CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER X."And now we believe in evilWhere once we believed in good.The world, the flesh, and the devilAre easily understood."Gordon.IIT seems a pity that our human destinies are too often so constituted that with our own hands we may annul in one hour—our hour of weakness—the long, slow work of our strength; annul the self-conquest and the renunciation of our best years. We ought to be thankful when the gate of the irrevocable closes behind us, and the power to defeat ourselves is at last taken from us. For he who has once solemnlyand with conviction renounced, and then, for no new cause, has taken to himself again that which he renounced, has broken the mainspring of his life.John went early the following morning to London, for he had business with three men, and he could not rest till he had seen them, and had shut that gate upon himself for ever.So early had he started that it was barely midday when he reached Lord Frederick's chambers. The valet told him that his lordship was still in bed, and could see no one; but John went up to his bedroom, and knocked at the door."It is I—John Tempest," he said, and went in.Lord Frederick was sitting up in bed, sallow and shrunk like a mummy, in a blue watered-silk dressing-gown. His thin hair was brushed up into a crest on the topof his head. The bed was littered with newspapers and letters. There was a tray before him, and he was in the act of chipping an egg as John came in.He raised his eyebrows and looked first with surprised displeasure, and then with attention, at his visitor."Good morning," he said; and he went on tapping his egg. "Ah," he said, shaking his head, "hard-boiled again!"John looked at him as a plague-stricken man might look at the carcase of some obscene animal found rotting in his water-spring.Lord Frederick's varied experiences had made him familiar with the premonitory symptoms of those outbursts of anger and distress which he designated under the all-embracing term of "scenes." He felt idly curious to know what this man with his fierce white face had to say to him."Oblige me by sitting down," he said; "you are in my light.""I have been reading my mother's letters to you," said John, still standing in the middle of the room, and stammering in his speech. He had not reckoned for the blind paroxysm of rage which had sprung up at the mere sight of Lord Frederick, and was spinning him like a leaf in a whirlwind."Indeed!" said Lord Frederick, raising his eyebrows, and carefully taking the shell off his egg. "I don't care about reading old letters myself, especially the private correspondence of other people; but tastes differ. You do, it seems. I had imagined the particular letters you allude to had been burnt.""My mother intended to burn them.""It would certainly have been wiser to do so, but probably for that reason they remained undestroyed. From time immemorialwomankind has shown a marked repugnance to the dictates of common sense.""I have burnt them.""Just so," said Lord Frederick, helping himself to salt. "I commend your prudence. Had you burnt them unread, I should have been able to commend your sense of honour also.""What do you know about honour?" said John.The two men looked hard at each other."That remark," said Lord Frederick, joining the ends of his fingers and half shutting his eyes, "is a direct insult. To insult a man with whom you are not in a position to quarrel is, in my opinion, John, an error of judgment. We will consider it one, and as such I will let it pass. The letters, I presume, contained nothing of which you were not already aware?""Only the fact that I am your illegitimate son.""I deplore your coarseness of expression. You certainly have not inherited it from me. But, my dear Galahad, it is impossible that even your youth and innocence should not have known of mytendressefor your mother.""Is that the last new name for adultery?" said John huskily, advancing a step nearer the bed. His face was livid. His eyes burned. He held his hands clenched lest they should rush out and wrench away all semblance of life and humanity from that figure in the watered-silk dressing-gown.Lord Frederick lay back on his pillows, and looked at him steadily. He was without fear, but it appeared to him that he was about to die. The laws of his country, of conscience and of principle, all the protection that envelops life, seemed to have recededfrom him, to have slipped away into the next room, or downstairs with the valet. They would come back, no doubt, in time, but they might be a little late, as far as he was concerned."He has strong hands, like mine," he said to himself, his pale, unflinching eyes fixed upon his son's; while a remembrance slid through his mind of how once, years ago, he had choked the life out of a mastiff which had turned on him, and how long the heavy brute had taken to die."Do not spill the coffee," he said quietly, after a moment.John started violently, and wheeled away from him like a man regaining consciousness on the brink of an abyss. Lord Frederick put out his lean hand, and went on with his breakfast.There was a long silence."John," said Lord Frederick at last, notwithout a certain dignity, "the world is as it is. We did not make it, and we are not responsible for it. If there is any one who set it going, it is his own look out. Reproachhim, if you can find him. All we have to do is to live in it. And we can't live in it, I tell you we can't exist in it, with any comfort until we realize that it is rotten to the core."John was leaning against the window-sill shaking like a reed. It seemed to him that for one awful moment he had been in hell."I do not pretend to be better than other men," continued Lord Frederick. "Men and women are men and women; and if you persist in thinking them angels, especially the latter, you will pay for your mistake.""I am paying," said John."Possibly. You seem to have sustained a shock. It is incredible to me that you did not know beforehand what the letters toldyou. Wedding-rings don't make a greater resemblance between father and son than there is between you and me."Lord Frederick looked at the stooping figure of the young man, leaning spent and motionless against the window, his arms hanging by his sides. He held what he called his prudishness in contempt, but he respected an element in him which he would have termed "grit.""You are stronger built than I am, John," he said, with a touch of pride, "and wider in the chest. Come, bygones are bygones. Shake hands.""I can't," said John. "I don't know that I could on my account, but anyhow not onhers.""H'm! And so this was the information which you rushed in without leave to spring upon me?""It was, together with the fact that ofcourse I withdraw in favour of Colonel Tempest, the heir at law. I am going on to him from here."Lord Frederick reared himself slowly in his bed, his brown hands clutching the bedclothes like eagles' talons."You are going to own your——""Myshame—yes; not yours. You need not be alarmed. Your name shall not be brought in. If I take the name of Fane, it will only be because it was my mother's.""But you said you had burned the letters.""I have. I don't see what difference that makes. The fact that they are burnt does not alter the fact that I am—nobody, and he is the legal heir.""And you mean to tell him so?""I do.""To commit suicide?""Social suicide—yes.""Fool!" said Lord Frederick, in a voice which lost none of its force because it was barely above a whisper.John did not answer."Leave the room," said the outraged parent, turning his face to the wall, the bedclothes and the tray trembling exceedingly. "I will have nothing more to do with you. You need not come to me when you are penniless. Do you hear? I disown you. Leave me. I will never speak to you again.""I hope to God you never will," said John; and he took up his hat and went out.He had settled his account with the first of the three people whom he had come to London to see. From Lord Frederick's chambers he went straight to Colonel Tempest's lodgings in Brook Street. But Colonel Tempest had that morning departed with his son to Brighton, and John,momentarily thrown off his line of action by that simple occurrence, stared blankly at the landlady, and then went to his club and sat down to write to him. There was no question of waiting. Like a man walking across Niagara on a tight rope, it was no time to think, to hesitate, to look round. John kept his eyes riveted to one point, and shut his ears to the roar of the torrent below him, in which a moment's giddiness would engulf him.It was afternoon by this time. As he sat writing at a table in one of the bay windows, a familiar voice spoke to him. It was Lord Hemsworth. They had not met since the night of the ice carnival. Lord Hemsworth's face had quite lost its boyish expression."I hope you are better, Tempest," he said, with obvious constraint, looking narrowly at him. Could Di's accepted lover wear so grey and stern a look as this?John replied that he was well; and then, with sudden recollection of Mitty's account of Lord Hemsworth's conduct during that memorable night, began to thank him, and stopped short.The room was empty."It was onheraccount," said Lord Hemsworth.John did not answer. It was that conviction which had pulled him up.Lord Hemsworth waited some time for John to speak, and then he said—"You know about me, Tempest, and why I was on the ice that night. Well, I have kept out of the way for three months under the belief that—I should hear any day that—— I am not such a fool as to pit myself against you—I don't want to be a nuisance to—— But it's three months. For God's sake tell me; are you on or are you not?""I am not," said John."Then I will try my luck," said the other.He went out, and John knew that he had gone to try it there and then; and sat motionless, with his hand across his mouth and his unfinished letter before him, until the servant came to close the shutters.CHAPTER XI."We live together years and years,And leave unsounded stillEach other's springs of hopes and fears,Each other's depths of will."Lord Houghton.BBUT still more bewildering is the way in which we live years and years with ourselves in an entire ignorance of the powers that lie dormant beneath the surface of character. The day comes when vital forces of which we know nothing arise within us, and break like glass the even tenor of our lives. The quiet hours, the regulated thoughts, the peaceful aspiration after things but little set above us, whereare they? The angel with the sword drives us out of our Eden to shiver in the wilderness of an entirely changed existence, unrecognizable by ourselves, though perhaps lived in the same external groove, the same divisions of time, among the same faces as before.Day succeeded day in Di's life, each day adding one more stone to the prison in which it seemed as if an inexorable hand were walling her up."I will not give in. I will turn my mind to other things," she said to herself. And—there were no other things. All lesser lights were blown out. The heart, when it is swept into the grasp of a great love, is ruthlessly torn from the hundred minute ties and interests that heretofore held it to life. The little fibres and tendrils of affections which have gradually grown round certain objects are snapped off from the roots.They cease to exist. The pang of love is that there is no escape from it. It has the same tension as sleeplessness.Di struggled and was not defeated; but some victories are as sad as defeats. During the struggle she lost something—what was it—that had been to many her greatest charm? Women were unanimous in deploring how she