CHAPTER 1 RELATING HOW I DROVED THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF GILLINGTON WITH MARK WILDER'S LETTER IN MY VALAS. It was late in the autumn, and I was skimming along through a rich English county in a post-chase among tall-head roads gilded, like all the landscape, with the slanting beams of sunset. The road makes a long and easy descent into the little town of Gillington, and down this we were going at an exhilarating pace, and the jingle of the vehicle sounded like sled bells in my ears, and its swaying and jerking were pleasant and lifelike. I fancy-o's in one of those moods, which, under similar circumstances, I sometimes experience still a semi-narcotic excitement, silent but delightful. An undulating landscape with a homely farmstead here and there, and plenty of old English timber scattered grandly over it, extended mystically to my right. On the left, the road is overtopped by masses of noble forest. The old park of Branton lies there more than four miles from end to end. These masses of solemn and discolored verdure, the faint but splendid lights, and long filmy shadows, the slopes and hollows. My eyes wandered over them all, with that strange sense of unreality, and that mingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scene familiar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a long interval of maturity and absence, like a romantic reverie. As I looked through the chase windows, every moment presented some group or outline or homely object, for years forgotten, and now with a strange surprise how vividly remembered and how affectionately greeted. We drove by the small old house at the left, with its double gable and pretty grass garden, and trim youths and modern lilacs and labyrinems, backed by the grand timber of the park. It was the parsonage, and old bachelor Dr. Crew, the rector in my nannage, still stood in memory at the door, in his black shorts and gaiters, with his hands in his pockets, and a puckered smile on his hard ready countenance, as I approached. He smiled little on others, I believe, but always kindly upon me. This general liking for the children and instinctive smiling on them is one source of the delightful illusions which make the remembrance of early days so like a dream of paradise, and give us, at starting, such false notions of our value. There was a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before the steps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away, the shorts, gaiters and smile, a phantom, and nature who had gathered in the past was providing for the future. The pretty mill road running up through Redmond's Dell, dank and dark, with tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment, and we were now traversing the homely and antique street of the little town with its queer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church Street, I contrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung, and as we turned the corner, a glance at the brandened arms, how very small and low that palatial hostelry of my earlier recollections had grown. There were new faces at the door. It was only two and twenty years ago, and I was then but eleven years old. A retrospect of a score of years or so, at three and thirty, is a much vaster affair than a much longer one at fifty. The whole thing seemed like yesterday, and as I write, I open my eyes and start and cry. Can it be twenty, five and twenty? Ah, by Jove, five and thirty years since then? How my days have flown, and I think when another such yesterday shall have arrived, where shall I be? The first ten years of my life were longer than all the rest put together, and I think would continue to be so where my future extended to an anti-Nawakian span. It is the first ten that emerge from nothing, and commencing in a point, it is during them that consciousness, memory, all the faculties grow, and the experience of sense is so novel, crowded and astounding. It is this beginning at a point, and expanding to the immense disc of our present range of sensuous experience, that gives to them so prodigious and illusory perspective, and makes us, in childhood, measuring futurity by them, form so wild and exaggerated an estimate of the duration of human life, but I beg your pardon. My journey was from London, when I had reached my lodgings, after my little excursion of the Rhine, upon my table there lay among the rest one letter. There generally is an overdue bundle, which I viewed with suspicion. I could not in the least tell why. It was a broad-faced letter of bluish complexion, and had made inquisition after me in the country, had asked for me at Queen's Forkston, and vised by my cousin, had presented itself at the fires in Shropshire, and thence proceeded by Sir Harry's direction, there was the autograph, to Noton Hall. Thence again, to Ilchester, once my fiery and decisive old aunt, sent it straight back to my cousin, with a whisk of her pen, which seemed to say how the plague can I tell where the puppy is, to your business, sir, not mine to find him out. And so my cousin dispatched it to my headquarters in town, where from the table it looked up in my face, with a broad red seal, and a countenance scarred and marred all over with various post-marks, erasures, and transverse directions, the scars and furrows of disappointment and adventure. It had not a good countenance, somehow, and the original lines were not prepossessing. The handwriting I knew, as one sometimes knows a face, without being able to remember who the plague it belongs to, but still with an unpleasant association about it. I examined it carefully and laid it down unopened. I went through half a dozen others and recurred to it, and puzzled over its exterior again, and again postponed what I fancied would prove a disagreeable discovery. And this happened every now and again, until I had quite exhausted my budget, and then I did open it, and looked straight to the signature. Mark Wilder, I exclaimed a good deal relieved. Mark Wilder, yes, Master Mark, could not hurt me. There was nothing about him to excite the least uneasiness. On the contrary, I believe he liked me as well as he was capable of liking anybody, and it was now seven years since we had met. I have often since thought upon the odd sensation with which I hesitated over his unopened letter, and now, remembering how the breaking of that seal resembled, in my life, the breaking open of a portal through which I entered a labyrinth, or rather a catacomb, where for many days I groped and stumbled, looking for light, and was, in a manner lost, hearing strange sounds, witnessing imperfectly strange sights, and at last arriving at a dreadful chamber, a sad sort of superstition steals over me. I had then been his working junior in the cause of Wilder versus trustees of Brandon, Minor Dorcas Brandon, his own cousin. There was a complicated cousinship among these Brandon's Wilders and Lakes, inextricable intermarriages, which five years ago, before I renounced the bar, I had at my fingers ends, at which had now relapsed into haze.  They were an ill-conditioned race, that is to say, every now and then there emerged a miscreant, with a pretty evident vein of madness. There was Sir Jonathan Brandon, for instance, who ran his own nephew through the lungs in a duel fought in a proxism of sentient jealousy, and afterwards shot his coachman dead upon the box through his coach window, and finally died in Vienna, whether he had absconded, of a pike-thrust received from a century in a brawl. The Wilders had not much to boast of, even in contrast with that wicked line. They had produced their madmen and villains, too. And there had been frequent intermarriages, not very often happy. There had been many lawsuits, frequent disinheritings, and even worse stewings. The Wilders of Brandon appear very early in history, and the Wilder arms, with their legend of wrist-sirgum, stands in bold relief over the great door of Brandon Hall. So there were Wilders of Brandon, and Brandon's of Brandon. In one generation, a Wilder ill-using his wife and hating his children would cut them all off, and send the estate-bounding back again to the Brandon's. The next generation or two would amuse themselves with a lawsuit, until the old Brandon type reappeared in some bachelor brother or uncle, with a Jezebel on his left hand and an attorney on his right, and presto. The estates were back again with the Wilders. A statement of title is usually a dry affair, but that of the dynasty of Brandon Hall was a truculant romance. Their very wills were spiced with the devilment of the testitors, and abounded in insinuations and even language which were scandalous. Here is Mark Wilder's letter. Dear Charles, of course you have heard of my good luck, and how kind poor Dickie, from whom I never expected anything, proved at last. It was a great windfall for a poor devil like me, but, after all, it was only right, for it ought never to have been his at all. I went down and took possession on the fourth. The tenants very glad, and so they might well be for, between ourselves, Dickie, poor fellow, was not always pleasant to deal with. He'd let the roof fall out of repair, and committed waste beside in timber he had no right to in life, as I am told, but that don't signify much. Only the house will cost me a pretty penny to get it into order and furnish. The rental is five thousand a year and some hundreds, and the rents can be got a bit, so Larkin tells me. Do you know anything of him? He says he did business for your uncle once. He seems a clever fellow, a bit too clever, perhaps, and was too much master here, I suspect, in poor Dickie's reign. Tell me all you can make out about him. It is a long time since I saw you, Charles. I'm grown brown and great whiskers. I met poor Dominic, who wouldn't ask that chap is, but he did not know me till I introduced myself. So I must be a good deal changed. Our ship was at Malta when I got the letter. I was sick of the service and no wonder, a lieutenant, and they're likely to stick all my days. Six months last year on the African coast watching slavers, think of that, I had a long yarn from the vicant, advice and that sort of thing. I do not think he's a year older than I, but takes airs because he's a trustee. But I only laugh at trifles that would have riled me once. So I wrote him a yarn in return, and drew it uncommon mild. And he has been useful to me, and I think matters are pretty well arranged to disappoint the kind intention of good Uncle Wilder, the brute. He hated my father, but that was no reason to persecute me, and I but an infant almost when he died, damn him.  She is a superbly fine girl. Our ship was at Naples when she was there two years ago, and I saw a good deal of her. Of course it was not to be thought of then, but matters are quite different. You know, now, and the vicant, who is a very sensible fellow in the main, saw it at once. You see, the old brute meant to live her a life of state, but it does not amount to that, though it won't benefit me, for he settled that when I die it shall go to his right heirs, that will be to my son if I ever have one. So Miss Dorcas must pack and turn out whenever I die, that is, if I slip my cable first. Larkin told me this, and I took an opinion, and found it is so. And the vicant, seeing it, agreed the best thing for her, as well as me, would be, we should marry. She's a wide awake young lady, and nothing the worse for that. I'm a bit that way myself. And so very little courtship has ficed. She is a splendid beauty, and when you see her, you'll say any fellow might be proud of such a bride. And so I am. And now, dear Charlie, you have it all. It will take place somewhere about the 24th of next month. And you must come down by the first, if you can. Don't disappoint. I want you for best man, maybe. And besides, I would like to talk to you about some things they want me to do in the settlements. And you were always a long-headed fellow. So pray, don't refuse. Dear Charlie, ever most sincerely, your old friend, Mark Wilder. P.S. I stay at the brand and arms in the town until after the marriage, and then you can have a room at the hall and capital shooting when we return, which will be in a fortnight after. I can't say that Wilder was an old friend, but he was certainly one of the oldest and most intimate acquaintances I had. We had been for nearly three years at school together, and when his ship came to England met frequently, and twice when he was on leave, we had been for months together under the same roof, and had for some years kept up a regular correspondence, which first grew to sultry, and finally, as manhood supervene died out. The plain truth is, I did not very much like him. Then there was that beautiful, apathetic Dorcas Brandon. Where is the laggard so dull as to experience no pleasing flutter at his heart in anticipation of meeting a perfect beauty in a country house? I was romantic, like every other young fellow who is not a premature commudant, and there was something indefinitely pleasant in the consciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still was fancy free, not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience with mitigations, and so