The quarter whence the wind came, was a subject about which Clarissa had never concerned herself. The sun was shining, and the sky was blue.
"We have plenty of wraps," she said, "and we can have the carriage closed if we are cold."
"It is not a day upon whichIshould take an infant out," Miss Granger murmured, dipping her brush in some Prussian-blue; "but of course you know best."
"O, we shall take care of baby, depend upon it. Good-bye, Sophy."
And Clarissa departed, anxious to avoid farther remonstrance on the part of her step-daughter. She told the coachman to drive to the Luxembourg Gardens, intending to leave the nurse and baby to promenade that favourite resort, while she made her way on foot to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. She remembered that George Fairfax had described her brother's lodging as near the Luxembourg.
They drove through the gay Parisian streets, past the pillar in the Place Vendôme, and along the Rue de la Paix, all shining with jewellers' ware, and the Rue de Rivoli, where the chestnut-trees in the gardens of the Tuileries were shedding their last leaves upon the pavement, past the airy tower of St. Jacques, and across the bridge into that unknown world on the other side of the Seine. The nurse, who had seen very little of that quarter of the town, wondered what obscure region she was traversing, and wondered still more when they alighted at the somewhat shabby-looking gardens.
"These are the Luxembourg Gardens," said Clarissa. "As you have been to theTuileries every day, I thought it would be a change for you to come here."
"Thank you, ma'am," replied Mrs. Brobson, the chief nurse; "but I don't think as these gardings is anyways equal to the Tooleries—nor to Regent's Park even. When I were in Paris with Lady Fitz-Lubin we took the children to the Tooleries or the Bore de Boulong every day—but, law me! the Bore de Boulong were a poor place in those days to what it is now."
Clarissa took a couple of turns along one of the walks with Mrs. Brobson, and then, as they were going back towards the gate, she said, as carelessly as she could manage to say: "There is a person living somewhere near here whom I want to see, Mrs. Brobson. I'll leave you and baby in the gardens for half an hour or so, while I go and pay my visit."
Mrs. Brobson stared. It was not an hour in the day when any lady she had ever served was wont to pay visits; and that Mrs. Granger of Arden Court should traverse a neighbourhood of narrow streets and tall houses, on foot and alone, to call upon her acquaintance at eleven o'clock in the morning, seemed to her altogether inexplicable.
"You'll take the carriage, won't you, ma'am?" she said, with undisguised astonishment.
"No, I shall not want the carriage; it's very near. Be sure you keep baby warm, Mrs. Brobson."
Clarissa hurried out into the street. The landau, with its pair of Yorkshire-bred horses, was moving slowly up and down, to the admiration of juvenile Paris, which looked upon Mr. Granger's deep-chested, strong-limbed bays almost as a new order in the animal creation. Mrs. Granger felt that the eyes of coachman and footman were upon her as she turned the first corner, thinking of nothing for the moment, but how to escape the watchfulness of her own servants. She walked a little way down the street, and then asked a sleepy-looking waiter, who was sweeping the threshold of a very dingy restaurant, to direct her to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. It wastous près, the man said; only a turn to the right, at that corner yonder, and the next turning was the street she wanted. She thanked him, and hurried on, with her heart beating faster at every step. Austin might be out, she thought, and her trouble wasted; and there was no knowing when she might have another opportunity. Even if he were at home, their interview must needs be brief: there was the nurse waiting and wondering; the baby exposed to possible peril from east winds.
The Rue du Chevalier Bayard was a street of tall gaunt houses that had seen better days—houses withporte-cochères, exaggerated iron knockers, and queer old lamps; dreary balconies on the first floor, with here and there a plaster vase containing some withered member of the palm tribe, or a faded orange-tree; everywhere and in everything an air of dilapidation and decay; faded curtains, that had once been fine, flapping in the open windows; Venetian shutters going to ruin; and the only glimpse of brightness or domestic comfort confined to the humble parlour of the portress, who kept watch and ward over one of the dismal mansions, and who had a birdcage hanging in her window, an Angora cat sunning itself on the stone sill, and a row of scarlet geraniums in the little iron balcony.
But this model portress did not preside over the house inhabited by Austin Lovel. There Clarissa found only a little deaf old man, who grinned and shook his head helplessly when she questioned him, and shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the staircase—a cavernous stone staircase, with an odour as of newly opened graves. She went up to the first-floor, past theentresol, where the earthy odour was subjugated by a powerful smell of cooking, in which garlic was the prevailing feature. One tall door on the first-floor was painted a pale pink, and had still some dingy indications of former gilding upon its mouldings. On this pink door was inscribed the name of Mr. Austin, Painter.
Clarissa rang a bell, and a tawdry-looking French servant, with big earrings and a dirty muslin cap, came to answer her summons. Mr. Austin was at home; would madame please to enter. Madame, having replied in the affirmative, was shown into a small sitting-room, furnished with a heterogeneous collection of cabinets, tables, and sofas, every one of which bore the stamp of the broker's shop—things which had been graceful and pretty in their day, but from which the ormolu-moulding had been knocked off here, and the inlaid-wood chipped away there, and the tortoiseshell cracked in another place, until they seemed the very emblems of decay. It was as if they had been set up as perpetual monitors—monuments of man's fragility. "This is what life comes to," they said in their silent fashion. This faded rubbish in buhl and marqueterie was useful enough to Mr. Lovel, however; and on his canvas the faded furniture glowed and sparkled with all its original brightness, fresh as the still-life of Meissonier. There were a child's toys scattered on the floor; and Clarissa heard a woman's voice talking to a child in an adjoining room, on the other side of a pair of tall pink folding-doors. Then she heard her brother's voice saying something to the servant; and at the sound she felt as if she must have fallen to the ground. Then one of the doors was opened, and a woman came in; a pretty, faded-looking woman, dressed in a light-blue morning wrapper that might very well have been cleaner; a woman with a great deal of dyed hair in an untidy mass at the back of her head; a woman whom Clarissa felt it must be a difficult thing to like.
This was her brother's wife, of course. There was a boy of four or five years old clinging to his mother's gown, and Clarissa's heart yearned to the child. He had Austin's face. It would be easy to lovehim, she thought.
"Mr. Austin is in his paintin'-room, madame," said the wife, putting on a kind of company manner. "Did you wish to see him about a picture? Je parle très poo de Français, mais si——"
"I am English," Clarissa answered, smiling; "if you will kindly tell Mr.Austin a lady from England wishes to see him. What a dear little boy! MayI shake hands with him?"
