"And now, Mr Crosbie, what have you got to say to me? But, first, I mean to repeat Lady Julia's question, as I told you that I should do.—When did you hear last from Miss Dale?"

"It is cruel in you to ask me such a question, after what I have already told you. You know that I have given to Miss Dale a promise of marriage."

"Very well, sir. I don't see why you should bring me in here to tell me anything that is so publicly known as that. With such a herald as Lady Julia it was quite unnecessary."

"If you can only answer me in that tone I will make an end of it at once. When I told you of my engagement, I told you also that another woman possessed my heart. Am I wrong to suppose that you knew to whom I alluded?"

"Indeed, I did not, Mr Crosbie. I am no conjuror, and I have not scrutinised you so closely as your friend Lady Julia."

"It is you that I love. I am sure I need hardly say so now."

"Hardly, indeed,—considering that you are engaged to Miss Dale."

"As to that I have, of course, to own that I have behaved foolishly;—worse than foolishly, if you choose to say so. You cannot condemn me more absolutely than I condemn myself. But I have made up my mind as to one thing. I will not marry where I do not love." Oh, if Lily could have heard him as he then spoke! "It would be impossible for me to speak in terms too high of Miss Dale; but I am quite sure that I could not make her happy as her husband."

"Why did you not think of that before you asked her?" said Alexandrina. But there was very little of condemnation in her tone.

"I ought to have done so; but it is hardly for you to blame me with severity. Had you, when we were last together in London—had you been less—"

"Less what?"

"Less defiant," said Crosbie, "all this might perhaps have been avoided."

Lady Alexandrina could not remember that she had been defiant; but, however, she let that pass. "Oh, yes; of course it was my fault."

"I went down there to Allington with my heart ill at ease, and now I have fallen into this trouble. I tell you all as it has happened. It is impossible that I should marry Miss Dale. It would be wicked in me to do so, seeing that my heart belongs altogether to another. I have told you who is that other; and now may I hope for an answer?"

"An answer to what?"

"Alexandrina, will you be my wife?"

If it had been her object to bring him to a point-blank declaration and proposition of marriage, she had certainly achieved her object now. And she had that trust in her own power of management and in her mother's, that she did not fear that in accepting him she would incur the risk of being served as he was serving Lily Dale. She knew her own position and his too well for that. If she accepted him she would in due course of time become his wife,—let Miss Dale and all her friends say what they might to the contrary. As to that head she had no fear. But nevertheless she did not accept him at once. Though she wished for the prize, her woman's nature hindered her from taking it when it was offered to her.

"How long is it, Mr Crosbie," she said, "since you put the same question to Miss Dale?"

"I have told you everything, Alexandrina,—as I promised that I would do. If you intend to punish me for doing so—"

"And I might ask another question. How long will it be before you put the same question to some other girl?"

He turned round as though to walk away from her in anger; but when he had gone half the distance to the door he returned.

"By heaven!" he said, and he spoke somewhat roughly, too, "I'll have an answer. You at any rate have nothing with which to reproach me. All that I have done wrong, I have done through you, or on your behalf. You have heard my proposal. Do you intend to accept it?"

"I declare you startle me. If you demanded my money or my life, you could not be more imperious."

"Certainly not more resolute in my determination."

"And if I decline the honour?"

"I shall think you the most fickle of your sex."

"And if I were to accept it?"

"I would swear that you were the best, the dearest, and the sweetest of women."

"I would rather have your good opinion than your bad, certainly," said Lady Alexandrina. And then it was understood by both of them that that affair was settled. Whenever she was called on in future to speak of Lily, she always called her, "that poor Miss Dale;" but she never again spoke a word of reproach to her future lord about that little adventure. "I shall tell mamma, to-night," she said to him, as she bade him good-night in some sequestered nook to which they had betaken themselves. Lady Julia's eye was again on them as they came out from the sequestered nook, but Alexandrina no longer cared for Lady Julia.

"George, I cannot quite understand about that Mr Palliser. Isn't he to be a duke, and oughtn't he to be a lord now?" This question was asked by Mrs George de Courcy of her husband, when they found themselves together in the seclusion of the nuptial chamber.

"Yes; he'll be Duke of Omnium when the old fellow dies. I think he's one of the slowest fellows I ever came across. He'll take deuced good care of the property, though."

"But, George, do explain it to me. It is so stupid not to understand, and I am afraid of opening my mouth for fear of blundering."

"Then keep your mouth shut, my dear. You'll learn all those sort of things in time, and nobody notices it if you don't say anything."

"Yes, but, George;—I don't like to sit silent all the night. I'd sooner be up here with a novel if I can't speak about anything."

"Look at Lady Dumbello. She doesn't want to be always talking."

"Lady Dumbello is very different from me. But do tell me, who is Mr Palliser?"

"He's the duke's nephew. If he were the duke's son, he would be the Marquis of Silverbridge."

"And will he be plain Mister till his uncle dies?"

"Yes, a very plain Mister."

"What a pity for him. But, George,—if I have a baby, and if he should be a boy, and if—"

"Oh, nonsense; it will be time enough to talk of that when he comes. I'm going to sleep."



CHAPTER XXIV

A Mother-in-Law and a Father-in-Law

On the following morning Mr Plantagenet Palliser was off upon his political mission before breakfast;—either that, or else some private comfort was afforded to him in guise of solitary rolls and coffee. The public breakfast at Courcy Castle was going on at eleven o'clock, and at that hour Mr Palliser was already closeted with the Mayor of Silverbridge.

"I must get off by the 3.45 train," said Mr Palliser. "Who is there to speak after me?"

"Well, I shall say a few words; and Growdy,—he'll expect them to listen to him. Growdy has always stood very firm by his grace, Mr Palliser."

"Mind we are in the room sharp at one. And you can have a fly, for me to get away to the station, ready in the yard. I won't go a moment before I can help. I shall be just an hour and a half myself. No, thank you, I never take any wine in the morning." And I may here state that Mr Palliser did get away by the 3.45 train, leaving Mr Growdy still talking on the platform. Constituents must be treated with respect; but time has become so scarce nowadays that that respect has to be meted out by the quarter of an hour with parsimonious care.

In the meantime there was more leisure at Courcy Caste. Neither the countess nor Lady Alexandrina came down to breakfast, but their absence gave rise to no special remark. Breakfast at the castle was a morning meal at which people showed themselves, or did not show themselves, as it pleased them. Lady Julia was there looking very glum, and Crosbie was sitting next to his future sister-in-law Margaretta, who already had placed herself on terms of close affection with him. As he finished his tea she whispered into his ear, "Mr Crosbie, if you could spare half an hour, mamma would so like to see you in her own room." Crosbie declared that he would be delighted to wait upon her, and did in truth feel some gratitude in being welcomed as a son-in-law into the house. And yet he felt also that he was being caught, and that in ascending into the private domains of the countess he would be setting the seal upon his own captivity.

Nevertheless, he went with a smiling face and a light step, Lady Margaretta ushering him the way. "Mamma," said she, "I have brought Mr Crosbie up to you. I did not know that you were here, Alexandrina, or I should have warned him."

The countess and her youngest daughter had been breakfasting together in the elder lady's sitting-room, and were now seated in a very graceful and well-arranged deshabille. The tea-cups out of which they had been drinking were made of some elegant porcelain, the teapot and cream-jug were of chased silver and as delicate in their sway. The remnant of food consisted of morsels of French roll which had not even been allowed to crumble themselves in a disorderly fashion, and of infinitesimal pats of butter. If the morning meal of the two ladies had been as unsubstantial as the appearance of the fragments indicated, it must be presumed that they intended to lunch early. The countess herself was arrayed in an elaborate morning wrapper of figured silk, but the simple Alexandrina wore a plain white muslin peignoir, fastened with pink ribbon. Her hair, which she usually carried in long rolls, now hung loose over her shoulders, and certainly added something to her stock of female charms. The countess got up as Crosbie entered and greeted him with an open hand; but Alexandrina kept her seat, and merely nodded at him a little welcome. "I must run down again," said Margaretta, "or I shall have left Amelia with all the cares of the house upon her."