there were, covered in my curiosity, some little flicker of egotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits and spur me on to action. CHAPTER II In which I enter the drawing-room. I was now approaching Braddon Hall. Less than ten minutes more would set me down at its doorsteps. The stiff figure of Mrs. Marston, the old housekeeper, pale and austere in rustling black silk, she was accounted a miser and estimated to have saved, I dare not say, how much money in the wild or family, kind to me, with a bread and jam and Naples biscuit kindness of her species in old times, stood in fancy at the doorway. She, too, was a dream, and I dare say her money spent by this time. And that other dream, to which she often led me, with large hazel eyes and clear delicate tints, so sweet, so rion, yet so sad. Poor lady Mary Brandon, dying there, so unhappily mated, a young mother, and her baby slipping in long, broad rion glazed attire upon the pillow on the sofa, and whom she used to show me with a peeping mystery, and her finger to her smiling lip, and a gaiety and fondness in her pretty face. That little helpless, groping, wailing creature was now the dorkess Brandon, the mistress of the grand old mansion, and all its surroundings, who was the heroine of the splendid matrimonial compromise, which was about to reconcile a feud and avert a possible lawsuit, and for one generation at least, to tranquilize the troubled annals of the brandons and wilders. And now the ancient gray chapel with its stained window and store of old Brandon and wilder monuments among its solemn clump of elm trees flitted by on my right. And in a moment more, we drew up at the great gate on the left, not a hundred yards removed from it, and with an eager recognition, I gazed on the noble front of the old manorial house up the broad straight avenue with its solemn files of gigantic timber towering at the right and the left hand, the chase rolled smoothly, and through the fantastic iron gate of the courtyard, and with a fine swinging sweep and a jerk, we drew up handsomely before the doorsteps with the wilder arms and bold and florid projection carved above it. The sun had just gone down, the blue shadows of twilight overcast the landscape, and the mists of night were already stealing like thin smoke among the trunks and roots of the trees. Through the stone mullions of the projecting window at the right, a flush of firelight looked pleasant and hospitable, and on the threshold were standing Lord Shelford and my old friend Mark Wilder, a faint perfume of the mildest shrew, declared how they had been employed. So I jumped to the ground and was greeted very kindly by the smokers. I'm here, you know, in Locoparentis. My mother and I keep watch and ward. We allow Wilder you see to come every day to his devotions, but you are not to go to the Brandon Arms. You got my note, didn't you? I had, and had come direct to the hall in consequence. I looked over the door. Yes, my memory had served me right. There was the Brandon Arms, and the Brandon quartered with the Wilder, but the Wilder coat in the center, with the grinning griffons for supporters, and flaunting scrolls all around, and the ominous word, recircum, underneath, proclaimed itself sadly and vauntingly over the great entrance. I often wonder how the Wilder coat came in the center, who built the old house, a Brandon, or a Wilder, and if a Wilder, why was it Brandon Hall? Dusty and seedy somewhat, as men are after a journey. I chatted with Mark and the noble peer for a few minutes at the door, while my vales and et cetera's were lifted and hurried up the stairs to my room, whether I followed them. While I was at my toilet, in came Mark Wilder, laughing, as was his wand, and very unceremoniously, he took possession of my easy chair, and threw his leg over the arm of it. I'm glad you're come, Charlie. You're always a good fellow, and I really want a hand here confoundedly. I think we'll all do very nicely, but, of course, there's a lot of things to be arranged, settlements, you know. And I can't make head or tail of their lingo, and a fellow don't like to sign and seal hand of her head. You would not advise that, you know. And Shelford is a very good fellow, of course, and all that, but he's taking care of Dorcas, you see, and I might be left in the lurch. It is a better way, at all events, Mark, than Wilder v. Trustees of Brandon Minor, said I. Well, things do turn out very oddly, don't they? said Mark, with a sly glance of complacency, and his hands and his pockets. But I know you'll hold the tiller till I get through. Hang me if I know the soundings or where I'm going, and you have the chart by heart, Charlie. I'm afraid you'll find me by no means so well up and out as six years ago, in Wilder and Brandon. But surely you have your lawyer, Mr. Larkin, haven't you? To be sure that's exactly it. He's Dorcas' agent. I don't know anything about him, and I do know you. Don't you see? A fellow doesn't want to put himself into the hands of a stranger altogether, especially a lawyer. Wouldn't pay. I did not half-like the Equivocal Office which my friend Mark had prepared for me. If family squabbles were to arise, I had no fancy to mix in with them, and I did not want a collision with Mr. Larkin, either. And on the whole, not withstanding his modesty, I thought Wilder very well able to take care of himself. There was time enough, however, to settle the point. So, by this time, being splendid in French boots and white vest, and altogether perfect and refreshed, I emerged from my dressing room, Wilder by my side. We had to get along a dim oak-paneled passage, and into a sort of Oled-e-Bouf, with a lantern light above, from which diverged to other solemn corridors, and a short puzzling turn or two brought us to the head of the upper stairs, for I, being a bachelor, and treated accordingly, was eerily perched on the third story. To my mind, there is something indescribably satisfactory in the intense solidity of those old stairs and floors. No spring in the planks, not a creek. You walk as over strata of stone. What clumsy grandeur. What cyclopean carpenters. What a prodigality of oak. It was dark by this time, and the drawing-room, a vast and grand chamber, with no light but the fire and a pair of dim, soft lamps near the sofas and ottomans, lofty and glowing with rich tapestry curtains and pictures and mirrors and carved oak and marble, was already tenanted by the ladies. Old Lady Chelford, stiff and rich, a van dyke dowager, with a general effect of deep lace, funerial velvet and pearls, and pale with dreary eyes and thin high nose sat in a high-backed carved oak throne with red cushions. To her, I was first presented, and cursorily scrutinized with a stately old-fashioned insolence, as if I were a candidate footman and so dismissed. On a low seat, chatting to her as I came up, was a very handsome and rather singular-looking girl, fair with a light golden-tinted hair and accountinance, though then grave enough, instinct with a certain promise of animation and spirit not to be mistaken. Could this be the heroine of the Pending Alliance? No, I was mistaken. A third lady, at what would have been an ordinary room's length away, half reclining on an ottoman was now approached by Wilder, who presented me to Miss Brandon. Dorkas, this is my old friend Charles de Cressaron. You have often heard me speak of him, and I want you to shake hands and make his acquaintance, and draw him out. Do you see, for he is a shy youth and must be encouraged? He gave me a cheerful slap on the shoulder, as he uttered this agreeable bit of banter, and altogether disconcerted me confoundedly. Wilder's dress coats always smelt of tobacco, and his talk of tar. I was quietly incensed and disgusted, for in those days I was a little shy. The lady rose in a soft, floating way, tall, black-haired, but a blackness with a dull, rich shadow through it. I had only a general impression of large, dusky eyes and very exquisite features, more delicate than the Grecian models, and with a wonderful transparency, like tinted marble and a superb haughtiness, quite unaffected. She held forth her hand, which I did little more than touch. There was a peculiarity in her greeting, which I felt a little over-awing without exactly discovering in what it consisted. And it was, I think, that she did not smile. She never took that trouble for form's sake, like other women. So, as Wilder had said a chair for me, I could not avoid sitting upon it, though I should have much of preferred standing, after the manner of men, and retaining my liberty. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of Wilder's Hand This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 3 Our Dinner Party at Brandon I was curious. I had heard a great deal of her beauty, and it had exceeded all I had heard, so I talked my sublimest and brightest chit-chat in my most musical tones, and was rather engaging and amusing. I ventured to hope. But the best man cannot manage a dialogue alone. Miss Brandon was plainly not a person to make any sort of exertion towards what is termed keeping up a conversation. At all events, she did not. And after a while, the present one got into a decidedly seeking condition. An acquiescence, a faint expression of surprise, a fainter smile, she contributed little more. After the first few questions of courtesy had been asked, in her low, silvery tones, and answered by me. To me the natural demise of a te-ta-te discourse has always seemed a disgrace.  I've sometimes thought my struggles and sinkings amused her cruel serenity. Vela más tupira? I experienced, at last, the sort of peak with which our sans-hero apostrophizes la Daniera Aldini. Yet I could not think her stupid, the universal instinct honors beauty. It is so difficult to believe it either dull or base. In virtue of some mysterious harmonies, it is the image of God and must, we feel, enclose the Godlike.  She was not exactly languid, but a grave and listless beauty, and a splendid beauty for all of that. I told her my early recollections of Brandon and Gillingdon, and how I remembered her a baby, and said some graceful trifles on that theme, which I fancied were likely to please, but they were only received and led to nothing. In a little while in comes Lord Shelford, always natural and pleasant, and quite unconscious of his peerage. He was above it, I think, and chatted away merrily with that handsome animated blonde, who on earth could she be, and did not seem the least chilled in the stiff and frosted presence of his mother, but was genial and playful, even with that spirit of the frozen ocean who received his affectionate trifling with a sort of smiling, though wintery pride and complacency, reflecting back from her icy aspects something of the rosy tints of that kindly sunshine. I thought I heard him call the young lady Miss Lake, and there rose before me an image of an old general lake, and a dim recollection of some reverse of fortune. He was, I was sure of that, connected with the Brandon family, and was, with the usual fatality, a bit of a mauvaise sujet. He had made away with his children's money or squandered his own, or somehow or another impoverished his family not creditably. So I glanced at her, and Miss Brandon divined, it seemed, what was passing in my mind, for she said, That is my cousin, Miss Lake, and I think her very beautiful, don't you? Yes, she certainly is very handsome. And I was going to say something about her animation and spirit, but remembered just in time that that line of eulogy would hardly have involved a compliment to Miss Brandon. I know her brother a little, that is Captain Lake, Stanley Lake, he's her brother, I fancy. Oh, said the young lady, in that tone which was pointed with an unknown accent between a note of inquiry and of surprise. Yes, he's her brother. And she paused as if something more were expected. But at that moment the bland tones of Larkham, the solemn butler, announced the Reverend William Wilder and Mrs. Wilder, and I said, William is an old college friend of mine. And I observed him as he entered with an affectionate and sad sort of interest. Eight years had passed since we met last, and that is something at any time.  But his earnest sweet smile was there still. Slight, gentle, was something of a pale and studious refinement in his face, the same gentle voice with that slight occasional hesitation, which somehow I liked. There is always a little shock after an absence of some years before identities adjust themselves, and then we find the change is not, after all, so very great. I suspect it is rather that something of the old picture is obliterated in that little interval to return no more. And so William Wilder was vicar now, instead of that straight, wiry cleric of the mulberry face and black leggings. And who was this little Mrs. William Wilder, who came in so homely a feature, so radiant of good humor, so eager and simple, in a very plain dress, a brandon housemaid would not have been seen in it, leaning so pleasantly on his lean, long clerical arm, made for reaching books down from high shelves, a lank scholar-like limb with a somewhat threadbare cuff, and who looked round with the anticipation of pleasure and that simple confidence in a real welcome, which are so likely to ensure it.  