"Give the lady your hand, Henery," said the mother. "Not that one," as the boy, after the invariable custom of childhood, offered his left—"the right hand."
Clarissa took the sticky little paw tenderly in her pearl-gray glove. To think that her brother Austin Lovel should have married a woman who could call her son "Henery," and who had such an unmistakable air of commonness!
The wife went back to the painting-room; and returned the next minute to beg the visitor to "step this way, if you please, ma'am." She opened one of the folding-doors wide as she spoke, and Clarissa went into a large room, at the other end of which there stood a tall slim young man, in a short velvet coat, before a small easel.
It was her brother Austin; pale and a trifle haggard, too old in looks for his years, but very handsome—a masculine edition of Clarissa herself, in fact: the same delicate clearly-cut features, the same dark hazel eyes, shaded by long brown lashes tinged with gold. This was what Mrs. Granger saw in the broad noonday sunshine; while the painter, looking up from his easel, beheld a radiant creature approaching him, a woman in pale-gray silk, that it would have been rapture to paint; a woman with one of the loveliest faces he had ever seen, crowned with a broad plait of dark-brown hair, and some delicate structure of point-lace and pink roses, called by courtesy a bonnet.
He laid down his mahl-stick, and came to meet her, with a puzzled look on his face. Her beauty seemed familiar to him somehow, and yet he had no recollection of ever having seen her before. He saw the faded counterpart of that bright face every morning in his looking-glass.
She held out both her hands.
"Austin, don't you know me?"
He gave a cry of pleased surprise, and caught her in his arms.
"Clarissa!" he exclaimed; "why, my darling, how lovely you have grown! My dear little Clary! How well I remember the sweet young face, and the tears, and kisses, and the slender little figure in its childish dress, that day your father carried you off to school! My own little Clary, what a happiness to see you! But you never told me you were coming to Paris."
"No, dear, I kept that for a surprise. And are you really glad to see me,Austin?"
"Really glad! Is there any one in the world could make me gladder?"
"I am so happy to hear that. I was almost afraid you had half forgotten me.Your letters were so few, and so short."
"Letters!" cried Austin Lovel, with a laugh; "I never was much of a hand at letter-writing; and then I hadn't anything particularly pleasant to write about. You mustn't gauge my affection by the length of my letters, Clary. And then I have to work deucedly hard when I am at home, and have very little time for scribbling."
Clarissa glanced round the room while he was speaking. Every detail in her brother's surroundings had an interest for her. Here, as in the drawing-room, there was an untidy air about everything—a want of harmony in all the arrangements. There were Flemish carved-oak cabinets, and big Japan vases; a mantelpiece draped with dusty crimson velvet, a broken Venetian glass above it, and a group of rusty-looking arms on each side; long limp amber curtains to the three tall windows, with festooned valances in an advanced state of disarrangement and dilapidation. There were some logs burning on the hearth, a pot of chocolate simmering among the ashes, and breakfast laid for one person upon a little table by the fire—the remnant of a perigord pie, flanked by a stone bottle of curaçoa.
She looked at her brother with anxious scrutinising eyes. No, George Fairfax had not deceived her. He had the look of a man who was going the wrong way. There were premature lines across the forehead, and about the dark brilliant eyes; a nervous expression in the contracted lips. It was the face of a man who burns the candle of life at both ends. Late hours, anxiety, dissipation of all kinds, had set their fatal seal upon his countenance.
"Dear Austin, you are as handsome as ever; but I don't think you are looking well," she said tenderly.
"Don't look so alarmed, my dear girl," he answered lightly; "I am well enough; that is to say, I am never ill, never knock under, or strike work. There are men who go through life like that—never ill, and never exactly well. I rarely get up in the morning without a headache; but I generally brighten considerably as the sun goes down. We move with a contrary motion, Helios and I."
"I am afraid you work too hard, and sit up too late."
"As to working hard, my dear, that is a necessity; and going out every night is another necessity. I get my commissions in society."
"But you must have a reputation by this time, Austin; and commissions would come to you, I should think, without your courting them."
"No, child; I have only a reputationde salon, I am only known in a certain set. And a man must live, you see. To a man himself that is the primary necessity. Yourgenerosityset me on my legs last year, and tempted me to take this floor, and make a slight advance movement altogether. I thought better rooms would bring me better work—sitters for a new style of cabinet-portraits, and so on. But so far the rooms have been comparatively a useless extravagance. However, I go out a good deal, and meet a great many influential people; so I can scarcely miss a success in the end."
"But if you sacrifice your health in the meantime, Austin."
"Sacrifice my health! That's just like a woman. If a man looks a trifle pale, and dark under the eyes, she begins to fancy he's dying. My poor little wife takes just the same notions into her head, and would like me to stop at home every evening to watch her darn the children's stockings."
"I think your wife is quite right to be anxious, Austin; and it would be much better for you to stay at home, even to see stockings darned. It must be very dull for her too when you are out, poor soul."
Mr. Lovel shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating air.
"C'est son métier," he said. "I suppose she does find it rather dismal at times; but there are the children, you see—it is a woman's duty to find all-sufficient society in her children. And now, Clary, tell me about yourself. You have made a brilliant match, and are mistress of Arden Court. A strange stroke of fortune that. And you are happy, I hope, my dear?"
"I ought to be very happy," Clarissa answered, with a faint sigh, thinking perhaps that, bright as her life might be, it was not quite the fulfilment of her vague girlish dreams—not quite the life she had fancied lying before her when the future was all unknown; "I ought to be very happy and very grateful to Providence; and, O Austin, my boy is the sweetest darling is the world!"
Austin Lovel looked doubtful for a moment, half inclined to think "my boy" might stand for Daniel Granger.
"You must see him, Austin," continued his sister; "he is nearly ten months old now, and such a beauty!"
"O, the baby!" said Austin, rather coolly. "I daresay he's a nice little chap, and I should like to see him very much, if it were practicable. But how about Granger himself? He is a good sort of fellow, I hope."
"He is all goodness to me," Clarissa answered gravely, casting down her eyes as she spoke; and Austin Lovel knew that the marriage which had given his sister Arden Court had been no love-match.
They talked for some time; talked of the old days when they had been together at Arden; but of the years that made the story of his life, Austin Lovel spoke very little.
