THE INTERPRETER (continued 5)

"Done!" I exclaimed furiously, for my blood boiled at the bare recital of such brutality, "I would have shot the Marshal through the heart, wheresoever I met him, were it at the very altar of a church."

Valèrie's pale face gleamed with delight at my violence.

"You say well," she exclaimed, clasping her hands together convulsively; "you say well. Woman as I am, I would have dipped my hands in his blood. But no, no, revenge is not for slaves like us; we must suffer and be still. Hopeless of redress, and unable to survive such dishonour, her husband blew his brains out. What would you have? it was but a victim the more. But it is not forgotten--no, it is not forgotten, and the Marshal lives in the hearts of our Hungarian soldiers, the object of an undying, unrelenting hatred. I will tell you an instance that occurred but the other day. Two Hungarian riflemen, scarcely more than boys, on furlough from the army of Italy, were passing through the town where he resides. Weary, footsore, and hungry, they had not wherewithal to purchase a morsel of food. The Kaiser does not overpay his army, and allows his uniform to cover the man who begs his bread along the road. An old officer with long moustaches saw these two lads eyeing wistfully the hot joints steaming in the windows of a café.

"'My lads,' he said, 'you are tired and hungry, why do you not go in and dine?'

"'Excellency,' they replied, 'we come from the army of Italy; we have marched all the way on foot, we have spent our pittance, and we are starving.'

"He gave them a few florins and bade them make merry; he could not see a soldier want, he said, for he was a soldier too. The young men stepped joyfully into the cafê, and summoned the waiter forthwith.

"'Do you know,' said he, 'to whom you have just had the honour of speaking? that venerable old man is Marshal Haynau.'

"The two soldiers rushed from the room; ere the Marshal had reached the end of the street they had overtaken him; they cast his money at his feet, and departed from him with a curse that may have been heard in Heaven, but was happily inaudible at the nearest barrack. So is it with us all; those two soldiers had but heard of his cruelty, whilst I, I had stood by and seen her wounds dressed after her punishment. Judge if I do not love him! But, alas! I am but a woman, a poor weak woman; what can I do?"

As she spoke, we heard Victor's step approaching across the lawn, and Valèrie was once more the graceful, high-born lady, with her assured carriage and careless smile. As she took up her embroidery and greeted her brother playfully, with an air from the last new opera, hummed in the richest, sweetest voice, who would have guessed at the volcano of passions concealed beneath that calm and almost frivolous exterior. Are women possessed of a double existence, that they can thus change on the instant from a betrayal of the deepest feelings to a display of apparently utter heartlessness? or are they only accomplished hypocrites, gifted with no real character at all, and putting on joy or sorrow, smiles or tears, just as they change their dresses or alter the trimmings of their bonnets, merely for effect? I was beginning to study them now in the person of Valèrie, and to draw comparisons between that lady and my own ideal. It is a dangerous occupation, particularly for a wounded man; and one better indeed for all of us, in sickness or in health, let alone.

CHAPTER XXIII

FOREWARNED

It was a pleasant life that we led in the fine old castle at Edeldorf. Victor was always an enthusiast in field-sports, and since his return from the war he devoted himself to the pursuit of wild animals more assiduously than ever. This was no less a measure of prudence than of inclination on the part of my friend. An inveterate Nimrod seldom busies himself much with politics, and as the antecedents of the De Rohans had somewhat compromised that patriotic family in the eyes of the Government, its present representative was looked on less unfavourably in the character of a young thoughtless sportsman, than he would have been as a disaffected man brooding in solitude, and reserving his energies for more dangerous occupations.

Moreover, to one who loved the fresh breath of morning and the crack of the rifle, Edeldorf was a perfect paradise. Within a ride of two hours its hills furnished many a pair of antlers for the castle hall, and the wild boar whetted his tusks upon the stem of many a fine old forest tree in its deep woodlands. An occasional wolf and a possible bear or two enhanced the interest of the chase; and when the Count quitted his home at early morning, belted and equipped for his work, he could promise himself a day of as varied enjoyment as the keenest sportsman could desire.

I was getting rapidly better, but still unable to accompany my friend on these active expeditions. I am not sure that I longed very eagerly to participate in their delights. As I got stronger, I think I felt less inclined to break my habits of convalescence and helplessness--a helplessness that made me very dependent on Valèrie de Rohan.

I was awaking from a pleasant dream of evening skies and perfumed orange-groves and soft music, with a dim vision of floating hair and muslin dresses, when Victor, with a lighted candle in his hand, entered my apartment--a habit he had acquired in boyhood, and which he continued through life--to bid me "Good-morning," and favour me with his anticipations of his day's amusement.

"I wish you were well enough to come with me, Vere," said he, as he peered out into the dark morning, not yet streaked with the faintest vestige of dawn. "There is nothing like shooting, after all; war is a mistake, Vere, and an uncomfortable process into the bargain; but shooting, I find, gives one quite as much excitement, and has the advantage of being compatible with a comfortable dwelling and plenty to eat every day. I have changed my note, Vere, and I say Vive la chasse! now."