Could extemporize Latin hexameters and dream in Greek? Was she very wise or at all learned? I think her knowledge lay chiefly in the matters of poultry and puddings and latterly of the nursery where one treasure lay, that golden-haired little boy, four years old, whom I had seen playing among the roses before the personage-door, asleep by this time, half past seven, precise as old Lady Chalford loved to write on her summons to dinner. When the vicar, I daresay, in a very odd quaint way made his proposal of marriage, moved there too assuredly, either by fortune nor by beauty, to good, merry little Miss Dorothy Chubly, whom nobody was supposed to be looking after, and the town had somehow set down from the first as a natural-born old maid. There was a very general amazement, some disappointment here and there, with customary sneers and compassion, and a good deal of genuine amusement not ill-natured. Miss Chubly, all the shopkeepers in the town knew and liked and in a way respected her as Miss Dolly, old Reverend John Chubly, D.D., who had been in love with his wife from the period of his boyhood, and yet so grudging was ate, had to undergo an engagement of nigh thirty years before Hyman rewarded their constancy, being at length made vicar of Huddleston and master of church revenues to the amount of three hundred pounds a year had at forty-five married his early love, now forty-two. They had never grown old in one another's fond eyes. Their fidelity was of the days of chivalry and their simplicity comical and beautiful. Twenty years of happy and loving life were allotted them, and one pledge, poor Miss Dorothy, was left alone when little more than nineteen years old. This good old couple, having loved early and waited long, and lived together with wonderful tenderness and gaiety of heart, their allotted span bid farewell for a little while, the gentle little lady going first, and in about two years more the good old rector following. I remembered him, but more dimly than his merry little wife. Though she went first, she made raisin wine and those curious biscuits that tasted winds or soap. And this is William Wilder, just announced by soft-toned Larkham, is the daughter, there is no mistaking the jolly smile and lumpy odd little features and radiance of amiability of the good doctor and Mrs. Chubbly, so curiously blended in her loving face. And last comes in old Major Jackson, smiling largely, squaring himself and doing his courtesies in a firm but florid military style, and plainly pleased to find himself in good company and on the eve of a good dinner, and so our dinner list is full. The party were just nine, and it is wonderful what a round nine well-behaved people will contrive to make at a dinner table. The inferior animals, as we see them, caged and cared for, and fed at one o'clock precise, in those public institutions provided for their maintenance, confined their uproar to the period immediately antecedent to their meal, and performed the actual process of deglutition with silent attention and only such suckings, lappings, and crunchings as illustrate their industry and content. It is a distinctive privilege of a man to exert his voice during his repast and to indulge also in those specially human cacinations which no lower creature except that disreputable Australian biped known as the laughing jackass presumes to imitate, and to these vocal exercises of the feasters respond the endless ring and tinkle of knife and fork on china plate, and the ministering angels in white chokers behind the chairs, those murmured solicitations which hum round and round in the ears of the revelers. Of course, when great guns are present and people talk pro bono publico, one at a time, with parliamentary regularity, things are different. But at an ordinary symposium, when the garrulous and diffident make merry together, and people break into twos or threes and talk across the table or into their neighbor's ears, and altogether the noise is not only exhilarating and peculiar, but sometimes perfectly unaccountable. The talk, of course, has its proxisms and its subsidences. I have once or twice found myself on a sudden in total silence in the middle of a somewhat prolex, though humorous, story commenced in an uproar for the sole recreation of my pretty neighbor and ended, patched up, renounced, a faltering failure under the converging gaze of a sternly attentive audience. On the other hand, there were moments when the uproar whirls up in a crescendo to a pitch and volume perfectly amazing, and at such times I believe that anyone might say anything to the reveler at his elbow, without the smallest risk of being overheard by mortal. You may plan with young Cesar Borgia on your left the poisoning of your host, or ask Pretty Mrs. Fusible on your right to elope with you from her grinning and gabbling lord, whose bald head flashes red with champagne, only at the other side of the table. There is no privacy like it. You may plot your wickedness, or make your confession, or pop the question, and not a soul which your confidant be a bit the wiser, provided only you command your countenance. I don't know how it happened, but Wilder sat beside Miss Lake. I fancy he ought to have been differently placed, but Miss Brandon did not seem conscious of his absence. And it seemed to me that the handsome blonde would have been as well pleased if he had been anywhere but where he was. There was no look of liking, though some faint glimmerings of both annoyance and embarrassment in her face. But in Wilder I saw a sort of conceited consciousness, and a certain eagerness. Two, while he talked, though a shrewd fellow in many ways, he had a secret conviction that no woman could resist him. I suppose the world thinks me a very happy fellow, Miss Lake? He said with a rather pensive glance of inquiry into that young lady's eyes as he set down his hot glass. I'm afraid it's a selfish world, Mr. Wilder, and thinks very little of what does not concern it. Now you, I daresay, continued Wilder not caring to perceive the scupon of sarcasm that modulated her answer so musically. Look upon me as a very fortunate fellow?   Stupid? Did I say? Well, you know we learn by experience, Mr. Wilder. One's judgment matures, and we are harder to please. Don't you think so, as we grow older? I so we are, I daresay, at any rate. Some things don't please us as we calculated. I remember when this bit of luck would have made me a devilish happy fellow, twice as happy. But, you see, if a fellow hasn't his liberty, where's the good of money? I don't know how I got into it, but I can't get away now, and the lawyers, fellows, and trustees, and all that sort of prudent people, get about one, and persuade, and exhort, and they bully you by jove into what they call a marriage of convenience. I forget the French word. You know, and then you see your feelings may be very different and all that, and where's the good of money, I say, if you can't enjoy it. And Mr. Wilder looked poetically unhappy and trundled over a little bit of fresh undo on his plate with his fork, desolately, as though earthly things had lost their relish. Yes, I think I know the feeling, said Miss Lake quietly. That ballad, you know, expresses it very prettily. Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother. It was not then as old a song as it is now. Wilder looked sharply at her, but she did not smile, and seemed to speak in good faith, and being somewhat sick in some matters, though a cunning fellow, he said. Yes, that is a sort of thing, you know, of course, with a difference. A girl is supposed to speak there, but men suffer that way too, though, of course, very likely it is more their own fault. It is very sad, said Miss Lake, who was busy with a pate. She has no life in her. She's a mere figurehead. She's awfully slow. I don't like black hair. I'm taken by conversation and all that. There are some men that can only really love once in their lives, and never forget their first love, I assure you. Wilder murmured all this, and looked as plaintive as he could without exciting the attention of the people over the way. Mark Wilder had, as you perceive, rather vague notions of decency, and not much experience of ladies, and thought he was making just the interesting impression he meditated. He was a good deal surprised then when Miss Lake said, and with quite a cheerful countenance, and very quickly but so that her words stung his ear, like the prick of a bodkin. Your way of speaking of my cousin, sir, is in the highest degree discreditable to you, and offensive to me. And should you venture to repeat it, I will certainly mention it to Lady Telford. And so she turned old Major Jackson at her right, who had been expounding a point of the battle of Vittoria to Lord Telford, and she led him again into action, and acquired during the next ten minutes, a great deal of curious lore, about Spanish muleteers and French prisoners, together with some particulars about the nature of picket duty, and that scoundrel Castanos. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4. In which we go to the drawing room, and the party breaks up. Wilder was surprised, puzzled, and a good deal incensed, that saucy craft had fired her shot so unexpectedly across his bows. He looked a little flushed, and darted a stealthy glance across the table, but no one, he thought, had observed the maneuver. He would have talked to ugly Mrs. W. Wilder, his sister-in-law, at his left, but she was entertaining Lord Telford now. He had nothing for it but to perform cavalier sole with his slice of mutton, a sensual sort of isolation, while all the world was chatting so agreeably and noisily around him. He would have liked, at that moment, a walk upon the quarter-deck, with a good headwind blowing, and liberty to curse and swear a bit over the bullock.  Wilder was rather surly after the ladies had floated away from the scene, and he drank his liquor doggedly. It was his fancy, I suppose, to revive certain sentimental relations which had it may be once existed between him and Miss Lake, and he was a person of that combative temperament that magnifies an object in proportion as its pursuit is thwarted. In the drawing-room he watched Miss Lake over his cup of coffee, and after a few words to his fiancée he lounged toward the table at which she was turning over some prints. Do come here, Dorothy, she exclaimed, not raising her eyes. I have found the very thing. What thing? My dear Miss Lake, said that good little woman, skipping to her side. The story of Fridolin and Wretches' pretty outlines. Sit down beside me, and I'll tell you the story. Oh! said the picker's wife, taking her seat, and the inspection and exposition began, and Mark Wilder, who had intended renewing his talk with Miss Lake, saw that she had foiled him and stood with a heightened colour and his hands in his pockets, looking confoundedly cross and very like an outcast in the shadow behind. After a while, in a pet, he walked away. Lord Shelford had joined the two ladies and had something to say about German art, and some pleasant lights to throw from foreign travel and devious reading, and was as usual intelligent and agreeable, and Mark was still more soren angry and strutted away to another table, a long way off, and tossed over the leaves of a folio of Wooverman's works, and did not see one at the plates he stared at so savagely. I don't think Mark was very clear as to what he wanted, or, even if he had had a cool half-hour to define his wishes, that he would seriously have modified existing arrangements. But he had a passionate sort of obstinacy, and his whims took a violent character when they were crossed, and he was angry and jealous and unintelligible, reminding one of Carlisle's description of Philip Egalité, a chaos. Then he joined a conversation going on between Dorcas Brandon and the vicar, his brother. He assisted at it, but took no part, and in fact was listening to that other conversation which sounded, with its pleasant gable and laughter, like a little musical tinkle of bells in the distance. His gall rose, and that distant talk rang in his ears like a cool but intangible insult. It was dull work. He looked at his watch. The brome would be at the door to take Miss Lake home in a quarter of an hour. So he glided by old Lady Chelford, who was dozing stiffly through her spectacles on a French novel, and through a second drawing-room, and into the hall where he saw Larkham's expanse of white wesquet, and disregarded his advance and respectful inclination, and strode into the outer hall her vestibule, where were hat stands, walking sticks, great coats, umbrellas, and the exuvier of gentlemen. Mark clapped on his hat, and rifled the pocket of his pail-toe of his cigar-case and matches, and spluttered a cursor to, according to Old Noliken's receipt for easing the mind, and on the doorsteps lighted his charoute, and became gradually more philosophical. In due time the brome came round with its lamps lighted, and Mark, who was by this time placid, greeted price on the box familiarly, after his want, and asked him who he was going to drive, as if he did not know cunning