had "gone off." There was a thinness in her cheek, and a blue line under her deep eyes. Her beauty remained, but it was not the same beauty. Mrs. Courtenay noticed with a pang that she was growing like her mother.Easter came, and with it the wedding of Miss Crupps and the Honourable Augustus Lumley, youngest son of Lord Mortgage. Miss Crupps' young heart had long inclined towards Mr. Lumley; but on the occasion of seeing him blacked as a Christy Minstrel, she had finally succumbed into a state ofgiggling admiration, which plainly showed the state of her affections. So he cut the word "yes" out of a newspaper, and told her that was what she was to say to him, and amid a series of delighted cackles they were engaged. Di went to the wedding, looking so pale that it was whispered that Mr. Lumley and his tambourine had won her heart as well as that of his adoring bride.On a sunny afternoon shortly afterwards, Di was sitting alone indoors, her grandmother having gone out driving with a friend. She told herself that she ought to go out, but she remained sitting with her hands in her lap. Every duty, every tiny decision, every small household matter, had become of late an intolerable burden. Even to put a handful of flowers into water required an effort of will which it was irksome to make.She had stayed in to make an alterationin the gown she was to wear that night at the Speaker's. As she looked at the card to make sure it was the right evening, she remembered that it was at the Speaker's she had first met John, just a year ago. One year. How absurd! Five, ten, fifteen! She tried to recollect what her life could have been like before he had come into it; but it seemed to start from that point, and to have had no significance before."I must go out," she said again; and at that moment the door bell rang, and although Mrs. Courtenay was out, some one was admitted. The door opened, and Lord Hemsworth was announced.There is, but men are fortunately not in a position to be aware of it, a lamentable uniformity in their manner of opening up certain subjects. Di knew in a moment from previous experience what he had come for. He wondered, as he stumbled througha labyrinth of platitudes about the weather, how he could broach the subject without alarming her. He did not know that he had done so by his manner of coming into the room, and that he had been refused before he had finished shaking hands.Di was horribly sorry for him while he talked about—whatever he did talk about. Neither noticed what it was at the time, or remembered it afterwards. She was grateful to him for not alluding even in the most distant manner to their last meeting. She remembered that she had clung to him, and that he had called her by her Christian name, but she was too callous to be ashamed at the recollection. It was as nothing compared to another humiliation which had come upon her a little later."It is no good beating about the bush," said Lord Hemsworth at last, after he had beaten it till there was, so to speak, nothingleft of it. "I have come up to London for one thing, and I have come here for one thing, which is—to ask you to marry me. Don't speak—don't say anything just for a moment," he continued hurriedly, raising his hand as if to ward off a rebuff. "For God's sake don't stop me. I've kept it in so long I must say it, and you must hear me."She let him say it. And he got it out with stumbling and difficulty and long gaps between—got out in shaking commonplaces a tithe of the love he had for her. And all the time Di thought if it might only have been some one else who was uttering those halting words! (I wonder how many men have proposed and been accepted while the woman has said to herself, "If it had only been some one else!")Despair at his inability to express himself, and at her silence, seized him: as if itmattered a pin how he expressed himself if she had been willing to listen."If you understood," he said over and over again, with the monotonous reiteration of a piano-tuner, "you would not refuse me. I know you are going to, but if only you understood you would not. You would not have the heart. It's—it's just everything to me." And Lord Hemsworth—oh, bathos of modern life!—looked into his hat."Lord Hemsworth," said Di, "have I ever given you any encouragement?""None," he replied. "People might think you had, but you never did. I knew better. I never misunderstood you. I know you don't care a straw about me; but—oh, Di, you have not your equal in the world. There's no woman to compare with you. I don't see how you could care for any one like me. Of course you don't. I would not expect it. But if—if you would only marryme—I would be content with very little. I've looked at it all round. I would be content with—very little."There was a long silence.What woman whose love has been slighted can easily reject a great devotion?"I think," said Di, after several false starts to speak, "that if I only considered myself I would marry you; but there is the happiness of one other person to think of—yours.""I can't have any apart from you.""You would have none with me. If it is miserable to care for any one who is indifferent, it would be a thousand times more miserable to be married to that person.""Not if it were you.""Yes, if it were I.""I would take the risk," said Lord Hemsworth, who held, in common with most men, the rooted conviction that a woman willbecome attached to any husband, however little she cares for her lover. It is precisely this conviction which makes the average marriages of the present day such mediocre affairs; which serves to place worldly or facile women, or those whose affections have never been called out, at the head of so many homes; as the mothers of the new generation from which we hope so much."I would take any risk," repeated Lord Hemsworth, doggedly. "I would rather be unhappy with you than happy with any one else.""You think so now," said Di; "but the time would come when you would see that I had cut you off from the best thing in the world—from the love of a woman who would care for you as much as you do for me.""I don't want her. I want you.""I cannot marry you."Lord Hemsworth clutched blindly at the arms of the chair."I would wait any time."Di shook her head."Any time," he stammered. "Go away for a year, and—come back.""It would be no good."Then he lost his head."So long as you don't care for any one else," he said incoherently. "I thought at the carnival—that is why I have kept out of the way—but I met Tempest to-day at the Carlton, and—I asked him straight out, and he said there was nothing between you and him. I suppose you have refused him, like the rest of us. Oh, my God, Di, they say you have no heart! But it isn't true, is it? Don't refuse me. Don't make me live without you. I've tried for three months"—and Lord Hemsworth's face worked—"and if youknew what it was like, you wouldn't send me back to it."Every vestige of colour had faded from Di's face at the mention of John."I don't care enough for you to marry you," she said, pitiless in her great pity. "I wish I did, but—I don't.""Do you care for any one else?"Di saw that nothing short of the truth would wrest his persistence from its object."Yes, I do," she said passionately, trembling from head to foot. "For some one who does not care for me. You and I are both in the same position. Do you see now how useless it is to talk of this any longer?"Both had risen to their feet. Lord Hemsworth looked at Di's white convulsed face, and his own became as ashen. He saw at last that he had no more chance of marrying her than if she were lying at his feet in hercoffin. Constancy, which can compass many things, avails nought sometimes."I beg your pardon," he said, holding out his hand to go."I think I ought to beg yours," she said brokenly, while their hands clasped tightly each in each. "I never meant to make you as—unhappy as—as I am myself, but yet I have."They looked at each other with tears in their eyes."It does not matter," said Lord Hemsworth, hoarsely. "I shall be all right—it's you—I think of. Don't stand—mustn't stand—you're too tired. Good-bye."Di flung herself down on her face on the sofa as the door closed. She had forgotten Lord Hemsworth's existence the moment after he had left the room.John had told him that there was nothing between her andhimself.John had told him that. John had said that. A cry escaped her, and she strangled it in the cushion.Hope does not always die when we imagine it does. It is subject to long trances. The hope which she had thought dead was only giving up the ghost now. "Chaque espérance est un œuf d'où peut sortir un serpent au lieu d'une colombe." Out of that frail shell of a cherished hope lying broken before her the serpent had crept at last. It moved, it grew before her eyes."Slighted love is sair to bide."CHAPTER XII."We met, hand to hand,We clasped hands close and fast,As close as oak and ivy stand;But it is past."Christina Rossetti."Half false, half fair, all feeble."Swinburne.WWHEN John roused himself from the long stupor into which he had fallen after Lord Hemsworth's departure, he put his finished letter to Colonel Tempest into an envelope, and then remembered with annoyance that he did not know how to address it. When the landlady in Brook Street had told him that Colonel and CaptainTempest had gone to Brighton that morning, he had been too much taken aback at the moment to think of asking for their address. He was too much exhausted in mind and body to go back to the lodgings for it immediately. He wrote a second letter, this time to his lawyer, and then, conscious of the state of his body by the shaking hand and clumsy, tardy brain which made of a short and explicit statement so lengthy an affair, he mechanically changed his clothes, dined, and sat watching the smoke of his cigar.Presently, with food and rest, the apathy into which exhaustion had plunged him lifted, and the restlessness of a tortured mind returned. He had only as yet seen one of the three men whom he had come to London to interview, namely, Lord Frederick. Colonel Tempest, the second, was out of town; but probably the third, Lord----, the minister, was not. It was close on ten o'clock. He should probably find him in his private room in the House.John flung away his cigar, and was in a few minutes spinning towards the Houses of Parliament in a hansom. He had not thought much about it till now, but as he turned in at the gates the lines of the great buildings suddenly brought back to him the remembrance of his own ambition, and of the splendid career that had seemed to be opening before him when last he had passed those gates; which had fallen at a single touch like a house of cards—a house built with Fortune's cards.There was aqueueof carriages at the Speaker's entrance. A party was evidently going on there. John went to the House and inquired for Lord ——. He was not there. Perhaps he was at the Speaker's reception. John remembered, or thought he remembered, that he had a card for it, andwent on there. His mind was set on finding Lord ——.History repeats itself, and so does our little private history. Only when the same thing happens it finds us changed, and we look back at what we were last time, and remember our old young self with wonder. Was that indeed I?Possibly to some an evening party may appear a small event, but to Di, as she stood in the same crowd as last year, in the same pictured rooms, it seemed to her that her whole life had turned on the pivot of that one evening a year ago.The lights glared too much now. The babel dazed her. Noises had become sharp swords of late. Every one talked too loud. She chatted and smiled, and vaguely