Lord Oakburn's Daughters Part 4

LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER XLV.⁠TAKING THE AIR IN BLISTER LANE.

It was a gloomy time at South Wennock. Usually a remarkably healthy place—indeed, had it not been, the few medical men established there could not have sufficed—it was something new to have an epidemic raging, and people took alarm. The fever was a severe one, and two or three patients had died; but still it was not so bad as it might have been, as it is occasionally in other places. The town was hurriedly adopting all sorts of sanitary precautions, and the doctors were worked off their legs.

Lady Jane Chesney regretted on Lucy’s account that it should have happened just now. Not that she was uneasy on the score of fear for her; Jane was one of those happy few who can put their full and entire trust in God’s good care, and so be calm in the midst of danger: “Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” But she was sorry this sickness should prevail now, because it made the visit a dull one.

Jane lived in the same quiet style. Since the addition to her income through the money left her by old Lady Oakburn, she had added but one man servant to her modest household. The two maids, of whom Judith was one, and this man, comprised it. Not that Jane saved much. She dressed well, and her housekeeping was liberal; and she gave away a great deal in a quiet way. But the young, full of life, loving gaiety, might have called her house a dull one; she feared Lucy was finding it so; and it certainly did not want the sickness and alarm prevailing abroad to augment it.

Jane was saying this as she sat one night alone with Lucy. They had promised to spend the evening with some friends, but just as they were about to quit home, a note was delivered from the lady to whom they were engaged. One of her servants was taken ill, and she feared it might be the fever: perhaps therefore Lady Jane would prefer to put off her visit.

“I should not have minded for myself,” remarked Jane, as they sat down to a quiet evening at home, “but I will not risk it for you, Lucy. I am so sorry, my dear, that South Wennock should be in this uncertain state just now. You will have cause to remember your dull visit to me.”

Lucy laughed. She did not look very dull as she sat there. Her evening dress was of gay silk, and some sort of enamelled ornaments, a necklace and bracelets glistening with their steel mountings, were on her fair neck and arms. She had taken up some embroidery work, was already busy with its intricacies, and she looked up with a laughing eye at Jane.

“Indeed I am not sorry to be kept at home, Jane. Dull as you call my visit, all my work seems to get on badly: and you know I promised myself to do so much. But, Jane—if I may say one thing,” Lucy added, her gay tone changing to seriousness, “you seem dull. You have been so ever since we came from London.”

Jane paused a moment. “Not dull, Lucy, dear. I have been preoccupied: I acknowledge that.”

“What about?” asked Lucy.

“I would rather not tell you, Lucy. It is only a little matter on my mind: a little doubt: something I am trying to find out. I cannot help thinking of it constantly, and I suppose it has made me silent.”

You need not ask the source of Jane’s preoccupation. That it was connected with her sister Clarice you will have already divined. Since the information gained from Mrs. West, that Clarice had married, Lady Jane had been unable to divest herself of an impression that that little child at Tupper’s cottage was the child of Clarice. The only possible ground for her fancy was the extraordinary likeness (at least, as Jane saw it) in that child’s eyes and general expression of face to Clarice. The features were not like; quite unlike; but the eyes and their look were Clarice’s over again. Added to this—and perhaps the fact somewhat strengthened Jane’s doubts—was the manner of his ostensible mother, Mrs. Smith. From the very first, Jane had thought she looked old to be the mother of so young a child; but she had hard features, and such women, as Jane knew, are apt to look much older than they really are. Several times since her return from London Jane had passed the cottage and talked to the little boy over the gate. Once she had gone in—having been civilly invited by Mrs. Smith to rest herself—and she had indirectly tried to ascertain some particulars of the child’s past life: where he was born, and where he had lived. But Mrs. Smith grew uncommunicative and would not answer much. The boy was her own, she said; she had had another son, older than this, but he had died; she had married very late in life. Her husband had occupied a good post in a manufactory at Paisley, in Scotland, and there her little boy had been reared. Upon her husband’s death that summer, she had left the place and come back to her native country, England. So far as that, Mrs. Smith was communicative enough; but beyond these points she would not go; and upon Lady Jane’s rather pressing one or two questions, the widow was quite rude. Her business was her own, she said, and she did not recognise the right of strangers to pry into it. Lady Jane was baffled. Of course it might all be as the woman said; but there was a certain secrecy in her manner that Jane suspected. She had, however, no plea for pressing the matter further; and she preferred to wait and, as it were, feel her way. But she thought of it incessantly, and it had rendered her usually equable manner occupied and absent, so much so as to have been observed by Lucy.

“Is it anything about Laura?” asked Lucy, in answer to Jane’s last observation.

“Oh no. Nothing at all.”

“Do you think, Jane, that Laura is happy? She seems at times so strangely restless, so petulant.”

“Lucy, I hope she is happy: I cannot tell. I have observed what you say, but I know nothing.”

“Mr. Carlton seems very indulgent to her,” returned Lucy.

And in point of fact, Lucy had been quite struck with this indulgence. Jane’s own decision, not to visit at the house of Mr. Carlton, whether springing from repugnance or pride, or what not, she had strictly adhered to, but she had not seen fit to extend the prohibition to Lucy; and Lucy was often at Laura’s, and thus had an opportunity of seeing Mr. Carlton’s behaviour to his wife. She told Jane that she liked Mr. Carlton better than she had liked him as a little girl; she remembered, she said with a laugh, that she then entertained a great prejudice against him; but she liked him now very well, and he was certainly fond of Laura. Jane agreed that Mr. Carlton’s manners were gentlemanlike and agreeable; she had now and then met him in society, and nothing could be more courteous than was Mr. Carlton’s manner to herself; but, into his house Jane still declined to enter.

“I think he has always been most indulgent to her,” observed Jane. “Laura, I fear, is of a difficult temper, but———Are we going to have visitors to-night?”

The break in her sentence was caused by a visitor’s knock. Impromptu evening visitors to Lady Jane Chesney were not common. The servant opened the drawing-room door.

“Mr. Frederick Grey, my lady.”

Lucy threw down her embroidery. Jane smiled; the dull evening had changed for Lucy.

He came in with a radiant face. They questioned him upon his appearance in South Wennock, when they had believed him in London, reading hard for his degree. Frederick protested his uncle John had invited him down.

“I suppose the truth is, you proffered him a visit,” said Jane. “Or perhaps came without any notice to him at all.”

Frederick Grey laughed. The latter was in truth the fact. But Frederick never stood on ceremony at his uncle John’s: he was as much at home there as at his father’s.

And as the days went on and the sickness in South Wennock increased, Mr. John Grey declared that his nephew’s visit was the most fortunate circumstance that could have happened. For the medical men were scarcely equal to the additional calls upon them, and Frederick took his full share of the duty. So, after all, the visit, which had been intended by him to be nothing but a short and delightful holiday with Lucy Chesney, was changed into one of labour, and—in one sense—disappointment. For he could only venture to see her once in a way, every other day or so; neither had he time for more; and then, with all the precaution of changing his clothes.

Lady Laura Carlton’s feet seemed instinctively to take her to Blister Lane, past the front of Tapper’s cottage. Jealousy has carried women to more inconvenient places. The unhappy suspicion—how miserably unhappy it was to be in its ultimate effects, neither Laura nor any one else could dream of!—connecting her husband with that little child had grown to a height that was scarcely repressible; and Laura was in the dangerous frame of mind that has been metaphorically designated as touchwood—wanting but a spark to kindle it into a flame.

Not a day passed but she was walking down Blister Lane. She would take her way up the Rise, turn down the lane, pass the cottage, which was situated at this end of it, walk on a little way, and then come back again. All as if she were taking a walk to get a mouthful of fresh air. If she saw the little boy in the garden she would stop and speak to him; her jaundiced eyes devouring the likeness which she thought she detected to Mr. Carlton; it seemed that she could never tire of looking at it.

It was not altogether the jealousy itself that took Lady Laura there, but a determination that had sprung out of it. A resolve had seated itself firmly in her mind to sift the matter to its very foundation, to bring to light the past. She cared not what means she used: the truth she would know, come what would. Of a sufficiently honourable nature on the whole, Lady Laura forgot honour now; Mr. Carlton had reproached her with “dodging” his steps; she was prepared to do that and worse in her route of discovery.

It might have been described as a disease, this mania that was distracting her. What did she promise herself would be gained by these hauntings of Blister Lane? She did not know; all that she could have told was, that she was unable to rest away from the place. For one thing, she wanted to ascertain how frequently Mr. Carlton went to the cottage.

But fortune had not favoured her. Not once had she chanced to light upon the time that Mr. Carlton paid his professional visit. Had she met him—of which there was of course a risk—an excuse was ready. As if fate wished to afford her a facility of operation, Lady Laura had become acquainted with the fact that a young woman, expert in fine needlework, lived in Blister Lane; she immediately supplied her with some, and could have been going there to see about it had she been inconveniently met.

One gloomy day in the beginning of November, Laura bent her steps in the usual direction. It did not rain, but the skies were lowering, and anybody might have supposed that Lady Laura was better indoors than out. She, however, did not think so. In her mind’s fever, outward discomfort was as nothing.

As she passed the gate of Tupper’s cottage, Mrs. Smith, in her widow’s cap, was leaning over it, gazing in the direction of South Wennock, as if expecting some one. She looked at Laura as she came up; but she did not know her for the wife of Mr. Carlton. And Lady Laura, with averted eyes and a crimson blush on her haughty cheeks, went right into the road amidst the mud, rather than pass close to the gate. It was the only time she had seen Mrs. Smith since that first day, for the widow kept much to the house.

On went Laura in her fury, and never turned until she came to the cottage of the seamstress. It seemed that she required an excuse to her own mind for being in the lane that day. The conclusion she had arrived at in her insensate folly was, that the woman was looking impatiently for the advent of Mr. Carlton. What passion that this earth contains can ever befool us like that of jealousy!

She went in, gave some directions about the work, so confused and contradictory as nearly to drive the young woman wild, and then retraced her fierce steps back again. Very excessively astonished was she, to see, just on this side of Tupper’s cottage, a sort of hand-carriage standing in the middle of the road path, and the little boy seated in it. He looked weak and wan and pale, but his beautiful eyes smiled a recognition of Lady Laura.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“She took off her pattens and forgot them, and she has got a hole in her boot,” lucidly replied the child.

“Who’s she?” resumed Laura.

“The girl that Mr. Carlton sent. He says I must go out as long as I can, and she comes to draw me. The drum’s broke,” continued the boy, his countenance changing to intense trouble; “Mr. Carlton broke it. He kissed me because I didn’t cry, and he says he’ll bring me another.”

“Is Mr. Carlton there now?” hastily asked Laura, indicating the cottage.

“Yes. It was the drum broke, not the soldier. He hit it too hard.”

The clanking of pattens was heard in the garden path, and a stout-looking country girl came forth. She knew Lady Laura by sight, and curtsied to her. Laura recognised her as a respectable peasant’s daughter who was glad to go out by day, but who could not take a permanent situation on account of a bed-ridden mother.

“The little boy looks ill,” remarked Lady Laura, rather taken to, and saying any words that came uppermost.

“Yes, my lady; and they say he is weaker to-day than he has been at all.”

“Mr. Carlton says so?”

“His mother says so. Mr. Carlton hasn’t seen him. He has not been to-day.”

Laura strode away, vouchsafing no further notice of the speaker, not so much as a word of adieu to the little child. In her heart of hearts she believed the girl was telling her a lie; was purposely deceiving her; and that Mr. Carlton was even then inside the cottage. The child’s words, “the girl that Mr. Carlton sent,” were beating their refrain on her brain. Why should Mr. Carlton send a girl to draw out any child, unless he held some peculiar interest in him? she was asking herself. Ah, if she could but have seen the thing as it actually had been!—how innocent it was! When the boy got past running about, Mr. Carlton said he must still go into the open air. The mother hired this little carriage, and was regretting to Mr. Carlton that she could not hear of a fit person to draw it; he thought at once of this young woman; he was attending the mother at the time; and said he would send her. That was the whole history. Laura Carlton, in her blind jealousy, knew not the bed that she was preparing for herself.

She went straight home, walking fast, and entered the house by the surgery entrance, as she would do now and then in impatient moods, when she could not bear to wait while the street door was opened. Mr. Carlton’s assistant, Mr. Jefferson, was standing there, and raised his hat to her.

“When do you expect Mr. Carlton in?” she asked, as she swept past.

“Mr. Carlton is not out, Lady Laura.”

“Mr. Carlton is out,” she rejoined, turning her angry face upon the surgeon.

He looked surprised. “Indeed no, Lady Laura. Mr. Carlton came in about half an hour ago. He is down in the drug-room.”

Lady Laura did not believe a word of it. Were they all in league to deceive her? She turned to the lower stairs, determined to see with her own eyes and confute the falsehood. This drug-room, sometimes styled shortly the cellar, was a small boarded apartment, to which access could be had only through the cellar. Mr. Carlton kept drugs and other articles there pertaining to his profession; the servants had strict orders never to enter it, lest, as Mr. Carlton once told them, they might set their feet on chemical materials of a combustible nature, and get blown up. They took care to keep clear of it after that warning.

Lady Laura passed through the cellar and peered in. Standing before an iron safe, its door thrown wide open, was Mr. Carlton. Laura saw what looked like bundles of papers and letters within it; but so entirely astonished was she to see her husband, that a sudden exclamation escaped her.

You have heard of this room and this safe before. Mr. Carlton once locked up a letter in it which he had received from his father, the long-ago evening when he first heard of the illness of Mrs. Crane. Laura knew of the safe’s existence, but had not felt any curiosity in regard to it. She had penetrated to this room once in her early married days, when Mr. Carlton was showing her over the house, but never since.

A sudden exclamation escaped her. It appeared to startle Mr. Carlton. He shut the safe door in evident haste, and turned round.

“Laura! Is it you? What ever do you want down here?”

Iaura was unable to say at the moment what she wanted, and in her perplexity spoke something very near the truth. Mr. Jefferson had said he was there, but she thought he was out, and came to see.

She turned away while she spoke, and Mr. Carlton looked after her in surprise, as she made her way quickly up the stairs.

So in this instance, at least, there had been no treachery, and Lady Laura, so far, might have sat down with a mind at rest. The little child had evidently not comprehended her question, when she asked whether Mr. Carlton was indoors then.

CHAPTER XLVI.⁠LADY JANE BROUGHT TO HER SENSES AT LAST.

On the morning subsequent to this, Lady Jane and Lucy were sitting together after breakfast. Lucy had complained of a headache; she was leaning her head upon her hand, when Judith came in with a note. It proved to be from Lady Laura. She had twisted her ankle, she said; was consequently a prisoner, and wished Lucy to go and help her to pass a dull day.

“I should like to go, Jane. A walk in the air may take my headache off.”

“You are sure you have no sore throat?” asked Jane, somewhat anxiously. She had put the question once before.

Lucy smiled. Of course people were suspicious of headaches at this time! “I don’t think I have any sore throat, Jane; I ate my breakfast very well. I did not sleep well last night, and that has made my head feel heavy.”

Lucy found Laura on a sofa in her dressing-room, a pretty apartment on the first ﬂoor.

“Are you quite an invalid?” asked Lucy.

“Not quite; I can manage to limp across the room. But the ankle is swollen and rather painful. Did Jane object to your coming?”

“Not at all. How did you contrive to hurt it, Laura?”

“I was in mischief,” returned Lady Laura, with a half laugh. “And you know, when people do get up to mischief on the sly, punishment is sure to follow. Don’t our first lessons in the spelling-book tell us so?”

“What was the mischief,” returned Lucy.

“I and Mr. Carlton are not upon the best of terms; there is a grievance between us,” was Laura’s answer. “You need not look so serious, Lucy; I do not mean to imply that we are quite cst-and-dog, but we are not precisely turtle-doves. He has secrets which he keeps from me; I know he has; and get at them I will. There’s deceit abroad just now, and I vow and declare I’ll come to the bottom of it.”

Lucy listened in wondering surprise. Laura would say no more. “No,” she observed, “it is nothing particularly suitable to your ears: let it pass, so far. He has got a strong iron safe in the cellar, and in this safe he keeps papers and letters and things; I know, because I went down yesterday, when he had the lid open, and he started like a coward when he saw me, and shut it to. Well, I thought 1 would see what there is in that safe, and I stole down to the cellar last night with my bunch of keys, to try whether any one of them would unlock it.”

“Oh, Laura!” broke forth Lucy, shocked and pained beyond expression. “How could you think of such a thing?”

“Wait until you have a husband like Mr. Carlton, who puts your temper up with his underhand ways, and then see what you would ‘think’ and do,” retorted Lady Laura.

And Lucy ventured no further remonstrance, for she had once been a child under Laura’s control, and was somewhat in awe of her still.

“I went in the dark, lest the servants should see me,” proceeded Lady Laura, “taking some wax matches with me, to light when I got down. All went well; I tried the keys (none of which fitted, so I was baffled there), and blew out my lights to come back again. We have to go down three steps in coming out of the drug-room, where the safe is, and mount two to get into the cellar—wretched incapables the builders must have been, to make you go down steps only to come up again! Well, Lucy, I slipped on something at the top of these three steps, something sticky, it seemed, and down I went to the bottom. I could hardly get up at first, for pain in my foot, and a regular fright I was in, fearing I must call the servants; however, I did succeed in crawling back. There’s the history.”

And a very creditable one! Lucy sat in wonder.

“I have told it you out of bravado,” continued Laura, who seemed to be in a reckless mood, “and you may repeat it to Jane, if you like. When he came home he wanted to know how I had done it. ‘Slipped,’ I answered; and he got no more out of me.”

A silence ensued, which Lucy broke. “We heard a rumour, Laura, that Mr. Carlton was likely to give up his practice here. Frederick Grey mentioned it.”

“He says he shall. I don’t know. Of course London’s the best field for a medical man. Talking of Frederick Grey, what’s the reason that Mr. Carlton dislikes him so much?”

“I know nothing about it,” replied Lucy.

“I heard him going on to Mr. Jefferson about Frederick Grey’s being down here interfering with the practice. There never was any love between them. Young Grey used to say Mr. Carlton drove his father from the town.”

“As he did,” returned Lucy, quietly. “At least it was so reported in the old days, I remember. But that is all past and done with. Frederick Grey is not interfering with Mr. Carlton’s practice.”

“No; Mr. Carlton would see him far enough away, rather than allow that. Lucy! are you ill? Your eyes look heavy, and your cheeks are flushed.”

Lucy had been bending her head upon her hand for the last few moments, as she had done earlier in the morning at her sister Jane’s.

“I got up with a headache,” she replied, lifting her eyes wearily. “I thought the air, as I came along, might have done it good, but it has not, and my throat is getting sore.”

“Throat getting sore!” echoed Laura. An instant’s pause, and she started from the sofa in consternation, forgetting her lameness, seized her sister, and drew her to the light of the window.

“Lucy! it cannot be! You are never going to have the fever!”

But Lucy was going to have the fever. In fact, Lucy had got the fever. And Lady Jane did not know of it until night, when she was expecting Lucy home; for Laura, from carelessness or from some other motive, never sent to tell her. At nine o’clock the footman was dispatched with the news, but it was Mr. Carlton who sent him.

Lady Jane could not believe it. It was simple Jonathan, and she did think the man must have made some mistake. Lady Lucy was in bed, he said. She had been taken ill soon after reaching their house. Mr. Carlton was out then, but on his return he pronounced it to be the fever, and ordered her instantly to bed. He had charged Jonathan to give his respects to Lady Jane, and to assure her that every care and attention should be paid to the invalid.

Now nothing in the world could have been much less welcome than this news to Lady Jane Chesney. To her mind there was something underhanded in their thus taking possession of Lucy, and she complained privately to Judith. Apart from Lady Jane’s anxiety for Lucy, she had an unconquerable aversion to her lying ill at Mr. Carlton’s, to her being attended by that gentleman, or to herself becoming an inmate, however temporarily, in his house, which she must do, were Lucy to remain. She took a moment’s counsel with herself, for Lady Jane was one who rarely did things upon impulse, then attired herself for walking, and proceeded to Mr. Carlton’s, taking Judith with her, and ordering her own footman to go as quickly as he could to Mr. Grey’s and bring back that gentleman to Mr. Carlton’s.

The best room, a large and handsome spare chamber adjoining Lady Laura’s dressing-room, had been hastily prepared for Lucy. She was lying in it, looking flushed and anxious, and complaining of her head and throat.

“Jane,” she whispered, as her sister bent over her, “Mr. Carlton says it is the fever. I wish I could have been at home with you!”

“You should have returned the instant you found yourself getting worse, Lucy,” was Jane’s answer. “I thought you were possessed of common sense, child. Laura, you ought to have sent her; where was your carriage, that she could not have the use of it?”

“It was not her fault—or mine,” replied Laura. “Mr. Carlton administered some remedies this morning, and wished to see the effect; to-night he says she is too ill to go. But, if you will allow me to express my private opinion, Jane, I should say that it has all happened for the best, for where can she be so well attended to as in the house of a medical man? And you may be sure she shall have good nursing.”

“Laura, I would rather have her with me; she is under my charge, you know. I wonder if she can be moved now?”

“You must be stupid to think it,” returned Laura.

“I told Mr. Carlton I felt well enough to be taken home,” spoke Lucy, “but he said I did not understand the risk. I think I might be taken, Jane.”

Jane inquired after Mr. Carlton. Ho was in the dining-room, taking some refreshment after a hard day’s work, and she went to him. He rose in astonishment. Lady Jane Chesney in his house!

“Mr. Carlton,” she said, speaking quietly in spite of her anger, and she did feel very angry, “I have come to convey Lady Lucy home. I fancy it may be done without risk.”

“Impossible, Lady Jane. It might cost her her life.”

“I cannot but think, sir, before you had assumed to yourself the responsibility of keeping her, that you might have sent to inquire my pleasure upon the subject,” returned Lady Jane, with dignity. “The fever must be quite at its earliest stage, and there was no reason why she could not have been sent home. She was well enough to walk here this morning, and she was, I make no doubt, not sufficiently ill to debar her returning this evening.”

“It has come on very rapidly indeed,” replied Mr. Carlton; “and I think she will have it badly.”

“I still wish to take her, if possible,” persisted Jane, somewhat agitated at the last words, “and I have dispatched a messenger for Mr. Grey, that he may come here and give me his opinion upon the point. In doing this, I wish to cast no slight upon your judgment and skill, Mr. Carlton, but Mr. Grey is my own attendant, and I have unusual confidence in him; moreover, he will not be prejudiced, for her removal or against it. You and I, sir, perhaps are so; though on opposite sides.”

“I do not understand you,” spoke the surgeon.

“I am prejudiced in favour of taking her; you, in favour of keeping her; Mr. Grey, on the contrary, will give his honest opinion, for he can have no motive to be biassed either way.”

“Yes, ho can,” rejoined Mr. Carlton. “A profitable patient will fall into his hands, if he gets her away.”

True, so far; but the words vexed Jane. “She will be his patient in either case, Mr. Carlton. I mean, I say, no reflection on your skill; but my own doctor must attend on Lady Lucy, wherever she may be.”

The cold, haughty tone of the words and manner, the "Lady Lucy,” stung Mr. Carlton. Jane’s treatment of him, her utter rejection of any intimacy, had been boiling up within him for years. He so far forgot his usual equanimity, he so far forgot himself, as to demand with a flash of passion and a word that had been better left unsaid, whether he was not as efficient as John Grey. Jane put him down with calm self-possession.

“Sir, it is true that my sister is your wife; but I beg you not to forget that I am Lady Jane Chesney, and that a certain amount of respect is due to me, even in your house. I do believe you to be as efficient as Mr. Grey; that your skill is equal to his; but that is not the question. He is my medical attendant, and I would prefer that he took the case.”

“It’s well known, sir, that when people are ill, there’s no place seems to them like home,” interposed Judith, who had quite adopted her lady’s prejudices in the affair. “We’d a great deal better have her at home.”

Before any rejoinder could be made, a noise was heard in the hall, and Mr. Carlton turned to it, Jane following him. Frederick Grey had entered: and Mr. Frederick was in a state of agitation scarcely suppressible. He caught hold of Lady Jane.

“My uncle was out, and I came in his stead,” he cried, his words rendered half unintelligible by emotion. “Where is she? Is she very ill?”

An altercation ensued. Mr. Carlton, whose temper was up (a most unusual thing with him) stepped before his visitor to impede his way to the stairs.

“Mr. Frederick Grey, I cannot permit you to be in my house. Had your uncle come, I would have received him with all courtesy; but I wish to know by what right you intrude.”

“I don’t intrude willingly,” was the answer. “I have come to see Lady Lucy Chesney.”

“You cannot see her. You shall not pass up my stairs.”

“Not see her!” echoed Frederick, staring at Mr. Carlton as though he thought he must be out of his mind. “Not see her! You don’t know what you are saying, Mr. Carlton. She is my promised wife.”

He would have borne on to the stairs; Mr. Carlton strove to impede him, and by some means the gas became extinguished; possibly the screw was touched. The servants were in the hall; hearing the altercation, they had stolen into it; Lady Laura, with her damaged foot, was limping down the stairs. The women servants shrieked at finding themselves in sudden darkness; they were perhaps predisposed to agitation from the dispute; and Lady Laura shrieked in concert, not having the faintest notion what there could possibly be to shriek at.

Altogether it was a scene of confusion. The women ran close to their master for protection, they knew not from what, and Frederick Grey, pushing everybody aside with scant courtesy, made his way to the staircase. Mr. Carlton would have prevented him, but was impeded by the servants, and at the same moment some words were whispered in a strange voice in his ear.

“Would you keep her here to poison her on her sick bed, as you did another?”

Simultaneously with this, there was some movement at the hall door: a slight bustle or sound as if somebody had either come in or gone out. It had been ajar the whole of the time, not having been closed after Frederick Grey’s entrance, for Lady Jane’s footman stood outside, waiting for orders.

Mr. Carlton—all his energy, all his opposition gone out of him—stood against the wall, wiping his ashy face. But that he had heard Frederick Grey’s footsteps echoing up the stairs beforehand, he would have concluded that the words came from him. Somebody struck a match, and Mr Carlton became conscious, in the dim light, that there was a stranger present,—a shabby-looking man who stood just within the hall. What impulse impelled the surgeon, he best knew, but he darted forward, seized, and shook him.

“Who are you, you villain?”

But Mr. Carlton’s voice was changed, and he would not have recognised it for his own. The interloper contrived to release himself, remonstrating dolefully.

“I’m blest if this is not a odd sort of reception when a man comes for his doctor! What offence have I been guilty on, sir, to be shook like this?”

It was inoffensive little Wilkes, the barber, from the neighbouring shop. Mr. Carlton gazed at him with very astonishment in the full blaze of the relighted gas. “I’m sure I beg your pardon, Wilkes! I thought it was—Who came in or went out?” demanded Mr. Carlton, looking about him in all directions.

The servants had seen no one. It was dark.

“I came along to fetch you, sir,” explained the barber, who sometimes had the honour of operating on Mr. Carlton’s chin. “My second boy’s a bit ill, and we think it may be the fever. I wasn’t for coming for you till morning, sir, but the wife made a fuss and said there were nothing like taking disorders in time; so when I shut up my shop, I come. I suppose you took me for a wild bear, a marching in without leave.”

“Did you meet anybody, or see anybody go out?” asked Mr. Carlton, leaving the suggestion of the wild bear unanswered.

“I didn’t, sir. I was going round to the surgery, when I see the hall light disappear, and heard some women scream. Naterally I come straight in at the big door; I wondered whether anybody was being murdered.”

At the foot of the stairs, standing side by side, contemplating all these proceedings with astonishment, and not understanding them, were the ladies, Jane and Laura. They asked an explanation of Mr. Carlton.

“I—I—thought I heard a stranger; I thought some one had come in. I feel sure some one did come in,” he continued, peering about him still in a curious kind of way.

“Will you step down, please sir, to the boy?”

“Yes, yes, Wilkes, I’ll be with him before bedtime,” replied Mr. Carlton. And the forgiving little barber turned away meekly, and met Mr. John Grey coming in. Frederick Grey, unimpeded, had made his way up-stairs. An open door, and a light inside, guided him to Lucy’s chamber. Ill as she was, she uttered an exclamation of remonstrance when she saw him, and covered her face with her hot hands.

“Oh, Lucy, my darling! To think that it should have attacked you!”

“Frederick! what do you do here? Where is Jane? It is not right.”

He drew away her hands to regard her face, he passed his own cool hand across her brow; he took out his watch to count the beatings of the pulse.

“I am here in my professional capacity, Lucy; don’t you understand? Could I entrust my future wife to any other?” he asked, in a voice that literally trembled with tenderness. “I have been at the bedside of patients to day, love, young and delicate as you.”

“I do feel very ill,” she murmured.

The fear that was over him increased as he gazed upon her, stopping the life-blood at his heart. What if he should lose her?—if this scourge should take her away from him and from life? And of course there was only too much reason to fear that it might have been communicated to her through his visits. A scalding tear dropped on to her face, and Lucy, looking up, saw that his eyes were wet.

“Am I then so very ill?” she murmured.

“No, no, Lucy; it is not that. But this has come of my imprudence: I ought to have kept away from you; and I cannot bear that you should suffer pain! Oh my darling———”

They were coming in, Mr. Grey and Lady Jane. The experienced surgeon moved his nephew from the bed, as if the latter were but a tyro. And indeed he was such, in comparison with the man of long practice.

Mr. Grey could not recommend Lucy’s removal; quite the contrary. He saw no reason why she should not have been taken home at first, he said, but it had better not be attempted now. Jane was deeply annoyed, but she could only acquiesce.

“It cannot be helped,” she said, with a sigh. “But I am grievously vexed that she should be ill, away from my house. Remember, she is in your charge, Mr. Grey.”

“In mine? What will Mr. Carlton say to that?”

“It is of no consequence to me what he says,” was the reply. “I cast no slight upon Mr. Carlton’s skill; I have told him so; and if he chooses to attend her, conjointly with you, I have no objection whatever. But Lucy’s life is precious, and I have confidence in you, Mr. Grey, from old associations.”

Frederick Grey found that ho was to be excluded from the sick-room. His attendance as a medical man was not necessary. And both Mr. Grey and Lady Jane thought his visits might tend to excite Lucy. In vain he remonstrated: it was of no use.

“She is to be my wife,” he urged.

“But she is not your wife yet,” said Mr. Grey, “and you may trust her safely to me. Be assured that, if dangerous symptoms appear, you shall be the first to hear of them.”

“And to see her,” added Lady Jane.

With this he was obliged to be content. But he was terribly vexed over it. He stooped to kiss her hot lips in the impulse of the moment’s tenderness.

“Don’t—don’t,” she murmured. “You may take the fever.”

“Not I, child. We medical men are fever-proof. Oh Lucy, my best and dearest, may God bring you through this!”

Mr. Carlton was pleased to accept the alternative, and agreed, with some appearance of suavity, to attend Lucy in conjunction with Mr. Grey. Putting aside the implied reflection on his skill—and this, Jane reiterated to him again, was not intended—he had no objection to the visits of Mr. Grey. The fact was, Mr. Carlton would have liked to bring Lucy triumphantly through the illness himself, as he felt confident he could do; she would have had his best care, looking for no reward, as his wife’s sister; and he felt mortified that the case should have been partially taken out of his hands. It was a slight, let Lady Jane say what she would; he felt it, and no doubt the town would be free enough in its comments.