fellow, and actually went so far as to give price one of those cheap and nasty reeds, of which he kept a supply apart in his case for such occasions of good fellowship. So Mark waited to put the Lady into the carriage, and he meditated, walking a little way by the window and making his peace. And there was perhaps some vague vision of jumping in afterwards. I know not. Mark's ideas of ladies and of propriety were low, and he was little better than a sailor ashore, and not a good specimen of that class of monster. He walked about the courtyard smoking, looking sometimes on the solemn front of the old palatial mansion, and sometimes breathing a white film up to the stars, impatient, like the enamored Aladdin, watching an ambush guide for the emergence of the Princess Badroul Badour. But honest Mark forgot that young ladies do not always come out quite alone, and jump unassisted into their vehicles. And in fact not only did Lord Shelford assist the Fair Lady, cloaked and hooded, into the carriage, but the vicar's good humor little wife was handed in also, the good vicar looking on. And as the gay good night and leave-taking took place by the doorsteps, Mark drew back, like a guilty thing, in silence, and showed no sign but the red top of his cigar glowing like the eye of a cyclops in the dark. And away rolled the broam with the two ladies, and Shelford and the vicar went in, and Mark hurled the stump of his charoute at fortune, and delivered a fragmentary soliloquy through his teeth. And so, in a sulk, without making his adduce, he marched off to his crib at the Brandon arms. In which my slumber is disturbed. The ladies had accomplished their ascension to the upper regions. The good vicar had marched off with the major, who was by this time unbuckling in his lodgings, and Shelford and I, tet-a-tet, had a glass of sherry and water together in the drawing-room before parting. And over this temperate beverage I told him frankly the nature of the service which Mark Wilder wished me to render him, and he as frankly approved, and said he would ask Larkin, the family lawyer, to come up in the morning to assist. The more I saw of this modest, refined, and manly peer, the more I liked him. There was a certain courteous frankness, and a fine old English sense of duty, perceptible in all his serious talk. So I felt no longer like a conspirator, and was to offer such advice as might seem expedient, with the clear approbation of Miss Brandon's trustee. And this point clearly settled I avowed myself a little tired, and lighting our candles at the foot of the stairs we scaled that longer scent together, and he conducted me through the intricacies of the devious lobbies upstairs to my chamber door, where he bid me good-night, shook hands, and descended to his own quarters. My room was large and old-fashioned, but snug, and I, beginning to grow very drowsy, was not long in getting to bed, where I fell asleep indescribably quickly. In all old houses one is, of course, liable to adventures. Where is the marvellous to find refuge if not among the chambers, the intricacies which have seen the vicissitudes, the crimes, and the deaths of generations of such men as had occupied these? There was a picture in the Outer Hall, one of those full-length gentlemen of George II's time, with a dark peruque flowing on his shoulders, a cut velvet coat, and lace cravat and ruffles. This picture was pale and had a long chin, and somehow had impressed my boyhood with a singular sense of fear. The foot of my bed lay towards the window, distant at least five and twenty feet, and before the window stood my dressing-table, and on it a large-looking glass. I dreamed that I was arranging my toilet before this glass, just as I had done that evening, when on a sudden the face of the portrait I have mentioned was presented on its surface, confronting me like a real countenance and advancing towards me with a look of fury, and at the instant I felt myself seized by the throat and unable to stir or to breathe. After a struggle with this infernal garotta I succeeded in awaking myself, and as I did so I felt a rather cold hand really resting on my throat and quietly passed up over my chin and face. I jumped out of bed with a roar and challenged the owner of the hand, but received no answer and heard no sound.  Everything was as I had left it except the door, which was the least bit open. In my shirt, candle in hand, I looked out into the passage. There was nothing there in human shape, but in the direction of the stairs the green eyes of a large cat were shining. I was so confoundedly nervous that even a harmless necessary cat appalled me, and I clapped my door as if against an evil spirit. In about half an hour's time, however, I had quite worked off the effect of this nightmare and reasoned myself into the natural solution that the creature had got on my bed and lay, as I have been told they will, upon my throat, and so all the rest had followed. Not being given to the fear of larvae and lemures, and also knowing that a mistake is easily committed in a great house like that, and that my visitor might have made one, I grew drowsy in a little while and soon fell asleep again. But knowing all I now do I hold a different conclusion, and so I think will you. In the morning Mark Wilder was early upon the ground. He had quite slept off what he would have called the nonsense of last night, and was very keen upon settlements, consoles, mortgages, jointures, and all that dry but momentous law. I find a note in my diary of that day, from half past ten o'clock until two with Mark Wilder and Mr. Larkin the lawyer in the study, dull work over papers and title, Lord Chelford with us now and then to lend a helping hand. Lawyer Larkin, though he made our work lighter, for he was clear, quick, and orderly, and could lay his hand on any paper in those tin walls of legal manuscripts that built up two sides of his office, did not make our business, to me at least, any pleasanter. Wilder thought him a clever man, and so perhaps in a certain sense he was. Lord Chelford, a most honorable one, yet there came to me by instinct an unpleasant feeling about him. It was not in any defined way. I did not fancy that he was machinating, for instance, any sort of mischief in the business before us, but I had a notion that he was not quite what he pretended. Perhaps his personnel prejudiced me, though I could not quite say why. He was a tall, lank man, rather long of limb, long of head, and gaunt of face. He wanted teeth at both sides, and there was rather a skull-like cavity when he smiled, which was pretty often. His eyes were small and reddish as if accustomed to cry, and when everything went smoothly were dull and dove-like, but when things crossed or excited him, which occurred when his own pocket or plans were concerned, they grew singularly unpleasant, and greatly resembled those of some not-amiable animal. Was it a rat or a serpent? It was a peculiar concentrated vigilance and rapine that I have seen there, but that was long afterwards. Now, indeed, they were meek and sad and pink. He had an ambition, too, to pass for a high-bread gentleman, and thought it might be done by a somewhat lofty and drawing way of talking, and distributing his length of limb in what he fancied were easy attitudes. If the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, so are the elegances of a vulgar man, and his made me wince. I might be all in the wrong, and was no doubt unreasonable, for he bore a high character and passed for a very gentleman-like man among the villagers. It was also something of a religious light, and had for a time conformed to Methodism, but returned to the church. He had a liking for long sermons, and a sad abhorrence of amusements, and sat out the morning and the evening services regularly, and kept up his dissenting connection, too, and gave them money, and appeared in print in all charitable lists, and mourned over other men's backslidings and calamities in a lofty and Christian way, shaking his tall bald head, and turning up his pink eyes mildly. Notwithstanding all which he was somehow unlovely in my eyes, and in an indistinct way formidable, it was not a pleasant misgiving about a gentleman of larkin species, the family lawyer who become viscera magnorum doma. My duties were lighter, as advisor, than I at first apprehended. Wilder's crotchets were chiefly mares' nests. We had read the draft of the settlement, preparatory to its being sent to senior council to be approved. Wilder's attorney had done his devoir, and Mr. Larkin avowed a sort of parental interest in both parties to the indentures, and made, at closing, a little speech, very high in morality, and flavoured in a manly way with religion, and congratulated Mark on his honour and plain dealing, which he gave us to understand were the secrets of all success in life as they had been in a humble way of his own. CHAPTER VI. In answer to the roaring shiver of the gong, we all trooped away together to luncheon. Lady Chelford and Dorcas and Chelford had nearly ended that irregular repast when we entered. My chair was beside Miss Brandon. She had breakfasted with old Lady Chelford that morning, and this was my first meeting that day. It was not very encouraging. People complained that acquaintance made little way with her, that you were perhaps well satisfied with your first day's progress, but the next made no headway. You found yourself this morning exactly at the point from which you commenced yesterday, and to-morrow would recommend where you started the day before. This is very disappointing, but may sometimes be accounted for by there being nothing really to discover. It seemed to me, however, that the distance had positively increased since yesterday, and that the oftener she met me, the more strange she became. As we went out, Wilder inquired with his usual good taste, well, what do you think of her? Then he looked slyly at me, laughing, with his hands in his pockets. A little bit slow, eh? he whispered, and laughed again, and lounged into the hall. If Dorcas Brandon had been a plain woman, I think she would have been voted an impertinent bore, but she was so beautiful that she became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No, she never would have had energy to plan her husband's career, and manage that affair of Duncan. A sultana, rather, sublimely egotistical, without reverence, a voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a picture, but thinking of her, and was surprised by her voice very near me. Will you give me just a minute, Mr. Decressoran, in the drawing-room, while I show you a miniature? I want your opinion. So she floated on, and I accompanied her.  You remember my poor mama, don't you, very well. This was the first time she had yet shown any tendency, so far as I had seen, to be interested in anything, or to talk to me. I seized the occasion, and gave her, as well as I could, the sad and pretty picture that remained, and always will, in the vacant air, when I think of her, on the mysterious retina of memory. How filmy they are, the moonlight shines through them, as through the phantom dain in wretches' outlines, colour without substance. How they come, wearing for ever the sweetest and pleasantest look of their earthly days. Their sweetest and merriest tones hover musically in the distance. How far away, how near to silence, yet how clear. And so it is with our remembrance of the immortal part. It is the loveliest traits that remain with us perennially. All that was noblest and most beautiful is there, in a changeless and celestial shadow, and this is the resurrection of the memory, the foretaste and image which the faithful creator accords us, of the resurrection and glory to come, the body redeemed, the spirit made perfect. On a cabinet near to where she stood was a casket of Olmoliu, which she unlocked and took out a miniature, opened, and looked at it for a long time. I knew very well whose it was, and watched her countenance, for as I have said, she interested me strangely. I suppose she knew I was looking at her, but she showed always a queen-like indifference about what people might think or observe. There was no sentimental softening, but her gaze was such as I once saw the same proud and handsome face turn upon the dead, pale, exquisite, perhaps a little stern. What she read there, what procession of thoughts and images passed by, through neither light nor shadow on her face. Its apathy interested me inscrutably. At last she placed the picture in my hand and asked, Is this really very like her? It is, and it is not, I said, after a little pause. The features are true.  