wondered that her friends recognized her. "I am not the same person," she said toherself, "but no one seems to see any difference."Presently she found herself near the same arched window where she had stood with John last year. She moved for a moment to it and looked out. There was a mist across the river. The lights struggled through blurred and feeble. It had been clear last year. She turned and went on talking, of she knew not what, to a very young man at her elbow, who was making laborious efforts to get on with her.Her eyes looked back from the recess across the sea of faces and fringes, and bald and close-cropped heads. The men who were not John, but yet had a momentary resemblance to him, were the only people she distinctly saw. Tall fair men were beginning to complain of her unrecognizing manner.Yes, history repeats itself.Among the crowd in the distance she suddenly saw him. John's rugged profile and square head were easy to recognize.He had said there was nothing between them.Their last meeting rushed back upon her with a scathing recollection of how she had held him in her arms and pressed her face to his. Shame scorched her inmost soul.She turned towards her companion with fuller attention than what she had previously accorded him.As John walked through the rooms scanning the crowd, the possibility of meeting Di did not strike him. With a frightful clutch of the heart he caught sight of her. A man who instantly aroused his animosity was talking eagerly to her. Something in her appearance startled him. Was it the colour of her gown that made her look so pale, the intense light that gave her calm dignifiedface that peculiar worn expression? She had a faint fixed smile as she talked that John did not recognize, and that, why he knew not, cut him to the quick.Was this Di? Could this be Di?He knew she had seen him. He hesitated a moment and then went towards her. She received him without any change of countenance. The fixed smile was still on her lips as he spoke to her, but the lips had whitened. Their eyes met for a moment. Oh! what had happened to Di's lovely eyes that used to be so grave and gay?He stammered something—said he was looking for some one—and passed on. She turned to speak to some one else as he did so. He strangled the nameless emotion which was choking him, and made his way into the next room. He had a vague consciousness of being spoken to, and of making herculean efforts to grind out answers, andthen of pouncing on the secretary of the man he was looking for, who told him his chief had suddenly and unexpectedly started for Paris that afternoon on affairs of importance.John mechanically noted down his address in Paris and left the house.The necessity of remembering where his feet were taking him recalled him somewhat to himself. He pulled himself together, and slackened his pace."I will go to Paris by the night express," he said to himself, the feverish longing for action increasing upon him as this new obstacle met him. He dared not remain in London. He knew for a certainty that if he did he should go and see Di. Neither could he write to Lord —— all that he must tell him, or put into black and white the favour he had to ask of him—the first favour John had ever needed to ask, namely,to be helped by means of Lord ——'s interest to some post in which he could for the moment support himself and Mitty.As he turned up St. James's Street, he remembered with irritation that he had not yet procured Colonel Tempest's and Archie's address. While he hesitated whether to go on, late as it was, to Brook Street for it, he remembered that he could probably obtain it much nearer at hand, namely, at Archie's rooms in Piccadilly. Archie, who was a person of much pink and monogrammed correspondence, would probably have left his address behind him, stuck in the glass of the mantelpiece, as his manner was. The latch-key he had lent John in the autumn, when John had made use of his rooms, was still on his chain. He had forgotten to return it. He let himself in, went upstairs to the second floor, and opened the door of the little sitting-room."Here you are at last," said a woman's voice.He went in quickly and shut the door behind him.A small woman in shimmering evening dress, with diamonds in her hair, came towards him, and stopped short with a little scream.It was Madeleine.He looked at her in silence, standing with his back to the door. The smouldering fire in his eyes seemed to burn her, for she shrank away to the further end of the room. John observed that there was a fire and lamps, and knit his brows.Some persons are unable to perceive when explanations are useless. Madeleine began one—something about Archie's difficulties, money, etc.; but John cut her short."You are not accountable to me for your actions," he said. "Keep your explanations for your husband."He looked again with perplexity at the fire and the lamps. He knew Archie hadgone that morning on three days' leave to Brighton with his father."Let me go," she said, whimpering. "I won't stay here to be thought ill of, to have evil imputed to me.""You will answer one question first," said John."You impute evil to me—I know you do," said Madeleine, beginning to cry; "but it is your own coarse mind that sees wickedness in everything.""Possibly," said John. "When do you expect Archie?""Any moment. I wish he was here, that he might tell you——""Thank you, that will do. You can go now."He opened the door. She drew a long cloak over her shoulders and passed him without speaking, looking like what she was—one of that class whose very existence sheprofessed to ignore, but whose ranks she had virtually joined when she announced her engagement to Sir Henry in theMorning Post. Perhaps, inasmuch as that, untempted, she had sold herself for diamonds and position, instead of, under strong temptation, for the bare necessities of life like her poorer sisters, she was more degraded than they; but fortunately for her, and many others in our midst, society upheld her.John looked after her and then followed her. There was not a soul on the common staircase or in the hall. He passed out just behind her, and they were in the street together."Take my arm," he said, and she took it mechanically.He signalled a four-wheeler and helped her into it."Where do you wish to go?" he said."I don't know," she said feebly, apparentlytoo much scared to remember what her arrangements had been.John considered a moment."Where is Sir Henry?""Dining at Woolwich.""Can't you go home?""No, no. It is much too early. I'm dressed for—I said I was going to ——, and I have left there already, and the carriage is waiting there still.""You must go back there," said John. "Get your carriage and go home in it."He gave the cabman the address and paid him. Then he returned to the cab door."Lady Verelst," he said less sternly, "believe me—Archie is not worth it.""You don't understand," she tried to say, with an assumption of injured dignity. "It was only that I——""He is not worth it," said John with emphasis; and he shut to the door of thecab, and watched it drive away. Then he went back to Archie's room, and sat down to consider. A faint odour of scent hung about the room. He got up and flung open the window. Years afterwards, if a woman used that particular scent, the same loathing disgust returned upon him."He took three days' leave to nurse his father at Brighton, with the intention of coming back here to-night," John said to himself. "He will be here directly." And he made up his mind what he would do.And in truth a few minutes later a hansom rattled to the door, and Archie came in, breathless with haste. He looked eagerly round the room, and then, as he caught sight of the unexpected occupant, his face crimsoned, and he grinned nervously."She is gone," said John, without moving."Gone? Who? I don't know what you mean.""No, of course not. What made you so late?""Train broke down outside London.""I came here to get your address at Brighton, because I have news for you. You are there at this moment, aren't you, looking after your father?"Archie did not answer. He only grinned and showed his teeth. John was aware that though he stood quietly enough by the table, turning over some loose silver in his pocket, he was in a state of blind fury. He also knew that if he waited a little it would pass. Something in John's moral and physical strength had always the power to quell Archie's fits of passion."I had no intention of prying on you," said John, after an interval. "I wanted your address at Brighton, and I could not wait till to-morrow for it. I am going to Paris to-night on business, and—as it isyours as much as mine—you will go with me."Archie never indulged in those flowers of speech with which some adorn their conversation. But there are exceptions to every rule, and he made one now. He culled, so to speak, one large bouquet of the choicest epithets and presented it to John."He knew not what to say, and so he swore." That is why men swear often, and women seldom."I shall not leave you in London with that woman," said John, calmly. "You will go to her if I do.""I shall do as I think fit," stammered Archie, striking the table with his slender white hand."There you err," said John. "You will start with me in half an hour for Paris."CHAPTER XIII."There's not a crimeBut takes its proper change out still in crimeIf once rung on the counter of this world."E. B. Browning.TTHERE is in Paris, just out of the Rue du Bac, a certain old-fashioned hotel, the name of which I forget, with a littlecourin the middle of the rambling old building, and a thin fountain perennially plashing therein, adorned by a few pigeons and feathers on the brink. It had been a very fashionable hotel in the days when Madame Mohl held hersalonnear at hand. But the old order changes. It was superseded now.Why John often went there I don't know. He probably did not know himself, unless it was for the sake of quiet. Anyhow, he and Archie arrived there together that morning; for it is needless to say that, having determined to get Archie at any cost out of London, John had carried his point, as he had done on previous occasions, to the disgust of the sulky young man, who had proved anything but a pleasant travelling companion, and who, late in the afternoon, was still invisible behind the white curtains in one of the two little bedrooms that opened out of the sitting-room in which John was walking up and down.He had put several questions to Archie respecting the state of his father's health, and that gentleman had assured him he was all right, quite able to look after himself; no need for him to remain with him."Of course not," said John, "or you wouldnot have left him. But is he able to attend to business?""Rather," said Archie, with the emphasis of ignorance.As long as Archie was in the next room, out of harm's way, John did not want his company. He knew that when he did appear he had to tell him that for eight and twenty years he had lived on Colonel Tempest's substance; and then he must post the letter lying ready written on the table to Colonel Tempest, only needing the address.After that life was a blank. Archie would rush home, of course. John did not know where he should go, except that it would not be with Archie. Back to Overleigh? No. And with a sudden choking sensation he realized that he should not see Overleigh again. He wondered what Mitty was doing at that moment, and whether the horse-chestnut against the nursery window wouldever burst to leaf. Here in Paris they were out. He had noticed them as he returned from an interview with Lord ——. That gentleman had been much pressed for time, but had nevertheless accorded him a quarter