University of Virginia Library

Lord of the Manor

1. CHAPTER I.

It was the morning of the first of May,
that merriest morning of the year, in the
old days of merry England; and never
did a brighter dawning illuminate a fairer
landscape, than that wherein the incidents
occurred, which form the basis of
one of those true tales that prove how
much there is of wild and strange romance
even in the most domestic circles
of existence.

The landscape was a portion of the
western slope of a broad English valley,
diversified with meadow-land and pasture,
and many a field of green luxuriant
wheat, and shadowy woods, and bosky
dells and dingles; and with a clear,
bright, shallow river rippling along its
pebbly channel, at the base of the soft
hills, which swept down to its flowery
marge in gentle loveliness.

The foreground of the picture, for it was
one indeed, on the left hand side, was
made up of a thick mass of orchards, and
beyond these by a clump of towering
lindens, above which might be seen the
arrowy spire of a village church, piercing
the cool air with its gilded vane and
weathercock—the river sweeping round
and half enclosing the garden grounds,
and cottages seen among the shrubbery,
in a blue glancing reach spanned by a
three-arched bridge of old red brick, all
overrun with ivy. Close to the bridge,
but on the west side of the stream, lay a
large tract of open common, carpeted
with rich short greensward, whereon a
thousand fairy rings were visible, and
sprinkled with all the bright wild flowers
of the early spring. A winding road of
yellow sand traversed the varied surface
of the waste, which was much broken up
by hillocks and deep hollows, alternating
clear sunny lights with cool blue
shadows; and, after crossing the river by
the old bridge, was lost for a little while
among the orchards of the village, till it
again reappeared, near the centre of the
middle distance, above the fringe of willow,
birch, and alder bushes, which
skirted all he eastern margin of the river.
Beyond this screen of coppice, the view
extended upward for nearly a mile in distance,
over a beautiful park-like lawn,
dotted with clumps of noble trees, and
enclosed on every side by woods of tall
dark oak.

A large white gate gave access to this
fair demesne, with a snug porter's lodge
nestled into a shady covert close beside
it; and at the very crown of the slope
overlooking all the broad and fertile vale,
stood a large mansion of red brick, built in
the quaint architecture of the Elizabethan
era. with large projecting oriels and
tall clustered chimneys, and a wide freestone
terrace, bedecked with urns and
balustrades, in front; the dwelling evidently
of the lord of that fair manor. To
the right of the woods, which skirted that
side of the park, lay an abrupt ravine,
through which a brawling trout stream
made its way down, among large blocks
of limestone, and under tangled covert, to
join the river in the valley. Beyond this
gorge, the sides of which were feathered
thick with yew, and box, and juniper,
rose a broad barren hill, crowned by the
grey and weather-beaten keep of an old
Norman castle, frowning in dark sublimity
over the cultured fields, whose fruits its
lords of old had reaped, won by the mortal
sword—and beyond this a range of
purple moors towered, summit over summit,
till they were lost at length in the
grey mists of the horizon.

It was, as has been said, the early
dawning of the sweet first of May—so
early that the sun had not yet reared the
whole of his red dics above the eastern
hills, but half emerged was checkering all
the slopes and the level meadows at the
bottom of the valley with lengthened
streams of ruddy lustre, and casting long
clear shadows from every tree or bush or
stone that met his rays. Yet, early as it
was, the village was alive with merriment
and bustle. A joyous peal was chiming
from the bells of the tall steeple, while a
May-pole that almost vied in height with
the neighboring spire, was planted on the
common by the waterside, where the
ground lay most level to the sunshine,
and where the greensward grew the
mossiest and softest to the tread. The
whole waste land was covered with glad
groups of peasautry, all in their holiday
attire, speeding towards the rendezvous,
beneath a huge gnarled hawthorn, which
had beheld the sports of their grandsires,
now white as if a sudden snow storm
had powdered its dense foliage with the
sweet blossoms that derive their name
from the delicious month which witnesses
their birth—the sandy road, too, and the
bridge were glistening with moving parties;
while the shrill merry laugh of girls,
and the yet shriller whoop of childhood,
came frequent on the ear from many a sequestered
spot among the budding or
chards—nor did the rugged castle hill display
no joyous company; for there, and
through the dim-wood glen and over
the old turn-stile, and the park itself,
the happy yeomanry came flocking
to celebrate their feast of flowers.

Just at this moment the parkgates were
suddenly thrown open, and a young man
rode out into the sandy road, accompanied
by several dogs, and followed by three
serving men—two mounted and the third
on foot—and taking the downward track,
to the left hand towards the village and the
bridge, was quickly lost to view behind
the willows on the river bank. As he appeared,
however, even at that distance,
both by his dress and air to be a person of
superior rank to any of the groups around,
and as I shall have much to do with him
in the course of my narrative, I shall attach
myself to him during his ride from
the manor gates to the meadow of the
May-pole.

He was a young and extremely handsome
person, well formed and tall, and
giving promise of great future strength,
when his slender and almost boyish frame
should be developed to its full proportions;
for he was, in years, all but a boy,
having on that very morning attained to
his majority, and the possession of the
fine demesnes, and ample fortune, which
now called him master. His hair was
long and slightly curled, of a deep rich
chestnut color; and notwithstanding it
was the fashion of that day, even for the
young and comely, to cover the whole
head with a disfiguring mass of flowing
powdered horse-hair, under the title of a
periwig, he wore his locks all natural and
undisguised; and well they harmonized
with the fine coloring and noble outlines
of his well marked frank features, sparkling
as they were on that bright happy
morning with gratified ambition, and
high hope, and all the bounding energies
of prosperous unbroken manhood.

There were, it is true, some indications
—which would not easily be missed by
an experienced physiognomist—that told
of strong and fiery passions concealed beneath
that bold and beautiful exterior—
there was a quick and hasty sparkle in
the fine open eye, which indicated a temperament
prone to blaze out, at any check
to its desires, into fierce bursts of angry vehemence—there
were deep lines for one
so young about the mouth and nostrils,
that clearly spoke of latent but indomitable
pride; and something, too, of the existence
of many a voluptuous feeling,
ready to spring up giants from their birth,
when any chance occurrence should

kindle them to sudden life; still, in despite
these drawbacks to his beauty, for
such in truth they were, he could not fail
to be pronounced, and that too in the
highest sense of the term, a fine and noble
looking man. He was dressed, too, in
the rich fashion of the day, with a low
crowned and broad brimmed beaver,
decked by a hatband set about with
short white ostrich feathers—his coat of
grass green velvet, ornamented by a slight
cord of gold, sat closely on his graceful
form; while breeches of white doeskin,
with heavy hunting boots and massive
silver spurs, completed his attire; a light
couteau de chasse hanging at his side, being
carried rather as an indication of the
wearer's rank, than us a weapon of defence;
which, in the set led and peaceful
state of England at that moment, was almost
as unnecessary as at the present
day.

The dogs, which ran beside his stirrup,
were six or eight in number, and noble
specimens of several choice and favorite
breeds. There was the tall lithe English
bloodhound, with his sleek tawny hide,
his pendulous ears, and coal black mnzzle;
there were two fleet and graceful greyhounds,
one white as snow, the other
black as the raven's wing, with their elastic
limbs and airy gait; there were a leash
of King Charles's spaniels, beautiful silky
creatures, with ears that swept the dew;
and last, though not least in the owner's
estimation, a savage-looking, wire-haired
Scotch terrier, with shaggy jaws, and keen
intelligent expression, though many a scar,
of wounds inflicted in desperate encounters
with the hill-fox or prowling wild-cat,
seamed his rough grizzly face.

The male attendants of the young gentleman
were three, as I have said, in number;
one a grey-headed, venerable-looking
man, dressed in a suit of plain snnff-colored
clothes, and mounted on a strong
brown cob, which set off admirably, by
the contrast, the fine points and superb
condition of the splendid hunter which
carried the young lord of the manor. This
aged man, who was, indeed, the steward,
who had lived on the property in the time
of this youth's father, and to whose care
and faithful management much of the present
wealth of the estate might be attributed,
rode not exactly abreast of his master,
nor yet entirely behind him, but so
that while preserving a respeetful distance,
to show that he laid claim to no
standing of equality, he was still near
enough to maintain, without any inconvenience,
whatever conversation it might
please the younger man to originate.

On the other side, among the dogs,
which looked up to him from time to time
with a very evident mixture of fear and
affection in their features, strode along a
well-built sturdy fellow of some eight-and-twenty
or thirty years, standing some six
feet in his stockings, and powerful in due
proportion to his height. This man, who
was dressed as a gamekeeper or forester,
with leather buskins on his legs, and a
short musquetoon or carabine in his hand,
was what would be generally called good-looking,
by those at least who, in the
habit of regarding the mere animal qualities
of humanity, neglect the nobler characteristics
of intellectual beauty—for he
was dark-haired and fresh complexioned,
with a full bright eye and prominent features.
There was a strong resemblance,
moreover, in all his lineaments to the calm
and serene face of the old steward; but it
was in the outlines only, and, even of
these, one of the most remarkable in the
father was wholly wanting to the son—for
such, indeed, was their relationship—
namely, the ample and majestic forehead;
which striking feature was changed in the
younger man for a low and receding brow,
giving a mean and vulgar expression to
the whole countenance, which was, moreover,
of a dogged and sullen cast, with
large thick sensual lips, heavy and massive
jaws, and all the animal portions of the
head unusually and ungracefully developed.
This unprepossessing face, for
such indeed it was, gloomy and lowering,
unless when it was lighted up by a smile
even more inauspicious than the darkness
it relieved, flashed out at times under that
brief illumination with a shrewd gleam,
half cunning, half malignant, which rendered
it, for the moment, almost fearful
to behold.

The third person was an ordinary
groom, in a blue coat, with a livery badge
on his farm, carrying pistols at his holsters,
and a heavy hunting whip in his right
hand.

Such was the little party which rode
down from the manor gate towards the
village-green, on that May morning, amidst
the loud and hearty congratulations of
every rustic group they passed on their
way—the honest heart of every jolly yeoman
expanding, as he welcomed to his
new possessions the young man, who had
dwelt among them when a gay and
thoughtless boy, and won affections which
had still remained unchanged throughout
his absence from the home of his fathers,
during his education at school and college,
or, in vacation time, at the distant mansions
of his guardians.

It did not take the horsement long, although
the heir pansed several times for
a moment or two to converse cheerily
with some of the older farmers, whom he
remembered to have been kind to him
when a child, or with some of the stalwart
striplings with whom he had fished, or
birdnested, or ferreted wild rabbits, as
companions in the blithe days of boyhood
—it did not take the horsemen long to
thread the windings of the sandy road, to
cross the old brick bridge, and reach the
beautiful green meadow, where the tall
May-pole stood, as it had stood for ages,
surrounded by a merry concourse, engaged
in decking it with clusters of the flowery
hawthorn, and garlands of a thousand
dewy blossoms. While one bold boy,
who had elimbed to the summit of the
dizzy mast, was hoisting up a hollow globe
composed of many intersecting hoops,
all bound with wreaths of eglantine and
hawthorn and wild roses, with flaunting
streamers and bright ribbons of every hue
under the sun, to crown the flower-girt
fabric, another group was busied, as the
horsemen wheeled from the high road into
the wide velvet green, in piling up a rustic
throne beneath the aged hawthorn, composed
of turf bedecked with crocuses and
violets, and the sweet cuckoo buds, and
briony, and bright marsh marigolds from
the stream's berge, and water-lilies from
its stiller reaches, and buttercups and
daisies from the meadows.

All ceased, however, instantly from
their slight labors as the young gentleman
rode forward at a slow pace, his progress
actually hindered by the progress of the
people crowding up to greet their honored
landlord; and a lond ringing shout,
echoed back many times by each projecting
hill through the long valley, spoke,
and for once sincerely, more of heart-love
than of lip-loyalty.

A brilliant flush of pleasure suffused his
cheeks, and his eyes sparkled with excitement,
as he doffed his plumed hat and
bowed repeatedly to his assembled tenantry.
He said, however, nothing in reply to
their tumultuous cheering, until the old
steward, pricking his cob gently with the
spur, rode up unbidden to his master's side,
and whispered in his ear—

“Speak to them—speak to them, Sir
Edward—for they expect it; and will set
it down to pride, it may be, if you do not.
Speak to them, if it be only twenty
words.”

“Not I, faith!” said the young heir,
laughing; “I should stop short for very
bashfulness before I had got ten words
out, let alone twenty. But tell them, good
Adam”—

“No! no! Sir Edward”—the old man
interrnpted him, “you must, so please you,
be guided for this once by your old servant;
your father was a favorite with
them always; and so were you, God bless
you! while you were but a little boy;
and, take my word for it, you shall gain
more of good will, and of general favor
by speaking to them frankly for five minutes,
than by distributing five hundred
pounds.”

“Well, if it must be so, old Adam, I
suppose it must,” returned the other,
“but by my honor, I had rather scatter
the five hundred pounds you talk about,
among them.”

Then drawing himself up in his saddle
without a moment's thought or preparation,
he once more doffed his hat, and addressed
himself in clear and well enunciated
words, although his tones at first
were somewhat low, and his manner
flurried, to the yeomanry, who stood
around in silent and attentive admiration.
As he went on, however, and gradually
became accustomed to the sound of his
own voice, that voice grew stronger,
clearer, more sonorous, and his air less
embarrassed, till at length, before he had
been speaking quite five minutes, his
notes were even and sustained, flowing
into the ear like a continued strain of silvery
music.

“I thank you, my good friends,” he
said, “I thank you, from the bottom of
my soul, for this, your frank and warm-hearted
reception, and, when I say I thank
you, I would not have you fancy that I
am using a mere word, an empty form of
speech, filling the ear indeed, signifying
nothing. No, my good friends and neighbors,
when I say here, I thank you, I
mean in truth that my heart is full of
gratitude towards you, and that it is my
full and resolute intention, to prove that
gratitude by my deeds to be done among
you. I am a very young man yet, as you
all know—and, of the few years which
have hitherto been mine, the most have
been passed at a distance from you. Many
of you, whom I see round about, remember
well my birth and boyhood; as I remember
many whom I look upon for
their frank, manly kindness towards a
wayward schoolboy; but as I said even
now, I have hitherto lived afar from you,
and you know nothing of my heart or
habits; and therefore, though I feel that
your welcome is sincere, your congratulations
honest, I am not such a fool of vanity,

as to suppose all this aflection and
respectful greeting to be won from you by
any merits of ray own. Oh! no, my
friends, I know it is the legacy, the precious
legacy of your esteem and love! left
to me by the virtues of a father, a grandfather,
a race who have lived here in the
midst of you, for ages, doing good, and receiving
ample payment in looking on a
free, a prosperous, and a grateful people.
My heart then would be dull, indeed, and
senseless, if I did not appreciate the richest
legacy of all, which they have left me,
in your hereditary love—my mind must
be brutish and irrational, if, in perceiving
and appreciating this, I did not perceive
also, how I must merit your affection—
how I must make it my own absolute possession,
even as it was my father's—how
I must leave it to my children, after me—
if it please God in his wisdom through me
to continue our line. My friends, I do perceive
it! I have come hither to-day, to
live among you, as my fathers did—to be
no more your landlord than your friend,
your neighbor, your protector. I will not
draw my revennes from the country, to
layish them on the idlers of the town!
No! my friends, where my father's life
was passed, there I will pass mine, likewise;
and when the time allotted here to
us shall be measured to its end, I trust
thet I shall lay my bones beside his bones
in your quiet churchyard! Now, mark
what I would say, for I must not be tedious;
I promise you that no man's rent
shall be screwed up by me, beyond his
own ability to psy, so he be sober, industrious,
and frugal! I promise you that no
new tenant shall be preferred before an
old one, so long as he deal with me justly.
I promise you, that no strong man shall
want good work, and ready payment—no
sick man medicine and succor—no old
man aid and comfort—no poor man whatsoever
help his exigencies need, that I can
give to him, so long as God continue me
among you. This, then, I promise you,
not as a boon or bounty, but as I hold it
here to be my bounden duty—and this
will I make good to you, so surely as my
name is Edward Hale of Arrington! Now
I will trouble you no more, except to pray
you to continue your sports, as if I were not
present; and to request you all to dine
with me at noon, on good old English
beef and pudding. My fellows will be
down anon, to pitch some tents here on
the green, and set the ale a-flowing—and
so once more I thank you.”

It is probable that no set oration, delivered
by the mightiest of the world's
rhetoricians, bedecked with all the gor
geous ornaments that genins can produce
from its immortal garners, was ever listened
to with more profound and rapt attention,
than the few simple words, which
flowed as it appeared so naturally from
the heart to the tongue of the young landlord.
It is certain, that none ever sank
more deeply into the feelings of the audience—their
better, holier feelings! There
was no violent outburst of pleasure—no
loud tumultnous cheering—but a deep
hush—a breathing silence! Many of the
old men, and all the women, were in
tears; and when they spoke, at length, it
was with husky interrupted voices that
they invoked Heaven's blessings on his
head; and when they thought, it was
with gratitude for their own happy lot in
owning such a master.

Sir Edward was himself affected, partly
it might be from the excitement of delivering
a first speech, and that with success
so apparent and complete—it might
be from the geauine warmth of his own
heart, and strength of his own feelings;
for the hearts of the young are almost ever
warm, whether for good or for evil, and
their emotions powerful and abundant;
and oftentimes it happens, that the mere
speaking forcibly of feelings, which perhaps
at the time exist but faintly—and as
I might say speculatively—will give those
feelings actual force, and cause them to
develope themselves with new and unsuspected
vigor. And so it surely was with
Edward Hale, in this case.

He was, as we have seen, extremely
young—not in years only, but in knowledge
of the world—and volatile, and
hasty, and impetnous—too much, indeed,
a creature and a child of impulse—I say
not that his impulses were evil—I believe
not that the impulses of the very young
are so, except in rare and almost monstrous
instances; but they were impulses,
ungoverned, uncontrolled by any principle,
any set rule of action, any guide of
religion—and, therefore, even when most
originally good, they were liable to be
pushed into excesses; to be deceptive; to
be self-deceivers; to degenerate into
downright vices. That Edward Hale had
thought at times of the condition of his
subordinate fellows, is most true—that he
had often dreamed bright day-dreams
concerning the happiness of a half patriarchal
life among his tenants, is undoubted;
and that his tastes, his habits, his pursuits,
all led him to prefer a country to a
city residence, no less so.

So it is true, that being liberal as the
wind—nay, almost lavish—charity, so far
at least as charity consists in giving, was

an accustomed and familiar pleasure;
that, like all men of glowing and enthusiastic
minds, he was by no means without
some crude and undigested notions of
a wild species of Utopian justice! that he
was of too bold and fiery a temperament
not to abhor and loathe the very name of
fraud or falsehood—and more, to do him
simple justice, too kindly-hearted to be
cruel, or systematically overbearing and
oppressive. Still, it is no less certain that
until that very morning—nay, until the
very minute when accident called on him
to deliver an impromptu speech, when the
excitability of his emotions, and his gratification
at his warm reception by his tenants
set loose the flood-gates of his fancy
and his heart—for in this instance, both
were acted on, and both reacted in connexion—he
had never thought consecutively
for half an hour on the subject;
never had laid out for himself any rule or
principle at all; never had, indeed, considered
that he owed any duties to his fellow
men.

“What then,” I fancy I can hear the
reader say, “What then, was Edward
Hale a hypocrite? Was all his fine, apparently
free-hearted speech a piece of absolute
deception” Neither, dear reader,
neither; the young are rarely, oh! very
rarely, hypocrites; rarely deceivers even,
nuless it be from fear, in timid dispositions,
of some contingent evils, which
they imagine they can shum by falsehood.
And Edward Hale was neither; scarce
even a deceiver of himself.

He had returned, only the previous
night, to the home of his happy boyhood,
after years of absence; had looked upon
the picture of a mother, whom he almost
adored; had trodden the floors, along which
he had bounded years ago; how changed
and yet the same; and everything he saw,
and heard, and thought of, conspired to
call up his better feelings, and to attune
his spirit to a mood more reflective—nay,
almost melancholy—than his wont. A
passionate lover of the charms of nature,
he had felt, while he gazed out from his
window over the lovely landscape, while
he rode in all the consciousness of power
and health, on his splendid hunter, beneath
his ancestral trees, he had felt, I say,
that he could never love a spot on earth
so well as his own fair demesnes; that he
could never live so happily or with so
calm a dignity in any other place, as he
could here among his people. Theu,
when he found himself quite unexpectedly
the object of affection so enthusiastic,
of greetings so sincere and earnest, his
fancy pictured to him in a moment, the
pure and exquisite delights of such a life
as he described in his brief speech; his
heart yearned to the kind and humble
yeomanry, whose very souls, apparently,
were overflowing with love to all his race.
He spoke embarrassed at the first, and
faltering and undecided; but, as he warmed
to his task, his rich imagination woke;
image suggested image, and though perhaps,
he actually thought, now for the
first time of many of the things he stated,
they glowed so vividly before the eyes of
his mind, that he believed them for the
moment to be old and familiar ideas—the
well remembered consequences of past
reasoning. He believed from the bottom
of his heart, that every word he uttered
was strictly and indisputably true; not for
his life would he have uttered one, had
he not so believed! And when he ceased
to speak, he was affected by the very
ideas that his own lively fancy had, for
the first time, set before him; and he
could safely then have registered a vow in
heaven that such had always been his view
of his own duties; and that so he would
surely act, as long as he lived to act on
earth at all.

As he ceased speaking, he turned his
horse half round, as if to leave the green,
saying to a fine hearty-looking yeoman
who stood nearest to him, one of the patriarchs,
unquestionably, of the place.

“I must ride, Master Marvel, to Stowcum-Barnesley,
to meet some college
friends of mine, who promised to come
down and spend my birth-day with me;
but it is early yet, you know, and Oliver
here.” patting as he spoke the proud neck
of his horse, “makes nothing of fifteen
miles an hour; so I can ride thither easily,
and he back with my friends to dinner.”

“Aye, that thou canst, Sir Edward,” returned
the old man, laughing cheerily—
“Aye, that thou canst; so go thy ways, go
thy ways, and God speed thee!”

Edward Hale touched his horse lightly
with the spur, that he made one quick
bound forward; but as he did so, the rider
turned half round in his saddle, for
something caught his attention so keenly
that his eye sparkled, and his cheek flushed
suddenly. The consequence was, that
he checked Oliver so sharply with the
curb, although involuntarily, that he reared
bolt upright, and by the suddenness of the
movement, so nearly unseated his master,
that his hold on the saddle depended for
a moment on the rein, and consequently
the strain was increased greatly on the bit.

The hunter stood erect, pawing the air
with his fore-feet, as if in an effort to retrieve
his balance. Every one thought

he must have fallen backward, crushing
his rider in the fall, and a shrill female
shriek rang piercingly into the air; but,
active, young, and fearless, Sir Edward
scarce perceived the error he had committed
before he repaired it. Throwing
himself forward in his stirrups, by a rapid
and elastic spring, he wreathed his fore-finger
lightly in the mane, and gave the
horse the spur so sharply that he made a
violent plunge forward and alighted on his
fore-feet with a dint that threw the turf into
the air, in fifty several fragments, but failed
to move the horseman in his saddle in the
slightest degree.

Then the hot temper of the young man
rose; and though a moment's thought
would have shown him that the horse was
in no respect to blame, he checked him
again almost fiercely with the heavy curb,
and spurred him till the blood spirted from
his sides, under the galling rowels. Stung
by the treatment, the noble beast yerked
out his heels, and fell into a quick succession
of balotades, croupades, and caprioles,
and furious plunges, such as must
have inevitably cast headlong to the earth
a less accomplished cavalier than he who
backed him now.

Firm as a rock in his demique sat Edward
Hale, as though he had been a portion
of the animal which he bestrode;
but maddened by the resistance offered to
his first momentary action of injustice, he
plied both lash and spur with almost savage
impetuosity, yet with so rare a skill,
that in five minutes' space, or even less,
the brown horse stood stock still, panting,
and humbled, and subdued.

He gazed around him for a moment,
with a triumphant and defying glance;
and without again looking in the direction
of the object, whatsoever it was, that had
before attracted his attention, he bade his
mounted groom give up his horse to the
game-keeper, and stay himself to wait on
master Adam Eversley. The change was
accomplished in a minute; and, without
any further words, he dashed into a gallop,
and was speedily lost to view beyond the
summit of the hills, which bounded the
valley to the westward.

