you have sucked a client dry, and leave
him to die in the streets," replied Guilfoyle, with his strange dry mocking
laugh; "remorse is the word for a fool--the unpunished crime, I have read
somewhere, is never regretted. Men mourn the consequences, but never the
sin or a crime itself. As for Hardinge, d--n him!" he added, grinding his
teeth; "I thought to put a spoke in his wheel, by passing off Georgette as his
wife, but Taffy came to his aid, and the true story was told; and yet, do you
know, there were times when I played my cards exceedingly well with the
Cressinghams. Besides, you always represented me to be a man of fortune."

"I have invariably done so," groaned Sharpus.

"And have stumped out pretty well to maintain the story, while hinting
of--"

"Coal-mines in Labuan, shares in others in Mexico, and all manner of
things, to account for the sums wrung from me--from my wife and children.
But, God help me, I can do no more!"

"Bah! what do they or you want with that villa at Hampstead? But you
are a good fellow, Sharpus; and, thanks to your assistance, I worked the
oracle pretty well at Walcot Park for Mr. Henry Hardinge."

"Against him, you mean?"

"Of course; but, unluckily, our story wouldn't stand testing."

"Could you expect it to do so?"

"But I put a hitch in his gallop there, anyhow. By Jove, I was a great fool
not to make love to the old woman, instead of her daughter."

"Meaning Lady Naseby?" said Sharpus, with surprise.

"So Burke and Debrett name her. She is just at that age--twice her
daughter's--when the soft sex become remarkably soft indeed, and apt to
make fools of themselves."

"She would indeed have been one had she listened to you."

"Thanks, old tape-and-parchment; I did not come here for a character,
but to show you the state of my cash-book."

Again the lawyer groaned, and Guilfoyle laughed louder than ever.
Delight to have a lawyer under his heel rendered him merciless; but even a
worm will turn, so Sharpus said sternly, "How have you lived since the last
remittance--extortion?"

"Call it as you will," replied the other, putting his glass in his eye, and
smilingly switching his leg with his cane; "I have lived as most men do who
live by their wits, and the follies, or it may be the crimes--O, you wince!--of
others; meeting debts and emergencies as they come, content with the peace
or action of the present, and never regretting the past, or fearing the future!
With the help of an ace, king, and queen, when my betting-book or a stroke

of billiards failed me, and with your great kindness, my dear old Sharpus, I
have, till now, always kept my funds far above zero."

"Your life is a great sham--a very labyrinth of deceit!" exclaimed the
lawyer, furiously.

"And yours, friend Sharpus?"

"Is spent in slaving for my family, and endeavouring to atone for, or to
buy the concealment of, one great error--the error that made you--ay, men
such as you--my master!"

Guilfoyle laughed heartily, and said,

"I require 600l. instantly!"

"Not a penny--not another penny!"

"We shall see. Sharpus, though a bad lot, I know that you are not the
utter rogue that most of your profession are--"

"Leave my office, scoundrel, or I shall kill you!" said Sharpus, in a low
voice of concentrated passion, as he became deadly pale, and a dangerous
white gleam came into his stealthy restless eyes, which seemed to search in
vain for a weapon.

"If I leave your office it will be for the purpose of laying before the
nearest police-magistrate a certain document you may remember to have
written; and I am so loth to kill the goose that lays my golden eggs,"
continued the other, in his quiet mocking tone. "But remember, Mr.
Sharpus," he added, in a lofty and bullying manner, as he grasped the
shoulder of the listener, "that the forgery of a document is not deemed an
error in legal practice here, as in Spain or Scotland, but a crime meriting
penal servitude; and shall I tell you what that means--you, who have now
wealth, ease, position, a handsome wife, and several children? You will be
torn from all these for ever, as a felon!"

Drops of perspiration poured over the poor wretch's temples as his
tormentor continued: "Think of being in Millbank, beside the muggy
Thames, and the years that would find you there, a bondsman and a slave,
who for the least misconduct would be lashed like a faulty hound, and
ironed in a blackhole. Hard work, aggravated by the consciousness of
infamy; clad in the gray livery of disgrace; your name effaced from the Law
List, and for it substituted the letter or number on your prison garb!"

"For God's sake, hush!" implored the wretched lawyer, in terror, lest the
speaker's voice might reach the room of Juggles, or the ears of the clerks
below; "hush, and I shall do all you wish."