"I have always been an unlucky beggar," he said, in his careless way. "There's very little use in going over old ground. Some men never get fairly on the high-road of life. They spend their existence wading across swamps, and scrambling through bushes, and never reach any particular point at the end. My career has been that sort of thing."
"But you are so young, Austin," pleaded Clarissa, "and may do so much yet."
He shook his head with an air of hopelessness that was half indifference.
"My dear child, I am neither a Raffaelle nor a Dore," he said, "and I need be one or the other to redeem my past But so long as I can pick up enough to keep the little woman yonder and the bairns, and get a decent cigar and an honest bottle of Bordeaux, I'm content. Ambition departed from me ten years ago."
"O Austin, I can't bear to hear you say that! With your genius you ought to do so much. I wish you would be friends with my husband, and that he could be of use to you."
"My dear Clarissa, put that idea out of your mind at once and for ever. There can be no such thing as friendship between Mr. Granger and me. Do you remember what Samuel Johnson said about some one's distaste for clean linen—'And I, sir, have no passion for it!' I confess to having no passion for respectable people. I am very glad to hear Mr. Granger is a good husband; but he's much too respectable a citizen for my acquaintance."
Clarissa sighed; there was a prejudice here, even if Daniel Granger could have been induced to think kindly of his brother-in-law.
"Depend upon it, the Prodigal Son had a hard time of it after the fatted calf had been eaten, Clary, and wished himself back among the swine. Do you think, however lenient his father might be, that his brother and the friends of the family spared him? His past was thrown in his face, you may be sure. I daresay he went back to his evil ways after a year or so. Good people maintain their monopoly of virtue by making the repentant sinner's life a burden to him."
Clarissa spoke of his wife presently.
"You must introduce me to her, Austin. She took me for a stranger just now, and I did not undeceive her."
"Yes I'll introduce you. There's not much in common between you; but she'll be very proud of your acquaintance. She looks upon my relations as an exalted race of beings, and myself as a kind of fallen angel. You mustn't be too hard upon her, Clary, if she seems not quite the sort of woman you would have chosen for your sister-in-law. She has been a good wife to me, and she was a good daughter to her drunken old father—one of the greatest scamps in London, who used to get his bread—or rather his gin—by standing for Count Ugolino and Cardinal Wolsey, or anything grim and gray and aquiline-nosed in the way of patriarchs. The girl Bessie was a model too in her time; and it was in Jack Redgrave's painting-room—the pre-Raphaelite fellow who paints fearfully and wonderfully made women with red hair and angular arms—I first met her. Jack and I were great chums at that time—it was just after I sold out—and I used to paint at his rooms. I was going in for painting just then with a great spurt, having nothing but my brush to live upon. You can guess the rest. As Bessie was a very pretty girl, and neither she nor I had a sixpence wherewith to bless ourselves, of course we fell in love with each other. Poor little thing, how pretty she used to look in those days, standing on Jack's movable platform, with her hair falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her petticoat!—such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as much as to say, 'I'm very tired of standing here; but I'm only a model, to be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. I count for nothing.' Poor little patient soul! she was so helpless and so friendless, Clary. I think my love for her was something like the compassion one feels for some young feeble bird that has fallen out of its nest. So we were married one morning; and for some time lived in lodgings at Putney, where I used to suffer considerable affliction from Count Ugolino and two bony boys, Bessie's brothers, who looked as if the Count had been acting up to his character with too great a fidelity. Ugolino himself would come prowling out of a Saturday afternoon to borrow the wherewithal to pay his week's lodging, lest he should be cast out into the streets at nightfall; and it was a common thing for one of the bony boys to appear at breakfast-time with a duplicate of his father's coat, pledged over-night for drink, and without the means of redeeming which he could not pursue his honourable vocation. In short, I think it was as much the affliction of the Ugolino family as my own entanglements that drove me to seek my fortunes on the other side of the world."
Austin Lovel opened one of the doors, and called his wife "Come here,Bessie; I've a pleasant surprise for you."
Mrs. Lovel appeared quickly in answer to this summons. She had changed her morning dress for a purple silk, which was smartly trimmed, but by no means fresh, and she had dressed her hair, and refreshed her complexion by a liberal application of violet powder. She had a look which can only be described as "flashy"—a look that struck Clarissa unpleasantly, in spite of herself.
Her expressions of surprise did not sound quite so natural as they might have done—for she had been listening at the folding-doors during a considerable part of the interview; but she seemed really delighted by Mrs. Granger's condescension, and she kissed that lady with much affection.
"I'm sure I do feel proud to know any relation of Austin's," she said, "and you most of all, who have been so kind to him. Heaven knows what would have become of us last winter, if it hadn't been for your generosity."
Clarissa laid her hand upon Bessie Lovel's lips.
"You mustn't talk of generosity between my brother and me," she said; "all I have in the world is at his service. And now let me see my nephews, please; and then I must run away."
The nephews were produced; the boy Clarissa had seen, and another of smaller growth—pale-faced, bright-eyed little fellows; They too had been subjected to the infliction of soap-and-water and hair-brushes, clean pinafores, and so on, since Mrs. Granger's arrival.
She knelt down and kissed them both, with real motherly tenderness, thinking of her own darling, and the difference between his fortunes and theirs; and then, after a warm caress, she slipped a napoleon into each little warm hand, "to buy toys," and rose to depart.
"I must hurry away now, Austin," she said; "but I shall come again very soon, if I may. Good-bye, dear, and God bless you."
The embrace that followed was a very fervent one. It had been sweet to meet again after so many years, and it was hard to leave him so soon—to leave him with the conviction that his life was a wreck. But Clarissa had no time to linger. The thought of the baby in the Luxembourg Gardens had been distracting her for ever so long. These stolen meetings must needs be short.
She looked at her watch when she got back to the street, and found, to her horror, that she had been very nearly an hour away from the nurse and her charge. The carriage was waiting at the gate, and she had to encounter the full fire of her servants' gaze as she crossed the road and went into the gardens. Yes, there was the baby's blue-velvet pelisse resplendent at the end of an avenue, Clarissa walked quickly to meet him.
"My darling!" she cried. "Has he been waiting for his mamma? I hope he has not been tired of the gardens, nurse?"
"Yes, ma'am, he have been tired," replied Mrs. Brobson, with an outraged air. "There ain't much in these gardens to keep a baby of his age amused for an hour at a stretch; and in a east wind too! It's right down cutting at that corner."