“And now, Laura,” said Jane, seeking her sister, “as you and Mr. Carlton have saddled yourselves with Lucy, you must also be troubled with me and Judith, who is invaluable in a sick-room. I shall not move out of this house until I can take Lucy with me.”

Lady Laura clapped her hands in triumph, “Well done, Jane! You, who would not condescend to put your foot over our doorstep, to be brought to your senses at last! It serves you right, Jane, for your abominable pride.”

“It has not been pride,” returned Jane. “Pride has not kept me away.”

“What then? Prejudice?”

“No matter now, Laura; we have an anxious time before us. Mr. Grey thinks that Lucy will be very ill.”

“Just what Mr. Carlton said; and he kept her here to take care of her. I am sure he will be glad to extend a welcome to you, Jane, for as long as you choose to stay with us. He has always been willing to be friendly with you, but you would not respond. He takes prejudices; I acknowledge that; but he never took one against you. He has taken one against Judith.”

“Against Judith! What has she done to Mr. Carlton?” asked Jane, in surprise.

“Nothing. But he does not like her face. He says it always strikes him as being disagreeable. I like Judith, and I’m sure she’s a faithful servant.”

Mr. Carlton, inquire as he would, was unable to discover how that whisper could have come to him. That some one had entered the hall and gone out again, he did not entertain a doubt. He made inquiries of Lady Jane's footman, whether he had seen any one enter; but the man acknowledged that he had not been looking. After the entrance of Mr. Frederick Grey, he had waited a minute or two, and then had gone round to the servants' entrance by the surgery.

So Mr. Carlton was as wise as before. And meanwhile no one could think why he should fancy that any stranger had been in the hall, in addition to little Wilkes the barber.

(To be continued.)

THE PEAR.

Soft sister of the firmer apple, the pear displays so marked a resemblance to its relative that the most unobservant could scarcely fail to detect their kinship, yet is the difference between them sufficiently apparent on very slight inspection, and sufficiently great to justify Loudon in his wish that they may not always continue to be classed together in the same genus, as they are now by botanists too eminent for their decision to be disputed, even when it does not give perfect satisfaction. To this genus the pear has the honour of giving the name, being termed the Pyrus communis, while the apple bears the title of Pyrus malus. Albeit alike in some respects, the trees may be distinguished in a moment by their leaves, those of the apple being broader, very slightly serrated, of a yellow green colour, and hairy underneath, while the dark green foliage of the pear is elliptical, more serrated, and smooth on both sides, the upper surface being absolutely shining; and when both are full grown the low and spreading apple, often uncouthly irregular in form, seldom attains more than half the height of the tall, upright, shapely pear, always inclining to the pyramidal form. In spring-time the large, rosy, fragrant blossoms of the former far outshine the scentless and colourless bloom of its modest rival, though differing scarcely at all botanically, the only distinction being that the five central styles are in the one case united at the base, in the other distinct; while as regards the fruit, though the tender melting consistency of the best dessert pears is different indeed from the crisp solidity of the apple, yet in some varieties the one species could quite compete with the other in hardness, and the characteristic distinction is therefore to be sought rather in the fact that the former is generally convex at the base, while the latter is always concave. Both fruits have woody threads passing from the stalk through the midst of the flesh, but in the pear these are less distinct, on account of the gritty concretions commonly found at the core, and which is caused by the woody matter becoming disseminated near the centre in small masses. The cells of the core, too, are pointed at both ends in the apple and only at one end in the pear, and the latter fruit is more astringent, less acid, and lighter than the former.

The pear does not come into bearing so soon as the apple, seedlings seldom producing any fruit before the seventh or eighth year after planting; but though attacked by the same insects and liable to the same diseases it is usually found to retain its health and vigour far better, at least in Britain (for in France and America this is said not to be the case), and reaches a much greater age, the longevity of pear trees being often reckoned by centuries. Usually the largest of our orchard trees, it sometimes attains extraordinary dimensions, one being recorded to have been fifty feet high, to have had a trunk eighteen feet in circumference, and to have borne in good years one ton and a half of fruit. Another noted pear tree, seeming to "take a leaf" from the Banyan of the East, increased to an enormous size by sending down its branches to the ground, where they took root, and each became a new tree, in turn similarly producing others.

In Europe, Western Asia, and China the pear is found growing wild throughout as wide a range as the apple; but as the crab will never grow except on tolerably good soil, and its humbler sister is content with far poorer accommodation, they are not often found in association. The latter, too, displays a far greater power of adapting itself to peculiarities of situation, a remarkable example of which is afforded by the notched-leaved pear, which grows on the mountains of Upper Nepaul. "Nature seems," says Dr. Lindley, in describing this plant, "to have intended it to brave the utmost inclemency of climate, for in its own country in the earliest spring the leaves, while still delicate and tender, are clothed with a thick white coating of wool, and the flowers themselves are so immersed in an ample covering of the same material as to bid defiance to even Tartarean cold. But in proportion as the extent of the distribution of the plant descends towards the plains, or as the season of warm weather advances, it throws off its fleecy coat, and at length becomes as naked and as glittering with green as the trees which have never had such rigour to endure." In England, where it is grown for ornament, this tree displays scarcely any woolliness, while on the other hand in the woods of Poland and on the steppes of Russia the leaves of the ordinary pear are mostly white and downy.

The great orchardist, Rivers, remarks that the pear seems to require a warm, moist climate, and that many parts of France being too hot, and most parts of England not hot enough, the island of Jersey, where a happy medium is found, is probably the most favourable situation for pears in all Europe; while it may perhaps be sime surprise to the many who look on vicinity to the metropolis as incompatible with flourishing vegetation to hear that next in suitability to this sea-girt pyral paradise are the low, moist situations immediately around London, particularly near Rotherhithc, where, he says, the Jargonelle and other fine pears may be said to attain the highest possible perfection.

In what points soever the two principal members of the Pyrus family may resemble each other, most unlike are they as regards the place they have held in the estimation of man, for while poetic fancy in different ages and far-severed climes has everywhere invested the apple with so many mystic charms, no extraneous associations diffuse a halo of borrowed glory around the neglected pear, no graceful legend plants it in celestial gardens, gives it to the guardianship of god or goddess, or links its name with the adventures of the daring heroes or loving nymphs of antiquity. There are few fruits, indeed, of whose history so little is known, though it appears to have been common from time immemorial in Syria, Egypt, and Greece, passing probably from the latter country into Italy. Homer names it as forming part of the orchard of Laertes, and Virgil alludes to having received some pears from Cato, indeed 3G varieties were known to the Romans, including the singularly-named "proud pears," so called because they ripened early and would not keep long; "libralia," or pound weight pears, &c, <tc.; but we may imagine that none could have been fruit of very fine quality, or they could hardly have merited Pliny's conclusive assertion that "all pears whatsoever are but heavy meat unless they be well boiled or baked." But little mention is made of the fruit in our own history, and as pear trees are often found growing wild throughout the country it is by some thought to be indigenous, while others believe it to be only native to more genial climes, and to have been first brought here by the Romans. There is no doubt that pears of some sort were eaten by our remote ancestors, though probably they were of no very excellent quality, for a very old English writer pronounces upon them a similar verdict to that of Pliny; but in the days of Henry VIII. some at least were admitted to even the royal table, since an item is found in his accounts of " 2d. to an old woman who gaff the kyng peres," and another of 3s. 4d. for " wardens and medlars," the " warden," a baking pear, so named, it is said, from its keeping property, being one of our oldest known varieties, once extensively cultivated by " the monks of old."

An ancient medical authority affirms that "the red warden is of great virtue conserved, roasted, or baked to quench choler;" but as it would be libellous to suppose that cloistered serenity could itself require the fruit on this account, imagination is free to picture the benevolent recluses sending round a basket of pears to any notedly fiery spirits in the neighbourhood, as modern good people might distribute a bundle of tracts.

In the time of Gerard that which stood at the head of his list as the best of all the "tame pears " then known, and which he calls the Pyrus superba sive Kutherina, was no other than the little brilliant-coloured but ill-flavoured fruit which furnished one of our old poets with so charming an illustration of his mistress's beauty when he says that, —

Her cheek was like the Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun;

but which, though it still holds a place on Loudon street-stalls on account of being so early ripe, has long since sunk below the appetite of any but children. It might almost be said that it is only during the lust 60 or 70 years that the pear has actually been known in Europe, so great is the change that has taken place in it from what it was before that time, when it had hardly begun to manifest the perfection of which it is capable. It was in Belgium, which has therefore been prettily termed the "Eden of the pear tree," that attention was first attracted to it, and to a native of that country, M. Van Mons, who actually devoted his life to pears and their improvement, we chiefly owe it that the poor varieties which gave a modicum of enjoyment to our forefathers have disappeared from all good gardens, and resigned their place to aristocratic races of rich and varied flavour, intensified to a degree hitherto unimagined. This gentleman was no mere empiric lighting accidentally on lucky expedients in fruit-growing, but a scientific philosopher, who, having conceived a theory, set resolutely to work to test it by years of patient experimentalising, for believing that originally there were but few, perhaps but one, species of any genus of plants, and that while in a wild state Nature only aimed at preserving these in a healthy condition, and perfecting seed which should exactly reproduce the parent from which it sprung, he considered that it must be the object of cultivation to refine even by enervating the fruit tree, to subdue its coarse exuberance of vegetation, and while probably lessening the quantity of the foliage as well as the size and vigour of the seeds to improve the quality of the pulp or flesh surrounding the latter. Finding that wild trees transplanted into gardens altered but little, or, though their leaves and fruit might grow larger, that the latter did not become better in quality, and that suckers, buds, or grafts taken from them did but reproduce similar plants, he sought in the seed for means of improvement, and found that the pips of wild fruit sown in good soil produced plants which differed somewhat from the parent (mostly for the better) and from each other; their seeds replanted advanced another stop, and so on, until a certain ultimate point of perfection was reached, when a retrograde movement began, and if the sowing process were still persevered in the descendants of the good plants became worse and worse, until they ended finally, as worthless wildings, much where the original ancestor began. The coincidence of Dr. Lindley, in at least the latter part of this theory, seems apparent from a remark in his works that—" There can be no doubt that if the arts of cultivation were abandoned for only a few years, all the annual varieties of plants in our gardens would disappear and be replaced by original wild forms."

The retrograde tendency seems to be most strong in old trees, and Van Mons therefore gathered his first seeds from young trees of common kinds yet not absolutely crabs, and as soon as the trees produced from them bore fruit, which usually proved to be of very middling quality, but at least differing from the parent, and mostly a little in advance of it, ho chose out the best and again planted their seeds. The next generation was found to come more quickly into bearing, while their quality was still more promising; their offspring showed yet greater amelioration, and each succeeding family bringing forth fruit sooner, and producing a greater number of valuable varieties, when the fifth generation was reached the trees began to bear in the third year after planting, and nearly all had attained great excellence. To use Van Mons' own words, "I have found," says he, "this art to consist in regenerating in a direct line of descent and as rapidly as possible an improving variety, taking care that there be no interval between the generations. To bow, to resow, to sow again, to sow porpetually, in short to do nothing but sow is the practice to be pursued, and which cannot be departed from; and this is the whole secret of the art I have employed."

The constant springing up of fine now varieties of fruits in the American States is, as the author of "The Fruits of America" admits, a confirmation of the Van Mons theory, for while the colonists who had taken pains to bring with them seeds of the very best English fruits were doomed to see a grievous falling off in the degenerate produce resulting from their planting, the seedlings proving little better than wild trees, in the course of years this ebbing tide has turned again and borne transatlantic growths with onward flow to heights of excellence beyond what had ever been attained by the British trees from which they are descended; and had the process of continually rearing new generations of seedlings been uninterruptedly followed the good result might perhaps have been much sooner arrived at. Assuredly the Belgian's theory was founded on an observance of natural laws, and in practice his system proved a great success, for having himself raised no less than eighty thousand seedlings, from these and many thousands of others reared by his disciples in Belgium and elsewhere, an immense number of new varieties of great excellence have been obtained, among which the palm is usually given to the Buerre Diel. The method, however, is attended with several disadvantages, for being avowedly an enfeebling process, the trees so grown are usually of weak habit, and apt very soon to decay or become unhealthy; and being, too, almost absolutely artificial products, they often require an unintermittent care and culture never needed by the hardy children of Nature, so that some of the Flemish pears latest introduced into America have already begun to show symptoms of decay or disease. Whether it be that our climate suits them better, or that our cultivators pay them more attention, the pears of Belgium succeed better in England and are found much hardier than those of either France or Jersey, which seldom thrive here, or at least are very precarious. Yet though both England and America have gladly availed themselves of the result of Van Mons' labours, the process which he pursued has never found much favour with us, and still less with our more impatient and "go-a-head" cousins, so long a time being required before any result can be expected. Some have tried raising seedlings without ob serving any method, but as a proof of the capriciousness of fortune in such matters, a celebrated French horticulturist has recorded that for fifty years ho had been in the habit of planting pear pips without ever having thus produced a good variety; while on the other hand Major Esperen, of Belgium, who simply sowed seeds indiscriminately and trusted to chance, originated five or six sorts so fine as to be unsurpassed by any in the Van Mons col collection. In our country, however, the method introduced by Mr. Knight of obtaining new kinds by means of hybridisation or cross breeding, which is far less tedious, and in which, too, the result can be prognosticated with some degree of accuracy, has been attended with so much success that there has been little temptation to resort to any other. Of course when fine kinds are once obtained, by whatever means they may have been produced, nothing more is needed to perpetuate them than to continue their propagation to any extent by grafting; and as with regard to the hardier kinds at least Loudon assures us that the best pears can be grown with no more trouble and expense than inferior ones, it is to be hoped that eventually the former will quite supersede the latter, and what is still too exclusively a luxury for the wealthy at length be freely open to all classes.

So much attention having been directed to the multiplication of varieties, it is not surprising that they should now be very numerous, and though there are still not above twenty or thirty pears which are reckoned really first-class, Dochnahl's recent work describes above 1050, and the Bon Jardinier, the chief French horticultural periodical, says that the catalogue in that country now comprises 3000 varieties, each of which, too, has about six synonyms. Attempts have been made to classify these multitudinous races into families, but no very satisfactory arrangement has yet been achieved, and the only classification in use in England is that which divides them into summer, autumn, and winter pears, with the further distinction into the very soft or melting pears (in French bewries), the crisper or breaking pairs (crevers), and the perry (poiree) and baking fruits. According to their forms they are described as pyriform, like the old Wind sor; oblate, like the Bergamot; obovate, like the Swan's Egg; or pyramidal when the lines extend upwards nearly uncurved from the broad base.

Many of our old sorts are extinct, and others are doomed to the same fate, for even the popular Swan's Egg is pronounced byg in comparison with the more modem sorts; but a few are still welcomo to our palates as ever they were to preceding generations, for far from superseded is our common Bergamot, long as great a favourite among English pears as the Ribstono Pippin among apples. Nothing authentic is known of its origin but its antiquity is undoubted, and according to Manger the name is not derived from Bergamo in Italy, as many have supposed, but from the Turkish word beg or bey, a prince, and armoud, a pear, and was formerly written Begarmoud, the natural inference being that it originated in a warmer climate than that of Europe, and was introduced here from Turkey. It is to the French that we have owed most of our good older kinds, for they seem to have had the start of us in pear culture, since good sorts were known in France as early as in the thirteenth century. Foremost among our old fruits thence derived stands the Jargonelle, long since pro nounced to be the queen of autumn pears, and which, still scarcely surpassed in flavour and quite unequalled in productiveness by any of her contemporaries of that season, seems hardly likely to bo called on to abdicate her throne in favour of upstart modern rivals. This fruit consists literally of little more than can suerie enclosed in a rind, the analysis of De Candolle showing that when ripe it contains 83-88 per cent, of water and 11 52 per cent, of sugar. Though we owe both the fruit and its title to France, by somo strange contretemps the name is there given to a quito different kind, while our Jargonelle is called by the extraordinary appellation of Orosse Cuisse Madame, or Great Ladios' Thighs. The German name, Frauen Schenhel, has the same meaning.

The Bon Chretien is another ancient variety still as highly in repute as ever, both hero and in its native France. It has many sub-varieties, one of the commonest in England being the William's Bon Chretien, often called merely the William Pear. Of the Flemish pears more lately introduced into this country, one of the chief in beauty and flavour, scarcely owning a superior, is the Marie Louise, the tree of which is, too, so hardy that it affords an almost certain crop under the most unfavourable circumstances. Other noted Flemish pears are the Bcurre Ranee, a misnomer for Ranz, its name being borrowed from the district in Flanders where it first grew; and the Olon morceau, so called from a Walloon word equivalent to the French friand, the title meaning therefore delicious morsel or bit.

Among the Germans the pear is more prized at the dessert than almost any other fruit, but the one which ranks highest there, and which may indeed be called their national fruit, as it originated in Germany, is the pretty Forelle, Truite, or Trout Pear, so named from a fancied resemblance between its speckled skin and that of the fish.

In America many of the pears of Europe are grown, but are rated at a much lower standard than on this continent, the Jargonelle, though very common, being looked on as a poor fruit, ami even the Marie Louise and Bon Chretien as but second rate; for, as in the caso of the apple, the seeds of most European fruits sown in America have in the course of time originated new varieties peculiarly adapted to that country, and far more highly esteemed there than the sorts from which they were produced. The prince of American pears, a variety exhibiting a rare combination of virtues, the richest and most exquisitely flavoured of fruits being borne on the healthiest and hardiest of trees, is the Seckel Pear, so general a favourite that no garden is considered complete without it. Small sized, dumpy in shape, and dull in colour, it has been called the ugliest of fruits, but if we may so far adapt the old saying as to admit that "Handsome is that handsome tastes," no deficiencies in beauty will be perceived when once the palate revels in the honied spicy richness of the Seckel Pear, its flavour, quite peculiar to itself, being generally pronounced to be unequalled by any of its European kindred.

The pear is peculiar in one respect, for, unlike nearly all other fruits, its being fresh-gathered is by no means a recommendation, most varieties being much finer in flavour if plucked early in the season and ripened in the house than if suffered to mature on the tree; and many which appear very dry and second-rate when ripened in the open air not only keep good much longer but attain first-rate quality when gathered while unripe and shut up for weeks indoors. They however require warmth, for a pear which is of melting consistency after having been ex posed for some time to a temperature of 60 or 70 degrees would prove quite tough if left until wanted in a cold apartment. A German writer recommends packing pears between feather beds as a good mode of ripening them, but this would hardly suit English notions, and the Guernsey method of exposing them to the sun shine on the shelves of a greenhouse commends itself as seeming the most natural and pleasant way of bringing the fruit to healthy maturity. The chief use of pears is as a dessert fruit, but they are also stewed or baked, many of the hard kinds being appropriated exclusively to this use, but most keeping pears, such as the Swan's Egg, &c., are also excellent for baking, for when simply heaped into a dish and put in the oven their own juice forms a rich syrup as sweet as though much sugar had been used, and even windfalls and damaged fruit may thus be turned to good account with little trouble and no expense. In Germany, Russia, and yet more in France pears are also dried; the common sort, sold about the streets in Paris, being merely slowly baked on boards in ovens after the bread has been withdrawn, but their juice being thus lost, they are far inferior to the more carefully prepared best sort, which are first boiled until a little soft, then peeled and put on a dish till the syrup drains from them; afterwards placed on wicker mats in an oven for twelve hours, then soaked in this syrup, to which a little sugar and brandy has been added, till their own juice is thus reabsorbed, after which they are replaced in the oven twice or thrice until they become quite firm and of a rich transparent chestnut colour, when they are packed in paper-lined boxes for homo use or exportation. In hotter countries fires and ovens are not needed for this purpose, for the traveller Burchell mentions having, when in the interior of South Africa, stocked himself before crossing the desert with dried pears, "the manner of preserving which consisted in merely drying them whole and unpeeled in the sun, and afterwards pressing them flat, by which simple process they keep in perfection for more than a twelve-month, as I afterwards learnt by experience, and therefore can recommend them as a valuable addition to the stores of a traveller."

As the apple yields its cider so too does the pear afford a special beverage, less wholesome than the former, but even more agreeable, and therefore scarcely less esteemed, especially as it is made in far less quantities and has there fore more claim to the merit of rarity, its manufacture being now chiefly limited to the cider districts of England and France. Pears for the press may be either large or small, but the more austere the taste the better the liquor; wild pears are found not unsuitable, and the fruit which is esteemed best for this use is so unfit for any other that not only are they quite uneatable by man, but it is said that even hungry swine will hardly so much as smell to them; and it is a curious fact, though not without its parallel in the annals of vegetable peculiarities, that the unexpressed juice of the perry pear is so harsh and acrid as to cause great heat and long-continued irritation of the throat if an attempt be made to eat it, yet no sooner is it separated from the pulp by simple pressure than it at once becomes rich and sweet with no more roughness than is agreeable to most palates. As pears were deemed by the Romans an antidote against poisonous fungi, so perry is still reckoned the best thing to be taken after a surfeit of mushrooms. Though it will not keep nearly so long as cider, it yet contains more alcohol, and also makes better vinegar, while the residue left after pressure serves very well for fuel, for which purpose that of cider is useless. The bark of the pear tree yields a yellow dye, and its wood is eminently serviceable to Art, being much employed not only for making parts of musical instruments but also to furnish blocks for wood engraving. The wood of the wild pear is extremely hard, that of the cultivated kind much lighter and soft.Asterisk.

A PROCESSION.

It was a Queen went forth
In pomp and state and bravery.
She was beloved, and so, in state,
She ever went, till she ceased to be
With circumstance and pomp elate.
But as she loved her people well
She bore the clamour of the bell
And saw the coloured banners wave,
And heard her lieges shout and rave,
As things unto her lot that clave.
And so she bowed with gentle mien,
Bending with sweet, untiring smile,
As rose on her slow course the while
Each shout, "God save the Queen!"

"To be a queen is a gallant thing,"
Sighed a poor, weary artisan
Who close by the royal carriage ran:
"'Tis a blessed lot to be a king,
To know you've a good roof over your head,
And never to feel the want of bread,
Or fear that the work will come to an end,
Or have to wait for bad times to mend.
It must be a blessed thing and good,
If sick, to be able to stay within,
And not to think you're committing sin
By neglecting the young ones' food.
And instead of trudging with blistered feet,
To ride in a coach with a nosegay sweet,
And soldiers fine
To keep the line.
And people hallooing all down the street."

But the artisan only spoke in his heart,
As beside the carriage he ran;
And the monarch had not the diviner's art
To read all the thoughts of man.
Nor did that weary workman know
What weariness in a soul may dwell,
A weight that a sceptre cannot dispel,
A hidden grief lips may not tell,
Like rivers dark 'neath the ice that flow.
And often that the temples crowned
Are prisoners in that golden round,
And a captive lone a king may be,
While all about his throne are free.

A city's streets the progress threads:
The mayor comes forth in a golden chain,
With red-cloaked burgesses in his train,
And on his knees
Presents the keys
Of the gates whose arch is over their heads;
And foliage and flowers hide the stones,
Like an infant's flesh on an old man's bones.
And the trumpet's bray
And the drum's deep bay
Are hushed for the mayor his address to say.

The Queen sits forward, all attent;
Though she cannot hear, she knows what's meant.
And as she waits in patient guise,
What object meets her wistful eyes?
Her eyes upon a casement fall,
A little oriel in the wall.
And there, behind the bean-pots gay,
Stands a blooming maiden tall;—
A blooming girl, with nut-brown hair
Knotted above her snowy neck.
With rounded cheek so rich, so fair,
That a young countess it might deck;

And eyes that shed a tender light,
Which read the heart where they are thrown,
And do not seek to hide her own.
With hands enclasped, the maiden stood
In the first morn of womanhood.
Th' excitement of the time and scene
Had sent more colour to her face;
But little wot she that her Queen,
Whose gaze seemed fixed on empty space,
Was watching with absorbing power,
Half hid by flowers, that fairest flower.
*⁠*⁠*⁠*The mayor had ended his address—
On the last words he laid such stress
It startled royalty's dreaming flight;
And brought back the mayor and his keys,
And the burgesses all on their knees.
And the queen, with a sigh, said the thing that was right,
And gently expressed delight;
And how glad she was
To be there,—because
Of that loyal and beautiful sight.

Then the air with the drums and trumpets shook;
And onward again
Moved the royal train
Through the gates in right royal guise,
And the weary Queen cast a lingering look
At the girl with the peaceful eyes.
"Ah, blessed lot!" said the pensive Queen,
As the laboured hours crept by,
“‘Mid the foliage to dwell
Of a home one loves well,
And the heaven of privacy:
Shedding sweet light
Like a star on the night,
Or a glow-worm in grass-blades green!
Thrice happy girl of the nut-brown curl,
Of eyes and brow so sweet;
'Tis not in thy fate
For heaven to wait,
For heaven is about thy feet.
Whilst a weary world fights on its path,
Thou hast the peace that an angel hath!"
*⁠*⁠*⁠*The years rolled on and the Queen still ruled,
Still reigned in her people's heart;
To the duties a crown entails well schooled,
She bore a monarch's part.
But weary Time could not efface
That form of happy, youthful grace,
Which, like a tinkling stream
Heard from a dry and hot high road,
Or a blest memorable dream
That mocks our present tearful load,
Came back and back and back and back,
Amidst and between life's cloudy wrack,
And sometimes brought a sudden tear
To her eyes, which none might see;
And a long-drawn sigh when none was near—
A queen's humility,
Who knew that Heaven hath better things
To give than the gilded state of kings:—
A lightsome bosom and golden rest,
The sweetness of home, in some hidden nest,
And the presence of those the heart loves best.
⁠Berni.

A PROCESSION.

LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER XLVII.⁠DANGER.

Lady Lucy Chesney lay in imminent danger. But a few days ill, and her life was despaired of. The anticipations of the surgeons—that she would have the fever badly—had been all too fully borne out. They had done what they could for her, and it was as nothing.

None could say that Mr. Carlton was not a kind and anxious attendant. Lady Jane thanked him in her heart. She began half to like him. That he was most solicitous for Lucy’s recovery was indisputable; and it may be said that she was in his hands, not in Mr. Grey’s, because his opportunities of seeing her were of necessity so much more frequent. Jane sat by the bed, full of grief, but not despairing as those who have no hope. She possessed sure confidence in God; full and perfect trust; she had learnt to commit all her care to Him; and to those who can, and do, so commit it, utter despair never comes. Jane believed that every earthly means which skill could devise was being tried for the recovery of Lucy; and if those means should fail, it must be God’s will; she tried to think, because she knew, that it would still be for the best, although they in their human grief might repine and see it not.

Lady Laura also had taken the fever. But she had it in so very slight a degree that she need not have lain in bed at all; and before the worst had come for Lucy, she was, comparatively speaking, well. Laura was exacting; it was in her nature so to be; and Lady Jane had to quit Lucy’s room for hers, often, when there was not the least necessity for it. Mr. Carlton was anxious and attentive, but he knew from the first there would be no danger, and he told Laura so. The result was that she called him “unfeeling.” An unmerited reproach; if ever man was anxious for the well-doing of his wife, that man was Mr. Carlton.

Frederick Grey went in once with his uncle to Lucy’s chamber, after the danger supervened. She did not know him; and he had only the pain of seeing her turn her head from side to side in the delirium of fever. If Lady Jane did not despair, he did; the sight nearly unmanned him.

“Oh, merciful Heaven, save her!” he murmured. “Save her, if only in compassion to me!”

It was not alone the dreadful grief for Lucy; it was the self-reproach that was haunting him. He assumed that the disorder must have been communicated to Lucy through him, and remorse took hold of him. What could he do?—what could he do? He would have sold his own life willingly then, to save that of Lucy Chesney.

He went straight from the sick-chamber to the telegraph-office at Great Wennock. South Wennock had been in state of resentment some time at having to go so far if it wanted to telegraph, and most certainly Frederick Grey indorsed the indignation now. Then he went back to South Wennock, to Mr. Carlton’s. Jonathan advanced from his post in the hall to the open door: open that day, that there might be neither knock nor ring.

“Do you know how she is now?” he asked, too anxiously excited to speak with any sort of ceremony.

“There’s no change, sir. Worse, if anything.”

He suppressed a groan as he leaned against the pillar. Chary of intruding into Mr. Carlton’s house, after that gentleman’s reception of him the first night of Lucy’s illness, he would not enter now. He tore a leaf from his pocketbook, wrote some words on it in pencil, folded, and gave it to Jonathan.

“Let Lady Jane have this when there’s an opportunity. But don’t disturb the sick-room to give it her.”

The paper, however, soon found its way to Jane. She opened it in some curiosity.

“I have telegraphed for my father. He may not be able to do more than is being done, but it will at least be a satisfaction. He knows Lucy’s constitution, and there’s something in that. If I lose her, I lose all I care for in life.”

Words quiet and composed enough; scant indication did they give of the urgent, impassioned nature of the message gone up to Sir Stephen.

Jane approved of what he had done. Though she put little faith in further advice being of avail, it would, as he said, be a satisfaction. She wished Lady Oakburn was as much within their reach as Sir Stephen Grey; if the worst happened to Lucy, the blow to her almost more than mother would be bitter.

Dangerous illness connected with our history was in another habitation of South Wennock that day. The little boy at Tupper’s cottage, of whom mention has been so frequently made, and who had created doubt and speculation in more minds than one, had become rapidly worse in the past week; and Mr. Carlton saw that he could not save him. Greatly worked as Mr. Carlton just then was out of doors,—having Lucy in her danger on his hands at home, not to speak of his exacting wife—he had not on this day been able to go to the cottage. Mr. Jefferson went up and brought back the report: The boy was no better, and the mother excessively anxious.

“She did not like my calling,” observed the assistant-surgeon to Mr. Carlton. “She said she hoped you would be able to get up to day, if only for a minute.”

Mr. Carlton made no particular answer. He would go if he could, but did not think time would permit him; and he knew his going could do the child no good.

Mrs. Smith, to her own surprise, found she was to be favoured with a levee that afternoon. The little fellow, for whom a temporary daybed had been made up in the parlour, was lying upon it asleep, and Mrs. Smith sat by him. The leg gave him a great deal of pain now, but it seemed easier than it was in the morning; and in these easy intervals he was sure to sleep. The young woman, whom you saw drawing the child’s carriage not long ago, had come into the house entirely by Mrs. Smith’s desire, to do the work, go on errands, anything that might be required; and there’s always enough to do in illness. She was out now: having had leave to go and see her mother; and Mrs. Smith had fallen into a doze herself, when she was aroused by a sharp knock at the cottage door.

She went into the kitchen and opened it. There stood a little shrivelled woman in a black bonnet, with a thin, battered-looking sort of face. Mrs. Smith had seen her before, though she retained not the slightest recollection of her; and the reader has seen her also.