"Alexandrina has told me all about it," said the countess, with her sweetest smile, "and I have given her my approval. I really do think you will suit each other very well."

"I am very much obliged to you," said Crosbie. "I'm sure at any rate of this,—that she will suit me very well."

"Yes; I think she will. She is a good sensible girl."

"Psha, mamma; pray don't go on in that Goody Twoshoes sort of way."

"So you are, my dear. If you were not it would not be well for you to do as you are going to do. If you were giddy and harum-scarum, and devoted to rank and wealth and that sort of thing, it would not be well for you to marry a commoner without fortune. I'm sure Mr Crosbie will excuse me for saying so much as that."

"Of course I know," said Crosbie, "that I had no right to look so high."

"Well; we'll say nothing more about it," said the countess.

"Pray don't," said Alexandrina. "It sounds so like a sermon."

"Sit down, Mr Crosbie," said the countess, "and let us have a little conversation. She shall sit by you, if you like it. Nonsense, Alexandrina,—if he asks it!"

"Don't, mamma;—I mean to remain where I am."

"Very well, my dear;—then remain where you are. She is a wilful girl, Mr Crosbie; as you will say when you hear that she has told me all that you told her last night." Upon hearing this, he changed colour a little, but said nothing. "She has told me," continued the countess, "about that young lady at Allington. Upon my word, I'm afraid you have been very naughty."

"I have been foolish, Lady de Courcy."

"Of course; I did not mean anything worse than that. Yes, you have been foolish;—amusing yourself in a thoughtless way, you know, and, perhaps, a little piqued because a certain lady was not to be won so easily as your Royal Highness wished. Well, now, all that must be settled, you know, as quickly as possible. I don't want to ask any indiscreet questions; but if the young lady has really been left with any idea that you meant anything, don't you think you should undeceive her at once?"

"Of course he will, mamma."

"Of course you will; and it will be a great comfort to Alexandrina to know that the matter is arranged. You hear what Lady Julia is saying almost every hour of her life. Now, of course, Alexandrina does not care what an old maid like Lady Julia may say; but it will be better for all parties that the rumour should be put a stop to. If the earl were to hear it, he might, you know—" And the countess shook her head, thinking that she could thus best indicate what the earl might do, if he were to take it into his head to do anything.

Crosbie could not bring himself to hold any very confidential intercourse with the countess about Lily; but he gave a muttered assurance that he should, as a matter of course, make known the truth to Miss Dale with as little delay as possible. He could not say exactly when he would write, nor whether he would write to her or to her mother; but the thing should be done immediately on his return to town.

"If it will make the matter easier, I will write to Mrs Dale," said the countess. But to this scheme Mr Crosbie objected very strongly.

And then a few words were said about the earl. "I will tell him this afternoon," said the countess; "and then you can see him to-morrow morning. I don't suppose he will say very much, you know; and perhaps he may think,—you won't mind my saying it, I'm sure,—that Alexandrina might have done better. But I don't believe that he'll raise any strong objection. There will be something about settlements, and that sort of thing, of course." Then the countess went away, and Alexandrina was left with her lover for half an hour. When the half-hour was over, he felt that he would have given all that he had in the world to have back the last four-and-twenty hours of his existence. But he had no hope. To jilt Lily Dale would, no doubt, be within his power, but he knew that he could not jilt Lady Alexandrina de Courcy.

On the next morning at twelve o'clock he had his interview with the father, and a very unpleasant interview it was. He was ushered into the earl's room, and found the great peer standing on the rug, with his back to the fire, and his hands in his breeches pockets.

"So you mean to marry my daughter?" said he. "I'm not very well, as you see; I seldom am."

These last words were spoken in answer to Crosbie's greeting. Crosbie had held out his hand to the earl, and had carried his point so far that the earl had been forced to take one of his own out of his pocket, and give it to his proposed son-in-law.

"If your lordship has no objection. I have, at any rate, her permission to ask for yours."

"I believe you have not any fortune, have you? She's got none; of course you know that?"

"I have a few thousand pounds, and I believe she has as much."

"About as much as will buy bread to keep the two of you from starving. It's nothing to me. You can marry her if you like; only, look here, I'll have no nonsense. I've had an old woman in with me this morning,—one of those that are here in the house,—telling me some story about some other girl that you have made a fool of. It's nothing to me how much of that sort of thing you may have done, so that you do none of it here. But,—if you play any prank of that kind with me, you'll find that you've made a mistake."

Crosbie hardly made any answer to this, but got himself out of the room as quickly as he could.

"You'd better talk to Gazebee about the trifle of money you've got," said the earl. Then he dismissed the subject from his mind, and no doubt imagined that he had fully done his duty by his daughter.

On the day after this, Crosbie was to go. On the last afternoon, shortly before dinner, he was waylaid by Lady Julia, who had passed the day in preparing traps to catch him.

"Mr Crosbie," she said, "let me have one word with you. Is this true?"

"Lady Julia," he said, "I really do not know why you should inquire into my private affairs."

"Yes, sir, you do know; you know very well. That poor young lady who has no father and no brother, is my neighbour, and her friends are my friends. She is a friend of my own, and being an old woman, I have a right to speak for her. If this is true, Mr Crosbie, you are treating her like a villain."

"Lady Julia, I really must decline to discuss the matter with you."

"I'll tell everybody what a villain you are; I will, indeed—a villain and a poor weak silly fool. She was too good for you; that's what she was." Crosbie, as Lady Julia was addressing to him the last words, hurried upstairs away from her, but her ladyship, standing on a landing-place, spoke up loudly, so that no word should be lost on her retreating enemy.

"We positively must get rid of that woman," the countess, who heard it all, said to Margaretta. "She is disturbing the house and disgracing herself every day."

"She went to papa this morning, mamma."

"She did not get much by that move," said the countess.

On the following morning Crosbie returned to town, but just before he left the castle he received a third letter from Lily Dale. "I have been rather disappointed at not hearing this morning," said Lily, "for I thought the postman would have brought me a letter. But I know you'll be a better boy when you get back to London, and I won't scold you. Scold you, indeed! No; I'll never scold you, not though I shouldn't hear for a month."

He would have given all that he had in the world, three times told, if he could have blotted out that visit to Courcy Castle from the past facts of his existence.



CHAPTER XXV

Adolphus Crosbie Spends an Evening at His Club

Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest station, in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself from thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on which he had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that he was a villain. On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from the house to watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his receding figure. As he had not started very early she had sat with him at the breakfast-table; but others also had sat there, and when he got up to go, she did no more than smile softly and give him her hand. It had been already settled that he was to spend his Christmas at Courcy; as it had been also settled that he was to spend it at Allington.

Lady Amelia was, of all the family, the most affectionate to him, and perhaps of them all she was the one whose affection was worth the most. She was not a woman endowed with a very high mind or with very noble feelings. She had begun life trusting to the nobility of her blood for everything, and declaring somewhat loudly among her friends that her father's rank and her mother's birth imposed on her the duty of standing closely by her own order. Nevertheless, at the age of thirty-three she had married her father's man of business, under circumstances which were not altogether creditable to her. But she had done her duty in her new sphere of life with some constancy and a fixed purpose; and now that her sister was going to marry, as she had done, a man much below herself in social standing, she was prepared to do her duty as a sister and a sister-in-law.

"We shall be up in town in November, and of course you'll come to us at once. Albert Villa, you know, in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood. We dine at seven, and on Sundays at two; and you'll always find a place. Mind you come to us, and make yourself quite at home. I do so hope you and Mortimer will get on well together."