"Why didn't you take him home in the carriage, nurse? It would have been better than running any risk of his catching cold."
"What, and leave you without a conveyance, ma'am? I couldn't have done that!"
"I was detained longer than I expected to stay. O, by the bye, you need not mention to Miss Granger that I have been making a call. The people I have been to see are—are in humble circumstances; and I don't want her to know anything about it."
"I hope I know my duty, ma'am," replied Mrs. Brobson stiffly. That hour's parading in the gardens, without any relief from her subordinate, had soured her temper, and inclined her to look with unfavourable eyes upon the conduct of her mistress. Clarissa felt that she had excited the suspicion of her servant, and that all her future meetings with her brother would involve as much plotting and planning as would serve for the ripening of a political conspiracy.
* * * * *
While Clarissa was pondering on that perplexing question, how she was to see her brother frequently without Mr. Granger's knowledge, fortune had favoured her in a manner she had never anticipated. After what Mr. Fairfax had said to her about Austin Lovel's "set," the last thing she expected was to meet her brother in society—that fast Bohemian world in which she supposed him to exist, seemed utterly remote from the faultless circle of Daniel Granger's acquaintance. It happened, however, that one of the dearest friends to whom Lady Laura Armstrong had introduced her sweet Clarissa was a lady of the Leo-Hunter genus—a certain Madame Caballero,néeBondichori, a little elderly Frenchwoman, with sparkling black eyes and inexhaustible vivacity; the widow of a Portuguese wine-merchant; a lady whose fortune enabled her to occupy a first floor in one of the freestone palaces of the Champs Elysées, to wear black velvet and diamonds in perpetuity, and to receive a herd of small lions and a flock of admiring nobodies twice a-week. The little widow prided herself on her worship of genius. All members of the lion tribe came alike to her: painters, sculptors, singers; actors, and performers upon every variety of known and unknown musical instruments; budding barristers, who had won forensic laurels by the eloquent defence of some notorious criminal; homoeopathic doctors, lady doctresses, or lawyeresses, or deaconesses, from America; and pretty women who had won a kind of renown by something special in the way of eyebrows, or arms, or shoulders.
To these crowded saloons Mr. Granger brought his wife and daughter one evening. They found a great many people assembled in three lofty rooms, hung with amber satin, in the remotest and smallest of which apartments Madame Caballero made teaà l'anglaise, for her intimates; while, in the largest, some fearful and wonderful instrumental music was going on, with the very smallest possible amount of attention from the audience. There was a perpetual buzz of conversation; and there was a considerable sprinkling of curious-looking people; weird men with long unkempt hair, strong-minded women, who counterbalanced these in a manner by wearing their hair preternaturally short. Altogether, the assembly was an unusual one; but Madame Caballero's guests seemed to enjoy themselves very much. Their good spirits may have been partly due to the fact that they had the pleasing anticipation of an excellent supper, furnished with all the choicest dainties that Chevet can provide; for Madame Caballero's receptions were of a substantial order, and she owed a good deal of her popularity to the profusion that distinguished the commissariat department.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger made their way to the inner room by and by. It was the prettiest room of the three, with a great semi-circular window overlooking nothing particular in the daytime, but making a handsome amber-hung recess at night. Here there was a sea-coal fireà l'anglaise, and only a subdued glimmering of wax candles, instead of the broad glare in the larger saloons. Here, too were to be found the choicest of Madame Caballero's guests; a cabinet minister, an ambassador, a poet of some standing, and one of the most distinguished sopranos of the season, a fair-haired German girl, with great pathetic blue eyes.
Even in this society Madame Caballero was rejoiced to see her sweet Mrs. Granger and her charming Miss Granger, who was looking unutterably stiff, in mauve silk and white lace. The lady and her friends had been talking of some one as the Grangers entered, talking rapturously.
"J'en raffole!" exclaimed Madame; "such a charming young man, gifted with talents of the most original order."
The ambassador was looking at a portrait—the likeness of Madame Caballero herself—a mere sketch in oils, with a mark of the brush upon it, but remarkable for thechicand daring of the painter's style, and for that idealised resemblance which is always so agreeable to the subject.
Clarissa's heart gave a little throb. The picture was like one she had seen on the easel in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard.
"Mais c'est charmant!" exclaimed the ambassador; and the adjective was echoed in every key by the rest of the little coterie.
"I expect him here this evening," said Madame; "and I shall be very much gratified if you will permit me to present him to your excellency."
The ambassador bowed. "Anyprotégéeof Madame's," he said, and so on.
Mr. Granger, who was really a judge of art, fastened on to the picture immediately.
"There's something fresh in the style, Clary," he said. "I should like this man to paint your portrait. What's the signature? Austin! That's hardly a French name, I should think—eh, Madame Caballero?"
"No," replied Madame; "Mr. Austin is an Englishman. I shall be charmed if you will allow him to paint Mrs. Granger; and I'm sure he will be delighted to have such a subject."
There was a good deal of talk about Mr. Austin's painting, and art in general. There were some half dozen pictures of the modern French school in this inner room, which helped to sustain the conversation. Mr. Granger talked very fair French, of a soundly grammatical order; and Clarissa's tongue ran almost as gaily as in her schoolgirl days at Belforêt. She was going to see her brother—to see him shining in good society, and not in the pernicious "set" of which George Fairfax had spoken. The thought was rapture to her. They might have a few minutes' talk to themselves, perhaps, before the evening was over. That interview in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard had been so sadly brief, and her heart too full for many words.
Austin Lovel came in presently, looking his handsomest, in his careful evening-dress, with a brilliant light in his eyes, and that appearance of false brightness which is apt to distinguish the man who is burning the candle of life at both ends. Only by just the faintest elevation of his eyebrows did he betray his surprise as he looked at his sister; and his air, on being presented to her a few moments afterwards, was perfect in its serene unconsciousness.
Mr. Granger talked to him of his picture pleasantly enough, but very much as he would have talked to his architect, or to one of his clerks in the great Bradford establishment. There was a marked difference between the tone of the rich English trader and the German ambassador, when he expressed himself on the subject of Mr. Austin's talent; but then the Englishman intended to give the painter a commission, and the German did not.
"I should like you to paint my wife—and—and—my daughter," said Mr. Granger, throwing in Sophia as an after-thought. It would be only civil to have his daughter's portrait painted, he thought.
