Kitabı oku: «The Master of the Ceremonies», sayfa 11

Volume One – Chapter Twenty Four.
Pressed for Money

As a rule, a tailor is one who will give unlimited credit so long as his client is a man of society, with expectations, and the maker of garments can charge his own prices; but Stuart Denville, Esq, MC, of Saltinville, paid a visit to his tailor to find that gentleman inexorable.

“No, Mr Denville, sir, it ain’t to be done. I should be glad to fit out the young man, as he should be fitted out as a gentleman, sir; but there is bounds to everything.”

“Exactly, my dear Mr Ping, but I can assure you that before long both his and my accounts shall be paid.”

“No, sir, can’t do it. I’m very busy, too. Why not try Crowder and Son?”

“My dee-ar Mr Ping – you’ll pardon me? I ask you as a man, as an artist in your profession, could I see my son – my heir – a gentleman who I hope some day will make a brilliant match – a young man who is going at once into the best of society – could I now, Mr Ping, see that youth in a suit of clothes made by Crowder and Son? Refuse my appeal, if you please, my dear sir, but – you’ll pardon me – do not add insult to the injury.”

Mr Ping was mollified, and rubbed his hands softly. This was flattering: for Crowder and Son, according to his view of the case, did not deserve to be called tailors – certainly not gentlemen’s tailors; but he remained firm.

“No, Mr Denville, sir, far be it from me to wish to insult you, sir, and I thank you for the amount of custom you’ve brought me. You can’t say as I’m unfair.”

“You’ll pardon me, Mr Ping; I never did.”

“Thank you, sir; but as I was a saying, you’ve had clothes of me, sir, for years, and you haven’t paid me, sir, and I haven’t grumbled, seeing as you’ve introduced me clients, but I can’t start an account for Mr Denville, junior, sir, and I won’t.”

The MC took snuff, and rested first on one leg and then on the other; lastly, he held his head on one side and admired two or three velvet waistcoat pieces, so as to give Mr Ping time to repent. But Mr Ping did not want time to repent, and he would not have repented had the MC stayed an hour, and this the latter knew, but dared not resent, bowing himself out at last gracefully.

“Good-morning, Mr Ping, good-morning. I am sorry you – er – but no matter. Lovely day, is it not?”

“Lovely, sir. Good-morning – poor, penniless, proud, stuck-up, half-starved old dandy,” muttered the prosperous tradesman, as he stood in his shirt-sleeves at the door, his grey hair all brushed forward into a fierce frise, and a yellow inch tape round his neck like an alderman’s chain. “I wouldn’t trust his boy a sixpence to save his life. Prospects, indeed. Fashion, indeed. I expect he’ll have to ’list.”

The MC went smiling and mincing along the parade, waving his cane jauntily, and passing his snuff-box into the other hand now and then to raise his hat to some one or another, till he turned up a side street, when, in the solitude of the empty way, he uttered a low groan, and his face changed.

“My God!” he muttered. “How long is this miserable degradation to last?”

He looked round sharply, as if in dread lest the emotion into which he had been betrayed should have been observed, but there was no one near.

“I must try Barclay. I dare not go to Frank Burnett, for poor May’s sake.”

A few minutes later he minced and rolled up to a large, heavy-looking mansion in a back street, where, beneath a great dingy portico, a grotesque satyr’s head held a heavy knocker, and grinned at the visitor who made it sound upon the door.

“Hallo, Denville, you here?” said Mr Barclay, coming up from the street. “Didn’t expect to see you. I’ve got the key: come in.”

“A little bit of business, my dear sir. I thought I’d come on instead of writing. Thanks – you’ll pardon me – a pinch of snuff – the Prince’s own mixture.”

“Ah yes.” Snuff, snuff, snuff. “Don’t like it though – too scented for me. Come along.”

He led the way through a large, gloomy hall, well hung with large pictures and ornamented with pedestals and busts, up a broad, well-carpeted staircase and into the drawing-room of the house – a room, however, that looked more like a museum, so crowded was it with pictures, old china, clocks, statues, and bronzes. Huge vases, tiny Dresden ornaments, rich carpets, branches and lustres of cut-glass and ormolu, almost jostled each other, while the centre of the room was filled with lounges, chairs and tables, rich in buhl and marqueterie.