“Oh! father,” cried a beautiful country
girl, who was leaning on the arm of an old
grey-headed farmer, “Oh, father, father,
how beautifully young Sir Edward spoke,
and what a kind speech that was, and
then how well he sat on that vicious horse
of his, and how quickly he did master
him. He is the handsomest gentleman, I
think, in all the country; and the best-hearted
too, I'll warrant him.”

“And yet, Rose,” answered a young
stalwart yeoman, who had been standing
close beside her, leaning on a long twohauded
quarter staff, “and yet Rose, it
was all of his own fault, that the poor
horse was vicions; and then see how he
dealt with the dumb beast for his own
failing. He is a handsome man, that's true,
as ever an eye looked upon; but did you
see the way his black brows met together;
how the passion flashed out, almost like
lightning, under them; and how he bit
his lips till the blood came? Be sure, now,
he has a fearful temper. Why he looked
liker to a handsome devil, than to a Christian
man! I would be loth to stand against
him, in aught he had set his heart on.”

“For shame—for shame to thee, Frank
Hunter,” cried the girl he had addressed
as Rose—“For shame on thee, to speak so
of the young winsome gentleman. I hate
an envious spirit; and he so kind, too,
and so gentle—didst not hear what he
promised—how no poor man should ever
want for anything; and how no sick man
should need doctoring, so long as his
name was Edward Hale—and then to liken
him to a devil! I'm sure, I think he looked
like an angel, and spoke like an angel,
too, just come down to us out of heaven!”

“Have a care, Rose,” returned the other,
gloomily, “have a care, lest he lure thee
to somewhat that will not lead thee up
there; whether he came down out of heaven
or no. I reckon it 'was all along o'
looking at those brown curls and hazel
eyes o' thine, that he came so near falling
from his saddle.”

“Why, here's a nice to do,” answered
the girl, very sharply, “and what
an' he was looking at my curls, or my eyes
either; what is that, master Hunter, to
thee, I'd be pleased to know—or who gave
thee the right to say who shall look at me:
or whom I shall look at either, for that matter?
You are no kin of mine—much less
a master.”

“Oh, Rose! Rose! can it be come to this,
between us—and we troth-plighted, too!'

“Aye has it,” answered Rose, tossing
her pretty head, “aye, has it come to this
—and better now than later!—better troth-plighted,
and rue the plighting! than wed
and rue the wedding!—better an envious
sweetheart and a jealous, than a hard tyrannizing
husband! Aye, has it come to
this, and thou must mend thy manners,
ere aught else come of it, I tell thee.”

Her father tried to interpose; but the
village beauty was quite too indignant to
be appeased so readily; and she left his
arm instantly, turning her back without
ceremony on her luckless swain, saying
that she must go and join Susan Fairly,

for all the girls were seeking her. So little
does it need to raise a quarrel between
those who truly and sincerely love each
other especially in quick and ardent dispositions.

2. CHAPTER II.

It often happens that, in places far removed
each from the other, events are occurring
to different individuals, almost at
the same moment, which are destined to
produce the most serious results to other
persons, who are equally ignorant of the
present action, and unsuspicious of the
future consequence. So intricately and
inextricably blended are the threads of
mortal life, and so wonderfully linked are
those chains of cause and effect, in which
even unborn generations are not unfrequently
involved, by that vast and all comprehensive
Providence which mortals in
their blindness are wont to call chance.

Especially was this the case with Sir Edward
Hale, at the present moment of my
tale; though he would have laughed very
heartily had any one told him that the
whole happiness of his future life was
brought into jeopardy, while he was thinking
only of the pleasures of the hour, by
the intrigues of men in London, some of
whom he had never seen, and scarcely
even heard of; yet such unquestionably
was the case.

It was about seven o'clock on the same
morning that a plain dark carriage, containing
a tall, thin, grave looking gentleman,
with a peculiarly sardonic smile,
drove rapidly from the door of the Secretary
of State, at whose house an extraordinary
cabinet council had been just held,
through Charing Cross, where the magnificent
statue of King Charles the First, by
Hubert le Sœur, had resumed its position,
and passed the stately front of Northumberland
House, towards Spring Gardens.

Here it paused, before the portico of a
stately mansion; and the footman springing
down from the board behind the chariot,
notwithstanding the earliness of the
hour, raised such a noisy snmmons as soon
brought a servant to the door, when the
name of the untimely visitor procured his
admittance without delay, although the
man appeared somewhat reluctant—saying
that the Earl was not yet awake, and
had left word that he should not be disturbed,
as it was very late when he retired.

“I know it, my good friend,” replied the
visitor—“I know that it was very late;
but it was later by two hours before I was
abed, and I have been up, I assure you,
since four o'clock this morning. But,
leaving this aside, which is no matter, I
will be your security that you will do no
wrong in awakening my lord, seeing that
I have news for him about which he is
very anxious; and it is, moreover, on business
of his majesty that I must see him.”

This, of course, put an end, on the instant,
to all discussion or remonstrance on
the subject, the man showing him immediately
into a handsome library, containing
several thousand volumes, and decorated
with many busts, and two or three
fine antique statues.

Begging the visitor, with whom he appeared
to be well acquainted, to take a
seat while he apprised the Earl of his arrival,
he then withdrew, but returned in a
few minutes, saying, “My lord, Sir Henry,
will be down in a quarter of an hour,
at the furthest, and begs that you will
wait for him. He desired me to ask if you
would take some chocolate, Sir Henry!”

“Yes, bring me some, Anderson, if it be
ready; and, hark ye, tell my fellows to go
home with the chariot; I will walk, when I
go hence.”

As soon as the man had left the room,
the other arose from his chair and walked
towards one of the tall book-cases, as if to
seek a volume wherewith to while away
the time; but, after he had opened the
glass doors, and suffered his eyes to run
over a shelf or two, he either changed his
mind or fell into a different train of
thought, and forgot it; for he turned round
abruptly, and walked across the room with
his hands clasped behind his back.

“It must be done! it must,” he muttered
to himself; “we must have his vote, or
the whole thing is at an end, and we may
just as well give up the campaign at once!
But this will do it; I think, I dare swear it
will! and, if not—if not—we must give
him more; though, hang me! if I know
what there is that we can give him that he
is fit for! The garter! aye, the garter—a
rare successor he to the great champions
of the order!” And he smiled, with the
bitter, sneering, caustic expression that has
been mentioned as peculiar to him.

At this moment the servant returned,
bearing a silver salver, with a tall chocolate
pot of the same metal, richly embossed,
and a couple of superb French-china
cups. Scarcely, however, had he
frothed and poured out the rich beverage,
which had but lately been introduced into
England, and was still a rarity, before his
master entered the library, in some small

agitation, as it seemed, and perhaps even
anxiety. He was a tall and powerfully
made man, of some fifty-seven or fifty-eight
years, with features that would have
been positively handsome had there been
a solitary gleam of intelligence—a single
trace expressing anything of character in
their symmerrical outlines and harmonioas
coloring. He was magnificently,
though not completely, attired in the costume
of the day; wearing a dressing gown
of splendid brocade in place of the embroidered
coat, and a cap of green velvet,
with a gold band and tassel, in lien of the
huge periwig, which was then an essential
part of a gentleman's full dress.

“Give you good day, Sir Henry,” he
said as he entered, with a bland smile upon
his face, which did not, however, conceal
a nervousness of manner that told something
of eager and fretful expectation.
“You come so early that, as you see, I
make no ceremony with you; I have not
even tarried to finish dressing, as I presumed
you were in a hurry.”

“I thank you much, my lord,” returned
the other, sipping his chocolate, “both
for what you have done, and what you
have left undone; for, indeed, I have something
to say to you of moment.” Then,
seeing that he did not take the hint, as
he expected he would do, and dismiss
the valet, who stood with both his ears
wide open, ready to drink in every word,
he said carelessly, “Excellent chocolate,
this, my lord, but I do not think it has ever
paid any duty.”

“No, no! not it, not it! Sir Henry,” answered
the penderous earl, making precisely
the reply for which his guest was
looking. “I had it in a present from my
good friend the French Ambassador.”

“Ah! ah!” answered Sir Henry Davenant,
as if thoughtfully, “and upropos of
French, had you Anderson, here, with you
when you were at Paris last?”

“No; he came to me after my return,”
said the obtuse earl, not yet perceiving
that the drift of Sir Henry's question was
to call his attention to the presence of the
man. After a few minutes, however, during
which he appeared to ruminate very
sagely, he lifted up his head with what he
intended for a very knowing smile, and
told his valet that he need not wait.

“Very deep of you—very deep, that,
Sir Henry. Almost too deep! for, drown
me for a witch if I caught your meaning
at first!”

“But why in Heaven's name, my dear
lord, do you keep such a long-eared knave
as that about you? Why, curiosity is
written as plainly as the name of a book
on its title-page, in every feature of his
face; the very owning such a fellow is
enough almost to destroy one's reputation
for diplomacy. It is true that the Earl of
Asterly has less need to regard such things
than we beginners; but, nevertheless,
even with your finesse, I would hardly desire
to risk it!”

“Ha! ha! you are flattering me—you
are flattering me, I am afraid, Sir Henry;
though you have not very much the character
of saying pretty things, even to the
ladies, bless their souls!” And, while he
spoke, it was as evident as the sun in heaven,
that he had swallowed the dose, palpable
as it was, without wincing, or suspecting
that it was, even as he said, a
mixture of the grossest adulation with the
most barefaced ridicule “But, come,”
he added, after another pause of hesitation,
“unbuckle your budget, my good
sir; what can you possibly have to say to
me so early this morning?”

“Why, the fact is, my lord,” answered
Davenant, who filled at that time the very
useful post, in reference to the then ministry,
which is now known as that of
Whipper-in to the House of Commons,
“that, as I told you would be the case,
when I had the honor of speaking with
you last night, there has been a meeting
of the cabinet at Mr. Secretary's house,
this morning.”

And the wily baronet paused at this
piece of information, partly to give his
heavy auditor time to take in its whole
meaning, and partly because he wished
to see exactly what was the amount of
his dupe's anxiety on the subject.

“Indeed, indeed?” the earl replied, in
the tone of one inquiring further; “you
are well informed always, Sir Henry; and
what then? What was the result of their
conference, my dear sir?—that is to say,
if it may be spoken.”

“Oh, yes, my lord, it may be spoken.
If that were not the case, you would not
have seen me here this morning, for my
object in coming was purely to give you
the information; which I have leave to do
from Mr. Secretary, and a message from
him, likewise, that is to say, if the government
may rely, as they presume they can,
on the continued support of the Earl of
Asterly. If not, why, I must keep my
budget closed; which I should be the
more sorry to do, because, if opened, it
contains news that I think would give
you pleasure.”

“Oh! yes, Sir Henry,” replied the peer,
immediately. “His majesty's government
may certainly count on my support
in all matters consistent with the Protest—”

But before he could get out the whole
word and commit himself to any measure,
Davenant interrupted him.

“Oh! my dear lord, of course, the cabinet
will not attempt to carry any measure
out, which shall not have received, previously,
your distinguished approbation.
But your lordship is too good a politician,
not to feel that no ministry would be justified
in submitting a plan of its campaign,
and perhaps offering honors, to any gentleman
or nobleman, how sure soever
they might feel of his support, without
something more definite, in the shape of
a pledge—”

“Ah!” said the earl, affecting to ponder
on what he had heard, but in reality endeavoring
to outwit the keen clear-sighted
diplomatist, who could read every
thought in his bosom, almost before it was
formed. “Ah! that makes all the difference!—”

“That is to say,” thought Davenant in
his own heart, “the hope of office, or additional
rank, makes all the difference.
Showing your hand, rather too openly, my
good lord!”

“That makes all the difference, Sir
Henry,” he resumed, “for, as you say, the
fact of the ministry being desirous of consulting
me on their measures, or indeed of
their asking for my support at all, is as I
think a sufficient guarantee of their intentions.
For it is evident that they could
not imagine it possible that I should lend
my countenance to measures—”

“Of which your lordship's well known
capacity and foresight should not induce
you cordially to approve. You take the
same views of the matter which I do myself,
my lord. The noble lords, now at
the head of his majesty's government,
doubtless would not expect anything incompatible
with Lord Asterly's known
character for political consistency and
personal integrity. Nevertheless, it is
their resolution in the present unsettled
state of parties, and I think your lordship
will admit it to be a necessary and a wise
one, to associate no person, however
great his merits, with themselves, unless
it be upon an unconditional pledge.”

“Well, sir, I cannot blame them, upon
my word, Sir Henry, I cannot. For there
is now-a-days so much political tergiversation,
even in the highest quarters, that
no one can be absolutely above suspicion!”—and,
at the very moment he said
this, despite all his dullness, he clearly
understood what was expected of him;
and, having fully made up his mind to
desert his party for a consideration, was
only now endeavoring to conceal his pre
meditated baseness from Sir Henry; which
he had about as much chance of doing,
as the ostrich, when it buries its hend in
the sand of the desert, has of keeping its
body hidden from the lynx-eyed Arabian
hunter.

“Then I am to understand, my lord,
that you do not object to give such a
pledge to the Secretary—a written pledge,
my lord?”

“Why—no—no!” said Lord Asterly, in
a sort of half-doubtful tone, “not absolutely—no!
I should not absolutely
object—but I should like to know something
a little more definite about the
nature of the measures!”

“Well, then, my lord,” returned Sir
Henry Davenant,” since your lordship is
so scrupulous, for which I confess I honor
you so much the more, I will venture to
give you a few hints. In the first place,
the captured French colonies will not be
given up under any circumstances!” This
piece of information, by the way, was the
more valuable, because it was the first
any one had ever received concerning the
question of their cession; which had
never once been mooted. But notwithstanding
this, the earl expressed his grave
satisfaction at the firmness of the noble
lords.

“In the next place, his grace of B—
will have the vice-royalty of Ireland. The
earl of F— goes as ambassador to
France, and your humble servant, I believe,
to the Hague—but that is not quite
certain yet!”—the other two appointments
having been known to all the quidnuncs of
the town for a week past, the earl learned
little by this last sentence, and that little,
utterly of no account; but he replied—

“Excellent—excellent—Sir Henry, no
better men for the offices, than they. I
will say that it does honor to Mr. Secretary's
discernment. For I presume he had
a word to say in the appointments.”

“Surely, my lord, surely. His word,
I may say, is almost omnipotent with their
lordships; and that, I fancy, is one reason
why he is so desirous of attaching you,
my lord, with some others of his friends,
to the party; while he is himself in
power.”

The Earl of Asterly noted and treasured
up the words, but pretending not to have
given them much attention, he added—

“But have you nothing more to tell
me?”

“Faith! very little more, my lord, there
will be several new additions to the peerage—two
or three ancient titles to be
raised to a higher grade; and then, there
are, you know, the two vacant garters—

But upon my life!” he added, breaking
off suddenly, “this is scarce fair of your
lordship; here, you have pumped me of
almost all my secrets, and given me nothing
satisfactory after all. But I trust
your lordship will deal kindly with me,
this would go far to ruin me with the
great man, if it got wind.”

“Why! ha! ha!” responded the earl,
langhing very knowingly, “I think I have
been a little hard on you, Sir Henry, a
little too hard—I believe! But, ha! ha!
ha! you young fellows ought not to fancy
that you can hood-wink us old boys!—
well—well—well!—but, as you say, I
must make it up with you. See here, I
will write a word or two; pray you,
excuse me.”

Could the dull nobleman have marked
the cold, calm, cutting smile, ineffably
contemptuous and full of loathing, with
which the politician surveyed him, while
he penned his memorandum, well cased
as he was in complete panoply of self-conceit,
and gross, complacent stolidity,
he must have been cut to the quick; but
he did not raise his head till he had
finished writing, and when he did so,
Davenant's eyes were fixed on the ground
in quiet and apparently conscious humility.

The earl pushed the sheet of paper, on
which he had written a few lines with his
signature appended to them, across the
table to Sir Henry, saying—

“There, my good friend; see if that will
meet Mr. Secretary's views!”

It was a full and formal promise to support,
with all his personal and political
influence, the present cabinet in all its
measures whatsoever.

“I presume,” he added, “that of course
it will not be shown.”

“Of course not, my lord,” Sir Henry
answered, as he took it; and then, after
casting his eyes slightly over the document,
“Perfectly—perfectly satisfactory,”
he added; “nothing can be more honorable,
open, or above board. And now,
my lord, allow me to congratulate you—”

“To congratulate me, Sir Henry! upon
what?” said Lord Asterly, with a pleasant
and conscious smile, which be endeavored
vainly to dissemble.

“There is a dormant marquisate in your
lordship's family, I believe. Beverley, is it
not? which your lordship claimed from
the last ministry.”

“And was refused!” replied the earl,
hanghtily, “owing to the opposition, I
think, of my Lord Calverly, who lays claim
to it likewise, though he has no more plea
of right, than he has to the dukedom of
Northumberland! I never cared much
about it myself, Sir Henry; but it was an
old hobby of my father's; and in respect
to his memory, it was, that I revived the
claim.”

“And gross injustice was done to you
in the refusal. Well, my lord, in consideration
of this, his majesty has been pleased
of his own accord, quite unsolicited, to
creare you Marquis of Beverley, and I am
happy to be the first person to salute you
by the ancient title of your family.”

“Indeed! Sir Henry, indeed!” exclaimed
the new marquis, exceedingly gratified;
“this is indeed very flattering. His majesty
is very gracious—the rather, as you
say, that it is quite unsolicited; and that
no one can say that it is a reward of any
party services!”

Old hand as he was at intrigue, and an
adept at concealing every emotion, Davenant
could hardly refrain from laughing
aloud at the impudent self-complacency of
this speech, when he thought of the precious
document which he had just pocketed;
but he did refrain, and answered quietly,
and as a matter of course.

“Yes! marquis, it must be very gratifying.
But now et us speak of business.
The Irish Bill, comes on, you know next
Tuesday se'nnight, and by it the ministry
have determined that they will stand or
fall.”

“The Irish Bill! indeed! the Irish Bill!”
said the marquis, as he must now be called,
“I did not look for that! you should have
told me of that, Sir Henry.”

“Why, marquis,” answered Davenant,
as if surprised, “I took it for granted that
you must see that. It followed as a natural
consequence, from his Grace's nomination
to the vice-royalty.”

“And so it did—and so it did—upon my
word!” replied the other, quite as much
relieved by the futile explanation, as if it
were a satisfactory excuse for his adopting
the measures to-day, which yesterday
he had repudiated; “I never thought of
that before.”

“I felt quite certain that you would view
it in that light, when you came to reflect,”
answered Davenant.

“Certainly—certainly—I could not do
otherwise,” said the marquis; “but what
was it you said about the garter? who did
you say were to succeed to the two vacant
stalls?”

“I did not say, marquis, for I don't
know; and I don't know, simply because
it has not yet been determined by their
lordships.”

“Not yet determined! Is not that very
strange? a matter, tob, of so great and
paramount importance.”

“Doubtless there are strong reasons for
delay, marquis. In the first place, notwithstanding
the accession of strength to
the government from the complete over-throw
of the Duke of Monmouth's people
at Sedgemoor, and the final close of all
that infamous affair, you are aware that
there is still a very strong opposition—
and on this Irish question—by the way,
how many votes do you carry with you,
marquis?”

“Five in the Lower House, and in the
Peers, my son-in-law Helvelyn's, in addition
to my own.”

“Oh! in the Peers we are safe enough;
but, to be frank with you, marquis, there is
a good deal to fear in the Commons—at
the best, we can only count a tie, reckoning
all your votes—and, I fancy, though I
do not know it for certain, that any one
who could bring over one or two votes so
as to make sure of a majority, might reckon
pretsy certainly on the garter.”

“Aye! aye!” responded the marquis,
falling into a deep fit of cogitation, from
which he presently aroused himself to inquire
who were the members that remained
at all doubtful.

“Why, by my honor!” answered Davenant,
“there are but three whom we dare
even to count doubtful—and they are at
the present dead against us—the only reason
why I call them doubtful, is that they
are against us from whim only, or what
they call principle, and not from any
pledge, or any great interest that they
have in the matter.”

“And who are they?”

“First of all, Captain Trevor—”

“Why don't you give him a regiment?”

“It would not do—he is not at all that
sort of man—besides, it is hardly worth
the while to try him; he has a grudge of
some kind, I believe, against Berkley, and
we may set him down against us without
more ado. The next is Frampton of
Frampton, and as there is not a newly imported
Arab stallion, or an invincible gamecock
of extraordinary lineage, to be got
for love or money in the kingdom, we have
no means of bribing him. As for offering
him rank, that is useless to a man who
thinks that to be Frampton of Frampton
is a far finer thing than to be premier peer
of England, if we could make him that,
which we can't. Money—worse yet, to a
fellow who complains that he cannot for
his life get through a third of his rent roll;
though I believe he feeds half the East
Riding with beef and beer the year round.
Ashley did speak of sending to the Dey of
Algiers for a barh; but there is not time
enough. So he is a lost vote, too! The
third and last is Lord Henry St. Maur.”

“Ah! St. Maur—St. Maur! is he inclined
against you?”

“Not inclined merely. He has declared
himself opposed to all our measures; and
he is too young, too full of generous and
high fantasies to be approachable.”

“And yet I think I could approach him
on the subject,” said the marquis.

“You, my lord, you! Impossible!” cried
Davenant, the whole aim and object of
whose mission was simply to procure the
influence of his man on young St. Maur.
“Impossible! we were not aware even
that you knew him.”

“I do, but very slightly,” answered
Beverley; “and yet I think he can he won.
Nay! I almost think I can promise you
his vote. Do you know where he is, Sir
Henry?”

“By accident, I do; for I called at his
father's yesterday. He is on a visit to some
young country bumpkin of a baronet or
other, at Arrington, in Hampshire—the
post town is Stow-cum-Barnesley.”

“Indeed, at Sir Edward Hale's—is he?”

“Hale—Hale! By George! I believe
Hale was the name. Upon my word, marquis,
you seem to know all the world.”

“My place is near Oxford, you know,
Sir Henry, and this young fellow was at
Christ Church, with my son, who brought
him to Asterley last year in the long vacation.
But he is not at all a bumpkin.”

“I dare say not, indeed—for I know nothing
about it—only Fred Jermyn, of the
Life Guards, was laughing at him for a
quiz the other night, at the Nag's Head,”
replied Davenant, who never said a word
without its object, and who had now his
own peculiar reason for doing the young
baronet an ill office with the marquis.

“I will write to St. Maur to-day,” said
the marquis, after a moment's thought, “I
am nearly sure that I can secure you his
vote.”

“I do not think it is possible,” said Davenant,
knowing all the time that it was
pretty certain, if the old peer only chose to
exert himself on the right track. “It
would require immense influence—immense
influence!”

“I flatter myself I have a good deal of
influence over him,” answered the marquis,
knowingly.

“I thought you said, but now, that you
only knew him slightly?”

“I do only know him slightly.”

“Then how, in the devil's name,” Sir

Henry began, with well feigned astonishment,
when the peer interrupted him—

“Ask me no questions—it is a secret—
but I tell you, that Mr. Secretary may
make himself tolerably easy on the matter.
I will write to him this very day,
and I shall have an answer by to-morrow
night, for I will send one of my fellows
post.”

“You are an extraordinary man, marquis;
but, if you accomplish this, I shall
set you down as a second Mazarin. Well!
well! you are a fortunate man, too; for I
see that you will be the wearer of this
garter, which his grace of Lauderdale, they
say, is looking after.”

“Fie! fie! Sir Henry—fie! Do you
suppose that a thought of that kind ever
occurred to me? Oh no—fie! fie! but,
on my word, I believe I can do it.”

“I trust that you may not be disappointed.
But, in the meantime, I will take my
leave; for I can hear the marchioness',
and the pretty Lady Fanny's voices in the
breakfast parlor. Besides which, I must
make haste with this good news to master
Secretary.”

Then, with the courtly ceremonial of
the day, he took his leave; but as he
crossed the threshold, he muttered to himself—

“Cursed old hypocrite and knave! and
idiot, worse than either, for daring to
imagine that he could hoodwink me.
Well! never mind, St. Maur will get Lady
Fan's pretty hand, and we shall get his
vote; and Beverley his garter; and, what is
worth all the rest, I shall go to the Hague!
the Hague—and then—and then!' and he
walked rapidly away, in the direction of
Whitehall, with his whole brain boiling
with ambition, and his whole heart elated
and self-confident.