Mr. Austin bowed. "I shall be most happy," he said. Clarissa's eyes sparkled with delight. Sophia Granger saw the pleased look, and thought, "O, the vanity of these children of perdition!" But she did not offer any objection to the painting of her own likeness.
"When shall we begin?" asked Mr. Granger.
"My time is entirely at your disposal."
"In that case, the sooner the thing is done the better. My wife cannot come to your studio—she has so many claims upon her time—but that would make no difficulty, I suppose?"
"Not at all. I can paint Mrs. Granger in her own rooms as well as in mine, if the light will serve."
"One of our drawing-rooms faces the north," answered Mr. Granger, "and the windows are large—larger than I like. Any loss of time which you may suffer in accommodating Mrs. Granger must, of course, be considered in the price of your pictures."
"I have only one price for my pictures," replied Mr. Austin, with a loftiness that astonished his patron. "I charge fifty guineas for a portrait of that kind—whether it is painted for a duke or a grocer in the Rue St. Honoré."
"I will give you a hundred guineas for each of the pictures, if they are successes," said Mr. Granger. "If they are failures, I will give you your own price, and make you a present of the canvasses."
"I am not a stoic, and have no objection to accept a premium of a hundred guineas from so distinguished a capitalist as Mr. Granger," returned Austin Lovel, smiling. "I don't think Mrs. Granger's portrait will be a failure," he added confidently, with a little look at Clarissa.
Sophia Granger saw the look, and resented it. The painter had said nothing of her portrait. It was of Clarissa's only that he thought. It was a very small thing; but when her father's wife was concerned, small things were great in the eyes of Miss Granger.
There was no opportunity for confidential talk between Austin Lovel and his sister that evening; but Clarissa went home happy in the expectation of seeing her brother very often in the simplest, easiest way. The portraits would take some time to paint, of course; indeed Austin might make the business last almost as long as he liked.
It was rather hard, however, to have to discuss her brother's merits with Mr. and Miss Granger as if he had been a stranger; and Clarissa had to do this going home in the carriage that night, and at breakfast next morning. The young man was handsome, Mr. Granger remarked, but had rather a worn look—a dissipated look, in point of fact. That sort of people generally were dissipated.
Mrs. Granger ventured to say that she did not think Mr. Austin looked dissipated—a little worn, perhaps, but nothing more; and that might be the effect of hard work.
"My dear Clary, what can you know of the physiology of dissipation? I tell you that young man is dissipated. I saw him playingécartéwith a Frenchman just before we left Madame Caballero's; and, unless I am profoundly mistaken, the man is a gambler."
Clarissa shuddered. She could not forget what George Fairfax had said to her about her brother's ways, nor the fact that her remittances had seemed of so little use to him. He seemed in good repute too, and talked of fifty guineas for a picture with the utmost coolness. He must have earned a good deal of money, and the money must have gone somewhere. In all the details of his home there was evidence of extravagance in the past and poverty in the present.
He came at eleven o'clock on the second morning after Madame Caballero's reception; came in a hired carriage, with his easel and all the paraphernalia of his art. Mr. Granger had made a point of being present at this first sitting, much to the discomfiture of Clarissa, who was yearning for a long uninterrupted talk with her brother. Even when Mr. Granger was absent, there would be Miss Granger, most likely, she thought, with vexation; and, after all, these meetings with Austin would be only half meetings. It would be pleasant only to see him, to hear his voice; but she was longing to talk freely of the past, to give him counsel for the future.
The drawing-room looking north was rather a dreary apartment, if any apartment furnished with blue-satin damask and unlimited gilding can be called dreary. There was splendour, of course, but it was a chilling kind of splendour. The room was large and square, with two tall wide windows commanding a view of one of the dullest streets in new Paris—a street at the end of which workmen were still busy cutting away a hill, the removal whereof was necessary for the realisation of the Augustan idea of that archetypal city, which was to be left all marble. Mr. Granger's apartments were in a corner house, and he had the advantage of this side view. There was very little of what Mr. Wemmick called "portable property" in this northern drawing-room. There were blue-satin divans running along the walls, a couple of blue-satin easy-chairs, an ormolu stand with a monster Sèvres dish for cards, and that was all—a room in which one might, "receive," but could scarcely live.
The light was capital, Mr. Austin said. He set up his easel, settled the position of his sister, after a little discussion with Mr. Granger, and began work. Clarissa's was to be the first portrait. This being arranged, Mr. Granger departed to write letters, leaving Sophia established, with her Berlin-wool work, at one of the windows. Clarissa would not, of course, like to be lefttête-à-têtefor two or three hours with a strange painter, Miss Granger opened.
Yes, it was very pleasant to have him there, even though their talk was restrained by the presence of a third person, and they could only speak of indifferent things. Perhaps to Austin Lovel himself it was pleasanter to have Miss Granger there than to be quite alone with his sister. He was very fond of Clarissa, but there was much in his past life—some things in his present life even—that would not bear talking of, and he shrank a little from his sister's tender questioning. Protected by Miss Granger and her Berlin-wool spaniels, he was quite at his ease, and ran gaily on about all manner of things as he sketched his outline and set his palette. He gave the two ladies a lively picture of existing French art, with little satirical touches here and there. Even Sophia was amused, and blushed to find herself comparing the social graces of Mr. Austin the painter with those of Mr. Tillott the curate, very much to the advantage of the former—blushed to find herself so much interested in any conversation that was not strictly utilitarian or evangelical in its drift. Once or twice Austin spoke of his travels, his Australian experiences; and at each mention, Clarissa looked up eagerly, anxious to hear more. The history of her brother's past was a blank to her, and she was keenly interested by the slightest allusion that cast a ray of light upon it. Mr. Austin did not care, however, to dwell much upon his own affairs. It was chiefly of other people that he talked. Throughout that first sitting Miss Granger maintained a dignified formality, tempered by maidenly graciousness. The young man was amusing, certainly, and it was not often Miss Granger permitted herself to be amused. She thought Clarissa was too familiar with him, treated him too much with an air of perfect equality. A man who painted portraits for hire should be received, Miss Granger thought, as one would receive a superior kind of bootmaker.
More than once, in fact, in the course of that agreeable morning, Clarissa had for a moment forgotten that she was talking to Mr. Austin the painter, and not to her brother Austin Lovel. More than once an unconscious warmth or softness in her tone had made Miss Granger look up from her embroidery-frame with the eyes of wonder.