Is was the Widow Gould from Palace Street. She had been honoured by a call from Mrs. Pepperfly that morning, which led, as a matter of course, to a dish of gossip; and the result was, that the widow became acquainted for the first time with Mrs. Smith’s presence at South Wennock, and the various speculations arising therefrom. Consequently the widow—and there were few more curious widows living—thought she could not do better than go up to the cottage and claim acquaintance.

Mrs. Smith received her with some graciousness. The truth was, she was growing rather out of conceit of the plan of secrecy she had adopted since her sojourn at South Wennock. Her only motive for it (if we except a natural reserve, which was habitual) had been that she thought she might find out more particulars of Mrs. Crane’s death as a stranger, if there was anything attendant on that death which needed concealment. Until she heard of the death, she had not the remotest idea of any concealment. But the plan had not seemed to answer, for Mrs. Smith could learn no more than she had learnt at the commencement, and she talked readily enough with the widow.

Upon hospitable thoughts intent, Mrs. Smith set out her tea-table; laying the tray in the kitchen, not to disturb the little sleeper in the parlour. It’s true it was barely three o’clock, rather an early hour for the meal; but it has become fashionable, you know, to take a cup of tea early. Before they had sat down to it, another visitor arrived. It was Judith Ford.

It appeared that Judith had been obliged to come to Cedar Lodge that afternoon upon some matter of business: and Lady Jane had told her to call in and ask after the little boy at the cottage. Jane had heard of his increasing illness; and she thought much of him, even in the midst of her anxiety for Lucy.

“It’s like magic, your both meeting here together!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith.

For there was always a feeling resting in the woman’s mind that the whole known circumstances connected with Mrs. Crane’s death had not been detailed to her; a continuous hope that a chance word might reveal to her something or other new. Judith said she could stop for a quarter of an hour, and Mrs. Smith handed her some tea in triumph, for the promised tea-drinking bout, when Judith was to spend an evening at the cottage, had not taken place yet. What with Lady Jane’s visit to London, and Lucy’s sojourn with them, and one thing or other, Judith had not been able to find the time for it.

It would have been strange had the conversation not turned upon that long-past tragedy. The Widow Gould, who loved talking better than anything else in the world, related her version of it, and the other widow listened with all her ears. Mrs. Gould, it must be remembered, had never admitted, in conjunction with the nurse, that there could be truth in that vision of Mr. Carlton’s, touching the man on the stairs; it a little exasperated both of them to hear it spoken of, and she began disclaiming against it now. A needless precaution, since Mrs. Smith had never before heard of it. It appeared, however, to make a great impression upon her, now that she did hear it.

“Good Heavens! And do you mean to say that man was not followed up?”

“There wasn’t no man to follow,” testily returned the Widow Gould, upon whom the past seven or eight years had not sat lightly, and she looked at least sixty-six. “I’ve never liked Mr. Carlton since, I know that. It might have took away our characters, you know, ma'am.”

Mrs. Smith did not appear to know anything of the sort, or even to hear the delicate allusion. She had risen from her seat to fill the teapot from the kettle on the fire; but she put it down again in haste.

“It was just the clue I wanted!” she exclaimed. “Just the clue. I thought it so strange that he had not been here; so strange, so strange! It was more unaccountable to me than all the rest.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed the little shrivelled woman, staring at the evident excitement.

“I mean her husband. That man concealed on the stairs must have been her husband.”

“What, Mr. Crane?”

“Of course it was. He killed her. I feel as certain of it as if I had seen it done. How came that fat nurse, Pepperfly, not to tell me this?”

“Mother Pepperfly don’t believe in it,” said Mrs. Gould. “She’s as certain as I be, that no man was there.”

“You might have told me this,” resumed Mrs. Smith, turning to Judith. “Why, it throws more light upon the subject than all the rest put together.”

“I have not had much opportunity of telling you anything,” answered Judith, who had sat in her usual silent fashion, sipping the hot tea and listening to the other two. “But I don’t believe it, either, for the matter of that.”

“Believe what?”

“That any man was concealed on the stairs.”

“But—I can’t understand,” cried Mrs. Smith. “Did Mr. Carlton not see one there?”

“He fancied so at the moment. But he came to the conclusion afterwards that the moonlight had deceived him.”

“And it never was followed up?”

“Oh dear yes,” said Judith. “The police sought after the man for a long while, and could never find him.”

“And they came to think at last, ma'am—as everybody else of sense had thought at the time—that there wasn’t no man there,” put in the little widow.

“Then I can tell them to the contrary,” was Mrs. Smith’s emphatic rejoinder. “That man was poor Mrs. Crane’s husband. I happen to know so much.”

Little Mrs. Gould was startled at the words. Judith arrested the piece of bread-and-butter she was about to put into her mouth, and gazed in astonishment.

“Yes,” continued Mrs. Smith, “it must have been him. I know—I feel that it was him. He was at South Wennock: I know so much as that.”

“You know this?” cried the other two in a breath.

“I do. I know that Mrs. Crane’s husband was at South Wennock.”

“And where is he now, ma'am?” asked the widow.

“Ah, where indeed!” was the answer given in an angry tone. “I have never heard of him since in all these years. I came down here now to find out what I could about him—and her.”

“It’s what old Pepperfly told me this morning, ma'am; she said she was sure you hadn’t come for nothing else. I know what I should have done in your place,” added the widow. “I should have declared myself to the police the minute I come, and got them to rake up the search again. You see there was nobody here belonging to the poor lady at the time, and it made the police careless over it —least ways, a many folks have held that opinion. All I can say is, that if there was any Mr. Crane on the stairs that night, he must have stole in surreptitious down the drawing-room chimbley, for he never come in at the straightforward door.”

“There’s time enough yet to declare my business to the police,” was Mrs. Smith’s answer. “I have preferred to remain quiet, and feel my way. Not but that one or two have suspected who I was. Judith, here, for one; she remembered me at once.”

“And Mother Pepperfly for another,” remarked the widow, handing up her cup for some more tea.

“No, she did not; at first she did not recollect me at all,” said Mrs. Smith, as she filled it. “I think Mr. Carlton suspects who I am.”

Judith lifted her eyes. “Why do you think so?”

“Because he asked so many questions when I first came—who I was, and what I was, and all the rest of it; I believe he’d have gone on asking till now if I had not put him down. And one day I caught him looking curiously into my drawers; he said he was searching for rag for my child’s knee; but I have always thought he was looking to see what he could find.”

“Why! Mr. Carlton met you that time at the station at Great Wennock!” exclaimed Mrs. Gould, the event occurring to her memory. “I remember it came out at the inquest.”

“Was it Mr. Carlton I met there?” resumed Mrs. Smith, after a pause, during which she had cast her thoughts back to the nearly-forgotten incident. “I have not recognised him again. It was almost dark at the time, I remember. But perhaps his eyes were keener than mine. At any rate, I feel sure he knows who I am; why also should he put all those questions?”

“It’s only natural to him to ask such,” observed the Widow Gould. “He’d like it to be brought to light as well as the rest of us.”

“Of course he would,” was the acquiescent answer. “Once or twice I have been upon the point of talking to him about it, but I thought I’d wait; I thought I’d wait.”

She spoke this in a dreamy sort of manner. Judith rose and put back her chair. She could not stay long on that day of anxiety, and she did not care to ask Mrs. Smith any questions before the other.

“I say,” broke in that other, “how long did that little mite of an infant live? Pepperfly says it’s dead.”

“Not over long,” replied Mrs. Smith. “It wasn’t to be expected that it would. I wish yon could stay, Judith.”

“I wish I could,” was Judith’s answer. “It’s impossible to-day. There’s nothing can be done for Lady Lucy, poor thing, but one must be in the house.”

“Report says, Judy, that Lady Laura———My goodness! who’s come now?”

The sudden breaking off of the Widow Gould’s remark was caused by the dashing up to the gate of some sort of vehicle. They crowded to the window to look.

It was a baker’s cart. And seated in state beside the driver was Mrs. Pepperfly.

It appeared that her duties at Mrs. Knagg’s were over, through that lady’s being, as Mrs. Pepperfly expressed it, on her legs again, and she had quitted her the previous day. Consequently she was at leisure to make calls upon various friends. It struck her that she could not do better than devote the afternoon and evening to her new acquaintance in Blister Lane, where she should be sure to enjoy a good tea, and might happen to drop upon something nice for supper—pickled pork, or some other dainty; not to reckon the chance of being invited to take a bed. The friendly baker had accommodated her with a lift in his cart. How he had contrived to lift her up, he hardly knew; still less how he should get her down again. While this was being accomplished, the Widow Gould running out to assist in the process, the little boy awoke and cried aloud. Altogether, what with one distraction and another, Judith found a good opportunity to slip away.

She was half way down the Rise, when she met Mr. Carlton driving up in his open carriage. He was on his way to pay a visit at Tupper’s cottage.

CHAPTER XLVIII.⁠SIR STEPHEN’S VISIT.

Down thundered Sir Stephen Grey as fast as the hissing and shrieking train could take him. The message had disturbed him in no measured degree. Lucy Chesney given over! At Great Wennock he found his son waiting with a fleet horse and gig. A minute’s explanation, and they were skimming along the smooth road.

“Any change since you telegraphed, Frederick?”

“None for the better, sir.”

There was an interval of silence.

“My son, what a pace you are driving at? Take care what you are about.”

“The horse is sure, father. And she lying at the turn between life and death.”

Sir Stephen said no more. As the gig reached South Wennock, and dashed through it on its way to Mr. Carlton’s, the inhabitants flocked to their doors and windows. What could possess young Fred Grey, that he was driving in that mad fashion? But, as their eyes fell on his companion, they recognised him, and comprehended all. Sir Stephen Grey, the great physician, brought down from London in that haste? Then Lady Lucy Chesney must indeed be dying!

Mr. Carlton happened to be at home when the gig dashed up. He had just returned from that visit to Tupper’s cottage. At the first moment he did not recognise his visitor. But he did when he met him in the hall.

“Sir Stephen Grey?” he exclaimed, his manner cold, his tones bearing marked surprise. In that first moment he scarcely understood how or why Sir Stephen had come.

“How d’ye do, how d’ye do, Carlton?” unceremoniously spoke Sir Stephen, in his haste, as he brushed past him. “Which room is she lying in?”

Whether opposition was or was not in the surgeon’s mind, he did not offer it. Indeed there was no time, for Sir Stephen had gone quickly up the stairs. For one thing, Mr. Carlton was preoccupied, sundry little trifles at Tupper’s cottage having put him out considerably. He comprehended the case now: that Frederick Grey—or perhaps Mr. John Grey— had telegraphed to Sir Stephen on Lucy’s account. Mr. Carlton had not any objection to Sir Stephen’s seeing her; but he asked himself in what way Sir Stephen’s skill was better than theirs, that he need have been summoned; and he resented its having been done without consulting him.

He looked out at the front door, and saw Frederick Grey driving away in the gig, quietly now. Mr. Carlton sent after him a scornful word: he disliked him as much as he had done in the days gone by.

Sir Stephen was already at his post in Lucy's chamber, Lady Jane alone its other inmate. Mr. Carlton went in once, but Sir Stephen put his finger on his lip for silence. A few words passed between them in the lowest whisper, having reference to the case; its past symptoms and treatment; and the surgeon stole away again.

For three long hours Stephen Grey remained in the chamber, never quitting it; three long hours, and every moment of those hours might be that of death. Lady Jane caused a sandwich to be brought to the door and a glass of wine, and he swallowed the refreshment standing. And the time wore on.

When Sir Stephen quitted the house it was night. A little beyond Mr. Carlton's, nearer the town, was a space unoccupied by houses; it was dark there, for no friendly gas-lamp was near to throw out its light. Pacing this dark spot, was one with folded arms; he had so paced it since the night set in. The baronet recognised his son.

"The crisis has come," said Sir Stephen. "Come: and passed."

Frederick Grey struggled with his agitation. He strove to be a man. But he essayed twice to speak before any words would issue from his bloodless lips.

"And she is dead?"

"No. She will recover."

He placed his arm within his son's as he spoke, and walked on, perceiving little of the emotion. Sir Stephen was of equable mind himself; he liked to take things easy, and could not understand that Frederick must be different. Frederick, however, was different: he had inherited his mother's sensativo temperament. Sir Stephen caught a glimpse of his pallid face as they passed the window of Wilkes the barber, who had a flaring gas jet therein, to display the beauties of a stuffed gentleman, all hair and whiskers, which turned round upon a pivot.

"What's the matter, Frederick? Don't you feel well?"

"Oh, yes. A little—anxious. Are you sure the crisis is favourable?"

"Certain. If she dies now, it will be from weakness. I wonder Lady Jane let her be ill at Carlton's."

Even yet Frederick was not sufficiently himself to enter on the explanation. It was not Lady Jane's fault, was all he said.

"You won't go back to-night, father?"

"No. I shall stay until morning, but I am sure she is all right now. Youth and beauty can't escape, you see. To think that it should have attacked Lucy Chesney! Fortunately she has a good constitution."

They walked on to Mr. John Grey's, where Sir Stephen would remain for the night. Most cordially was he welcomed; Mrs. Grey said it seemed like old times to see him back again.

There were many cases, even at that present time, where the fever had taken as great a hold as it had on Lucy, and when the fact of Sir Stephen's arrival became known—and the news spread like wildfire—Mr. Grey's house was besieged with applicants, praying that Sir Stephen would afford the sick the benefit of his advice, before he went back to town. So much for popular opinion! A few years back, Mr. Stephen Grey had been hunted from the town, scarcely a soul in it would have taken his advice, gratis; but Sir Stephen Grey, the orthodox London physician, the baronet, the great man who attended upon royalty, had risen to a wonderful premium. Had all the faculty of the physicians' college combined been at South Wennock, none would have been thought much of, in comparison with Sir Stephen Grey.

Did he refuse to go? Not he. At the beck and call of any in South Wennock—for he was not one to pay back evil in its own coin, Sir Stephen went abroad. In at one house, out of another, till the little hours of the morning, was he. And not a fee would he take, either from rich or poor. No, no, it was for old friendship's sake, he said, as he shook them by the hand; for old friendship's sake.

Twice in the evening he visited Lucy, and found that the favourable symptoms remained; nay, were growing more and more apparent. Jane would scarcely let go his hand; she could not divest herself of the idea that he had saved Lucy. No, Sir Stephen said: Lucy's constitution would have triumphed without him, under God.

Mr. Carlton, who had recovered his equanimity, invited Sir Stephen into his drawing-room, and seemed disposed to be cordial; but Sir Stephen told him, and with truth, that he had no time to sit that night even for a minute, South Wennock would not let him.

When Sir Stephen reached his brother's house it was one o'clock, and, to his surprise, he saw another applicant waiting for him; a stout female of extraordinary size, who was dozing asleep in a chair, underneath the hall lamp. His coming in aroused her, and she stood up, curtseying after her peculiar fashion.

“You don’t remember me, sir.”

“Why, bless my heart!—if I don’t think it’s mother Pepperfly!” he exclaimed, after a minute’s doubtful stare. “What have you been doing with yourself? You have grown into two.”

“Growed into six, Mr. Stephen, if I’m to be reckoned by breadth. Hope you are well, sir, and your good lady!”

“All well. And now, what do you want with me? To recommend you to a mill that grinds people slender again?”

Mrs. Pepperfly shook her head dolefully, intimating that no such mill could have any effect upon her, and proceeded to explain her business. Which she persisted in doing at full length, in spite of the lateness of the hour and Sir Stephen’s fatigue.

It appeared—rather to Mrs. Pepperfly’s own discomfiture—that Mrs. Smith was not able to invite her to a bed, owing to the only spare one being occupied by the servant maid; but she was treated to a refreshing tea and profuse supper, and enjoyed her evening very much; the Widow Gould’s presence adding to the general sociability. The widow loft early; she kept good hours; but Mrs. Pepperfly was in no hurry to depart. She really did make herself useful in attending to the child, and sat by him for some time after he was carried up-stairs to his room. She offered to stop with him for the night, but Mrs. Smith entirely declined: it had not come yet to sitting up nights with him.

In the course of the evening, the news which had been spreading through South Wennock reached Tupper’s cottage. Mr. Carlton’s boy, who had carried up some medicine, imparted it. The great London doctor, Sir Stephen Grey, had come down by telegraph to Lady Lucy, and was now paying visits to the sick throughout the town. Mrs. Smith seized upon the news, as a parched traveller seizes upon water. She loved the child passionately, hard and cold as were her outward manners; and it seemed that this whispered a faint hope for his life. Not that she had reason to be dissatisfied with Mr. Carlton; she acknowledged that gentleman’s skill, and was sure he did his best; but the very name of a great physician brings some magic with it. She asked Mrs. Pepperfly to find out where Sir Stephen was staying, as she went home, and to call and beg him to step up in the morning, and to be sure and say he would be paid his fee, whatever amount it might be, lest he might think it was but a poor cottage, and decline the visit. Upon this last clause in the message, the nurse laid great stress when telling it to Sir Stephen.

But not one word did she say, or hint impart, that this Mrs. Smith was the same person who had played a part in the drama which had driven Stephen Grey from his former home. Mrs. Pepperfly was a shrewd woman; she did not want for common sense; and she judged that that past reminiscence could not be pleasant to Sir Stephen; at any rate she would not be the one to recall it to him. She simply spoke of Mrs. Smith as a “party” who had settled lately at South Wennock, and reiterated the prayer for Sir Stephen to go up.

“But I have no time,” cried Sir Stephen. “What’s the matter with the boy? The fever?”

“Bless you, no, sir,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly. “He haven’t got enough of fever in him, poor little wan object! He’s going off as fast as he can go in a decline and a white swelling in his knee.”

“Then I can do no good.”

“Don’t say that, Mr. Stephen, sir. If you only knowed the good a doctor does, just in looking at ’em, you wouldn’t say it. But in course you do know it, sir, just as well as me. He mayn’t save their lives by an hour, and mostly don’t in them hopeless cases; but think of the comfort it brings to the cowed-down mind, sir! If you could step up for a minute in the morning, sir, she’d be everlasting grateful.”

Telling her he must leave it until the morning to decide, though he gave a sort of promise to find the time if possible, Sir Stephen dismissed Mrs. Pepperfly. He had a good laugh afterwards with his brother John at her size. “What about the old failing?” he asked.

“Well, it’s not quite cured,” was the reply, “but it’s certainly no worse. She keeps within bounds.”

With the morning, Sir Stephen was up and out early. Many were still calling for him. Indeed everybody in the town would fain have had a visit from him, could they have invented the least shadow of an excuse. His first care was Lucy Chesney, who was decidedly better: skin cool, intellects collected; in short, Lucy was out of danger.

“And now for this cottage of Tupper’s, if I must go up,” he exclaimed to his son, who had walked with him to Mr. Carlton’s but had not entered. “I declare it is unreasonable of people! What good can I do to a dying boy?”

One thing must be mentioned. That Frederick Grey had not the remotest idea there was any suspicion, anything singular, attaching to this woman and child. That suspicion was confined as yet to very few in South Wennock. He had casually heard such people were living in Tupper’s cottage, but he supposed them to be entire strangers.

The boy was in bed up-stairs, and Mrs. Smith was putting her house to rights, for she had sent the girl for some milk. She had not expected the doctor so early. He passed quickly up the stairs; he had not a minute to lose, leaving her to follow. The little fellow, in his restlessness, had got one arm out of his nightgown sleeve, leaving it exposed. Sir Stephen’s attention was caught by a mark on the arm, underneath the shoulder. He looked at it attentively; it was a very peculiar mark, a sort of mole, almost black, and as large as a speckled bean. He was talking to the child when Mrs. Smith came up.

“Is there any hope, sir?” she whispered, after Sir Stephen had examined the child and was preparing to go down.

“Not the least. He won’t be here long.”

Mrs. Smith paused. “At any rate, you tell it me plump enough, sir,” she said presently, in a resentful tone. “There’s not much soothing in that to a mother’s feelings.”

“Why should I not tell it you?” rejoined Sir Stephen. “You said you wished for my candid opinion, and I gave it. You are not his mother.”

“Not his mother!” she echoed.

“That you are not. That child’s one of mine.”

“Whatever do you mean?” she exclaimed in astonishment.

“I mean that I brought that child into the world. Look here,” he added, retracing his steps to the bed, and pulling aside the night gown to show the mark. “I know the child by that, and could swear to him among a thousand.”

She made no reply. They descended to the kitchen, where Frederick was waiting. Sir Stephen talked as he went down.

“The mother of that child was the unfortunate lady who died at the Widow Gould’s in Palace Street some years ago: Mrs. Crane. I have cause to remember it, if nobody else has.”

The widow fixed her eyes on Sir Stephen. “I asked Mrs. Pepperfly—who was the attendant nurse upon that lady—whether the infant was born with any mark upon it, and she told me it had none.”

“I don’t care what Mrs. Pepperfly told you,” returned Sir Stephen. “She may have forgotten the mark, or may possibly not have seen it at the time, for her faculties of perception are sometimes obscured by gin. I tell you that it is the same child.”

Frederick Grey was listening with all his ears, in doubt whether he might believe them. He scarcely understood. Mrs. Smith gave in the point: at least so far as that she did not dispute it further.

“You are the gentleman, sir, who attended that lady? Mr.—Mr.———"

“Mr. Stephen Grey, then: Sir Stephen, now. I am; and I am he against whom was brought the accusation of having carelessly mixed poison with her draught.”

“And you did not do it?” she whispered.

“I! My good woman, what you may be to that dead lady, I know not; but you may put perfect faith in this, that I tell you. Over her poor corpse, and in the presence of her Maker and mine, I took an oath that the draught went out of my hands a proper and wholesome mixture, that no poison was impregnated with it: and I again swear it to you now, within shadow of her dying child.”

“Who did do it?” continued the woman, catching up her breath.

“Nay, I know not,” replied Sir Stephen, as he wrote a prescription with his pencil, ink not being at hand. “Smith! Smith!” he repeated to himself, the name, in connection with the past, striking upon his memory. “You must be the Mrs. Smith who came to take away the child!”

Possibly Mrs. Smith saw no further use in denying it; possibly she no longer cared to do so. “And what if I am, sir?”

“What if you are!” echoed Sir Stephen, sitting down on one of the wooden chairs, and regarding her in his astonishment. “Why, my good woman, do you know that pretty nearly the whole world was searched to find you? Nobody connected with the affair was wanted so much as you were.”

“What for?”

“To give what testimony you could; to throw some light upon the mystery; to declare who and what the young lady was,” reiterated Sir Stephen, speaking very fast.

“But if I couldn’t?” rejoined Mrs. Smith.

“But I don’t suppose you couldn’t. I expect you could.”

“Then, sir, you expect wrong. I declare to Goodness that I know no more who the lady was—that is, what her family was or what her connections wore—than that baby up-stairs knows. I have come down to South Wennock now to find out; and I never knew that Mrs. Crane was dead until after I got here.”

Sir Stephen Grey was surprised. Frederick, who was leaning his elbow on the back of a high chair, carelessly played with his watchchain.

“Where’s her husband?” asked Sir Stephen. “Sir, it’s just what I should like to know. I have never heard of him since I took the baby from South Wennock.”

“But you must know in a measure who she was! You could not have come down, as you did, to take the child from an utter stranger.”

Mrs. Smith was silent. “I knew her because she lodged at my house,” she said at length. “I don’t know why I may not say it.”

“And her husband? Was he lodging with you also?”

“No. Only herself. Sir, I declare upon my sacred word that I don’t know who she really was, or who her husband, Mr. Crane, was. It’s partly because I didn’t want to be bothered with people asking me things I was unable to answer, that I have kept myself quiet here, saying nothing about its being the same child.”

“And you did not know she was dead?”

“I did not know she was dead. I have been living with the child in Scotland, where my husband was in a manufactory; and times upon times have we wondered what had become of Mrs. Crane, that she did not come for her child. We thought she must have gone to America with her husband. There was some talk of it.”

“And you know nothing about the death?—or the circumstances attending it?” reiterated Sir Stephen.

“I know nothing whatever about it,” was the reply, spoken emphatically. “Except what has been told to me since I came here this time. Mrs. Crane lodged with me in London, and left me to come to South Wennock. I got a note a day or two afterwards, saying her baby was born, and asking me to come and fetch it. It had been arranged that I should have the nursing of it. That’s all I know.”

“Do you know why she came to South Wennock?”

“To meet her husband. But there seemed to be some mystery connected with him, and she was not very communicative to me.”

It seemed that this was all Mrs. Smith knew. At least it was all she would say; and it threw little if any more light upon the past than Sir Stephen had known before. He quitted her with a recommendation to tell what she knew to the police.

“I dare say I shall,” she said. “But I must take my own time over it. I have my reasons. It won’t be my fault, sir, if the thing is not brought to light.”

Sir Stephen was half way down the garden with his son, when Mrs. Smith came running after him, asking him to stop.

“Sir, you have forgotten: you have not taken your fee.”

“I don’t take fees in South Wennock,” he smiled. “Follow my direction, and you may give the child a little ease, but nothing can save him.”

In going out at the gate they met Mr. Carlton, who was abroad early with his patients. What on earth had brought them there? was the question in his eyes, if not on his lips.

“You have been to see my patient!” he exclaimed aloud, in no conciliating tone.

“Is it your patient?” cried Sir Stephen. “I declare I thought it was Lycett’s, and I had no time to ask extraneous particulars. I have recommended a little change in the treatment and left a prescription: just to give ease; nothing else can be done.”

He spoke in the carelessly authoritative manner of a first-class physician; he meant no offence, nor dreamt of any; but it grated on the ear of Mr. Carlton.

“What brought you here at all,” he asked, really wondering what could have brought Sir Stephen to that particular place.

“Mrs. Smith sent for me,” said Sir Stephen. “I suppose you know what child it is?”

“What child it is?” repeated the surgeon, after an almost imperceptible pause. “It won’t be long here; I know that much, in spite of physician’s prescriptions.”

“It is the child of that lady who died in Palace Street, where I attended for you. She who was killed by the prussic acid.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Carlton.

“There’s no nonsense about it,” rejoined Sir Stephen. “Mrs. Smith thought to persuade me I was wrong, but I convinced her to the contrary.”

A change had crossed the face of Mr. Carlton; a peculiar expression, not unlike that of a stag at bay. Lifting his eyes, he caught those of Frederick riveted upon his.

“Is it possible to recognise an infant after the lapse of years, do you think, Sir Stephen?”

“Not unless it is born with a distinguishing mark, as this was. I should know that boy if I met him in old age in the wilds of Africa.”

“What is the mark?” asked Mr. Carlton, looking as if he doubted whether there was any.

“It’s under the right arm, near the armpit; one you can’t forget, once seen. Go and look at it.”

They parted, shaking hands. Sir Stephen turned out at the gate, Mr. Carlton towards the door of the cottage. He had all but entered it, when he heard himself called by Sir Stephen.

“You had better make it known abroad that this is the same child, Mr. Carlton; it may lead to a discovery eventually. Perhaps Mrs. Smith will tell you more than she has told me. She says Mrs. Crane came to South Wennock to meet her husband, and I should think that likely. Recollect the fellow you saw hidden on the stairs!”

Sir Stephen had no need to say “Recollect the fellow.” That fellow was in Mr. Carlton’s mind, all too often for its peace.

(To be continued.)

AN IRISH CONVICT IN THE FEDERAL ARMY.

It was my invariable rule, when chaplain in the large convict prison on Spike Island, to ask every new prisoner “What are you in for? I was able to obtain this information from the “sheets” which accompanied his admission—and did obtain it, and all that was known of each prisoner’s antecedents, in this way—but I wished also to get the convict’s own version of the affair, which generally differed very materially from the view of his case taken by the judge and jury, and forwarded to the prison authorities. The question, “What are you in for?”— which I generally put in an abrupt way in the vestry-room of the prison chapel—rather stunned or dumbfoundered some of my flock. An Englishman might probably answer directly, and say, “for housebreaking,” or “picking pockets,” as the case might be; a Scotchman would probably place these offences under the head of “a breach of trust;” while an Irishman would scratch his head, turn himself round in his clothes, and say, “It was just nothing at all,” or, “It was all a mistake,” or, “I’ll tell you all about it some other time, sir.”

To a prisoner from whom I received the latter reply, I said, “You promised to tell me what you are in for.”

“Well, sir, it was just a family dispute.”

“It must have been rather a serious dispute, seeing you have got fifteen years for it”—pointing to the sentence-badge on his arm.

He threw up his head in a contemptuous way, which plainly said, “It is but little you could learn from the length of the sentence.”

“But what was the offence? You need not conceal it, for you know I can find it out in the office.”

“Manslaughter, sir.”

“Manslaughter!” I exclaimed, in unfeigned surprise, for the prisoner was a remarkably quiet, decent-looking man, who had been a small farmer in the north of Ireland.

He nodded assent to my exclamation of surprise, looking out at me from beneath a pair of shaggy eye-brows, like a fox from behind a furze-bush.

“Manslaughter! May I ask you who was the man you murdered?”

“It was a woman, sir; but it was no murder.”

“A woman!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who was the woman?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife! Oh, I see, that is why you called it a family dispute?”

“Yes, sir. The judge who tried me, and gave me fifteen years, said my crime was an ‘uncommon one.’ Now you know, sir, it is not an uncommon crime at all.”

I agreed with him that the crime was too common, and thought, on that very account, it should be visited with a severe sentence, in order to check the cruelty and tyranny of husbands towards wives.

“That’s very queer reasoning, sir. If one man gives a long sentence because a crime is common, and another does the same because a crime is uncommon, what’s a poor man to do?”

“To avoid crime altogether, and treat his wife with kindness and affection. But you have not told me how it was you killed your wife.”

“It was all an accident, sir. I got mad drunk at the fair; and when I came home I took down the gun to shoot a servant-boy, for I am an Orangeman, and he is a Papist. Besides that, he discovered some of my lodge secrets. My wife caught hold of the gun to take it from me, and in the scuffle the gun went off and shot her in the ankle, and she died that night from the bleeding.”

This, I have reason to believe, was a pretty correct account of the affair; but as this prisoner took down the gun for the purpose of committing murder, he was sentenced to fifteen years transportation, although he did not kill the person he intended. He was under my instruction for several years, and I never knew a quieter or better conducted prisoner; but I could imagine him, when under the influence of liquor, to be a very maniac or devil. He was between forty and fifty years of age.

He had a friend and fellow-prisoner, who sat by his side in the prison chapel, a young man about two and twenty, who was almost as fearfully hot when sober as M——— was when drunk; and who, conscious of his failing, and knowing the severe penalties to which his unruly temper subjected him, kept as near the side of his cool friend, the wife-killer, as the somewhat stringent rules of the prison would permit.

I took a special interest in this young man, who had also been sentenced to fifteen years transportation.

"What are you in for?" I inquired, when he first landed on Spike Island.

"For stealing seventeen gold watches."

"Seventeen gold watches! Why, you do buisness in the wholesale line."

"It is the first business of the kind I ever did," he replied, with a smile.

"How did you get that out over your eye?"

"This?"—putting up his hand to an ugly scar—"from a musket-ball in the Crimea."

"You were in the Crimean war, then?"

"Yes, I ran away from home and enlisted, when about eighteen."