As soon as he had left the room, the
new-ereated marquis rang his bell, and
when his valet entered—

“Anderson,” he said, “let Perkins take
the green chariot, that has the coronet
only and the cipher on the panels, in embossed
work, down to the coachmaker's,
and have them altered instantly for a coronet
and the letter B—the silver-mounted
harness must be all changed likewise, in
the same manner. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And let him tell Mr. Ryckman that all
must be ready by two hours after noon—
that it must be ready. I shall require it to
go to St. Stephen's. My Lady's chairs must
be remounted also, and the coach newly
painted—and do you see that the liveries
are correct—”

“Correct, my lord?”

“Yes! correct, you blockhead—correct!
The Marquis of Beverley's—do you understand,
you stupid fellow?”

“Yes, my lord marquis,” replied the
man, with an obeisance almost oriental in
its depth and duration—“your orders
shall be performed instantly, my lord
marquis.”

“Now, then, follow me to the dressing
room, I want my coat, and periwig, and
sword. Has the marchioness come down
stairs yet?”

“Yes, my lord marquis.”

And strutting away like a peacock, with
his head half a foot higher than when he
had come down stairs, as yet an honest
man, he conceived that he had made a
capital bargain in swopping a way his own
conseience, and the happiness of two or
three human beings, one of them his own
daughter, for an empty title, and a yard of
satin ribbon!

3. CHAPTER III.

In the room adjoining the library where
the Earl of Asterly—now Earl, or Asterly,
no longer—and his ministerial guest had
been carrying on their political machinations,
two ladies were seated at a breakfast
table, which, for the benefit of the
pleasant air of the sweet May morning,
had been drawn up to a large open window
of the French fashion; giving access
to a balcony full of the rarest exotics cultivated
at that day.

The room was sumptuously furnished in
the gorgeous style of the period, with
cabinets of buhl and marquetry, tables inlaid
with the most precious Indian woods,
armed chairs and sofas cushioned with
Genoa velvet, curtains of flowered brocade,
Persian or Turkey carpects, several
fine pictures by Sir Peter Lely and Vandyke,
and two or three well executed
marble statues, copies from the antique,
the taste for which articles of virtu had
just begun to be considered fashionable in
England, when it was checked for awhile
by the rude and ignorant barbarism of
the Puritan iconoclasts, not to revive
again until the kingdom returned to the
rule of its legitimate hereditary monarchs.

The ladies were very different both in
age and appearance—more different, indeed,
in appearance, than the difference
in age would seem to justify in relations so
near as a mother and her daughter. The
elder lady was a small, slight, meagre person,

considerably below the middle size;
and, though she had been praised and admired
in the zenith of her womanhood for
the sylph-like and graceful symmetry of
her proportions, her figure was now angular
and emaciated, and almost disagreeable
to look upon. Her face, and features, too,
had in her younger days been called handsome,
and to this hour her high and intellectual
forehead bad preserved its fiue contour,
and its expressiou of solidity and
thoughtfulness. Little, however, else was
there left, that could be called pleasing in
her aspect—large, keen, black eyes, piercing
and cold as iee, placed very near together,
gave an air of craft and shrewd
half-malignant cunning to features which
would otherwise have been bold and commanding;
her nose was almost Roman,
thin, high, and nearly fleshless; her mouth
compressed and characteristic of both energy
and resolution. It was impossible to
look at her even for a moment without
perceiving that she must be a person of
exceedingly superior mental faculties, of
capabilities more stern and sustained, and
of an intellect more massive and imposing
than are natural to her sex; and at the
same time it was almost equally impossible
not to believe that she must be as deficiently
endowed with the qualities of the
heart, as she was pre-eminently furnished
with those of the head.

There was, indeed, something more than
mere craft, and coldness, and inflexibility
of purpose written upon her keen polished
lineaments; for never stranger looked
upon her without a vague feeling of dislike
and apprehension; a sort of intuitive
sense, that here was one of those few
beings to whom the sufferings of their fellows
are not only wholly unimportant,
when ministering to their own advancement,
but are actually subjects of curiosity
and interest, and of a kind of pleasurable
excitement.

The other was an extremely beautiful
girl of about eighteen or nineteen years,
in every respect the very opposite of the
lady I have described; for she was rather
tall, and though her waist was symmetrical
and round, her figure and bust were
unusually developed and voluptuous. She
was a blonde, too, as decidedly as her mother
was a brunette, with a profusion of
luxuriant light brown hair, scarcely restrained
about her temples by a broad
blue ribbon bandeau, and falling down her
neck and over her shoulders in heavy
silken masses of waving ringlets. Her
eyes were of the very darkest blue, almost
violet colored, with eyebrows slightly
curved, and long lashes, dark as night,
giving an air of character and decision to
her face, which is usually wanting in very
fair beauties.

The expression, too, was very-fine and
prepossessing; there was mind enough
visible in every lineament to counteract
everything voluptuous or sensual; while
there was not too much to be perfectly
compatible with that softness, that predominance
of the affectionate and tender
feelings, that superiority of the imaginative
to the reasoning faculties, which we
desire to see in a woman. She looked,
in short, such as Wordsworth has so beautifully
painted the ideal of her sex—

The breakfast table at which they were
still seated, although they had finished
their slender meal, was very differently
arranged from the modest breakfasts of
these degenerate days; for although there
were chocolate and coffee, and dry toast,
and bread in many forms, there were
flasks of red and white wine also, and
highly seasoned ragouts, and roast wildfowl,
and fruits, and pastry in abundance.
And not these only, for on a second table
were displayed a huge sirloin of beef, a
boar's head from the black forest, and an
enormous venison pasty, flanked by their
regular companion, a vast silver tankard
mantling with toast and ale. None of
these, however, had they partaken of,
limiting themselves to the fresh fruit, and
dry toast, and frothing chocolate; and
they were now loitering at the board,
waiting for the appearance of the master
of the house, who had been thus unwontedly
detained.

At last the sound of the front door,
clapping heavily after the visitor, showed
them that the detention was at an end, and
at the next moment Sir Henry Davenant
walked past the window, and seeing the
ladies, raised his hat and bowed very low.

The blood rushed to the fair face of the
younger lady and she said at once, with
the ingenuous frankness which was one
of her most remarkable characteristics—

“Oh! I declare it is that odious man,
Sir Henry Davenant. I am sorry that he
has been here, for he always leaves my
father restless and ill at ease. I suppose

it is very wrong of me,” she added, laughing,
“but I do really almost hate the
man.”

“Aye! indeed it is very wrpng, and,
what is worse, very ridiculous, and even
childish. He is the ablest and most rising
young man of his party, and exceedingly
clever, well-read, and witty. There is not
a man more courted by society, or one
more sure to achieve greatness,” replied
her mother. “But I have long given up
all hopes of ever seeing you rational or
like the rest of the world, with your perpetual
whims and prejudices.”

“I know all that you say, madam,” answered
the girl; “and it is all quite true;
he is very clever, and witty, and wise too,
I dare say, and sometimes he entertains
me in spite of myself, and I almost begin
to like him. And then most likely he
commences some odious tirade against
the existence of honesty or honor among
men, and of faith or affection among women,
and looks at me with that strange
fascinating eye, as if he were reading
every thought in my bosom, and that
dark sneering smile which makes every
word he utters, how seriously and solemnly
soever, seem like a sarcasm or a
mockery. It is as if he were always ridiculing
one!”

“Most likely he is,” replied her mother;
“most likely he is always ridiculing you;
for indeed, my dear Fanny, you are most
thoroughly ridieulous, with your romantic
and Utopian fancies, I do wish I
could see you growing a little rational—a
little practical—but I grow sick of wishing.”

“Well, mother mine,” replied the girl
laughing, “I am very sorry for it; but I
cannot help it, I do assure you. I cannot
like the society, or listen patiently to the
conversation of men whose every action,
every word, proves so clearly that they
are altogether heartless and hollow.”

“Heartless!”—cried the elder lady with
a harsh and bitter sneer—“heartless!
what, prithee, dost thou know about
hearts, minion? But here comes my lord,
take care that you anger him not with
your nonsense, Fanny.”

But of this there was little danger, for
to do him justice he was at all times a
good-natured man, and especially a kind
father; and now he wore his face dressed
in its brightest garb of smiles, and was
evidently in one of his most complacent
moods.

“We waited breakfast for you awhile,
my lord,” said the unconscious marchioness,
“but your good friend Sir Henry de
tained you so long that we were forced to
begin for very hunger. But Fanny will
ring for hot chocolate in a moment.”

“Sir Henry brought you good news, I
am sure, dear father,” cried Lady Fanny,
speaking in the same breath with her
mother, and springing forward to meet
her favorite parent—for if he were pompous
and a dullard, he was affectionate
nevertheless, and kind hearted, and proud
of his children. “What is it? what is it,
dear father?”

“Nothing that makes much difference
to thee, Fan,” he replied with a tender
smile, as the beautiful girl threw her arms
about his neck—“though it will to thy
brother!”—and for a moment his heart
smote him for the thought lie had begun
to entertain against her future peace of
mind. Then turning towards his wife he
added—

“Yes. Davenant did bring me pleasant
tidings. His majesty has been pleased in
the most gracious manner, quite unsolicited
moreover, to revive in my person the
dormant Marquisate of Beverley. There
will be a levee and a drawing room on
Wednesday of next week, at which you
will of course be present to kiss hands.”

“A marquis—a marquis!—are you indeed,
father? I am so glad—so glad!—
because I know you wish it”—exclaimed
the lively beauty, clasping her hands together—“and
then dear Arthur will be an
earl; will he not? and have a seat in the
Peers, during your lifetime; and he is sure
to distinguish himself, he is so clever.”

“I don't know about that, Fan,” replied
the marquis; “the title he will have of
course, by courtesy at least—but whether
he will be called to the Peerage is more
doubtful.”

And as he spoke, he sat down and
helped himself largely to a salmi of teal,
which had been kept smoking hot over a
silver chafing dish, and to a large goblet
of Bordeaux wine. But gratified although
his wife was by the announcement,
whose spirit was no less ambitious
and far-reaching than it was shrewd and
piercing, she looked at him steadily, as
he applied himself to the good things
which he so sincerely loved, and became
certain as she gazed, that there was something
yet behind. She turned towards her
daughter then, and said in the most natural
and unconstrained voice in the world,

“Frances, my dear, I thought you had
promised to visit your cousin, Lady Serena
Fortescue, this morning! You can
have my chair if you wish it, and Meredith
can follow you with two of the running

footmen; I cannot endure, child, that
you should suffer these unpuactual habits
to grow upon you.”

“I will go, then, immediately,” said the
fair girl, tripping lightly across the room;
but as she reached the door which opened
on the gland stairease, she nodded her
head, and smiled, saying to herself, “A
gentle hint once again, that I am de trop!
and rather a transparent hint too, for my
lady, who generally laps such things up
pretty thoroughly. Just as if she cared a
rush whether I go to Serena's at twelve of
the clock, or earlier. But I will go to her
—I will go—for she is a good girl, and I
love her dearly. Heigho! I wonder why
I feel so sad this lovely morning. A sudden
chill seemed to run through my very
heart, when I saw that cold-blooded serpent
Davenant sneer as he passed the
window. I hope it was not ominous—
but no! no! I am not superstitious!”

The moment she left the breakfast room,
the marchioness looked full into her husband's
face, and said, “Well, my lord—
well! what else—what more have you
got to tell me? and what is the price of
this?”

“Why, is not this enough! is not this
more, Adeliza, than we could hope for, or
expect, under a ministry who have not
hitherto seemed very friendly?”

“That is not what I asked you,” answered
the lady very sharply, “I asked
you what more you expected, and what
price you had paid for this?”

“Price! price! my lady!” replied the
new marquis, in his most dignified and
stately manner, “how can you think of
anything so disgraceful, or speak of it in
so coarse a manner, my dear lady?”

“Yes, price, my lord marquis, I said
price! Everything has its name; and
the name of the pledge, or promise, or
vote, or concession, or whatever else you
gave the ministry for this title, is its price!
Now, then, I saw just now in your eye
that you wished to consult me about
something or other. I dare say it is not
of the slightest consequence! and if that
is the case, or if you have changed your
mind, I will go my way, and get my tatting—but
if you mean to speak, speak
plainly—for you are not exactly a sphinx,
to propound riddles; nor do I desire to be
the Œdipus to unravel yours, which I
think would be rather unperspicuous than
otherwise.”

The cruel sarcasm of her tone and manner,
even had her words been less bitter,
would have been enough to hinder any
but the weakest of men, and most domineered
of husbands from replying; but it
had no such effect on the marquis, long
used to hear and obey the imperious mandates
of his wife, whose superior intellect
he could not but acknowledge. He
answered, therefore, and at last to the
point.

“Of course I gave the ministers a written
pledge of my adherence to their party,
and support of their measures; but no one
can presume, except you, my dear Adeliza,
who may do anything with impunity,
to speak of my title as the price of this,
since it was granted before my adhesion.”

“And did you know that it was granted,
Beverley?”

“Why, not exactly, not entirely—Davenant
did not—that is to say, my lady—”

“That is to say, my lord, `not one
word about it?'—of course you did
not; for if you had, you would not
have promised entire adherence to a
party, some of whose measures you almost
stand pledged to oppose. But now
comes my second question—what more
do you expect to gain from them, as the
price of your abandoning the Protestant
interests?”

“The vacant stall—the garter! marchioness!”
he answered, even more pompously
than his wont, though he had
writhed visibly as she gave his conduct
its true appellation.

“The garter, indeed! the garter!” she
said, a flush of exultation beaming across
her pallid and sallow face. “That is indeed
worth playing for—that is indeed
worth an apostasy! But how is this? I
thought Lauderdale was to have had it?”

“He does aspire to it, my lady. But it
will be mine notwithstanding; or I am
much mistaken.”

“You generally are very much mistaken,”
said she quietly, and then resumed,
“But what is to be the price of this—
what new iniquity?”

“Upon my soul, my lady!” answered
the marquis, writhing under the conseiousness
that all the harsh words she used
were richly merited, and at the same time
losing temper at her taunts—“you are a
most extraordinary personage; one would
think you were vexed or angry at the
very things which you constantly urge
and encourage me to do. I should like
monstrously to know whose wish it was
that I should sue for the marquisate!—it
is too provoking! quite too provoking!”

The lady arched up her eyebrows as he
spoke, and smiled, as was her wont, and
then answered very meekly,

“Oh! never mind, my dear lord, what
sort of a personage I am. I should think

you must know that pretty well, by this
time; and pray do not fancy that I am
vexed, for on the contrary I am prodigiously
delighted. Still I like calling
everything by its right name, and you
know quite as well as I do—for, though
by no means clever, you do not lack a
certain sort of plodding common sense,
which is capable of discerning right from
wrong! You know, I say, quite as well
as I do, that it is miquitous for a politician
to desert his party, and vote against his
conscience, which you are going to do,
you know, on the Irish Bill; that is to
say, so far as you have got a conscience!
Oh yes! it is certainly very iniquitous!
though at the same time it may be, and
is very expedient; and much more creditable
to you as a convenient husband, and
provident father, than as a public man or
a patriot; which, after all, you never
were, nor will be! But come, you have
not told me what you are to do for the
garter.”

“Well then, if you will have it in plain
English—”

“To be sure—to be sure—that is the
only way—”

“If you will have it, I am to bring Lord
Henry St. Maur over to our side; and
persuade him to vote the Irish Bill, which
will carry it for the ministers by a majority
of two. It is a tie now—St. Maur
voting in the opposition.”

“Excellent! excellent!—” exclaimed
the lady, clapping her hands joyfully together,
and now appearing to be really
delighted—“which you can do very
easily, by breaking off Fan's match with
Sir Edward Hale, and promising her hand
to the other—that will buy him!—of
course that will buy him!—and though
Fanny can't endure him, and loves Hale
with all her heart, that can't be helped,
you know! Girls can't expect that their
whims should be gratified, when the advancement
of their families stands directly
in the way.”

It is perfectly true that the Marquis of
Beverley had resolved in his own heart to
do exactly as his wife stated—that he
knew the complete and unquestionable
truth of every word she uttered, touching
his daughter's hatred to St. Maur, and love
for Sir Edward Hale—in both of which
feelings he had hitherto given her his full
sanction; for, where his base and grovelling
ambition stood not in the way of his
paternal feelings, he was a kind and indulgent
father. It is true, likewise, that
he knew St. Maur to be worthy of the
hatred, and Hale to merit all the love—
and, having well considered all these
things, he meant to sacrifice poor Fanny's
happiness without a moment's hesitation.
Still, as his wife suggested it in her barefaced
sarcastic manner, he positively
shuddered—stung to the quick by the malicious
ingenuity with which she probed
his very soul, and held up his every vice
and meanness clearly and visibly before
his eyes. And yet she was no paradox,
that artful bitter woman. She had deliberately,
when a young, beautiful, clever,
and much admired girl, married the gross
and dullard earl, at the promptings of her
ambition. Almost hating herself, when
she found that the world had penetrated
and branded her motives with their right
name; and hating him to a degree that
can hardly be imagined—a degree increasing
day by day with the mortifications
which his pompous stupidity day
by day heaped upon her, she avenged
herself to the utmost of her powers—perpetually
driving him on to the commission
of fresh meannesses, so as to gratify that
ambition, which she now only lived for;
and constantly tormenting him by exhibiting
those meannesses to himself in the
most odious light. Having herself
smothered down and stifled in her bosom
a sincere and honorable passion for a
young man who, though poor and of
small pretension when she abandoned
him for his dull titled rival, had since
risen, by dint of worth and talents only,
to high rank and power, she could not
even think of prosperous and happy love
without disgust and fury. Disliking her
own daughter, because she felt her to be
equal to herself in intellectual parts, and
superior in all other qualities—jealous of
her, because she perceived how popular
she was in all society—fearful of her, because
she felt that her own baser essence
must naturally be revealed by the test of
her purer spirit, as Satan's at the touch of
Ithuriel's lance—this bad and unnatural
wife and mother almost rejoiced that,
while advancing her own narrow and
morbid ambition, she was torturing the
guilty conscience of her lord, and breaking
the heart of her too virtuous and
charming daughter.

The marquis, I say, positively shuddered,
as she revealed to him his own future
intentions and their consequence; and he
was silent a minute or two before he answered—

“Poor Fan! I am afraid it will grieve
her a little while at first; but young ladies'
love-smarts are not generally very
lasting. And St. Maur is young and handsome,

and has far greater wealth than
Hale, and title also—I daresay she will be
very happy.”

“I daresay,” answered his wife, with
another sneer. “Fanny's mind is just of
the sort most likely to be captivated by
money, which she calls dross—and title
which you have often heard her style tinsel!
Do not you think so? And then as
St. Maur never keeps less than three or
four mistresses, and is the most confirmed
gambler in London, and drinks, they say,
frightfully, and has a most infernal temper
—he shot his favorite horse in the park the
other day, with his servant's pistol, because
it shied from a passing carriage!
On all these accounts, I say, he is very
likely, I think, to make her happy. But
as it must be done, there is no use in
troubling ourselves about it. How do you
purpose to proceed?”

“I thought of writing to St. Maur to inform
him that we have thought better of
the addresses he paid to Lady Frances
Asterly, and that were it not for his unfortunate
opposition to my party, especially
on the Irish Bill, we should rejoice to receive
him as our son-in-law!”

“Upon my word, Marquis, you improve—you
grow quite diplomatic. Yes,
that will do very well, for as Henry is not
scrupulous, and is very much in love with
Fan's pretty figure, and has not an iota of
principle, he will doubtless chop about
like a weathercock, in less time than it
takes to talk about it. But how will you
get on with Fanny?”

“I shall merely tell her that I have
changed my mind, and that she must
marry St. Maur.”

“Then she will merely tell you that she
will do nothing of the kind, and she will
keep her word, too, as she always does.
That will never do, my lord—never—
never!”

“How then? I do not see how else it
can be managed.”

“She must be made to think Edward
Hale faithless to her—told of some evil
and dishonorable deeds of his, artfully
simulated, and if not true, at least, truth-like.
Hold—where is St. Maur now?”

“Staying with Hale at Arrington—Davenant
told me so just now.”

“Yes! yes! I recollect he told me himself
he was going down thither to celebrate
a birth-day, or some such Tomfoolery;
and Percy Harbottle is to be there
too, and that notorious pendable Captain
Spencer. Let me see—let me see—I will
write myself to St. Maur and to Spencer
also to-day. They can surely either invent
something that will do the business
with Fan; or, what would be much better
still, lead Edward in reality to commit
some disgraceful action—to cheat at cards
—or rather, for he is incapable of that, to
get drunk and play, so that they could lay
the imputation on him, or to carry off some
country wench or other. Lord! it will be
as easy, as they say, as lying, marquis!
But I forgot—I beg your pardon—I forgot
that you do not like to hear the names of
the things you do every day. There,
there—do not stay to answer me now;
but go away and write your letter to St.
Maur; and write it as short as you can,
do you hear, and as much to the point—
and none of your honorable and virtuous
rhodomontades, I beseech of you—which
are always ridiculous, and impose on nobody,
you know; because nobody in the
world believes in such things as honor or
virtue; and which would be doubly out
of place here, because St. Maur, I am sure,
would not know the meaning of the
words. There, now; why don't you go
away and do it?”

“Because I want to know what I shall
do with the letter, after I have written it,
my lady,” answered her lord, quite crest-fallen,
and stripped of all his peacock
plumes of self-complacency and pompousness.

“Bring it to me, that I may read it, first
of all, and see how many absurdities you
can contrive to squeeze into six lines, and
then enclose it in a long letter of my own
to this young hopeful. You must send a
man off with it post to-day; he can reach
Arrington to-night, and return to-morrow
morning. Benedict, the newly hired man
will do, and he must wear plain clothes,
and take care that he drop no hint whose
man he is, or whence he comes; but I
will tutor him.”

“And then—” began the marquis, in an
inquiring tone.

“And then,” she answered, with a
sneering accent, “you can go and order
the coronets on the carriages and harnesses
to be altered, and choose new buttons
at the button-maker's and new liveries
at the tailor's—business just suited to
your calibre.”

“I have sent Anderson to do all that
two hours ago at least. Do you suppose
it possible—”

“I crave your pardon,” replied the
lady, with an air of affected blandness, “I
onght not to have supposed it possible,
marquis—possible, that business of real
instance or moment could banish from
your mind those nice frivolities and frivolous
niceties which are so thoroughly congenial
to natures as comprehensive and

politic as your own. And then, since you
have done all this, I would go, were I you,
to Master Child's, and order a new service
of gilt plate, with the proper supporters
and coronets, marquis. That will be an
amusement for you; and the old plate is
getting rather out of date. I believe it
was as old as the creation in your grandfather's
time, who was, I think, a Lincolnshire
grazier! But go—do go, and write
the letter!”

4. CHAPTER IV.

When Sir Edward Hale left the meadow
of the May-pole in the manner I have described,
he galloped forward at three
quarters' speed of his fine brown hunter,
Eversly having some difficulty in keeping
up with him, until he reached the foot of
the western slope of the valley, where he
slackened his pace, and rode on for a
while in a deep reverie. And was it indeed
Rose, on whom, as Hunter insinuated,
the young baronet cast that quick
glance, which had so nearly cost him a
heavy fall from his horse? Reader, it was
—for like most youths of hot impetuous dispositions,
he was a passionate admirer of
female beauty; and Rose's loveliness was,
in truth, of so high an order, that it might
well have attracted the eyes even of a
colder and less inflammable nature.

She was, indeed, in face and figure, a
paragon, more fitted for the sphere of
courts, than for the simple and somewhat
hard realities of a plain country life. Her
beauty was not the mere animal beauty,
consisting chiefly of fresh coloring and
vigorous health, which marks so freqently
the country maiden—it was of a
far higher and more delicate order.

Had she been robed in unison, she
might have moved, her birth and rank unquestioned,
among the most magnificent
array of England's aristocracy—for she
was very tall, and though her swelling
bust and ample shoulders, and all her
lower limbs were exquisitely modelled and
developed to the most voluptuous symmetry,
her waist was small and tapering, and
the whole contour of her person slender
and graceful. Her arms were like rounded
ivory—her hands, small, delicate, and
fair, as if they had been little used to any
hard or menial labor—her ankles trim and
shapely, and her feet singularly little for
so full and tall a figure.