At a table covered with papers sat plump, pleasant-looking Mrs Barclay, in a very rich, stiff brocade silk. Her appearance was vulgar; there were too many rings upon her fat fingers, too much jewellery about her neck and throat; and her showy cap was a wonder of lace and ribbons; but Nature had set its stamp upon her countenance, and though she was holding her head on one side, pursing up her lips and frowning as she wrote in the big ledger-like book open before her, there was no mistaking the fact that she was a thoroughly good-hearted amiable soul.

“Oh, bless us, how you startled me!” she cried, throwing herself back, for the door had opened quietly, and steps were hardly heard upon the soft carpet. “Why, it’s you, Mr Denville, looking as if you were just going to a ball. How are you? Not well? You look amiss. And how’s Miss Claire? and pretty little Mrs Mayblossom – Mrs Burnett?”

“My daughters are well in the extreme, Mrs Barclay,” said the MC, taking the lady’s plump extended hand as she rose, to bend over it, and kiss the fingers with the most courtly grace. “And you, my dear madam, you?”

“Oh, she’s well enough, Denville,” said Barclay, chuckling. “Robust’s the word for her.”

“For shame, Jo-si-ah!” exclaimed the lady, reddening furiously. She had only blushed slightly before with pleasure; and after kicking back her stiff silk dress to make a profound curtsey. “You shouldn’t say such things. Why, Mr Denville, I haven’t seen you for ever so long; and I’ve meant to call on Miss Claire, for we always get on so well together; but I’m so busy, what with the servants, and the dusting, and the keeping the books, and the exercise as I’m obliged to take – ”

“And don’t,” said Barclay, placing a chair for the MC, and then sitting down and putting his hands in his pockets.

“For shame, Jo-si-ah. I do indeed, Mr Denville, and it do make me so hot.”

“There, that’ll do, old lady. Mr Denville wants to see me on business. Don’t you, Denville?”

“Yes – on a trifle of business; but I know that Mrs Barclay is in your confidence. You’ll pardon me, Mrs Barclay?”

A looker-on would have imagined that he was about to dance a minuet with the lady, but he delicately took her fingers by the very tip and led her back to her seat, into which she meant to glide gracefully, but plumped down in a very feather-beddy way, and then blushed and frowned.

“Oh, Mr Denville won’t mind me; and him an old neighbour, too, as knows how I keep your books and everything. It isn’t as if he was one of your wicked bucks, and bloods, and macaronies as they calls ’em.”

“Now, when you’ve done talking, woman, perhaps you’ll let Denville speak.”

“Jo-si-ah!” exclaimed the lady, reddening, or to speak more correctly, growing more red, as she raised a large fan, which hung by a silken cord, and used it furiously.

“Now then, Denville, what is it?” said Barclay, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking the extreme of vulgarity beside the visitor’s refinement.

“You’ll pardon me, Mr Barclay?” said the MC, bowing. “Thanks. The fact is, my dear Barclay, the time has arrived when I must launch my son Morton upon the stream of the fashionable world.”

“Mean to marry him well?” said Barclay, smiling.

“Exactly. Yes. You’ll pardon me.”

He took snuff in a slow, deliberate, and studied mode that Mrs Barclay watched attentively, declaring afterwards that it was as good as a play, while her husband also took his pinch from his own box, but in a loud, rough, frill-browning way.

“I have high hopes and admirable prospects opening out before him, my dear Barclay. Fortune seems to have marked him for her own, and to have begun to smile.”

“Fickle jade, sir; fickle jade.”

“At times – you’ll pardon me. At times. Let us enjoy her smiles while we can. And now, my dear Barclay, that I wish to launch him handsomely and well – to add to his natural advantages the little touches of dress, a cane and snuff-box, and such trifles – I find, through the absence of so many fashionable visitors affecting my fees, I am troubled, inconvenienced for the want of a few guineas, and – er – it is very ridiculous – er – really I did not know whom to ask, till it occurred to me that you, my dear sir, would oblige me with, say, forty or fifty upon my note of hand.”

“Couldn’t do it, sir. Haven’t the money. Couldn’t.”

“Don’t talk such stuff, Jo-si-ah,” exclaimed Mrs Barclay, fanning herself sharply, and making a sausage-like curl wabble to and fro, and her ribbons flutter. “You can if you like.”

“Woman!” he exclaimed furiously.

“Oh, I don’t mind you saying ‘woman,’” retorted the lady. “Telling such wicked fibs, and to an old neighbour too. If it had been that nasty, sneering, snickle dandy, Sir Harry Payne, or that big, pompous, dressed-up Sir Matthew Bray, you’d have lent them money directly. I’m ashamed of you.”