of an hour. He was genuinely perturbed by the disclosure the young man made to him, deplored the event as it affected John, but after the first moment was obviously more concerned about the seat, and the loss of the Tempest support, than the wreck of John's career. After a decorous interval, Lord —— had put a few questions to him about Colonel Tempest, his age, political views, etc. John perceived with what intentions those questions were put, and they made it the harder for him to ask the great man to help him to a livelihood.As John spoke, and the elder man's eye sought his watch, John experienced for the first time the truth of the saying that thehighest price that can be paid for anything is to have to ask for it. If it had not been for Mitty he could not have forced himself to do it."But my dear—er—Tempest," said Lord ----, "surely we need not anticipate that—er—your uncle—er—that Colonel Tempest will fail to make a suitable provision for one—who—who——""He may offer to do so," replied John; "but if he did, I should not take it. He is not the kind of man from whom it is possible to accept money.""Still, under the circumstances, the extraordinary combination of circumstances, I should advise you to—my time is so circumscribed—I should certainly advise you to—you see, Tempest, with every feeling of regard for yourself and your father—ahem—Mr. Tempest before you, it is difficult for a person situated as I am at the present moment, to offer you, on the eve of the generalelection, any position at all adequate to your undeniably great abilities.""We shall not hear much more of my great abilities now that I am penniless," said John, with bitterness. "If I can get any kind of employment by which I can support myself and an old servant, I shall be thankful."Lord —— promised to do his best. He felt obliged to add that he could do but little, but he would do what he could. John might rest assured of that. In the meantime—— He looked anxiously at the watch on the table. John understood, and took his leave. Lord —— pressed him warmly by the hand, commended his conduct, once more deplored the turn events had taken, which he should consider as strictly private until they had been publicly announced, and assured him he would keep him in his mind, and communicate with him immediately should any vacancy occur that, etc., etc.John retraced his steps wearily to the hotel. The loss of his career had stung him yesterday. How to keep Mitty in comfort seemed of far greater importance to-day—how to provide a home for her with a little kitchen in it. John wondered whether he and Mitty could live on a hundred a year. He knew a good deal about the ways and means of the working classes, but of how the poor of his own class lived he knew nothing.But even the thought of Mitty could not hold him long. His mind ever went back to Di with an agony of despair and rapture. During these three interminable months during which he had not seen her, he had pictured her to himself as taking life as usual, wondering perhaps sometimes—yes, certainly wondering—why he did not come; but it had never struck him that she would be unhappy. When he saw her he had suddenly realized that the same emotionswhich had rent his soul had left their imprint on her face. Could women really love like men? Could Di actually, after her own fashion, feel towards him one tithe of the love he felt for her? John recognized with an exaltation, which for the moment transfigured as by fire the empty desolation of his heart, that the change which had been wrought in Di was his own work. Her cheek had grown pale for him, her eyes had wept for him, her very beauty had become dimmed for his sake."I shall go mad," said John, starting to his feet. "Why is that damned letter still unposted?"Purpose was melting within him. The irrevocable step even now had not been taken. Lord —— and his own lawyer would say nothing if at the eleventh hour he drew back. He must act finally this instant, or he would never act at all.He went into the next room, where Archie was languidly shaving himself in a pink silkpeignoir, and obtained from him Colonel Tempest's address. He addressed the letter, and took his hat and stick."I will post it myself this instant," he said to himself.He went quickly downstairs and across the little court, scattering the pigeons. His face looked worn and ravaged in the vivid sunshine.He passed under the archway into the street, and as he did so two well-dressed men came out of acaféon the opposite side. Before he had gone many steps one of them crossed the road, and raised his hat, holding out a card."Mr. Tempest of Overleigh, I think," he said respectfully.John stopped and looked at the man. He did not know him. The decisive moment had come even before posting the letter."Now or never," whispered conscience."My name is Fane," he said, and passed on.The man fell back at once and rejoined his companion."I told you so," he said. "That man is a deal too old, and he said his name was Fane. It's the other one in the tow wig, as I said from the first. That ain't real hair. It's the wig as alters him."John posted his letter, saw it slide past recall, and then walked back to the hotel, found Archie in the sitting-room reading the playbills for the evening, and told him.Perhaps nothing is more characteristic of our fellow-creatures than the manner in which they bear unexpected reverses of fortune. Archie had some of the callousness of feeling for others which accompanies lack of imagination. He had never put himself in the place of others. He was not likelyto begin now. He had no intention of hurting John by setting his iron heel on his face. He had no idea people minded being trodden on. And, indeed, as John stood by the window with his hands clasped behind his back, he was as indifferent as he appeared to be to anything that Archie, pacing up and down the room with flashing eyes, could say. He had at last closed the iron gates of the irrevocable behind himself, and he was at first too much stunned by the clang even to hear what the excited young man was talking about. Perhaps it was just as well."By Jove!" Archie was saying, as John's attention came slowly back. "To think of the old governor at Overleigh, poor old chap! He has missed it all his best years, but I hope he'll live to enjoy it yet. I do indeed." Archie felt he could afford to be generous. "And Di, John, dear old Di, shall come andqueen it at Overleigh. And she shall have a suitable fortune. I'll make father do the right thing by Di. He won't want to do more than he can help, because she has never been much of a daughter to him; but he shall. And when it's known, she'll marry off quick enough; and I'll see it gets about. And don't you be down-hearted, John. We'll do the right thing by you. You know you never cared for the money when you had it. You were always a bit of a screw, to yourself as well as to others—I will say that for you; but—let me see—you allowed me three hundred a year. Don't you wish now it had been four? for you shall have the same, if the old guv. agrees. And I dare say I shall be a bit freer with a ten-pound note now and then than ever you were to me.""There will be no necessity for this reckless generosity," said John, wonderingwhy he did not writhe, as a man might who watches a knife cut into his benumbed limb. It gave him no pain."And you shall have a hunter," continued Archie. "By Jove, what huntingIshall have! I shall get the governor to add another wing to the stables; and I will keep Quicksilver for you, John. You mustn't turn rusty because the luck has come to us at last. You know I knew all along I ought to have been the heir, and I put up with your being there, and never raised a dust.""I think I can promise I shall not raise a dust," said John, dispassionately, watching the knife turn in his flesh."And—and," continued Archie—"why, I need not marry money now. I can take my pick." New vistas seemed to open at every turn. His weak mouth fell ajar. "My word, John, times are changed. And—my debts; I can pay them off.""And run up more," said John. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.""I don't call it much of an ill wind," said Archie, chuckling; "not much of an ill wind."In spite of himself, John laughed aloud at thenaïvetéof Archie's remark. That it was an ill wind to John had not even crossed his mind.It would cross Di's, John thought. She would do him justice. But, alas! from the few who will do us justice we always want so much more, something infinitely greater than justice—at least, John did.The earlytable d'hôtedinner broke in on Archie's soliloquy, and, much to John's relief, that favoured young gentleman discovered that a lady of his acquaintance was dancing at one of the theatres that evening, and he determined to go and see her. He could not persuade John to accompany him, eventhough he offered, with the utmost generosity, to introduce him to her."Well, if you won't, you won't," said Archie, seeing his persuasions did nought avail, and much preferring to go by himself. "If you would rather sit over the fire in the dumps, that's your affair, not mine. Ta-ta. I expect you will have turned in before I'm back. By-the-by, can you lend me five thick 'uns?"John was on the point of refusing when he remembered that the actual money he had with him was more Archie's than his."Thank'ee," said Archie. "You part easier than you used to do. I expect it'll be the last time I shall borrow of you—eh, John? It will be the other way about in future.""Will it?" said John, as he put back his pocket-book.Archie laughed and went out.Oh! it is good to be young and handsome and admired. The dancers pirouetted in the intense electric light, and the music played on every chord of Archie's light pleasure-loving soul. And he clapped and applauded with the rest, his pulse leaping high and higher. A sense of triumph possessed him. His one thorn in the flesh was gone for ever. He rode on the top of the wave. He had had all else before, and now the one thing that was lacking to him had come. He was rich, rich, rich. There was much goods laid up for many years of pleasure.Archie touched the zenith.It was very late, or rather it was very early, when he walked home through the deserted streets. A great mental exaltation was still upon him, but his body was exhausted, and the cool night air and thesilence, after the babel of tongues, and the shrieking choruses, and the flaring lights of the last few hours, were pleasant to his aching eyes and head.The dawn stretched like a drawn sword behind the city. The Seine lay, a long line of winding mist under its many bridges. The ruins of the scorched Tuileries pushed up against the sky. Archie leant a moment on the parapet, and looked down to the Seine below whispering in its shroud. He took off his hat and pushed back the light curling hair from his forehead, laughing softly to himself.An invisible boat, with a red blur coming down-stream, was making a low continuous warning sound.A hand came suddenly over his shoulder, and was pressed upon his mouth, and at the same instant something exceeding sharp and swift, pointed with death, pierced his back,once and again. Archie saw his hat drop over the parapet into the mist.He tried to struggle, but in vain. He was choking."It is a dream," he said. "I shall wake. I have dreamt it before."He looked wildly round him.The steadfast dawn was witness from afar. There was the boat still passing down-stream. There was the city before him, with its spires piercing the mist.Wasit a dream?The hot blood rushed up into his mouth. The drenched hand released its pressure."I shall wake," he said, and he fell forward on his face.