Her face, however, was yet more strik
ing than her person—it was that of a clear
brunette, with but the palest flush of the
most delicate rose tinging the lustrous
darkness of her cheek—her features approached
nearly to the classic model, but
there was a trifling upward inclination in
the outlines of the well shaped thin nose,
which added a charm of archness, that regularity
too often will be found to lack—
her ponting lips were, if such a thing can
be, almost too deeply crimson; for to nothing
that exists, of warm and soft and
sentient, could the hue of that balmy
mouth be possibly compared.

It was the eyes, however, the large, deep
lustrous eyes, of the darkest hazel, that
caught most suddenly the observation of
all who looked upon her, if it were but for
a passing moment—there was an indescribable
fascination in those eyes, an inexplicable
mixture of wild out-flashing
light, and soft voluptuous languor, half
amorous, half melancholy, such as is rarely
indeed seen at all, and never but in orbs
of that clear translucent brown, that is so
far more beautiful than the dull bead-like
black, or the more shallow glitter of the
blue. Her hair, of a dark sunny brown,
shining with many an auburn gloss, where
the light fell strong upon its heavy masses,
was luxuriantly abundant; falling off on
each side of her high polished forehead in
a maze of thick clustering ringlets, and
flowing down her neck, and over her sloping
shoulders, in large and natural curls.

The dress of this fair girl was simple as
it could be; yet, perhaps, no magnificence
of garb would have so well displayed her
wondrous charms as that undecorated
garment. A low-necked frock of plain
white muslin, sitting quite close to her
bust and slender waist, with tight sleeves
reaching to the elbow, and terminating
there in ample plaited ruffles, and a long
flowing skirt—a little cottage bonnet of
home-made straw, with a pink ribbon to
match her silken neckerchief and sash, a
cluster of violets in the bosom of her
frock, and a nosegay in her hand, the gift
—much prized that morning—of the now
half-rejected lover.

Such was the choicest finery of the village
belle, and, as I have already said, it
would have been hard indeed to deck her
comely person in anything that could
have displayed her beauties with more advantage.
Those were the days, in courts,
of whalebone stomachers and hoops five
fathoms in circumference; of stiff brocaded
stuffs, and powdered head-dresses; of art,
and most ungraceful art, against any touch
of nature. Grace and simplicity were discarded,
and every native movement, so

beautiful in its natural ease, was hampered
and confined by every species of
ligature and bandage that the most depraved
and artificial taste could by any
means imagine or suggest.

What wonder, then, that Edward Hale,
a passionate admirer, as he was, of female
beauty, accustomed so much to the stiff
airs and affected minanderies of starched
ladies, should have been momentarily
struck by the natural and simple loveliness
of that fair villager, whose every turn
and motion was full of poetry, and instinct
with easy life. What wonder, then, that
when he crossed the hill, and lost sight of
the gay concourse, he should have called
the keeper up to his side, and asked him
quite abruptly—

“Tell me, Mark Eversley, tell me,” he
said, not without a slight shade of embarrassment
appearing in his manner, “who
was that fine old silver-headed farmer who
stood close to me on the left-hand side,
when my horse reared so suddenly? There
was a tall young fellow at his elbow, with
a quarter staff—Frank Hunter, I believe, if
I have not forgotten more than I think I
have. I used to ferret rabbits with him,
if it be the same, many a year ago, in the
Monk's coppice. But who was the old farmer,
Mark? I can't remember him.”

“Oh, that was Master Castleton, I think,
Sir Edward,” answered the fellow, with a
cunning grin, clearly perceiving the drift
of his master's question, “there was a
very pretty lass upon his arm, wasn't
there, sir?”

The hot blood rushed to the brow—the
ingenuous brow—of the young gentleman;
and, vexed at the bare idea that his
thoughts should be read, his secret penetrated
by a menial, he answered hastily—

“Was there? I did not notice—I hardly
think there was, though; for I suppose I
should have observed her, if there had
been—seeing that I am a great admirer of
pretty faces.”

“I'm sure, then, you'd admire Rose's.”
answered the wily keeper, “for it's the
prettiest eye, and the handsomest face,
too, in all the village; and then her shape
is not behind her face, neither. But I'm
a-thinking it couldn't have been Master
Castleton, else, as you say, you must have
noticed Rose. It might have been old Andrew
Bell, or Simon Carter, or John Hall,
they were all gathered thereabout, and
they are all grey-headed men, too.”

“No, no!” replied the landlord, “it was
not any one of these; I recollect them all
right well. It must have been old Castleton;
what did you call him—Harry?”

“No. James, so please your honor;
but I don't think it could have been he,
anyhow, Sir Edward; least ways I don't
see how you could have missed observing
Rose. Why, bless you! she's the beauty
of the village; there's not a girl like her
for twenty miles around. I don't believe,
Sir Edward, you ever saw a handsomer in
London.”

“Well, now I think on it, I believe there
was a girl—a very tall girl—on his arm;
dressed all in white, was she? but Oliver
reared up, just then, and that prevented
me from taking notice, I suppose. What
is she? daughter to old Castleton?”

“Yes, sir; and troth-plighted, they say,
to that Frank Hunter, d—n him? but I
don't reckon much of that, for she's an
arrant jilt—is pretty Rose. Why she kept
company with me, Sir Edward, six months
and better, and then flew off as if she was
meet for a king, when I asked her to be
my wife. I warrant me she'd fly from
Frank, there, just as sudden, so be she
could 'light on a higher or a richer sweetheart.”

“Well, well!” said Hale, half angrily,
perhaps, at feeling that his servant was
tampering with thoughts that were even
then, though faintly and uncertainly, at
work in his own bosom, and not being yet
prepared to be hurried on his way—
“well, all that's nothing to me, Mark. But
why did you damn the young fellow,
Eversley? He used to be as fine a lad as
any in the country; and, if he did win
your sweetheart, I dare say that he won
her fairly. You should not bear a grudge,
man; all goes by luck in love and liking.”

“Oh! it's not that, Sir Edward, it is not
that at all! I would not now have the
girl if I could; I'm very glad he took her
off my hands, and very grateful to him for
it. I would not have her now, I'm sure,
unless it was for a mistress—and that she
is not like to be for a poor fellow, whatever
she might for a born gentleman. It is not
that, at all, that made me damn him; but,
bless you! he's the biggest poacher in the
country!”

“Ha! is he—is he? that's bad; we must
see to that. Have you got any proof
against him?”

“Not clear—not clear, Sir Edward; but
I keep a tight watch on him always, and
I'll be nabbing him, I warrant me, one of
these times.”

“Do so—do so!” returned the other,
forming, almost unconsciously, a secret
feeling of dislike to the young man, who
was known as the accepted suitor of Rose
Castleton. “Do so; and if we catch him
tripping badly, we can send him out of
the country, or, perhaps, get him pressed

on board the fleet; and then you can get
the pretty Rose, you know.”

“Oh! I don't want her, sir—not I,” returned
the keeper, “I would not marry
her at all, unless I was to be well paid for
it, and then I'd marry the foul fiend if need
were.”

“Fie! fie! Mark!” answered Hale—
“don't talk in that profligate manner, I
beg of you. But, tell me, where does old
Castleton live now? Your father was saying
something to me about his lease, I
think, this morning. It has run out, I
fancy, and he wants it renewed.”

“Yes, yes, Sir Edward,” the other interrupted
eagerly, “it has run out; and he
does want it renewed; but then, Sir Edward,
it's the home-farm, like; between
Monk's coppice and Raywood; and the
spring-brook trout pond lies in the very
middle of it—all the best ground for game
in the whole manor—and the best water,
too, for fishing! Now I've been thinking
that it will make bad work, if Hunter
marries Rose, and Castleton gets a new
lease. Why, bless you, sir! Frank would
not leave a feather in the woods, or a fin
in the waters, after he'd lived in the home
farm a fortnight; besides, the kennel lies
so handy; it always seemed to me the
keeper should live there. I was going to
speak to you about that myself. I should
like well to rent it; and my two brothers
could look after it, so that I would not be
kept from my duties, neither.”

“I'm afraid, Mark, that can't well be;
for, you see, I promised not to remove
any tenant; and, besides, old Castleton
lived there, under my grandfather, if I remember
rightly; and has been a good
tenant, too. But I won't forget you,
Mark, never fear; for I won't forget you.
But now we must make haste, or we shall
be late at Barnsley;” and, with the words,
he again put spurs to his horse, and rode
on as fast as he could gallop, until he
reached the little post-town, where he
drew bridle at the door of the next country
inn, and called aloud to the hostler,
who came running across the court-yard
towards him—asking whether “Lord
Henry St. Maur and Captain Spencer had
arrived from London!”

But, before the man had time to answer,
a loud burst of laughter from within replied;
and then a gay voice cried—

“Here we are, Ned; here we are; and
here have we been these two hours.
Come in—come in hither; quick, man, or
that rogue Percy Harbottle will finish the
cool tankard before you get a taste of it.
Our horses will be ready in a minute;
come, make haste, you must be athirst
this hot day!”

Edward Hale leaped down at the jovial
summons, and flinging his rein to the
keeper, ran up the steps, and entered the
small clean parlor, to the left of the passage,
where he found his three friends
merrily employed in circulating a mighty
silver flagon, filled with the generous
compound of ale and sherry, sugar and
toast and spices.

Three very comely personages were
they, who occupied the solitary parlor of
the country inn; three such, indeed, as it
had probably never contained at one time
before, such that not the landlord and
landlady only, but Doll the chambermaid,
and Dick the tapster, and even fat old
drunken Deborah, the cook, had contrived
to find something or other to do in that
parlor, in order to get a glimpse of the
handsome gentlemen from London.

They were three in number, all of distinguished
family, and of appearance and
manners suitable to their rank, and none
of them above the middle age, though two
were scarcely beyond their boyhood.

The eldest of the three was the notorious
Captain Spencer, a peer's second son,
the commander of a gallant frigate now in
commission, and as Lady Beverley had
truly designated him, within an hour of
the time when he was sitting there so
calm and unruffled, although he knew it
not, the most celebrated pendable of the
metropolis. Of tried and distinguished
courage, a good seaman for those days, a
gentleman of the most courtly and finished
manners, the Honorable Edmund Spencer
was perhaps as thorough a debauchee
and reprobate as existed at that day in all
England. An admirable player at all
games, a perfect musician, a very graceful
dancer, his success among women had
been almost unparalleled; and, although
several of his adventures had been marked
by very thorough depravity, and had
terminated miserably for his fair victims,
still fair and virtuous and innocent and
noble women were found to smile upon
the cold-hearted seducer, while they had
not one tear to shed for the hapless beings
he had brought down to shame and
misery and untimely death.

With men, his ready wit, his liberality,
his frankness, and his courage, made him
even more generally a favorite than he
was with the softer sex. The very boldness
of his vice was to him a protection;
and, as it seemed, a fresh claim on the
world's admiration. No subterfuge had
ever sullied his character for truth—whatever

wrong he did to any one, he avowed
it openly, and gave honorable satisfaction.
He had shot one husband dead, and
desperately wounded two brothers, fighting
to avenge wife's and sister's reputation.
An honorable man par excellence was the
Honorable Edmund Spencer. Yet many
a better man had expiated his crimes on
the gallows.

Spencer was at this time about forty-three
years old, although no person would
have suspected him of being nearly that
age; he was extremely handsome, though
of a dark and somewhat saturnine complexion,
with a full bright black eye, an
aquiline nose, and one of the most fascinating
smiles that ever wreathed a lip in
blandishment. His hair, black as the raven's
wing, and without one speck or line
of grey, was exquisitely soft and glossy,
and almost as redundant in its fall of natural
tresses as the huge wigs of the day.
His voice was silvery music, and by long
habit he had learned to modulate his accents
like the tones of a delicate instrument.

For the young of both sexes never was
created an enemy more dangerous than
Edmund Spencer. In the slightest glance
of his eye there lurked wily fascination—
in the most trivial word he uttered there
was a covert meaning—a concealed
power! But his smile, his caress, his
friendship, or his love, were ruin—utter,
inevitable ruin!

His dress, although in some degree professional,
was rich and magnificent; for
at that period a gentleman could be recognised
by his distinctive garb alone, from
his valet. He wore a coat, cut in the
naval form, with the open sleeves of the
period, showing from the elbow to the
wrist the shirt sleeves of plaited lawn
fringed with ruffles of superb Valenciennes
lace. It was of dark blue cloth, long
waisted and broad skirted, lined throughout
with white sarcenet. His breeches
were of blue velvet, and his vest of the
same color, both slashed with white silk,
and adorned with many buttons of solid
gold, embossed with the crown and anchor.
He wore high boots and spurs,
having travelled thither on horseback,
being, rather an uncommon thing for a
sailor, a perfect and graceful cavalier—his
hat, with a band of feathers, and a short
crooked hanger lay on the table near
him.

Lord Henry St. Maur, who was standing
up with his back to the fire-place, now
filled with green and May-flowers, instead
of its winter decoration of sea coal,
was a tall, slight, fair young man, with
nothing particular in his appearance, unless
it were a mixed expression of licentiousness
and audacity, which ill became
his beardless lip, and smooth, effeminate
features. He was dressed far more splendidly
than the sea captain, in a full suit of
maroon colored velvet, lined and slashed
with philomot satin, and decorated with
large ribbon shoulder knots of the same
color. He had much costly lace at his
bosom and wrists; the buttons of his coat
and his knee buckles and sword hilt glittered
with brilliantly cut steel; and to
complete the picture, a huge fleece of
curls, the natural hue of which was disguised
by a profusion of reddish marechal
powder, fell down over his shoulders, and
impregnated the whole atmosphere of the
inn-parlor with musk and ambergris, and
Heaven knows what besides.

Percy Harbottle, the third of the company,
was the youngest likewise, and the
least worthy of notice, though perhaps
the most worthy to be esteemed a gentleman.
He was good-looking, and good-humored;
and, though by no means a fool,
certainly neither a genius nor a wit—in a
word, he was a frank, lively, generous-hearted,
rash, impetuous young man, likely
enough to be hurried by evil association
into the contracting of bad habits, and of
committing follies, or becoming subject
to the more venial vices—but kindly at
the same time, and honorable if unthinking.

In fact, he was a type of that large class
of youths at all times floating like the froth
on the top of that great syllabub—the social
world!—whom every one pronounces
an “excellent good fellow,” without being
able in the least degree to specify wherein
their excellence consists—whose greatest
merits are good looks and animal good-humor,
and whose greatest demerit is a want
of ballast, of stability of character, and singleness
of purpose, without which a man
may be agreeable, but cannot possibly be
great.

Such was Percy Harbottle—and there
be many Percy Harbottles around us everywhere—who,
exquisitely, and rather
coxcombically attired in light blue silk,
laced with gold, and bewigged and bepowdered
to the very acme of the mode,
was, at the moment of Sir Edward's entrance,
apparently justifying the apprehensions
of the others concerning the contents
of the tankard, by the prodigious
draught which he was making on its racy
mixture. He sent it down, however, and
drawing a long breath, as Hale came in,
jumped up with a good deal of eagerness,
and with his hand extended, to meet him.

Spencer arose also, and put out his
hand; but though there was much elegance
and grace in every motion, though his
tones were perfect harmony, and his
words not well chosen only, but courteous
and even friendly, there was something
that gave the young baroneta strong impression
of the sea-captain's heartlessness;
for he had known him before but
slightly, and was now receiving him
rather as a friend of his school-fellow St.
Maur, than as an intimate of his own
choosing.

The truth was, that although the captain's
manner was exquisite, it was too
evident that it was manner only—there
was a total want of cordiality, or warmth,
or in fact of any feeling. And, sooth to
say, it would have been very strange had
there not been that want—for it was on
his total freedom from all touch of genuine
nature, his complete mastery over his
strongest feelings, his absolute impassibility
of temper, and immobility of feature,
on which Edmund Spencer prided himself
the most. He had been all his life acquiring
it—and though he had given much
pains to many fine accomplishments, to
none had he devoted half the study this
had cost him. No wonder he was perfect
in it!

St. Maur nodded, and smiled, and
thrust out a single finger, with a delicious
attempt at nonchalance. He was really
glad to see Edward Hale, whom he liked
as well as he liked anything, except himself;
that is to say, so far as he amused
him, and gave him no trouble—and he said
he was glad—but he said it as if he was
rather sorry than otherwise. He wanted
to be easy and careless; he had heard
Spencer ridicule enthusiasm as boyish and
ladylike—and he had the greatest horror
in the world of being thought a boy; and
in endeavoring to be un-enthusiastic, one
of the nil admirari school, he became as
stiff as the poker, and as unnatural and unlike
his model, whom he flattered himself
he was very closely imitating, as it is
possible to conceive.

In a few minutes, however—for St.
Maur's character was far too impulsive
and ill-regulated to be true to anything—
even to itself, for above half an hour—he
became boisterous and noisy, and displayed
spirits so exuberant as to justify in
some measure Perey Harbottle's assertion,
that he had only drained the tankard,
which it appeared on inspection he had
done to the very dregs, for the purpose of
preserving him from the commission of
such a solecism as to be drunk before
dinner.

“Upon my life!” said Spencer, “I do
not feel so perfectly assured that you
were in time enough to save him, Percy!
Who will bet odds that he does not tumble
off his horse before we reach Arrington?”

“I will, by heaven!” cried St. Maur
himself; “I will, in rouleaux! is it
done!”

“No, not exactly,” answered Spencer,
laughing, “not with you, my dear fellow;
for if I did, you would not drink any more
in the first place; and in the second, you
would keep yourself quiet; and, in short,
I should not be sure of winning.”

“And do you never bet, Captain Spencer,”
asked Hale, half jesting and half serious,
“but when you are sure to win?”

“Never, my dear sir, never,” replied
Spencer, in his blandest tones, “do you?”

“Generally, I am afraid,” said Sir Edward,
laughing merrily.

“Ah! so does Harbottle; except that
for `generally' you may read `always.'
Harbottle always bets when he is not sure
to win; or, in other words, when he is
sure to lose. He pays too, which is something
in these days. Harbottle is an undeniable
man to bet with. I bet with him
myself a good deal.”

Nothing could, indeed, be more strictly
true than this last assertion of the gallant
captain, to whose gentlemanlike necessities
Percy Harbottle's betting-book annually
ministered, to the tune of a cool thousand,
at the least reckoning. A more cunning
and less artful man than he would
have shunned the topic and been detected
by his silence. Spencer knew better, and
talking of it openly, those who knew it to
be true scarcely believed it, and those
who were not certain utterly scouted the
idea.

For a few minutes after this, the young
men conversed merrily and gaily of fifty
trivial incidents which had occurred since
their last meeting; and light jokes called
forth lighter laughter; as for the most part
is the case when the gay-hearted and the
cheerful, over whose head time has not
shed a single sorrow, meet after passing
absence. But by-and-by the replenished
tankard was once again exhausted, and
the young comrades soon began to lack
some newer and more keen excitement.

“Come, come,” cried Edward Hale,
“let us get, all of us, to horse, and ride,
as quickly as we may, back to the manor.
There is a kind of merry-making of the
villagers—a May-day frolic on the green;
and, as it is my birth-day too, I was obliged
to promise the good people there that
I would join their sports; and, what is

more, to ask them all to dine with me at
noon, under a tent. I am afraid it will be
but a tedious sort of merriment to you, my
boys, after the gaieties of London; but we
must make the best of it; and, to compensate
for it, we'll sup at eight, when all is
over, and try my father's choice old Burgundy.”

“Ods-life!” cried St. Maur, “there will
be nothing tedious in it so far as I'm concerned;
for, I doubt not, you have store of
pretty lasses here among your tenantry?
and if we are to pass the summer here
with you, you know, we must look out
for something in the shape of bona robas
to while away the time before the shooting
season.”

“Well, well, Lord Harry, you shall see
all of them, I promise,” answered the baronet,
with a quick meaning smile; “but
then it must be honor bright. You shall
have every help from me in your amours,
but then you must not interfere with mine
—hey, St. Maur?”

“Hark to him—hark to him, Spencer;
hark to him, Harbottle!” cried the young
lord, laughing; “did you, in all your lives,
did you ever hear such a Turk? Why,
he only came down hither last night, for
the first time these sixteen years, and the
dog has cut out an intrigue already!”

“Oh, I don't wonder at it, not I, in the
least,” Harbottle answered; “the fellow
always had the eye of a hawk for a pretty
wench, and the devil's own luck in winning
them, too. Don't you remember, St.
Maur, how he tricked Neville, at Christ
Church, out of his black-browed Julia,
after two days' acquaintance, when Neville
had been better than six months in
bringing her to reason?”

“And Neville such a lady-killer, too!”
lisped St. Maur; “but I suppose we had
better promise him.”

“To be sure, to be sure we had!” answered
the other in a breath, “for if he
has got the least start in the world with
the girl, we have no more chance of her
than the merest bumpkin in the country”

“So it's a bargain, Hale,” continued St.
Maur; “you will give each of us the best
of your countenance and assistance, provided
we keep all due distance from your
own dulcinea.”

“A bargain!” answered the young baronet;
and “a bargain! a bargain!”
chimed in his gay, licentious comrades.

“And now, Sir Edward,” inquired
Spencer, gravely, after they had mounted,
and galloped a few hundred yards from
the inn door, “what is your wench's
name, that we may have no mistake
here? and what does she look like?”

“Her name is Rose Castleton,” answered
Sir Edward Hale, the hot blood
rushing hurriedly to his brow and cheek,
as he named her, against whose peace
and honor the wild words of his reckless
and unprincipled companions had almost
instantaneously matured his vague
thoughts into violent designs.

“Her name is Rose Castleton; and she
is like—simply the most beautiful woman
it ever was my luck to gaze upon. The
finest and most voluptuous figure—the
brightest and most sparkling face—the
most luxuriant hair—the softest and most
passionate eye! By heaven! the loveliest
girl I ever yet have looked upon
were but a foil to her transcendant beauties!—but
let us hurry on our way, or we
shall be too late!”

And, at the word, they gave the rein to
their good steeds, and touched their sleek
sides with the spur, and no one could
have found fault with the pace thereafter,
till they came to the hill which overlooked
the vale of Arrington.

4. CHAPTER IV.

No further words were spoken by the gay
companions; for, indeed, the fiery rate
at which the cavaliers spurred on towards
the manor, precluded the possibility of
conversation—the thick beating clang of
their horses' hoofs on the country road
drowning all words pitched in tones
lower than a shout.

It was, indeed, a charming—a delicious
morning; the soft south wind which
fanned their brows and fluttered their
hair, as they cut through it rapidly, came
laden with the fresh odor of the new
mown hay, and the mingled perfumes of
a thousand wild flowers; for all the hedge-row
banks were studded, as thickly as
the parterres of a well kept garden, with
primroses and cowslips, and dark clustering
violets,—the scent of which pervaded
the whole atmosphere. The tall
hedges, bordering the road on either
hand, with their green buds just bursting
into leaf, were actually sheeted with
white bloom; while many a brier rose
flaunting with its red blossoms, and many
a honey-suckle hung its rich clusters
over brake and thicket.

Myriads of larks were pouring their
clear merry notes into the cool air, as they
floated far beyond the reach of human
vision, at the very gates of Heaven; one

soaring upward as another dropped, faint
and exhausted with the sweetness of his
own melody, to repose himself on the
fresh greensward, and meditate another
hymn.

Everything in the sounds and sights of
nature, that spoke to the senses of the
young men, was pleasant and exhilarating;
and from a distance, as if to swell
the chorns of general rejoicing, the chime
of a village church came pealing down
the wind with notes, as it were, of mirthful
invitation. Their hearts, too, were
glad and jocund; no selfish thoughts, or
interested motives, were at that time alive
within bosoms too generally the slaves to
such evil feelings. They had come down
into the free, blithe country to divest their
spirits of the cares and half toilsome
pleasures, the din and rivalry, the jealousy
and turmoil of the great city; and having
come they were prepared and willing to
be pleased with almost everything.

After they had galloped a few miles on
their road, the lane which they had followed
hitherto turned off almost at right
angles to the left hand, another pathway
coming in from the opposite direction.
Here the young baronet pulled up his
horse, and pointing straight forward, over
a high wattled fence, dividing a large
pasture field from the highway, he called
out—

“That is our nearest way, gentlemen,
by three miles; and over as pretty a line
of country as you ever rode across.
There is not one ploughed field or meadow
in the range; all good firm pasture
land, with fair stand-up fences, and one
ten foot brook—nothing more; what do
you say to a lark?”