"I'm sure we shall," said Crosbie. But he had had higher hopes in marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with Mortimer Gazebee. What those hopes were he could hardly define to himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of them. Lady de Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to that secretaryship at the General Committee Office; but Crosbie, when he came to weigh in his mind what good might result to him from this, was disposed to think that his chance of obtaining the promotion would be quite as good without the interest of the Under-Secretary of State for India as with it. Now that he belonged, as we may say, to this noble family, he could hardly discern what were the advantages which he had expected from this alliance. He had said to himself that it would be much to have a countess for a mother-in-law; but now, even already, although the possession to which he had looked was not yet garnered, he was beginning to tell himself that the thing was not worth possessing.

As he sat in the train, with a newspaper in his hand, he went on acknowledging to himself that he was a villain. Lady Julia had spoken the truth to him on the stairs at Courcy, and so he confessed over and over again. But he was chiefly angry with himself for this,—that he had been a villain without gaining anything by his villainy; that he had been a villain, and was to lose so much by his villainy. He made comparison between Lily and Alexandrina, and owned to himself, over and over again, that Lily would make the best wife that a man could take to his bosom. As to Alexandrina, he knew the thinness of her character. She would stick by him, no doubt; and in a circuitous, discontented, unhappy way, would probably be true to her duties as a wife and mother. She would be nearly such another as Lady Amelia Gazebee. But was that a prize sufficiently rich to make him contented with his own prowess and skill in winning it? And was that a prize sufficiently rich to justify him to himself for his terrible villainy? Lily Dale he had loved; and he now declared to himself that he could have continued to love her through his whole life. But what was there for any man to love in Alexandrina de Courcy?

While resolving, during his first four or five days at the castle, that he would throw Lily Dale overboard, he had contrived to quiet his conscience by inward allusions to sundry heroes of romance. He had thought of Lothario, Don Juan, and of Lovelace; and had told himself that the world had ever been full of such heroes. And the world, too, had treated such heroes well; not punishing them at all as villains, but caressing them rather, and calling them curled darlings. Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another? Ladies had ever been fond of the Don Juan character, and Don Juan had generally been popular with men also. And then he named to himself a dozen modern Lotharios,—men who were holding their heads well above water, although it was known that they had played this lady false, and brought that other one to death's door, or perhaps even to death itself. War and love were alike, and the world was prepared to forgive any guile to militants in either camp.

But now that he had done the deed he found himself forced to look at it from quite another point of view. Suddenly that character of Lothario showed itself to him in a different light, and one in which it did not please him to look at it as belonging to himself. He began to feel that it would be almost impossible for him to write that letter to Lily, which it was absolutely necessary that he should write. He was in a position in which his mind would almost turn itself to thoughts of self-destruction as the only means of escape. A fortnight ago he was a happy man, having everything before him that a man ought to want; and now—now that he was the accepted son-in-law of an earl, and the confident expectant of high promotion—he was the most miserable, degraded wretch in the world!

He changed his clothes at his lodgings in Mount Street and went down to his club to dinner. He could, at any rate, do nothing that night. His letter to Allington must, no doubt, be written at once; but, as he could not send it before the next night's post, he was not forced to set to work upon it that evening. As he walked along Piccadilly on his way to St. James's Square, it occurred to him that it might be well to write a short line to Lily, telling her nothing of the truth,—a note written as though his engagement with her was still unbroken, but yet written with care, saying nothing about that engagement, so as to give him a little time. Then he thought that he would telegraph to Bernard and tell everything to him. Bernard would, of course, be prepared to avenge his cousin in some way, but for such vengeance Crosbie felt that he should care little. Lady Julia had told him that Lily was without father or brother, thereby accusing him of the basest cowardice. "I wish she had a dozen brothers," he said to himself. But he hardly knew why he expressed such a wish.

He returned to London on the last day of October, and he found the streets at the West End nearly deserted. He thought, therefore, that he should be quite alone at his club, but as he entered the dinner room he saw one of his oldest and most intimate friends standing before the fire. Fowler Pratt was the man who had first brought him into Sebright's, and had given him almost his earliest start on his successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age a few years senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he was less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much less popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate private fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was unmarried, not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent. For the first few years of Crosbie's life in London he had lived very much with his friend Pratt, and had been accustomed to depend much on his friend's counsel; but latterly, since he had himself become somewhat noticeable, he had found more pleasure in the society of such men as Dale, who were not his superiors either in age or wisdom. But there had been no coolness between him and Pratt, and now they met with perfect cordiality.

"I thought you were down in Barsetshire," said Pratt.

"And I thought you were in Switzerland."

"I have been in Switzerland," said Pratt.

"And I have been in Barsetshire," said Crosbie. Then they ordered their dinner together.

"And so you're going to be married?" said Pratt, when the waiter had carried away the cheese.

"Who told you that?"

"Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth."

"But if it be not true?"

"I have heard it for the last month," said Pratt, "and it has been spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?"

"I believe it is," said Crosbie, slowly.

"Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I'm told, is a cousin of Dale's."

Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and said nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in his hand, looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be well that he should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give him better advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would be less shocked at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance about women, and had never pretended to very high sentiments.

"Come up into the smoking-room and I'll tell you all about it," said Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.

He found it very hard to tell;—much harder than he had beforehand fancied. "I have got into terrible trouble," he began by saying. Then he told how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how, he had been rash and imprudent, how nice she was—"infinitely too good for such a man as I am," he said;—how she had accepted him, and then how he had repented. "I should have told you beforehand," he then said, "that I was already half engaged to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy." The reader, however, will understand that this half engagement was a fiction.

"And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?"

"Exactly so."

"And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have changed your mind?"

"I know that I have behaved very badly," said Crosbie.

"Indeed you have," said his friend.

"It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved almost before he knows where he is."

"Well; I can't look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing her and not offering to marry her,—though even that sort of thing isn't much to my taste. But, by George, to make an offer of marriage to such a girl as that in September, to live for a month in her family as her affianced husband, and then coolly go away to another house in October, and make an offer to another girl of higher rank—"

"You know very well that that has had nothing to do with it."

"It looks very like it. And how are you going to communicate these tidings to Miss Dale?"

"I don't know," said Crosbie, who was beginning to be very sore.

"And you have quite made up your mind that you'll stick to the earl's daughter?"

The idea of jilting Alexandrina instead of Lily had never as yet presented itself to Crosbie, and now, as he thought of it, he could not perceive that it was feasible.

"Yes," he said, "I shall marry Lady Alexandrina;—that is, if I do not cut the whole concern, and my own throat into the bargain."

"If I were in your shoes I think I should cut the whole concern. I could not stand it. What do you mean to say to Miss Dale's uncle?"

"I don't care a —— for Miss Dale's uncle," said, Crosbie. "If he were to walk in at that door this moment, I would tell him the whole story, without—"

As he was yet speaking, one of the club servants opened the door of the smoking-room, and seeing Crosbie seated in a lounging-chair near the fire, went up to him with a gentleman's card. Crosbie took the card and read the name. "Mr Dale, Allington."

"The gentleman is in the waiting-room," said the servant.

Crosbie for the moment was struck dumb. He had declared that very moment that he should feel no personal disinclination to meet Mr Dale, and now that gentleman was within the walls of the club, waiting to see him!

"Who's that?" asked Pratt. And then Crosbie handed him the card. "Whew-w-w-hew," whistled Pratt.

"Did you tell the gentleman I was here?" asked Crosbie.

"I said I thought you were upstairs, sir."

"That will do," said Pratt. "The gentleman will no doubt wait for a minute." And then the servant went out of the room. "Now, Crosbie, you must make up your mind. By one of these women and all her friends you will ever be regarded as a rascal, and they of course will look out to punish you with such punishment as may come to their hands. You must now choose which shall be the sufferer."

The man was a coward at heart. The reflection that he might, even now, at this moment, meet the old squire on pleasant terms,—or at any rate not on terms of defiance, pleaded more strongly in Lily's favour than had any other argument since Crosbie had first made up his mind to abandon her. He did not fear personal ill-usage;—he was not afraid lest he should be kicked or beaten; but he did not dare to face the just anger of the angry man.

"If I were you," said Pratt, "I would not go down to that man at the present moment for a trifle."

"But what can I do?"