“Will you allow me to carry on my business in my own way, madam?”

“Yes, when it’s with nobodies; but I won’t sit by and hear you tell our old neighbour, who wants a bit of help, that you couldn’t do it, and that you haven’t the money, when anybody can see it sticking out in lumps in both of your breeches’ pockets, if they like to look.”

“’Pon my soul, woman,” said Barclay, banging his fist down upon the table, “you’re enough to drive a man mad. Denville, that woman will ruin me.”

Mrs Barclay shut up her fan and sat back in her chair, and there was a curious kind of palpitating throbbing perceptible all over her that was almost startling at first till her face broke up in dimples, and the red lips parted, showing her white teeth, while her eyes half-closed. For Mrs Barclay was laughing heartily.

“Ruin him, Mr Denville, ruin him!” she cried. “Ha, ha, ha, and me knowing that – ”

“Woman, will you hold your tongue?” thundered Barclay. “There, don’t take any notice of what I said, Denville. I’ve been put out this morning and money’s scarce. You owe me sixty now and interest, besides two years’ rent.”

“I do – I do, my dear sir; but really, my dear Barclay, I intend to repay you every guinea.”

“He’s going to lend it to you, Mr Denville,” said Mrs Barclay. “It’s only his way. He always tells people he hasn’t any money, and that he has to get it from his friend in the City.”

“Be quiet, woman,” said Barclay, smiling grimly. “There, I’ll let you have it, Denville. Make a memorandum of it, my gal. Let’s see: how much do you want? Twenty-five will do, I suppose?”

“My dear friend – you’ll pardon me – if you could make it fifty you would confer a lasting obligation upon me. I have great hopes, indeed.”

“Fifty? It’s a great deal of money, Denville.”

“Lend him the fifty, Josiah, and don’t make so much fuss about it,” said the lady, opening the ledger, after drawing her chair to the table, taking a dip of ink, and writing rapidly in a round, clear hand. “Got a stamp?”

“Yes,” said Barclay, taking a large well-worn pocket-book from his breast, and separating one from quite a quire. “Fill it up. Two months after date, Denville?”

“You’ll pardon me.”

“What’s the use of doing a neighbour a good turn,” said Mrs Barclay, filling up the slip of blue paper in the most business-like manner, “and spoiling it by being so tight. ‘Six months – after – date – interest – at – five – per – centum’ – there.”

Mrs Barclay put her quill pen across her mouth, and, turning the bill stamp over, gave it a couple of vigorous rubs on the blotting-paper before handing it to her husband, who ran his eye over it quickly.

“Why, you’ve put five per cent, per annum,” he cried. “Here, fill up another. Five per cent.”

“Stuff!” said Mrs Barclay stoutly; “are you going to charge the poor man sixty per cent? I shan’t fill up another. Here, you sign this, Mr Denville. Give the poor man his money, Josiah.”

“Well,” exclaimed Barclay, taking a cash-box from a drawer and opening it with a good deal of noise, “if ever man was cursed with a tyrant for a wife – ”

“It isn’t you. There!” cried Mrs Barclay, taking the bill which the visitor had duly signed, and placing it in a case along with some of its kin.

“There you are, Denville,” said Barclay, counting out the money in notes, “and if you go and tell people what a fool I am, I shall have to leave the town.”

“Not while I live, Mr Barclay,” said the MC, taking the notes carefully, but with an air of indolent carelessness and grace, as if they were of no account to such a man as he. “Sir, I thank you from my very heart. You have done me a most kindly action. Mrs Barclay, I thank you. My daughter shall thank you for this. You’ll pardon me. My visit is rather short. But business. Mr Barclay, good-day. I shall not forget this. Mrs Barclay, your humble servant.”

He took the hand she held out by the tips of the fingers, and bent over it to kiss them with the most delicate of touches; but somehow, just then there seemed to be a catch in his breath, and he pressed his lips firmly on the soft, fat hand.

“God bless you!” he said huskily, and he turned and left the room.

“Poor man!” said Mrs Barclay after a few moments’ pause, as she and her lord listened to the descending steps, and heard the front door close. “Why, look here, Josiah, at my hand, if it ain’t a tear.”

“Tchah! an old impostor and sham. Wipe it off, woman, wipe it off. Kissing your hand, too, like that, before my very face.”