“By all means! by all means!” cried
St. Maur, giving his horse the spur, and
sweeping over the fence cleverly; “which
is the way?”

“Straight for the tall oak tree on the
hill, in the third hedge-row; thence
you will see the top of the old castle
on my grounds; steer straight for that,
boys!”

And away they went, with whoop and
halloa, skimming the bright green fields,
and swinging over the easy fences with
scarce an effort of their mettlesome and
high-bred horses. It was not long, however,
before the headlong pace at which
they rode brought them to the summit of
the hills commanding the scene which has
been heretofor described; and so extraordinary
was the beauty of that scene,
with its tranquil landscape, and gay
grouping, that the three guests of the
young lord of the manor pulled up, as it
were by a common impulse, their hot
horses, and uttered a simultaneous expression
of surprise and admiration.

“Is that your place? By Heaven! you
are a luckier fellow than I fancied, Ned,”
cried St. Maur.

“Give us your hand, old boy; long may
you live to enjoy this fair manor!” said
Harbottle, yet more cordially.

“By the Lord! what a lovely picture.
A Poussin in the distance, and a Teniers
merry-making in the foreground,” added
Spencer, looking at the view with a painter's
eye, for he was indeed no mean connoisseur
in that delightful art.

“It is a fine old place,” Hale answered,
gratified much by the pleasure of his
friends and college comrades; “but come
along, and you shall see the place and its
inhabitauts more nearly.”

And, with the words, he again touched
his horse with the spur, and galloped
lightly down the slope, and across the
greensward of the common, towards a
large and gaily decorated tent, with
several flags and streamers fluttering in
the summer air above it, which had been
erected during his temporary absence, at
a short distance from the May-pole.
About the entrance of this grand marquee,
a dozen or more of Sir Edward's servitors
were clustered, and flinging his rein to
the foremost of these as he alighted, he
bade the others look to the horses of his
friends, and lead them to the stables of the
manor.

Loud rang the plaudits of the tenantry,
as the young master of their destinies, accompanied
by his distinguished looking
friends—for they were all finely made and
handsome men, and all, as I have said,
superbly dressed in the rich mode of the
day, with gold embroideries, and rich lace,
and fluttering shoulder-knots, and waving
feathers—walked through the merry
throng, now pausing for a moment to
shake hands with some sturdy yeoman,
whom he remembered as his play-fellow
of yore; now listening to the tedious, but
not, for that, insincere or unwelcome gratulations
of some hoary-headed farmer;
now giving brief directions to his steward
or serving men concerning the ale butts to
be broached, and the ox to be roasted
whole by noon; now chucking some
bright-cheeked demure looking damsel
under the chin, with a light laugh; till all
pronounced him the most affable and
kindest-hearted landlord in the county,
and augured years of peace and comfort
under his patriarchal sway.

But it was acting all—sheer acting!—
natural acting indeed, and such as might

have imposed on the shrewdest judge of
human nature; and for this reason—that
Edward Hale but enacted, at that time,
what would have been his own instinctive,
natural conduct at another, had his
mind been at ease, and his thoughts disengaged;
and even while he was thus
acting, he was almost if not entirely unconscious
of the fact; for he was not a
hypocrite—not even a dissembler—,
though full many a gay licentious vice
might have been laid with justice to his
charge, he never had committed any very
serious, or at least any premeditated wrong
—and was not, in the least degree, a hardened
or habitual sinner. But now all the
worse portions of his nature were aroused
within him.

Voluptuous by nature, and not, perhaps,
disinclined to sensuality, his attention had
been struck at first sight by the singular
beauty of Rose Castleron; and a keen, although
vague desire of possessing her had
occupied his mind for a moment. A little
thought, however, had quickly brought
him back to his better senses; and while
he was thus fluctuating between the influences
of his good and evil genii, a single
admonition from a wise and sincere friend
would have drawn the black drop from
his heart. But in the place of the sage adviser,
Edward had met the tempter. The
question which he asked of his ill-disposed
gamekeeper, in curiosity, and from the
want of any other interesting topic, had
been so answered by that artful man as to
inflame the nascent passions of his master;
and, by creating a doubt of Rose's
mental purity, to palliate to his mind the
offence which he soon began to meditate
against her.

Twofold was the design of Eversley—
first, and most prominently, he desired, by
basely pandering to the evil qualities of
the young baronet, to gain such an ascendency
over his mind as might contribute
to his own advancement—second, to
wreak his vengeance on a girl who had
rejected his addresses, and on the man
who had won the love of her whom he
once courted. With his heart burning yet
at the hints and instigations of that bad
servant, he had been thrown into the
whirl and vortex of licentious merriment
which characterized the conversation of
his companions; and thus his passions
were excited, and his dormant vanity
aroued, until by degrees he worked himself
into a resolute determination to make
Rose Castleton his victim and his mistress.

It was on this account that he walked
with an absent mind among his shouting
peasantry; uneasy that he could not discover
the object of his burning passion,
and unwilling to inquire her whereabouts,
lest he should prematurely wake suspicion.

Suddenly, as he passed the May-pole,
and neared the hawthoru bush and pastoral
throne beneath it, his glad eye fell
upon the rustic beauty. She had been
chosen Queen of the May, and sat on high,
surrounded by the prettiest of the village
maidens, upon the grassy seat—her bright
eye sparkling even more brightly than its
wont, with gratified ambition—her dark
cheek flushed with the quick lustre of
successful vanity.

A crown of gorgeous flowers had now
supplanted the humble cottage bonnet,
and many a dewy bud was mingled with
her long curled tresses; the modest kerchief
that had veiled her sloping shoulders
and fair neck was gone, and was but insufficiently
replaced by a gay wreath
which crossed her bosom like a baldric
and twined around her waist A tall
white lily, meet sceptre for so beautiful a
queen, graced her right hand, as with
young artless mirth she issued her commamds
to the blithe crowd around her.

Why does her cheek so suddenly turn
pale—why flush to so hot a crimson?
Alas! poor maid! her eye met Edward
Hale's, as he drew nigh, and again noted
the strong and passionate expression of
delighted admiration, which it had noted
once before. And yet she loved Frank
Hunter—ardently, truly loved him! And
yet—and yet—oh woman! woman! well
said the great Magician of the North, noting
thy changeful mood, well did he paint
thee—

for thou, Rose Castleton, loving—most
truly and most singly loving—Frank Hunter,
and caring nothing for Sir Edward, all
for a poor brief triumph of thy sex's passion,
and therewithal to punish Frank for
his short jealous fit that morning, didst
meet the eye of the young baronet, with
that half bold, half bashful glance of thine
—half innocent, half conscious—that made
him fancy thee half won already—made
him strain every nerve to win thee.

Fair face and graceful form, and eloquence
so warm and wily, as never peasant
maiden listened to without dread
peril, and rare skill in the mazes of the
dance, and sumptuous garb, and dignity,
and rank! Beware! beware! Rose Castleton.

All day he danced with her upon the

green; his gay companions selecting for
their partners the prettiest three of her attendant
nymphs, and, like Sir Edward,
monopolizing them the live-long day—
and at the noonday feast she sat beside
him, her little heart high fluttering with
vanity and pleasure and ambition.

She had listened to his vows of love,
how delicately syllabled to her fond foolish
ear—his arms had been about her
waist—his lips had snatched a kiss before
they parted—and she had promised too—
promised to meet him in the Monk's coppice,
ere the moon set the following night
—and yet, weak fool! she dreamed not
that she did any real wrong—and laid the
flattering unction to her soul, that she
would forgive Frank soon—when she had
made him soundly jealous. Beware! Rose
Castleton, beware! Heaven succor thee!
or thou art but a lost one!

6. CHAPTER VI.

The moon rose bright and broad behind
the castle hill, and poured its full flood of
lustre over the tented meadow, whereon
the revels and the dances of the yeomanry
were still kept up with unabated spirit,
long after the young lord of the manor
and his guests had retired from the scene
of sylvan merriment.

Meanwhile, a ruddy light began to
shine out of the oriel windows of the old
hall, showing that mirth and gaiety maintained
their empire within, as steadily as
without the hospitable walls of the proprietor.

The supper room was a fine old fashioned
chamber, wainscoted and ceiled with
dark English oak, polished so brightly that
the walls reflected every object almost as
distinctly as a crystal mirror. The monotony
of the black woodwork was relieved
by a rich cornice, round the summit of
the walls, of flowers and fruits and arabesques,
highly gilt and burnished; the
surbase and the panels were surrounded
with workmanship of the same kind, as
were the posts and lintels of the doors, the
chimney-piece, and the frames of several
large Venetian looking-glasses that hung,
one in each angle of the room, which was
an oblong ocragon, reaching from the
floor to the roof. The floor, where it was
not covered by a fine Turkey carpet, was
polished till it was as bright and almost as
slippery as ice; the curtains and the furniture
were of ruby colored velvet, laid
down with broad gold lace; and, when it
is taken into consideration that there were
above fifty large wax lights in lamps and
chandeliers of cut glass with many pendants,
so disposed in every part of the
hall that it was nearly as light as day, nothing
could easily be imagined more grand
and striking in the shape of decoration.

The table was spread with its snow-white
drapery, and a profusion of cut
glass and silver glittered upon the board,
while the long necks of several flasks of
champagne and Bordeaux, protruding
from the massive coolers, showed that
due preparation had been made to gratify
the palate, as well as to delight the eye.

Supper was served, and so well was the
household of the young baronet organized,
that all the guests were loud and sincere
in their commendation of his wines, his
cookery, his whole menage; and Spencer,
the fastidious spoiled child of the world,
privileged to find fault with anything at
will, whispered aside to St. Maur that his
country friend was by no means to be despised
as an Amphitryon, and immediately
challenging Sir Edward to drink
champagne with him, told him aloud in
his significant, blunt-seeming manner,
“that it would not be his fault if he did
not become an habitué at his house—for
that his bill of fare was as undeniable as
Harbottle's betting book.”

It must not be supposed, however, that
on this, the first evening of the young heir's
majority, he sat down with his three
guests alone to supper. Far from it—the
board was laid with more than twenty
covers, and all the landed aristocracy of
the county were assembled to celebrate
the birth-day, and welcome the arrival of
their young neighbor.

Some few of these were men of the
world and gentlemen in the highest sense
of the word, the venerable Earl of Rochefort
and his three noble sons being among
the number.

The greater part of the company, however,
with the exception of one or two clergymen,
consisted of country gentlemen, as
country gentlemen of that day—for it is of
the time of the last of the unhappy Stuarts
that I am writing—were almost to a man
—that is to say, mere boorish and unlettered
sportsmen, staunch riders after stag
and fox from sunrise to mid-day; staunch
topers at the bottle or the bowl, from afternoon
to midnight!

It had not been deemed wise, or in any
sense advisable, to omit this class of neighbors,
for many reasons; not that Sir Edward
had the least idea either of becoming
one of their number in reality, or of affecting

to do so for the sake of gaining their
votes; for he entertained no thought of
standing for the county, even at a future
period; nor, had he done so, would he
have condescended, therefore, to any indirection.

Something of this sort he slightly hinted
to the old peer who sat on his right, while
apologizing for the rather uproarious mirth
which soon began to prevail at the lower
end of the table; but the good old man
smiled slightly as he answered—

“You do not owe me the least apology,
my dear Sir Edward; since all these gentlemen
are occasionally guests of mine,
likewise, at the castle; and several of them,
though somewhat rough and unpolished,
are very estimable men in their way; good
landlords and good neighbors—upright and
charitable, and true English hearts—proud
to the proud and kindly to the poor. It
may be they are a little addicted to elevating
trifles, which are well enough in their way,
into the serious occupation of a life-time.
But, after all, I do not know which of us
all is free from this weakness! and it is at
least more venial to pass a life-time in
hunting foxes, than in misgoverning nations,
merely for pastime.”

“I agree with you perfectly, my lord,”
said Hale, “and am glad to find that you
do not altogether disapprove offox-hunting,
as I must confess myself rather fond of it
and believe I shall sometimes join my
neighbors when the season comes.”

“Disapprove of it—oh no!” said the
earl, laughing, “so far from that, I was
very near determining to set up a pack
myself some years since, when your respected
father died, Sir Edward—a loss
which you were too young to feel at that
time—and I should probably have done so,
had not our friend, Sir Willoughby de Willoughby,
whom I see you have made your
vice-president for the day, undertaken
them. Oh, no! I think hunting an admirable,
bold, and manly exercise, tending to
hinder our young men from degenerating
into mere city coxcombs, or singing, dancing
dilettanti, like the noblesse of Italy—
I mean of course, if it be not abused. No,
no! indeed; I think there are many pursuits
more blameble than hunting, and
many associates, too, more dangerous than
fox-hunters!”

And, as he spoke the words, his eye
dwelt for a moment on the handsome face
of Capt. Spencer, whose character he
knew thoroughly well by reputation; and
whom he was extremely sorry to see on
terms of intimacy with a young man, to
whom, on many accounts, he wished well;
and of whom he was disposed, on a very
short acquaintance, to think highly.

Sir Edward's eye followed the transient
glance; and, as he thought he had detected
a hidden allusion to himself and his
guests, the ingenuous blood rushed crimson
to his frank face, and he remained for
a moment or two absent and embarrassed.
This was not, however, noticed by the old
nobleman, for he had not made the observation
with reference to Spencer, although
the fitness of it struck him the moment he
had spoken; and, not wishing to assume
the monitor, or to interfere in the affairs of
others, he had cast his eyes upon his plate,
and appeared to be busy only in apportioning
the condiments to his wild fowl.

The direction of the earl's eye had not,
however, been unnoticed by St. Maur, who,
though he did not catch the words uttered,
had no doubt, as he saw the glance followed
by his host's embarrassment, that
something had been said in disparagement
of his friend. Nothing occurred,
however, at the moment, although a sentiment
of dislike was implanted in St. Maur's
breast, which he evinced afterwards by taking
every opportunity of holding up the
old lord to ridicule, as a fanatic and half
fool; and of quizzing his sons behind their
backs unmercifully, as milksops and twaddlers,
scarce one shade better than the
country bumpkins round about them.

Conversation, except among the few persons
at the head of the table, was soon at
an end; bumper toasts circulated fast;
song followed song; and glees and catches
without number were trolled, with far
more energy than melody; and cork after
cork was drawn; and punch-bowl
after punch-bowl was replenished; yet the
interminable thirst of the country squires
seemed all the thirstier for each attempt to
allay it. Before the bounds of decency
had yet been transgressed by any person
present, the butler entered in a pause between
the quick following bursts of song,
bearing two letters on a large silver waiter
—one of which he handed to Capt. Spencer,
and the other to Lord Henry St. Maur,
saying aloud, that they had just been
brought by a servant, who had ridden post
from London, and waited an immediate
answer.

Just at this moment, the Earl of Rochefort,
excused by his age and character
from prolonging the festivities of the board
to morning light, arose to go; begging,
however, that he might not break up the
party, and apologizing for carrying off his
sons—two of whom were about to set out
for London in the morning.

There was, of course, a general movement
of the company, but at Edward
Hale's request they all resumed their seats
—he alone following the earl into the hall
to take leave of him; while, on the same
pretence, but in reality wishing to gain an
opportunity of reading their letters, Spencer
and St. Maur glided out of the room
immediately behind him.

A short time was occupied in hunting up
cloaks, hats, and swords, but it was not long
before the earl's party were all in readiness,
and moving towards the hall door. Just as
they reached it, after taking leave of Sir Edward,
Colonel Hardinge, the peer's eldest
son, saw a tall man, in plain riding dress,
with heavy boots and spurs, and a courier's
leather belt about his waist, standing in
the vestibule; and Spencer, who had been
questioning him about the letters he had
brought, gliding away, as if desirous of escaping
observation.

There was something so singular in the
movement, that the Colonel's attention was
called somewhat particularly to the servant,
and he at once recognised him for a fellow
who had left him, a few months
before, in order to take service with Lord
Asterly. The man had, as it happened,
been rather a favorite servant, and the
colonel, without much consideration, said
as he passed him,

“Ha! Benedict, what has brought you
hither? Are you not living still with my
Lord Asterly?”

“Yes, colonel,” answered the man,
quickly, and quite off his guard; and then
stammering, and appearing a good deal
embarrassed—“that is to say, colonel,”
he added, “I have left—I brought letters!”
Hardinge, who had merely spoken for
lack of anything else to do, and without
any great interest in the matter, nodded
only and passed on; but Edward Hale
had caught the words of the servant, and
perceived his obvious confusion; and, as
he returned from escorting the earl to his
carriage, he stopped and asked—

“Did you bring letters for me, my good
fellow?”

“No, sir,” replied the man at once, “I
brought letters for the honorable Captain
Spencer, and my Lord Henry St. Maur!
and I want their answers, if you please,
Sir Edward.”

“From Lord Asterly?” asked Hale, in
astonishment. “Are you Lord Asterly's
man?”

“I was, Sir Edward—but—but” and the
man began again to stutter, and turned
fiery red.

“That will do,” answered the baronet,
passing on—“it does not signify at all;”
and he thought within himself, “that fellow
has been drinking—or, if not, he is a
knave;” and, with his mind a little disturbed,
he re-entered the supper room,
where all was revelry and noise, and loud
uproarious glee. Spencer and St. Maur
had not yet returned into the room; but
Percy Harbottle, who had contrived already
to render himself very popular with
the good-hearted country gentlemen,
called to him as he came in—

“Come, Ned Hale, come—now that
your steady friends have left us, let us set
to work instantly; we are bound, I must
say to you, in honor, to drink all of these
gentlemen under the table, without any
more delay—for they have had the audacity
to challenge us to the test, and to talk
of us Christ-church men as if we were
mere milksops. Come, order some mulled
Burgundy, and let us fall on gallantly.”

“Certainly! certainly!” replied Hale—
and muttering to himself, “for this time,
at least, there is no help for it, I suppose,”
he resumed his chair, and the supper
party soon degenerated into a wild and
frantic orgie—through which Hale and
Harbottle sustained their parts with more
success than either had anticipated; for,
whether it was that their young and unbroken
constitutions offered better resistance
to the wine they swallowed than
the enfeebled systems of the inveterate
topers, or that their quietness of manner,
and comparative abstinence during the
early part of the evening, gave them an
advantage, certain it is, that while reveller
after reveller fell from his chair, and was
carried, or staggered out of the room to
be thrust into his carriage, or conveyed to
bed in a state nearly approaching to insensibility,
the young men were by no
means even seriously affected by the liquor
they had drunk; and, when they had seen
the last guest safely carried to his chamber,
they walked, with feverish brows
indeed, and quivering nerves, and blood
unduly heated, into the drawing-room,
where they found St. Maur and the Captain
playing, with perfect coolness, at
picquet, and sipping some strong coffee,
which Spencer urged them to take as a
sovereign remedy against the effect of
over-drinking.

Edward Hale poured himself out a cup
of coffee, and then fixing his eyes quietly
on St. Maur's face, asked him in a tranquil
voice.

“Was your letter from the Asterlys, St.
Maur?”

“No!” answered St. Maur, steadily,
“three tierce majors, captain, and the
quatorze of aces, count fourteen.”

Spencer looked up quickly, in utter astonishment
at the absurd and reekless
falsehood of his friend; but not the smallest
sign of wonder was visible in his composed
manners, or on his inscrutable and
impassive features. But he replied at
once, eager if possible to repair the evil
which he foresaw from St. Maur's injudicious
denial—a denial which he knew
must sooner or later be discovered, if it
was not so already.

“Nor I, Sir Edward, nor I, either—from
the Asterlys—inasmuch as they are Asterlys
no longer—for that I suppose is what
Henry means; since I saw him get a letter
from the people you mean, at the very
moment I got mine—which certainly is
from her spiteful ladyship; and a very
pretty piece of spite it is too! considering
that one would have expected her to be in
a better humor.”

The wonder which the self-possessed
and cold-blooded man of the world had
kept down so perfectly, positively beamed
from every feature of St. Maur's face, as
he heard this avowal, which appeared
quite as incomprehensible to him as did
his falsehood to the other; who, by one of
those marvellous contradictions which we
sometimes discover in the characters of
men, though he would have done almost
any other evil thing in the whole world,
wonld not have told a lie to save his life.

Astonished as he was, however, he saw
the utter inutility of trying to carry the
deception out as he had intended. So
with a loud and boisterous laugh, he cried
out, “Oh! fie, you blab! You mar-sport!
You have spoiled all my fun. Why did
you not stick to it, Spencer?”

“I never say the thing that is not, even
in fun!” replied the other gravely; and as
he spoke he met a glance of approbation
beaming from Hale's clear eye, and noted
it; and determined to turn the feeling
which it indicated to his purpose. This of
course passed as quick as lightning; and
at the same moment St. Maur said, for
Spencer's shaft had pierced deeply.

“Nor I, nor I, Captain Spencer, but
your words do not apply; for I said the
thing that is—the true thing!—I did not
get a letter from the Asterlys.”

“True, true!” replied the Captain with
a smile, “my remark was uncivil and inappropriate.
Excuse it.”

“But gentlemen, gentlemen,” interposed
Hale, laughing and yet puzzled, “why am
I to be left in the basket? how is this, you
speak truth to the ear and riddles to the
sense? The Earl of Asterly—”

“Is Earl of Asterly no longer,” answered
Spencer. “It has pleased his most
gracious majesty James by the Grace of
God, for reasons which I suppose he and
his ministers know—for I am sure nobody
else does—to create his dull earlship Marquis
of Beverley; so now I suppose he will
be duller, and more pompous, and more
utterly intolerable than ever.”

“Indeed, Marquis of Beverley? and
news, captain?—”

“Is from the new made marchioness. I
cannot show it to you, Sir Edward. Ladies'
letters you know—but I wish I could,
for it is capital—capital!”

“Strange, strange!” thought Edward
Hale within himself, although he gave his
thoughts no utterance; “strange that I
should have heard nothing of the matter.”

But aloud he only said—“Does her ladyship
mention anything of Lord Arthur's
whereabouts? I hope and in fact
expected that he would have been here
to-day? Does she mention him at all?”

“Not a word, not a word about him,”
replied Spencer. “Her ladyship is not, I
fancy, the most anxious or affectionate of
mothers! By heaven! I repique you, St.
Maur, Yes, I repique you—three of my
points! twelve for my four tierce majors?
fourteen for my four aces! fourteen for
my four kings! fourteen for my four
queens! sixty for the repique! thirteen I
gain on the cards in playing, and forty for
the capot! a hundred and seventy in all.
I never saw that stroke happen before. I
doubt if it ever did! but it is just, I will
bet ten to one. Will you bet, Harbottle?
No? Well, good night!—it is late; good
night.”

7. CHAPTER VII.

That same night there had been a gay
and sumptuous ball in London, at the
prime minister's. The king had himself
honored it with his presence for an hour
or two; and all that was gay and witty,
great and beautiful, wise, noble, or in any
way distinguished, had been assembled
round the monarch's person. Nothing
could possibly have been more brilliant in
the shape of a fête, nothing at the same
time more magnificent and merry.

But the ball had come to an end, as all
earthly pleasures will, even the purest and
the most enduring; and once ended had
left the heart full of bitterness and ashes,
or at the best vacant and exhausted. The
guests had departed to their homes, to
abuse one another, and criticise, as it might

be, the ostentation or the meanness of
their entertainers. The crash of carriages
and the din and quarrelling of drunken
servants had subsided into stillness; the
lights were extinguished in the ball-room;
the flowers were fading on the wall; the
tables were strewn with the relics of the
splendid supper; and who was now the
happier, for the wild gaiety, the lavish
luxury, the vast expanse!

In a large airy bed chamber situated in
the corner of a stately house in Spring
Gardens, the newly created marquis's, the
Lady Fanny Asterly was sitting by an open
window that overlooked the beautiful and
quiet Thames, pensive and melancholy,
and undressed, as if for bed; yet she sat
there as she had sat for about an hour,
and taken no thought of the time, nor
dreamed of lying down since she dismissed
her woman.

That evening she had been the beauty
of the ball-room, the admired of all men,
the observed of all the observers. Adulations
had flowed into her ears in one continuous
stream of silvery music; homage
the most devoted, attentions such as must
gratify every female heart, even when
those who tender them are but regarded
lightly, had been paid her on all sides.