Mr. Granger came back to the drawing-room, having finished his letter-writing just as the sitting concluded, and, luncheon being announced at the same time, asked Mr. Austin to stay for that meal. Austin had no objection to linger in his sister's society. He wanted to know what kind of man this Daniel Granger was; and perhaps wanted to see what probability there was of Daniel Granger's wife being able to supply him with money in the future. Austin Lovel had, from his earliest boyhood, possessed a fatal capacity for getting rid of money, and for getting into debt; not common plain-sailing debt, which would lead at the worst to the Bankruptcy Court, but liability of a more disreputable and perilous character, involving the terror of disgrace, and entanglements that would have to be unravelled by a police-magistrate.
Racing debts, gambling debts, and bill-discounting transactions, had been the agreeable variety of difficulties which had beset Austin Lovel's military career; and at the end there had been something—something fully known to a few only—which had made the immediate sale of his commission a necessity. He wasallowedto sell it; and that was much, his friends said. If his commanding officer had not been an easy-going kind of man, he would scarcely have got off so cheaply.
"I wonder how this fellow Granger would treat me, if he knew who I was?" he thought to himself. "He'd inaugurate our acquaintance by kicking me out of his house most likely, instead of asking me to luncheon." Notwithstanding which opinion Mr. Austin sat down to share the sacred bread and salt with his brother-in-law, and ate a cutleta la Maintenon, and drank half a bottle of claret, with a perfect enjoyment of the situation. He liked the idea of being patronised by the man who would not have tolerated his society for a moment, had he been aware of his identity.
He talked of Parisian life during luncheon, keeping carefully clear of all subjects which the "young person," as represented by Miss Granger, might blush to hear; and Mr. Granger, who had only an Englishman's knowledge of the city, was amused by the pleasant gossip. The meal lasted longer than usual, and lost all its wonted formality; and the fair Sophia found herself more and more interested in this fascinating painter, with his brilliant dark eyes, and sarcastic mouth, and generally agreeable manner. She sat next him at luncheon, and, when there came a little pause in the conversation, began to question him about the state of the Parisian poor. It was very bad, was it not?
Mr. Austin shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know," he said, "but I don't think it would be possible for a man to starve to death in Paris under the Imperial regime; and it seems very easy for an Englishman to do it in Spitalfields or Mile-end New Town. You don't hear of men and women found dead in their garrets from sheer hunger. But of course there is a good deal of poverty and squalor to be found in the city."
And then Mr. Austin launched into a graphic description of some interesting phases of life among the lower classes, borrowed from a novel that had been recently delighting the reading public of France, but appropriated with such an air of reality, that Miss Granger fancied this delightful painter must spend some considerable part of his existence as a district visitor or city missionary.
"What a pity that Mr. Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought; Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and temporal welfare of his humble parishioners—questions which, in the vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put a chap's back up, somehow."
"I should like to show Mr. Austin the baby, Daniel," Clarissa said to her husband shyly, while Miss Granger was keeping Austin hard and fast to the amelioration of the working classes; "he would make such a lovely picture."
Mr. Granger smiled, a quiet well-satisfied smile. He, the strong man, the millowner and millionaire, was as weak as the weakest woman in all things concerning the child of his mature age.
"Yes," he said, with some affectation of indifference; "Lovel would make a nice picture enough. We'll have him painted if you like, Clary, some day. Send for him, my dear."
She had her hand upon the bell directly.
"Yes," she cried, "he would make the sweetest picture in the world, andAustin shall paint him."
The familiar mention of the name Austin,tout court, scared Mr. Granger almost as much as a cannon fired close at his elbow might have done. He stared at his wife with grave displeasure.
"Mr. Austin can paint him some day, if you wish it, Clarissa," he said.
Mrs. Granger blushed crimson; again she remembered that this brother she loved so dearly was only a strange painter of portraits, whom it behoved her to treat with only the most formal courtesy. She hated the deception; and having a strong faith in her husband's generosity, was sorely tempted to put an end to this acted lie on the spot, and to tell him who his guest was; but fear of her brother's anger stopped her. She had no right to betray him; she must wait his permission to tell the secret.
"Even Sophia seems to like him," she thought; "and I don't think Daniel could help being pleased with him, in spite of anything papa may have said to his prejudice."
The baby was brought, and, being in a benignant humour, was graciously pleased to look his brightest and prettiest, and in nurse's phraseology, to "take to" his unknown uncle. The unknown uncle kissed him affectionately, and said some civil things about the colour of his eyes, and the plumpness of his limbs—"quite a Rubens baby," and so on, but did not consider a boy-baby an especially wonderful creature, having had two boy-babies of his own, and not having particularly wanted them. He looked upon them rather as chronic perplexities, like accommodation bills that had matured unawares.
"And this is the heir of Arden," he said to himself, as he looked down at the fat blue-eyed thing struggling in Clarissa's arms, with that desperate desire to get nowhere in particular, common to infancy. "So this little lump of humanity is the future lord of the home that should have been mine. I don't know that I envy him. Country life and Arden would hardly have suited me. I think I'd rather have anentresolin the Champs Elysees, and the run of the boulevards, than the gray old Court and a respectable position. Unless a man's tastes are 'horsey' or agricultural, country life must be a bore."
Mr. Austin patted the plump young cheeks without any feeling of enmity.
"Poor little beggar! What ghosts will haunt him in the old rooms by-and-by,I wonder?" he said to himself, smiling down at the child.
* * * * *
The picture made rapid progress. For his very life—though the finishing of his work had been the signal of his doom, and the executioner waiting to make a sudden end of him when the last touch was laid upon the canvas, Austin Lovel could not have painted slowly. The dashing offhand brush was like a young thoroughbred, that could not be pulled, let the jockey saw at his mouth as he might. And yet the painter would have liked much to prolong this easy intercourse with his sister. But after Clarissa's portrait was finished, there was Miss Granger to be painted; and then they would want a picture of that unapproachable baby, no doubt; and after that, perhaps, Mr. Granger might consent to have his massive features perpetuated. Austin considered that the millionaire should be good for three hundred guineas or so; he had promised two hundred, and the painter was spending the money by anticipation as fast as he could.