"Shirk away out of the club. Only if you do that it seems to me that you'll have to go on shirking for the rest of your life."

"Pratt, I must say that I expected something more like friendship from you."

"What can I do for you? There are positions in which it is impossible to help a man. I tell you plainly that you have behaved very badly. I do not see that I can help you."

"Would you see him?"

"Certainly not, if I am to be expected to take your part."

"Take any part you like,—only tell him the truth."

"And what is the truth?"

"I was part engaged to that other girl before; and then, when I came to think of it, I knew that I was not fit to marry Miss Dale. I know I have behaved badly; but, Pratt, thousands have done the same thing before."

"I can only say that I have not been so unfortunate as to reckon any of those thousands among my friends."

"You mean to tell me, then, that you are going to turn your back on me?" said Crosbie.

"I haven't said anything of the kind. I certainly won't undertake to defend you, for I don't see that your conduct admits of defence. I will see this gentleman if you wish it, and tell him anything that you desire me to tell him."

At this moment the servant returned with a note for Crosbie. Mr Dale had called for paper and envelope, and sent up to him the following missive:—"Do you intend to come down to me? I know that you are in the house." "For heaven's sake go to him," said Crosbie. "He is well aware that I was deceived about his niece,—that I thought he was to give her some fortune. He knows all about that, and that when I learned from him that she was to have nothing—"

"Upon my word, Crosbie, I wish you could find another messenger."

"Ah! you do not understand," said Crosbie in his agony. "You think that I am inventing this plea about her fortune now. It isn't so. He will understand. We have talked all this over before, and he knew how terribly I was disappointed. Shall I wait for you here, or will you come to my lodgings? Or I will go down to the Beaufort, and will wait for you there." And it was finally arranged that he should get himself out of this club and wait at the other for Pratt's report of the interview.

"Do you go down first," said Crosbie.

"Yes: I had better," said Pratt. "Otherwise you may be seen. Mr Dale would have his eye upon you, and there would be a row in the house." There was a smile of sarcasm on Pratt's face as he spoke which angered Crosbie even in his misery, and made him long to tell his friend that he would not trouble him with this mission,—that he would manage his own affairs himself; but he was weakened and mentally humiliated by the sense of his own rascality, and had already lost the power of asserting himself, and of maintaining his ascendancy. He was beginning to recognise the fact that he had done that for which he must endure to be kicked, to be kicked morally if not materially; and that it was no longer possible for him to hold his head up without shame.

Pratt took Mr Dale's note in his hand and went down into the stranger's room. There he found the squire standing, so that he could see through the open door of the room to the foot of the stairs down which Crosbie must descend before he could leave the club. As a measure of first precaution the ambassador closed the door; then he bowed to Mr Dale, and asked him if he would take a chair.

"I wanted to see Mr Crosbie," said the squire.

"I have your note to that gentleman in my hand," said he. "He has thought it better that you should have this interview with me;—and under all the circumstances perhaps it is better."

"Is he such a coward that he dare not see me?"

"There are some actions, Mr Dale, that will make a coward of any man. My friend Crosbie is, I take it, brave enough in the ordinary sense of the word, but he has injured you."

"It is all true, then?"

"Yes, Mr Dale; I fear it is all true."

"And you call that man your friend! Mr—; I don't know what your name is."

"Pratt;—Fowler Pratt. I have known Crosbie for fourteen years,—ever since he was a boy; and it is not my way, Mr Dale, to throw over an old friend under any circumstances."

"Not if he committed a murder."

"No; not though he committed a murder."

"If what I hear is true, this man is worse than a murderer."

"Of course, Mr Dale, I cannot know what you have heard. I believe that Mr Crosbie has behaved very badly to your niece, Miss Dale; I believe that he was engaged to marry her, or, at any rate, that some such proposition had been made."

"Proposition! Why, sir, it was a thing so completely understood that everybody knew it in the county. It was so positively fixed that there was no secret about it. Upon my honour, Mr Pratt, I can't as yet understand it. If I remember right, its not a fortnight since he left my house at Allington,—not a fortnight. And that poor girl was with him on the morning of his going as his betrothed bride. Not a fortnight since! And now I've had a letter from an old family friend telling me that he is going to marry one of Lord de Courcy's daughters! I went instantly off to Courcy, and found that he had started for London. Now, I have followed him here; and you tell me it's all true."

"I am afraid it is, Mr Dale; too true."

"I don't understand it; I don't, indeed. I cannot bring myself to believe that the man who was sitting the other day at my table should be so great a scoundrel. Did he mean it all the time that he was there?"

"No; certainly not. Lady Alexandrina de Courcy was, I believe, an old friend of his;—with whom, perhaps, he had had some lover's quarrel. On his going to Courcy they made it up, and this is the result."

"And that is to be sufficient for my poor girl?"

"You will, of course, understand that I am not defending Mr Crosbie. The whole affair is very sad,—very sad, indeed. I can only say, in his excuse, that he is not the first man who has behaved badly to a lady."

"And that is his message to me, is it? And that is what I am to tell my niece? You have been deceived by a scoundrel. But what then? You are not the first! Mr Pratt, I give you my word as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I have lived a good deal out of the world, and am, therefore, perhaps; more astonished than I ought to be."

"Mr Dale, I feel for you—"

"Feel for me! What is to become of my girl? And do you suppose that I will let this other marriage go on; that I will not tell the de Courcys, and all the world at large, what sort of a man this is,—that I will not get at him to punish him? Does he think that I will put up with this?"

"I do not know what he thinks; I must only beg that you will not mix me up in the matter—as though I were a participator in his offence."

"Will you tell him from me that I desire to see him?"

"I do not think that that would do any good."

"Never mind, sir; you have brought me his message; will you have the goodness now to take back mine to him?"

"Do you mean at once,—this evening,—now?"

"Yes, at once,—this evening,—now;—this minute."

"Ah; he has left the club; he is not here now; he went when I came to you."

"Then he is a coward as well as a scoundrel." In answer to which assertion, Mr Fowler Pratt merely shrugged his shoulders.

"He is a coward as well as a scoundrel. Will you have the kindness to tell your friend from me that he is a coward and a scoundrel,—and a liar, sir."

"If it be so, Miss Dale is well quit of her engagement."

"That is your consolation, is it? That may be all very well nowadays; but when I was a young man, I would sooner have burnt out my tongue than have spoken in such a way on such a subject. I would, indeed. Good-night, Mr Pratt. Pray make your friend understand that he has not yet seen the last of the Dales; although, as you hint, the ladies of that family will no doubt have learned that he is not fit to associate with them." Then, taking up his hat, the squire made his way out of the club.

"I would not have done it," said Pratt to himself, "for all the beauty, and all the wealth, and all the rank that ever were owned by a woman."



CHAPTER XXVI

Lord de Courcy in the Bosom of His Family

Lady Julia De Guest had not during her life written many letters to Mr Dale of Allington, nor had she ever been very fond of him. But when she felt certain how things were going at Courcy, or rather, as we may say, how they had already gone, she took pen in hand, and set herself to work, doing, as she conceived, her duty by her neighbour.

MY DEAR MR DALE [she said],

I believe I need make no secret of having known that your niece Lilian is engaged to Mr Crosbie, of London. I think it proper to warn you that if this be true Mr Crosbie is behaving himself in a very improper manner here. I am not a person who concerns myself much in the affairs of other people; and under ordinary circumstances, the conduct of Mr Crosbie would be nothing to me,—or, indeed, less than nothing; but I do to you as I would wish that others should do unto me. I believe it is only too true that Mr Crosbie has proposed to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, and been accepted by her. I think you will believe that I would not say this without warrant, and if there be anything in it, it may be well, for the poor young lady's sake, that you should put yourself in the way of learning the truth.

Believe me to be yours sincerely,

JULIA DE GUEST.

COURCY CASTLE, Thursday.