"And now we believe in evilWhere once we believed in good.The world, the flesh, and the devilAre easily understood."Gordon.

IIT seems a pity that our human destinies are too often so constituted that with our own hands we may annul in one hour—our hour of weakness—the long, slow work of our strength; annul the self-conquest and the renunciation of our best years. We ought to be thankful when the gate of the irrevocable closes behind us, and the power to defeat ourselves is at last taken from us. For he who has once solemnlyand with conviction renounced, and then, for no new cause, has taken to himself again that which he renounced, has broken the mainspring of his life.

John went early the following morning to London, for he had business with three men, and he could not rest till he had seen them, and had shut that gate upon himself for ever.

So early had he started that it was barely midday when he reached Lord Frederick's chambers. The valet told him that his lordship was still in bed, and could see no one; but John went up to his bedroom, and knocked at the door.

"It is I—John Tempest," he said, and went in.

Lord Frederick was sitting up in bed, sallow and shrunk like a mummy, in a blue watered-silk dressing-gown. His thin hair was brushed up into a crest on the topof his head. The bed was littered with newspapers and letters. There was a tray before him, and he was in the act of chipping an egg as John came in.

He raised his eyebrows and looked first with surprised displeasure, and then with attention, at his visitor.

"Good morning," he said; and he went on tapping his egg. "Ah," he said, shaking his head, "hard-boiled again!"

John looked at him as a plague-stricken man might look at the carcase of some obscene animal found rotting in his water-spring.

Lord Frederick's varied experiences had made him familiar with the premonitory symptoms of those outbursts of anger and distress which he designated under the all-embracing term of "scenes." He felt idly curious to know what this man with his fierce white face had to say to him.

"Oblige me by sitting down," he said; "you are in my light."

"I have been reading my mother's letters to you," said John, still standing in the middle of the room, and stammering in his speech. He had not reckoned for the blind paroxysm of rage which had sprung up at the mere sight of Lord Frederick, and was spinning him like a leaf in a whirlwind.

"Indeed!" said Lord Frederick, raising his eyebrows, and carefully taking the shell off his egg. "I don't care about reading old letters myself, especially the private correspondence of other people; but tastes differ. You do, it seems. I had imagined the particular letters you allude to had been burnt."

"My mother intended to burn them."

"It would certainly have been wiser to do so, but probably for that reason they remained undestroyed. From time immemorialwomankind has shown a marked repugnance to the dictates of common sense."

"I have burnt them."

"Just so," said Lord Frederick, helping himself to salt. "I commend your prudence. Had you burnt them unread, I should have been able to commend your sense of honour also."

"What do you know about honour?" said John.

The two men looked hard at each other.

"That remark," said Lord Frederick, joining the ends of his fingers and half shutting his eyes, "is a direct insult. To insult a man with whom you are not in a position to quarrel is, in my opinion, John, an error of judgment. We will consider it one, and as such I will let it pass. The letters, I presume, contained nothing of which you were not already aware?"

"Only the fact that I am your illegitimate son."

"I deplore your coarseness of expression. You certainly have not inherited it from me. But, my dear Galahad, it is impossible that even your youth and innocence should not have known of mytendressefor your mother."

"Is that the last new name for adultery?" said John huskily, advancing a step nearer the bed. His face was livid. His eyes burned. He held his hands clenched lest they should rush out and wrench away all semblance of life and humanity from that figure in the watered-silk dressing-gown.

Lord Frederick lay back on his pillows, and looked at him steadily. He was without fear, but it appeared to him that he was about to die. The laws of his country, of conscience and of principle, all the protection that envelops life, seemed to have recededfrom him, to have slipped away into the next room, or downstairs with the valet. They would come back, no doubt, in time, but they might be a little late, as far as he was concerned.

"He has strong hands, like mine," he said to himself, his pale, unflinching eyes fixed upon his son's; while a remembrance slid through his mind of how once, years ago, he had choked the life out of a mastiff which had turned on him, and how long the heavy brute had taken to die.

"Do not spill the coffee," he said quietly, after a moment.

John started violently, and wheeled away from him like a man regaining consciousness on the brink of an abyss. Lord Frederick put out his lean hand, and went on with his breakfast.

There was a long silence.

"John," said Lord Frederick at last, notwithout a certain dignity, "the world is as it is. We did not make it, and we are not responsible for it. If there is any one who set it going, it is his own look out. Reproachhim, if you can find him. All we have to do is to live in it. And we can't live in it, I tell you we can't exist in it, with any comfort until we realize that it is rotten to the core."

John was leaning against the window-sill shaking like a reed. It seemed to him that for one awful moment he had been in hell.

"I do not pretend to be better than other men," continued Lord Frederick. "Men and women are men and women; and if you persist in thinking them angels, especially the latter, you will pay for your mistake."

"I am paying," said John.

"Possibly. You seem to have sustained a shock. It is incredible to me that you did not know beforehand what the letters toldyou. Wedding-rings don't make a greater resemblance between father and son than there is between you and me."

Lord Frederick looked at the stooping figure of the young man, leaning spent and motionless against the window, his arms hanging by his sides. He held what he called his prudishness in contempt, but he respected an element in him which he would have termed "grit."

"You are stronger built than I am, John," he said, with a touch of pride, "and wider in the chest. Come, bygones are bygones. Shake hands."

"I can't," said John. "I don't know that I could on my account, but anyhow not onhers."

"H'm! And so this was the information which you rushed in without leave to spring upon me?"

"It was, together with the fact that ofcourse I withdraw in favour of Colonel Tempest, the heir at law. I am going on to him from here."

Lord Frederick reared himself slowly in his bed, his brown hands clutching the bedclothes like eagles' talons.

"You are going to own your——"

"Myshame—yes; not yours. You need not be alarmed. Your name shall not be brought in. If I take the name of Fane, it will only be because it was my mother's."

"But you said you had burned the letters."

"I have. I don't see what difference that makes. The fact that they are burnt does not alter the fact that I am—nobody, and he is the legal heir."

"And you mean to tell him so?"

"I do."

"To commit suicide?"

"Social suicide—yes."

"Fool!" said Lord Frederick, in a voice which lost none of its force because it was barely above a whisper.

John did not answer.

"Leave the room," said the outraged parent, turning his face to the wall, the bedclothes and the tray trembling exceedingly. "I will have nothing more to do with you. You need not come to me when you are penniless. Do you hear? I disown you. Leave me. I will never speak to you again."

"I hope to God you never will," said John; and he took up his hat and went out.

He had settled his account with the first of the three people whom he had come to London to see. From Lord Frederick's chambers he went straight to Colonel Tempest's lodgings in Brook Street. But Colonel Tempest had that morning departed with his son to Brighton, and John,momentarily thrown off his line of action by that simple occurrence, stared blankly at the landlady, and then went to his club and sat down to write to him. There was no question of waiting. Like a man walking across Niagara on a tight rope, it was no time to think, to hesitate, to look round. John kept his eyes riveted to one point, and shut his ears to the roar of the torrent below him, in which a moment's giddiness would engulf him.

It was afternoon by this time. As he sat writing at a table in one of the bay windows, a familiar voice spoke to him. It was Lord Hemsworth. They had not met since the night of the ice carnival. Lord Hemsworth's face had quite lost its boyish expression.

"I hope you are better, Tempest," he said, with obvious constraint, looking narrowly at him. Could Di's accepted lover wear so grey and stern a look as this?

John replied that he was well; and then, with sudden recollection of Mitty's account of Lord Hemsworth's conduct during that memorable night, began to thank him, and stopped short.

The room was empty.

"It was onheraccount," said Lord Hemsworth.

John did not answer. It was that conviction which had pulled him up.

Lord Hemsworth waited some time for John to speak, and then he said—

"You know about me, Tempest, and why I was on the ice that night. Well, I have kept out of the way for three months under the belief that—I should hear any day that—— I am not such a fool as to pit myself against you—I don't want to be a nuisance to—— But it's three months. For God's sake tell me; are you on or are you not?"

"I am not," said John.

"Then I will try my luck," said the other.

He went out, and John knew that he had gone to try it there and then; and sat motionless, with his hand across his mouth and his unfinished letter before him, until the servant came to close the shutters.

"We live together years and years,And leave unsounded stillEach other's springs of hopes and fears,Each other's depths of will."Lord Houghton.

BBUT still more bewildering is the way in which we live years and years with ourselves in an entire ignorance of the powers that lie dormant beneath the surface of character. The day comes when vital forces of which we know nothing arise within us, and break like glass the even tenor of our lives. The quiet hours, the regulated thoughts, the peaceful aspiration after things but little set above us, whereare they? The angel with the sword drives us out of our Eden to shiver in the wilderness of an entirely changed existence, unrecognizable by ourselves, though perhaps lived in the same external groove, the same divisions of time, among the same faces as before.

Day succeeded day in Di's life, each day adding one more stone to the prison in which it seemed as if an inexorable hand were walling her up.

"I will not give in. I will turn my mind to other things," she said to herself. And—there were no other things. All lesser lights were blown out. The heart, when it is swept into the grasp of a great love, is ruthlessly torn from the hundred minute ties and interests that heretofore held it to life. The little fibres and tendrils of affections which have gradually grown round certain objects are snapped off from the roots.They cease to exist. The pang of love is that there is no escape from it. It has the same tension as sleeplessness.

Di struggled and was not defeated; but some victories are as sad as defeats. During the struggle she lost something—what was it—that had been to many her greatest charm? Women were unanimous in deploring how she had "gone off." There was a thinness in her cheek, and a blue line under her deep eyes. Her beauty remained, but it was not the same beauty. Mrs. Courtenay noticed with a pang that she was growing like her mother.