"How did you get out?"

"I was purchased out."

"Well, what about these watches?"

"I got a situation in Dublin, at Messrs. ———. I was out rather late one night, when the foreman of my department, who owed me a grudge, abused me like a dog, and told me I might consider myself dismissed, and that I should be paid my wages in the morning. I don't know how I kept my hands off him, for my monkey was up; but in going to my own room, I passed by the jewellery department, when the thought struck me, like lightning, to revenge myself by robbing it, and leaving the house that night."

"And you did so?"

"I did; for I knew where the key was kept."

"Did you take anything else besides the watches?"

"Nothing else."

"What did you do with them?"

"I did not know what to do with them, for they were burning my pocket; so I walked up to the canal, intending to throw thein in."

"To cool them, or your conscience—which?"

"Well, I suppose my conscience—though I don't know that it was conscience, either."

"What, then—fear?"

"Oh, no; there is not much of that about me."

"What was it, then?"

"Shame—I was ashamed of myself. I felt I had done a regular dirty job, to revenge myself."

"But what did you do with the watches?"

"Well, I knew it would never do for the stolen property to be found on me, so I pledged them for a small sum—about what was due to me by the house—resolving to send back the tickets, that they might be released."

"Well?"

"I had scarcely returned from pledging them, when the police were in on me, and found the tickets in my possession."

"And for this you got a transportation sentence of fifteen years?"

"Yes; it was considered such a serious breach of trust."

I have reason to believe there was truth in this young man's statement; and it would appear as if his employers believed it, for they used their best efforts to get his sentence shortened. I also did my utmost to promote the same object; and in the end we succeeded in getting the sentence of fifteen years transportation reduced to six years and nine months of penal servitude. For my efforts on his behalf he was sincerely grateful, and endeavoured to show his gratitude to me in the only way in which he could show it—by curbing his unruly temper, and keeping out of trouble and the "punishment cells," and by exhibiting an attentive and becoming religious deportment. I really think he wished to be religious, for my sake, though it was sorely against his nature; but in his zeal to please me, he overdid the thing.

The prisoners have the privilege of writing periodically to their friends, and I have no doubt that a correspondence of this kind, when properly conducted and superintended, produces a humanizing, moral, and happy effect on the convict's mind. These letters are read, and if approved of, initialed by the chaplain. The first letter brought to me by this young man was written with wonderful ability, and great care, and breathed a spirit of piety throughout. It was addressed to his father, in the style of a prodigal son. I read it, wrote on the top, "Too pious" and handed it back to him. He read the words of condemnation and blushed up to the eyes, but seemed as much astonished as he was ashamed. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, "Be natural, especially in writing to your father. Try your best to be good and pious, but don't say too much about it. Go now, destroy that letter, and write another, and only say what you think and feel." He took my advice, and wrote a simple and proper letter, to which I placed my initials.

He was liberated in Dublin about twelve months ago, but there he was too well known to have any chance of procuring employment; so, after the lapse of a few weeks, he migrated to Liverpool, by no means an exceptional practice with Irish convicts, as we have no doubt the prison roll of the borough jail of Liverpool could testify.

He remained in Liverpool for three or four months, where I heard from him and of him, through his relatives and friends; but even there he could obtain no employment. He wrote to me to say that the police followed him like his shadow, and to their interference he attributed his being so long an idle wanderer through the streets.

Under these circumstances I was not sorry to hear ho had made up his mind to go to America. Emigration, to America, or one of our colonies, is the only means of affording a convict a certain mode of commencing life de novo, or of honestly obtaining a livelihood. He is almost sure to be detected in this country by some one, and pointed out as a person to be avoided and driven from employment, and back to his former evil courses. Hence the wisdom of the directors of Irish convict prisons in inducing as many of the discharged prisoners as they possibly can to emigrate. In this consists what is styled the success of the Irish system, in the deportation, and not in the reformation—of which we can have no evidence—of Irish convicts. We are convinced that more than the half of discharged Irish prisoners are disposed of in this way. We find that in the year 1862 as many as ninety-five emigrated out of a hundred and forty-two discharged from the intermediate prisons of Smithfield and Lusk. This was, perhaps, the largest proportion of emigrants in one year, but the average is over the half.

Well, our young friend resolved to emigrate, and took his departure from Liverpool to New York, about six months ago. I heard of him soon after his arrival, and found he had done what I suspected he would do, that was, enlist in the Federal army. Perhaps it was his only chance. There is many a man in the Queen's livery who has worn the convict frieze and badge; I have known several. The Federal army contains as many Irish roughs as New York rowdies.

When I heard of his having enlisted, I said, "Well, he will make a brave soldier at any rate." What, therefore, was my surprise to learn, a few weeks ago, that he had deserted in the presence of the enemy, as his regiment was moving up to take a position in front. I found it hard to believe it, for fighting seemed so congenial to his nature; but how could I disbelieve it, with his brother's letter before me, detailing the particulars, and mentioning the prison in which he was confined, awaiting his sentence, of the nature of which there could be no doubt. "Oh, would," said his brother, "that he had died fighting the enemy, and not to be shot down, by his own comrades, in cold blood, like a dog."

I was greatly distressed on his account, and that of his family, who are respectable, and although the young man's case appeared a hopeless one, I wrote at once to Mr. Adams, the American ambassador, on his behalf, informing him of the zeal and enthusiasm with which the young deserter had lately expressed himself, in a letter to his friends, respecting the Federal army; adding, that I did not think he was always master of his own actions, and that I suspected a wound which he received in the head at the Crimea, now and then, affected his mind.

Nothing could be more kind or prompt than His Excellency's reply. The matter was altogether out of his department, but he advised me how to proceed with the proper authorities in America. I at once wrote to the deserter's friends, enclosing the ambassador's letter, with a flickering hope, burning out like the end of a candle which had dropped into the socket, that he had not yet been shot.

What was my surprise, therefore, about a month ago, to see a letter addressed to his brother, from the "Army of the Potomac, in front of Petersburg," dated the 19th of June, 1864, commencing thus:—

"My dear Jack.

"You, no doubt, will be surprised and offended at not hearing from me sooner. It has caused me uneasiness not being able to send you some account of my movements. To begin at the beginning. Early in the month of May I was on detached service at Aquia Creek and Belle Plain, and consequently was not in some of the actions in which our army was engaged that month; but in lieu of such I was brought into contact with guerillas, in the above-mentioned places, never receiving a wound."

But not a word about desertion, arrest, imprisonment, or shooting. How was it to be explained? Simply enough. There was another J. P. in the American army, and all our sorrow and sympathy had been evoked for the wrong man, for our J. P. was no deserter after all. "I knew it," I exclaimed, "the fellow was too brave to run away."

As our readers by this time may possibly begin to feel some little interest in the right J. P., we shall favour them with two or three extracts from his letter. The following passage, somewhat abbreviated, gives a pretty correct picture of the fasting, marching, fighting, and plundering capacity of Irish soldiers in the Federal army:—

"Left Belle Plain on May 22, and marched to Fredericksburg, fourteen miles; next day to Bowling-Green (not Kentucky), twenty-one miles; third day, marched twelve miles, and encamped in the woods, about an hour before the whole force got orders to make a flank movement. Off we started to Byers Plan tation, our colonel shot dead just before we moved. We were told at starting to lighten ourselves by throwing away our kits, as we had a long and heavy march before us. We were at it, night and day, for four days; and as I had no food for two days before, and got none for two days after—altogether four days—you may judge what humour I was in. Well, we arrived at last, planted our batteries, and plugged Johnny with grape and canister. We afterwards charged and drove John from his trenches. I went over the field the following morning to see what was to be seen. Dead men and horses. I then started for a house situated at a short distance, plundered it, and walked off with a flitch of bacon."

The following gives an example of the severity of marches which are calculated to wear out any soldiers, were they made of iron. "Johnny," as he denominates the Confederates, "had been at their heels for some time, killing, wounding, and capturing a great number," till they get up to the Federal lines, and "then the fun began." Johnny was brought to a halt, and the Federals recommenced their march, leaving pickets consisting of 3000 men behind, in order to deceive the enemy, and give the main body a fair start. The main body moved off at nine at night, the pickets at two the next morning, "and got away without the rebs knowing it," and marched from two that morning till twelve the next night, a distance of thirty-five miles in one day. When I commenced," says our hero, "my boots were bad, but this long march knocked them all to pieces." In another place he says, "I was almost barefooted till after the first day's fight before Petersburg, when I went on the field and pulled a pair off a dead fellow, which fitted me first-rate."

The condition of the inside garments of both officers and men must be terrible, if the following be anything like a correct statement, and it bears all the marks of truth upon it.

"As it regards myself, I am first-rate in health, but very uncomfortable in many respects. It is now nearly two months since I slept with my clothes off. On some occasions we pass the night with our knapsacks on us—that is, the few who carry such a thing. Most of the men have but one shirt. I have two, and when I get a chance, not often, I wash one of them, that is, when I get too many bites. The clothes of every man—officers not excepted—are densely populated."

We shall conclude with the following graphic account of the nonchalance and reckless daring of this young man:—

"A few hours ago I felt inclined for a little apple stew, and I went about thirty yards over the pass parapet, to one of the many fruit-trees in front of us, and was favoured with about a dozen shots from Johnny, none of them touching Jemmy; and I stopped there till I filled my bag. A nice cool breeze has just sprung up, and our colours, the stars and stripes, are flying, inviting Johnny to try his skill in musketry. I belong to the 9th Army Corps, Burnside's."C. B. Gibson.

A REAL SOCIAL EVIL

Several years since the social and physical condition of the females employed in our mines and collieries formed the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry, when many painful and startling disclosures were made respecting the objectionable manner in which female labour was frequently employed in those places. Females of all ages, from the girl just entering her teens to the grey-haired matron of sixty, were found occupied in heavy drudgery in the long subterraneous passages which extended from the bottom of the pit-shafts. Of these females many were employed as miners, being furnished with lights, spades, and other necessaries of their craft, in emulation of the male workers. They still further imitated the men by working in a state of semi-nudity, and by being subjected to regulations of the most stringent nature. As a rule, the wages received by them were lower than those obtained by the men, a circumstance which sufficiently accounted for the demand for their services. When these facts became fully known to the public, much indignation was expressed on the subject, and ultimately an Act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting the employment of women and children in mines and collieries. This gave general satisfaction to the public, and from that time the whole question faded gradually out of sight, few persons, not actually residing in the colliery districts, being aware of the extent to which female labour continued to be employed outside the pits. Incredible as the fact may appear to some, it is nevertheless true that hundreds of females, habited as men, are to be found at the present day working on the pit banks in Wales, Scotland, Lancashire, and Staffordshire. In Wales it is stated by competent witnesses, that "instances of gross depravity, through the girls coming in contact with the male sex at their work, were frequent." In Scotland, we are informed, the females so employed are "as clean and tidy as the nature of their work will allow," but that "there is something abhorrent in seeing them begrimed with dust, and placed in the way of temptations which might lead to immorality."

LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER XLIX.⁠STOLEN MOMENTS.

Lucy Chesney was going on to convalescence—as indeed was South Wennock generally. In less than a week after Sir Stephen’s visit Lucy was able to leave her bed for the sofa. Mr. Frederick Grey considered himself a very ill-used man. Not once, save that single time when she lay in imminent danger and did not know him, had he been admitted to see Lucy. But upon hearing from his Uncle John that she was sitting up, he went down forthwith to Mr. Carlton’s. Admitted by Jonathan, asking leave and licence of nobody, he walked straight up-stairs and knocked at Lucy’s chamber. “Come in,” came the answer in Lucy’s voice, and he went in and found her alone, lying on the sofa, near the fire, dressed, and covered over with a silken coverlid.

The red flush flew into her white cheeks, but when the first moment of surprise was over she held out her hand in token of welcome. Not a word was spoken by either. He passed his arm underneath the pillow on which she was lying and raised it up, bringing her fair young face closer to his own.

“Lucy, my whole life will be one of thankfulness!”

“Did you think I should die?”

“Yes, my darling, I did. I may tell you so, now the danger’s over. Lucy, it must not be long before you are mine; I cannot risk another trial, such as this has been.”

“Had I been yours ever so, you could not have guarded me from it,” was her answer.

“Not from the illness; I am aware of that. But to know that you were ill—ill unto death and I not allowed to be with you—there was my trial. I do not care to tell you how badly I bore it; how I paced before the house outside, hour after hour, and night after night, watching its walls. Illness may come to you as my wife, Lucy, but it will be my right to tend you then; my right above anybody’s in the world! Sisters, nurses, friends, what are they compared to me?”

How delightful it was to lie there! In the sweet languor of growing convalescence, pressed to that manly heart, in those protecting arms! It was almost worth having been ill for. She looked up in his face with a tender smile.

“I shall always say you saved me, Frederick.”

“I saved you! How?”

“By sending for Sir Stephen. Jane declares that soon after he entered, I seemed to grow calmer. He gave me something, a powder, she says, and he changed the lotion that they were putting to my head.”

“Lucy, dear,-he did nothing for you that my Uncle John was not doing. The disorder was upon the turn when he came.”

“I cannot part with my opinion; neither will Jane. It is pleasant to me to think that I owe my prolonged life to your father: or rather to you for getting him here.”

“Keep the opinion, then,” he whispered.

“And take one thing to your heart, love—that you shall owe a very great portion of your future life’s happiness to me. I will strive to make it, by God’s blessing.”

“Don’t you think you have held me up long enough?” she presently said.

“Does it tire you? or hurt you?”

“Oh no. But you will be tired.”

He raised his own face for a moment, that he might look into her eyes.

“Tired, did you say? I wish I might hold you here long enough to become tired.”

Her gaze fell beneath the saucy glance that danced in his, and he bent his face to kiss away the bright blushes on her cheek. When folks get into mischief, you know, they are nearly sure to be caught. There was a brisk knock at the door, and Mr. Carlton stood before them. A far brighter blush rose then, and she would have shrunk in maidenly timidity from the arms that encircled her. But Frederick Grey altogether declined to let her so shrink. He kept her where she was, held to him, and raised his head with calm self-possession.

“What do you do here, Mr. Carlton?”

“Do!” returned Mr. Carlton. “It is my own house.”

“Your own house, of course. But this is Lady Lucy’s room in it.”

It seemed quite impossible for those two to meet without something unpleasant taking place between them, some little interchange of compliments indicative of incipient warfare. Frederick Grey gently laid Lucy down, and stood upright by her side, his tall form drawn to its full height.

“As my sister-in-law’s medical attendant, and as her protector so long as she is underneath my roof, perhaps you will allow me to inquire what you do here,” retorted Mr. Carlton, turning the tables. “I speak in her behalf when I say that in my opinion it is scarcely seemly.”

“You will allow me to be the better judge of that,” coolly returned the young man. “As my future wife, none can have a greater interest than I to guard her from aught unseemly.”

He drew a chair near the sofa as he spoke, and sat down; an intimation that he entertained no intention of quitting the room. Lucy, her face still crimson, spoke.

“Did you want anything, Mr. Carlton?”

“I came to bring these powders, Lucy,” was his reply, as he laid two small white papers on the table by her tide. “You complained of heartburn this morning: take one in a wine-glass of water now, and the second later in the day; they will relieve you.”

“Thank you,” she replied; “I will take it presently.”

Judith was in the room then, having entered it in time to hear what passed. Mr. Carlton left, not choosing probably to make further demur to the presence of the intruding guest, lest it might disturb Lucy, and Frederick Grey took up the powders and examined them.

“Have you suffered from heartburn, Lucy?”

“I think so. I had a hot, disagreeable sensation in my throat this morning, and Mr. Carlton said it was heartburn. I never had it before. "

“He wetted his finger, put it to the powder, and tasted what adhered to it. Then he folded up the papers and handed them to Judith.

“Put these away, Judith. They will do Lady Lucy no good.”

“Am I not to take them?” inquired Lucy.

“No, I will send you a better remedy.”

Judith received the powders from him very gingerly, as if she feared they might bite her, and left the room with them, meeting Lady Jane at the door, who was coming into it. Frederick laughed, and made the best excuse he could for being there without leave.

When he was leaving the house, half an hour later, Mr. Carlton came forth and met him face to face.

“A moment, Mr. Frederick Grey, if you please. It may be well that you and I should come to an understanding. You appear to assume that you may do just as you please with me: you enter my house, you interfere in my affairs: this shall not be.”

“The Ladies Chesney are temporary inmates of your house, and my visits in it are to them. I have not troubled it much.”

“I must request you to trouble it less for the future. I am not accustomed to these underhand modes of proceeding, and I don’t like them.”

“Underhand!” exclaimed Frederick Grey, in surprise.

“I don’t choose that my patients should be tampered with. When I become incapable of taking care of them, it will be time enough for others to interfere. It was a very unwarrantable liberty, that visit of Sir Stephen Grey’s to the sick boy at Tapper’s cottage.”

Frederick quite laughed. “You must ask Mrs. Smith to settle that with you. She sent for Sir Stephen, and I walked up with him. I did no more; I did not see the boy. As to interfering with you, Mr. Carlton, I am not conscious of having done it. I have desired Lady Lucy not to take those powders you brought her just now; so far, I certainly have interfered. But you should remember in what relation she stands to me.”

“And pray why have you desired her not to take the powders?”

“Because I don’t think they are the best remedy for heartburn; I told her I would send her something else.”

“You are cool and easy, sir,” returned Mr. Carlton, all his old hatred to Frederick Grey rising to boiling heat. And in point of fact there was a particularly cool, indifferent sort of tone pervading Frederick Grey’s behaviour towards the surgeon, which was easily discernible and anything but pleasant. “You and I will have a long account to settle some day.”

“It may be as well perhaps that we never come to the settlement,” was the answer. “I do not force it on: remember that always, Mr. Carlton, I do not force it on. There has been no good feeling between you and me for years, as you are aware; but that is no reason why we should quarrel every time we meet. I have had no intention of offending you in thus intruding into your house—and I acknowledge that it is an intrusion, antagonistic to each other as you and I are, and if you will so far allow me I would beg you in courtesy to excuse me under the circumstances. I will try and not enter it. again. In a day or two I expect the ladies will be leaving it for their own home.”

He made a movement to pass as he concluded; Mr. Carlton did not oppose it, and the fray ended. But no sooner had both disappeared than Judith emerged from a store-closet hard by, in which she had been an unwilling prisoner. She came out with a pot of jam in her hand, and a scared face: anything like quarrelling was sure to startle Judith.

Lady Laura Carlton was still in her room, making believe to be yet an invalid. She liked the indulgence of recovery; the being petted with attentions and fed with good things, jellies and wines and dainty messes. She would rise towards mid-day, cause herself to be attired becomingly, go into her dressing-room, and stop there for the remainder of the day. Lady Jane had to divide her time pretty equally between Laura and Lucy, now that Lucy was getting well, for Laura was jealous and exacting.

Laura’s frame of mind did not altogether tend to advance perfect recovery; at least not if repose were essential to it. That suspicion of hers, connecting her husband with the inmates of Tupper’s cottage, had only grown the fiercer in the condemned seclusion of the last week or two. On Laura Carlton’s heart there was an ever-burning sense of deep humiliation. Lax allegiance in a man’s married life does reflect its humiliation on the wife; and Laura drank deeply of its sting. Unduly conscious of her birth and title, of the place she held amidst the nobodies of the provincial town, remembering how impassioned had been her love for Mr. Carlton, how entirely in the early days of her wedded life she had given this love up to him, it cannot be wondered that she felt the defalcation to her heart’s core. Jealousy, rage, a thirst for redress, were ever at battle within her. She longed to fling back the humiliation on Mr. Carlton: that is, to bring him to self-humiliation. She wished to find something tangible of which to accuse him; proofs that he could neither ignore nor dispute; she cherished a vision of seeing him at her feet, suing for pardon, for reconciliation, abjectly, his head in the dust: or else that she would take a high ground, and say, I leave you, I am your wife no longer.

She was dwelling on all these things now, as she lay back in an easy chair, her feet on a low velvet ottoman in front of the fire, her eyes bent in thought, the tips of her fingers pressed together as her elbows rested on the arms of the chair. Lady Jane was sitting near the window, knitting a pair of the same sort of woollen mittens that she used to knit for her father. These were for Mr. Carlton. He had complained one day in Jane’s hearing of the cold striking to his wrists when he had to go abroad at night; and Jane immediately offered to make him a pair of these soft woollen things. Perfect courtesy—it may indeed be said cordiality—had existed between Mr. Carlton and Lady Jane during this sojourn of hers in the house; but they had not met much, for the unusual sickness prevailing had caused Mr. Carlton to be a great deal from home.

Jane fully intended to ask Mr. Carlton, before she quitted the house, whether he could give her any information of the past, as relating to Clarice. She might have done so before but for this continuous occupation of the surgeon and her own anxiety during Lucy’s danger. Neither had she spoken to Laura, preferring to wait until she, Laura, was convalescent. That time had come now, and Jane took the present quiet moment when they were alone together. It was the day of Frederick Grey’s visit, but subsequent to that event. She began by telling Laura of the late interview with Mrs. West, and of the supposition that Clarice was married.

“Married!” exclaimed Laura, turning her head quickly to her sister.

“By what Mrs. West said—as I have now repeated to you—I think there can be no doubt of it. Indeed, Clarice admitted that it was so when the servant girl met her.”

“Oh, well I think all that is proof enough,” remarked Laura. “So it seems I was not the only one of the family to consult self-inclination—dreadful conduct as you and papa thought it in me! And pray, Jane, who was the gentleman?”

“About that, there is less certainty,” said Jane. “Circumstances point strongly—at least in my opinion—to its having been a brother of Mr. West’s, a young medical man. He was staying there, was very intimate with Clarice, and in the following winter embarked for India. Mrs. West does not think this: she argues that Mr. Tom West was open-hearted, was his own master, and would have married Clarice publicly, had he married her at all. She feels certain that they did not sail together, however it may have been; but it appears to me that Clarice could not have been in a condition of health to embark, and would probably follow him later.”

“Nothing more likely. But why—being safely married—should she not have told us? Had she feared interference to prevent it, she could not have feared interference to separate them when it was done.”

“True,” said Lady Jane.

“I have pondered it all over until I am tired and sick. At all events, this is a little clue, and now I must tell you who may possibly help us in it—Mr. Carlton.”

“How should he help?” asked Laura, in surprise. “I have never spoken to him of Clarice. To confess to a sister who went out to serve as a governess and got lost, is not pleasant—and you have heard me say this before. I have never opened my lips about Clarice to Mr. Carlton.”

Jane explained. That in the old days Mr. Carlton was intimate at Mrs. West’s: was a friend of Tom West’s, of a Mr. Crane, and of other young medical men who visited there. “It is just possible Mr. Carlton might have known something of the marriage, and of their subsequent movements,” she concluded. Laura did not acquiesce.

“Really, Jane, there seems very little use in bringing up this uncertainty about Clarice. As I say, it does not tell for the dignity of the Chesney family.”

“1 will not rest, now, until I have found out Clarice—if she is to be found,” replied Jane, in some agitation. “This information of Mrs. West’s has given me an impetus; and my father left her to me. She may yet be living; may be in poverty, for all we know, and unwilling to apply to us; or,” she added, dropping her voice, “or if dead herself, she may have left a child or children. I must inquire of Mr. Carlton, Laura, in spite of your prejudices and your pride.”

“Inquire if you like,” returned Laura, ungraciously. “You always seem to speak as if there were some dark mystery attaching to this business, apart from the bare loss of Clarice,” she continued, in a fretful sort of way.

“It invariably presents itself as a mystery to my own mind,” said Jane, and her tone certainly did sound dark enough as she spoke; “a mystery which I seem to shrink from. You know that little lame boy at Tupper'a cottage?”

“Well?” returned Laura, after a pause and a stare.

“I cannot divest myself of the idea that that child is Clarice’s.”

Up started Lady Laura, flinging from her knees a warm covering which had been laid on them; she stamped up and down the room in excitement, forgetting her character of invalid.

“That child Clarice’s! For shame, Jane! That child is—is—yes, I will speak out! That child is Mr. Carlton’s.”

Jane sat unable to speak, aghast at her vehemence; at her words.

“Mr. Carlton’s! Nay, Laura, I think it is you who should cry shame. What wild notion can have taken possession of you?”

Laura, ten times more vehement, more excited than before, reiterated her assertion. She was in the midst of her tirade—directed against Mr. Carlton and mankind in general—when Judith came in. Laura, uncontrollable as ever her father was when over-mastered by passion, seized the girl by the arm.

“You know that child at Tupper’s cottage, Judith? I have heard of Lady Jane’s sending you there. Who is he like?”

Judith stood in dismay. She tried to parry the question. Lady Laura shook her by the arm.

“My lady, it’s well known there’s no accounting for likenesses: two people that never were within miles of each other in their lives may be alike.”

“Of course they may be,” sarcastically retorted Lady Laura. "Will you speak, Judith?”

“And sometimes are,” added Jane, with calm composure. “A likeness alone proves nothing. But you had better speak at once, Judith.”

“My ladies, the likeness I saw could be nothing but an accidental one,” said Judith, still avoiding a direct answer. “It may exist in my fancy only.”

Laura stamped her foot. “You must speak, Judith,” said Lady Jane. “Like whom do you think the child?”

“Like Mr. Carlton,” was the low reply.

Lady Jane stood dumb. It was anything but the answer she expected, for she had believed Laura’s notion to be pure fancy. A triumphant glance shot from Laura’s eyes, and certain ill-advised words dropped from her lips. The avowal seemed so complete a confirmation of her suspicions, that she looked upon the case as proved against Mr. Carlton.

She sat down in her chair again, battling with the jealous anger that was causing her bosom to heave and throb tumultuously. Jane repudiated the idea, repudiated it utterly, whatever accidental resemblance might exist to Mr. Carlton, She turned to Judith. As so much had been spoken before the girl, it was well that more should be said.

“We had a sister who was lost, Judith—you once heard me allude to her before. She has never been heard of; but latterly I have gathered facts which induce me to conclude that she married. In that little child at Tupper’s cottage I trace a very great likeness to her, and I cannot divest myself of the idea that it must be her child. Laura, don’t you see how feasible it is? Clarice may have gone abroad with her husband, leaving her child behind at nurse.”

For once a tinge of colour came into the white face of Judith. "What name did you say, my lady? Clarice?"

“Clarice,” repeated Jane, in surprise, for the emphasis was involuntary. “Lady Clarice. Why?”

Judith turned away. “Oh, nothing, my lady; nothing. I thought the name very uncommon.”

“It is rather uncommon. We have some reason to think she married a Mr. West: a gentleman who afterwards went abroad and died. What are you looking at, Judith?”

The girl had turned round again; in open, genuine surprise this time. “I once knew a Mr. West, my lady; a gentleman who was visiting old Mrs. Jenkinson in Palace Street, where my sister lives. He was Mrs. Jenkinson’s nephew.”

“Was his name Thomas?” asked Jane, eagerly.

“I don’t know, my lady. I can’t remember. Margaret could tell.”

“And what was he? In any profession?”

Judith shook her head. Margaret knew, no doubt, she said: she would inquire of her if her lady pleased.

Her lady did please, and told her to do so. But Lady Jane did not think much of this: West was rather a common name.

On this same afternoon at dusk, Mr. Carlton was in his surgery alone, preparing some mixture for Lucy—for the medicines necessary for her had been supplied by him, not by Mr. Grey. It grew too dark to see the proportions with any exactness, and he lighted one of the gas burners. The flame went flaring up, and Mr. Carlton turned to the narrow counter again, which was close under the window, and took a bottle in his hand.

Reader, when your room has been lighted up, and the window left exposed, have you ever felt a dread, a horror of what you might witness there?—Of seeing something unearthly, or what you may fear as such, standing outside the glass, and peering in? I believe that it is a sensation which has been experienced by many, causing them to drag down the blind, or to order the shutters closed with all speed. Was it this feeling which induced Mr. Carlton to look up from his employment, full at the window before him? or was his mind guided by subtle instinct, whispering that somebody was there?

The face, but imperfectly seen, was pressed against the glass, in the pane immediately faceing him: that dread face, with its white skin and its black whiskers, and the dark handkerchief round its chin, dreadful to the reminiscence of Mr. Carlton. It appeared to be eagerly watching, not him, but his movements, as he made up the medicine.

Mr. Carlton, impassive Mr. Carlton, found that he had nerves for once in his life. He cried aloud, in the moment’s impulse; a wild sort of cry not unlike that of a sea-gull, and the glass jar dropped from his hand on the floor and was shivered into fragments. Mr. Jefferson rushed in to see his principal staring at the surgery window, and all the good syrup of Taraxacum spilled.

CHAPTER L.⁠MISS STIFFING’S EXPEDITION.

December came in. On a cold bitter evening, a night or two subsequent to the above, a young woman might have been seen scudding through the streets of South Wennock. She wore a warm cloak, and kept her black Shetland veil tight over her face to protect it, for the wind was howling and the sleet was beating. It was Miss Stiffing, the maid of Lady Laura Carlton.

“Such a freak of my lady’s!” she grumbled discontentedly, as she went along. “Sending one abroad in this pelting weather! But that’s just like her; She takes a thing into her head, and then it must be done off-hand, convenient or unconvenient. Bother take the big cupboard! What did she go and lose the key for, if she wants it undone?”

She reached a locksmith’s shop and turned short into it. It was only lighted by a solitary candle, and that was placed so as to afford little light beyond the counter. Consequently the maid stumbled over some fire-irons that stood out slanting from the wall; they came down on the run, and she nearly with them.

“Now then! what the plague, White, can’t you keep the shop free for folks to enter?” she testily exclaimed, whilst the unoffending locksmith hastened round, and meekly picked up his property.

“Is it you, Miss Stiffing? And how are you, ma'am?”

“Why, I’m as cranky as them there bell rests of yours, that’s what I am,” returned Miss Stiffing. “She have no more consideration than an owl, haven’t my lady. Fancy her sending me slopping in my thin shoes through the beastly streets to-night!”

“Couldn’t you have put on boots?” asked the blacksmith, sensibly.

“No, I couldn’t. There! When one’s dressed for the evening one doesn’t want to be bothered changing shoes and boots. And you, White! why don’t you have gas in your shop, like other Christians?”

“I can’t afford it, Miss Stifling. And I mostly work in the back room by candle light; the shop’s so precious cold in winter. What can I do for you, miss?”

“I want a skeleton key.”

“A skeleton key!” repeated the tradesman.

“Yes, a skeleton key. Is there anything so odd in that? If I had said a skeleton, you might have stared.”

“What is it for?” he asked, scratching his head, and trying to remember whether the law allowed skeleton keys to be handed over indiscriminately to servants.

“Well, it’s for my lady, if you must come to the bottom of everything. She goes and loses the key of the big cupboard, that stands in the recess by her bedroom door. ‘Where’s the key of that cupboard?’ says she to me, this afternoon. ‘My lady, it’s in the keyhole,’ says I. ‘It’s not,’ says she; ‘you just go and find it’ Well, upon that I call to mind that I had put the key into her key-drawer only yesterday morning; and I told her so. Of course she has gone herself and lost it.”

“I daresay it’s only mislaid,” remarked the man.