Even the monarch had remarked her
charms with an observant eye, and struck
with her graceful manners and rare beauty,
had desired that she should be presented
to him. Beauty could have no greater
triumph than Fanny Asterly's had met at
that high festival. Nor, while the triumph
lasted, had she been insensible to something
akin to gratified ambition, to the high
perilous excitement of successful vanity,
and conscious superiority.

Her cheek had flushed with a warmer
and more bright carnation; her eye had
beamed more exultingly than its wont, as
she swam through the mazes of the
voluptuous dance, the cynosure of every
eye; and heard the stifled hum of admiration
which followed her steps everywhere—that
hushed and sincere applanse,
paid by the heart to loveliness, which every
woman understands, and to which she
who is insensible, can scarcely be called
woman. Greater or less it may be, but
not genuine, very woman—not that sweet
fascinating compound, whose very weakness
is so far more adorable than any
strength of mind or purpose; whose very
virtues are so much made up from, and
complicated with; those weaknesses, that
you can scarcely destroy one without
throwing down the other; whose very
love of pleasing and thirst for admiration
are perhaps half the secret of the
pleasure which she inspires—the admiration
which she wins from half reluctant
reason.

And Fanny Asterly was not insensible,
nor yet ungratified—for she was indeed all
woman—sweet, gentle, innocent, and amiable;
yet in her every phase of thought, in
her every fault, her every charm, a very,
very woman. Yes! she had been pleased,
delighted, almost intoxicated by the events
of that evening; yet now, though she had
not one thought or deed for which she
could reproach herself with justice, it
was with no sense of pleasure that she recurred
to the events of the ball.

She felt annoyed and angry with herself
that she shoutd have been pleased and
amused by such frivolous folly; she fancied
that she had been guilty of a sort of
half infidelity to Edward Hale, in suffering
herself to listen to the flatteries, and to be
pleased with the attentions of the young
cavaliers of the court of James.

“And this is his birth-day, too—this is
the very day on which, one little year ago,
he plighted me his faith, and we exchanged
rings in the linden avenue at
Asterly. Dear little ring—” and she raised
her finger to her lips, and kissed the senseless
gift of her lover's affection—“dear little
ring, how I love you—how I wish that
he were with me here who gave you to
me a year since; and he, I doubt it not,
he hath been thinking of me all this night;
while I, false girl, have been listening
and smiling, as if I had forgotten—but no!
no! Edward, Edward—” she went on, becoming
more excited as she gave vent to
her feelings—“it is not so—it is not. I
am true—true to you in my heart of
hearts, Edward! There is not, in my
most secret soul, dear Edward, one
thought which I would hide from thee—
one thought which I would hesitate to
tell—one thought on which thou wouldst
not smile thine approbation, even as, I
doubt not, in thy spirit there is not one
passing fancy which should raise a blush
or call up a frown on my cheek or brow,
did I know it.”

Alas! for the pure confidence of innocentand
guileless womanhood. Unsullied
herself as the virgin snow, her heart and
mind an unsoiled sheet, as it were, of
parchment, until love had inscribed there
one foundly cherished name, she never
doubted that he on whom she had set the
priceless jewel of her inestimable love
was spotless as herself from any taint of
voluptuous and sensual sin—nothing that
she could have heard, scarce anything
that she could have seen, were it not in
his own handwriting, or from his own

tongue, would have induced her to believe
that at this very moment he was
coveting if not loving the charms of another
woman.

Alas! alas! how does the boasted virtue
of the most virtuous and moral of
us men shrink into measureless vice,
when compared with the purity, the trust,
the truth of an innocent and loving woman.

Edward Hale was no worse, nay, he
was far less evil than the generality of
young men of his age, at that, or perhaps
at any day. Yet, troth-plighted as he
was to that sweet girl, he dreamed not
that he did her any wrong in dallying with
other women, in winning their affections,
in defrauding them of their virtues, so
long as he preserved his own heart and
his own affections in allegiance to her empire;
and by a sophistry not uncommon,
though most absurd and inconsistent, he
justified himself in this breach both of purity
and truth by saying to himself that
by her father's decision a year was yet to
pass before she could yet be his wife.
And she, while his heart was afire with
unholy passions for the betrothed wife of
another, and his brain busy with intrigues
whereby to work her ruin, she, in her exquisite
purity of soul, was accusing herself
of faithlessness, and almost weeping
over her own imaginary delinquencies, because
she had danced a few harmless
dances, and listened to a few unmeaning
compliments, and perhaps, at the most,
endured a casual pressure of the hand
from some gay coxcomb, whose attentions
had no meaning beyond the present.

But she was sad at heart—the excitement
of the last hours had ceased, and
the cold re-action had ensued, as is so frequently
the case, more painfully than the
bygone sensations had been pleasurable.
She was sad, almost sick at heart.

The moon was shining broadly into the
tall French windows of her chamber, for
she was near her full, and the skies were
almost as light as at noonday, except when
some great cloud came sweeping over the
bright disc, and veiling everything for a
few moments in clear and almost luminous
obscurity, when compared to the darkness
of a moonless midnight. And still she sat
there watching the vast shadows creeping
over the river's breast, and over the silent
streets, and drawing fancied auguries from
their strange forms and ghost-like movements.

After awhile she pressed her hand on
her heart and said, in low, mournful
tones, “I know not what it is—I know
not what ails me! I do wish that I had
seen Serena this morning, or that I could
see Arthur now—I have no reason, it is
true, for any fear or apprehension—yet I
do fear everything! Oh! how unhappy
I am—oh! how unhappy? There seemed
to fall a shadow on my heart, a chill upon
my spirit, as I saw that Sir Henry Davenant
pass by the window, with his bitter
and sarcastic smile—and he has seemed
to haunt me ever since! I met him twice
when I was walking out this morning in
the park, and both times he sneered at
me with his horrid supercilious courtliness
—and then, this evening at the ball, his
cold snake-like eye was never withdrawn
from my face for a moment; whenever I
stopped in the dance, or turned my head
from hearing some gay speech, I was
sure to catch sight of him. He put me in
mind of the skeleton the old Egyptians
used to place at their banquets as a ghastly
admonition. Whenever I beheld him,
my heart stood still within me; and my
blood seemed to run cold. Why can it be
that I so loathe that man? Can it be, that
the soul is prescient of its secret foes, and
is inexplicably warned against those that
shall work it woe?—No! no!—It cannot
be—and yet—I do believe—I do—that he
will one day injure me.” And she paused
for a long time, and sat still, thinking
deeply; but almost unconscious that she
was thinking at all, so wildly and fantastically
did her thoughts come and go; at
last she gave a sort of start; and exclaimed,—“Yes!
there is something going
on—there is something wrong and evil
plotting against us, I am sure. My
mother—I observed my mother's eye
many times to-day, fixed on me and not
lovingly.—She does not love me!—and
yet, my God, my God, what have I ever
done, or failed to do, that she should not?
She never loved me; never liked Edward!
alas! alas! and my father, though kind,
is not energetical.—Oh! Arthur, Arthur,
my dear brother, why are you not here,
why are you not at hand to help and comfort
your unhappy sister?—She wrote to-day
to St. Maur, and to Spencer, at his
house at Arrington, and not one word to
him! To Spencer—for what can she
write to him; but for evil—evil, it must
be evil! And oh! why will he associate
himself with comrades such as Lord Henry,
and this Captain Spencer, of whom no
man or woman had ever yet one good
word to say—whose very glance is poison!—Oh!
Edward—Edward—did you
but know—could you but know what
agony it gives me.—But no! he knows it
not—he cannot know it!—Nor can I send
him word at all, nor even summon him to

town, unless my brother should come
back!” For a few minutes she was again
silent, but then rising from her chair suddenly,
she fell down upon her knees, and
prayed fervently and long; and her meek
supplication finished, stood up refreshed
and strengthened, and feeling something
like a ray of heavenly consolation shining
upon her heart.

“Well, it is very late,” she said; “I
will to-bed, to-bed! but, I fear, not to
sleep!” and drawing the curtain over the
window, through which the moonlight
fell too brilliantly and full upon her couch,
she walked across the room to reach
something from a table, covered with
books and drawings, and a few stands of
flowers, before she lay down to rest.

She had taken up the article, whatever
it was, of which she was in search, and
was in the act of turning away from the
table, when her eye fell quite suddenly,
and as if by accident, upon a neatly folded
note, which she did not remember to have
seen when she came into the room, on
her return from the minister's ball. She
took it up; it was unopened, and secured
with a seal of red wax, bearing a deep impression,
an antique head of Minerva.
Thinking to herself that something must
have been lying over it when she looked
upon the table as she re-entered her room,
she walked with the note to the window,
in order to read it by the aid of the clear
moonlight.

Though she was very anxious, she
knew not why, to arrive at the contents;
and though she half prognosticated something
of evil tidings, she yet, as we often
do, even when we are the most impatient,
turned it again and again, to examine the
seal and superscription, and conjecture
from whom it possibly could have come,
when in all probability by opening it she
would have learned the whole in a moment.

Her hand literally shook as she broke
the seal, and her eyes swam, as if dazzled
by excess of light, so that some moments
passed before she could fix the letters.
At last, by a great effort, she composed
herself, and read as follows:

“One, who has seen and known the
Lady Frances Asterly, almost from her
cradle to the present day, although she
knows him not, nor has ever seen him—
who has watched her growth, daily, nay
almost hourly, from the wild buoyant
days of thoughtless infancy, through the
sweet spring of girlhood, up to her present
plenitude of glorious beauty—who has
marked every growing charm both of
mind and body—who has noted her fea
tures, full of rare inborn music, her form
ripe in most perfect loveliness—who has
read her soul, and knows it to be pure
and bright and spotless as the spirit of the
new-born babe, fresh from the hands of
the Creator—who loves her with an affection
surpassing that of a father, because,
unlike a father's, it is divested of all
prejudice, and arises only from his sense
of her exquisite and peerless beauty,
beauty both of mind and body. One who,
had he the means of altering his mission
and changing his existence, would be her
guardian spirit—one who has many times
already stood, though she knew it not,
between her and many an earthly peril—
writes now once more to warn, and if
possible to save her. Mark his words, innocent
and lovely one, mark his words;
and, although the task be a hard and bitter
one, believe them and be warned.
And oh! above all, fancy not that he who
writes these lines, has any secret or unworthy
object—that he is a resentful rival,
a discarded suitor, an avenger of
wrong done—”

“For I am none of these. Before thou
wert born I was old, wronged, and
wretched. It was a fate, a wondrous
fate, that interested me in thy birth, and
it has been my fate ever to cross thy path,
till I am, as it were, wound up in thy well
being. I had a daughter once, innocent
as thou art, and almost as beautiful—she
heard, but would not heed my warning—
she wedded, was deceived, lived wretched,
and died young, young and heart-broken,
as though wilt live, and die also,
Fanny, if thou attend not this my warning.

“He unto whom thy troth is plighted is
not what thou deemest him, not what
could make thee happy. Even now his
house is full of revelry and riot, debauchery
and—what it befits thee not to hear
of. His friends and chosen comrades, the
worst, the most notorious of the world's
wicked devotees. Beware! beware! ere
it shall be too late!

“Be warned by my words, Fanny; but,
even warned, I ask you not to act upon
them, until convinced that they are true
—true to the letter, or if lacking truth,
lacking it only in that they come not up
to the full measure of his wildness, his
unworthiness, his falsehood.

“Reject this warning, and you are lost
for ever!”

Eagerly she devoured every word of
this strange wild epistle. She read it and
re-read it, and in her own despite she felt
that it had left a sting in her soul. It was
in vain she said to herself, “Tush! it is

but an ordinary slander! a vile thing composed
by a wretch who dares not sign
his name to the emanations of his own
guilty mind.” It was in vain; she could
not so banish it for there was something in
the whole style and wording of the letter,
in the antique and flowery phraseology,
in the obscurity and mystery in which the
writer was shrouded, in the dark sounding
prophecies, and the strange emphasis of
the warning, that made it obviously different
from a commonplace anonymous letter.

The character of Lady Fanny was naturally
somewhat poetical and romantically
inclined; and on this, doubtless, the writer
had calculated in framing his artful and
insidious missive. It happened, moreover,
that the very tone of thoughts in
which she was indulging herself at the
time, harmonized singularly with the
spirit of the letter, and of the warning it
contained. She had been secretly deploring
the connexion of her betrothed husband
with the men whom she knew to be
his companions at this moment; and lo!
the letter spoke, not in dark hints, but in
open language and spoke, as she believed
truly, their characters in the world's
estimation; and when the world does indeed
condemn unanimously, it is rare that
it condemns unjustly.

Besides, did it not challenge investigation?
Did it not recommend inquiry? It
could not, therefore, be a mere baseless
slander. Oh! of a truth it was very
plausible! A very cunning spirit had devised
that shaft, had steeped it in the very
poisons which with a devilish foresight it
knew would be the most likely to corrode
and canker that pure heart; and a strong
hand, and practised in the works of evil,
when the unguarded moment had been
duly chosen, sped it with sure aim to the
mark, to rankle there, and blight the very
soul of confidence.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

It was not until a late hour, late at least
for those primitive days, that Edward Hale
awoke on the morning following the
revels of the first of May; and when he
did awake it was with a fevered frame
and an aching head. Some one or other,
I forget who, has said that a man ought to
get drunk every now and then for the sake
of the serious thoughts, the earnest promises
of reformation, and the very thorough
process of remorse and repentance which
he goes through on the morning succeeding
to a hard debauch. Without entering
into the morality of this question at all, or
inquiring whether, even if the salutary effects
be not overstated, a man ought to do
ill that good may come of it, it cannot be
disputed that the frame of mind in which
a man is left on the subsidence of that
violent excitement, conjoined with the
discomfort of the body, is such as to lead
him naturally to grave and serious reflection.

And so it was, in this instance, with the
young baronet. He was not by nature at
all disinclined to calm, and, at times, almost
solemn meditation; although the
character of his reveries was for the most
part rather imaginative and romantic than
contemplative or moral. Although gay
and joyous, and endowed largely with
those high spirits which flow from youth
and health, unchecked by present ills, or
presages of future sorrow, he was rather
of a poetical temperament, and that leads
oftentimes to a reflective mood.

This morning in particular, after he had
arisen from his bed and dressed himself
partially, he sent away his valet, and began
to ponder seriously on the occurrences
of the past day.

As he sat in his armed chair, partially
leaning on the sill of the open window,
looking over the green meadow whereon
still stood the tall May-pole, although the
giddy crowd who had made all the space
around it so gay on the preceding morning
were now dispersed about their ordinary
avocations, his thoughts reverted instantly
to the beautiful queen of the May. At
this calm season of the day, ere the sun
had yet heated the earth, while the air
came in fresh and dewy from the cool
woods and grassy meadows, and fanned
his brow with its fresh breath, the feverish
excitements and hot passions of the
past day seemed out of place, unhallowed,
and distasteful. Better things were at
work within him; better thoughts were
aroused by the comparison involuntarily
drawn between that innocent and tranquil
daybreak, and the wild revel of the past
night.

He was a different man this morning,
and the pictures which his mind conjured
up before him of beautiful Rose Castleton,
were not such as he had seen through the
medium of glowing Burgundy. He thought
not of her now, with her voluptuous figure
swaying and bending in the dance, its
every wavy line instinct with hidden passion;
of her white bosom, all too much
exposed by the disordered kerchie grow

ing and throbbing in soft tumult; of her
eyes now beaming bright with gratified
ambition, now swelling, swimming, languishing
in amorous dimness; of her
sweet pouting lips; her balmy breath fluttering
and panting between surprise and
half offended modesty; of her honeyed
kiss; of her rare form struggling in his
embrace, and yet half willing to be detained,
as he snatched the kiss from her lips,
and the rose bud from her bosom; of the
low, silvery, faltering voice in which she
promised to meet him the next evening in
the Monk's coppice! No! these were not
the pictures which his fancy this morning
set before him. Far, far from it. He
saw her weeping, disconsolate, and pensive
at her spinning wheel, in some such
touching attitude as that wherein the great
German painter has given a form and body
to the rare spiritual Margaret of the great
German poet.[1] He saw her with every
vestige of color vanished from her wan
cheek, every spark quenched in her bright
eye; all the soft roundness of her lovely
form wasted away and lost. He saw her
kneeling at the village shrine with clasped
hands and streaming eyes, while the
stern fiend remorse was whispering in her
ear to despair and die. He saw her prostrate
at her grey-headed father's feet,
clasping his knees and supplicating him
to pardon his lost child—he saw the
clenched hand, and the knitted brow, and
the indignant eye of the relentless father,
driving forth the dishonored girl, who had
brought shame on his grey hairs—he saw
the rude rout of the village, the coarse
brutal rabble hooting the harlot through the
long sunny street, and hallooing for the
beadle and the ducking stool! He saw
her by the still pool in the dark woodland,
where the stream has no ripple on its
surface, and the black waters tell of its
unusual depth, kneeling and striving
vainly to syllable a prayer for mercy before
that awful plunge which should remove
her, and for ever, from the cold
sneers of the ruthless world! He saw her
drawn out by the shuddering hands of
superstitious rustics, cold, wan, dishevelled,
dead—dead, by her own rash act—
her own! say rather his! his whose false
love had driven her to the brink of that
abyss whose bottom is perdition!

All this he saw, or seemed to see, in
the delineations of his vivid fancy; he
saw, and shuddered at the strength of his
own imaginings. “And shall I,” he
said to himself, half aloud, “shall I, for
the poor gratification of a foul sensual
passion, shall I do this thing? For a few
hours, or a few days of fierce and fiery
pleasure, shall I pollute so fair a temple, a
temple reared by the hands of our common
God and Father, to be the dwelling
of as fair a spirit? shall I, for any temporal
delight, perhaps consign her to eternal
ruin? God forbid! God forbid!” and he
stood up in the intensity of his feelings, for
he had worked himself up to a state of considerable
excitement, and walked for several
minutes to and fro the room, strengthening
his good resolves at every turn, and
manning the fortress of his heart against
the assaults of the Evil One, till he at last
satisfied himself that he was again master
of himself, that he could see and converse
with the country beauty, without incurring
any danger, or feeling any undue admiration
of her charms; and finally he determined
that with a magnanimity like that
of Scipio, he would at once bring about
her marriage with young Hunter, and give
her the lease of the home farm for a dowry.
This honorable resolution taken, well
pleased with himself, conscious of honorable
feelings, and proud of his own integrity,
superior to its first very grave temptation,
he sat down once again to reflect
on the perfections of his legitimate lady
love, and anticipate in imagination his future
marriage with the charming Lady
Fanny.

For one whose whole life had been
but one scene of success and pleasure, who
had scarce known, as yet, the meaning of
the word sorrow, so little had any touch of
it come near to him, Edward Hale did truly
and sincerely love Frances Asterly. It was
not her beauty only, nor her sweet manners
that had won him; but her heart, her
mind—the purity and truthfulness of the
one, the kind, affectionate, and cordial nature
of the other! And when a man sets
his love on the qualities of the intellect and
of the heart—the qualities that are immortal
and endure for ever in never fading and
undying glory—and not upon the qualities
of the poor body, that speedily are but as
grass cut down and cast into the oven—
small risk is there of his loving unworthily,
or of his changing easily! For, in a word,
so to love is a proof of character, higher
than ordinary men possess, in the lover,
and a guarantee for the existence of unusual
qualifications in the object beloved.

And, in both points, this was true of the
present case; for Sir Edward Hale was,
beyond doubt, a person of qualifications
and mental character far above the standard
average of men. It might be doubtful,
hitherto, whether that character would

turn our powerful for good or for evil in the
end—whether those qualifications would
serve to adorn and decorate a virtuous and
honorable life, or to lend a false and meteorie
splendor to an irregular and disorderly
career; but there could be no doubt that,
whichever way the wheel of his destinies
should turn, in that course he would be
found conspicuous and above his fellows,
either in virtue or in vice.

Thus far at least, the better spirit
had prevailed; and, as he finished dressing
himself, which he did unassisted
by his valet, his heart was more at ease,
and he was in truth both a happier and a
better man than he had been on the previous
morning; and it was with a gay and
joyous exterior, covering a self-satisfied
and tranquil confidence in his own good
intentions, that he descended the grand
staircase to join his companions in the
breakfast parlor.

Some short time, however, before he was
ready to go down, he was not a little surprised
to hear the sound of voices on the
terrace below his windows; the rather as
he knew of old that St. Maur was habitually
a late riser—rarely displaying the glories
of his well decorated person to profane
and vulgar eyes until high noon—and
he had no reason for suspecting that the
gay captain was more matutinal than his
friend. He looked out of the window,
therefore, wondering who these could be
that were astir already; and yet more to
his surprise, he found that the very men
whom he would almost have sworn had
not yet turned themselves over to take
their second nap, were walking to and fro
upon the terrace, pausing every now and
then, and talking earnestly in a low voice,
as if they were unwilling that their words
should be overheard.

This Hale did not observe at the time,
but afterwards events occurred which often
led him to reflect on various things which
passed that morning; and then he recollected
this, and recollected, moreover, that
when they first saw him leaning out of the
window looking at them, there was a sort
of consciousness if not embarrassment;
about St. Maur's air and manner, indicating
that he was, in some sort, the subject
of their discourse.

He did notice, however, and not without
surprise, that they were both fully dressed,
their periwigs arranged and powdered
with careful nicety, and the whole of their
attire showing, by its scrupulous precision,
that they must have been on foot some
hours, and that their toilets had been performed
not negligently nor in haste.

Hale waited for a moment without speak
ing, until they came directly under his
windows, when he dropped a rose-bud
which chanced to be lying on the table—
the same which he had snatched from the
bosom of Rose Castleton in the evening—
so that it fell immediately in front of St.
Maur.

He stooped to pick it up from the broad
flag-stones that paved the terrace, and then
cried, as he raised his eyes to the window,
before seeing who it was—

“By George! a fair challenge, be you
who you may, sweet. Ah! you rogue,
you rogue, Ned! so it is you, is it? I
thought it had been some fair dame or
damsel of whom my beaux yeux had made
a conquest. This is a pretty disappointment!
Your ugly phiz, in lieu of black
eyes and cherry cheeks, and I know not
what beside! The devil take you, Ned!
the devil take you!”

“Many thanks to you,” replied Hale,
laughing, “for the warmth of your morning
salutation, which I will not return. I
have to crave your pardon, Captain Spencer,
for playing such a sluggard part, as
host, who ought to have been on foot to
receive my guest. But it seems the mulled
Burgundy made me a more sleepy
night-cap than it did for you!”

“You forget, you forget,” answered
Spencer, “that St. Maur and I did not
double the said night-cap quite so often as
you did, and it sat in consequence less
heavily on us; but pray don't think of
apologizing; we have been amusing ourselves
delightfully here this fine clear
morning, looking about your magnificent
old place.”

“Thank you for saying so,” returned
Hale, “but I fear you could have found
little to amuse you; but I will dress myself
in haste, and come down to you—will
you be so kind in the meantime as to call
for chocolate, and make yourselves quite
at home? After breakfast we will see
what we can do to kill the day. It is not
a good time of the year for country sports,
unless any of you are fishermen; there are
fine trout in the river. But I fancy Mark
can find us a heron or two, and I have a
few cast of fine hawks, if you like to see
a flight; coursing and hunting are of
course out of the question; but I can give
you some capital rabbit shooting in the
fern of the upper deer-park.”

“Oh! I have no doubt we shall do very
well; but make haste, make haste, what
we desire most is your company,” said
the captain, but almost in the same breath,
he added in a half whisper to St. Maur,
“and as our desire will be gratified in a
few moments, we must talk out our talk

at once. What were you saying—oh, yes!
about Harbottle—no, no! that will never
do—he is not at all to be trusted in delicate
matters like these. No, no! leave it
to me, and my life on it, I arrange everything
to your wishes. But after all I cannot
guess, for my soul, why you are so
wild to marry this penniless girl. It is
true, I confess, that she is devilish handsome,
and sprightly looking also; if she
were some fellow's wife now, I could understand
it; but to marry her—to marry
her! Pshaw, pshaw! it is mere boy's
play. If I were you I would let Hale
marry her, nay, help him to her, and then
take her from him; by the Lord, there is a
great game to be played there.”

“Hold, Spencer, hold!” St. Maur interrupted
him, “you forget that you are talking
of a girl whom I seriously intend to
make my wife.”