I dare say, exact as it is, it would give to one who had not seen her a false, as it must an inadequate, idea of the original. There was something naive and spiritual and very tender in her face, which she has not caught. Perhaps it could hardly be fixed in colours. Yes, I always heard her expression and intelligence were very beautiful. It was the beauty of mobility, true beauty. There is a beauty of another stamp, equally exquisite, Miss Brandon, and perhaps more overpowering. I said this in nearly a whisper, and in a very marked way, almost tender, and the next moment was amazed at my own audacity. She looked on me for a second or two, with her dark, drowsy glance, and then it returned to the picture, which was again in her hand. There was a total want of interest in the careless sort of surprise she vouchsafed my little sally. Neither was there the slightest resentment. If a wafer had been stuck upon my forehead, and she had observed it, there might have been just that look and no more. I was ridiculously annoyed with myself. I was betrayed, I don't know how, into this little venture, and it was a flat failure. The position of a shy man, who has just made an unintelligible joke at a dinner-table, was not more pregnant with self- approach and embarrassment. Upon my honour, I don't think there was anything of the ruin me. I own I did feel towards this lady, who either was, or seemed to me, so singular, a mysterious interest just beginning, of that peculiar kind which becomes at last terribly absorbing. I was more elated by her trifling notice of me than I can quite account for. It was a distinction. She was so indescribably handsome, so passively disdainful. I think if she had listened to me with even the faintest intimation of caring whether I spoke in this tone or not, with even a flash of momentary resentment, I might have rushed into a most reprehensible and ridiculous rigmarole. In this, the subtlest and most perilous of all intoxications, it needs immense presence of mind to conduct ourselves always with decorum. But she was looking, just as before, at the miniature, as it seemed to me, in fancy infusing some of the spirit I had described into the artist's record, and she said, only in soliloquy, as it were, Yes, I see. I think I see. So there was a pause, and then she said, without, however, removing her eyes from the miniature, You are, I believe, Mr. Decressoran, a very old friend of Mr. Wilders. Is it not so? So soon after my little escapade, I did not like the question, but it was answered. There was not the faintest trace of a satirical meaning, however, in her face, and after another very considerable interval at the end of which she shut the miniature in its case, she said, It was a peculiar face, and very beautiful. It is odd how many of our family married for love, wild love matches. My poor mother was the last. I could point you out many pictures and tell you stories. My cousin Rachel knows them all. You know Rachel Lake? I have not the honour of knowing Miss Lake. I had not an opportunity of making her acquaintance yesterday. But I know her brother, so does Wilder. What's that? said Mark, who had just come in, and was tumbling over a volume of punch at the window. I was telling Miss Brandon that we both know Stanley Lake. On hearing which, Wilder seemed to discover something uncommonly interesting or clever in the illustration before him, for he approached his face very near to it, in a scrutinising way, and only said, Oh! That marrying for love was a fatality in our family, she continued, in the same low tone, too faint, I think, to reach Mark. They were all the most beautiful who sacrificed themselves, so they were all unhappy marriages. So the beauty of our family never availed it, any more than its talents and its courage, for there were clever and witty men, as well as very brave ones, in it. Mina houses have grown up into dukedoms, ours never prospers. I wonder what it is? Many families have disappeared altogether, Miss Brandon. It is no small thing, through so many centuries, to have retained your ancestral estates and your preeminent position, and even the splendid residence of so many generations of your lineage. I thought that Miss Brandon, having broken the ice, was henceforth to be a conversable young lady. But this sudden expansion was not to last. Ovid tells us, in his fasty, how statues sometimes surprised people by speaking more frankly into the purpose, even than Miss Brandon, and straight were cold chiseled marble again. And so it was, with that proud, cold shadeuvra of tinted statuary. Yet I thought I could, even in that dim glimpse, discern how the silent subterranean current of her thoughts was flowing, like other representatives of a dynasty, she had studied the history of her race to profit by its errors and misfortunes. There was to be no weakness or passion in her reign. The princess, by this time, was seated on the ottoman, and chose to read a letter, thus intimating, I suppose, that my audience was at an end. So I took up a book, put it down, and then went and looked over Wilder's shoulder, and made my criticisms—not very novel, I fear—upon the pages he turned over. And I am sorry to say I don't think he heard much of what I was saying, for he suddenly came out with, and where is Stanley Lake now, do you know? I saw him in town, only for a moment though, about a fortnight ago. He was arranging, he said, about selling out. Oh, retiring! And what does he propose doing then, asked Wilder, without raising his eyes from his book. He spoke in a sort of undertone, like a man who does not want to be overheard, and the room was quite large enough to make that sort of secrecy easy, without the appearance of seeking it. I have not an idea. I don't think he's fit for many things. He knows something of horses, I believe, and something of play. But he'll hardly make out a living that way, said Wilder, with a sort of sneer or laugh. I thought he seemed put out and a little flushed. I fancy he has enough to live upon without adding to it, however, I said. Wilder leaned back in his low chair, with his hands stuffed in his pocket, and the air of a man trying to look unconcerned, but both annoyed and disconcerted nevertheless. I tell you what, Charlie, between you and me, that fellow Stanley is a damned bad lot. I may be mistaken, of course. He's always been very civil to me, but we don't like one another, and I don't think I ever heard him say a good word of any one. I dare say he abuses you and me, as he does everyone else. Does he, I said, I was not aware he had that failing. Oh, yes, he does not stick at trifles, Master Stanley. He's about the greatest liar I think I ever met with, and he laughed angrily. I happened at that moment to raise my eyes, and I saw Dorcas' face reflected in the mirror, her back was towards us, and she held the letter in her hand as if reading it, but her large eyes were looking over it, and on us, in the glass, with a gaze of strange curiosity. Our glances met in the mirror, but hers remained serenely undisturbed, and mine dropped and turned away hastily. I wonder whether she heard us. I do not know. Some people are miraculously sharp of hearing. I dare say, said Wilder, with a sneer, he was asking affectionately for me, eh? No, not that I recollect. In fact, there was not time, but I suppose he does not like you less for what has happened. You're worth cultivating now, you know. Wilder was leaning on his elbow, with just the tip of his thumb to his teeth, with a vicious character of biting it, which was peculiar to him when anything vexed him considerably, and glancing sharply this way and that.   I don't know exactly how. He's a pushing fellow, one of the coolest hands I know, but I don't see that I can be of any use to him, or why the devil I should. I say, old fellow, come out and have a weed, will you? I raised my eyes. Ms. Brandon had left the room. I don't know that her presence would have prevented his invitation, for Wilder's wooing was certainly of the coolest. So forth we sallied, and under the autumnal foliage, in the cool amber light of the declining evening, we enjoyed our charoots, and with them Wilder his thoughts and I the landscape, and the whistling of the birds, for we waxed Turkish and Tassitan over our tobacco. Chapter 7 Relating How a London Gentleman Appeared in Redmond's Dell I believe the best rule in telling a story is to follow events chronologically. So let me mention that just about the time when Wilder and I were filming the trunks of the old trees with reeds of lingering perfume, Miss Rachel Lake had an unexpected visitor. There is near the hall a very pretty glen called Redmond's Dell, very steep, with a stream running at the bottom of it, but so thickly wooded that in summertime you can only now and then catch a glimpse of the water gliding beneath you. Deep in this picturesque ravine, buried among the thick shadows of tall old trees, runs the narrow mill road, which lower down debouches on the end of the village street. There in the transparent green shadow stand the two mills, the old one with AD 1679 and the Wilder arms, and the eternal resurgum projecting over its door, and higher up, on a sort of platform, the steep bank rising high behind it, with its towering old wood overhanging and surrounding upon a site where one of King Arthur's knights of an autumn evening as he rode solitary in quest of adventures might have seen the peeping gray gable of an anchorage chapel dimly through the gilded stems, and heard the drowsy tinkle of his Vesperbell, stands an old and small two-storied brick and timber house, and though the sun does not very often glimmer on its windows, it yet possesses an air of sad old world comfort. A little flower garden lies in front with a pailing round it, but not every kind of flowers will grow there under the lordly shadow of the elms and chestnuts. This sequestered tenement bears the name of Redmond's Farm, and its occupant was that Miss Lake whom I had met last night at Brandon Hall, and whose pleasure it was to live here in independent isolation.  How fresh and pretty she looks in that sad, silvan solitude, with the background of the dull crimson brick and the climbing roses. Bars of sunshine fall through the branches above, across the thick tapestry of blue, yellow and crimson that glow so richly upon their deep green ground. There is not much to be done just now, I fancy, in the gardening way, but work is found or invented, for sometimes the hour is dull and that bright, spirited and at heart it may be bitter exile will make out life somehow. There is music and drawing. There are flowers as we see, and two or three correspondents and walks into the village, and her dark cousin, Dorcas, drives down sometimes in the pony carriage, and is not always silent, and indeed they are a good deal together. This young lady's little Eden, though overshadowed and encompassed with the solemn silvan cloister of nature's building, and vocal with sounds of innocence, the songs of birds and sometimes those of its young mistress, was no more proof than the Mesopotamian haunt of our first parents against the intrusion of darker spirits. So as she worked, she lifted up her eyes and beheld a rather handsome young man standing at the little wicket of her garden, with his gloved hand on the latch, a man of fashion, a town man, his dress bespoke him, smooth cheeks, light brown, curling mustache, and eyes very peculiar both in shape and color, and something of elegance of finish in his other features, and of general grace in the coup d'etre, struck one at a glance. He was smiling silently and slyly on Rachel, who with a little cry of surprise said, Oh! Stanley, is it you? And before he could answer she had thrown her arms about his neck and kissed him two or three times. Laughingly, half resisting, the young man waited till her enthusiastic salutation was over, and with one gloved hand caressingly on her shoulder, and with the other smoothing his ruffled mustache he laughed a little more, a quiet, low laugh. He was not addicted to stormy greetings and patted his sister's shoulder gently, his arm a little extended, like a man who tranquilizes a frolic somepony.  And how have you been, Raddy? Oh, very well! No life like a gardener's early hours work, air, and plenty of quiet, and the young lady laughed. You are a wonderful lass, Raddy. Thank you, dear. And what do you call this place? The Happy Valley, I call it. Don't you remember Rassilis? No, he said, looking round him, I don't think I was ever there. You horrid dunce! It's a book!  So no matter, laughed Miss Rachel, giving him a little slap on the shoulder with her slender fingers. His reading, you see, lay more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson, as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if it were not for Boswell. It's a confounded deal, more like the Valley of the Shadow of Death in Pilgrim's Progress. You remember, that old Tamar used to read to us in the nursery, replied Master Stanley, who had never enjoyed being quizzed by his sister, not being blessed with a remarkably sweet temper. If you don't like my scenery, come in, Stanley, and admire my decorations. You must tell me all the news, and I'll show you my house, and amaze you with my housekeeping. Dear me, how long it is since I've seen you!  It is an odd fence he living alone here—an odd necessity, Stanley. Aren't you afraid of being robbed and murdered, Raddy? He said, leaning forward to smell it the pretty bouquet in the little glass, and turning it listlessly round.  