“Nothing else in the world; dropped down, perhaps, behind the furniture, or something of that, and will be found in the morning. I said so to my lady; but no, not a minute’s waiting will do for her. She must have the door open to-night, and off she sends me here for a skeleton key. ‘I won’t have the lock picked or damaged, in case the key does turn up,’ says she. ‘Tell White to send me a skeleton key, one that’ll pick any lock of about that size, and he shall have it returned in a day or two.’ And so off I came. And now, just look sharp, for I’d like to get back home to the fire.”

“I’d have sent one of the men-servants.”

“1 dare say you would; but you don’t live under Lady Laura Carlton. If I told another servant to go when she had sent me, I might pack up my boxes. Is this the article? It looks simple enough.”

“It’s simple enough, Miss,” said the man, as he proceeded to explain its use. “And it’s good night, and wishing you a pleasanter walk back again, Miss Stifling.”

“Which you must be an idiot to wish,” irascibly returned Miss Stifling. “Is the sleet and rain not falling incessant to make it beastlier instead of pleasanter!”

The young woman made her way home as speedily as circumstances and her shoes permitted. Lady Laura Carlton was waiting for her in her dressing-room, waiting impatiently, as might be seen. What project was in her mind that night, flushing her cheeks to emotion, and rendering her eyes restless? Could it be that these external signs of agitation were caused by the simple mislaying of a key?—and the key of a place that was not in particular request?

“What a time you have been, Stifling!” uttered she, as the maid entered.

“Time, my lady!” returned Stifling, whose manner and voice, be it remarked, were subdued to meekness in Lady Laura’s presence, whatever they might be out of it. “I went as quick as the sleet and the slush allowed me; and this is what White has sent. Shall I open the place now, my lady?”

“No,” sharply answered Lady Laura. “It is time for my port-wine jelly.”

Stifling went down-stairs, muttering something about caprice, and brought up a small mould of dark jelly on a handsome glass dish, a glass plate and a tea-spoon. As she was putting the things on the sofa table before her mistress, Lady Laura looked at her.

“I cannot think how you could have been so carelessly stupid as to lose the key.”

“All I can say is this, my lady, that I put it into that there key-drawer yesterday morning. I am as positive of it———"

“There, that will do, Stiffing,” interrupted Lady Laura; “it is of no use going over the old assertion again. You can go down and get warm after your walk. I shall not want you for at least an hour. When I do, I’ll ring. And, Stiffing, you will not forget the injunction I gave you—to hold your tongue. I won’t have the servants know that I admit skeleton keys into my house: it might teach some of them tricks.”

Stiffing departed, saying she would remember: and she meant to keep her word. With all Lady Laura’s exactions and caprice, she was a generous mistress, and the servants liked her. Stiffing made herself comfortable in the servants’ sitting-room before a blazing fire. They seemed curious to know what had taken her out; “O, only a little errand for my lady,” was the indifferent answer. They were all shut up snugly enough there, and Judith was among them. Lady Jane was with Lucy, and Mr. Carlton had gone out.

The stairs were creaking—as stairs will creak when a stealthy footstep is upon them, and the house in silence. They were the back stairs, not the front; and, cautiously descending them, a thick black silk scarf tied over her head, and a shawl muffled round her, to guard against cold, was Lady Laura Carlton, bearing the skeleton key. The stairs were dark, for those back stairs were never lighted, and she felt her way by the balustrades. They brought her in time to the cellar; she groped her way through it, entered the room beyond, and struck a light. She struck the wax match and lighted the taper she had brought down from her writing table. Laura! Laura Carlton! what are you about to do? To pry into your husband’s private affairs, into things which he deems it fit and right to keep from you? Take you care; secrets, sought out dishonourably, rarely benefit the seeker.

She was not in a mood to take care. Had a very angel from heaven appeared to warn her against what she was doing, she had scarcely heeded it. In her present state of exasperation she cared not what the result might be. What precise secrets, or mementos of secrets, Mr. Carlton kept in that iron safe before her, she knew not; her suspicions were entirely vague; but the idea had taken possession of her that something or other might be ferreted out of it, and it was only her illness which had caused her to delay the search so long. Not that she supposed the contents of the iron safe would help her in the particular suspicion she had taken up latterly: not at all. Though there was little doubt that the unwilling avowal regarding the likeness, drawn from Judith on the previous day, had contributed its quota to work her mind up to its present excited state of rebellion.

Is it not remarkable to trace the chain of events, so trivial in themselves, by which the detection of crime is sometimes worked out?— Twelve months before, an accidental circumstance had made Laura Carlton familiar with the use of a skeleton key: she attached no importance to the knowledge: how should she? and yet, but for that, she might never have opened, or thought to open, that safe in her husband’s cellar.

She did open it now: readily; and she put the taper, in its elegant glass holder, to stand inside, while her eyes ranged over its contents. There were two shelves: the upper one appeared to be entirely filled with chemical apparatus, and the lower one partially.

Near to her hand there was a cash-box, locked; and there was a small note-case, not locked, for a very good reason—there was no lock on it.

Lady Laura took up the cash-box, rather a large one, and shook it: if it contained money, it must have been bank notes, for neither gold nor silver rattled. She put it down again, and opened the note-case. To describe her disappointment when she found it contained what she emphatically termed “rubbish,” would be difficult. There were scraps of writing, Latin and Greek; there were some receipted bills of a by-gone date; there were various private memoranda, not of a nature to bear upon her jealous fears; there were two or three prescriptions bearing the names of celebrated physicians; there was a receipt for the compounding of “sherbet,” and another for walnut catsup. In short, by the cursory glance afforded to Lady Laura in her haste, it appeared to contain neither more nor less than worthless scraps of paper.

She was closing it with a petulant gesture, when her eye fell upon an opening in the leather, and she found there was a pocket. Pulling it apart with both her hands, a note lay disclosed, nothing else, and she took it out.

“Lewis Carlton, Esq.,” was the address, and Lady Laura thrust it into her pocket for private perusal at her leisure: but a sudden recollection flashed upon her, and she took it out again, to devour the address with her eyes. If ever she had seen the hand-writing of her sister Clarice, she thought she saw it then. But there was not time to satisfy herself, for she stood upon thorns, metaphorically speaking, and she returned it to her pocket.

She placed the note-case in its former position; she took the taper in her hand and held it so that its rays fell on the top shelf, but nothing was really there, save what concerned his profession; nothing else was on the lower shelf, save the cash-box, and some bundles of receipted bills. Lady Laura was thinking how much she should like to see the inside of the cash-box, when Mr. Carlton’s voice on the stairs startled her.

Startled her pretty nearly into fits. What she did, in her terror, she scarcely knew. He was evidently coming down; had but halted momentarily to call out some order to one of the servants in the distance, or to the surgery boy. Instinct caused Lady Laura to gaze round for a hiding-place, and she espied a barrel in a corner. She blew out the light, grasped the crystal candlestick and the skeleton key, pushed-to the safe door firmly, and crouched down between the barrel and the wall, her heart beating as it had never yet beat in all her life.

She would almost rather die than that he should discover her; for although she had not shrunk from committing the act, to be detected during its actual perpetration would be more than her pride could well endure. Laura was honourable by nature; yes, she was, however you may feel inclined to demur to the assertion, seeing what you do see. She hated meanness as much as ever did the late earl; and to be detected at this, to be caught in its actual perpetration, would be a blow to her self-esteem for ever. In that moment there flashed a faint view on her mind of the wrong she was committing, and how utterly unjustifiable was its nature.

Mr. Carlton came in, a candle in his hand. Drawing from his pocket a bunch of keys, he inserted one in the lock. But he found the lock was not fastened.

“Why—what the deuce!” he uttered, half aloud and in a careless tone, “did I leave it so?”

And then, as if a suspicion occurred to him, he turned and peered round the room. His wife could see it, and she felt sick nearly unto death, lest he should discern her.

But she cowered in the shade of the dark corner; moreover the clothes she wore were dark, and his eye passed her over. He next turned his attention to the lock, but could find nothing the matter with it. He then applied himself to the object which he had come for, which appeared to be his chemical apparatus, for he began moving the different things about on the top shelf, in order to get at a glass cylinder.

He held it in his hand, when the voice of his assistant was heard, speaking down the stairs.

“Are you there, Mr. Carlton?”

“Yes,” responded the surgeon. “Anything wanted?”

“That child at Tupper’s cottage is taken worse; dying, they think.”

“And the sooner it dies the better,” was Mr. Carlton’s rejoinder to himself, in a voice of pity. “I can’t do it any good, poor little fellow, or ease its pain.—Who has come?” he called aloud.

“Only a neighbour,” replied Mr. Jefferson. “Perhaps you would like to hear what she says.”

“Coming,” said Mr. Carlton. He put down the cylinder, left the safe door open, and went up-stairs, intending, no doubt, to be back in a twinkling. As his footsteps died away, Lady Laura sprang from her hiding-place, and winged her flight up the stairs. She succeeded in gaining the top, the top of the cellar stairs, and she noiselessly stole round a corner which would take her to the others. A few paces from her was the surgery door, and she heard voices inside. At a time of less terror she might have stopped to listen, hearing where the messenger came from; but her own safety was above every consideration now, even above her jealous surmises. Arrived in her room, she sat there panting, not knowing whether she should faint or not.

She took some of the port-wine jelly, which still remained on the table, and leaned back in her easy chair to rest. After a while, when her heart had ceased to beat so violently, she rose from her chair, felt in her pocket, and drew something out of it.

It was the missing key, the key of the cupboard: had it been snugly reposing there all the time? What would Miss Stiffing have said? Lady Laura calmly unlocked the cupboard, leaving the door open, and then carried the key into her bedroom, and dropped it in a quiet nook on the floor, close to the key-drawer, where Miss Stiffing’s eyes would be charmed with its sight the first thing in the morning.

She sat down to the fire again, and opened the note, the note whose superscription was in the handwriting of her sister Clarice. But ere she had well glanced at its contents she was interrupted by the sudden entrance of Lady Jane.

“Lucy has got nicely to sleep,” said Jane, after sitting some time, “and I think I shall go to bed. You do not want me this evening, Laura?”

“I don’t want you,” returned Laura, impatiently, wishing Jane had not disturbed her before her curiosity was satisfied. “What do you want to go to bed at ten o’clock for?”

“I am feeling so very tired. My head aches, too. I am beginning, now that I am at ease as to Lucy, to feel the fatigue and anxiety of the past week or two. Good night, Laura.”

“Good night,” carelessly returned Laura, in a fever of impatience to get to her letter. “I shall be going to bed myself.” But Jane had scarcely gone out when Mr. Carlton came in, and Laura had to crush the stolen goods into her pocket again.

He sat down wearily, opposite Laura. He had been very busy all day, and had now come from a hasty run to Tupper’s cottage.

“How do you feel to-night, Laura?”

“Oh, pretty well,” was Laura’s answer; and the consciousness of the fraud she had been committing on him made her rather more civil than she had been of late. “You seem tired, Lewis.”

“Tired to weariness,” responded Mr. Carlton. “People are all getting better; but I’m sure it hardly looks like it, for they are more exacting than when they were in danger.”

“You were not home to dinner, were you?”

“No; I am going to take something now. Should you not be in bed, Laura?”

“I don’t know; I think I am tired of bed,” she answered, fretfully. “I shall go presently.”

He laughed pleasantly. “You are tired with having too little to do, I with having too much. Laura, I think we both want a change. It shall not be long now before we leave South Wennock.”

He sat a few minutes longer and then went down-stairs. Laura once more brought forth her letter, and took the precaution to slip the bolt of the door.

“Perhaps I shall be at peace now!” she cried, in a resentful tone.

In peace to read it, so far; but certainly not in peace afterwards; for the contents puzzled her to torment. She turned it about, she read it twice, she studied the superscription, she compared it with the lines themselves.

And finally she came to the conclusion that the letter was not written to Mr. Carlton, although addressed to him, but to Mr. Tom West. And that Mr. Tom West had married Clarice.

(To be continued.)

THE CIRCASSIAN EXODUS.

We must go back to a very distant period if we seek a parallel to the flight of the Circassians from their homes to a strange land. From hundreds it increased to thousands, and from thousands to tens of thousands, and then to hundreds of thousands. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe stated at the meeting held at the London Tavern on the 8th of July, that the number of emigrants who had reached Turkish territory exceeded 300,000, and we have good authority for believing that the actual number who have fled from their homes exceeds 400,000; and that, unless the emigration is checked by the news of the sufferings their predecessors have undergone, this number will be still further increased. Anything like precision in the statements made on this point is, however, difficult of attainment; so much so, that we find Mr. Layard stating in the House of Commons, in reply to a question asked by a member of the House, that the estimates varied from 100,000 to 300,000; but he considered the probability was, the real number was about 150,000. Mr. Stevens, our consul at Trebizond, under date the 19th of the same month, says that 25,000 had been landed at Trebizond, and 40,000 at Samsoun; and that 200,000 more were expected, "whom the Russians are said to have insisted should leave their country before the middle of June." The Russians themselves said that the number of those who emigrated in March was 30,000, and that by the end of April there would be upwards of 100,000 more ranged at different points along the Russian coast between Anapa and Sotcha. The report to the Board of Health at Constantinople made by their officer, states that he found at Samsoun between 80,000 and 90,000 emigrants in the town and the encampments, who occupied every place where they could obtain the slightest shelter, and that in a few days this number would be doubled. This, be it remembered, referred to Samsoun alone, and there were sundry other places where they were stationed.

To transport such a multitude as this from Russian to Turkish territory would, under the best system, have been a work of great difficulty, and required a large number of trans ports; whereas the means at the disposal of the Turkish government were very limited. In addition to the transports they were able to engage for this purpose, they sent some vessels of war, which the Russian government permitted to come to their coast for the purpose, on the condition that they left their armament in Turkey. Lord Napier, in his despatch to Earl Russell, said that the Grand Duke Michael had asked and received authority to call to his assistance all the Russian vessels of war in the Black Sea, and as many merchant vessels as could be disposed of, for this duty, so as to provide better means of transport for those who were still bent on leaving the country. This information was derived from the Russian Government in St. Peters burg; but the Invalide Russe goes beyond this, and says that the Russian Government had sent several vessels of war and transports, and also several private steamers it had chartered for the purpose. Besides which, it had given every encouragement to shipowners of all countries to send vessels to aid in the transportation of the emigrants to Turkish territory. Our Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs is again in collision with the Russian announcements. He says that Russia con fined its assistance in tins matter to sending four transports. The English Government likewise sent transports; but there is no doubt that all the means of conveyance employed were insufficient to remove them with the expedition desirable, or with a due regard to sanitary considerations; indeed some of these vessels became mere floating pest-houses.

It will enable us to form a better idea of the fearful mortality among these poor creatures, if we refer to what was the state of matters as described by our consul at Trebizond, in his despatches to Earl Russell, written in February last: " The quarters in the vicinity of the cemeteries are rendered uninhabitable owing to the careless manner in which the dead are buried, and the offensive consequences thereof; and whole families are abandoning their dwellings. The chief aqueduct which feeds the fountains of the town is tainted, a Circassian corpse having been found floating therein a few days ago. The streets and squares are in a wretched filthy condition, provisions are getting scarce and dear, and fuel is completely wanting, all which augments the misery, and tends to the spread of disease."

A recently published letter states the number of deaths to be 600 daily. To aggravate the miseries of disease, that of want of food, even of bread, was added; the fear of catching the disease causing the bakers to close their shops and fly from the pest-stricken town. The same dread caused all who were able among the in habitants to do likewise; and some of those who could not leave the place, laid in a stock of pro visions and shut themselves up as in a prison. Among the diseases which swept them off were small-pox, typhus fever, and dysentery. The account given by Dr. Barozzi in his report to the Board of Health at Constantinople of the state of things in this respect which he found at Samsoun at about the same time, is the most revolting that can be imagined, and more than confirms Mr. Stevens' statements. From the description he gives, we are led to believe that the emigrants are of an Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/319 Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/320 Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/321 one of unmitigated satisfaction. In an order of the day issued by the Grand Duke Michael Nicolaïévitch, Commandor-in-chief of the Army of the Caucasus, he says,—

"Soldiers of the Caucasian Army.—It is with sentiments of sincere pleasure, and of high esteem for your valour, that I congratulate you on the conquest of the Western Caucasus, and the termination of Caucasian warfare. By your intrepidity in battle, the unexampled endurance of fatigue and excessive privations, you have rendered an immense service to the sovereign and the country; neither the savage horrors of inaccessible mountain dens, nor the desperate resistance of their inhabitants, neither biting cold nor torrid heat, nothing has been able to resist your progress; during long years you have surmounted all without being discouraged, and you have attained the goal, in marking every stage with your sweat and blood.

"Let thanks be rendered to the All-Powerful, who has crowned your efforts! Glory and gratitude of the country to you, the conquerors of the Caucasus! Eternal honour to the memory of your fallen comrades at this happy and solemn moment!

(Signed) The Commander-in-chief of the Army of the Caucasus, Grand Master of the Artillery.

"Michael."

The Emperor sent Orders to the Grand Duke and those principally concerned in carrying out the military operations; a gold sabre, enriched with diamonds, with the inscription, "For having three times crossed the principal chain of the Caucasus," falling to the lot of General Grabbe. A similar token of his acknowledgment was sent by the Emperor to the Grand Duke Michael's predecessor, Prince Alexander Bariatiusky, together with an autograph letter thanking him for the services he had rendered in planning the scheme which had been successful in terminating a bloody war that had raged for a century and a half.

A grand religious celebration took place at Tiflis on the 21st of June, for the purpose of thanking the Almighty for crowning their efforts with victory. The principal functionaries took advantage of the opportunity to present their congratulations to the Grand Duke; the mayor presenting, in addition, a carved antique cross of cypress wood, containing relics of St. George the Martyr. After the termination of the religious service a solemn procession started from the Sion Cathedral to the tent prepared for the celebration of the Te Deum. This procession consisted of the Exarch of Georgia and a number of the clergy, preceded by crosses and banners. Before, however, they commenced the thanksgiving, the Exarch delivered a congratulatory address.

At the conclusion of the address, the performance of the Te Deum, and the Grand Duke's reply, all the bells in the city rang out joyful peals, the soldiers shouted, and the artillery shook the town with repeated discharges.

Nor was this the only religious service held to testify the gratitude of the Russians for their victory. At Moscow, St. Petersburg, and elsewhere, similar solemnities were performed, and the most exuberant joy manifested. Thus, while their wretched victims were lying in herds of thousands, poisoning the very air about them with the exhalations from their festering bodies, the Russians were thanking God with more or less sincerity for their successes.

JOHANN ZOFFANY.

TO THE EDITOR OF "ONCE A WEEK."

Calcutta, June 20th, 1804.

Sir,—In Part lviii., page 402, of your miscellany, appears an interesting paper regarding the late Johann Zoffany, Esq., R.A., and his productions. In this notice of the great artist's paintings no mention is, however, made of a life-size picture, representing "The Last Supper," presented by him as an altar-piece to St. John's Church, Calcutta, about the year 1795. This painting has deservedly been the admiration of many of our countrymen on visiting the Cathedral for the first time, but having, it is believed, been executed in India, its existence is not, perhaps, known "abroad," and it is with the view of bringing it to the notice of "J. W. A." and your readers at home that I address you. In this picture the calm and serene countenance of our Blessed Lord breaking bread, and the mild and confiding look of his favourite apostle resting on his bosom, contrast in a remarkable manner with the deep-set brows of Judas, and the anxious gaze of the other apostles, the whole pronouncing it to be the work of a master hand. Indeed, it could be said that a list of Sir Johann's productions would be incomplete were this picture to be omitted. Through the carelessness of native workmen the picture sustained some injury when the church was last under repairs, but with the assistance of Mr. Bennett, a local artist of some note, it has been restored to its original appearance.

I am, Sir,⁠
Yours faithfully,⁠
S. R. W.

LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER LI.⁠A LITTLE LIGHT.

Lady Jane Chesney sat before her dressing-glass, having her hair brushed by Judith, preparatory to retiring to rest, when they were interrupted by the entrance of Lady Laura.

“Jane, I want a little talk with you,” she said, sitting down by the bright fire. “Bring your chair round to the warmth.”

“I thought you said you were going to bed,” observed Jane.

“I don’t feel tired. Excitement is as good to me as rest, and I have had an exciting evening, taking one thing with another. Jane, you were right about Clarice.”

“Right in what way?” returned Jane, eagerly. “Have you questioned Mr. Carlton?”

“Shall I leave the room, my lady, and come back presently?” inquired Judith of her mistress, pausing with the hair-brush in her hand.

“No,” interposed Lady Laura. “There’s something to puzzle out, and I think you may perhaps help us, Judith. I have not questioned Mr. Carlton, Jane, but in—in—" Laura gave a slight cough, as though her throat troubled her—“in rummaging over some of his waste places to-night, I came upon a note. A note written by Clarice.”

Involuntarily Jane thought of the scrap of paper, the part of a note written by Clarice, which Laura had “come upon” once before.

“It is written to her husband,” continued Laura. “That Tom West, I suppose. And it proves that she came to South Wennock, and that Mr. Carlton must have attended upon her. Only think, Jane, to South Wennock! She must have been visiting at Mrs. Jenkinson’s, I fancy, where Judith’s sister lives, for the note is dated from Palace Street. I will read it to you, Jane.”

⁠“13, Palace Street, South Wennock.
⁠“Friday Evening, March 10, 1848.

“My dearest Husband,—You will be surprised to hear of my journey, and that I am safe at South Wennock. I know you will be angry, but I cannot help it, and we will talk over things when we meet. I have asked the people here about a medical man, and they strongly recommend one of the Messrs. Grey, but I tell them I would prefer Mr. Carlton: what do you say? I must ask him to come and see me this evening, for the railway omnibus shook me dreadfully, and I feel anything but well. I know he will come, and without delay. “It was unreasonable of you, my darling husband, to wish me to be ill so far away. I felt that I could not; that I should have died; and that’s why I have disobeyed you. I can go back again when all’s well over, if things still turn out crossly for the avowal of our marriage. No harm can come of it, for I have not given our name, and you must ask for me by the one you and Mr. West were so fond of calling me in sport. “Lose no time; be here in half an hour, if you can, for I do feel really ill; and believe me,

⁠“Ever your loving wife,
⁠"Clarice."

“I have heard part of that note before!” was on the tip of Judith’s tongue. But some feeling prompted her to stop the words ere they were spoken. Lady Jane took the note and read it to herself in silence, pondering over each word.

“It is incomprehensible to me,” she at length said, drawing the envelope from Laura, and looking at it. “Why, this is addressed to Mr. Carlton!” she burst forth.

“It must have come into his possession in some way; perhaps he and Tom West got their envelopes and letters mixed together,” returned Laura with composure. “I suppose there’s no doubt now that it was Tom West she married. Judith says he used to visit his aunt in Palace Street—old Mrs. Jenkinson,—and the letter’s dated from thence. If—Judith, what on earth’s the matter with you?”

“Thank you, my lady,” replied Judith, who was looking white and faint. “I feel a little sick. It will pass off directly.”

“It is evident that Clarice must have come to South Wennock without her husband’s consent,” resumed Laura, tossing a bottle of smelling salts to Judith. “I suppose he was stopping at Mrs. Jenkinson’s. Her number is thirteen, is it not, Judith?”

“No, my lady, Mrs. Jenkinson’s number is fourteen,” replied Judith, in a low tone.

“Oh, well, a mistake’s readily made in a strange number. Clarice must have———"

“Laura, I am all at sea,” interrupted Lady Jane. “Why should Clarice have come to South Wennock at all, unless she came with him? This note would seem to imply that he lived at South Wennock, but—he never lived here, did he, Judith? "

“Who, my lady? Mr. Tom West? no, he never lived here,” was Judith’s reply; but the girl looked remarkably uneasy. Did she fear being asked questions which she could not answer?

“It could not have been Tom West that Clarice married,” said Lady Jane. “This note is dated March, and he sailed for India in February.”

“My ladies,” spoke up Judith, “I have inquired of my sister Margaret whether young Mr. West’s name was Thomas. She says it was not Thomas, but Robert; and she also says he was married several years ago to a Miss Pope, and they live somewhere in Gloucestershire.”

“Then that disposes of the affair so far as he is concerned,” cried Laura, with wondering eyes. “How much difficulty it appears to be encompassed with!”

“Not quite,” said Jane. “Robert West may have been a brother. Do you know, Judith? And do you know whether Robert was a surgeon?”

“Robert West was not in any profession, my lady. He was an independent gentleman. I don’t think he had a brother. Margaret says he had not.”

“Laura, I cannot rest,” said Jane, starting from a pause of thought. “I shall go now and speak to Mr. Carlton. I ought to have applied to him before.”

Causing her hair to be smoothed under one of her plain white net morning caps, Jane proceeded to the dining-parlour. Mr. Carlton was in an easy-chair before the fire, solacing himself with a cigar, which, as a visiting medical man, he only ventured on at night—and that not often. He threw it into the fire with a word of apology when he saw Lady Jane.

“Pardon me for disturbing you at this hour,” she said, taking the chair he offered, “but I am in great want of some information which I think you can afford me—very anxious about it, in short. Some years ago you were, I believe, intimate with a family living in Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, of the name of West. Can you tell me whether Tom West married my sister?”

No pen could adequately describe Mr. Carlton’s countenance. It was one sheet of blank consternation; first—as it appeared—at being charged with having known the Wests, next at being questioned about Lady Jane’s sister.

“I can’t tell anything about it,” he said at length.

“I hope you can, Mr. Carlton. Perhaps I have not been sufficiently explicit. You were a friend of Tom West’s, were you not?”

“I certainly knew him,” he replied, after a pause. “Not much; that is, it was but a passing acquaintance. He went out to India, and I believe died there.”

“Not much!” repeated Jane; “Mrs. West told me you were there frequently. You used to see her cousins there, and my sister. We have a suspicion that my sister married Thomas West. Were you cognisant of it?”

The same blank look reigned paramount in Mr. Carlton’s face.

“I really do not understand you, Lady Jane. I never saw a sister of yours at Mrs. West’s. What sister?”

“You saw Miss Beauchamp?”

He suddenly rose, and seizing hold of the poker, began knocking the fire about.

“Well?” said he.

“I speak of Miss Beauchamp. She was my sister.”

He turned sharply round, poker in hand.

“Miss Beauchamp! What farce is it that you wish to play me, Lady Jane?”

“No farce,” replied Jane, sadly. “She dropped our name when she went out as governess—not to disgrace it, she said —retaining only that of Beauchamp. She was our sister, Clarice Beauchamp Chesney.”

A strange expression was on Mr. Carlton’s face, but he kept it turned away from Lady Jane.

“We know that Clarice married,” proceeded Jane, “and we can only think she must have married Thomas West. Had he a brother Robert, do you know?”

“Had who a brother Robert?” asked Mr. Carlton.

“Tom West.”

“Tom West had no brother Robert, that I am aware of. I never knew any one of the name of Robert West.”

“What name did my sister go by when she was here, at South Wennock?” continued Jane. “You can tell that.”

“She never was at South Wennock.”

“Mr. Carlton! She was, and you must know it. She sent for you, did she not, to attend her the night she arrived: sent for you to Palace Street?”

Down clattered the poker. Was it an accident, or were Mr. Carlton’s hands shaking? As he stooped to pick it up, Jane caught a glimpse of his face: either it was unusually pale or the firelight deceived her. Another moment, and he had put the poker in its place, and was turning to Lady Jane and speaking quietly.

“I know nothing of your sister; nothing whatever. Why should you think I do?—why do you apply to me?”

The precise why and wherefore Jane could not answer, for she had given a hasty promise to Laura not to speak of the note the latter had produced.

“When my sister came to South Wennock to stay with old Mrs. Jenkinson, we have reason to believe that you attended her, Mr. Carlton. I want to know by what name she then went.”

Again astonishment appeared to be the prevailing emotion of Mr. Carlton. It seemed that he could not understand.

“I protest, Lady Jane, you are asking me things that I know nothing of. I never was inside Mrs. Jenkinson’s house in my life. John Grey attends there.”

“Clarice would not have the Greys; Clarice preferred you: and Clarice was there. Was she not confined in Palace Street?”

Mr. Carlton raised his hand to smooth his brow. “What mistake you are labouring under, I cannot tell,” he presently said. “I know nothing of what you are asking me; I know nothing of your sister, or her health, or her movements; and I know as little of Mrs. Jenkinson.”

“You knew Miss Beauchamp at Mrs. West’s?” rejoined Jane.

“I used to see a lady there of that name, I remember, the Wests’ governess,” he replied. “Surely, Lady Jane, you must make some strange mistake in calling her your sister?”

“She was indeed our sister, Mr. Carlton. Laura, it seems, has never liked to mention the subject of Clarice to you, but we have been searching for her all these years.”

“Why has she not liked to mention it?” interrupted Mr. Carlton.

“From a feeling of pride, I believe. But—can you not tell me something, Mr. Carlton? Did Clarice marry Tom West?”

“Lady Jane, I cannot tell you anything,” he repeated, some annoyance in his tone. “Miss Beauchamp was the Wests’ governess, she was not mine. All I can say is, that if she married Tom West, I never knew it. So far as I believe, Tom West went out to India a single man. When I came down here to settle, I lost sight of them all.”

“But—surely you can tell me something?” Jane persisted, collecting her senses, which seemed in a maze. “Did you not attend my sister here, at Mrs. Jenkinson’s? You were certainly summoned to do so.”

“What grounds have you for thinking so? By whom was I summoned?”

Jane’s tongue was again tied. She could not tell of the note she had just read.

“The best answer I can give you, Lady Jane, is but a repetition of what I have already said,” he resumed, finding she did not speak. “I never attended anyone at Mrs. Jenkinson’s in my life: I never was summoned to do so.”

“And you can tell me nothing?”

“I cannot indeed.”

Jane rose from her chair, dissatisfied. “Will you pardon me for saying, Mr. Carlton, that I think you could say more if you would. I must find my sister, alive or dead. A curious suspicion has been latterly upon me that that little boy at Tupper’s cottage is her child,” she continued, in agitation. “I wish you could help me.”

He shook his head, intimating that he could not, opened the door for Lady Jane, and bowed her out. Laura, waiting in Jane’s room still, questioned her when she got up stairs.

“Well?” said she.

“Mr. Carlton either does not know anything, or will not disclose it,” said Jane. “I think it is the latter.”

“Did he ever know Clarice?”

“As Miss Beauchamp; not as Clarice Chesney. I believe he spoke truth there. He seems to have a difficulty in believing still that she was our sister. He says he never was inside Mrs. Jenkinson’s house in his life. Laura, I should have shown the note: I could have questioned to so much more purpose.”

“Ah, that would not do at any price,” laughed Laura. “I got it out of one of his hiding-places.”

“How can you laugh at this moment?” rebuked Jane. “I feel as if some heavy secret were on the point of discovery. You need not go away, Judith.”

Laura opened her eyes. “What secret?”

“How can I tell? I wish I could tell. If it were all straight and fair, why should Mr. Carlton betray agitation, and refuse to answer? There’s no doubt my questions did agitate him. A horrible doubt is growing upon me, Laura: whether those young Wests can have deceived Clarice into a marriage which would not, or did not, hold good—and Mr. Carlton was the confidant of their plans!”