“No, Jo-si-ah, I don’t believe he’s a bad one under all his sham and fuss. Folks don’t know folkses’ insides. They say you are about the hard-heartedest old money-lender that ever breathed, but they don’t know you as I do. There, it was very good of you to let him have it, poor old man. I knew you would.”

“I’ve thrown fifty pounds slap into the gutter.”

“No, you haven’t, dear; you’ve lent it to that poor old fellow, and you’ve just pleased me a deal better than if you’d given me a diamond ring, and that’s for it, and more to come.”

As she spoke she threw one plump arm round the money-lender’s neck, and there was a sound in the room as of a smack.

Volume One – Chapter Twenty Five.
A Revelation

“Oh, May, May! As if I had not care and pain enough without this. Surely it cannot be true.”

“Hush! don’t make a fuss like that, you silly thing. You’ll have the people hearing you down in the street. How could I help it?”

“Help it? May, you must have been mad.”

“Oh! no, I wasn’t,” said Mrs Burnett, nestling into a corner of the couch in her father’s drawing-room. “I believe he was, though, poor fellow.”

She gazed up at her portrait with her pretty girlish face wrinkling up, and these wrinkles seeming to have had work to get the better of the dimples in her baby cheeks and chin.

“He was dreadfully fond of me, Claire,” she continued, “and I was very fond of him. And then, you see, we were both so young.”

Claire clasped her hands together and gazed at her sister with a face full of wonder, she seemed so calm and unconcerned, as if it were some one else’s trouble and not her own that had brought the tears into her eyes.

“But, May, why did not you confide in me?”

“Likely! You were always scolding and snubbing me, as it was. I don’t know what you would have said if you had known. Besides, I was afraid of you in those days.”

“May, you will drive me mad,” said Claire, pacing the room.

“Nonsense; and don’t go on running up and down the room like that. Be sensible, and help me.”

“Why have you not told me before?”

“I’ve been going to tell you heaps of times, but you’ve always had something or other to worry about, and I’ve been put off.”

“Till you knew that detection was inevitable; and now you come to me,” cried Claire reproachfully.

“Look here, Claire, are you going to talk sensibly, or am I to go to some lady friend to help me? There’s Mrs Pontardent.”

“No, no,” cried Claire excitedly. “You must not take anyone else into your confidence. Tell me all. But May, May, is this really true, or is it some miserable invention of your own?”

“Oh, it’s true enough,” said May sharply, as she arranged her bonnet strings, and bent forward to catch a glimpse of her great ostrich feather.

Claire looked at her with her face drawn with care and horror, while she wondered at the indifference of the little wife, and the easy way in which she was trying to shift the trouble and responsibility of her weakness and folly upon her sister.

“Why, May, you could not have been seventeen.”

“Sixteen and a half,” said May. “Heigho! I begin to feel quite an old woman now.”

“But, Frank? Do you ever think of the consequences if he were to know?”

“Why, of course I do, you silly thing. Haven’t I lain in bed and quaked hundreds of times for fear he should ever find out? How can you talk so? Why do you suppose I came to you, if it was not that I was afraid of his getting to know?”

“May, it would drive our father mad if all came out.”

“Of course it would. Now you are beginning to wake up and understand why I have come.”

“How could you accept Frank Burnett, and deceive him so?”

“How could I marry him? What would papa have said if I had refused? Don’t talk stuff.”

Claire’s brow knit more and more, as she realised her sister’s utter want of principle, and her heart seemed rent by anger, pity, and grief.

“Besides, do you suppose I wanted to stop here and pinch and starve when a rich husband and home were waiting for me? Poor Louis was dead, and if I’d cried my eyes out every week and said I’d be a widow for ever and ever, it would not have brought him to life.”

Claire did not speak. Her words would not come, and she gazed in utter perplexity, struggling to realise the fact that the girlish little thing before her could possibly have been a widow and mother before she became Mrs Burnett.

“When – when did this begin?” said Claire at last.

“Now, don’t talk to me like that, Claire, or you’ll set me off crying my eyes blind, and I shall go home red and miserable, and Frank will find it all out.”

“He must be told.”

“Told?” cried May, starting up. “Told? If he is told, I’ll go right down to the end of the pier and drown myself. He must never know, and papa must never know. Do you think I’ve kept this a secret for more than two years for them to be told?”

“They will be sure to know.”

“Yes, if you tell them. Oh, Claire, Claire, I did think I could find help in my sister, now that I am in such terrible trouble.”

“I will help you all I can, May,” said Claire sadly; “but they must know.”