The squire had never been very fond of any of the De Guest family, and had, perhaps, liked Lady Julia the least of them all. He was wont to call her a meddling old woman,—remembering her bitterness and pride in those now long bygone days in which the gallant major had run off with Lady Fanny. When he first received this letter, he did not, on the first reading of it, believe a word of its contents. "Cross-grained old harridan," he said out loud to his nephew. "Look what that aunt of yours has written to me." Bernard read the letter twice, and as he did so his face became hard and angry.

"You don't mean to say you believe it?" said the squire.

"I don't think it will be safe to disregard it."

"What! you think it possible that your friend is doing as she says?"

"It is certainly possible. He was angry when he found that Lily had no fortune."

"Heavens, Bernard! And you can speak of it in that way?"

"I don't say that it is true; but I think we should look to it. I will go to Courcy Castle and learn the truth."

The squire at last decided that he would go. He went to Courcy Castle, and found that Crosbie had started two hours before his arrival. He asked for Lady Julia, and learned from her that Crosbie had actually left the house as the betrothed husband of Lady Alexandrina.

"The countess, I am sure, will not contradict it, if you will see her," said Lady Julia. But this the squire was unwilling to do. He would not proclaim the wretched condition of his niece more loudly than was necessary, and therefore he started on his pursuit of Crosbie. What was his success on that evening we have already learned.

Both Lady Alexandrina and her mother heard of Mr Dale's arrival at the castle, but nothing was said between them on the subject. Lady Amelia Gazebee heard of it also, and she ventured to discuss the matter with her sister.

"You don't know exactly how far it went, do you?"

"No; yes;—not exactly, that is," said Alexandrina.

"I suppose he did say something about marriage to the girl?"

"Yes, I'm afraid he did."

"Dear, dear! It's very unfortunate. What sort of people are those Dales? I suppose he talked to you about them."

"No, he didn't; not very much. I daresay she is an artful, sly thing! It's a great pity men should go on in such a way."

"Yes, it is," said Lady Amelia. "And I do suppose that in this case the blame has been more with him than with her. It's only right I should tell you that."

"But what can I do?"

"I don't say you can do anything; but it's as well you should know."

"But I don't know, and you don't know; and I can't see that there is any use talking about it now. I knew him a long while before she did, and if she has allowed him to make a fool of her, it isn't my fault."

"Nobody says it is, my dear."

"But you seem to preach to me about it. What can I do for the girl? The fact is, he don't care for her a bit, and never did."

"Then he shouldn't have told her that he did."

"That's all very well, Amelia; but people don't always do exactly all that they ought to do. I suppose Mr Crosbie isn't the first man that has proposed to two ladies. I dare say it was wrong, but I can't help it. As to Mr Dale coming here with a tale of his niece's wrongs, I think it very absurd,—very absurd indeed. It makes it look as though there had been a scheme to catch Mr Crosbie, and it's my belief that there was such a scheme."

"I only hope that there'll be no quarrel."

"Men don't fight duels nowadays, Amelia."

"But do you remember what Frank Gresham did to Mr Moffat when he behaved so badly to poor Augusta?"

"Mr Crosbie isn't afraid of that kind of thing. And I always thought that Frank was very wrong,—very wrong indeed. What's the good of two men beating each other in the street?"

"Well; I'm sure I hope there'll be no quarrel. But I own I don't like the look of it. You see the uncle must have known all about it, and have consented to the marriage, or he would not have come here."

"I don't see that it can make any difference to me, Amelia."

"No, my dear, I don't see that it can. We shall be up in town soon, and I will see as much as possible of Mr Crosbie. The marriage, I hope, will take place soon."

"He talks of February."

"Don't put it off, Alley, whatever you do. There are so many slips, you know, in these things."

"I'm not a bit afraid of that," said Alexandrina, sticking up her head.

"I dare say not; and you may be sure that we will keep an eye on him. Mortimer will get him up to dine with us as often as possible, and as his leave of absence is all over, he can't get out of town. He's to be here at Christmas, isn't he?"

"Of course he is."

"Mind you keep him to that. And as to these Dales, I would be very careful, if I were you, not to say anything unkind of them to any one. It sounds badly in your position." And with this last piece of advice Lady Amelia Gazebee allowed the subject to drop.

On that day Lady Julia returned to her own home. Her adieux to the whole family at Courcy Castle were very cold, but about Mr Crosbie and his lady-love at Allington she said no further word to any of them. Alexandrina did not show herself at all on the occasion, and indeed had not spoken to her enemy since that evening on which she had felt herself constrained to retreat from the drawing-room.

"Good-bye," said the countess. "You have been so good to come, and we have enjoyed it so much."

"I thank you very much. Good-morning," said Lady Julia, with a stately courtesy.

"Pray remember me to your brother. I wish we could have seen him; I hope he has not been hurt by the—the bull." And then Lady Julia went her way.

"What a fool I have been to have that woman in the house," said the countess, before the door was closed behind her guest's back.

"Indeed you have," said Lady Julia, screaming back through the passage. Then there was a long silence, then a suppressed titter, and after that a loud laugh.

"Oh, mamma, what shall we do?" said Lady Amelia.

"Do!" said Margaretta; "why should we do anything? She has heard the truth for once in her life."

"Dear Lady Dumbello, what will you think of us?" said the countess, turning round to another guest, who was also just about to depart. "Did any one ever know such a woman before?"

"I think she's very nice," said Lady Dumbello, smiling.

"I can't quite agree with you there," said Lady Clandidlem. "But I do believe she means to do her best. She is very charitable, and all that sort of thing."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Rosina. "I asked her for a subscription to the mission for putting down the Papists in the west of Ireland, and she refused me point-blank."

"Now, my dear, if you're quite ready," said Lord Dumbello, coming into the room. Then there was another departure; but on this occasion the countess waited till the doors were shut, and the retreating footsteps were no longer heard. "Have you observed," said she to Lady Clandidlem, "that she has not held her head up since Mr Palliser went away?"

"Indeed I have," said Lady Clandidlem. "As for poor Dumbello, he's the blindest creature I ever saw in my life."

"We shall hear of something before next May," said Lady de Courcy, shaking her head; "but for all that she'll never be Duchess of Omnium."

"I wonder what your mamma will say of me when I go away to-morrow," said Lady Clandidlem to Margaretta, as they walked across the hall together.

"She won't say that you are going to run away with any gentleman," said Margaretta.

"At any rate not with the earl," said Lady Clandidlem. "Ha, ha, ha! Well, we are all very good-natured, are we not? The best is that it means nothing."

Thus by degrees all the guests went, and the family of the de Courcys was left to the bliss of their own domestic circle. This, we may presume, was not without its charms, seeing that there were so many feelings in common between the mother and her children. There were drawbacks to it, no doubt, arising perhaps chiefly from the earl's bodily infirmities. "When your father speaks to me," said Mrs George to her husband, "he puts me in such a shiver that I cannot open my mouth to answer him."

"You should stand up to him," said George. "He can't hurt you, you know. Your money's your own; and if I'm ever to be the heir, it won't be by his doing."

"But he gnashes his teeth at me."

"You shouldn't care for that, if he don't bite. He used to gnash them at me; and when I had to ask him for money I didn't like it; but now I don't mind him a bit. He threw the peerage at me one day, but it didn't go within a yard of my head."

"If he throws anything at me, George, I shall drop upon the spot."