Thank you, dear, for reminding me, but somehow I'm not the least afraid. There hasn't been a robbery in this neighbourhood, I believe, for eight hundred years. The people never think of shutting their doors here in summer time till they are going to bed, and then only for form's sake, and beside there's nothing to rob, and I really don't much mind being murdered. He looked round and smiled on, as before like a man contemptuously amused, but sleepily with all. You are very oddly housed, Raddy. I like it, she said quietly, also with a glance round her homely drawing-room. What do you call this, your boudoir or parlor? I call it my drawing-room, but it's anything you please. What very odd people our ancestors were, he mused on. They lived, I suppose, out of doors like the cows, and only came into their sheds at night when they could not see the absurd ugliness of the places they inhabited. I could not stand upright in this room with my hat on. Lots of rats, I fancy Raddy, behind that wainscotting. What's that horrid work of art against the wall? A shell-work cabinet, dear. It is not beautiful, I allow. If I was strong enough, or poor old Tamar, I should have it put away, and now that you're here, Stanley, I think I'll make you carry it out to the lobby for me. I should not like to touch it, dear Raddy, and pray, how do you amuse yourself here? How on earth do you get over the day, and worse, still, the evenings? Very well. Well enough. I make a very good sort of a nun and a capital housemaid. I work in the garden, I mend my dresses, I drink tea, and when I choose to be dissipated I play and sing for old Tamar. Why did not you ask how she is? I do believe, Stanley, you care for no one, but— She was going to say yourself, she said instead, however, but— Perhaps the least in the world for me, and that not very wisely she continued a little fiercely. For from the moment you saw me you've done little else than try to disgust me more than I am with my penury and solitude. What do you mean? You always have a purpose. Will you ever learn to be frank and straightforward and speak plainly to those whom you ought to trust, if not to love? What are you driving at, Stanley? He looked up with a gentle start, like one recovering from a reverie, and said with his yellow eyes fixed for a moment on his sister, before they dropped again to the carpet. You're miserably poor, Rachel. Upon my word, I believe you haven't clear two hundred a year. I'll drink some tea, please, if you've got any, and if it isn't too much trouble. And it strikes me as very curious you like living in this really very humiliating state. I don't intend to go out for a governess if that's what you mean, nor is there any probation in living as I do. Perhaps you think I ought to go in housekeeping for you. Why, I really don't know, Ratty, where I shall be. I'm not of any regiment now. Why, you have not sold out? She flushed and suddenly grew pale, for she was afraid something worse might have happened, having no great confidence in her brother. But she was relieved. I have sold my commission.  Women never understand these things. The army is awfully expensive. I mean, of course, a regiment like ours, and the interest of the money is better to me than my pay. And see, Rachel, there's no use in lecturing me, so don't let us quarrel. We're not very rich, you and I, and we each know our own affairs. You yours, and I mine, best. There was something by no means pleasant in his countenance when his temper was stirred, and a little thing sometimes suffice to do so. Rachel treated him with a sort of deference, a little contemptuous, perhaps, such as spoiled children received from indulgent elders. And she looked at him steadily, with a faint smile and arched brows for a little while, and an undefinable expression of puzzle and curiosity. You are a very amusing brother, if not a very cheery or a very useful one, Stanley. She opened the door and called across a little hall into the homely kitchen of the mansion. To-mar, dear, Master Stanley's here, and wishes to see you.  I suppose she's as frightful as ever that worthy woman. Certainly she is awfully like a ghost. I wonder, Ratty, you're not afraid of her at night in this cheerful habitation. I should, I know. A ghost indeed, the ghost of old times. An ugly ghost enough for many of us. Poor To-mar, she was always very kind to you, Stanley. And just then old To-mar opened the door. I must allow there was something very unpleasant about that worthy old woman, and not being under any personal obligations to her, I confess my acquiescence in the spirit of Captain Lake's remarks. She was certainly perfectly neat and clean, but white predominated unpleasantly in her costume. Her cotton gown had once had a pale pattern over it, but wear and washing had destroyed its tints, till it was no better than white, with a mottling of grey.  It was a dress very odd and unpleasant to behold, and suggested the idea of an hospital or a madhouse or death in an undefined way. She was past sixty, with a mournful puckered and puffy face, tinted all over with a thin gamboge and burnt sienna glazing, and very blue under the eyes which showed a great deal of their watery whites. This old woman had in her face an air, along with an expression of suspicion and anxiety, a certain character of decency and respectability, which made her altogether a puzzling and unpleasant apparition. Being taciturn and undemonstrative, she stood at the door, looking with his pleased accountants as so sad a portrait could wear upon the young gentleman. He got up at his leisure and greeted old Tamar with his sleepy, amused sort of smile and a few trite words of kindness. So Tamar withdrew to prepare tea, and he said all at once with a sudden accession of energy, and an unpleasant momentary glare in his eyes. You know, Rachel, this sort of thing is all nonsense. You cannot go on living like this. You must marry. You shall marry. Mark Wilder is down here, and he has got an estate and a house, and it is time he should marry you. Mark Wilder is here to marry my cousin, Dorcas, and if he had no such intention and where as free as you are and again to urge his foolish suit upon his knees, Stanley, I would die rather than accept him. It was not always so foolish a suit, Raddy, answered her brother, his eyes once more upon the carpet. Why should not he do as well as another? You liked him well enough once. The young lady colored rather fiercely. I am not a girl of seventeen now, Stanley, and— and besides, I hate him. What damned nonsense! I really beg your pardon, Raddy, but it is precious stuff. You are quite unreasonable. You've no cause to hate him. He dropped you because you dropped him. It was only prudent. He had not a guinea, but now it is different, and he must marry you. The young lady stared with a haughty amazement upon her brother. I've made up my mind to speak to him, and if he won't, I promise you he shall leave the country, said the young man gently, just lifting his yellow eyes for a second with another unpleasant glare. I almost think you're mad, Stanley, and if you do anything so insane, sure I am, you'll ruin it while you live, and wherever he is I'll find him out and acquit myself with the scorn I owe him of any share in a plot so unspeakably mean and absurd. Bravo! Bravo! You're a hero in Rowdy, and why the devil he continued in a changed tone. Do you apply those insolent terms to what I propose doing? I wish I could find words strong enough to express my horror of your plot, a plot every way disgusting. You plainly know something to Mark Wilder's discredit, and you mean Stanley to coerce him by fear into a marriage with your penniless sister who hates him. Sir, do you pretend to be a gentleman? I rather think so, he said, with a quiet sneer. Give up every idea of it this moment. Has it not struck you that Mark Wilder may possibly know something of you you would not have published? I don't think he does. What do you mean? On my life, Stanley, I'll acquaint Mr. Wilder this evening with what you meditate, and the atrocious liberty you presume. Yes, sir, though you are my brother, the atrocious liberty you dare to take with my name, unless you promise upon your honour now and here to dismiss forever the odious and utterly resultless scheme. Captain Lake looked very angry after his fashion, but said nothing. He could not at any time have very well defined his feelings toward his sister, but mingling in them certainly was a vein of unacknowledged dread, and shall I say, respect. He knew she was resolute, fierce of will, and prompt in action, and not to be bullied. There's more in this, Stanley, than you care to tell me. You have not troubled yourself a great deal about me, you know, and I'm no worse off now than any time for the last three years. You've not come down here on my account, that is, altogether.  You shan't mix my name in them. What you please, wise or foolish, you'll do in what concerns yourself. You always have, without consulting me. But I tell you again, Stanley, unless you promise upon your honour to forbear all mention of my name, I will write this evening to Lady Chelford, apprising her of your plans, and of my own disgust and indignation, and requesting her son's interference. Do you promise? There's no such haste, Raddy. I only mentioned it. If you don't like it, of course it can lead to nothing. And there's no use in my speaking to Wilder, and so there's an end of it. There may be some use, a purpose in which neither my feelings nor interests have any part. I venture to say, Stanley, your plans are all for yourself. You want to extort some advantage from Wilder, and you think, in his present situation, about to marry Dorcas, you can use me for the purpose. Thank heaven, sir, you committed for once the rare indiscretion of telling the truth. And unless you make me the promise I require, I will take before evening such measures as will completely exculpate me. Once again, do you promise? Yes, Raddy. Of course I promise. Upon your honour, upon my honour, there. I believe you gentlemen dragoons observe that oath. I hope so. If you choose to break it, you may give me some trouble, but you shan't compromise me. And now, Stanley, one word more. I fancy Mr. Wilder is a resolute man. None of the Wilders wanted courage. Captain Lake was by this time smiling his sly, sleepy smile upon his French boots. If you have formed any plan which depends upon frightening him, it is a desperate one. All I can tell you, Stanley, is this, that if I were a man, and an attempt made to extort from me any sort of concession by terror, I would shoot the miscreant who made it through the head, like a high-women.  About your danger, she answered. For once in your life, listen to reason. Mark Wilder is as prompt as you, and has ten times your nerve and sense. You are more likely to have committed yourself than he. Take care. He may retaliate your threat by a counter-move more dreadful. I know nothing of your doings, Stanley. Heaven forbid. But be warned, or you'll rue it. Why, ratty, you know nothing of the world. Do you suppose I'm quite demented? Ask a gentleman for his estate, or watch, because I know something to his disadvantage. Dear ratty, every man who has ever been on terms of intimacy with another must know things to his disadvantage. But no one thinks of telling them. The world would not tolerate it. It would prejudice the betrayer, at least as much as the betrayed. I don't affect to be angry, or talk romance and heroics, because you fancy such stuff. But I assure you, when will that old woman give me a cup of tea? I assure you, ratty, there's nothing in it. Rachel made no reply, but she looked steadfastly and uneasily upon the enigmatical face and downcast eyes of the young man. Well, I hope so, she said at last, with a sigh and a slight sense of relief. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Wilder's Hand This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Wilder's Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu Chapter 8 In which Captain Lake takes his hat and stick. So the young people sitting in the little drawing-room of Redmond's Farm pursued their dialogue. Rachel Lake had spoken last, and it was the captain's turn to speak next. Do you remember Miss Bochamp, ratty? He asked rather suddenly after a very long pause. Miss Bochamp? Oh, to be sure, you mean little Caroline. Yes, she must be quite grown up by this time. Five years. She promised to be pretty. Whatever. Rachel, very flushed and agitated still, was now trying to speak as usual. She is good-looking. A little coarse, some people think. Resume the young man.  