“Do you suppose Mr. Carlton would sully himself by anything so cruel and disgraceful?” flashed Laura. “He has his own faults; but he would not lend himself to a business of that sort.”

“Men think a poor friendless governess legitimate game sometimes,” spoke Jane in a low tone. “And she was only known as the unprotected girl, Clarice Beauchamp. Rely upon it, Tom West worked ill to Clarice in some shape or other; I fear Mr. Carlton knew of it, and is trying to screen him. It was so shadowed forth in that dreadful dream: Mr. Carlton was mixed up with it.”

“What was that dream, Jane?—tell it me now,” whispered Laura, eagerly; for, however it might have pleased Laura in general to ridicule not only dreams themselves but those who dreamt them, that night hour, and the vague dread pervading Jane’s spirit, all too plainly were exercising their influence over her now. Jane began at once; it was a significant fact that she showed no thought of objecting. Judith, not caring to be solitary at a dream-telling, drew near and stood close behind the chair of Lady Jane.

“It was on Monday night, the thirteenth of March,” began Lady Jane, with a shiver, “and quite the beginning of Lent, for Easter was very late that year———"

“What has Easter to do with it?” interrupted Laura.

“Nothing. I had gone to bed that evening as soon as tea was over, not being well, and by half-past nine was asleep. I thought that Clarice came to my bed-side, dressed in her grave clothes, and stood looking at me. Understand me, Laura—I remembered in my dream that I had gone to bed ill; I seemed to know that I was lying in bed, and that I was sleeping. I dreamt that Clarice came, I say, and I dreamt that I awoke; her attire, the shroud, did not appear to frighten me, but she did not speak. ‘Why have you come here?’ I asked. ‘To tell you that I am gone,’ she answered, and she pointed to her face, which was that of the dead, and to the shroud; but it did not appear that I associated her words with death (at least, I could not remember so when I awoke), but that she had gone on a journey. ‘Why did you go without telling us?’ I asked her. ‘He stopped it,’ she answered, ‘he was too quick.’ ‘Who?’ I asked; and she turned her white face round and pointed to the door of the room. I cannot describe to you, Laura, the horror, the fear, that at that moment seemed to take possession of me. ‘Come and see him,’ Clarice said, and glided towards the door. I seemed to get out of bed, to follow her, without power of resistance; she kept looking over her shoulder, with her dead face and her dead fixed eyes, and beckoned to me. But oh! the dread, the fear I seemed to experience at having to look beyond that door! It was a dread perfectly unearthly, such as we can never feel in life. I thought Clarice went out before me,—went out in obedience to one who was compelling her to go, as she was compelling me. It seemed that I would have given my own life not to look, but yet I had no thought of resistance. There, standing outside, and waiting for her, was———"

“A—h!” shrieked Laura, her nerves strung beyond their tension with the superstitious terror induced by the recital “Look at Judith!”

Jane started at the interruption, and turned round. Judith’s face was of a blue whiteness. She stammered forth an excuse. “I am not ill, my ladies; but it frightens me to hear these strange dreams.”

Lady Jane resumed.

“Standing outside, waiting for Clarice, was the person she seemed to have spoken of as stopping her from telling us, as being ‘too quick.’ It was Mr. Carlton. He was looking at her sternly, and pointed with his outstretched hand to some place in the distance where it was dark. I remember no more; I awoke with the terror, the horror—such horror that, I tell you, Laura, we can never experience in life, except in a dream. And yet I was collected enough not to scream; papa was just getting better from his attack of gout, and I did not dare raise the house, and alarm him. I put my head under the bedclothes, and I believe a full hour passed before I had courage to put it out again; there I lay, shivering and shaking, bathed in perspiration.”

“It was a singular dream,” said Laura, musingly. “But, Jane, it could have had no meaning.”

“I argued so to myself. Clarice was at a distance, in London as we supposed, and Mr. Carlton was at South Wennock; that very evening, as late as half-past seven, he had been at our house with papa. This dream of mine took place before ten, for I heard the clock strike after I awoke. I did not like Mr. Carlton previously; we do take likes and dislikes; but it is impossible to tell you how very much that dream set me against him. Unjustly, you will say; but we cannot help these things. He was, ever after, associated in my mind with terror, with dread; and I would rather have seen you marry any one else in the world. This night, for the first time, I begin to think that the dream had a meaning, for Clarice must have been at South Wennock; the note of hers was dated the tenth, the previous Friday.”

“How absurd, Jane! What meaning?”

“I cannot conjecture; unless, as I say, those young Wests brought any ill on Clarice, and Mr. Carlton was privy to it.”

Laura would not accept the suggestion; ridiculed it in the highest degree; and she went away to her room casting a mocking, laughing word of censure at Jane for what she called her “folly.”

“I shall go,” said Jane, “to Mrs. Jenkinson’s in the morning.”

She spoke aloud, though the words were but uttered in commune with herself. Judith came forward, a little wash-leather bag in her hand.

“It will be of no use your going to Mrs. Jenkinson—as I believe, my lady. Did your ladyship ever see this?”

She took a trinket from the bag and laid it in Lady Jane’s hand. An elegant little locket, the back of blue enamel, the rim set round with pearls, with a short fine gold chain some three inches in length attached to it on either side. Lady Jane needed to cast but one glance at it.

“Oh, Judith!” she cried, “where did you get this? It belongs to Lady Clarice.”

“It did belong to her,” returned Judith, in a low tone. “My lady, I can tell you what became of her, I think—but the tale is full of horror and distress; one that you will not like to hear.”

“Tell it,” murmured Lady Jane, “tell it, whatever it may be.”

“That poor lady about whom so much has been said in South Wennock—who died the very night of your dream, my lady, not at Mrs. Jenkinson’s, but at the Widow Gould’s, next door to it—she gave me the locket.”

Lady Jane stood with dilating eyes. She could not sufficiently collect her ideas to understand as yet.

“I speak of Mrs. Crane, my lady, who died after taking the composing draught sent in by Mr. Stephen Grey.”

“She could not have been my sister!” panted Lady Jane, scarcely above her breath. “Judith, she could not have been my sister!”

“I truly believe she must have been so, my lady,” whispered Judith. “She told me it was her own hair inside. And that letter, which Lady Laura brought in tonight, was the one read by the coroner at the inquest; that was only partially read, that is to say, for the half of it was missing.”

Jane sank down on her knees, unable to support herself in her shock of discovery. Just as she had sunk in another shock of discovery once before, that long-ago evening when her father had brought home his unwelcome bride.

CHAPTER LII.⁠CROSS PURPOSES.

The revelation disturbed the previous theory of Lady Jane. Mrs. Crane? then it appeared to be evident that Clarice had married the Mr. Crane spoken of by Mrs. West. But there were discrepancies still. How account for the assertion in that letter to her husband, that she did not go by her proper name, when she had called herself Mrs. Crane?

What feeling prompted Jane to withhold the news of this discovery from Laura? Any subtle instinct? What feeling prompted her to give orders for quitting Mr. Carlton’s house on the following morning?—hurrying away Lucy, almost at the risk of her health? Of the true facts of the case she was in complete uncertainty; but a dark suspicion kept floating within her that the man seen on the stairs by Mr. Carlton the night of the death was the husband, Crane. The poor lady had asserted her husband was travelling; but, by the letter above alluded to, it was apparent her husband was then in South Wennock. It was altogether incomprehensible. Judith wore a timid, downcast look when questioned by her mistress, as if fearing she should be asked too much.

“This is a sudden departure, Lady Jane,” cried Mr. Carlton, as she went in to his presence in the morning. “I thought you would have been here at least a few days longer. Mind! I do not give a guarantee that Lucy is fit to be moved.”

“I take the risk upon myself, Mr. Carlton. I—I thank you sincerely for your hospitality, for your kindness and attention to Lucy, but I am anxious to be in my own home. I feel that I must be free; free to pursue this investigation of which I spoke to you last night, regarding the fate of my sister Clarice. Had you been more open with me, Mr. Carlton, I might not have gone.”

A shade of annoyance passed across his countenance. “It is a singular thing that you should persist in attributing to me a knowledge of these things, Lady Jane!”

“My firm conviction is, that you do possess the knowledge,” was Jane’s answer. “But in speaking of Clarice last night, I may have somewhat misled you; I was misled myself. It was not at Mrs. Jenkinson’s she stayed when at South Wennock, but at the next door. That ill-fated lady who died at the Widow Gould’s was my sister Clarice.”

Mr. Carlton made no reply. He looked hard at Jane. “She called herself Mrs. Crane. Of course I can only conclude that she married, not Tom West, but the Mr. Crane who used to visit at the Wests’. You must have known him well, Mr. Carlton. What sort of a man was he?”

“Sort of man?” repeated Mr. Carlton, who seemed half buried in his own thoughts. “He was a short man, stout, had black hair. At least, if my memory serves me well. I protest that I have never seen or heard of him, since the time he used to go to the Wests. What have you learnt, Lady Jane, that can induce you to think that dead lady was your sister?”

“Short and stout, with black hair,” repeated Jane, unmindful of the rest. “It must have been him, the same you saw on the stairs.”

“That it was not,” burst forth Mr. Carlton, unusually heated. “The face I saw on the stairs—if I did see one—bore no earthly resemblance to any one I had ever seen in all my life.”

“Did you know that Clarice—that Miss Beauchamp married Mr. Crane?”

“I did not”

“I cannot divest myself of the idea that you know more of this past business than you say,” she rejoined. “I want the clue to it. If you can furnish it, why will you not? You certainly were called in to Mrs. Crane: you gave evidence to that effect at the inquest.”

“We are at cross-purposes, Lady Jane,” was the surgeon’s answer. “I can tell you nothing whatever. The lady I was called to attend in Palace Street was a stranger. As to the supposition you have taken up, that she was your sister, I think you must be wholly mistaken. But, whether or not, my advice to you would be to let it drop. No good can result, investigate it as you will; the poor lady cannot be recalled to life, and it would not be pleasant for you or my wife, to have the matter raked up and spread before the public. Let it drop, Lady Jane.”

“I shall never let it drop,” answered Jane.

“And the unpleasantness—we must put up with that.”

“As you please, of course,” said Mr. Carlton, with indifference. “I can say no more.”

At cross purposes they seemed indeed to be, and at cross-purposes they parted. Jane began to doubt whether she who died really was Miss Beauchamp, but she was resolute in her work of discovery, and she went at once to Tupper’s cottage. Judith told her that Mrs. Smith had confessed to her that the child was Mrs. Crane’s. Generally speaking, the door stood open: the sun streaming in on a bright winter’s day was cheering: but it was shut now. Mrs. Smith came to open it, and Jane said she wished for half an hour’s interview with her, if she was at leisure.

“At too much leisure,” was the woman’s sad reply. “I am but watching the dead.”

“The dead! He is not dead—that little child!”

“He is. He died between nine and ten this morning.”

Jane sank down on a chair in the kitchen. “And I never gave him a kiss for his mother’s sake! I never knew that he belonged to her. Dead! He was—as I believe—my little nephew.”

The woman stared at her. "Your nephew, madam, you are one of the Ladies Chesney.”

“Yes—stay. This little child’s mother died in Palace Street. Who was she? What was her married name?”

“I don’t know. I would give a great deal to know.”

Lady Jane felt sick at heart. Was it to be ever thus? Was obstacle after obstacle ever to be thrust in her way?

“I pray you let us have no more concealment!” she said, in a voice of anguish. “If I cannot come to the bottom of this business by fair entreaty, I must call in the help of the law. Did you never know that young lady’s name before her marriage or after it?”

“I knew it before—at least the one she went by. I knew her first when she was governess at the Lortons’. She was Miss Beauchamp.”

“And my dear sister!” exclaimed Jane, her doubts at rest. “Whom did she marry!”

Mrs. Smith held out her hard hand. “I’d give this to know.”

“Let me see the child,” said Jane. He was lying on the bed up stairs in his white nightgown, a little cambric- bordered cap shading his wan white face. His hands were laid by his side, and some sprigs of geranium were strewn on the sheet.

“He was so fond of flowers in life,” said Mrs. Smith. “Geraniums especially. So was his mother.”

Jane’s tears fell upon the placid little countenance, and she stooped and kissed it. “I did not do it while he lived,” she said. “Why did you not tell me whose child he was then?”

“Nay, my lady, why did you not tell me who his mother was?—how was I to suspect she could be anything to the Ladies Chesney? I only knew her as a governess. Passers-by were always asking me about him out of idle curiosity, just because they saw he was ill, and that we were strangers in the place: I thought you only asked from the same motive.”

“You were attached to his mother,” said Jane, as she gave a short history of her sister Clarice.

“I don’t think I was ever so much attached to anybody,” was Mrs. Smith’s answer; “though it was not for long I knew her.”

“Then I ask you by that attachment to give me every particular you can respecting her.”

“You might have heard all I know long ago, my lady, had I but been aware what you were to her. I knew her first at the Lortons’ in Gloucester Terrace. I and Mrs. Lorton are cousins; yes, she’s a great lady, and lives in style, and tries to make herself out a greater; but she’ll never be one, let her try ever so. We lived in a country town; her father was a pastry-cook, and mine (they were brothers) kept a public-house. She thought the pastry line was more genteel than the public line, and held up her head rather. She married, married well—some London gentleman—and I stopped at home for many years, marrying nobody. In course of time my father and mother died, and all they had became mine. What with their savings and the sale of the business, I found I had about a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Then came my turn. George Smith, who had used our house for many years, and had been, as the nonsense runs, sweet upon me, said why should we not join our means together: his salary a hundred and fifty, and my hundred and fifty, would make three hundred, and we should be comfortable for life? I said nothing against it, but that I was getting on to be forty years of age and liked my own way; he, poor fellow, was turned forty by some years, and as mild as milk. So we married, and settled in London, where his master’s house of business was, he being their country traveller. I couldn’t set up for a lady, and I didn’t; I was as plain and rough as ever; that didn’t please Mrs. Lorton, and she shunned me; but when, soon after, Mrs. Lorton was taken with a dangerous illness, she was glad enough to send for me to nurse her through it. It was then I saw Miss Beauchamp; I thought her the sweetest girl I had ever met, and the more I saw of her the more I liked her. A real lady she was, there was no mistaking that; she had none of Mrs. Lorton’s stuck-up airs, but spoke gently and kindly to folks, as if they were human beings. I was there for a month, for my husband was away on his journey, and when I left, Miss Beauchamp promised faithfully to come and see me at Islington, where we lived. She did come, and she told me she had left Mrs. Lorton’s, through that great big booby of a son making up to her, and had gone to Mrs. West’s. After that I saw no more of her for some months, till—I think it must have been September in the following year; and then she came, and asked if I could recommend her to a lodging. Of course I was surprised, and she told me she would confide a secret to me—that she was married. I asked why it was a secret; she laughed, and said for two reasons; one was, that her husband could not and would not tell his father, on account of some money matters between them that were not settled amicably; and the other reason was, that she, on her part, could not tell her family, for they were very high and proud, and would say she had disgraced them by her choice. Her husband, she said, was a professional man, and as soon as he got on well, so as to keep her in comfort and tolerable style, then they should declare it, and care for nobody.”

“What did she say her name was?” interrupted Lady Jane.

“She did not say, madam. When I pressed her, she said it was better that it should not be known, especially as I was connected with the Gloucester Terrace Lortons; it might get to them and it might get to the Wests, and that would not do. I said, then what was I to call her, and she laughed again, and said I might call her Miss Beauchamp; she was not afraid of my misconstruing her position. My lady, she never left my house again until she came down to South Wennock.”

“Never left it!”

“I mean, not to live. Ours was a good house, and I said the drawing-room and bed-room were at her service; but she would pay for them, and my servant waited on her. In the December my little child was born, the only one I ever had; and she, dear lady, used to sit with me, and be———"

“But did her husband never come to see her all that time?” interrupted Lady Jane, with wonder.

“Never once to my house. From what I could gather—for she would let a word now and then drop in forgetfulness—he seemed to have left London to live in the country. He would occasionally come to London, and of that she made no secret, and at those times she would go out and be away a day or two. But I never knew where she stayed.”

“How were her letters addressed?” asked Jane. “She must have received letters.”

“No letters came to the house; she used to go to Islington post-office for them. Once, when she was expecting one, she was too ill to go out, and sent the maid. I saw the letter in the girl’s hand as she came in; it was directed ‘C. C'"

“For Clarice Crane,” thought Jane. Though it might have served equally for Clarice Chesney.

“Towards the next March she got restless; she would be expecting her own illness in May, and she did not like to lie up so far from her husband. She said she would go down to where he lived, whether he was pleased or not. He said she was not to go—so she told me; and I spoke against it; I did not think she was strong enough to travel. I was in great grief at that time, for my child had died; and, as to my husband, I thought he’d never be pacified. When old folks like us get blessed with a child for the first time, they are as fond of it and proud over it as a dog with two tails. Ah, well!” added Mrs. Smith, in an indifferent tone, as she rubbed her nose, “it’s all over, and I’m almost glad it didn’t live, for the world’s full of trouble and care and wickedness. Miss Beauchamp promised that I should have the nursing of hers, and, my lady, I looked to that promise like a famished man looks to meat, for I am naturally fond of young children, and I didn’t want her to go away, lest I should not get the baby, after all.”

“But she went?”

“She went; there was no stopping her. She packed her things in one large trunk, burning all her letters and papers, and left on the morning of the tenth of March; I well remember the day, it was on a Friday. On the next day, the Saturday, I was out with some friends, country people who had come to London for a few days’ pleasuring. They were at an inn near the Strand, and nothing would do but I must go and breakfast with them, which they had made me promise to do, and I went out early, before the post was in. When I got home at night there was a letter from Miss Beauchamp, asking me to go to her, for she was ill at South Wennock. I took the night-train, and when I arrived I found the baby was born—the least child nearly I ever saw. I was very angry with her, my lady; I could not help it: and she had endangered her life for nothing, as may be said, for when she got to South Wennock, her husband was away.”

“Away?” interrupted Lady Jane.

“So she said. And by a slip word she let drop, I thought he was a surgeon, but I was not sure. I took the baby away with me that same evening. I could not stop, for, as ill luck would have it, my husband was coming home on the Monday, sick. She told me to have the baby baptised, and to name him ‘Lewis'—and it occurred to me that it might be the name of his father. I took the liberty of adding George to it, after my husband.”

There was a long pause. “Did you know she went by the name of Crane?” asked Lady Jane.

“She told me in her letter to ask for her by that name. I inquired of her, after I reached South Wennock, whether it was her real name, and she laughed and said, no more real than Beauchamp, nor half so much so; it was a name that her husband and young Mr. West were very fond of calling her, partly because she had a peculiar way of arching her neck, partly to tease her. Some gentleman, named Crane, to whom she had an aversion, used to visit at the Wests', and, to make her angry, they would call her by his name, Mrs. Crane. She said it had never struck her that she should want a name for South Wennock until she was close upon the place, and then she thought of that one—Crane; it would do for her as well as any other, until she assumed her legal one, which she supposed she should now soon do. I found great fault: I said she ought to have assumed it and been with her husband before the child was born; and we had quite words. She defended him, and said it would have been so, but for the child’s coming before its time. She charged me not to write to her, not to communicate at all with her, until she wrote to me. We had nearly a fight upon another point: she wanted me to say I would be paid for the child; I steadily refused it. It was a boon to me to have the child, and I was at ease in my circumstances. My lady, I took away the child, and I never heard one word from her, good or bad, afterwards.”

“Never at all?”

“Never at all. My husband was at home with a long illness, and afterwards removed to Paisley, where he had a good situation offered him. Some friends took to our house at Islington and to the carpets and curtains, and there I left a letter, saying where we had gone, directing it ‘Mrs. Crane, late Miss Beauchamp.’ It was never applied for.”

“And you never wrote to South Wennock?” cried Lady Jane.

“I never did. I own I was selfish; I was afraid of losing the child, and my husband he had got to love it as much as I did. I argued, if she wanted the child she would be sure to apply for it. Besides, I thought I might do some mischief by writing, and I did not know her real name or address.”

“But what could you think of her silence?—of her leaving the child?”

“We thought it might arise from one of two reasons. Either that she had gone abroad with her husband to America, or some distant colony (and she had said something about it in the early days when she was first at my house), and that her letters to me from thence must miscarry: or else that—you must pardon me for speaking it, my lady—that she was not married, and shrank from claiming the child. I did not believe it was so, but my husband used to think it might be.”

Jane made no reply.

“Anyway we were thankful to keep him. And when my husband died last spring, his care in his last illness was more for the child than for me. I sold off then, and determined to come to South Wennock: partly to hear what I could of Mrs. Crane; partly to see if the child’s native air would do him good; he had never been strong. I never shall forget the shock when I got here and heard how Mrs. Crane had died”

Poor Jane thought she should never forget the shock of the previous night, when told that Mrs. Crane was Clarice Chesney.

“What I can’t make out is, that her husband has never been heard of,” resumed Mrs. Smith, breaking the pause of silence. “I—I am trying to put two and two together, as the saying goes, but somehow I can’t do it; I get baffled. There’s a talk of a dark man having been seen on the stairs near her room that night; one would think he must have been the husband, stolen in there to work the ill.”

“I don’t know,” shivered Lady Jane. “Since you have been speaking, other dark fears have come upon me. Fears which I dare not look upon.”

Yes; various fears, and thoughts, and remembrances were stirring within her. A recollection of that scrap of letter, found by Lady Laura in her drawer of fine laces soon after becoming Mr. Carlton’s wife, rose up. Laura had always persisted that the paper must have come from Cedar Lodge amidst her clothes: how else, she argued, could it have got there? Now Jane began to think (what she would have thought previously but for its apparent impossibility) that the paper must have been in the drawer before Laura ever went into the house; that it must have slipped under the paper covering of the drawer, and lain there, it was impossible to say how long. It had never occurred to her or to Laura to connect Mr. Carlton with it at all; and the little matter had puzzled Jane more than she cared to think of. Could the letter have been written to Mr. Crane? surely it had not been written to Mr. Carlton! But how came it in the drawer? Had Mr. Crane ever visited Mr. Carlton at South Wennock? And again there was Clarice’s denial that her name was Crane. What had been Mr. Carlton’s part in it all? was the chief question that agitated Jane’s mind now. She stayed with Mrs. Smith, talking and talking, and it was growing dusk when she quitted the cottage to walk home. But as Lady Jane went down Blister Lane and turned on to the Rise, she started nervously at every shadow in the hedge, just as Mr. Carlton had started at them some years before.

(To be continued.)

LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER LIII.⁠JUDITH’S STORY.

In the twilight of the winter’s evening, in the drawing-room of Lady Jane’s house, Frederick Grey was sitting with Lucy Chesney. The removal from Mr. Carlton’s that day did not appear to have hurt her, she seemed the stronger for it, and though Judith kept assuring her that she ought to go to her chamber and lie down, Lucy stayed where she was.

The interview was a gloomy one. It was Frederick Grey’s farewell visit, for he was going back to London the following day. But the gloom did not arise from that cause, but from another. Lucy had been telling him something, and he grew hot and angry.

The fact was, Lady Jane, in her perplexity and tribulation at finding the deceased lady, Mrs. Crane, to have been Clarice Chesney, had that morning dropped a word in Lucy’s hearing to the effect that the discovery might be the means of breaking off the contemplated marriage. Of course, Lucy was making herself very miserable, and her lover was indignant.

“On what grounds?” he chafed, for he had rather a hot temper. “On what grounds?”

“Jane thinks it will not be seemly that we should marry, if the mistake that brought Clarice her death was made by Sir Stephen. The medicine, you know.”

“Jane must be getting into her dotage,” he angrily exclaimed. “Sir Stephen never did make the mistake. Lucy, my darling, be at ease: we cannot be parted now.”

Lucy’s tears were dropping fast: she was weak from her recent illness. To marry in opposition to Jane could never be thought of, and Jane was firm when she once took a notion into her head. In the midst of this, Jane came in from her visit to the little dead boy at Tupper’s cottage, and Frederick Grey spoke out his mind somewhat warmly. Judith, who entered the room to take her lady’s bonnet, stood in surprise and concern: her sympathies were wholly with Frederick Grey and Lucy. He had not observed Judith enter.

“Oh, my lady,” she exclaimed, impulsively, “it would not be right to separate them. Should the innocent suffer for the guilty?”

“The guilty? the guilty?” mused Lady Jane. “How are we to know who is guilty?”

Judith stood still, a strange expression of eagerness, blended with indecision, on her white face. She looked at Lady Jane, she looked at Frederick Grey; and she suddenly threw down the bonnet she held, and lifted her hands.

“I’ll speak,” she exclaimed. “I’ll declare what I know. Ever since last night I have been telling myself I ought to do it. And I wish I had done it years ago!”

They looked at her in astonishment. What had come to quiet, sober Judith?

“My lady, you ask who was guilty—how it is to be known? I think I know who it was: I think it was Mr. Carlton. I could almost have proved it at the time.”

“Oh, Judith!” exclaimed Frederick Grey, reproachfully, while Jane dropped her head upon her hand, and Lucy gazed around, wondering if they had all gone scared. “And you have suffered my father to lie under the suspicion all these years!”

“I did not dare to speak,” was Judith’s answer. “Who was I, a poor humble servant, that I should bring an accusation against a gentleman—a gentleman like Mr. Carlton, thought well of in the place? Nobody would have listened to me, sir. Besides, in spite of my doubts, I could not believe he was guilty. I thought I must have made some strange mistake. And I feared that the tables might have been turned upon me, and I accused.”

Whatever she knew, and however long she might have suppressed it, there was no resource but to speak out fully now. She took up her position against the wall, partially hidden by the folds of the crimson curtains from what little light the fire gave. Lucy sat forward on the sofa as one dazed, Lady Jane’s face was still shaded by her hand, Frederick Grey stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece.

“I will not be Mr. Carlton’s accuser,” she began. “No, my lady, I will simply tell what I saw, and let others judge: the impression of his guilt on my mind may have been altogether some great mistake. I—I suppose I must begin at the beginning?”

“You must begin at the beginning and go on to the ending,” interposed Frederick Grey, authoritatively.

“And I’ll do it,” said Judith. “On the Sunday evening when that poor lady, Mrs. Crane, lay ill at the Widow Gould’s, I stepped in between eight and nine to wish her good-night. I had a bad face-ache; it was in pain all over; and I wanted to get to bed. The widow and Nurse Pepperfly were at supper in the kitchen; I saw them as I passed the kitchen window, and I ran up-stairs quietly, not disturbing them. I had no light, and I found the bedroom in darkness, but it was a fine moonlight night. I spoke to Mrs. Crane, but she was asleep, and did not answer, and I sat down by the bed, behind the curtain, and nursed my face for a minute or two. There came a ring at the door-bell, and I heard Mrs. Gould go to answer it, and attend the visitor up-stairs. I thought it might be Mr. Stephen Grey, but as they came into the adjoining sitting-room, I heard Mrs. Gould address him as Mr. Carlton. She went down again, and he came into the chamber, without the light. His coming in awoke Mrs. Crane, for I heard her start and stir, and he approached the bed. ‘Clarice,’ said he, 'Clarice, how could you be so imprudent, so foolish, as to come to South Wennock?’ ‘Oh, Lewis, I am so thankful you have returned!’ she answered, in a joyful, loving tone, which struck me with amazement. ‘Don’t be angry with me; we can keep our secret; but I could not bear the thought of being ill so far away. It is such a sweet little boy!’ ‘It was exceedingly wrong, Clarice,’ he went on, in a vexed tone; but I heard no more, for I stole out of the room. I heard Mr. Carlton say ‘Who’s there?’ but I sped down-stairs quietly in my list shoes, for I did not like them to think they had been overheard. As I went by the kitchen Mrs. Gould spoke to me, telling me, I remember, of an accident that had happened to Mr. Carlton that evening in coming from Great Wennock. I ran in home, and went to bed; but what with the pain in my face, and the words I had overheard next door, I could get no rest. It seemed a mystery to me and nothing less, that the young lady should be so intimate with Mr. Carlton, when she had asked about him and spoken of him as a stranger. It came into my mind to wonder whether he could be her husband, but I thought I must be downright foolish to suppose such a thing. However, it was no business of mine, and I knew I could keep my own counsel.”

“Go on, Judith,” said Lady Jane, for Judith had paused in thought.

“The next day I was anything but well, for I had had no sleep, and the pain in my face worried me. In the afternoon it began to swell, and in the evening, when Mr. Stephen Grey came to see Mrs. Crane, he told me the swelling would make it easier, but that I ought to tie it up. It was just seven when Mr. Stephen came in, and he expected Mr. Carlton; he waited till a quarter past, but Mr. Carlton did not come. He observed that Mrs. Crane was flushed and looked feverish, and he spoke quite sharp to me, and said there had been too much gossiping going on; I replied that the lady would talk, feeling well, and we could not prevent her. He said he should send in a composing draught: and he left. I returned home to tie my face up, but at first I was puzzled what to tie it with, as my boxes were not at Mrs. Jenkinson’s, and a pocket-handkerchief was hardly warm enough. I laid hold of an old piece of black plush, which had covered a bonnet I had worn all the winter, and had unpicked that day. It was not worth much, and I cut it into two, and doubled the pieces together, so that they formed two ears or lappets, fastened them to some black tape, and tied them up round my chin and the sides of my face. I had got on a black cap, being in mourning for my late mistress, and when I saw myself in the glass, I thought I did look a guy. What with my swollen face, which was glazed and puffy and white, and my black eyes, blacker they seemed than usual, and this flossy plush round my face, I was a sight! ‘Goodness me!’ exclaimed Margaret when I got down-stairs, ‘what have you been at with yourself? one would think you had got a pair of sudden-grown whiskers!’ and she wasn’t far wrong, as appearances went, for the little edge of the black quilled net border close to my face, and the rough plush behind it, made a very good imitation of whiskers. I was dead tired; I felt as if I could sleep; and after sitting awhile with Margaret, I said I’d go in and see if Mrs. Crane wanted anything more that I could do, and then come back and go to bed. Like the previous night, I saw that the nurse and Mrs. Gould were at supper in the kitchen—or rather, sitting at the supper-table, for supper seemed to be over. I went quietly up-stairs; and, knowing those two were down-stairs, I was surprised to hear a movement in the sitting-room. The first thought that struck me was, could Mrs. Crane have been so imprudent as to get out of bed after anything she might want, and I peeped in through the door, which was ajar. It was not Mrs. Crane; she was safe in bed, and the door between the two rooms was shut: it was Mr. Carlton. The light was on the mantelpiece, and he stood sideways at the cheffonier. He had a very, very small bottle in his hand, putting a cork into it, and then he put it into his waistcoat pocket. Next he took up a larger bottle, the size of those which had contained night-draughts for Mrs. Crane; it had been standing close to his hand on the cheffonier, and the cork by it; he hastily put the cork into it, and put it on the little shelf of the cheffonier, in a leaning position in the corner. He turned so quickly to leave the room, that I had not time to get out of the way; I did not know what he had been doing; I did not know it was anything wrong; but an instinct flashed across me that he would not like to find he had been watched; not that when I peeped in I had thought of doing anything mean or underhanded. I just drew up against the wall on the landing—the worst place I could have got to, for the moonlight came in upon my face—and he saw me. He could see nothing of me but my face; but he looked at me with a sort of frightened glare. My eyes, accustomed to the dark, could just discern his face: he had come from the lighted room. ‘Who and what are you?’ he whispered, but I thought my best plan was not to answer. I did not like to go forward and speak, so I kept still. He wheeled round, and went back to the sitting-room to bring out the light, which gave me the opportunity to slip inside the closet. He———"

“Oh, Judith!” interrupted Lady Jane, “then the man’s face on the stairs, about which so much has been said, was yours!”