But the countess had a worse time with the earl than any of her children. It was necessary that she should see him daily, and necessary also that she should say much that he did not like to hear, and make many petitions that caused him to gnash his teeth. The earl was one of those men who could not endure to live otherwise than expensively, and yet was made miserable by every recurring expense. He ought to have known by this time that butchers, and bakers, and corn-chandlers, and coal-merchants will not supply their goods for nothing; and yet it always seemed as though he had expected that at this special period they would do so. He was an embarrassed man, no doubt, and had not been fortunate in his speculations at Newmarket or Homburg; but, nevertheless, he had still the means of living without daily torment; and it must be supposed that his self-imposed sufferings, with regard to money, rose rather from his disposition than his necessities. His wife never knew whether he were really ruined, or simply pretending it. She had now become so used to her position in this respect, that she did not allow fiscal considerations to mar her happiness. Food and clothing had always come to her,—including velvet gowns, new trinkets, and a man-cook,—and she presumed that they would continue to come. But that daily conference with her husband was almost too much for her. She struggled to avoid it; and, as far as the ways and means were concerned, would have allowed them to arrange themselves, if he would only have permitted it. But he insisted on seeing her daily in his own sitting-room; and she had acknowledged to her favourite daughter, Margaretta, that those half-hours would soon be the death of her. "I sometimes feel," she said, "that I am going mad before I can get out." And she reproached herself, probably without reason, in that she had brought much of this upon herself. In former days the earl had been constantly away from home, and the countess had complained. Like many other women, she had not known when she was well off. She had complained, urging upon her lord that he should devote more of his time to his own hearth. It is probable that her ladyship's remonstrances had been less efficacious than the state of his own health in producing that domestic constancy which he now practised; but it is certain that she looked back with bitter regret to the happy days when she was deserted, jealous, and querulous. "Don't you wish we could get Sir Omicron to order him to the German Spas?" she had said to Margaretta. Now Sir Omicron was the great London physician, and might, no doubt, do much in that way.

But no such happy order had as yet been given; and, as far as the family could foresee, paterfamilias intended to pass the winter with them at Courcy. The guests, as I have said, were all gone, and none but the family were in the house when her ladyship waited upon her lord one morning at twelve o'clock, a few days after Mr Dale's visit to the castle. He always breakfasted alone, and after breakfast found in a French novel and a cigar what solace those innocent recreations were still able to afford him. When the novel no longer excited him and when he was saturated with smoke, he would send for his wife. After that, his valet would dress him. "She gets it worse than I do," the man declared in the servants' hall, "and minds it a deal more. I can give warning, and she can't."

"Better? No, I ain't better," the husband said, in answer to his wife's inquiries. "I never shall be better while you keep that cook in the kitchen."

"But where are we to get another if we send him away?"

"It's not my business to find cooks. I don't know where you're to get one. It's my belief you won't have a cook at all before long. It seems you have got two extra men into the house without telling me."

"We must have servants, you know, when there is company. It wouldn't do to have Lady Dumbello here, and no one to wait on her."

"Who asked Lady Dumbello? I didn't."

"I'm sure, my dear, you liked having her here."

"D—— Lady Dumbello!" and then there was a pause. The countess had no objection whatsoever to the above proposition, and was rejoiced that that question of the servants was allowed to slip aside, through the aid of her ladyship.

"Look at that letter from Porlock," said the earl; and he pushed over to the unhappy mother a letter from her eldest son. Of all her children he was the one she loved the best; but him she was never allowed to see under her own roof. "I sometimes think that he is the greatest rascal with whom I ever had occasion to concern myself," said the earl.

She took the letter and read it. The epistle was certainly not one which a father could receive with pleasure from his son; but the disagreeable nature of its contents was the fault rather of the parent than of the child. The writer intimated that certain money due to him had not been paid with necessary punctuality, and that unless he received it, he should instruct his lawyer to take some authorised legal proceedings. Lord de Courcy had raised certain moneys on the family property, which he could not have raised without the co-operation of his heir, and had bound himself, in return for that co-operation, to pay a certain fixed income to his eldest son. This he regarded as an allowance from himself; but Lord Porlock regarded it as his own, by lawful claim. The son had not worded his letter with any affectionate phraseology. "Lord Porlock begs to inform Lord de Courcy—" Such had been the commencement.

"I suppose he must have his money; else how can he live?" said the countess, trembling.

"Live!" shouted the earl. "And so you think it proper that he should write such a letter as that to his father!"

"It is all very unfortunate," she replied.

"I don't know where the money's to come from. As for him, if he were starving, it would serve him right. He's a disgrace to the name and the family. From all I hear, he won't live long."

"Oh, de Courcy, don't talk of it in that way!"

"What way am I to talk of it? If I say that he's my greatest comfort, and living as becomes a nobleman, and is a fine healthy man of his age, with a good wife and a lot of legitimate children, will that make you believe it? Women are such fools. Nothing that I say will make him worse than he is."

"But he may reform."

"Reform! He's over forty, and when I last saw him he looked nearly sixty. There;—you may answer his letter; I won't."

"And about the money?"

"Why doesn't he write to Gazebee about his dirty money? Why does he trouble me? I haven't got his money. Ask Gazebee about his money. I won't trouble myself about it." Then there was another pause, during which the countess folded the letter, and put it in her pocket.

"How long is George going to remain here with that woman?" he asked.

"I'm sure she is very harmless," pleaded the countess.

"I always think when I see her that I'm sitting down to dinner with my own housemaid. I never saw such a woman. How he can put up with it! But I don't suppose he cares for anything."

"It has made him very steady."

"Steady!"

"And as she will be confined before long it may be as well that she should remain here. If Porlock doesn't marry, you know—"

"And so he means to live here altogether, does he? I'll tell you what it is,—I won't have it. He's better able to keep a house over his own head and his wife's than I am to do it for them, and so you may tell them. I won't have it. D'ye hear?" Then there was another short pause. "D'ye hear?" he shouted at her.

"Yes; of course I hear. I was only thinking you wouldn't wish me to turn them out, just as her confinement is coming on."

"I know what that means. Then they'd never go. I won't have it; and if you don't tell them I will." In answer to this Lady de Courcy promised that she would tell them, thinking perhaps that the earl's mode of telling might not be beneficial in that particular epoch which was now coming in the life of Mrs George.

"Did you know," said he, breaking out on a new subject, "that a man had been here named Dale, calling on somebody in this house?" In answer to which the countess acknowledged that she had known it.

"Then why did you keep it from me?" And that gnashing of the teeth took place which was so specially objectionable to Mrs George.

"It was a matter of no moment. He came to see Lady Julia De Guest."

"Yes; but he came about that man Crosbie."

"I suppose he did."

"Why have you let that girl be such a fool? You'll find he'll play her some knave's trick."

"Oh dear, no."

"And why should she want to marry such a man as that?"

"He's quite a gentleman, you know, and very much thought of in the world. It won't be at all bad for her, poor thing. It is so very hard for a girl to get married nowadays without money."

"And so they're to take up with anybody. As far as I can see, this is a worse affair than that of Amelia."

"Amelia has done very well, my dear."

"Oh, if you call it doing well for your girls; I don't. I call it doing uncommon badly; about as bad as they well can do. But it's your affair. I have never meddled with them, and don't intend to do it now."

"I really think she'll be happy, and she is devotedly attached to the young man."

"Devotedly attached to the young man!" The tone and manner in which the earl repeated these words were such as to warrant an opinion that his lordship might have done very well on the stage had his attention been called to that profession. "It makes me sick to hear people talk in that way. She wants to get married, and she's a fool for her pains;—I can't help that; only remember that I'll have no nonsense here about that other girl. If he gives me trouble of that sort, by ——, I'll be the death of him. When is the marriage to be?"

"They talk of February."

"I won't have any tomfoolery and expense. If she chooses to marry a clerk in an office, she shall marry him as clerks are married."

"He'll be the secretary before that, de Courcy."

"What difference does that make? Secretary, indeed! What sort of men do you suppose secretaries are? A beggar that came from nobody knows where! I won't have any tomfoolery;—d'ye hear?" Whereupon the countess said that she did hear, and soon afterwards managed to escape. The valet then took his turn; and repeated, after his hour of service, that "Old Nick" in his tantrums had been more like the Prince of Darkness than ever.