“I tell you they must not,” cried May angrily, and speaking like a spoiled child. “Frank would kill me, and as for poor, dear, darling papa, with all his troubles about getting you married and Morton settled, and Fred turning out so badly, it would kill him, and then you’d have a nice time of it, far worse than poor old mummy Teigne being killed.”

“Oh, hush, May!” said Claire, with a horrified look.

“That moves you, does it, miss? Well, then, be reasonable. I don’t know what to make of you of late, Claire; you seem to be so changed. Ah, you’ll find the difference when you’re a married woman.”

Claire gazed down at her, with the trouble and perplexity seeming to increase, while May Burnett arranged the folds of her dress, as she once more nestled in the corner of the old sofa, and seemed as if she were posing herself to be pitied and helped.

Then she lifted her eyes towards the florid portrait on the wall, and sighed.

“Poor Louis! How he did flatter me. But he always did that, and I suppose it was his flattering words made me love him so. I was very fond of him.”

“May,” said Claire excitedly, “when was it you were married?”

“Oh, it was such fun. It was while I was staying at Aunt Jerdein’s, and taking the music lessons. I went out as usual, to go to Golden Square for my lesson as aunt thought, and Louis was waiting for me, and he took me in a hackney coach with straw at the bottom and mouldy old cushions, and one of the windows broken. And we went to such a queer old church somewhere in the city, and were married – a little old church that smelt as mouldy as the hackney coach; and the funny old clergyman took snuff all over his surplice, and he did mumble so.”

“And then?”

“Oh, Louis left Saltinville, you know, when I went up to London, and gave lessons at Aunt Jerdein’s, and we used to see as much of each other as we could, till he had to go back to Rome, and there, poor boy, you know he died of fever.”

Claire did not speak, but stood with her hands clasped before her, listening to the calm, cool, selfish words that seemed to come rippling out from the prettily-curved mouth as if it were one of the simplest and most matter-of-fact things in the world.

“It was a great trouble to me, of course, dear,” May continued; and she raised herself a little, to spread her handsome dress, so that it should fall in graceful folds. “I used to cry my eyes out, and I don’t know what I should have done if it had not been for Anne Brown.”

“Anne Brown? Aunt Jerdein’s servant?” said Claire bitterly. “You trusted her, then, in preference to your own sister.”

“No, I didn’t, baby. She found me out. And besides, I daren’t have told you. How you would have scolded me, you know,” continued May. “Anne was very good to me, and I went and stayed with her mother when baby was born, and then Anne left aunt soon after. Aunt thought, you know, that I’d come down home, and, of course, you all thought I was still at aunt’s. Anne Brown managed about the letters.”

“Go on,” said Claire, who listened as if this were all some horrible fiction that she was forced to hear.

“Then I did come home, and Anne Brown took care of poor baby with her mother, and it was terribly hard work to get money to send them, but somehow I did it; and then you know about Frank Burnett, how poor dear papa brought all that on.”

Claire uttered a sigh that was almost a groan, but the pretty little rosebud of a wife went prattling on, in selfish ignorance of the agony she was inflicting, dividing her attention between her dress and the picture of herself that was smiling down at her from the wall.

“I suffered very much all that time, Claire dear, and, whenever I could, I used to go upstairs, lock myself in my room, and put on a little widow’s cap I had – a very small one, dear, of white crape – and have a good cry about poor Louis. It was the only mourning I ever could wear for him, and it was nearly always locked up in the bottom drawer; but I used to carry a bit of black crape in my dress pocket, and touch that now and then. It was a little strip put through my wedding ring and tied in a knot. There it is,” she said, fishing it out of her dress pocket; “but the strip of crape only looks like a bit of black rag now.”

She held out a tiny, plain gold ring for her sister to see, and it looked so small that it seemed as if it had been used sometime when a little girl had been playing at being married with some little boy, or at one of the child weddings that history records.

“Poor Louis!” sighed May. “I was very fond of him. Then, when I was married again, of course I was able to send money up every week easily enough till Frank began to grow so stingy, when I’ve often had no end of trouble to get it together. But I always have managed somehow. Oh, dear me! This is a wearisome place, this world.”

Claire stood gazing down at her, and May went on:

“Then all went smoothly enough till that stupid Anne’s mother took a cold or something, and died; then Anne sent me word that she was going to be married, and I must fetch poor baby away.”