“My own and no other’s, my lady. I was afraid to explain so, lest I should be questioned further, and I let it pass. Mr. Carlton brought out the light, but of course he could not see me, and, after he had looked all about, he went down-stairs. I heard him say something to Mrs. Gould about a man up-stairs with black whiskers, and I laughed to myself at the joke. But I did not care that anyone should know I had played it, though it had been unintentionally done, and when Mr. Carlton was gone and the women were shut up in the kitchen again, I stole down-stairs and took off the black plush ears in the yard, and put them in my pocket. I then knocked at the window, as if I had just come in, which startled them both, and Mrs. Gould called me a fool, and asked why I could not come into the house quiet and decent. I said I had come in to wish Mrs. Crane good night, and I went on up-stairs. Mrs. Crane laughed at my swollen face, saying it looked like a full moon; but I thought how much more she would have laughed had she seen it in the whiskers.”

Frederick Grey, who had stood with his eyes fixed on Judith, listening to every word, interrupted with a question.

“Did you not suspect, did it not occur to you to suspect, that the draught might have been tampered with?”

“Never, sir, for a moment. How was I likely to suspect such a thing? Was not Mr. Carlton a doctor in practice? I did not know that he had added anything to the draught, but if I had known it, I should only have supposed it to be some alteration he deemed necessary, as her attendant, to make.”

“Well, go on.”

“I left them, and went in-doors to bed, and the next morning Margaret told me that Mrs. Crane had died; died the previous night before ten o’clock, through taking the sleeping draught sent her by Mr. Stephen Grey. I don’t know how I felt, I could not tell it if I tried, or the dreadful doubt that came over me, whether or not Mr. Carlton had touched it. I heard of his having smelt poison in the draught when it first came, and I thought then of course the poison must have been in it, that when I saw him all alone with the bottle open, he might only be smelling at it again. Of one thing I felt certain—that Mr. Stephen Grey had not committed the error—and the state of mind, the uncertainty I was in until the inquest, no tongue could tell. I went to the inquest; I wanted to be at ease one way or the other, to have some relief from my perplexity. Young Frederick Grey—I beg your pardon, Mr. Frederick; I had got my thoughts cast back in the past—had whispered to me, that if anybody mixed poison with the draught, it was Mr. Carlton, not his father; and though I would not listen to him, his words made a deep impression on me. At the inquest I heard Mr. Carlton give his evidence, and from that moment I believed him to have been guilty. He swore before the coroner that he neither touched nor saw the draught after he gave it back to Mrs. Pepperfly; that he did not observe or know where she placed it. That I knew to be a falsehood. He did see it and touch it, and took care to replace it in the same position which the old woman had done. He testified that he had told Mrs. Crane not to take the draught, but I felt sure he had told her nothing of the sort. He swore also that he knew nothing of Mrs. Crane, who she was, or where she came from, and that I knew was false. An impulse came upon me to step out before the coroner and declare all I had seen and heard, but somehow I did not dare; I feared he might turn round, and set me at defiance by denying it, or even accuse me in his stead—and which of us would have been listened to?—an established gentleman, such as he; or me, an obscure servant? Part of a letter was found before the inquest, was over—and, my lady, it was a faithful copy, for I remember every word, of the first part of that letter found last night by Lady Laura. The coroner showed it to Mr. Carlton, and he fenced in his answers; he took the letter to the window, and stood there with his back to the room; the jury thought nothing, but I was sure it was only to collect himself, and gain time to cover his agitation. That letter, which Lady Laura found, was the one written by Mrs. Crane the night of her arrival, for I recognised the envelope again last night; the very letter which Mrs. Gould got me to carry to Mr. Carlton’s. As I came out of the inquest-room, I felt quite sure that he had murdered the lady.”

“You ought to have declared it, Judith.”

“My lady, I say that people would not have believed me; there was not a jot or tittle of evidence to corroborate my tale, there was no proof at all that he knew her. If declared to them now, they will not, perhaps, believe it.”

“It might have saved my sister Laura,” murmured Lady Jane.

“I did what little I could to keep her from Mr. Carlton. After I went to live with you, my lady, Pompey let slip a word that Miss Laura—as she was then—used to go in the garden in secret, at the dusk hour, to meet Mr. Carlton. I could not say anything to Mr. Carlton openly. But I thought I might frighten him, and warn Miss Laura. One night that they were there (it was the very night before they went away) I took off my white cap and put on a black, tied on those plush whiskers, which I have kept by me to this day, put a cap of Pompey’s on my head, and threw on my master’s old cloak. When I got to their meeting-place in the garden Miss Laura was alone; he had gone. It was nearly dark amidst the trees, where I stood; she could get but an imperfect view of me, and I disguised my voice to gruffness, and warned her, in the best way I knew how, against Mr. Carlton. Mr. Carlton saw me as I was stealing back again, and I raised the cap and he saw my face in the moonlight. He looked frightened to death; I suppose he knew it again for the same face he had seen on the landing that night, and I glided amidst the trees until he had gone. I have appeared to him in the same way once or twice since. You may remember, my lady, the night we returned home after my lord’s death. When we had left Lady Laura and gone on, you discovered that her dressing-case had been forgotten in the fly. I got out to take it to her, saying I would walk on home afterwards. I left it at the servants’ entrance, and in passing the dining-room window, coming away, I saw Mr. Carlton by the light of the fire. I pushed back my bonnet, snatched my black scarf off my neck, tied it down the sides of my face under the chin, and pressed my nose flat against the panes, which naturally made my face look wide. He saw it was the same figure which had so terrified him before, and I heard his cry of amazement as I rushed away, putting my bonnet on as I went.”

“How do you account for it, Judith—that your appearance should inspire him with this terror?” interrupted Frederick Grey.

“Sir, in this way. I think that when he first saw me, that night on the staircase, he must have feared it was somebody who had watched him mix the poison; but when no one could be traced or heard of, as having been in the house, then he doubted whether the appearance might not have been supernatural. I fancy there has been a conflict in his mind all along, sometimes giving way to the fancy that the figure was real, sometimes that it was not; and equally fearing both.”

Frederick Grey nodded his head, and Judith continued.

“The years wore on, but somehow I always felt a fear of Mr. Carlton. The feeling that was upon me was—that nobody was safe with him. I daresay it was a foolish feeling, but I could not help it. When Lady Lucy was taken ill with the fever, and Mr. Carlton kept her at his house in what might be called an under-hand manner, I grew quite alarmed, wondering whether he intended any ill to her, l and the night the lamp went out in the hall I whispered words to him that he did not like; I did it in my fears; and only a night or two ago I put on those plush whiskers again—for I determined to do it, and fetched them from Cedar Lodge—and made myself look altogether as much like I did that first night as I could, and stood in the dusk at the surgery window.”

“But it is a strange thing he never recognised you!” interrupted Frederick Grey.

“Not strange, sir. You cannot think how those plush sides and the black border disguise my face. It looks exactly like a man’s. Besides, Mr. Carlton has never seen it but in the most imperfect and uncertain light. I think he must have been struck with some faint resemblance, for Lady Laura told me laughingly the other day that there was a look in my face Mr. Carlton could not bear. And all this; while, my ladies, I never had the remotest suspicion that the lady who died in Palace Street was connected with the family I serve.”

Judith ceased. The tale was told. And she stood motionless within the shade of the crimson curtain in the silence that fell upon the room.

CHAPTER LIV.⁠THE LAWYER’S TELEGRAM.

Could there be any doubt of the guilt of Mr. Carlton? It was scarcely to be hoped for. Jane Chesney and Frederick Grey remained alone after the revelation of Judith, pondering the question in their own minds, scarcely liking to look in each others’ faces. Judith had departed from the room; Lucy was up-stairs, going to rest—if rest she might hope for. Poor Lucy thought she should never leave off shivering. She was younger than they were, more inexperienced in the ways of the world, and utterly unprepared for the disclosure. Never a doubt had crossed her of Mr. Carlton; she could scarcely believe that she must doubt him now; but she felt sick and faint.

Frederick Grey was the first to break the silence. “Do you remember, Lady Jane, a meeting between me and Mr. Carlton on the Rise, to which you were an accidental listener?” he inquired in a low tone. “Do you remember the purport of the words I said to him?”

She made a gesture in the affirmative. “I have often recalled it, and the accusation you made upon him.”

“It tallies with this.”

There was another long pause.

“He must have been her husband,” resumed Jane, scarcely above a whisper.

“There’s no doubt of it. Had she not been his wife, the necessity for putting her out of his way could not have arisen. We must suppose that it was done to enable him to—to—marry another.”

The words were spoken hesitatingly in his delicacy of feeling, remembering who that other wife was. Jane groaned aloud; she could not help herself.

"How can Judith have kept that dreadful secret within her all these years?” was her next exclamation.

He took his elbow from the mantelpiece, where he had been so long standing, came forward, and sat down opposite to Jane. “I have been thinking it over, Lady Jane, and I really do not see—looking back—that Judith could have done otherwise. I confess my first impression was a selfish one, a sort of resentful feeling that she should not have declared what she knew, and so cleared my father. Now that I reflect upon it dispassionately, I do not think she could have done it. As she observes, none might have believed her. Think what a strange charge it would have been to bring against a medical man!”

“But if she had disclosed the few words of conversation she heard pass between Mr. Carlton and Clarice at their first greeting? That surely would have established previous relations between them, and been a clue to the rest.”

He shook his head. “Yes, had Judith been believed. It would all have lain in that. I think the chances are she would not have been; that Mr. Carlton could have crushed her and triumphed.”

“What is to be done now?” wailed Jane.

“Nothing. You would not like to proceed against Mr. Carlton, to bring any public accusation against him. Circumstances bar it.”

“Bring a public accusation against Mr. Carlton!” repeated Jane, recoiling in horror from the thought. “And Laura his wife! No, no; I did not allude to that; I did not think of it. Clarice and Laura stand to me in the same degree, both alike my sisters, and the one dead must remain unavenged for the sake of the one living. I spoke of Laura herself. What is to be done about her? She cannot be suffered to remain with Mr. Carlton.”

Frederick Grey drew in his lips. It was too delicate a point for him, and he preferred not to discuss it. “I can’t meddle with that, Lady Jane. She has been with him ever since, all these years.”

True. Jane saw not her way clear. “How could Mr. Carlton be so foolish as to keep that letter by him?” she said aloud, alluding to the letter found by her sister, and which she had been describing to Frederick Grey.

“Ah, that’s inexplicable,” was his quick reply. “At least it would be, but that we every day see guilty men commit the most unaccountable mistakes: mistakes that the world can only marvel at. It may be, that some fatal blindness overtakes their minds and judgments, causing them to bring upon themselves their own doom. We have a Latin proverb, Lady Jane: 'Quod Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.'"

But the reader—if he possesses any memory—can explain the fact, in this instance, better than Frederick Grey. Whatever mistakes Mr. Carlton committed in that unhappy business as against his self-preservation, this was not one, for the retention of the letter was unintentional. Do you remember that he searched for the letter and could not find it, and came to the conclusion that he had burnt it with some others, notes and trifles of no consequence? He put one letter away in his iron safe, supposing it to be a note from his father that he wished to preserve; the real fact being that this was the letter he put up, the one from his father he burnt. All in a mistake. A chance mistake, people might have said; but how many of these trifling “chances” may be traced in the chain leading to the discovery of some great crime. It happened that Mr. Carlton never had occasion to look at his father’s (supposed) letter again, and there it lay forgotten, waiting to do its mission, until it was at length unearthed by the jealous hands of Mr. Carlton’s wife. Had he not tried that wife, had he been always loyal to her, the past crime might never have been brought home to him during life.

For it was that letter that led to the final discovery; it was the turning point that drove home the guilt where it was due; and yet it may be said that the chain leading to it was linked by accident, more than by design.

Lady Jane, painfully perplexed, had brought away the letter when she quitted Mr. Carlton’s house that morning. She had it in her pocket at Mrs. Smith’s, and after the explanation had taken place, Jane showed her the letter, in the hope that it might lead to some elucidation of who the husband was, to whom it was evidently written. Even then Jane had no suspicion of Mr. Carlton, or if she had, it was only in a secondary sort of degree. She believed that Clarice had married Mr. Crane, and that however Mr. Carlton might have been mixed up in the affair, it had been only as a friend and associate of Mr. Crane’s. Jane would have shown the letter to Frederick Grey, but it was not just now in her possession. She described it and he caught the clue at once.

“Ah, yes, it was to her husband she wrote it; Mr. Carlton. But the playful style in which, as you describe, it is written would mislead any one who has not the key. They would never suppose that the husband spoken of, and the medical man she says she must ask to come to see her, were one and the same. I should like my father to see that letter, Lady Jane.”

“Oh yes, he shall see it. You—you are sure Sir Stephen would not use it against him?” she added quickly.

“Against Mr. Carlton? Oh no. I don’t think he would do it in any case, certainly not in this. My father is the kindest man breathing. Lucy will be his daughter-in-law; and Mr. Carlton is her sister’s husband. Sir Stephen must lie under suspicion still, for Lucy’s sake— perhaps I ought rather to say for Lady Laura’s sake. It has not hurt him, Lady Jane, he had out-lived the odium; witness how he was received the other day at South Wennock.”

But if Frederick Grey and Lady Jane agreed that the affair altogether, including the letter, must be suppressed, there was another individual who took, unfortunately, just the opposite view of it. That was Mrs. Smith. And at this very moment, while they were so speaking, she was making the first step to publish it.

Chance links, fitting one into the other! chance events, words, trifles in the chain of discovery! From the hour in which Mrs. Smith had found Mr. Carlton searching in her drawers, she had had a sort of suspicion of him, not that he was the husband of Mrs. Crane, but that he held some secret connected with that past time. The little boy, Lewis, had told her he heard Mr. Carlton looking into drawers up-stairs as well as down, and the woman wondered excessively. Like most secretive persons she dwelt much upon it in her own mind; and when the time came—as it did come—that a little fresh evidence bearing on the past met her ears, a half suspicion crept into her mind of the worst, as connected with Mr. Carlton.

You may remember Mrs. Smith’s afternoon of levee. You may remember that Judith as she left the cottage met Mr. Carlton driving up to it; and you may also remember a casual remark to the effect that Mr. Carlton returned home from that visit a little put out with some trifles that had occurred there. Very greatly to his annoyance, the Widow Gould—whom he had not the honour of meeting frequently in private society—brought up the subject of Mrs. Crane. Her tongue was long enough for two, and she had not the least tact. She alluded openly to the fact of Mrs. Smith being the person who took away the child, and persisted in alluding to the past in a manner not at all agreeable to the surgeon. Mrs. Pepperfly (also a visitor) thought no harm in chiming in, now that it was spoken of openly, and the two kept up a duet as long as they had the chance, which was as long as Mr. Carlton was attending to the child, then on Mrs. Smith’s lap in the kitchen. The final remark of Mrs. Gould capped it all.

“I could have declared that you was known to her, Mr. Carlton, sir, the very day she first come to South Wennock. It were in this way: Mrs. Crane———”

The surgeon turned round, a sort of glare in his eyes. If looks could enforce silence, the Widow Gould had been silenced then. But she did not understand; she had no tact.

“Mrs. Crane asks who were the doctors here, and I told her the Mr. Greys and Mr. Carlton. Then she writes a note to Mr. Carlton, telling me to send it—as have been known to South Wennock many a day, for I told it out at the inquest. But when I had took the note down-stairs, I saw it had got your Chrissen name outside it, sir, Lewis. Many a time have I wondered how she got at the name. Judy said Mrs. Fitch might have told it, but Mrs. Fitch said she didn’t, and———”

“Is it well to have this gossip in the room when your child’s so ill?” sternly asked the surgeon of Mrs. Smith. “It is bad for him; it must not be. You might choose a better time, I think, to receive visitors.”

The words, the tone, took Mrs. Gould by surprise. She sat a moment with her mouth open, and then seemed to shrink into nothing, too completely checked to offer even a whisper of apology. Mr. Carlton gave a short direction in regard to the child, strode out to his carriage, and was driven away.

“How did I offend him?” breathed the Widow Gould then, questioning the other two with her eyes.

“I wish you’d go on with what you were saying about the Christian name,” returned Mrs. Smith. “I never heard this before.”

“It’s not much to go on with. When I saw the name, Lewis Carlton, Esq., on the letter, I wondered how she knew it was Lewis, and I’ve wondered since. Judy said his name must have been in the newspaper I had took up to her to read while she had her tea, but I looked in it after she was dead, and I couldn’t see it. I saw his name, ‘Mr. Carlton,’ but I couldn’t see ‘Lewis'"

"Is Mr. Carlton’s name Lewis?”

Mrs. Gould opened her eyes at the question. “I thought all South Wennock knew that.”

Perhaps all South Wennock did know it; nevertheless Mrs. Smith did not. It was a singular fact that Mrs. Smith until that hour had remained ignorant of Mr. Carlton’s Christian name. She might possibly have heard it before, but if so it had escaped her notice. The plate on his door was no longer “Mr. Lewis Carlton;” it had been changed to “Mr. Carlton” upon his father’s death.

This little incident, the revelation of the name and Mr. Carlton’s uncalled for anger, had made a great impression on Mrs. Smith. She had always surmised that Lewis must have been the Christian name of Mrs. Crane’s husband, and her doubts of Mr. Carlton were certainly aroused. She had said to Lady Jane this present morning that she was trying to “put two and two together,” and could not do it. In plain English, had she but spoken out, she would have said she was suspecting Mr. Carlton, but wanted the clue to unite facts with doubts. After she had made this remark, Lady Jane showed her the letter, and she thought Mrs. Smith would never have ﬁnished looking at it, which she did in silence, making no comment.

“Would you mind leaving this note with me for an hour or two, my lady?” she then asked. “I should like to think it over when I am alone.”

Lady Jane saw no reason why she should not leave the note: she still thought it had been written to Mr. Crane; and after her departure from the cottage, Mrs. Smith sat down, note in hand, and deliberated; not upon whether Mr. Carlton was guilty or not; the letter, which she saw correctly, had completely settled that doubt in her own mind: but upon what her course should be to work it home to him, to bring him to his punishment. Never for a moment had Mrs. Smith wavered in her intention to bring Clarice Beauchamp’s destroyer to justice if she succeeded in discovering him, and that she knew she had done now. Lady Jane Chesney in her own home felt not more sure of Mr. Carlton’s guilt, now that she had heard Judith’s story, than did Mrs. Smith in her home at Tupper’s cottage, not having heard it.

“What had I best do?” she communed with herself. “See a magistrate at once, and tell my story; or see a lawyer, and get him to act? I have not been much in the way of these things, thank Heaven, and I hardly know the right manner to set about it. But I’ll do one of the two this blessed night.”

When the mind is in this excited, determined frame, action is almost imperative, and Mrs. Smith put on her bonnet to go out. But she found her progress frustrated. The young woman-servant, who had been away all the afternoon, and only came back to the cottage when Lady Jane was leaving it, positively declined to be left alone in the house with the little dead boy.

“You great simpleton!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith in her indignation. “You are old enough to know better. What do you suppose that dead baby would do to you?”

The girl could not say what; had no very defined idea what; but she wholly refused to try. If Mrs. Smith went out, she’d go out too; she’d not dare to stop.

The difficulty was solved by an arrival, that of Mrs. Pepperfly. Never had the old woman been so welcome to Mrs. Smith, and she contented to stay the evening. In point of fact, it was just the intention she had come with.

“Who are the magistrates here?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“Magistrates?” repeated Mrs. Pepperfly, looking astonished.

“Are there any living about here? I wanted to see one.”

Mrs. Pepperfly could not get over the surprise. Magistrates and their places of domicile were not much in her line of knowledge, and she really could give no information. “If it’s to register the boy’s death, it ain’t a magistrate you must go to,” she said. “And you’ll want a certificate from Mr. Carlton. Them register men won’t do nothing without one.”

“It’s not to register the death, that’s done; it’s for something else—a little private matter of my own. Perhaps you can recommend me to a clever lawyer?—he might do for me better than a magistrate.”

“The cleverest lawyer I know is Mr. Drone, two doors from the Red Lion,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly. “He haven’t got his equal in the place. Let anybody in a bit o’ trouble go to him, and he’s safe to pull ’em through it. He’s what they call the justices’ clerk.”

Accepting the recommendation, Mrs. Smith set forth on her night walk. She passed down the Rise, and through the town as far as the Red Lion. Just beyond, on the door of a private house, she read “Mr. Drone, Solicitor;” she rang at the bell, and asked to see him.

Mr. Drone was anything but an exempliﬁcation of his name; he was a little man, particularly brisk and active. He came to Mrs. Smith with a red face; he had been eating his dinner, and had since been toasting himself over the fire, for it was a cold night.

The fire in the inner office, a small square room, where Mrs. Smith had been shown, was nearly out, but the lawyer cracked it up, and put on some more coal. They sat down, the table covered with the lawyer’s papers between them, and Mrs. Smith told her tale from beginning to end, the little lawyer, in his eagerness, interrupting her with perpetual questions.

The story astonished him beyond expression. Again and again he asked whether there could be no mistake. Mr. Carlton, who stood so well in the good graces of his fellow townsmen, the destroyer of that poor Mrs. Crane! and Mrs. Crane was his wife, and the sister of the Ladies Chesney? Mr. Drone thought he had never heard so improbable a tale—off the stage.

Mrs. Smith, calm, patient, persistent, went over it again. She spoke of Lady Jane’s visit to her that afternoon, she handed him the letter her ladyship had left with her. Mr. Drone began to think there must be something in the story, and he set himself to recall as many particulars as he could of Mrs. Crane’s death; he had been fully cognisant of them at the time, as clerk to the magistrates.

“Does Lady Jane Chesney suspect Mr. Carlton?” he asked.

“Not she,” replied Mrs. Smith.

“She has no idea it was Mr. Carlton that was Mrs. Crane’s husband. She suspects it was a Mr. Crane who married her, but she does think Mr. Carlton knew of the marriage, for he was a friend of Mr. Crane’s. I’m not sure but she fears Mr. Carlton knew more about the death than he’d like to say; only, however, as Mr. Crane’s friend.”

“But I can’t see why Mr. Carlton should have destroyed this poor young lady?—allowing that he did do so, as you suspect,” urged Mr. Drone.

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Smith. “Unless any of his plans were put out by her coming down, and he was afraid it would be found out that she was his wife.”

The lawyer pulled at his whiskers, his habit when in thought. “You see there’s no certainty that she was his wife—that she was married at all, in fact.”

“Then there is, for I’d stake my life upon it,” angrily returned Mrs. Smith. “I’m as certain she was married as that I was married myself. You are as bad as my husband, sir; he’d used to say as much.”

“The chief thing would be to get a proof of it,” composedly returned the lawyer. “It would supply the motive, you see. I suppose you never obtained the slightest clue as to where the ceremony took place?”

“N—o,” returned Mrs. Smith, hesitating at the word. “I remember once, the winter that she was at my house at Islington, we were talking about churches and marriages and such things, and she said, in a laughing sort of way, that old St. Pancras Church was as good a one to be married in as any. It did not strike me at the time that she meant anything in saying it; but it’s just possible, sir, she was married there.”

Mr. Drone’s brisk eyes twinkled, and he made a memorandum in his pocket-book. He made other memorandums; he asked about five hundred questions more than he had already asked. And when Mrs. Smith departed, he stood at the door to watch her away, and then jumped into the omnibus just starting for Great Wennock station, and sent the following telegram to London:

“Henry Drone, South Wennock, to John Friar, Bedford Row.

“Search old St. Pancras register for 1847. Certificate of marriage wanted: Lewis Carlton to Clarice Beauchamp, or perhaps Clarice Chesney. Lose no time; bribe clerk if necessary, and send special messenger down at once with it, if obtained;”

(To be continued.)

GOETHE AND FREDERIKA BRION;
A PILGRIMAGE TO SESENHEIM.

It was in the spring of 1770 that young Wolfgang Goethe arrived in Strasburg to study Jurisprudence in the then famous University^[1] of Strasburg. During the first six months of his student life in Strasburg he lived merrily, joining heartily in the pleasure parties of his Strasburg friends. On the twenty-eighth of August of the above-named year young Goethe completed his twenty-first year. Nature had endowed him with uncommon beauty of face and figure, a warm temperament, and a lively imagination. He felt within him a fund of passion and sentiment which yearned for a vent. The surrounding landscape appeared to him a picture which knit itself to his inmost being. There throbbed within him a craving for the pleasurable sensations which woman’s love can give. He had already had some experience in love affairs. When a student at Leipzig he had won the heart of Anna Katherine Schönkopf. He had purposely tormented her, and she, after a patient endurance of his cruel sport, had broken loose from him, had conceived a strong dislike Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/374 Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/375 Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/376 dictated walking up and down the room with his hands behind him, but at this episode he often stopped in his walk and paused in his dictation; then after a long silence followed by a deep sigh he continued the narrative in a lower tone.

Goethe and Frederika were to see each other once more. It is in the autumn of 1779. Goethe has become a privy counsellor and is travelling with his patron the Grand Duke of Weimar to Switzerland. Ho is now, more over, the world-famous author of "Gotz von Berlichingen" and the "Sorrows of Werther." Surrounded by this double halo of literary glory and social eminence, he was emboldened to "look up" Frederika and Lili. His account of his visit to these two ladies is preserved in a letter—to the Frau von Stein! We will give his report of his interview with the Brions.

"On the twenty-fifth (September), in the evening, I rode somewhat in an oblique direction to Sesenheim while the others continued their journey, and found there a family group as I had left them eight years previously, and was greeted in a most kind and friendly manner. As I am now as pure and still as the zephyr, the atmosphere of good and quiet people is highly welcome to me. The second daughter of the house had loved me more exquisitely than I deserved, and more than others to whom I have given much passion and fidelity. [This is an allusion to his correspondent!] I was obliged to leave her at a moment when it almost cost her her life. She passed

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The old Parsonage at Sesonheim.

lightly over this to tell me of what remained to her of an illness of that time, conducted herself in the most charming manner, with such hearty friendship from the first moment when I unexpectedly came face to face with her on the threshold, that I was quite at my ease. I must also say of her that she did not make the slightest attempt to awaken in my soul the old sensation. She led me into both bowers and I was compelled to sit there, and it gave me pleasure. We had the most beautiful full moon. I enquired after everybody. A neighbour, who had formerly helped us carpenter, was called in and testified that he had asked after me only a week previously. The barber was also invited and came. I found old songs which I had composed, a carriage which I had painted. We recalled many tricks of that good time, and I found their souvenirs of me as lively as if I had only been away six months. The old people were cordial, they thought I had grown younger. I stayed the night there and took leave the next morning at sunrise, saluted by friendly looks, so that I can now once more think with satisfaction on this little comer of the world and live internally in peace with the spirits of these reconciled ones."

A part of the conversation with Frederika related to poor Lenz. Goethe writes in the "Biographische Einzelnheiten" as follows:—

"Lenz had introduced himself to the family after my departure and tried to learn concerning me as much as he could, until she (Frederika) Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/378 Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/379

↑ The university fell to the ground during the troubles of the French Revolution. It is now represented by the Protestant Seminary.

LORD OAKBURN'S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."

CHAPTER LV.⁠AN INTERRUPTED LUNCHEON.

Mrs. Smith of Tupper's cottage and Mr. Henry Drone, solicitor, and clerk to the magistrates at South Wennock, were holding a hot argument, almost a fight. With the dawn of the winter's morning, Mrs. Smith had presented herself at that gentleman's office, demanding, and obstinately persisting in the demand, that the case should be laid before the magistrates as soon as they met, and a warrant asked for to apprehend Mr. Carlton. Mr. Drone dissented: he saw no reason for being so precipitate.

"Look here," said he, "if you let this affair get wind before it's ripe, you may defeat your own ends. I am not sure that the magistrates would grant a warrant as the case stands; it's a ticklish thing, mind you, to arrest a gentleman of hitherto good repute; once the case is taken before the court, it will be blazoned from one end of South Wennock to the other, and Mr. Carlton—if he felt so inclined—might find escape facile.

"That's just what I want to prevent," retorted Mrs. Smith. "If the warrant is granted at once, he can't escape."

"But we cannot make sure that they will grant the warrant. I don't know that I would myself if I were one of the bench. I declare I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of the story, it is so strange a one; doubt after doubt of it arose in my mind; and I came to the conclusion, times and again, that there must be some great mistake; that it could not be true."

"And you don't mean to go on with it!" resentfully spoke Mrs. Smith. "I'd not have told you all I have, if I had thought that."

"Softly, ma'am," returned the lawyer, "I have said nothing of the sort. I do mean to go on with it. That is, I'll lay the case before their worships, and they can do as they please in it. What I urge is, don't strike before the iron's hot. When the subject of the accusation is a man like Mr. Carlton, enjoying the confidence of the town, and the husband of a peer's daughter, the bench won't grant a warrant lightly; they must have something beyond mere suspicion."

"And is there nothing here beyond mere suspicion?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"As you put it—yes. And perhaps the magistrates may consider so. But I say we should be at a great deal more certainty if we could get the copy of the marriage certificate down. I tell you I have telegraphed for it: that is, I have telegraphed for the register at old St. Pancras Church to be searched. If it's found, that copy will be down here in the course of the morning."

"And if it's not found, sir?" rejoined Mrs. Smith in a blaze of anger. "It's quite a wild-goose sort of chase to search for it at all, in my opinion. She might just as well have been married at any other church in London as at that. The remark she made might have meant nothing. If it had meant anything, I should have seen and suspected it at the time."

"I think it likely that it did mean something. We lawyers, ma'am, are apt to suspect these remarks; at any rate, we sometimes think it worth while to discover if, may be, they have a meaning or not."

"Then I'm thankful that I am not a lawyer, was the retort.

Mr. Drone shrugged his shoulders, as taking the words literally. "It's as pleasant a life as any, for what I see. All callings have their annoyances and drawbacks. But what I wished to point out to you was this; that if that certificate comes down and we can produce it to the magistrates, they will have no loop-hole of excuse; they must grant the warrant of apprehension. And as I expect the certificate (if it is in existence) will be down this morning, the application had better wait an hour or two."

"Then, sir, I tell you that I'll not wait the hour or two. No, nor a minute. As soon as the court doors are open and the magistrates on the bench, the application shall be made. And if you don't like to appear and make it, I'll do it myself in person."