CHAPTER XXVII

"On My Honour, I Do Not Understand It"

In the meantime Lady Alexandrina endeavoured to realise to herself all the advantages and disadvantages of her own position. She was not possessed of strong affections, nor of depth of character, nor of high purpose; but she was no fool, nor was she devoid of principle. She had asked herself many times whether her present life was so happy as to make her think that a permanent continuance in it would suffice for her desires, and she had always replied to herself that she would fain change to some other life if it were possible. She had also questioned herself as to her rank, of which she was quite sufficiently proud, and had told herself that she could not degrade herself in the world without a heavy pang. But she had at last taught herself to believe that she had more to gain by becoming the wife of such a man as Crosbie than by remaining as an unmarried daughter of her father's house. There was much in her sister Amelia's position which she did not envy, but there was less to envy in that of her sister Rosina. The Gazebee house in St. John's Wood Road was not so magnificent as Courcy Castle; but then it was less dull, less embittered by torment, and was moreover her sister's own.

"Very many do marry commoners," she had said to Margaretta.

"Oh, yes, of course. It makes a difference, you know, when a man has a fortune."

Of course it did make a difference. Crosbie had no fortune, was not even so rich as Mr Gazebee, could keep no carriage, and would have no country house. But then he was a man of fashion, was more thought of in the world than Mr Gazebee, might probably rise in his own profession,—and was at any rate thoroughly presentable. She would have preferred a gentleman with L5,000 a year; but then as no gentleman with L5,000 a year came that way, would she not be happier with Mr Crosbie than she would be with no husband at all? She was not very much in love with Mr Crosbie, but she thought that she could live with him comfortably, and that on the whole it would be a good thing to be married.

And she made certain resolves as to the manner in which she would do her duty by her husband. Her sister Amelia was paramount in her own house, ruling indeed with a moderate, endurable dominion, and ruling much to her husband's advantage. Alexandrina feared that she would not be allowed to rule, but she could at any rate try; She would do all in her power to make him comfortable, and would be specially careful not to irritate him by any insistence on her own higher rank. She would be very meek in this respect; and if children should come she would be as painstaking about them as though her own father had been merely a clergyman or a lawyer. She thought also much about poor Lilian Dale, asking herself sundry questions, with an idea of being high-principled as to her duty in that respect. Was she wrong in taking Mr Crosbie away from Lilian Dale? In answer to these questions she was able to assure herself comfortably that she was not wrong. Mr Crosbie would not, under any circumstances, marry Lilian Dale. He had told her so more than once, and that in a solemn way. She could therefore be doing no harm to Lilian Dale. If she entertained any inner feeling that Crosbie's fault in jilting Lilian Dale was less than it would have been had she herself not been an earl's daughter,—that her own rank did in some degree extenuate her lover's falseness,—she did not express it in words even to herself.

She did not get very much sympathy from her own family. "I'm afraid he does not think much of his religious duties. I'm told that young men of that sort seldom do," said Rosina. "I don't say you're wrong," said Margaretta. "By no means. Indeed I think less of it now than I did when Amelia did the same thing. I shouldn't do it myself, that's all." Her father told her that he supposed she knew her own mind. Her mother, who endeavoured to comfort and in some sort to congratulate her, nevertheless, harped constantly on the fact that she was marrying a man without rank and without a fortune. Her congratulations were apologetic, and her comfortings took the guise of consolation. "Of course you won't be rich, my dear; but I really think you'll do very well. Mr Crosbie may be received anywhere, and you never need be ashamed of him." By which the countess implied that her elder married daughter was occasionally called on to be ashamed of her husband. "I wish he could keep a carriage for you, but perhaps that will come some day." Upon the whole Alexandrina did not repent, and stoutly told her father that she did know her own mind.

During all this time Lily Dale was as yet perfect in her happiness. That delay of a day or two in the receipt of the expected letter from her lover had not disquieted her. She had promised him that she would not distrust him, and she was firmly minded to keep her promises. Indeed no idea of breaking it came to her at this time. She was disappointed when the postman would come and bring no letter for her,—disappointed, as the husbandman when the longed-for rain does not come to refresh the parched earth; but she was in no degree angry. "He will explain it," she said to herself. And she assured Bell that men never recognised the hunger and thirst after letters which women feel when away from those whom they love.

Then they heard at the Small House that the squire had gone away from Allington. During the last few days Bernard had not been much with them, and now they heard the news, not through their cousin, but from Hopkins. "I really can't undertake to say, Miss Bell, where the master's gone to. It's not likely the master'd tell me where he was going to; not unless it was about seeds, or the likes of that."

"He has gone very suddenly," said Bell.

"Well, miss, I've nothing to say to that. And why shouldn't he go sudden if he likes? I only know he had his gig, and went to the station. If you was to bury me alive I couldn't tell you more."

"I should like to try," said Lily as they walked away. "He is such a cross old thing. I wonder whether Bernard has gone with my uncle." And then they thought no more about it.

On the day after that Bernard came down to the Small House, but he said nothing by way of accounting for the squire's absence. "He is in London, I know," said Bernard.

"I hope he'll call on Mr Crosbie," said Lily. But on this subject Bernard said not a word. He did ask Lily whether she had heard from Adolphus, in answer to which she replied, with as indifferent a voice as she could assume, that she had not had a letter that morning.

"I shall be angry with him if he's not a good correspondent," said Mrs Dale, when she and Lily were alone together.

"No, mamma, you mustn't be angry with him. I won't let you be angry with him. Please to remember he's my lover and not yours."

"But I can see you when you watch for the postman."

"I won't watch for the postman any more if it makes you have bad thoughts about him. Yes, they are bad thoughts. I won't have you think that he doesn't do everything that is right."

On the next morning the postman brought a letter, or rather a note, and Lily at once saw that it was from Crosbie. She had contrived to intercept it near the back door, at which the postman called, so that her mother should not watch her watchings, nor see her disappointment if none should come. "Thank you, Jane," she said, very calmly, when the eager, kindly girl ran to her with the little missive; and she walked off to some solitude, trying to hide her impatience. The note had seemed so small that it amazed her; but when she opened it the contents amazed her more. There was neither beginning nor end. There was no appellation of love, and no signature. It contained but two lines. "I will write to you at length to-morrow. This is my first day in London, and I have been so driven about that I cannot write." That was all, and it was scrawled on half a sheet of note-paper. Why, at any rate, had he not called her his dearest Lily? Why had he not assured her that he was ever her own? Such expressions, meaning so much, may be conveyed in a glance of the pen. "Ah," she said, "if he knew how I hunger and thirst after his love!"

She had but a moment left to her before she must join her mother and sister, and she used that moment in remembering her promise. "I know it is all right," she said to herself. "He does not think of these things as I do. He had to write at the last moment,—as he was leaving his office." And then with a quiet, smiling face, she walked into the breakfast-parlour.

"What does he say, Lily?" asked Bell.

"What would you give to know?" said Lily.

"I wouldn't give twopence for the whole of it," said Bell.

"When you get anybody to write to you letters, I wonder whether you'll show them to everybody?"

"But if there's any special London news, I suppose we might hear it," said Mrs Dale.

"But suppose there's no special London news, mamma. The poor man had only been in town one day, you know: and there never is any news at this time of the year."

"Had he seen Uncle Christopher?"

"I don't think he had; but he doesn't say. We shall get all the news from him when he comes. He cares much more about London news than Adolphus does." And then there was no more said about the letter.

But Lily had read her two former letters over and over again at the breakfast-table; and though she had not read them aloud, she had repeated many words out of them, and had so annotated upon them that her mother, who had heard her, could have almost re-written them. Now, she did not even show the paper; and then her absence, during which she had read the letter, had hardly exceeded a minute or two. All this Mrs Dale observed, and she knew that her daughter had been again disappointed.

In fact that day Lily was very serious, but she did not appear to be unhappy. Early after breakfast Bell went over to the parsonage, and Mrs Dale and her youngest daughter sat together over their work. "Mamma," she said, "I hope you and I are not to be divided when I go to live in London."

"We shall never be divided in heart, my love."

"Ah, but that will not be enough for happiness, though perhaps enough to prevent absolute unhappiness. I shall want to see you, touch you, and pet you as I do now." And she came and knelt on the cushion at her mother's feet.

"You will have some one else to caress and pet,—perhaps many others."

"Do you mean to say that you are going to throw me off, mamma?"