Rather on a large scale, but certainly handsome. A style I admire rather, though it is not very refined, nor at all classic. But I like her, and I wish you'd advise me. He was talking after his want to the carpet. Oh! she exclaimed with a gentle sort of derision. You mean—he said looking up for a moment with a sudden stare—she has got money. Of course she has. I could not afford to admire her if she had not. But I see you are not just now in a mood to trouble yourself about my nonsense. We can talk about it to-morrow. And tell me now, how do you get on with the Brandon people? Rachel was curious and would, if she could, have recalled that sarcastic O which had postponed the story. But she was also a little angry, and with anger there was pride, which would not stoop to ask for the revelation which he chose to defer. So she said, Dorcas and I are very good friends, but I don't know very well what to make of her. Only I don't think she's quite so dull and apathetic, as I at first supposed, but still I'm puzzled. She is either absolutely uninteresting, or very interesting indeed, and I can't say which. Does she like you? he asked. I really don't know. She tolerates me, like everything else, and I don't flatter her. And we see a good deal of one another upon those terms, and I have no complaint to make of her. She has some aversions, but no quarrels, and has a sort of laziness, mental, bodily, and moral, that is sublime, but provoking, and sometimes I admire her, and sometimes I despise her, and I do not yet know which feeling is the jester. Surely she is woman enough to be fussed a little about her marriage. Oh, dear no, she takes the whole affair with a queen-like and supernatural indifference. She is either a fool or a very great philosopher, and there is something grand in the serene obscurity that envelops her. And Rachel laughed a very little. I must, I suppose, pay my respects, but to-morrow will be time enough. Or pretty little tea-cups, Rady. Quite charming. Old Cock China, isn't it? These were ancha-mamas, I think. Yes, they used to stand on the little marble table between the windows. Old Tamar had glided in while they were talking, and placed little tea-equipage on the table unnoticed, and the captain was sipping his cup of tea and inspecting the pattern while his sister amused him. This place, I suppose, is confoundedly slow, is it not? Do they entertain the neighbors ever at Brandon? Sometimes when old Lady Chelford and her son are staying there. But the neighbors can't entertain them, I fancy. Or you.  Like Aesop's fables, where the cows and sheep converse. And sometimes a wolf or a fox, she said. Well, Rady, I know you mean me. But as you wish it, I'll carry my fangs elsewhere. And what has become of Will Wilder? Oh, he's in the church! Quite right, the only thing he was fit for.  And where is poor Billy Courdard? Not quite half a mile away, he has got the vicarage of Naughton Friars. Oh, then, Will is not quite such a fool as we took him for. It is worth just a hundred and eighty pounds a year, but he's very far from a fool. Yes, of course. He knows Greek poets and Latin fathers and all the rest of it. I don't mean he ever was plucked. I daresay he's the kind of fellow you would like very well, Rady. And his sly eyes had a twinkle in them which seemed to say, Perhaps I've divined your secret. And so I do. And I like his wife, too, very much. His wife, so William, has married on a hundred and eighty pounds a year. And the Captain laughed quietly, but very pleasantly again. Oh, a very little more at all events. And I think they are about the happiest. And I'm sure they are the best people in this part of the world. Well, Rady, I'll see you tomorrow again. You preserve your good looks wonderfully. I wonder you haven't become an old woman here. And he kissed her and went his way with a slight wave of his hand in his odd smile as he closed the little garden gate after him. He turned to his left, walking down towards the town. And the innocent green trees hit him quickly. And the gush and tinkle of the clear brook rose faint and pleasantly through the leaves, from the depths of the glen and refreshed her ear after his unpleasant talk. She was flushed and felt oddly, a little stunned and strange, although she had talked lightly and easily enough. I forgot to ask him where he is staying. The brandenance, I suppose. I don't at all like his coming down here after Mark Wilder. What can he mean? He certainly never would have taken the trouble for me. What can he want of Mark Wilder? I think he knew old Mr. Bochamp. He may be a trustee, but that's not likely. Mark Wilder was not the person for any such office. I hope Stanley does not intend trying to extract money from him. Anything rather than that degradation, than that villainy. Stanley was always impracticable, perverse, deceitful, and so foolish with all his cunning and suspicion. So very foolish. Poor Stanley. He's so unscrupulous. And I don't know what to think. He said he could force Mark Wilder to leave the country. It must be some bad secret. If he tries and fails, I suppose he will be ruined. I don't know what to think. I never was so uneasy. He will blast himself and disgrace all connected with him. And it is quite useless speaking to him. Perhaps if Rachel Lake had been in Belgravia leading a town life, the matter would have taken no such dark coloring and pretentious proportions. But living in a small house in a dark glen with no companion and little to occupy her, it was different. She looked down the silent way he had so lately taken and repeated, rather bitterly, my only brother, my only brother, my only brother. That young lady was not quite a pauper. Though she may have thought so, comparatively, indeed, she was, but not, I venture, to think absolutely. She had just that symmetrical three hundred pounds a year which the famous Dean of St. Patrick's tells us he so often wished that he had clear. She had had some money in the funds besides, still more insignificant. But this her brother Stanley had borrowed and bagged piecemeal, and the consuls were no more. But though something of a nun in her way of life, there was no germ of the old maid in her, and money was not often in her thoughts. It was not a bad dot, and her brother Stanley had about twice as much and therefore was much better off than many a younger son of a duke. But these young people, after the manner of men, were spited with fortune, and indeed they had some cause. Old General Lake had once had more than ten thousand pounds a year and lived, until the crash came, in the style of a vicious old prince. It was a great break-up and a worst fall for Rachel then, for her brother, when the plate, coaches, pitchers, and all the valuable effects of old Tiberius went to the hammer, and he himself vanished from his clubs and other haunts and lived only a thin intermittent rumour, surmised to be in jail or in Guernsey, and quite forgotten soon, and a little later actually dead and buried. That's a devilish fine girl, said Mark Wilder. He was sitting at this moment on the billiard table, with his coat off, and his cue in his hand, and had lighted a cigar. He and I had just had a game, and were tired of it. Who! I asked. He was looking on me from the corners of his eyes, and smiling in a sly, rakish way, that no man likes in another. Rady Lake. She's a splendid girl, by Jove, don't you think so? And she liked me once devilish well, I can tell you. She was thin then, but she's plumped out of it, and improved every way. Whatever else he was, Mark was certainly no beauty. A little short he was, and rather square. One shoulder a thought higher than the other, and a slight energetic hitch in it, when he walked. His features in profile had something of a Grecian character, but his face was too broad, very brown, rather bloodless brown, and he had a pair of great, dense, vulgar black whiskers. He was very vain of his teeth, his only really good point, for his eyes were a small, cunning, grey pair, and this perhaps was the reason why he had contracted his habit of laughing and grinning a good deal more, than the fun of the dialogue always warranted. This sea-monster smoked here as unceremoniously as he would have done in Rhys Diven. And I only wonder he did not call for brandy and water. He had either grown coarser a great deal, or I more decent during our separation. He talked of his fiancée, as he might have an opera-girl almost, and was now discussing Miss Lake in the same style. Yes, she is, she's very well, but hang it, Wilder, you're a married man now, and must give up talking that way. People won't like it, you know, they'll take it to mean more than it does, and you oughtn't. Let's have another game. By and by, what do you think of Larkin, asked Wilder, with a sly glance from the corners of his eyes? I think he prays rather more than is good for his clients. Mind I spell it with an A, not with an E. But hang it for an attorney, you know, in such a sharp chap, it does seem to me rather a—a joke, eh? He bears a good character among the townspeople, doesn't he? And I don't see that it can do him any harm, remembering that he has a soul to be saved. Or the other thing, eh, laughed Wilder, but I think he comes it a little too strong, two sermons last Sunday, and a prayer meeting at nine o'clock? Well, it won't do him any harm, I repeated. Harm? Let Josiah Larkin alone for that, it gets him all the religious business of the county, and there are nice pickings among the charities, and endowments, and purchases of building-sites, and trust-deeds. I daresay it brings him in two or three hundred a year, eh? And Wilder laughed again. It has broken up his hard, proud heart, he says, but it left him a devilish hard head, I told him, and I think it sharpens his wits. I rather think you'll find him a useful man, and to be so in his line of business, he must have his wits about him, I can tell you. He amused me devilishly, said Wilder, with a sort of exhortation he treated me to. He's a delightfully imputed chap, and gave me to understand I was a limb of the devil, and he a saint. I told him I was better than he, in my humble opinion, and so I am, by chocks. I know very well I'm a miserable sinner, but there's mercy above, and I don't hide my faults. I don't set up for a light or a saint. I'm just what the prayer-book says, neither more nor less, a miserable sinner. There's only one good thing I can safely say for myself. I am no Pharisee, that's all. I air no religious preg, puffing myself, and trusting to forms, making long prayers in the marketplace. Mark's quotations were paraphrastic, and thinking of nothing but the uppermost seats in the synagogue, and broad borders in the praise of men. Hang them!  So Mark, like other men we meet with, was proud of being a publican, and his prayer was, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, spiritually proud, formalists, hypocrites, or even as this Pharisee. Do you wish another game? I asked. Just now, said Wilder, emitting first a thin stream of smoke and watching its ascent. Dorcas is the bell of the county, and she likes me, though she's odd. And don't show it the way other girls would. But a fellow knows pretty well when a girl likes him, and you know the marriage is a sensible sort of thing, and I'm determined, of course, to carry it through. But hang it! A fellow can't help thinking sometimes, there are other things besides money, and Dorcas is not my style. Rachel's more that way. She's a tremendous fine girl, by Jove, and a spirited minx, too. And I think, he added with an oath, having first taken two puffs at his cigar. If I had seen her first, I'd have thought twice before I'd have got myself into this business. I only smiled and shook my head. I did not believe a word of it. Yet perhaps I was wrong. He knew very well how to take care of his money. In fact, compared with other young fellows, he was a bit of a screw. But he could do a handsome and generous thing for himself. His selfishness would expand nobly, and rise above his prudential considerations, and drown them sometimes, and he was the sort of person who, if the fancy were strong enough, might marry in haste and repent, and make his wife, too, repent at leisure. What do you laugh at, Charlie? said Wilder, grinning himself. At your confounded grumbling mark, the luckiest dog in England will nothing content you. Why, I grumble very little, I think, considering how well off I am. Rejoined he with a laugh. Grumble! If you had a particle of gratitude, you'd build a temple to fortune. You're pagan enough for it, Mark. Fortune has nothing to do with it, says Mark, laughing again. Well, certainly neither had you. It was all the devil. I'm not joking, Charlie, upon my word, though I'm laughing. Mark swore now and then, but I'd take leave to soften his oaths. It was the Persian magician. Come, Mark, say what you mean. I mean what I say. When we were in the Persian Gulf near six years ago, I was in command of the ship. The captain, you see, was below, with a hurt in his leg. We had very rough weather, a gale for two days and a night almost, and a heavy swell after. In the night time we picked up three poor devils in an open boat. One was a Persian merchant with a grand beard. We called him the magician. He was so like the pictures of Aladdin's uncle. Why, he was an African. I interposed. My sense of accuracy offended. I don't care a curse what he was, rejoined Mark. He was exactly like the picture in the story books. And as we were lying off—I forget the cursed name of it— he begged me to put him ashore. He could not speak a word of English, but one of the fellows with him interpreted. And they were all anxious to get ashore. Poor devils, they had a notion, I believe. We were going to sell them for slaves, and he made me a present of a ring, and told me a long yarn about it. It was a talisman, it seems, and no one who wore it could ever be lost. So I took it for a keepsake. Here it is. And he extended his stumpy brown little finger, and showed a thick coarsely made ring of gold, with an uncut red stone of the size of a large cherry stone set in it. The stone is a humbug, said Wilder. It's not real. I showed it to Platten and Foil. It's some sort of glass, but I would not part with it. I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that glass stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now look at these Persian letters on the inside, for that's the oddest thing about it. Hang it, I can't pull it off.  