It was somewhat strange that Mrs. Smith, with her phlegmatic temperament, should put herself into this fever of resolute haste. Did she fear that Mr. Carlton would suspect, and slip away? It may be that she was vexed with herself for not having suspected him before, all the months that he had been visiting, almost daily, at her house. One thing was certain: so entirely was she convinced the past guilt was Mr. Carlton's alone, and so incensed was her feeling against him in consequence, that if she could have genteelly appended the surgeon with one of her silk pocket-handkerchiefs to any convenient beam, she had hastened to do it, and not waited for the delay and intricacies of the law.

Mr. Drone could make nothing of her. Once set upon a thing, perhaps no woman living was more persistently obstinate in having her own way than Mrs. Smith—and that’s saying a great deal, you know. The lawyer was not the first man who has had to yield, against his better judgment, to a woman’s will; and at eleven o’clock, for the magistrates met late that day, he accompanied her to the court, and requested a private hearing. Their worships granted it, and proceeded to business with closed doors.

Meanwhile Mr. Carlton was going his morning rounds, and chatting amicably with his patients, in complete ignorance of the web that others were tightening round him, utterly unconscious that even then a plot built up by his enemies had begun its operation. Oh, if some pitying spirit would but warn us of our peril, in these hours of danger! Could not one of those, that are said to rap at our tables, come and rap its warning message at our brains? They’d do some good then.

No friendly spirit rapped at Mr. Carlton’s. He paid his visits, driving from one house to another, and returned home rather earlier than usual. The sickness was abating in South Wennock as quickly as it had come on, and the medical men were, comparatively speaking, at leisure again. Mr. Carlton went into the surgery, looked in the visiting book, dotted down a few orders for medicines for Mr. Jefferson to make up when he came in, and at one o’clock went into the dining-room.

Lady Laura was there. It was the first day she had come down-stairs; that is, come regularly to her meals. She was just about to sit down to luncheon, and so very unusual a thing was it for her husband to come in to partake of that meal, that she looked at him in surprise.

“Ah, Laura! Down-stairs to luncheon again! I am glad of it, my dear.”

He spoke in a cheery, hearty, loving tone; very, very rarely did he speak in any other to his wife. The time was to come when Laura would remember those tones with remorse, and think how she had requited them.

“You are home early to-day,”' observed Laura, quitting the chair she had been about to take, and drawing nearer the fire while she talked.

“Earlier than I have been lately. Laura, I shall advertise the practice at once now.”

“Advertise the practice!”

“I am beginning to dislike this incessant work. And if I don’t make an effort some time we shall never get away. How early you went to bed last night!” continued Mr. Carlton, passing to a different topic.

“I was tired,” said Laura, evasively. In point of fact, she had not been tired the previous evening, but angry at Jane’s unexplained departure, and had gone to rest early.

“You are letting your luncheon get cold.”

Laura gave a side glance at the table and slightly tossed her head. She threw her eyes full at her husband as he stood opposite to her in the cross light of the front and side windows.

“So that child’s dead, I hear.”

“What child!” repeated Mr. Carlton, really not for the moment comprehending, for he was thinking of other things.

“As if you did not know! The child at Tupper’s cottage.”

“Oh yes; he died yesterday morning, poor little sufferer. The mother takes on dreadfully,” he added, after a pause.

“Will you affirm to me, now that he is lying dead, that the child was nothing to you? You know what I mean.”

“No,” returned Mr. Carlton with provoking coolness. “I answered you once on the point, and I thought you were satisfied. If you have been calling up the old fancies again, Laura, you must abide by it; I shall not allow them to trouble me.”

Thought she was satisfied! Little did Mr. Carlton suspect how far from “satisfied” she had been! What a turmoil of jealousy her mind had become since! Laura resumed.

“The mother ‘takes on,’ does she!”

‘She did yesterday morning. I was up there half-an-hour after the child’s death, and I think I never saw grief so passionate as hers was for the moment. I was astonished. But when these cold hard natures yield to emotion, it’s apt to be strong. I daresay it spent itself long before the day was over.”

“I suppose you soothed it for her.”

Mr. Carlton looked quickly at his wife: was she bringing up this absurdity again? “Laura?”

“Well?”

“What do you mean?”

Lady Laura’s pouting lips and flushed cheeks answered for her, and Mr. Carlton had no need to ask a second time. But the absurdity of the thing, as connected with Mrs. Smith, struck so ludicrously upon Mr. Carlton, that his whole face relaxed into an amused smile.

“Oh Laura! That hard old woman!”

Had he protested for an hour, it could not have opened her eyes to the real absurdity of her doubts more than did those simple words. She looked shyly up at him, her lip quivering. Mr. Carlton laid his hand fondly on her shoulder.

“Need I affirm it to you again, Laura?—that I never had any acquaintance with the woman, on my sacred word of honour. You cannot surely think it necessary that I should repeat it. What delusion can you have been giving way to?”

In truth Laura hardly knew. Except that it was one that had blinded her judgment and made her miserable. A conviction flashed into her mind that she had been altogether mistaken; and the chief sensation struggling through all the rest was one of shame, mingled with repentance, for having in this instance unjustly wronged him; for having betrayed her jealousy to the world, comprising Lady Jane and Judith; for having picked the lock of Mr. Carlton’s hiding-places.

She raised her hand, took his from her shoulder, and left her own within it, the tears trembling on her eyelashes. Mr. Carlton bent his face to hers.

“We will soon begin a new life elsewhere, Laura,” he whispered. “It shall not be my fault if clouds come between us then.”

Laura wiped her eyes and turned to the luncheon table. Two or three tempting little dishes were laid there. Lady Laura liked good living just as much as the earl had liked it. It was her pleasure not to be waited upon at luncheon, and she seized hold of two of the plates, now nearly cold, and held them to the fire. Mr. Carlton took them from her to hold them himself.

“You’ll take a bit with me to-day, Lewis?”

“It must be very little,” said he, sitting down. “I always make a good breakfast. What’s this? Stewed oysters. I’ll try one or two of these. Shall I give you some?”

Laura chose to take some. He had just helped her, and was about to put some on his own plate, when the door opened and Jonathan’s head came in. It was rather an unusual fashion for a footman to enter a room, and they both gazed at him. The man looked pale; as one scared.

“What is it, Jonathan?” asked his master.

“You are wanted, if you please, sir.”

“In the surgery? I’ll come in a minute.”

“No, sir; now please,” stammered Jonathan, looking more scared with every passing moment.

Mr. Carlton, struck with the servant’s manner, rose hastily. The thought which crossed him was, that some accident had been brought to the house. In the hall stood two policemen. Jonathan shut the dining-room door after his master.

Another minute and it was opened again. Lady Laura, curious to know what the wonder was, came to see. The matter-of-fact officers, with their impassive faces, had closed round Mr. Carlton, one of them showing what looked like a piece of paper, as he spoke in an under tone; and the servant Jonathan stood apart, with open mouth and staring eyes. The moment Mr. Carlton perceived Lady Laura, he drew the policemen into the opposite room and closed the door.

“Jonathan, what’s all that?”

“Goodness knows, my lady,” replied Jonathan, swallowing down his breath with a gulp.

“What do those policemen want? You are looking frightened. What did they say? What did you hear?”

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me, please,” hesitated the man, in his simple good-nature. “It would not do you good to hear it, my lady.”

“How dare you refuse, Jonathan?” she imperiously returned. “Tell me instantly.”

“Oh, my lady—I heard something about murder, and taking my master before the magistrates for examination.”

She did not believe it; she quite laughed at Jonathan. But at that moment they came out again, and Mr. Carlton advanced to her. There was that in his aspect, which caused his wife to cower against the door-post. Or was it that her own vague fears were frightening her?

“Laura, I am going out on business to the town hall. I shan’t be longer than I can help.”

Her faint cry resounded through the hall. It seemed such a confirmation of the words spoken by the servant.

“Oh, Lewis, what is it? Jonathan says it is something about murder!”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” heo peevishly exclaimed. “It is some absurd mistake, which I shall soon set right. Don’t be foolish; I shall be home to dinner.”

There was no time for more. It seemed but the work of a moment. Mr. Carlton went out and walked up the street, one of the policemen by his side, the other strolling behind.

Utterly bewildered, as much with the suddenness of the affair as anything, Lady Laura gazed around her for some explanation; but all she met was the startled face of Jonathan, not a whit less astounded than that of his mistress. Passionate and impetuous, she dashed out to the front gate, looking after them, as if that would afford her some explanation. It was just what the sailor-earl would have done.

And there Lady Laura became aware of the fact that a genteel mob were attending on the steps of Mr. Carlton and his escorters. The fact was, some version of the affair had got wind in the town, and people were up in arms. More and more astonished, Lady Laura perhaps would have run after them, but she caught sight of Mrs. Pepperfly, who had come into contact with the running mob at the gate, and was not improved in temper thereby. Lady Laura knew the nurse by sight, had occasionally spoken to her, and she seized hold of her arm.

“Tell me what the matter is!” she panted. "You know!”

Mrs. Pepperfly’s first movement was to go as quickly as she could inside the house and pull Lady Laura with her. The old woman shut the dining-room door upon them, leaving poor Jonathan alone in the hall.

“If you don’t tell me at once, I shall die,” came the passionate appeal. “What is it?”

“It’s one of them there ways of Providence we hears on when we has time to go to church,” was Mrs. Pepperfly’s lucid answer. “To think that we should have lived all these years and never suspected Mr. Carlton!—and him attending of the child every day at Tupper’s cottage! But murder will out. Yours is hard lines, my poor lady!”

Lady Laura, in her dreadful suspense, her vehement impatience, nearly shook her. Thought is very quick—and it was only that morning she had heard of the child’s death.

“Has he been murdered?—That child at Tupper’s cottage?”

“He!” responded Mrs. Pepperfly. “Bless your ladyship’s dear heart, he went off natural, like a lamb, with his bad knee. It’s his unfortunate mother.”

“Is she dead?” gasped Lady Laura, still more apprehensive ideas arising to her. “She, the woman?”

“Not her,” cried Mrs. Pepperfly, jerking her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the locality of Tupper’s cottage. “She warn’t his mother at all, as it turns out. It were that———"

“Not his mother!” interrupted Lady Laura; and all the absurdity of her past jealousy seemed to rise up before her in a moment, as it had done just before.

“No more nor me,” said Mrs. Pepperfly. “It were that other unfortunate, what I nursed my own self, my lady; she as was cut off by the prussic acid in Palace Street, and they do say it were Mr. Carlton that dropped it in. And her name was—oh dear, but it’s hard lines for all your ladyships!”

“Her name was what?” asked Laura, with blanched lips.

“Not Mrs. Crane at all, my lady, but Clarice Chesney. That is, Mrs. Carlton; for they say she was his wife.”

Lady Laura sank into a chair, terror-stricken, powerless. Mrs. Pepperfly, who was troubled with no superfluous sensitiveness on her own score and did not suspect that other people were, and who could talk enough for ten if once set going, continued:

“Folks tells of the finger of Fate, and such like incomprehension, but if Fate’s finger haven’t been in this here pie, it never were in one yet. It have all come to light through a letter, my lady; a letter of Mr. Carlton’s, which they say your ladyship found and got out of a place where it had laid for years, and gave it to my Lady Jane Chesney. And that letter have brought it home to him, and the justices had got it right afore their noses when they give the warrant to take him up.”

She sat back in her chair, her eyes dilating, her countenance one living horror. She! That letter! Had her underhand work, her dishonourable treachery against her husband, brought this to pass? Oh, miserable Laura Carlton! Surely the reminiscence would henceforth haunt her for ever!

“Now, poor dear lady, don’t take on so! We all have to bear, some in our minds, and some in our bodies; and some in our husbands, and some in having none. There ain’t nothing more soothing than a glass of gin-and-water hot,” added the sympathising Mrs. Pepperfly, “which can be had in a moment, where the kitchen’s got a biler in it, always on the bile.”

She turned about her rotund person to see if she could discover any signs of the chief ingredient for compounding that restoring cordial. The interrupted luncheon on the table, cold though it was now, looked tempting, as did the long green bottle, which Mrs. Pepperfly supposed contained some foreign sort of wine, and there was a sideboard with suggestive-looking cupboards in it. The old woman talked on, but Laura seemed dead to hearing, lying back with the same glassy stare, and the look of horror on her white face.

“If your ladyship wouldn’t object to my ringing of the bell, and asking for a spoonful of biling water from the servants, I’d soon bring the colour back into your cheeks. What a world this might be, my dear lady, if our minds never met with no upsets! I have been upset too with the news, I have, this morning, and ain’t recovered yet. And there was that pest of a crowd I got into outside, a poking in of my ribs and a treading of my shins! A quarter of a tumbler of gin-and-water hot———"

“Come home with me, Laura,” interrupted a soft voice, subdued in its grief, “come home with me. Oh, child, this is hard for us all; cruelly hard for you. Let me take you, Laura; my home shall henceforth be yours. Our father seemed to foresee storms for you when he was dying, and left you to me, he said, should they ever come.”

Laura rose up, her eye flashing, her face hot with passion, and stood defiantly before Lady Jane.

“Did you denounce him? Did you treacherously show up the letter you took away with you? It was well done, Lady Jane!”

Jane bent her sorrowful face, so calm and good in its pity, upon the raging one. “It is not I who have done it, Laura. Denounce your husband? No, I would have carried the secret with me to the grave, for your sake.”

Laura sank down again in the revulsion of feeling, and burst into a flood of tears most distressing to witness. She laid her head on her sister’s bosom, and openly avowed the part she had enacted, regarding the safe and the skeleton key. Remorse was taking possession of her. And Mrs. Pepperfly, subdued to meekness in her astonishment, dropped a silent curtsey and retired, cruelly grieving over the hot gin-and-water which might have been so near.

CHAPTER LVI.⁠THE EXAMINATION.

Somewhere about the same hour that the arrest of Mr. Carlton took place, or possibly a trifle later, Lady Grey was sitting at work in her house in Savile Row, when a telegraphic despatch was brought in from Great Wennock. She did not open it; it was addressed to Sir Stephen; but she believed she knew what the contents must be, and smiled to herself over her sewing.

“Another excuse for a day or two more with Lucy,” she said to her husband when he came in, as she handed him the message.

“Then I shall send Mr. Fred a peremptory mandate,” returned Sir Stephen, not feeling pleased. “He ought to have been up a week ago. Halloa! what’s this?”

“Great Wennock Station, one o’clock, p.m. Frederick Grey to Sir Stephen Grey, M.D.

“The mystery of the prussic acid is on the point of discovery. Come off at once, if possible. I have heard you say you should like to be present at the clearing. Tell my mother I was right.”

Sir Stephen read it twice over and then aloud to his wife. “What a strange thing!” he exclaimed, in the surprise of the moment. “And ‘tell my mother I was right!’ What on earth does he mean, Mary?”

Lady Grey made no satisfactory answer. She had never spoken of her son’s rash and, as she deemed, unjustifiable suspicion of Mr. Carlton, and she would not speak of it now.

“Shall you go, Stephen?”

“This very moment. There’s nothing to prevent me to-day, and I’d go to the end of the world to be proved blameless in the eyes of South Wennock. I hope I shall just catch a train!”

In point of fact Frederick Grey had been made aware a trifle earlier than the general public, of what was going on before the magistrates, and he had mounted a fleet horse and sent off the telegram to his father. He would not have aided to bring the guilt home to Mr. Carlton; nay, he would have suppressed it had it lain in his power; but if it was to be done, it was well that his father should be present at his clearing.

He rode more leisurely back again; but not very leisurely either, for South Wennock was in excitement today. And he found the examination of Mr. Carlton already begun, every body connected with it deep in the proceedings.

He might have walked on the people’s heads in the vicinity of the court; not a tenth portion could get into the small place designated by the grand name of town hall. Never had South Wennock been in the like commotion; that which had occurred at those past proceedings, connected with the death of Mrs. Crane, was as nothing to this.

But the crowd recognised his right to a place, as the son of the once accused man, Stephen Grey; the justices did the same; and Frederick was politely offered (providing he could got to the spot) about an inch and a half of room on the bench. His Uncle John occupied a seat on it; people made much of the Greys that day.

Frederick found the examination tolerably advanced. Mrs. Smith had given her evidence in public, declaring all she knew and all she suspected, for, allow me to tell you, you who are not aware of the fact, that a bench of country justices consults its own curiosity as to what it shall and shall not hear, and sometimes has a very indefinite notion indeed of whether such and such evidence can be legally tendered in law. The justices’ own opinion stands for law in many places. Judith Ford was under examination when Frederick entered, and the prisoner, as we are compelled to call Mr. Carlton, perpetually interrupted it, and got into hot squabbles with his defender in consequence. This gentleman was a Mr. Billiter, universally called Lawyer Billiter by South Wennock. He had been sent for in great haste to watch the case for Mr. Carlton, and was exerting himself to the utmost: they had been intimate acquaintances. Mr. Carlton stood his ground with calm equanimity. Ho was very pale, but nobody in South Wennock had ever seen him otherwise; and at moments he stirred as if restless. Calm, good-looking, gentlemanly, he appeared little suited to his position in that court.

“I protest against this going on,” he was saying for about the fiftieth time, as Frederick Grey edged himself on to the inch and a half of bench. “I protest against this woman’s evidence. I say—as I said at the time—that the person who lay ill was a stranger to me; what interest, then, could I———"

“Now, Carlton, I won’t have it,” interrupted Lawyer Billiter, wiping his hot face. “I declare, if you do ruin your cause in this manner, I’ll leave you to it. You be quiet, and trust to me.”

“But I did not know her, and I shall say it,” persisted the prisoner. “I ask what motive———"

“We cannot hear this, Mr. Carlton,” at length interposed the bench, tolerant hitherto, but Mr. Carlton was not an ordinary prisoner. “You can make your defence at the proper period; this is only wasting the time of the bench, and can do you no possible good. You must let the witness give her evidence.”

The witness looked rather uncertain what to do, what with the gaze of the crowded court, and Mr. Carlton’s interruptions. It was evident that Judith Ford was not a very willing witness.

“Go on, witness,” said the magistrate. “You looked into the room, you say, and saw Mr. Carlton. What was he doing?”

“He had a small bottle in his hand, sir,”: replied Judith; “a very little tiny bottle; but that he held it up, right in the light, I should not have been able to distinguish what it was. He was putting the cork into it, and then he dropped it into his waistcoat pocket. After that he took up the other bottle———"

“What bottle?” interrupted Lawyer Billiter, snapping up Judith.

“The other bottle that stood on the cheffonier, close to his hand; it was a bottle the size of those sent in by Mr. Stephen Grey with the night draughts. The cork lay by it, and he took up the cork very quickly and put it into the bottle———"

“You can’t swear that it was the bottle and draught just sent in by Mr. Stephen Grey?”

“No,” said Judith, “but I think it was. I could see that it had a label on it, and it was full of medicine. No other bottle in the house, but that, was full that night, as was testified to by the nurse at the inquest.”

“But———"

“Go on, witness,” interposed the bench, drowning Mr. Carlton’s “but.”

“When Mr. Carlton had corked it up,” resumed the witness, “he placed it in a corner of the shelf of the cheffonier, in a slanting position, and came out of the room very quickly; so quickly, that I had no time to get away. I went to the side of the landing, and stood against the wall, but———"

“Where he would pass you as he went downstairs?”

“Oh, no, sir, he would not pass me; I was further up, nearer to the bedroom door. He saw me standing there; at least he saw my face, and spoke, asking what I was; but I did not answer, and he looked alarmed. While he went back for the light, I slipped into the broom closet by the bedroom.”

“But you were not the dark man with whiskers, to whom allusion has been so often made?” exclaimed one of the astonished magistrates.

“Yes, I was, sir; at least I was what Mr. Carlton took to be a man. I had my cheeks tied up with black plush, on account of the face-ache, a piece on each side, and the plush and the frilled black border of my cap looked just like whiskers in the uncertain light.”

“But why did you disguise yourself like that?” was the inquiry of the magistrate, when the surprise had in some degree subsided. “What was your motive?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I had not meant it for any disguise,” replied Judith. “I had no thought of such a thing. My face was in great pain and much swollen, and Mr. Stephen Grey had told me I ought to tie it up. I had no other motive in doing it. Had I waited for Mr. Carlton to see me when I brought out the light, he would have known who it was.”

“This is a most extraordinary avowal, witness!” struck in Lawyer Billiter, who indeed spoke but in accordance with his own opinion and the general feeling. “Pray had you any knowledge of Mr. Carlton previous to this?”

“Not any,” was the reply. “I had seen him passing in the street in his carriage and knew him by sight from that circumstance; but he had never seen me in his life.”

“And now, witness, what was your motive for watching Mr. Carlton from the landing on this night, as you tell us you did?”

“Indeed I had no motive,” was the earnest reply of the witness; “I did not purposely watch him. When I heard a movement in the room as I got to the top of the stairs, I feared it was Mrs. Crane—as I have stated to you—and I looked in quietly, thinking how very imprudent it was of her. I did not know anybody except Mrs. Crane was up—stairs; I had no idea Mr. Carlton was there. But when I looked in I saw it was Mr. Carlton, and I saw him doing what I have told you. It all happened in an instant, as it were, and he came out before I could well get away from the door.”

“And why did you not avow who you were when he asked, instead of getting away?”

“Again I must say that I had no ill motive in doing it,” replied the witness. “I felt like an eaves-dropper, like a peeper into what did not concern me, and I did not like to let Mr. Carlton know I had been there. I declare that I had no other motive. I have wished many a time since, when people have been talking and suspecting the ‘man on the stairs,’ that I had let myself be seen.”

“And you mean to tell us that you could go up these stairs and into this closet without Mr. Carlton’s hearing you?”

“Oh yes, I had on my sick-room shoes. They were of list; soles and all.”

“Did you suspect, witness, that Mr. Carlton was doing anything wrong with the medicine?” asked one of the magistrates.

“No, sir, I never thought of such a thing. It never occurred to me to think anything wrong at all until the next morning, when I was told Mrs. Crane had died through taking the draught, and that it was found to have been poisoned. I doubted then; I remembered the words of greeting I had heard pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient the former night, proving that they were well acquainted with each other; but still I thought it could not be possible that Mr. Carlton would do anything so wicked. It was only at the inquest when I heard him swear to what I knew was false that I really suspected him.”

“It’s as good as a play!” ironically spoke Lawyer Billiter. “I hope your worships will have the goodness to take notes of the testimony of this witness. What she says is most extraordinary, most incredible,” he continued, looking from one part of the packed audience to another; “in my opinion it is tainted with the gravest suspicion. First of all she deposes to a cock-and-bull story of hearing terms of endearment pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient, to whom he had only then been called in as a medical attendant; and next she tells this equally incredible tale of the bottles! Why should she, above all others, have been seated in the dark in Mrs. Crane’s bedroom that ﬁrst night?—why should she, above all others, have come stealing up the stairs the second night, still in the dark, just at the particular time, the few minutes that Mr. Carlton was there? This by-play amidst the bottles, that she professes to have witnessed, can only be compared to so many conjuring tricks! How was it, if she did so come up, that the landlady of the house, Mrs. Gould, and the nurse, Pepperfly, did not see her? They———"

“I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting,” said Judith. “They were, both times, at their supper in the kitchen; I saw them as I went by. I have already said so.”

“Give me leave to finish, young woman,” reproved Lawyer Billiter. “I say,” he added, addressing the court collectively, “that this witness’s evidence is incomprehensible, it is fraught with the gravest doubt; to a clear judgment it may appear very like pure invention, a tale got up to divert suspicion from herself. It remains yet to be seen whether she was not the tamperer of the draught—if it was tampered with—and now seeks to throw the guilt upon another. Have the goodness to answer a question, witness: if you perceived all this committed by Mr. Carlton, how came it that you did not declare it at the time?”

“I have said,” replied Judith, in some agitation—“because I feared that I should not be believed. I feared it might be met in the manner that you, sir, are now meeting it. I feared the very suspicion might be turned upon me; as you are now trying to turn it.”

“You feared that your unsupported testimony would not weigh against Mr. Carlton?” interposed one of the magistrates.

“Yes, sir,” replied Judith. “I did not really suspect Mr. Carlton until after the inquest, and there was a feeling upon me then of not liking to speak as I had not spoken before: people would have asked me why I kept it in. Besides, I never felt quite sure that Mr. Carlton had done it: it seemed so impossible to believe it.”

“And, confessing this, you now take upon yourself to assert that Mr. Carlton was dropping the prussic acid into the draught while you were squinting at him through the door?” sharply asked Lawyer Billiter.

“I don’t assert anything of the kind,” returned Judith, “I have only said what I saw him do with the bottles; I have said nothing more.”

“Oh,” said Lawyer Billiter, “you have said nothing more, haven’t you, young woman! I think it must strike everybody that you have insinuated more, if you have not said it. Your worships,” he added, turning to the bench, “there is not, as it appears to me, a tittle of evidence that ought to weigh against Mr. Carlton. He tells you that the young lady, Mrs. Crane, came here a stranger to him as she did to all others, and there’s not a shade of proof that this is untrue; that he ever knew her before. You cannot condemn a man like Mr. Carlton upon the sole testimony of an obscure witness; a servant girl who comes forward with a confession of things that, if true, should have been declared years ago. With the exception of certain words she says she heard pass between Mr. Carlton and the sick lady, there’s no evidence whatever that they were not strangers to each other———"

“You forget the letter written by the lady to Mr. Carlton the night of her arrival,” interrupted one of the magistrates, alluding to the unfortunate letter found by Lady Laura, and which had brought on the trouble.

“Not at all, your worship,” undauntedly returned the lawyer. “There’s no proof that that letter was addressed to Mr. Carlton—was ever in his possession. The woman Smith’s story of its having been handed to her by the Lady Jane Chesney, and that Lady Jane received it from Mr. Carlton’s wife, goes for nothing. I might take a letter out of my pocket, and hand it to your worship, saying that the party from whom I received it told me he had had it from the Khan of Tartary; but it mightn’t be any the nearer truth for his saying it.”

There was a smile in the hall. Mr. Carlton touched his lawyer on the sleeve, and the latter bent to him.

“What letter is it that is in question?”

For it was a positive fact that Mr. Carlton, up to this moment, had heard nothing of the letter. The policeman who arrested him had not mentioned it: and, on his arrival at the Town Hall, the proceedings were commenced in so much haste and confusion that he had but a vague idea of the details of the charge. Lawyer Billiter was sent for afterwards; and he gathered his necessary information from others, more than from the prisoner.

“Don’t you know about it?” returned the lawyer, in a whisper. “Haven’t you seen the letter? Why, it’s that letter that has done three parts of the mischief.”

“I have not seen or heard of any letter. Where did it come from?”

“Out of some safe in your cellar,—as I am given to understand. It’s an awkward letter, mind you, Carlton,” added the lawyer, confidentially, “unless you can explain it away.”

“Have they been searching my house!” asked Mr. Carlton, haughtily, answering the only portion of the explanation which had struck him.

“Not at all. I’m not sure that the Bench know how it was obtained yet, except that Lady Jane Chesney lent it to that Mrs. Smith for an hour or two; and her ladyship said she got it from Lady Laura. I met Pepperfly———"

“But there was no letter in the safe,” interrupted Mr. Carlton, puzzled by the words. “I can’t tell what you mean. Can I see the letter?”

Lawyer Billiter asked permission of the Bench, and the letter was handed to Mr. Carlton. To describe his inward astonishment when he saw the letter that he had thought he had burnt years and years before would be impossible. He turned it about in his hands, just as he had once turned about the torn portion of its copy before the coroner: he read it word by word; he gazed at its faded characters, faded by the hand of Time; and he could not make it out at all. The Court gathered nothing from his aspect, save surprise—surprise that looked genuine.

“I protest—I know nothing of this letter!” he exclaimed. “It is none of mine.”

“It was found in your possession, in a safe that you keep locked in your cellar,” said the Bench, who were wiser than Mr. Billiter thought.

“It never was found there,” returned Mr. Carlton, impressively. “I deny it entirely; I declare that I never had such a letter there as this. I thought some false conspiracy must be at work!”

“Don’t you recognise the letter, Mr. Carlton?” inquired the Bench, who were deferent to Mr. Carlton yet, and could not address him or treat him as they did prisoners in ordinary.

“How can I recognise a letter that I never saw before?”

“You have seen part of it before, at any rate. You must remember the portion of a letter produced at the inquest on Mrs. Crane. The inference to be drawn now is, that she abandoned that letter in writing it on account of the blot she made, and began this fresh one. The words in the two are the same.”

“Are they the same?” rejoined Mr. Carlton. “I had forgotten; it is a long while ago. But to whom was this letter written?”

“You perceive that it is addressed to you.”

“I perceive that my name is on the cover, the envelope. How it got there, or what it all means, I am at a loss to imagine. This letter appears to be written to the lady’s husband, not to me, her medical attendant.”

“The deduction sought to be drawn from the letter is, that it was written to you as her husband. Of course, that is not yet proved.”

“I beg to thank your worship for that admission,” volubly spoke Lawyer Billiter. “It is not proved. On the contrary, it will not be my client’s fault, or mine either, if we do not prove that the whole charge is false, arising, it may be, out of some strange mistake. A more improbable charge was certainly never brought against a medical man. Why should Mr. Carlton deliberately kill a patient—a young lady whom he was called in to attend, a perfect stranger to him? He ———"

“If the greeting, testified to by the witness Judith Ford, may be believed, she was not a stranger to him, Mr. Billiter.”

“True, your worship; but you will scarcely feel inclined, I fancy, to accept that young woman’s word before Mr. Carlton’s. I repeat, there’s not a shadow of proof, if you put that witness’s word aside, that Mr. Carlton had any previous acquaintance with Mrs. Crane. All the probabilities tend the other way; and, without that proof, it is impossible to pursue this charge against him. Mrs. Crane herself spoke of Mr. Carlton as a stranger to her, as she did of the Messrs. Grey. The widow Gould———"

It seemed that Lawyer Billiter’s eloquence was fated to be perpetually cut short. A noise at the back of the hall caused him to turn angrily. “What was the cause of the noise?” the magistrates as angrily demanded, and they were answered by their clerk, Mr. Drone.

“Some important evidence has arrived from town, your worships.”

Important evidence from town! Their worships gazed in the direction of the commotion; everybody else gazed; the prisoner gazed. But all that could be seen was the blooming person of Mrs. Pepperfly, who was making her appearance late, and not altogether steady on the legs. Some policemen were endeavouring to force a way for her through the dense crowd, for they supposed her testimony would be wanted; but their efforts were useless. A slim figure might have been got through, but Mrs. Pepperfly, never. Groaning, exhausted, a martyr to heat, and dreadfully cross, she commenced a fight with those around her as effectually as her crushed state permitted.

But the stir, while it baffled Mrs. Pepperfly, enabled another to get through the mass: a tall, slim young man, who twisted in and out like an eel, and got to the front at last.

He was the important evidence from town; that is, he had brought it with him. After conferring a few moments with Mr. Drone, he took from his pocket-book a folded paper. Mr. Drone inspected it with curious eyes, and then handed it to the waiting magistrates.

It was a copy of the certificate of a marriage solemnised in London, at St. Pancras Old Church, early in July, 1847, between Lewis Carlton and Clarice Beauchamp.