"God forbid, my darling. It is not mothers that throw off their children. What shall I have left when you and Bell are gone from me?"

"But we will never be gone. That's what I mean. We are to be just the same to you always, even though we are married. I must have my right to be here as much as I have it now; and, in return, you shall have your right to be there. His house must be a home to you,—not a cold place which you may visit now and again, with your best clothes on. You know what I mean, when I say that we must not be divided."

"But Lily—"

"Well, mamma?"

"I have no doubt we shall be happy together,—you and I."

"But you were going to say more than that."

"Only this,—that your house will be his house, and will be full without me. A daughter's marriage is always a painful parting."

"Is it, mamma?"

"Not that I would have it otherwise than it is. Do not think that I would wish to keep you at home with me. Of course you will both marry and leave me. I hope that he to whom you are going to devote yourself may be spared to love you and protect you." Then the widow's heart became too full, and she put away her child from her that she might hide her face.

"Mamma, mamma, I wish I was not going from you."

"No, Lily; do not say that. I should not be contented with life if I did not see both my girls married. I think that it is the only lot which can give to a woman perfect content and satisfaction. I would have you both married. I should be the most selfish being alive if I wished otherwise."

"Bell will settle herself near you, and then you will see more of her and love her better than you do me."

"I shall not love her better."

"I wish she would marry some London man, and then you would come with us, and be near to us. Do you know, mamma, I sometimes think you don't like this place here."

"Your uncle has been very kind to give it to us."

"I know he has; and we have been very happy here. But if Bell should leave you—"

"Then should I go also. Your uncle has been very kind, but I sometimes feel that his kindness is a burden which I should not be strong enough to bear solely on my own shoulders. And what should keep me here, then?" Mrs Dale as she said this felt that the "here" of which she spoke extended beyond the limits of the home which she held through the charity of her brother-in-law. Might not all the world, far as she was concerned in it, be contained in that "here"? How was she to live if both her children should be taken away from her? She had already realised the fact that Crosbie's house could never be a home to her,—never even a temporary home. Her visits there must be of that full-dressed nature to which Lily had alluded. It was impossible that she could explain this to Lily. She would not prophesy that the hero of her girl's heart would be inhospitable to his wife's mother; but such had been her reading of Crosbie's character. Alas, alas, as matters were to go, his hospitality or inhospitality would be matter of small moment to them.

Again in the afternoon the two sisters were together, and Lily was still more serious than her wont. It might almost have been gathered from her manner that this marriage of hers was about to take place at once, and that she was preparing to leave her home. "Bell," she said, "I wonder why Dr Crofts never comes to see us now?"

"It isn't a month since he was here, at our party."

"A month! But there was a time when he made some pretext for being here every other day."

"Yes, when mamma was ill."

"Ay, and since mamma was well, too. But I suppose I must not break the promise you made me give you. He's not to be talked about even yet, is he?"

"I didn't say he was not to be talked about. You know what I meant, Lily; and what I meant then, I mean now."

"And how long will it be before you mean something else? I do hope it will come some day,—I do indeed."

"It never will, Lily. I once fancied that I cared for Dr Crofts, but it was only fancy. I know it, because—" She was going to explain that her knowledge on that point was assured to her, because since that day she had felt that she might have learned to love another man. But that other man had been Mr Crosbie, and so she stopped herself.

"I wish he would come and ask you himself."

"He will never do so. He would never ask such a question without encouragement, and I shall give him none. Nor will he ever think of marrying till he can do so without—without what he thinks to be imprudence as regards money. He has courage enough to be poor himself without unhappiness, but he has not courage to endure poverty with a wife. I know well what his feelings are."

"Well, we shall see," said Lily. "I shouldn't wonder if you were married first now, Bell. For my part I'm quite prepared to wait for three years."

Late on that evening the squire returned to Allington, Bernard having driven over to meet him at the station. He had telegraphed to his nephew that he would be back by a late train, and no more than this had been heard from him since he went. On that day Bernard had seen none of the ladies at the Small House. With Bell at the present moment it was impossible that he should be on easy terms. He could not meet her alone without recurring to the one special subject of interest between them, and as to that he did not choose to speak without much forethought. He had not known himself, when he had gone about his wooing so lightly, thinking it a slight thing, whether or no he might be accepted. Now it was no longer a slight thing to him. I do not know that it was love that made him so eager; not good, honest, downright love. But he had set his heart upon the object, and with the wilfulness of a Dale was determined that it should be his. He had no remotest idea of giving up his cousin, but he had at last persuaded himself that she was not to be won without some toil, and perhaps also some delay.

Nor had he been in a humour to talk either to Mrs Dale or to Lily. He feared that Lady Julia's news was true,—that at any rate there might be in it something of truth; and while thus in doubt he could not go down to the Small House. So he hung about the place by himself, with a cigar in his mouth, fearing that something evil was going to happen, and when the message came for him, almost shuddered as he seated himself in the gig. What would it become him to do in this emergency if Crosbie had truly been guilty of the villainy with which Lady Julia had charged him? Thirty years ago he would have called the man out, and shot at him till one of them was hit. Nowadays it was hardly possible for a man to do that; and yet what would the world say of him if he allowed such an injury as this to pass without vengeance?

His uncle, as he came forth from the station with his travelling-bag in his hand, was stern, gloomy, and silent. He came out and took his place in the gig almost without speaking. There were strangers about, and therefore his nephew at first could ask no question, but as the gig turned the corner out of the station-house yard he demanded the news.

"What have you heard?" he said.

But even then the squire did not answer at once. He shook his head, and turned away his face, as though he did not choose to be interrogated.

"Have you seen him, sir?" asked Bernard.

"No, he has not dared to see me."

"Then it is true?"

"True?—yes, it is all true. Why did you bring the scoundrel here? It has been your fault."

"No, sir; I must contradict that. I did not know him for a scoundrel."

"But it was your duty to have known him before you brought him here among them. Poor girl! how is she to be told?"

"Then she does not know it?"

"I fear not. Have you seen them?"

"I saw them yesterday, and she did not know it then; she may have heard it to-day."

"I don't think so. I believe he has been too great a coward to write to her. A coward indeed! How can any man find the courage to write such a letter as that?"

By degrees the squire told his tale. How he had gone to Lady Julia, had made his way to London, had tracked Crosbie to his club, and had there learned the whole truth from Crosbie's friend, Fowler Pratt, we already know. "The coward escaped me while I was talking to the man he sent down," said the squire. "It was a concerted plan, and I think he was right. I should have brained him in the hall of the club." On the following morning Pratt had called upon him at his inn with Crosbie's apology. "His apology!" said the squire. "I have it in my pocket. Poor reptile; wretched worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. "The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, 'that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend."

"I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him."

"Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile. "On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it."

"And he is engaged to this other girl?"

"Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country."

"He meant it up to the time of his leaving."

"I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart."

They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. "What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over again. "How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?"

"Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?"

"As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know—that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned."

It was a vile letter to have written—not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated—but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss,—sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written.

"I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt. "If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! "I know that I can have no excuse to make to you,—or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles.

"As an honest man!" repeated the squire. "On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table."

"What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while.

"Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now."

"There must be more than that, uncle."

"I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villainy. We have to remember Lily's name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!"

Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. "Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day."

Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club?



CHAPTER XXVIII

The Board

Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview.

He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production.

But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him,—cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at the heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr Butterwell himself.

How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the de Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out,—not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing.

And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the de Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.

That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment.

During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady de Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject.

At eleven Mr Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. "Tact," Mr Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact."

"Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly;—much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office."

"Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily.

"But I say, oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the commissioners."

"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you."

"I've known it all along,—before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board."

"Ah;—I wish I'd known," said Crosbie.

"You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew it,—swearing that I knew it,—but I wouldn't have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!"

"Exactly so," said Crosbie.

"But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than I gain."

"What! with three hundred a year more and less work?"

"Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By-the-by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing."

But Mr Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs Butterwell's table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present." "By-the-by,—of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope you'll be as lucky as I have been."