He came every other morning to the Rue de Morny, and generally stayed to luncheon; and those mornings spent in his company were very pleasant to Clarissa—as pleasant as anything could be which involved deception; there was always the sting of that fact. Miss Granger was rarely absent for ten minutes together on these occasions; it was only some lucky chance which took her from the room to fetch some Berlin wool, or a forgotten skein of floss silk for the perennial spaniels, and afforded the brother and sister an opportunity for a few hurried words. The model villagers almost faded out of Miss Granger's mind in this agreeable society. She found herself listening to talk about things which were of the earth earthy, and was fain to confess herself interested in the conversation. She dressed as carefully to receive the painter as if he had been, to use her particular phraseology, "a person in her own sphere;" and Mr. Tillott would have thought his chances of success at a very low point, if he could have seen her in Austin Lovel's presence.
That gentleman himself was not slow to perceive the impression he had made.
"It's rather a pity I'm married, isn't it, Clary?" he said to his sister one day, when Sophia, whose habits had not been quite so methodical of late, had gone in search of some white beads for the spaniels, some of which were of a beady nature. "It would have been a great chance for me, wouldn't it?"
"What do you mean, Austin?"
"Miss Granger," answered the painter, without looking up from his work, "I think she rather likes me, do you know; and I suppose her father will give her fifty thousand or so when she marries, in spite of young Lovel. He seems to have no end of money. It would have been an uncommonly good thing, wouldn't it?"
"I don't think it's any use talking of it, Austin, however good it might have been; and I don't think Sophia would have suited you as a wife."
"Not suited me—bosh! Any woman with fifty thousand pounds would have suited me. However, you're right—there's no good in talking ofthat. I'm booked. Poor little woman, she's a good wife to me; but it's rather a pity. You don't know how many chances I might have had but for that entanglement."
"I wish, Austin, for your poor wife's sake, you'd let me tell my husband who you are. This concealment seems so hard upon her, as well as a kind of wrong to Daniel. I can do so little to serve her, and I might do so much, if I could own her as my sister-in-law. I don't think Daniel could help liking you, if he knew everything."
"Drop that, if you please, Clarissa," said Austin, with a darkening countenance. "I have told you that your husband and I can never be friends, and I mean it. I don't want to be degraded by any intercession of yours.That'sa little too much even for me. It suits my purpose well enough to accept Mr. Granger's commissions; and of course it's very agreeable to see you; but the matter must end there."
Miss Granger returned at this moment; but had she stayed away for an hour, Clarissa could scarcely have pressed the question farther. In the old days when they had been boy and girl together, Austin seven years her senior, Clarissa had always been just a little afraid of her brother; and she was afraid of him now.
The very fact of his somewhat dependent position made her more fearful of offending him. She was anxious about his future; anxious too about his present mode of life; but she dared not question closely upon either subject. Once, when she had ventured to ask him about his plan of life, he answered in his careless off-hand way,—
"My dearest Clary, I have no plans. I like Paris; and if I am not particularly successful here, I don't suppose I should be more successful anywhere else. I mean to stay here as long as I can hold out. I know a good many people, and sometimes get a stroke of luck."
"But you are ruining your health. Austin, I fear, with—late hours, and—and—parties."
"Who told you I keep late hours? The Parisians, as a rule, don't go to bed at curfew. I don't suppose I'm worse than my neighbours. If I didn't go out, Clary, and keep myself in the minds of my patrons, I might rot in a garret. You don't know how soon a man is forgotten—even a man who has made his mark more positively than I have; and then you see, my dear, I like society, and have no taste for the domestic hearth, except for variety, once in a way, like dining on a bouillon after a week's high feeding. Yes, come what may, I shall stay in Paris—as long as I can."
There was something in the tone of the last words that alarmed Clarissa.
"You—you—are not in debt, are you, Austin?" she asked timidly.
"No—no—I'm not in debt; but I owe a good deal of money."
Clarissa looked puzzled.
"That is to say, I have no vulgar debts—butcher and baker, and so on; but there are two or three things, involving some hundreds, which I shall have to settle some of these days or else——"
"Or else what, Austin?"
"Cut Paris, Clary, that's all."
Clarissa turned pale. Austin began to whistle a popularcafé-chantantair, as he bent over his palette, squeezing little dabs of Naples yellow out of a leaden tube. Some hundreds!—that was a vague phrase, which might mean a great deal of money; it was a phrase which alarmed Clarissa; but she was much more alarmed by the recklessness of her brother's tone.
"But if you owe money, you must pay it, Austin," she said; "you can't leave a place owing money."
The painter shrugged his shoulders.
"It's not an agreeable thing to do," he said, "but it has been done. Of the two, it's pleasanter than staying in a place where you owe money."
"Of course I shall do all I can to help you, dear," said his sister. "There will be a hundred and twenty-five pounds due to me at Christmas, and I'll give you the hundred."
"You're a first-rate girl, Clary, but I think that fellow Granger might give you more pin-money. Five hundred a year is a beggarly pittance for a man of his means."
"It is more than I fancied I could ever want; and Daniel allows papa five hundred a year, you know Austin."
"Humph! that makes a thousand—no great things for a millionaire. A pretty girl, married to a man of that stamp, ought to have unlimited command of money," replied her brother. "It's the only compensation," he said to himself afterwards.
"I don't like to hear you say these things, Austin. My husband is very kind to me. I'm afraid I'm not half as grateful as I ought to be."
"Gratitude be——!" He did not finish the ejaculation.
"Gratitude from a Lovel of twenty to a Granger of fifty! My dear Clary, that's too good a joke! The man is well enough—better than I expected to find him: but such a girl as you is a prize for which such a man could not pay too highly."
It was rarely they had the opportunity for so long a conversation as this; and Austin was by no means sorry that it was so. He had very pressing need of all the money his sister could give him; but he did not care to enter into explanations about the state of his affairs.
* * * * *
Clarissa did not forget the existence of the poor little wife in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard; and on the very first afternoon which she had to herself, Mr. Granger having gone to see some great cattle-fair a few miles from Paris, and Miss Granger being afflicted with a headache, she took courage to order her coachman to drive straight to the house where her brother lived.
"It is much better than making a mystery of it," she thought.
"The man will think that I have come to see a milliner or some one of that kind."
The footman would fain have escorted Mrs. Granger the way she should go, and held himself in readiness to accompany her into the house; but she waved him aside on the threshold of the darksomeporte-cochère, out of which no coach ever came nowadays.
"I shan't want you, Trotter," she said. "Tell Jarvis to walk the horses gently up and down. I shall not be very long."
The man bowed and obeyed, wondering what business his mistress could have in such a dingy street, "on the Surrey side of the water, too," as he said to his comrade.