I will come up again. And he swore a great oath. It's as true as you stand there. Our motto is not at odd, so I got the resurgum you see there engraved round it, and by Jove it did bring me up. I was near lost and did rise again. Eh? Well, it certainly was a curious accident. Mark had plenty of odd and not an amusing lore. Men who beat about the world in ships usually have, and these yarns furnished after the pattern of fellow's tails of anthropophagates and men whose heads do grow between their shoulders, one of the many varieties of fascination which he practiced on the fair sex. Only in justice to Mark I must say that he was by no means so shameless a drawer of the long bow as the Venetian gentleman and officer. When I got this ring, Charlie, three hundred a year and a London life would have been Peru and Paradise to pour pill-garlic and see what it has done for me.  So he does, laughed wilder in a state of elation, and he's not done working yet, I can tell you. When the estates are joined in one, they'll be good eleven thousand a year. And Larkin says with smart management I shall have a rental of thirteen thousand before three years, and that's only the beginning by George. Sir Henry Twiston can't hold his seat, he's all but broke, as poor as Jove, and the gentry hate him, and he lives abroad, he has had a hint or two already, and he'll never fight the next election. Do you see, eh? And wilder winked and grinned with a wag of his head. MP, eh? You did not see that before. I look ahead a bit, eh? And can take my turn at the will, eh? And he laughed with cunning exultation. Miss Rachel will find I'm not quite such a lover as she fancies, but even then it has only begun. Come, Charlie, you used to like a bet. What do you say? I'll buy you that twenty-five guinea-book of pictures. What's its name? If you give me three hundred guinea's one month after I'm a peer of Parliament. Eh? There's a sporting offer for you. Well, what do you say, eh? You mean to come out as an orator, then? Orator be diddled. Do you take me for a fool? No, Charlie, but I'll come out strong as a voter. That's the stuff they like, at the right side, of course, and that is the way to manage it. Thirteen thousand a year, the oldest family in the county, and a steady, thick, and thin supporter of the minister. Strong points, eh, Charlie? Well, do you take my offer? I laughed and declined to his great elation, and just then the gong sounded, and we were away to our toilets. While making my toilet for dinner, I amused myself by conjecturing whether there could be any foundation, in fact, for Mark's boast, that Miss Brandon liked him. Women are so enigmatical, some in everything, all in matters of the heart. Don't they sometimes actually admire what is repulsive?  Don't they often affect indifference, and occasionally even a version, where there is a different sort of feeling? As I went down, I heard Miss Lake chatting with her queen-like cousin, near an open door on the lobby. Rachel Lake was indeed a very constant guest at the hall, and the servants paid her much respect, which I look upon as a sign that the young heiress liked her, and treated her with consideration. And indeed there was an insubordinate and fiery spirit in that young lady, which would have broke nothing less, and dreamed of nothing but equality. 10. The Ace of Hearts Who should I find in the drawing room, talking fluently and smiling after his want to old Lady Chelford, who seemed to receive him very graciously, for her at least, but Captain Stanley Lake! I can't quite describe to you the odd and unpleasant sort of surprise, which that very gentleman-like figure, standing among the Brandon household gods at this moment, communicated to me. I thought of the few odd words and looks that had dropped from Wilder about him, with an ominous pang as I looked, and I felt somehow, as if there were some occult relation, between that confused prelude of Wilder's and the Mephistophalian image that had risen up, almost upon the spot where it was spoken. I glanced round for Wilder, but he was not there. You know, Captain Lake, said Lord Chelford, addressing me, and Lake turned round upon me, a little abruptly, his odd yellowish eyes, a little like those of the Sea Eagle, and the ghost of his smile that flickered on his singularly pale face, with a stern and insidious look, confronted me. There was something evil and shrinking in his aspect, which I felt with a sort of chill, like the commencing fascination of a serpent. I often thought, since, that he had expected to see Wilder before him. The churchyard meteor expired. There was nothing in a moment, but his ordinary smile of recognition. You're surprised to see me here, he said, in his very pleasing, low tones. I lighted on him in the village, and I knew Miss Brandon would not forgive me if I allowed him to go away without coming here. He had his hand upon Lake's shoulder. They're cousins, you know. We are all cousins. I'm bad at genealogies. My mother could tell us all about it. We, Branden's, Lake's, Wilder's, and Chelford's. At this moment Miss Brandon entered, with her brilliant cousin Rachel. The blonde and the dark, it was a dazzling contrast. So Chelford led Stanley Lake before the Lady of the Castle. I thought of the fair Brunescenda, with the captive knight in the hands of her seneshaw before her, and I fancied he said something of having found him trespassing in her town, and brought him up for judgment. Whatever Lord Chelford said, Miss Brandon received it very graciously, and even with a momentary smile. I wonder, she did not smile oftener, it became her so. But her greeting to Captain Lake was more than usually haughty and frozen, and her features, I fancied, particularly proud and pale. It seemed to me to indicate a great deal more than mere indifference, something of aversion, and nearer to a positive emotion than anything I had yet seen in that exquisitely apathetic face. How was it that this man with the yellow eyes seemed to glean from them an influence of pain or disturbance, wherever almost he looked? Shake hands with your cousin, my dear, said Old Lady Chelford, peremptorly. The little scene took place close to her chair, and upon this stage direction, the little piece of bi-play took place, and the young lady coldly touched the Captain's hand and passed on. Young as he was, Stanley Lake was an old man of the world, not to be disconcerted, and never saw more than exactly suited him. Waiting in the drawing-room I had some entertaining talk with Miss Lake. Her conversation was lively, and rather bold, not at all in the coarse sense, but she struck me as having formed a system of ethics and views of life, both good-humored and sarcastic, and had carried into her rustic sequestration the melancholy and precocious lore of her early London experience. When Lord Chelford joined us, I perceived that Wilder was in the room, and saw a very cordial greeting between him and Lake. The Captain appeared quite easy and cheerful, but Mark, I thought, not withstanding his laughter and general jollity, was uncomfortable, and I saw him once or twice when Stanley's eye was not upon him, glanced sharply on the young man with an uneasy and not very friendly curiosity. At dinner, Lake was easy and amusing. That meal passed off rather pleasantly, and when we joined the ladies in the drawing-room, the good vicar's enthusiastic little wife came to meet us in one of her honest little raptures. Now here's a thing worth your looking at. Did you ever see anything so beautiful in your life?  She arrested the phial of gentlemen just by a large lamp before whose effulgence she presented the subject of her eulogy, one of those costly trifles which announced the approach of Hyman as flowers spring up before the rosy steps of May. Well, it was pretty, French, I daresay, a little set of tablets, a toy, the cover of enamel studded in small jewels with a slender border of symbolic flowers and with a heart in the center, a mosaic of little car-buncles, rubies, and other rad and crimson stones placed with a view to light and shade. Exquisite indeed, said Lord Shelford, is this yours, Mrs. Wilder? Mine indeed, laughed poor little Mrs. Dorothy, well dear me, no indeed, and in an earnest whisper close in his ear, a present to Miss Brandon, and the donor is not a hundred miles away from your elbow, my Lord, and she winked slyly and laughed with a little nod at Wilder. Oh, I see, to be sure, really, Wilder, it does your taste infinite credit. I'm glad you'd like it, says Wilder, chuckling benignantly on it over his shoulder. I believe I have a little taste that way. Those are all real, you know, those jewels. Oh yes, of course! Have you seen it, Captain Lake? And he placed it in that gentleman's fingers, who now took his turn at the lamp and contemplated the little parallelogram with a gleam of sly amusement. What are you laughing at? asked Wilder a little snappishly. I was thinking it's very like the ace of hearts, answered the Captain softly, smiling on. Fi, Lake, there's no poetry in you, said Lord Shelford, laughing. Well now, though, really, it is funny, it did not strike me before. But do you know, now it is, laughs out jolly Mrs. Dolly, isn't it? Look at it, do, Mr. Wilder, isn't it like the ace of hearts? Wilder was laughing rather readily with the upper part of his face very surly, I thought. Never mind, Wilder, it's the winning card, said Lord Shelford, laying his hand on his shoulder, whereupon Lake laughed quietly, still looking on the ace of hearts with his sly eyes. And Wilder laughed too, more suddenly and noisily, than the humor of the joke seemed quite to call for, and glanced a grim look from the corners of his eyes on Lake. But the gallant Captain did not seem to perceive it, and after a few seconds more he handed it very innocently back to Mrs. Dorothy, only remarking, seriously, it is very pretty, and appropriate. And Wilder, making no remark, helped himself to a cup of coffee, and then to a glass of curacao, and then looked industriously at a Spanish quarto of Don Quixote, and lastly walked over to me on the hearthrog.   Lake? Oh, I really can't tell, but he'll soon tire of country life. I don't think he's much of a sportsman. Ha! Isn't he? I don't know anything about him almost, but I hate him. Why should you, though? He's a very gentleman-like fellow and your cousin. My cousin, the Devil's cousin, everyone's cousin. I don't know who's my cousin or who isn't, nor you don't, who've been for ten years over those DD papers. But I think he's the nastiest dog I ever met. I took a dislike to him at first sight long ago, and that never happened to me, but I was right. Wilder looked confoundedly angry and flustered, standing with his heels on the edge of the rug, his hands in his pockets jingling some silver there, and glancing from under his red forehead sternly and unsteadily across the room. He's not a man for country quarters. He'll soon be back in town. Or to brighten, I said. If he doesn't, I will. That's all. Just to get him off this unpleasant groove with a little jolt, I said. By the by, Wilder, you know the pictures here? Who is the tall man with the long pale face and wild, phosphoric eyes? I was always afraid of him, in a long perook and dark red velvet coat facing the hall door.  That? Oh, I know. That's Lorne Brandon. He was one of our family devils he was. A devil in a family now and then is not such a bad thing when there's work for him. All the time he was talking to me, his angry little eyes were following Lake.  He was going to marry the gamekeeper's daughter, it was thought, and he and the old boy, who was for high blood and all that, were at loggerheads about it. It was not proved, only thought likely, which showed what a nice character he was, but he might have done worse. I suppose Miss Partridge would have had a precious lot of babbies, and who knows where the estate would have been by this time. I believe Charlie, he recommends suddenly. There is not such an unnatural family I'm record as ours is there. It's well to be distinguished in any line. I forget all the other good things he did, but he ended by shooting himself through the head in his bedroom. And that was not the worst thing ever he did. And Wilder laughed again, and began to whistle very low. Not, I fancy, for want of thought, but as a sort of accompaniment there too, for he suddenly said, and where is he staying? Who, Lake? Yes. I don't know, but I think he mentioned Larkins' house, didn't he? I'm not quite sure. I suppose he thinks I'm made of money. By Jove, if he wants to borrow any, I'll surprise him, the cur. I'll talk to him. And Wilder chuckled angrily, and the small change in his pocket tinkled fiercely, as his eye glanced on the graceful captain, who was entertaining the ladies, no doubt, very agreeably in the distance.