The sisters’ eyes now met as May continued:

“So, as I didn’t know anyone else, I went to Mrs Miggles out there on the cliff, and told her how I was situated. She wouldn’t help me at first. She said I was to tell you; but when I told her I dared not, and promised her I’d pay her very regularly, she came round, and she went up to London by the coach and fetched baby, and a great expense it was to me, for she had to come back inside. Do open the window, Claire; this room is stifling.”

Claire slowly crossed the room and threw open the window and then returned to stand gazing at her sister.

“And your little innocent child is there at that fisherman’s hut on the cliff?”

“Yes, dear,” said May calmly; and then, for the first time, her face lit up, and she showed some trace of feeling as she exclaimed:

“And, oh, Claire dear, she is such a little darling.”

Claire looked at her in a strangely impassive way. It was as if the story she had heard of her sister’s weakness and deception had stunned her, and, instead of looking at her, she gazed right away with wistful eyes at the past troubles culminating in Fred’s enlistment, and then that horror, the very thought of which sent a shudder through her frame.

And now this new trouble had come, one that might prove a terrible disgrace, while the future looked so black that she dared not turn her mental gaze in that direction.

“Well,” said May, at last, “why don’t you speak – though you need not, if you are only going to scold.”

“Why have you come to tell me this now – this disgraceful story of deceit and shame?”

“Do you wish to send me back broken-hearted, Claire – crying my eyes out so that Frank is sure to know?”

“I say, why have you come to me, May?”

“Because I am in dreadful trouble at last, and don’t know what to do. I daren’t communicate with those people or go near the cottage, for I’m sure Frank is watching me and suspecting something.”

“You will have to confess everything, May; he loves you and will forgive you.”

“But he doesn’t love me, and he never would forgive me,” cried May excitedly. “You can’t think how we quarrel. He’s a horribly jealous little monster, and I hate him.”

“May!”

“I don’t care: I do. Now, look here, Claire, it’s of no use for you to boggle about it, because you must help me. If it were to come out it would be social ruin for us all, and I’ve had quite enough poverty, thank you. I dare not go and see the little thing again, and if some one does not take the Miggleses some money regularly, likely as not they’ll turn disagreeable and begin to talk. I shall bring you money, of course, and as some one must go and see that my poor darling is properly cared for, why you must.”

“I?”

“Yes, dear, you. The poor little thing shall not be neglected, I’m determined upon that; and as my situation prevents me, why it is your duty, Claire.”

“Who knows that this is your little girl, May?” said Claire coldly.

“Nobody.”

“Not even the fisherman’s wife?”

“Well, I dare say she thinks something; but those people never say anything so long as you pay them regularly. But there, I dare not stay any longer. There’s a guinea, Claire; it’s all I have to-day. Take that to Mrs Miggles, and see how the darling is. I must be off. I’ll come in to-morrow and hear.”

“May, I cannot – I dare not – try to cloak this shameful story.”

“But you must, I tell you. Now, don’t be so silly. Why, I’d do as much for you.”

“I tell you I dare not do this. I must tell papa – or, there, I’ll be your help in this; I’ll come with you, and you shall confess to Frank.”

“Why, he’d kill me. I know it has been a surprise to you, and you are a bit taken aback, but think about it, and you will see that it is your duty to help me now. Good-bye, Claire dear,” she continued, as she kissed her sister. “Nobody knows anything about this but you, and it is our secret, mind. Good-bye.”

Claire hardly heard the door close as May rustled out of the room, hot and excited by the confidence she had had to make, but evidently quite at her ease, as her bright eyes and smile showed, when she looked up from her carriage and nodded at her sister.

Claire looked down at her, drawn involuntarily to the window; and as the carriage drove off, and she still remained gazing straight before her, an officer passed and raised his hat.

Claire had an instinctive feeling that it was Major Rockley, but she neither looked nor moved, for the face of a tiny child seemed to be looking up at her, smiling, and asking her sympathy.

Then she started into life as there was another footstep on the boulder path, and another hat was raised, and an eager appealing look met hers, making her shrink hastily away, with her erst blank face growing agitated as she drew back trembling and fighting hard to keep down the sobs that rose.

For all that was past now for her. With the secrets she had held within her breast before, how dared she to think of his love? Now there was another – a secret so fraught with future trouble that she hardly dared dwell upon all that she had heard. It had come upon her that morning like a thunderclap – this new trouble, known only to herself and the fisherman’s wife. So May had said: for she had gone to her sister to demand her aid in happy ignorance of this part of her miserable story being known, beside much more, to little library-keeping Miss Clode.