“Indeed I do not, my good fellow; I
only wish to give you all the good advice
I can beforehand; after she is your wife I
shall remember it, you may be sure—unless
indeed I should take a fancy to her
myself—there is no saying what may happen,
when men marry handsome wives;
a friend's wife now is twice as good as an
acquaintance's, and an acquaintance's as
a stranger's!”

“By heavens! Spencer, you are incorrigible;
I should be hurt and angry with
you, if I did not know that it is only your
wild way of talking, and that you would
not do the things you talk about to win the
world!”

“Oh no,” said Spencer, with a dubious
smile, “not at all, not at all! only, as there
is no saying what may happen, and as I
hate treachery as I do the devil or the
parson; only don't say, if anything should
turn up, that I did not give you fair warning,
Harry.”

St. Maur looked at him for a minute or
two steadily, as if to see whether he was
in earnest, and then said, bursting into a
light laugh—

“You are a sad fellow, but I am not
afraid of you. Well, go on, what is the
whole of your scheme? let us be perfect
in it.”

“Why it seems that this old she devil
has arranged all the preliminaries with
pretty Fan already. She is to be made to
believe Hale a perfect devil of licentiousness,
and so break off the match with
him; when you will have it all your own
way; for there was never a man yet, who,
backed by father and mother, could not
win any girl's love at any time, when her
fancy is disengaged, unless he is a greater
fool than I take you to be. Then she will
be piqued and her vanity wounded in this
case, which will make it easier yet for
you; and if, as you say, she does dislike
you now, that does not hurt your chance
a straw's value; for my own part, when
I want to win a woman, next to her loving
me beforehand, I would choose to
have her hate me! Nothing is so difficult
to deal with as indifference—for they always
go by contraries and extremes—women
do, I mean, Harry; and so if they begin
by hating you, and thinking you a
fiend of darkness, they are pretty sure to
adore you in six weeks, and discover that
you are an angel of light.”

“Yes, yes! that is all very fine—one of
your wiredrawn theories that come to nothing!
However, I do not doubt but I can
win her easily enough if we can set her
against Hale.”

“Well, that is easily done enough, I am
sure. Why here is luck playing into your
very hand. The old woman has laid the
foundation of distrust in her daughter's
heart already; and here is this young baby
half wild now after this country girl—who
by the way is pretty enough to make a
wiser man wild. My only fear was that
she would be too willing. But I have
taken care of that—she will not meet him
to-night, and that will whet his appetite;
then you must play your own part—extol
her beauty, feed his passion as much as
you can; and I will sneer at him—we will
bet high on his success, you for and I
against it! I saw at a glimpse that game-keeper
was a rogue, and I have bought
him; he will help us through anything.
Then I have sent for my lieutenant and a
press gang to be here to-morrow, and we
will screw him up to-night to sign an order
to have Hunter pressed. It is a devil
of a stretch I know; but we who serve
King Jamie to the utmost, know how to
stretch a commission without cracking it;
and we will have him carry off the girl,
and so arrange things that it shall all come
our directly; and so he will be disgraced
in the eyes of all good people, and dished
with lady Fan.”

“Yes, that will do, if we can accomplish
it.”

“If, if!—to the devil with your ifs!—I
tell you it is half accomplished now. I
should not at all wonder, if he have half
repented of his wicked wishes this fine
morning, now that he is maudlin—your
maudlin state is a great virtue breeder!
But I have laid a trap for him that will set
his tinder in a blaze presently. Do you
but play your part well, and talk all day
of her charms, and try to make him jealous
of that fool Harbottle, who is I think

smitten a little with the wench already—
get him to show that if you can—and
now, do not forget to write to Delaval, as
I told you, expressing your surprise at
finding Hale, as he had hinted to you,
such a wild rake and jolly fellow. Invent,
invent! describe his harems and his orgies!
Draw, draw upon imagination, or
if that fail you, look to the Arabian Nights!
But hark you, all in your proper character,
—reckless and rash—no sermonizing, or
you will spoil all. Do you understand?”

“Yes, to be sure; it will be shown—”

“To her cousin, Lady Serena Fortescue,
who will tell her so, that she shall never
doubt the channel. I, too, will write to
Davenant, in a quite different strain, but
to the same effect. I only wish I could
have got him to commit some outrage or
indecency before that puritanical old beast
and idiot, Rochefort; that would have set
him talking.”

At this moment Sir Edward appeared
coming down the steps from the front door
to join them; and at the same time Eversley
passed them going to meet his master,
with a beantiful black greyhound bitch
following at his heel, and a large bunch of
violets in his hand.

“Ha! Master Keeper,” exclaimed Spencer,
as the man went by; “what's in the
wind now?” and he spoke loud, on purpose
that Hale might hear him; and then,
as Eversley turned round to answer him,
he went on—“By George! what a posy
thou hast got there! Here, give it to me,
man, give it to me, and take this guinea
in exchange, for I am mortal fond of
posies.”

“Excuse me, Captain Spencer,” said
the fellow, grinning and pocketing the
guinea which the sailor flung to him;
“excuse me, for I would give it willingly
if it was mine, which it is not; it is a present
I am carrying to master.”

“What's all this? what's all this?” said
the young Lord of the Manor, laughing.
“Why don't you give Capt. Spencer the
flowers, Mark?”

“Nay, nay, Sir Edward, she that gave
them to me desired me to put them in your
own hand, and by the same token she
sent a message, too.”

“She! she!” exclaimed St. Maur; “Spencer,
I'll bet you a rouleau I can put a name
to the she!”

“Done! done!” replied the captain;
“done, that you cannot put the right one.
Whisper it now to me, and we will leave
it to his honor afterwards.”

“Well, then, I say Rose Castleton,” replied
St. Maur, in what was meant to pass
for a whisper, although it reached Ed
ward's ears as plainly as if it had been
uttered in a shout.

“I bide my bet,” said Spencer in the
same sort of whisper; “I shall win it too;
that girl is not to be won so easily—he will
never win her! But come,” he added,
now speaking in his natural tones, “come;
Mercury, it seems, will not deliver his
message in the presence of the assembled
gods, but keeps it for the private ear of
Jove. Let us leave them”—and they moved
off a little way, out of ear-shot, although
they watched every movement of the parties.

They saw the hot blood mount crimson
to the fair brow of the young man as he
received the nosegay and the message;
but it was evident that his face reddened
not with anger, for his eye sparkled and
there was a smile upon his lip as he asked
several questions, to all of which he got
prompt answers from the keeper, who had
been primed already for his part by the
wily plotters, and now played it to perfection.

The conference did not last above five
minutes when Hale turned away, saying—

“Be in the way, after breakfast; for we
will either shoot, or see those new merlins
fly. Canst find us a heron-shaw this fine
morning?”

“I'll warrant you, Sir Edward?”

“Well, we will see anon. Now let us
go to breakfast, gentleman. I think a
broiled turkey's gizzard will suit my stomach
to a turn this morning, for, to speak
truth, I do feel a little squeamish after the
Burgundy. But where is Harbottle? Has
nobody seen Harbottle? Run, Mark, and
send some one to call Mr. Harbottle to
breakfast.”

“But in the meantime, baronet,” said
Spencer, “touching this bouquet, of which
I see you think so well you are wearing it
next to you heart; will you decide our bet,
upon your honor?”

“Is it correct to do so, Captain, when it
concerns a woman?”

“No, if it be a lady—yes! if a country
girl, Sir Edward.”

“I believe you are in the right; the rather
that she seems to me rather a light o'
love. How stands your bet?”

“St. Maur bets that it was Rose Castleton
that sent you the violets. I hold the
opposite.”

“St. Maur has won, captain, it was
she!”

“There, Spencer, there,” cried the
young lord triumphantly, “unbuckle, sailor
man, unbuckle your fat legs; out with
the rouleau.”

Spencer pulled out his purse, and with

apparent reluctance handed to him the
sum which he had lost, saying, as he did
so,

“I must look out for Percy Harbottle,
now for you dare not stand the other bet,
St. Maur.”

“What other bet? what other bet, Captain
Spencer?” answered Lord Henry with
well feigned eagerness, and a little show
of anger. “I do not like such remarks
as these! I stand any bet that any man
dare stand, at least if I see a possibility of
winning it. What bet is it you mean?”

“That he wins her,” answered Spencer,
“that he wins the girl in any reasonable
time; you dare not bet that, St. Maur; but
it does not come within your category—
there is no possibility of your winning it.”

“I will, though, I will!” exclaimed St.
Maur; “I will bet a cool thousand that he
has her living with him as his mistress in
a fortnight.”

“A cool thousand! done! I shall win
that,” said the captain confidently.

They had been all walking together towards
the house, while this conversation,
if conversation it can be called, was going
forward; but now Sir Edward stopped
short, piqued not a little at the sort of undervaluing
way in which Spencer spoke
of his chances with the girl, and trying to
laugh, but evidently a little mortified—

“And why do you think so, Captain
Spencer? Have you so vast an idea of
the girl's virtue?”

“Why, I had rather you would pardon
me. I was in the wrong to speak as I did;
I would rather you would ask me no
more.”

“No, no; speak out. You have said
too much, or too little. I insist on it, that
you let us have the whole. Do you think
her impregnable!”

“Oh dear, no! Far from it, She is
willing enough, any one can see. But you
will excuse me, Sir Edward, I have some
experience in these matters, and I do not
think you are the man.”

“Who then? yourself, perhaps, captain?”
replied Hale, still more piqued by
his answer, although perfectly good humored.

“Oh, no! not myself, upon my word!
though I should like very well to have the
wench in London for a month or so, for she
is a devilish handsome woman, that is certain;
and her slim round figure would show
admirably well in a mazarine blue riding-dress
of the last mode, slashed with gold
colored brocade. By heaven! I think I
can see her now, reming that strawberry
roan Spanish jenet of mine through the
Parks. Heavens! St. Maur, how she would
catch men's eyes. It would be a year's renown
to return to London as her protector.
But I beg your pardon, Sir Edward, for wandering
from your question; no! I assure you
on my honor, that I had not myself in mind
at all, when I spoke. No! I think Percy
Harbottle a likelier man. I saw her look
at him out of the corners of those large
languishing eyes of hers, two or three
times while you were dancing with her.”

“Perhaps you would like, captain,” replied
Hale, assuming a tranquillity which
he did not feel, “perhaps you will like to
bet that she will be Harbottle's mistress in
a week, and not mine, for I intend to try all
means to make her mine.”

“Of course you do,” said St. Maur;
“nobody doubted that—nobody, at least,
who knows you. With the encouragement
you have had, you would be a precions
ninny if you did not. Of course you
will try, and succeed, too. I'll be sworn
of it.”

“I cannot bet that she will be Harbottle's
mistress, for I don't know at all that
he is thinking about her. I would bet—but
no, no! baronet,” he interrupted himself,
“I am your guest, and I don't wish to
win your money. Besides, it is my jesting
that has put you up to the notion. It
would not be fair.”

“To the notion of what?” asked Hale,
very quickly, “put me up to the notion of
what!”

“Of courting this girl, to be sure,” answered
Spencer. “But let us say no more
about it. Come, let us go to breakfast.”

“You forget that I told you yesterday
at Barnsley that my eye was upon her—
you forget—”

“Yes, to be sure he does,” interrupted
St. Maur, “or rather he pretends to forget,
to get off betting. He knows as well as
we do that you will win her.”

“I know nothing of the sort! I know
that he will not.”

“Once again, will you bet?” said Sir Edward,
who was growing almost angry.

“If you insist upon it, yes.”

“I say, then, that I will have her openly
as my mistress within one week from
this day.”

“I understand you perfectly, and take
the converse. For how much?”

“For anything you please, from one to
five thousand.”

“Oh! one—one is enough; for one
thousand be it. It is a bet!”

“Very well, there is an end of that—
then let us go to breakfast; and here
comes Percy Harbottle,” and he took
several quick steps forward in advance of
the rest, to greet him. As he did so

Spencer fell back to St. Maur a pace or
two, and whispered in his ear—

“You stand my lose to him, if I should
lose the bet; as it is most likely that I
shall.”

“Yes, yes! I understand it so,” said
the other, “but come on quickly, or he
will see us whispering together, and suspect
something.”

And overtaking him, they all walked
on together, and entered the breakfast
room, joking and laughing merrily.

9. CHAPTER IX.

Breakfast passed joyously and gaily, no
more allusions were made to the bets,
Spencer carefully avoiding the subject, as
if he thought that he might give offence
by continuing it; but St. Maur and Harbottle
continued to expatiate upon the
charms of Rose Castleton, the felicity of
the man who should have the luck to
gain her, and the certainty of its giving
him the greatest eclat of any one in London,
to produce her in the parks, or at
the theatre, as a part of his menage.

As soon as breakfast was over, while
St. Maur and Spencer excused themselves
for the purpose of writing a few letters,
Edward with Percy Harbottle walked
round the grounds, and visited the stalls,
and the kennels, and the mews of the falcons;
and finally set to amusing themselves
by making the grooms ride the
hunters in succession backward and forward
over a high leaping bar.

While thus employed they were joined
by the others, and the question was put,
how the day was to be spent, until dinner
time.

“Oh! confound dinner!” replied Spencer;
“I hate your regular two o'clock
dinner, it so thoroughly breaks up the
day. Let us go out and hawk or shoot, if
Sir Edward likes my plan, all day; taking
some ale and cold meat with us, and
come home to a good early supper, and
we will have another bout at the Burgundy.
What say you, worthy host of mine?”

“That is a bright thought, and a right
good plan,” answered Hale. “I am like
you; I hate your ceremonious dinner so
early in the day, and I love your extemporaneous
sylvan meal on the green turf,
under the shady trees, or beside some
clear and bubbling runnel.”

“Yes,” answered St. Maur, “or in some
jolly farmer's house, with his pretty
daughter to pour out the ale, and kiss you
behind the door, when the father is looking
the other way.”

A loud laugh followed this characteristic
speech; and then they began to inquire
what should be the order of the day,
and it was speedily decided that they
would shoot rabbits in the park, in preference
to hawking in the meadows, or
fishing in the stream—and Eversley being
called in to name a farm-house situated
conveniently for taking the mid-day meal,
suggested, not altogether unexpectedly to
Edward Hale, nor without having
pocketed beforehand a handsome fee for
his advice, suggested farmer Castleton's.

“Ha! ha! Then we shall see the pretty
Rose again—hey, Ned?” said St. Maur.

“And Percy Harbottle will have a
chance of entering the lists, if he will,”
said Spencer.

“No, no!” replied Harbottle, “every
lad to his own lass. I stick to my promise;
he gave me a good chance with a
pretty girl yesterday, and hang me if I
cross him to-day.”

In a few moments they were all equipped,
and ready for the sport, accompanied
by servants with hunting-poles to
beat the bushes, and spaniels to start the
game, and boys with spare ammunition,
and all means and appliances for a blithe
day's sport.

Taking their way across the trout
stream, and through the dense oak grove,
they crossed the tall castle hill, and going
out by a postern in the brick wall of the
park, entered a deep and hollow road, between
high banks of sand, crested on
either hand by the walls of the home park
and the deer-park—and overshadowed by
the rich foliage of the huge oaks, which
almost crossed their branches overhead,
and made the lane at noonday almost as,
dark as midnight. A second postern, at
a short distance up the lane, gave access
to the deer-park—a wild tract of barren
broken land, with many gulleys and ravines,
each watered by its gushing streamlet,
each clothed with feathery brushwood
and tall fern, among which the
grey burrowers they came in pursuit of
squatted by hundreds.

At a short distance from the double portions,
they caught a glimpse, as they
crossed the road, of a large rambling brick
farm-house, with tall fantastic pinnacles,
and the twisted chimneys of the Elizabethan
style, peering from out the shade
of the dark oaks, and abutting on the deer-park
wall.

“There is the home farm,” said the
keeper—“old Castleton's, you know, Sir

Edward; I sent the boys up with the
wine, and word we would be there at
two hours past noon; and he says, if you
please, Sir Edward, he will be very blithe
to see you, and they will have the goose
pie ready.”

“A capital thing, too, is a good goose
pie,” said Hale, “and we will find appetites
conformable, I'll warrant it. Now,
give me my gun, for here we are upon
the ground, and so let loose the spaniels.
Are they steady, Mark?”

“No steadier in England, your honor,”
answered the keeper, “than the two black
King Charles! they are worth fifty guineas
any day, of any gentleman's gold!
I'll be judged by these gentlemen if they
be not—although I say it who should not,
seeing it was I who broke them.”

The game was abundant, the day
prosperous, the young marksmen in
good cue; the dogs behaved well, the
shooting was extremely good, and the
sport undeniable, for above a hundred
rabbits had been bagged by the three guns
before the hour indicated for their rustic
dinner was announced, by the long keen
blast of a bugle, strongly and scientifically
winded, from the porch of the neighboring
farm-house.

“There goes old Castleton,” cried Hale,
“he was the huntsman to my father's
pack, many years since! That says that
the goose pie is ready.”

Leaving the brakes wherein they had
been shooting, a short walk brought them
to the well stocked and hospitable farm-house,
where blunt old fashioned English
hospitality received them, with its cheery
and unceremonious welcome. The goose
pie was pronounced excellent, and such
justice done to it as showed the praise
was sincere; the home-brewed ale as
clear as amber, as mild as milk, and almost
as strong as brandy, was duly honored;
and, above all, as Edward expected,
lovely Rose Castleton was there—looking,
he thought even lovelier than before, in
her tight fitting russet jacket, and short
blue petticoat, with her beautiful round
arms bare nearly to the shoulder, and her
trim shapely ankles, displayed by her
brief draperies.

There was, however, something in
Rose's manner that Hale did not understand;
she would not talk much to him,
nor jest at all; yet many a stolen glance
met his—now dwelling boldly, now as
coquettishly averted; still he could not
exactly make it out, until, as her father
turned aside to speak to St. Maur, she
cast her eye quickly towards the old
man, and laid her finger on her lips.

Frank Hunter, with the wonted indiscretion
of men and lovers, under such
circumstances, had been to see her that
morning; and, like a fool as he was, instead
of coaxing, had reproached and
harassed her; and, concluding by calling
for her father's interposition, had procured
her a sound seolding, in set terms,
for her flirtiness and vanity in fancying
that a gentleman like Sir Edward would
demean himself so much as to look at her.

In truth, between the fascinations of the
young lord of the manor, the sulky and
unflattering resentment of her lover, and
the most injudicious violence of her
father, who really had not the least suspicion
that Hale was thinking about his
daughter, and fancied that it was merely
an absurd whim of the girl's, to tease
Frank Hunter—in truth, Rose Castleton
was in dread peril of going irretrievably
astray.

Nothing of any moment passed; nor
could Sir Edward find any opportunity of
speaking to the poor girl alone until when
the dinner was finished, and they were
returning to their sports; after they had
all quitted the house with the old farmer,
he made a plea of having left his shot
pouch, and ran back himself, before any
one could anticipate him, to fetch it. He
found, as he expected, Rose Castleton
alone, looking out of the window after
them. As he entered the garden gate she
looked round, and seeing the shot bag,
guessed, with a woman's rapid wit, what
it meant—caught it up, and stepped out
into the porch to meet him.

There were two servant girls removing
the dinner things in the hall, and, as if
accidentally, she pulled the heavy door
to after her. The porch was deep and
projecting, and, as Hale entered it, he
cast a quick glance round to see if he was
observed, but all was safe!

The very air of Rose, her heighteued
color, the quickened motion of her bosom,
and the trembling of her small hand,
showed that she was not all unconscious.

“I thank you, Rose,” he said quite
aloud, in order to be overheard; “that is
just what I came back for.”

But, with the words, he caught her
round the waist with both his arms, and
pressed her soft and panting bosom to
his own—took one long kiss from her unreluctant
lips, and whispered, “You will
come, Rose, you will come, dearest Rose,
to-night?”

“Be sure I will,” she replied—“if they
will let me—if I can slip away; but—
but,” she added, with an arch smile, “you

must promise that you will not harm
me.”

Before he could reply, however, the old
man's step was heard without; and putting
her fingers up to her rosy lips, and
blowing him a kiss, she vanished. The
door clapped heavily, and, making as if
it had closed on his own exit, Edward
walked out with the pouch in his hand,
spoke a few words to the old man, and
hurried on to join his comrades.

They returned to their sport,—but the
mind of Edward was too much engrossed
by other matters; his heart beat thick and
fast—his head was unsteady—he missed
four or five fair shots in succession; and
his friends laughed at him; but he bore
all their jeering in good part, and laughed
in his turn, at them, as he told them that
“He laughed the loudest who laughed
last!” “Look out,” he added, “look out
for your thousand, captain!”

“Ha! is it so?” said Spencer, “has she
made an appointment?”

“For nine o'clock to-night!”

“Hurrah!” cried St. Maur. “Hurrah!
we shall do the captain—I knew we
should. Halloa! there goes a rabbit,
right from between my legs!” and he
took a quick sight and fired.

Their shooting was continued until the
shades of evening had begun fairly to set
in; and then, with their shooting ponies
fairly laden with the quantity of game
they had shot, their dogs almost tired out,
and themselves in the highest possible
spirits, they returned homeward to supper,

Just as they came in sight of the house,
the first bell was ringing out clearly and
merrily, so that there was little time to
spare before the social meal should be set
on the board—and this little Captain
Spencer, determined that Edward should
have no more time for quiet consideration,
contrived to make still less, by detaining
him some minutes on the steps of
the hall door, in frivolous conversation.

Then starting suddenly, as if he had
forgotten himself, he said—“Upon my
word! we shall scarce have five minutes
to make our ablutions. Now, pray, lose
no time, my dear Sir Edward, for I am
perilous hungry.”

“Not I, faith,” answered the baronet,
running up stairs in high glee—“I will
be with you in five minutes.”

Then Spencer turned round, with a
quiet smile, to St. Maur, and said—

“The game is won!—that is to say, if
you have not made any blunder in your
letter to Delaval. I wish I had found time
to see it before you sent it off. Mine to
Davenant was a master-piece! Not a
word that could be contradicted; yet not
a word that might not be construed into
anything.”

“I think, for my part, that the game is
lost! Here is this silly wench going to
meet him quietly to-night. He wins her
almost without wooing—wearies of her
as soon as she is won—and there's an
end of the whole thing, and no one the
wiser.”

“That is all you know about it! and,
true enough, that is all that would come
of it, if there were no head wiser than
your own to arrange it.”

“How is it, then? How—”

“Never you mind. It is all well, that
is enough for you. Go away now, and
prepare yourself for supper.”

It was not twenty minutes before to the
light-hearted sports of the day the excitement
of the lighted hall succeeded—the
sumptuous supper—the rich and genial
wines—the frolic mirth—the graceful revelry—the
voluptuous song—the licentious
boasting. Now there was nothing
of the gross and low debauchery which
had rendered the orgies of the past night
disgusting to every refined and gentle
spirit; now there was nothing coarse or
boisterous or obscene; wine flowed, it is
true, liberally, but not to excess; now
there was present everything that could
excite and stimulate, and nothing that
could jar upon or disgust the senses.

So passed the evening, until the hour
drew nigh for the host's appointment, and
then, easily excused, Sir Edward stole
away to the rendezvous in the low Monk's
Coppice.

That night, although they waited for
him, and revelled late, his friends saw nothing
of their host; and when, two hours
past midnight, they adjourned, they were
informed by the house-steward that Sir
Edward, not being well at ease, had been
a-bed these four hours.

“I told you so,” whispered Spencer, “I
told you he would not get her very easily.
Good night! good night! to-morrow will
play out the game.”

The morrow came, and when the party
were assembled at the breakfast table, the
brow of Edward Hale was so dark and
moody, that from this alone it was evident
he must have been disappointed; but
this it did not suit his guests to perceive,
and as soon as he entered the apartment,
St. Maur, who was awaiting him, cried
out, with a merry laugh—

“Why this is the very insolence of conquest,
Ned. They tell me that you were
abed at ten o'clock; was not the lovely
Rose worth one hour's attention?”