Easter came, and with it the wedding of Miss Crupps and the Honourable Augustus Lumley, youngest son of Lord Mortgage. Miss Crupps' young heart had long inclined towards Mr. Lumley; but on the occasion of seeing him blacked as a Christy Minstrel, she had finally succumbed into a state ofgiggling admiration, which plainly showed the state of her affections. So he cut the word "yes" out of a newspaper, and told her that was what she was to say to him, and amid a series of delighted cackles they were engaged. Di went to the wedding, looking so pale that it was whispered that Mr. Lumley and his tambourine had won her heart as well as that of his adoring bride.

On a sunny afternoon shortly afterwards, Di was sitting alone indoors, her grandmother having gone out driving with a friend. She told herself that she ought to go out, but she remained sitting with her hands in her lap. Every duty, every tiny decision, every small household matter, had become of late an intolerable burden. Even to put a handful of flowers into water required an effort of will which it was irksome to make.

She had stayed in to make an alterationin the gown she was to wear that night at the Speaker's. As she looked at the card to make sure it was the right evening, she remembered that it was at the Speaker's she had first met John, just a year ago. One year. How absurd! Five, ten, fifteen! She tried to recollect what her life could have been like before he had come into it; but it seemed to start from that point, and to have had no significance before.

"I must go out," she said again; and at that moment the door bell rang, and although Mrs. Courtenay was out, some one was admitted. The door opened, and Lord Hemsworth was announced.

There is, but men are fortunately not in a position to be aware of it, a lamentable uniformity in their manner of opening up certain subjects. Di knew in a moment from previous experience what he had come for. He wondered, as he stumbled througha labyrinth of platitudes about the weather, how he could broach the subject without alarming her. He did not know that he had done so by his manner of coming into the room, and that he had been refused before he had finished shaking hands.

Di was horribly sorry for him while he talked about—whatever he did talk about. Neither noticed what it was at the time, or remembered it afterwards. She was grateful to him for not alluding even in the most distant manner to their last meeting. She remembered that she had clung to him, and that he had called her by her Christian name, but she was too callous to be ashamed at the recollection. It was as nothing compared to another humiliation which had come upon her a little later.

"It is no good beating about the bush," said Lord Hemsworth at last, after he had beaten it till there was, so to speak, nothingleft of it. "I have come up to London for one thing, and I have come here for one thing, which is—to ask you to marry me. Don't speak—don't say anything just for a moment," he continued hurriedly, raising his hand as if to ward off a rebuff. "For God's sake don't stop me. I've kept it in so long I must say it, and you must hear me."

She let him say it. And he got it out with stumbling and difficulty and long gaps between—got out in shaking commonplaces a tithe of the love he had for her. And all the time Di thought if it might only have been some one else who was uttering those halting words! (I wonder how many men have proposed and been accepted while the woman has said to herself, "If it had only been some one else!")

Despair at his inability to express himself, and at her silence, seized him: as if itmattered a pin how he expressed himself if she had been willing to listen.

"If you understood," he said over and over again, with the monotonous reiteration of a piano-tuner, "you would not refuse me. I know you are going to, but if only you understood you would not. You would not have the heart. It's—it's just everything to me." And Lord Hemsworth—oh, bathos of modern life!—looked into his hat.

"Lord Hemsworth," said Di, "have I ever given you any encouragement?"

"None," he replied. "People might think you had, but you never did. I knew better. I never misunderstood you. I know you don't care a straw about me; but—oh, Di, you have not your equal in the world. There's no woman to compare with you. I don't see how you could care for any one like me. Of course you don't. I would not expect it. But if—if you would only marryme—I would be content with very little. I've looked at it all round. I would be content with—very little."

There was a long silence.

What woman whose love has been slighted can easily reject a great devotion?

"I think," said Di, after several false starts to speak, "that if I only considered myself I would marry you; but there is the happiness of one other person to think of—yours."

"I can't have any apart from you."

"You would have none with me. If it is miserable to care for any one who is indifferent, it would be a thousand times more miserable to be married to that person."

"Not if it were you."

"Yes, if it were I."

"I would take the risk," said Lord Hemsworth, who held, in common with most men, the rooted conviction that a woman willbecome attached to any husband, however little she cares for her lover. It is precisely this conviction which makes the average marriages of the present day such mediocre affairs; which serves to place worldly or facile women, or those whose affections have never been called out, at the head of so many homes; as the mothers of the new generation from which we hope so much.

"I would take any risk," repeated Lord Hemsworth, doggedly. "I would rather be unhappy with you than happy with any one else."

"You think so now," said Di; "but the time would come when you would see that I had cut you off from the best thing in the world—from the love of a woman who would care for you as much as you do for me."

"I don't want her. I want you."

"I cannot marry you."

Lord Hemsworth clutched blindly at the arms of the chair.

"I would wait any time."

Di shook her head.

"Any time," he stammered. "Go away for a year, and—come back."

"It would be no good."

Then he lost his head.

"So long as you don't care for any one else," he said incoherently. "I thought at the carnival—that is why I have kept out of the way—but I met Tempest to-day at the Carlton, and—I asked him straight out, and he said there was nothing between you and him. I suppose you have refused him, like the rest of us. Oh, my God, Di, they say you have no heart! But it isn't true, is it? Don't refuse me. Don't make me live without you. I've tried for three months"—and Lord Hemsworth's face worked—"and if youknew what it was like, you wouldn't send me back to it."

Every vestige of colour had faded from Di's face at the mention of John.

"I don't care enough for you to marry you," she said, pitiless in her great pity. "I wish I did, but—I don't."

"Do you care for any one else?"

Di saw that nothing short of the truth would wrest his persistence from its object.

"Yes, I do," she said passionately, trembling from head to foot. "For some one who does not care for me. You and I are both in the same position. Do you see now how useless it is to talk of this any longer?"

Both had risen to their feet. Lord Hemsworth looked at Di's white convulsed face, and his own became as ashen. He saw at last that he had no more chance of marrying her than if she were lying at his feet in hercoffin. Constancy, which can compass many things, avails nought sometimes.

"I beg your pardon," he said, holding out his hand to go.

"I think I ought to beg yours," she said brokenly, while their hands clasped tightly each in each. "I never meant to make you as—unhappy as—as I am myself, but yet I have."

They looked at each other with tears in their eyes.

"It does not matter," said Lord Hemsworth, hoarsely. "I shall be all right—it's you—I think of. Don't stand—mustn't stand—you're too tired. Good-bye."

Di flung herself down on her face on the sofa as the door closed. She had forgotten Lord Hemsworth's existence the moment after he had left the room.John had told him that there was nothing between her andhimself.John had told him that. John had said that. A cry escaped her, and she strangled it in the cushion.

Hope does not always die when we imagine it does. It is subject to long trances. The hope which she had thought dead was only giving up the ghost now. "Chaque espérance est un œuf d'où peut sortir un serpent au lieu d'une colombe." Out of that frail shell of a cherished hope lying broken before her the serpent had crept at last. It moved, it grew before her eyes.

"Slighted love is sair to bide."

"We met, hand to hand,We clasped hands close and fast,As close as oak and ivy stand;But it is past."Christina Rossetti.

"Half false, half fair, all feeble."Swinburne.

WWHEN John roused himself from the long stupor into which he had fallen after Lord Hemsworth's departure, he put his finished letter to Colonel Tempest into an envelope, and then remembered with annoyance that he did not know how to address it. When the landlady in Brook Street had told him that Colonel and CaptainTempest had gone to Brighton that morning, he had been too much taken aback at the moment to think of asking for their address. He was too much exhausted in mind and body to go back to the lodgings for it immediately. He wrote a second letter, this time to his lawyer, and then, conscious of the state of his body by the shaking hand and clumsy, tardy brain which made of a short and explicit statement so lengthy an affair, he mechanically changed his clothes, dined, and sat watching the smoke of his cigar.

Presently, with food and rest, the apathy into which exhaustion had plunged him lifted, and the restlessness of a tortured mind returned. He had only as yet seen one of the three men whom he had come to London to interview, namely, Lord Frederick. Colonel Tempest, the second, was out of town; but probably the third, Lord----, the minister, was not. It was close on ten o'clock. He should probably find him in his private room in the House.

John flung away his cigar, and was in a few minutes spinning towards the Houses of Parliament in a hansom. He had not thought much about it till now, but as he turned in at the gates the lines of the great buildings suddenly brought back to him the remembrance of his own ambition, and of the splendid career that had seemed to be opening before him when last he had passed those gates; which had fallen at a single touch like a house of cards—a house built with Fortune's cards.

There was aqueueof carriages at the Speaker's entrance. A party was evidently going on there. John went to the House and inquired for Lord ——. He was not there. Perhaps he was at the Speaker's reception. John remembered, or thought he remembered, that he had a card for it, andwent on there. His mind was set on finding Lord ——.

History repeats itself, and so does our little private history. Only when the same thing happens it finds us changed, and we look back at what we were last time, and remember our old young self with wonder. Was that indeed I?

Possibly to some an evening party may appear a small event, but to Di, as she stood in the same crowd as last year, in the same pictured rooms, it seemed to her that her whole life had turned on the pivot of that one evening a year ago.

The lights glared too much now. The babel dazed her. Noises had become sharp swords of late. Every one talked too loud. She chatted and smiled, and vaguely wondered that her friends recognized her. "I am not the same person," she said toherself, "but no one seems to see any difference."