"Come--that is acting like a reasonable being."

"Will 200l. do you--this time?"

"Two hundred devils! I want 600l. at least."

"I shall be ruined with my partner; he must know ere long where all
these moneys have gone."

"That is nothing to me; tell him if you dare."

Sharpus burst into tears, and said, piteously,

"At present I can give but 200l.--the rest shall follow."

"Well, you can do something else for me, and I may trouble you no
more."

"How?" asked Sharpus, eagerly and incredulously, with a dreary and
bewildered air.

"Get me some employment, where there is little to do; I hate brain-
work."

"Employment!--where? with whom?"

"Civil or military, I care not which."

"Military! impossible--too old. Stay, I have it!" exclaimed the lawyer;
"you have been in the Militia, I know."

"Three months in the Royal Diddlesex."

"What say you to an appointment in Lord Aberdeen's new Land
Transport Corps? It will be easily got--a handsome uniform and great éclat,
though the officers are nearly all taken from the ranks. The duties are
simple enough--conveyance of baggage, and carrying off the wounded after
an action."

"Not to bury the dead?--ugly work that."

"No, no."

"By Jove, I'll go!" he exclaimed, as Sharpus filled up the cheque.

Sharpus strove in vain to conceal his delight.

"I have of course done a few things which would hardly bear the 'light of
the world's bull's-eye' turned upon them, but the Horse Guards know
nothing of them. You have noble and powerful clients, and can do this
easily for me. Bravo!" And they actually shook hands over the matter, as if
over a bargain.

Sharpus lost no time in using the necessary influence, and--though not
exactly a cadet after Mr. Cardwell's heart--this commission was decidedly
one without purchase; and on the strength of having been once in the
boasted constitutional force, "Henry Hawkesby Guilfoyle, gent., late
Lieutenant, Diddlesex Militia," appeared in the Gazette ere long, as one of
twenty-four comets of the long-since disbanded Land Transport Corps, for
service in the Crimea.

CHAPTER XXVII.--RECONCILIATION.

As Sir Madoc and I proceeded along the to me well-known Whitchurch
road, I asked myself mentally, could it really be that I was again looking
with farewell eyes on all this fair English scenery, and perhaps for the last
time; for our departure to the seat of war, where we were to be face to face
and foot to foot with an enemy, was very different from other voyages to a
peaceful British colony? Now, varied by autumnal tints, brown, golden, or
orange, I saw the long and shady lane where Estelle had last seen me, and
near it the low churchyard wall, where our evil genius had rent away the
locket from his wife. Sir Madoc's eyes were turned chiefly to the tawny
stubble-fields, and he sighed with regret, as he saw the brown coveys of
partridges whirring up, that he had not his patent breech-loader in lieu of a
hunting-whip.

"Estelle--Estelle!" thought I. "How many temptations in mighty London,
and in the country, too--in Brighton, that other London by the sea, and
wherever she may go--will beset one so noble and so beautiful--allurements
that may teach her to forget and banish from her memory the poor Fusileer
subaltern, to whom she seems as the centre of the universe!"

The evening was a lovely one, and the scenery was beautiful. Chestnuts
and oaks were, at every turn of the way we rode, forming natural arches and
avenues, beyond which were pleasant glimpses of quaint cottages, whose
walls and roofs were nearly hidden by masses of roses and honeysuckle;
short square village spires and ivy-covered parsonages; widespreading
pastures, where the sleepy cattle browsed amid purple clover and golden
cowslips, with the glory of the ruddy sunset falling aslant upon them, while
the ambient air was full of earthy and leafy fragrance; for many fallen
leaves, the earliest spoil of autumn, lay with bursting cones in cool and
sunless dells, or by the wayside, where the fern and foxglove mingled under
the old thick hedgerows. And so I was looking, as I have said, on all this
peaceful scene, perhaps for the last time; yet there was no sadness in my
heart, for the revulsion or change of feeling, from the gloom and
tumultuous anxiety of many, many days past, and even of that morning, was

great indeed to me, especially when we cantered through the handsome iron
gates of Walcot Park, the once suspicious keeper of which gave me an
unmistakable glance of recognition. I felt like one in a dream as I threw my
reins to a servant, and was led upstairs by Sir Madoc.

"Where is Lady Estelle?" he asked of another valet, to whom I gave my
sword in the hall.

"In the front drawing-room."