“Tush!” answered the young baronet,
sharply; “damnation on it! she did not
come at all. Instead of Rose, I met that
great brute, Mark Eversley, at the place,
to tell me she was watched, and could not
get out to meet me. And now, to wind
up the whole, her old dotard of a father
has been here, as soon as it was light this
morning, with Frank Hunter, to ask my
sanction for her marriage, on the day after
to-morrow. He did not directly tell me
so, but it is quite clear that she had
told him everything, for he talked about a
love-quarrel with her betrothed husband,
and her flightiness, and coquetting with
some other man to punish him! And
how sorry she was now, and how much
she repented of her misconduct, and how
willing Frank was to forgive her, and
how anxious he was himself to marry her
at once to the man she loved, lest scandal,
and perhaps worse should come of it.”

“Pshaw! pshaw! that is the merest humbug.
They have found you out somehow
or other, and have been badgering the girl
out of her wits. It is as clear as daylight
that she loves you, and would rather be
your mistress than that bumpkin's wife.
Only do not despair, and you shall have
her yet.”

“No, no!” replied Hale, bitterly, “no
—St. Maur—no! it is impossible. By all
the powers of hell! she is lost to me altogether,
and for ever; and I—I—by the Lord
that lives! I would give half my fortune,
half my life to win her.”

“Nonsense, man, nonsense,” replied St.
Maur, “why the deuce should she be lost
to you! It will never do to give it up
thus. Why Spencer will win our two
thousand guineas; I suppose that does not
signify to you, who are as rich as Crœsus,
but it is everything to me, who have not
been a minor eighteen years, with ten
thousand pounds per annum to accumulate.”

“Why, what the devil would you have
me do, man?” answered Sir Edward, angrily;
“I tell you I would give ten thousand
pounds to win her.”

“Then why don't you win her, baronet?”
said Speneer, laughing. “I could
do it, for a twentieth part of the sum.”

“Oh, you mean buy her, I suppose; buy
her of the father, or the bridegroom! But
you would be very much mistaken if you
were to try that game. You would be
pretty sure to get your head broken with a
quarter-staff for your pains.”

“Indeed, I mean nothing of the kind,”
said he; “but I could do it.”

“How? how? I will do anything—
anything in the world to win her.”

“You forget, baronet, that I have bet
against you; and it is hardly likely that I
should help you to win my own money.”

“Oh, I have lost the bet; I have lost the
bet fairly, for I have consented to her marrying
Hunter,” replied Edward. “I had
given up all hopes of success, and, indeed,
had filled up a draft in your name
on my goldsmith, before I came down
stairs; here it is, Captain Spencer. Now
we are straight on that score. So you are
free to help me now. How would you
win her?”

“Why, by a little gentle violence. Carry
her off, to be sure,” answered Spencer,
pocketing the draft.

“More easily said, that, than done!”
answered Hale.

“Oh, you are young—you are young,”
replied the other. “Give me the necessary
orders, and I will arrange it all for
you in the twinkling of an eye.”

“I will give you anything you please,
captain,” answered the baronet, very
quickly, “if you will show me how you
can do it”

“Well, just sit down at that table. You
are a magistrate, are you not?”

“Yes; what of that?”

“Everything—everything! Just sit
down, and write me an order to take in
charge Francis Hunter, as a poacher, or
vagabond, or anything you please, and
to put him on board my frigate—and I
will do it this very night—if I take him
out of his own house.”

“But how will you get the force?”

“Never you mind. I have got force
nearer than you think for. My frigate lies
in the Southampton river, and perhaps my
heutenant and a gang are nearer at hand
than she is. Perhaps I brought them
hither with a view to some fun for myself;
you need not inquire. In these
times the king's very good friends, as I
am, can do a great many very funny
things. Only do you give me the order,
and tell me where to catch Master Frank,
and he shall find himself to-morrow night
under hatches of the good ship Royal Oak,
instead of being under a coverlet with a
bonny bride. And, if he needs must be
married, my boatswain shall be parson,
and tie him up to the gunner's daughter.
A saucy scoundrel, to interfere thus with
his betters.”

“That is soon done,” said Hale, who
was now thoroughly maddened between
passion, rivalry, and disappointment,
“that is soon done,” and with the words
he drew an order, signed it, and gave it to
Spencer; “and for the rest, there is no
difficulty in getting hold of Hunter. He

told me himself that he should ride to Alresford
this evening, to buy the wedding
ring, or some such foolery, and return
homeward by the forest road ere midnight;
I will show you where you may post your
men, and catch him—and what then?”

“Why, then, you shall ride out with
me, and show me the spot; and then go
on and call to pay your respects on the
good Earl of Rochefort; and, if he press
you, stay dinner with him. Then you
must let Mark Eversley show St. Maur
which is the window of the girl's bedchamber,
and he must have the carriage
waiting in some safe place by the park
wall, and carry off the girl for you, and
the seandal of that will fall on him, not on
you; and he has earned so good a repntation
for such deeds, that one more or
less will make no difference to him; and
as for Hunter, I will not post my men until
sunset, and when the job is done will
return quietly to the Hall, and no one will
be a word the wiser, until a three years'
cruise is over, and by that time the whole
thing will be forgotten.”

“Excellent! excellent!” exclaimed Sir
Edward. “And as I return from, Rochefort's,
I will meet St. Maur in the carriage,
have a sham quarrel with him, and bring
her back to her father's as her rescuer.”

“And so secure a two-hour's tête-à-tête with
her in the first place, in which, of course,
you can overcome all her scruples, if she
have any, and win her for your mistress
under her father's very nose; and that,
too, with his everlasting gratitude to you
for saving her from this vile profligate.
Ah! you are a cunning fellow, Hale; and,
before many years, will be as deep a hand
as myself, I warrant, you.”

It needed little time to arrange all
their schemes of iniquity, in due form, and
with every probability of success; and
then, when all was planned, St. Maur and
Harbottle set out to fish the stream; while
Spencer and the young lord of the manor
rode out together, the former, as he gave it
out, to carry letters to the post at Barnsley,
the latter to pay his respects to the Earl of
Rochefort; but it was a matter of some little
surprise to the household that they took
no attendants with them, and that they ordered
a late supper, saying that they
should neither of them be home until near
midnight.

10. CHAPTER X.

Throughout that day everything went
on well for the conspirators: Spencer had
reconnoitred the ground thoroughly, as
he rode out with his friend in the morning;
had found his lieutenant with the
men, as he expected, at Barnsley; and had
given them his instructions so skilfully
that he felt well assured no suspicion
could in any case fall upon him as the perpetrator
of the meditated ontrage, until he
should himself choose to reveal his agency
in the matter.

Meanwhile, Sir Edward Hale had galloped
onward, without giving his mind
time to cool from the turmoil of fierce passion
which was still raging there, to Kings
ton castle, the seat of the Earl of Rochefort;
and there, too, everything had happened
to his liking, for shortly after his arrival a
furious thunder-storm arose, and lasted so
long that he was pressed, as he desired to
be, to stay for dinner, and no plea was
left him for refusing the kindly and oft-urged
invitation.

Thus passed the day, unmarked by anything
of moment, and night came on untimely
for the season, and boisterons, and
unpleasant, and in all respects suited to
the purposes of the conspirators. Few
men were likely to be abroad on such a
night, if it were not on urgent business;
for it had been a dim grey misty evening
since the thunder-storm, with every now
and then a violent burst of cold and wintry
rain; the wind howled fearfully among the
tree-tops, and the chimneys of the manor,
and it was withal so dark and black, that
long before midnight a man could not
have seen his hand at a yard before his
face.

This storm had afforded Spencer a fair
excuse for dining at the little Inn at Barnsley;
while his men went off singly, or in
small parties so as to pass unnoticed, to
rendezvous at a well known and conspicuous
landmark, the Battle Pillar, as it was
called, a large block of grey granite, commemorative
of some event long since forgotten,
standing, by the wayside, on a
large waste common covered with fern and
bushes, and interspersed with pools and
pits full of water, where they were to be
joined by their officers in the course of the
night, and receive further orders.

Hale had, however, some difficulty in
escaping from the hospitalities of the castle,
in consequence of the unusual inclemency
of the night; and it was only by
alleging the presence of his guests at
home, as an insurmountable obstacle to his
remaining all night, that he was enabled
to avoid the well meant persecutions of
the old lord.

After that, he had another struggle to
undergo, before he could get away without

accepting the escort of a half a dozen of
the earl's blue coated serving men, whom
it would have very ill-suited him to take
along with him that night; but finally,
when it was nearly ten o'clock, he succeeded
in making good his retreat, and began
to ride rapidly towards the place appointed.

Eleven o'clock struck from many a village
steeple, and quarter elapsod after
quarter, and now it was almost on the
stroke of twelve, and all things were prepared
for action—a carriage, one of the
lightest of the ponderous vehicles of that
day, with four strong horses harnessed to
it, stood in a hollow way close to the postern
gate in the park wall, sheltered from
observation by the dense shadows of the
overhanging trees, ready to bear off Rose
to London so soon as she should be seized
by the ruffians appointed for that task under
the orders of Lord Henry St. Maur.
Meantime the gang of sailors, well armed,
with bludgeons, pistols, and cutlasses, lay
hid in the dark thickets by the side of the
Alresford road, with Captain Spencer and
his first lientenant; while guarded by
three men, in a low charcoal burner's
shed, long since deserted, on the skirts of
the forestland, and scarcely half a mile
distant, a light taxed cart, with two swift
horses attached to it, tandem-fashion, was
in waiting to bear the captured yeoman
to his floating prison.

The times had been calculated closely—
and all, so far, had gone successfully.
Frank Hunter was even now jogging
homeward, as the leaders of the press-gang
anticipated, with a full purse and
happy heart, from the distant market-town;
and now Lord Henry, with his ruffians,
was actually at his post by the lonely
farm, and consulting his repeater ere he
should give the word to plant the ladder
against the chamber window of the innocent
girl, who slept, all unsuspicious and
unconscions, the calm, soft sleep of
youthful happiness.

Sir Edward Hale, however, was ill at
ease and anxious; he was too young in
evil—he had too much of actual goodness
in his composition—was too unhardened
in the road of siu, not to feel many a
twinge of conscience, many a keen compunctious
visitation. He, too, was now
near the place of action—he had already
ridden many miles since leaving the
castle, where he had spent the day; and
his heart, fearfully agitated, began to turn
almost sick within him, as he was now
rapidly approaching the point on the
great London road whereat, an hour or
two later, he was to meet the carriage
bearing his destined mistress from her
terrified and grieving family.

He had, as I have said already, felt full
many a prick of conscience, full many a
touch of half repentant sorrow; but still,
whenever he made up his mind to turn
from the evil of the way in which he was
going, as he did many times that night,
dread—that false dread which so often
drives frail man to crime and sorrow—
dread, I mean, of the mockery and langhter
of his more hardened comrades, prevailed,
and hindered him from turning his
head homeward, and countermanding the
preparation of those base outrages.

Still, though he dared not halt in the
career of sin—though he felt that he could
not, even though he would, repent—he
was sad, moody, and reluctant; and he
rode onward slowly, guiding his horse
with an irresolute and feeble hand through
the blind darkness. He was now two or
three miles only distant from the station
at the cross-roads, which had been fixed
upon as the spot where he was to overtake
the carriage, and enact the part of
Rose's rescuer from St. Maur and his myrmidons.
He was just in the act of crossing
the bridle-road which led from the
market-town, when Hunter was returning,
past the wild forest-land skirting his
own park, wherein the press-gang was
patiently awaiting the appearance of the
young yeoman.

The London road, after it crossed the
narrow track in question, mounted the
brow of a short bold hill, and dived at
once into a deep and shadowy dingle, with
a large brook, which had been swollen by
that night's rain into a wild and foaming
torrent, threading the bottom of the dell.
The brook, which lay between the rocky
banks, was spanned at this place by a
rude wooden bridge, that had, for some
time past, been gradually falling into ruin;
and scarce two hours before the time at
which Sir Edward reached the spot, the
whole of the weak fabric had been swept
away by the swollen torrent.

At the cross road the youthful baronet
paused, even longer than before, and
doubted—yes, greatly doubted—whether
he should not alter, even now, his purpose;
but, as he did so, the distant clatter
of a hoof came down the horse-road from
the direction of Alresford—and, instantly
suspecting that the traveller could be no
other than Frank Hunter, he dashed his
spurs into his horse's side, and galloped
furiously across the hill, and down the
steep descent, towards the yawning chasm,

fearful of being seen, under these circumstances,
by the man on whom he was preparing
to inflict an injury so fearful.

Down the steep track he drove furiously
—headlong—spurring his noble hunter—
on! on! as if he were careering in full
flight—flight from that fearful fury, a self-tormenting
conscience; which; to borrow
the imagery of the Latin lyrist—“Climbs
to the deck of the brazen galley, and
mounts on the croupe of the flying horseman!”

On he came! on! Now he was at the
brink of the dread precipice! One other
bound would have precipitated horse and
man together into the dark abyss! But
the horse bounded not; he saw, almost
too late, the frightful space, and stood
with his feet rooted to the verge, stock
still, even as a sculptured image! stock
still from his furious gallop, even at the
chasm's brink!

Headlong was Edward Hale launched
by the shock into the flooded stream; and
well was it for him that the stream was so
wildly flooded; for had he fallen on the
rocks, which in ordinary weather lay bare
and black in the channel, he had been
dashed to atoms.

Deep! deep he sank into the whirling
eddies—but he rose instantly to the surface,
and struck out lightly for his life! for
he was both a bold and active swimmer.
At the same instant he shouted loudly—
wildly—so as no man can shout who is
not in such desperate extremity—again
and again for succor!

Just at this moment the moon came
out bright from the scattered clouds,
and showed him all the perils of his
state, but showed him no way to escape
them, so steeply did the rocks tower
above his head—so wildly did the torrent
whirl him upon its mad and foaming waters.

Again he shouted—and again—and once
he thought his shout was answered; fainter
he waxed and fainter; he sank—rose—
sank, and rose again; a deadlier and more
desperate struggle—a wilder yell for help,
and the water rushed into his mouth, and
a flash reeled across his eyes, and he was
floating helplessly—hopelessly down the
gulf, when a strong arm seized him, and
dragged him to the bank; for he had
drifted through the gorge, and the stream
flowed here through low and level meadows.
A little space he lay there senseless,
and then, by the kind and attentive
energies of his rescuer, he was
brought back to life—and his first glance,
as his soul returned to him, feil on the frank
face of the man who had preserved him!
That man was Frank Hunter! All Edward
Hale's best feelings rushed back in a
flood upon him—he started to his knee!

“I thank thee!” he cried fervently—
“with all my soul I thank thee, mighty,
Almighty Lord! that thou hast saved me—
not from this death alone, but from this
deadly sin!”

And, seeing Hunter's hand, he poured
into his half incredulous and all bewildered
ear the story—the confession—of his dark
meditated crime.

“But there is time—there is yet time,” he
cried, “the horses! where are the horses?”

“Here! here, Sir Edward,” cried the
stout yeoman; “I caught your hunter as I
came along, and tied him with my hackney
to a tree here at the hill foot.”

A moment, and they were both in the
saddle, furiously spurring towards a crossroad,
which led directly to the place
where we have seen the carriage, and
leaving the press-gang far behind them;
for Hunter had quitted his homeward
track on hearing Sir Edward's cry for help,
and so avoided that danger. A second
bridge, a little lower down the river, soon
gave them the means of crossing it and
regaining the high road; and they were
nearing the lane by which the carriage
must come up, at every stride of their
horses; and there was now no longer any
doubt but they were in good time. Just
as they were about to turn, however,
down the oft-mentioned lane, they were
arrested by the clang of several horses at
a gallop, coming down the great road from
London, so as to meet them, and by a
shout—

“Stand! stand! and tell us the road to
Arrington!”

Edward Hale answered in a moment,
for he knew the voice. “Good God!
Lord Arthur, is that you?”

“Hale! Heaven be praised,” cried the
new comer; “then I am in luck. But
what the deuce are you doing here? and
who is this with you?” Where are St.
Maur and Spencer?”

“I will tell you another time—I will tell
you another time, Arthur Asterly,” replied
Sir Edward; for it was Lady Fanny's brother—an
officer in the Life Guards—who,
at his sister's entreaty, had ridden down
post-haste. “Come with me, quick!
come with me and see me repair a great
intended wrong!”

“One minute—for I must tell you now
what I have ridden post from town to tell
you. I was just off guard at Windsor
when Fan sent for me, and I have not had
time to take off my uniform! You are the
dupe of a set of scoundrels! Spencer and

St. Maur have been urging you to a great
offence, for their own evil ends! and,
grieved I am to say it, with my mother's
cognisance. They thought themselves
very cunning with their anonymous letters
and base schemes to make Fan think you
a villain; but Fan and I detected them in
no time; and, I thank God! it has been
the meaus of bringing my poor father to his
senses; and he would have thrown up the
cursed marquisate, which was the price of
all this kuavery—but the king, for all the
evil they speak of him, has acted nobly—
nobly! I saw him myself, and told him
the whole story, and he wrote a manly and
generous letter, in his own hand, restoring
the pledge he had given to that seoundrel,
Davenant! and I have come down here,
post-haste, to save you—and I am time
eneugh to do so—am I not, dear Ned?”

“Sir Edward was saved ere you came,
my lord—if I may be so bold as to speak
to you, who are a great gentleman. His
own good heart and good feelings saved
him,” cried the bold yeoman, half crying
with the violence of his emotions.

“I am afraid not,” said Sir Edward, unwilling
to take any crecit he did not deserve;
“it was chance only, or rather Providence—a
blessed accident—and gratitude
to this good man for his timely service!
But for him, Arthur, I should be
dead now—dead in the perpetration of a
cowardly base crime!”

“Well, God be praised that you are
saved by any means,” cried Lord Arthur,
“but let us gallop on, if there is anything
to do!”

“Much, much! there is much to do,”
answered Hale; “follow, follow!”—and,
putting spurs to his horse, he dashed down
the lane towards the brick farm-house.

They reached it in time; reached it
just as Rose Castleton, fainting between
surprise and terror—for the girl's head and
not her heart had been led astray, and her
repentance had been real—was thrust into
the carriage by the hand of Henry St.
Maur.

“St. Maur!” cried Edward, springing
from his horse, as he arrived on the spot,
“St. Maur, you are a villain! You drove
me into this for your own evil ends; but
all your villanies are discovered—and you
may thank God, if you believe that there
is a God, that no more harm has come of it.”

And, lifting Rose respectfully out of the
carriage, he placed her in the arms of her
chosen bridegroom, saying, “Here, take
her, Hunter—take her! I give her to
you, and will give you her dowry to-morrow—take
her, God bless you, and be
happy!”

“Sir. Edward Hale, you shall answer
to me for this, by heaven!” cried St. Maur
fariously.

“When you will, my lord, when you
will!”

“Then now, now!” exclaimed St.
Maur, “I say now!”—and he unsheathed
his rapier ere the words were out of his
mouth. Sir Edward Hale followed his
example on the instant; and before any
one could interpose, their blades were
crossed. It was almost too dark for sword
play, but the lamps of the carriage were
lighted, and the inmates of the farm had
by this time run out, with several torches
and lanterus, so that the gleam of the
weapons could be distinguished in this
glimmering light.

The young baronet fought only on the
defensive, St. Maur thrusting at him with
insane and revengeful rashness, so that
Edward might have killed him two or
three times, had he been so minded. But,
at the fourth or fifth pass, the young lord's
foot slipped on the wet greeusward, and
he fell his full length, breaking his small
sword as he did so.

“Take your life. Take your life, my
lord, and mend it,” said Edward, putting
up his sword.

Sullenly the young nobleman arose, and
shook the hilt of his broken blade at the
victor.

“You will repent of this!” he said; and,
snatching the rein of one of the servants'
horses, which stood near, he sprang to its
back, and galloping off towards the hall
was quickly lost in the swart darkness.

But Edward Hale never did repent it.

A pause ensned of some moments after
his departure, which was at length broken
by Lord Arthur Asterly, who said, “Well,
we had better all go quietly home to our
beds now; and to-morrow we can talk
over these things at our leisure; that is to
say, if it be not the better plan to bury
them all in oblivion; for, by the blessing
of Providence, there has no harm befallen
any one, and I think the adventures of this
night are over. So send away the carriage,
Ned, and your people; and let us
two trot to the hall together, for I have a
good many private explanations for your
ear; and we will not hurry, for it is just as
well to let those scoundrels have time to
evacuate the premises. I do not think
they will have the impudence to wait for
our coming.”

But the adventures of the evening were
not over. For, unhappily, Spencer, having
grown weary of waiting with his men, left
them in charge of the lientenant, and came
galloping up to the entrance of the hall in

one direction, just as St. Maur arrived
there from another, bareheaded, his dress
covered with clay, and his seabbard empty
by his side.

“Ho! St. Maur,” said the captain, as he
saw him, “what does all this mean?
Whence do you come in this array?
Where is Sir Edward?”

“It means, sir,” replied St. Maur furiously,
for he was in the mood to wreak
his spite on any one who happened to be
near him, “that Arthur Asterly has come
down post from London, and all is discovered,
and we are a brace of fools and
villains!”

“Speak for yourself, pray, my good
lord! With regard to yourself I have no
doubt you are perfectly right—you must
know best,” said Spencer, in the most
eoolly irritating manner. “But I allow no
man to apply such words to me.”

“You will have to fight half the world,
then, captain,” answered St. Maur, seeing
the folly of quarrelling with his own confederate,
“for everything is blown—blown
to the four winds!”

“Then Hale has given up the wench?”

“Given her up! to be sure he has!
given her to the farmer fellow; and called
me a villain to my teeth! We fought, and
but that I fell and broke my sword, I
would have—”

“Done wonders, doubtless!” interrupted
Spencer. “But see here, if I understand
you aright, I win a cool thousand of you!
You bet me that Hale would have this
cursed wench, within a fortnight, for his
mastress. Now, as I mean to make myself
scarce, and to keep myself on board
my frigate until this blows over, you may
as well book up.”

“Why, Spencer,” exclaimed St. Maur,
“you forget—”

“Indeed, I forget nothing! did you not
make the bet?”

Just at this moment Harbottle, who
knew not a word of what had been passing,
disturbed by their loud voices, came
out upon the terrace, with several servants
bearing lights, and every word that followed
was heard by all of them.

“I did; but did we not understand that
it was to be drawn in case?—”

“Not I, my lord—not I, my lord; I never
play child's play. When I bet, I bet; and
wlien I win, I expect to be paid. Now
the question is, will you pay me?”

“No, sir, I will not, for you have not
won it. You are cheating me.”

“My lord!”

“Yes, sir, you are cheating me,” ex
claimed St. Maur fiercely. “You are cheating
me, or trying to do so! You are—”

“Quite enough said, my lord,” answered
Spencer, perfectly composed. “You heard
him, Harbottle; you heard what he said.
Now, my Lord Henry St. Maur, in my
mind the quicker these things are settled
the better. My pistols are in my holsters
loaded; yours are doubtless the same—if
not, take your choice of mine!”

It was in vain that Harbottle, that the
servants, would have interposed—both
were determined, obstinate, ynyielding!

Ten paces were stepped off upon the
terrace—the reluctant servants were compelled
to advance the torches—each took
a weapon in his hand, and to prevent
worse horror—for they swore that if balked
they would fight muzzle to the breast, and
give the word themselves—Harbottle gave
the signal.

The pistols flashed at once—but one
report was heard—and ere that reached
the ears of the spectators, St. Maur
sprang up a yard into the air, and fell to
the ground dead, with the bullet in his
brain!

At this moment the approaching sounds
of Sir Edward and his friend were heard,
quickened by the pistol shots. Spencer's
keen ear first canght them; and, as he
sprang to his horse, he took a sealed
package, undirected, out of the bosom of
his coat, and threw it to Harbottle, exclaiming,
“Give that to Edward Hale—it
is his—and say I am sorry for what has
passed; for to him, at least, I owe no ill
will.”

It was the order to arrest Frank Hunter,
under Sir Edward's hand and seal; but before
Harbottle had raised it from the
ground, the homicide was out of sight,
and the young baronet came upon the
ground with Lord Arthur Asterly.

The fall of the guilty and unhappy St.
Maur was the catastrophe of this romance—for
a romance it was of domestic
life!—and like all other romances, it ended
in a marriage!

From that day forth Sir Edward Hale
was a better and a wiser man!—from that
day forth sin had no more any permanent
dominion over him! No obstacle now
opposed his union, in due season, with
charming Fanny Asterly—and with his
sweet wife and a fair and noble family—
for God smiled upon his marriage—he
lived long and happily among his happy
tenants; and when he died the country
people mourned him, as “the good Lord
of the Manor!”