Presently she found herself near the same arched window where she had stood with John last year. She moved for a moment to it and looked out. There was a mist across the river. The lights struggled through blurred and feeble. It had been clear last year. She turned and went on talking, of she knew not what, to a very young man at her elbow, who was making laborious efforts to get on with her.

Her eyes looked back from the recess across the sea of faces and fringes, and bald and close-cropped heads. The men who were not John, but yet had a momentary resemblance to him, were the only people she distinctly saw. Tall fair men were beginning to complain of her unrecognizing manner.

Yes, history repeats itself.

Among the crowd in the distance she suddenly saw him. John's rugged profile and square head were easy to recognize.He had said there was nothing between them.Their last meeting rushed back upon her with a scathing recollection of how she had held him in her arms and pressed her face to his. Shame scorched her inmost soul.

She turned towards her companion with fuller attention than what she had previously accorded him.

As John walked through the rooms scanning the crowd, the possibility of meeting Di did not strike him. With a frightful clutch of the heart he caught sight of her. A man who instantly aroused his animosity was talking eagerly to her. Something in her appearance startled him. Was it the colour of her gown that made her look so pale, the intense light that gave her calm dignifiedface that peculiar worn expression? She had a faint fixed smile as she talked that John did not recognize, and that, why he knew not, cut him to the quick.

Was this Di? Could this be Di?

He knew she had seen him. He hesitated a moment and then went towards her. She received him without any change of countenance. The fixed smile was still on her lips as he spoke to her, but the lips had whitened. Their eyes met for a moment. Oh! what had happened to Di's lovely eyes that used to be so grave and gay?

He stammered something—said he was looking for some one—and passed on. She turned to speak to some one else as he did so. He strangled the nameless emotion which was choking him, and made his way into the next room. He had a vague consciousness of being spoken to, and of making herculean efforts to grind out answers, andthen of pouncing on the secretary of the man he was looking for, who told him his chief had suddenly and unexpectedly started for Paris that afternoon on affairs of importance.

John mechanically noted down his address in Paris and left the house.

The necessity of remembering where his feet were taking him recalled him somewhat to himself. He pulled himself together, and slackened his pace.

"I will go to Paris by the night express," he said to himself, the feverish longing for action increasing upon him as this new obstacle met him. He dared not remain in London. He knew for a certainty that if he did he should go and see Di. Neither could he write to Lord —— all that he must tell him, or put into black and white the favour he had to ask of him—the first favour John had ever needed to ask, namely,to be helped by means of Lord ——'s interest to some post in which he could for the moment support himself and Mitty.

As he turned up St. James's Street, he remembered with irritation that he had not yet procured Colonel Tempest's and Archie's address. While he hesitated whether to go on, late as it was, to Brook Street for it, he remembered that he could probably obtain it much nearer at hand, namely, at Archie's rooms in Piccadilly. Archie, who was a person of much pink and monogrammed correspondence, would probably have left his address behind him, stuck in the glass of the mantelpiece, as his manner was. The latch-key he had lent John in the autumn, when John had made use of his rooms, was still on his chain. He had forgotten to return it. He let himself in, went upstairs to the second floor, and opened the door of the little sitting-room.

"Here you are at last," said a woman's voice.

He went in quickly and shut the door behind him.

A small woman in shimmering evening dress, with diamonds in her hair, came towards him, and stopped short with a little scream.

It was Madeleine.

He looked at her in silence, standing with his back to the door. The smouldering fire in his eyes seemed to burn her, for she shrank away to the further end of the room. John observed that there was a fire and lamps, and knit his brows.

Some persons are unable to perceive when explanations are useless. Madeleine began one—something about Archie's difficulties, money, etc.; but John cut her short.

"You are not accountable to me for your actions," he said. "Keep your explanations for your husband."

He looked again with perplexity at the fire and the lamps. He knew Archie hadgone that morning on three days' leave to Brighton with his father.

"Let me go," she said, whimpering. "I won't stay here to be thought ill of, to have evil imputed to me."

"You will answer one question first," said John.

"You impute evil to me—I know you do," said Madeleine, beginning to cry; "but it is your own coarse mind that sees wickedness in everything."

"Possibly," said John. "When do you expect Archie?"

"Any moment. I wish he was here, that he might tell you——"

"Thank you, that will do. You can go now."

He opened the door. She drew a long cloak over her shoulders and passed him without speaking, looking like what she was—one of that class whose very existence sheprofessed to ignore, but whose ranks she had virtually joined when she announced her engagement to Sir Henry in theMorning Post. Perhaps, inasmuch as that, untempted, she had sold herself for diamonds and position, instead of, under strong temptation, for the bare necessities of life like her poorer sisters, she was more degraded than they; but fortunately for her, and many others in our midst, society upheld her.

John looked after her and then followed her. There was not a soul on the common staircase or in the hall. He passed out just behind her, and they were in the street together.

"Take my arm," he said, and she took it mechanically.

He signalled a four-wheeler and helped her into it.

"Where do you wish to go?" he said.

"I don't know," she said feebly, apparentlytoo much scared to remember what her arrangements had been.

John considered a moment.

"Where is Sir Henry?"

"Dining at Woolwich."

"Can't you go home?"

"No, no. It is much too early. I'm dressed for—I said I was going to ——, and I have left there already, and the carriage is waiting there still."

"You must go back there," said John. "Get your carriage and go home in it."

He gave the cabman the address and paid him. Then he returned to the cab door.

"Lady Verelst," he said less sternly, "believe me—Archie is not worth it."

"You don't understand," she tried to say, with an assumption of injured dignity. "It was only that I——"

"He is not worth it," said John with emphasis; and he shut to the door of thecab, and watched it drive away. Then he went back to Archie's room, and sat down to consider. A faint odour of scent hung about the room. He got up and flung open the window. Years afterwards, if a woman used that particular scent, the same loathing disgust returned upon him.

"He took three days' leave to nurse his father at Brighton, with the intention of coming back here to-night," John said to himself. "He will be here directly." And he made up his mind what he would do.

And in truth a few minutes later a hansom rattled to the door, and Archie came in, breathless with haste. He looked eagerly round the room, and then, as he caught sight of the unexpected occupant, his face crimsoned, and he grinned nervously.

"She is gone," said John, without moving.

"Gone? Who? I don't know what you mean."

"No, of course not. What made you so late?"

"Train broke down outside London."

"I came here to get your address at Brighton, because I have news for you. You are there at this moment, aren't you, looking after your father?"

Archie did not answer. He only grinned and showed his teeth. John was aware that though he stood quietly enough by the table, turning over some loose silver in his pocket, he was in a state of blind fury. He also knew that if he waited a little it would pass. Something in John's moral and physical strength had always the power to quell Archie's fits of passion.

"I had no intention of prying on you," said John, after an interval. "I wanted your address at Brighton, and I could not wait till to-morrow for it. I am going to Paris to-night on business, and—as it isyours as much as mine—you will go with me."

Archie never indulged in those flowers of speech with which some adorn their conversation. But there are exceptions to every rule, and he made one now. He culled, so to speak, one large bouquet of the choicest epithets and presented it to John.

"He knew not what to say, and so he swore." That is why men swear often, and women seldom.

"I shall not leave you in London with that woman," said John, calmly. "You will go to her if I do."

"I shall do as I think fit," stammered Archie, striking the table with his slender white hand.

"There you err," said John. "You will start with me in half an hour for Paris."

"There's not a crimeBut takes its proper change out still in crimeIf once rung on the counter of this world."E. B. Browning.

TTHERE is in Paris, just out of the Rue du Bac, a certain old-fashioned hotel, the name of which I forget, with a littlecourin the middle of the rambling old building, and a thin fountain perennially plashing therein, adorned by a few pigeons and feathers on the brink. It had been a very fashionable hotel in the days when Madame Mohl held hersalonnear at hand. But the old order changes. It was superseded now.Why John often went there I don't know. He probably did not know himself, unless it was for the sake of quiet. Anyhow, he and Archie arrived there together that morning; for it is needless to say that, having determined to get Archie at any cost out of London, John had carried his point, as he had done on previous occasions, to the disgust of the sulky young man, who had proved anything but a pleasant travelling companion, and who, late in the afternoon, was still invisible behind the white curtains in one of the two little bedrooms that opened out of the sitting-room in which John was walking up and down.

He had put several questions to Archie respecting the state of his father's health, and that gentleman had assured him he was all right, quite able to look after himself; no need for him to remain with him.

"Of course not," said John, "or you wouldnot have left him. But is he able to attend to business?"

"Rather," said Archie, with the emphasis of ignorance.

As long as Archie was in the next room, out of harm's way, John did not want his company. He knew that when he did appear he had to tell him that for eight and twenty years he had lived on Colonel Tempest's substance; and then he must post the letter lying ready written on the table to Colonel Tempest, only needing the address.

After that life was a blank. Archie would rush home, of course. John did not know where he should go, except that it would not be with Archie. Back to Overleigh? No. And with a sudden choking sensation he realized that he should not see Overleigh again. He wondered what Mitty was doing at that moment, and whether the horse-chestnut against the nursery window wouldever burst to leaf. Here in Paris they were out. He had noticed them as he returned from an interview with Lord ——. That gentleman had been much pressed for time, but had nevertheless accorded him a quarter of an hour. He was genuinely perturbed by the disclosure the young man made to him, deplored the event as it affected John, but after the first moment was obviously more concerned about the seat, and the loss of the Tempest support, than the wreck of John's career. After a decorous interval, Lord —— had put a few questions to him about Colonel Tempest, his age, political views, etc. John perceived with what intentions those questions were put, and they made it the harder for him to ask the great man to help him to a livelihood.