"Alone?"

"I think so, sir."

"All right, Harry!"

But he suddenly affected to remember that he had something to say to
his own groom, and as he turned back, I was ushered into the long and
stately apartment. I had a dreamy sense of being amid many buhl tables and
glass shades, much drapery, and several mirrors that reproduced everything,
amid which I saw Estelle advancing cordially to meet me. She had a bright
smile in her face, and held out both her hands; but I could scarcely speak.

"Estelle," I whispered, "joy--joy! It is indeed joy, to see you once again!"

"Then you quite forgive me, dearest Harry?"

"Forgive you? O Estelle!" I exclaimed, in a low and passionate voice, as
she turned up her adorable face to meet mine half-way.

I knew from past experience that caresses from her meant much more
than they did from most women; for Estelle, though proud and reticent, and
apparently cold and calm, was reluctant to give and to accept them; so now
I felt all the truth and sincerity of this reunion. "A lovers' quarrel is but love
renewed;" we, however, had not quarrelled, but been cruelly wrenched
asunder by the art and cunning of another.

"Are you on duty, Mr. Hardinge?" said a voice; and from a window
where she had been sitting, quite unseen and unnoticed by me, Winny

Lloyd came forth, looking, as I thought, a little paler and sadder than when I
had seen her last at Craigaderyn Court.

"What makes you think I am on duty, dear Miss Lloyd?--or rather let me
say, my dear, dear good friend and guardian angel Winifred, to whose
intercession I owe all the happiness of a time like this," said I, pressing her
hand caressingly between both of mine.

"Because you are in undress uniform, of course," said she, almost
petulantly.

"I can wear no other costume now; we bid good-bye to mufti, the sable
livery of civilisation, to-morrow."

"How?"

"We march at daybreak."

"For the East?"

"Yes; for the East, at last."

"So soon?" exclaimed both girls at once.

"The order came within an hour or little more, when Sir Madoc was with
me."

The eyes of the girls were full of sudden tears, and they gazed on me
with an honest emotion of tenderness and real interest, that, considering the
rare beauty and high position of both, were alike flattering and bewildering;
and I felt that this was one of those moments when, to be a soldier or a
sailor on the eve of departure to the seat of war, was indeed worth
something.

And Winifred, the impulsive Welsh fairy, so fresh-hearted, so simple in
her motives, and sweet in her disposition, uttered something very like a
little sob in her slender white throat, adding apologetically to Estelle, "We
have been such old friends, Harry Hardinge and I."

"You never wrote to me, Estelle," said I, softly, yet reproachfully.

"I dared not; you remember our arrangement," she replied, with
hesitation.

"Nor was I invited here, like Mostyn, Clavell, and others; thus I had no
opportunity of--"

"I had no control, darling Harry, over mamma's dinner-list: I could but
suggest to mamma; and then there was that terrible story. But here comes
mamma!"

And turning, I found myself face to face with the tall, handsome, and
stately Countess of Naseby, whom--nathless her chilling manner and lofty
presence--I hoped yet to hail as a very creditable mother-in-law.

I was on the eve of departure, to go where glory waited me. I might cross
her exclusive path no more; so my Lady Naseby seemed quite disposed to
bury the hatchet, and received me with that which was--for her--unusual
kindness, and an enmpressement which made the eyes of her daughter to
sparkle with pleasure. A late dinner made a sad hole in the time I had hoped
to spend with Estelle; yet I had the pleasure of sitting beside her--a pleasure
that was clouded by the conviction that my presence would soon be
imperatively requisite at the barracks, where so much was to be done ere
morning, and that I should be compelled to abridge even this, my farewell
visit, to pleasant Walcot Park, and all who were there. Fortunately, Lady
Naseby went quietly to sleep in her boudoir after dinner, with Tiny on her
lap; Sir Madoc obligingly went into the library to write; and Winifred
suggested a turn in the conservatory, where for a little time she adroitly left
Estelle and me together.

There is no utility in dwelling on how we sealed our reconciliation and
renewed our troth, when once more I placed my ring upon her finger; or in
rehearsing the soft and tender words--perhaps (O heaven!) the "twaddle"--
we spoke for an indescribable few minutes, and how each said to the other
that our apparent separation had been as a living death. But now all that
misery was over; we loved each other more than ever, and the grave alone
could part us finally; words, the prompting of the heart, came readily, till