Austin was out, but Mrs. Lovel was at home, and it was Mrs. Lovel whom Clarissa had come chiefly to see. The same tawdrily-dressed maid admitted her to the same untidy sitting-room, a shade more untidy to-day, where Bessie Lovel was dozing in an easy-chair by the fire, while the two boys played and squabbled in one of the windows.
Mrs. Granger, entering suddenly, radiant in golden-brown moiré and sables, seemed almost to dazzle the eyes of Austin's wife, who had not seen much of the brighter side of existence. Her life before her marriage had been altogether sordid and shabby, brightness or luxury of any kind for her class being synonymous with vice; and Bessie Stanford the painter's model had never been vicious. Her life since her marriage had been a life of trouble and difficulty, with only occasional glimpses of a spurious kind of brilliancy. She lived outside her husband's existence, as it were, and felt somehow that she was only attached to him by external links, as a dog might have been. He had a certain kind of affection for her, was conscious of her fidelity, and grateful for her attachment; and there an end. Sympathy between them there was none; nor had he ever troubled himself to cultivate her tastes, or attempted in the smallest degree to bring her nearer to him. To Bessie Lovel, therefore, this sister of her husband's, in all the glory of her fresh young beauty and sumptuous apparel, seemed a creature of another sphere, something to be gazed upon almost in fear and trembling.
"I beg your parding!" she faltered, rubbing her eyes. She was apt, when agitated, to fall back upon the pronunciation of her girlhood, before Austin Lovel had winced and ejaculated at her various mutilations of the language. "I was just taking forty winks after my bit of dinner."
"I am so sorry I disturbed you," said Clarissa, in her gracious way. "You were tired, I daresay."
"O, pray don't mention it! I'm sure I feel it a great compliment your comin'. It must seem a poor place to you after your beautiful house in the Roo de Morny. Austin told me where you lived; and I took the liberty of walking that way one evening with a lady friend. I'm sure the houses are perfect palaces."
"I wish you could come to my house as my sister-in-law ought," replied Clarissa. "I wanted to confide in my husband, to bring about a friendship between him and my brother, if I could; but Austin tells me that is impossible. I suppose he knows best. So, you see, I am obliged to act in this underhand way, and to come to see you by stealth, as it were."
"It's very good of you to come at all," answered the wife with a sigh. "It isn't many of Austin's friends take any notice of me. I'm sure most of 'em treat me as if I was a cipher. Not that I mind that, provided he could get on; but it's dinners there, and suppers here, and never no orders for pictures, as you may say. He had next to nothing to do all the autumn; Paris being so dull, you know, with all the high people away at the sea. He painted Madame Caballero for nothing, just to get himself talked of among her set; and if it wasn't for Mr. Granger's orders, I don't know where we should be.—Come and speak to your aunt, Henery and Arthur, like good boys."
This to the olive-branches in the window, struggling for the possession of a battered tin railway-engine with a crooked chimney.
"She ain't my aunt," cried the eldest hope. "I haven't got no aunt."
"Yes, this is your aunt Clarissa. You've heard papa talk of her."
"Yes, I remember," said the boy sharply. "I remember one night when he talked of Arden Court and Clarissa, and thumped his forehead on the mantelpiece like that;" and the boy pantomimed the action of despair.
"He has fits of that kind sometimes," said Bessie Lovel, "and goes on about having wasted his life, and thrown away his chances, and all that. He used to go on dreadful when we were in Australia, till he made me that nervous I didn't know what to do, thinking he'd go and destroy himself some day. But he's been better since we've been in Paris. The gaiety suits him. He says he can't live without society."
Clarissa sighed. Little as she knew of her brother's life, she knew enough to be very sure that love of society had been among the chief causes of his ruin. She took one of her nephews on her lap, and talked to him, and let him play with the trinkets on her chain. Both the children were bright and intelligent enough, but had that air of premature sharpness which comes from constant intercourse with grown-up people, and an early initiation in the difficulties of existence.
She could only stay half an hour with her sister-in-law; but she could see that her visit of duty had gratified the poor little neglected wife. She had not come empty-handed, but had brought an offering for Bessie Lovel which made the tired eyes brighten with something of their old light—a large oval locket of massive dead gold, with a maltese cross of small diamonds upon it; one of the simplest ornaments which Daniel Granger had given her, and which she fancied herself justified in parting with. She had taken it to a jeweller in the Palais Royal, who had arranged a lock of her dark-brown hair, with a true-lover's knot of brilliants, inside the locket, and had engraved the words "From Clarissa" on the back.
Mrs. Lovel clasped her hands in rapture as Clarissa opened the morocco case and showed her this jewel.
"For me!" she cried. "I never had anything half as beautiful in my life. And your 'air, too!" She said "'air" in her excitement. "How good of you to give it to me! I don't know how to thank you."
And the poor little woman made a rapid mental review of her wardrobe, wondering if she had any gown good enough to wear with that splendid jewel. Her purple silk—the one silk dress she possessed—was a little shiny and shabby by daylight, but looked very well by candle-light still, she thought. She was really delighted with the locket. In all her life she had had so few presents; and this one gift was worth three times the sum of them. But Clarissa spoke of it in the lightest, most careless way.
"I wanted to bring you some little souvenir," she said, "and I thought you might like this. And now I must say good-bye, Bessie. I may call you Bessie, mayn't I? And remember, you must call me Clarissa. I am sorry I am obliged to hurry away like this; but I expect Mr. Granger back rather early, and I want to be at home when he returns. Good-bye, dear!"
She kissed her brother's wife, who clung to her affectionately, touched by her kindness; kissed the two little nephews also, one of whom caught hold of her dress and said,—
"You gave me that money for toys the other day, didn't you, aunt Clarissa?"
"Yes, darling."
"But I didn't have it to spend, though. Pa said he'd lay it out for me; and he brought me home a cart from the Boulevard; but it didn't cost two napoleons. It was a trumpery cart, that went smash the first time Arthur and I stood in it."
"You shouldn't stand in a toy-cart, dear. I'll bring you some toys the next time I come to see mamma."
They were out on the landing by this time. Clarissa disengaged herself from the little fellow, and went quickly down the darksome staircase.
"Will that be soon?" the boy called over the banisters.
"I do hope I shall be able to keep it," said Bessie Lovel presently, as she stood in the window gloating over her locket; whereby it will be seen that Austin's wife did not feel so secure as she might have done in the possession of her treasure.
* * * * *