As John spoke, and the elder man's eye sought his watch, John experienced for the first time the truth of the saying that thehighest price that can be paid for anything is to have to ask for it. If it had not been for Mitty he could not have forced himself to do it.

"But my dear—er—Tempest," said Lord ----, "surely we need not anticipate that—er—your uncle—er—that Colonel Tempest will fail to make a suitable provision for one—who—who——"

"He may offer to do so," replied John; "but if he did, I should not take it. He is not the kind of man from whom it is possible to accept money."

"Still, under the circumstances, the extraordinary combination of circumstances, I should advise you to—my time is so circumscribed—I should certainly advise you to—you see, Tempest, with every feeling of regard for yourself and your father—ahem—Mr. Tempest before you, it is difficult for a person situated as I am at the present moment, to offer you, on the eve of the generalelection, any position at all adequate to your undeniably great abilities."

"We shall not hear much more of my great abilities now that I am penniless," said John, with bitterness. "If I can get any kind of employment by which I can support myself and an old servant, I shall be thankful."

Lord —— promised to do his best. He felt obliged to add that he could do but little, but he would do what he could. John might rest assured of that. In the meantime—— He looked anxiously at the watch on the table. John understood, and took his leave. Lord —— pressed him warmly by the hand, commended his conduct, once more deplored the turn events had taken, which he should consider as strictly private until they had been publicly announced, and assured him he would keep him in his mind, and communicate with him immediately should any vacancy occur that, etc., etc.

John retraced his steps wearily to the hotel. The loss of his career had stung him yesterday. How to keep Mitty in comfort seemed of far greater importance to-day—how to provide a home for her with a little kitchen in it. John wondered whether he and Mitty could live on a hundred a year. He knew a good deal about the ways and means of the working classes, but of how the poor of his own class lived he knew nothing.

But even the thought of Mitty could not hold him long. His mind ever went back to Di with an agony of despair and rapture. During these three interminable months during which he had not seen her, he had pictured her to himself as taking life as usual, wondering perhaps sometimes—yes, certainly wondering—why he did not come; but it had never struck him that she would be unhappy. When he saw her he had suddenly realized that the same emotionswhich had rent his soul had left their imprint on her face. Could women really love like men? Could Di actually, after her own fashion, feel towards him one tithe of the love he felt for her? John recognized with an exaltation, which for the moment transfigured as by fire the empty desolation of his heart, that the change which had been wrought in Di was his own work. Her cheek had grown pale for him, her eyes had wept for him, her very beauty had become dimmed for his sake.

"I shall go mad," said John, starting to his feet. "Why is that damned letter still unposted?"

Purpose was melting within him. The irrevocable step even now had not been taken. Lord —— and his own lawyer would say nothing if at the eleventh hour he drew back. He must act finally this instant, or he would never act at all.

He went into the next room, where Archie was languidly shaving himself in a pink silkpeignoir, and obtained from him Colonel Tempest's address. He addressed the letter, and took his hat and stick.

"I will post it myself this instant," he said to himself.

He went quickly downstairs and across the little court, scattering the pigeons. His face looked worn and ravaged in the vivid sunshine.

He passed under the archway into the street, and as he did so two well-dressed men came out of acaféon the opposite side. Before he had gone many steps one of them crossed the road, and raised his hat, holding out a card.

"Mr. Tempest of Overleigh, I think," he said respectfully.

John stopped and looked at the man. He did not know him. The decisive moment had come even before posting the letter.

"Now or never," whispered conscience.

"My name is Fane," he said, and passed on.

The man fell back at once and rejoined his companion.

"I told you so," he said. "That man is a deal too old, and he said his name was Fane. It's the other one in the tow wig, as I said from the first. That ain't real hair. It's the wig as alters him."

John posted his letter, saw it slide past recall, and then walked back to the hotel, found Archie in the sitting-room reading the playbills for the evening, and told him.

Perhaps nothing is more characteristic of our fellow-creatures than the manner in which they bear unexpected reverses of fortune. Archie had some of the callousness of feeling for others which accompanies lack of imagination. He had never put himself in the place of others. He was not likelyto begin now. He had no intention of hurting John by setting his iron heel on his face. He had no idea people minded being trodden on. And, indeed, as John stood by the window with his hands clasped behind his back, he was as indifferent as he appeared to be to anything that Archie, pacing up and down the room with flashing eyes, could say. He had at last closed the iron gates of the irrevocable behind himself, and he was at first too much stunned by the clang even to hear what the excited young man was talking about. Perhaps it was just as well.

"By Jove!" Archie was saying, as John's attention came slowly back. "To think of the old governor at Overleigh, poor old chap! He has missed it all his best years, but I hope he'll live to enjoy it yet. I do indeed." Archie felt he could afford to be generous. "And Di, John, dear old Di, shall come andqueen it at Overleigh. And she shall have a suitable fortune. I'll make father do the right thing by Di. He won't want to do more than he can help, because she has never been much of a daughter to him; but he shall. And when it's known, she'll marry off quick enough; and I'll see it gets about. And don't you be down-hearted, John. We'll do the right thing by you. You know you never cared for the money when you had it. You were always a bit of a screw, to yourself as well as to others—I will say that for you; but—let me see—you allowed me three hundred a year. Don't you wish now it had been four? for you shall have the same, if the old guv. agrees. And I dare say I shall be a bit freer with a ten-pound note now and then than ever you were to me."

"There will be no necessity for this reckless generosity," said John, wonderingwhy he did not writhe, as a man might who watches a knife cut into his benumbed limb. It gave him no pain.

"And you shall have a hunter," continued Archie. "By Jove, what huntingIshall have! I shall get the governor to add another wing to the stables; and I will keep Quicksilver for you, John. You mustn't turn rusty because the luck has come to us at last. You know I knew all along I ought to have been the heir, and I put up with your being there, and never raised a dust."

"I think I can promise I shall not raise a dust," said John, dispassionately, watching the knife turn in his flesh.

"And—and," continued Archie—"why, I need not marry money now. I can take my pick." New vistas seemed to open at every turn. His weak mouth fell ajar. "My word, John, times are changed. And—my debts; I can pay them off."

"And run up more," said John. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good."

"I don't call it much of an ill wind," said Archie, chuckling; "not much of an ill wind."

In spite of himself, John laughed aloud at thenaïvetéof Archie's remark. That it was an ill wind to John had not even crossed his mind.

It would cross Di's, John thought. She would do him justice. But, alas! from the few who will do us justice we always want so much more, something infinitely greater than justice—at least, John did.

The earlytable d'hôtedinner broke in on Archie's soliloquy, and, much to John's relief, that favoured young gentleman discovered that a lady of his acquaintance was dancing at one of the theatres that evening, and he determined to go and see her. He could not persuade John to accompany him, eventhough he offered, with the utmost generosity, to introduce him to her.

"Well, if you won't, you won't," said Archie, seeing his persuasions did nought avail, and much preferring to go by himself. "If you would rather sit over the fire in the dumps, that's your affair, not mine. Ta-ta. I expect you will have turned in before I'm back. By-the-by, can you lend me five thick 'uns?"

John was on the point of refusing when he remembered that the actual money he had with him was more Archie's than his.

"Thank'ee," said Archie. "You part easier than you used to do. I expect it'll be the last time I shall borrow of you—eh, John? It will be the other way about in future."

"Will it?" said John, as he put back his pocket-book.

Archie laughed and went out.

Oh! it is good to be young and handsome and admired. The dancers pirouetted in the intense electric light, and the music played on every chord of Archie's light pleasure-loving soul. And he clapped and applauded with the rest, his pulse leaping high and higher. A sense of triumph possessed him. His one thorn in the flesh was gone for ever. He rode on the top of the wave. He had had all else before, and now the one thing that was lacking to him had come. He was rich, rich, rich. There was much goods laid up for many years of pleasure.

Archie touched the zenith.

It was very late, or rather it was very early, when he walked home through the deserted streets. A great mental exaltation was still upon him, but his body was exhausted, and the cool night air and thesilence, after the babel of tongues, and the shrieking choruses, and the flaring lights of the last few hours, were pleasant to his aching eyes and head.

The dawn stretched like a drawn sword behind the city. The Seine lay, a long line of winding mist under its many bridges. The ruins of the scorched Tuileries pushed up against the sky. Archie leant a moment on the parapet, and looked down to the Seine below whispering in its shroud. He took off his hat and pushed back the light curling hair from his forehead, laughing softly to himself.

An invisible boat, with a red blur coming down-stream, was making a low continuous warning sound.

A hand came suddenly over his shoulder, and was pressed upon his mouth, and at the same instant something exceeding sharp and swift, pointed with death, pierced his back,once and again. Archie saw his hat drop over the parapet into the mist.

He tried to struggle, but in vain. He was choking.

"It is a dream," he said. "I shall wake. I have dreamt it before."

He looked wildly round him.

The steadfast dawn was witness from afar. There was the boat still passing down-stream. There was the city before him, with its spires piercing the mist.Wasit a dream?

The hot blood rushed up into his mouth. The drenched hand released its pressure.

"I shall wake," he said, and he fell forward on his face.

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