"Did you wake me to tell me that?" I yawned out, as I warded the light of the candle from my sleepy eyes, "or do you wish me to get out of my warm bed this cold morning and hold a discussion with you on the comparative attraction of shooting men and beasts? The former is perhaps the more exciting, but the latter the more innocent."

Victor laughed. "You lazy, cold Englander!" he replied; "I woke you as I always do when I anticipate a pleasant day, that I may tell you all I expect to do. In the first place, I shall have a delightful ride up to the hills; I wish you could accompany me. A cigar before dawn, after a cup of coffee, is worth all the smoking of the rest of the twenty-four hours put together. I shall gallop the whole way, and a gallop counts for something in a day's happiness. Confess that, at least, you cold, unimpassioned mortal."

I pointed to my wounded leg, and smiled.

"Oh! you will soon be able to get on horseback, and then we two must scamper about across the country once more, as we used to do when we were boys," resumed Victor; "in the meantime, Valèrie will take care of you, and you must get well as quick as you can. What a charming ride it is up to the hills: I shall get there in two hours at the outside, for Caspar goes like the wind; then to-day we mean to beat the woods at the farthest extremity of the Waldenberg, where my poor father shot the famous straight-horned stag years and years ago. There are several wild boar in the ravine at the bottom, and it was only the season before last that Vocqsal shot a bear within twenty yards of the waterfall."

"By the bye," I interrupted him, "are bears and boars and red-deer the only game you have in view? or are there not other attractions as fascinating as shooting, in the direction of the Waldenberg?"

It was a random shaft, but it hit the mark; Victor positively blushed, and I could not help thinking as I watched him, what a handsome fellow he was. A finer specimen of manly beauty you would hardly wish to see than the young Count de Rohan, as he stood there in his green shooting-dress, with his powder-horn slung across his shoulder, and his hunting-knife at his waist. Victor was now in the full glow of youthful manhood, tall, active, and muscular, with a symmetry of frame that, while it was eminently graceful, qualified him admirably for athletic exercises, and a bearing that can best be described by the emphatic term "high-bred." There was a woman's beauty in his soft blue eyes and silky hair of the richest brown, but his marked features, straight, determined eyebrows, and dark, heavy moustaches, redeemed the countenance, notwithstanding its bright winning expression, from the charge of effeminacy. Perhaps, after all, the greatest charm about him was his air of complete enjoyment and utter forgetfulness of self. Every thought of his mind seemed to pass across his handsome face; and to judge by appearances, the thoughts were of the pleasantest description, and now he absolutely blushed as he hurried on without taking any notice of my remark--

"If I can bring Valèrie back a bear-skin for her sledge, I shall be quite satisfied; and I will tell you all about my chasse and my day's adventures over a cigar when I return. Meantime, my dear fellow, take care of yourself, order all my carriages and horses, if they are of the slightest use to you, and farewell, or rather au revoir."

I heard him humming his favourite waltz as he strode along the gallery (by the way, the very Ghost's Gallery of our childish adventure), and in another minute his horse's hoofs were clattering away at a gallop into the darkness. Whilst I turned round in bed with a weary yawn, and after patting Bold's head--a compliment which that faithful animal returned by a low growl, for the old dog, though true and stanch as ever, was getting very savage now,--I composed myself to cheat a few more hours of convalescence in sleep. What a contrast to my friend! Weary, wounded, and disappointed, I seemed to have lived my life out, and to have nothing more now to hope or to fear. I had failed in ambition, I had made shipwreck in love. I was grey and old in heart, though as yet young in years; whilst Victor, at the same age as myself, had all his future before him, glowing with the sunshine of good health, good spirits, and prosperity. Let us follow the child of fortune as he gallops over the plain, the cool breath of morning fanning his brow and lifting his clustering hair.

To a man who is fond of riding--and what Hungarian is not?--there is no country so fascinating as his own native plains, where he can gallop on mile after mile, hour after hour, over a flat surface, unbroken even by a molehill, and on a light sandy soil, just so soft as to afford his horse a pleasant easy footing, but not deep enough to distress him. Although I could never myself appreciate the ecstatic pleasures of a gallop, or comprehend why there should be a charm about a horse that is not possessed by the cow, the giraffe, the hippopotamus, or any other animal of the larger order of mammalia, I am not so prejudiced as to be unaware that in this respect I am an exception to the general run of my countrymen. Now, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there are men whose whole thoughts and wishes centre themselves in this distinguished quadruped; who grudge not to ruin their wives and families for his society; and who, like the Roman Emperor, make the horse the very high-priest of their domestic hearth. To such I would recommend a gallop on a hard-puller over the plains of Hungary. Let him go! There is nothing to stop him for forty miles; and if you cannot bring him to reason in about a minute and a half, you must for ever forfeit your claim to be enrolled amongst the worshipful company of Hippodami to which it seems the noblest ambition of aspiring youth to belong. A deacon of the craft was my friend Victor; and I really believe he enjoyed a pleasure totally unknown to the walking biped, as he urged Caspar along at speed, his fine figure swaying and yielding to every motion of the horse, with a pliancy that, we are informed by those who pique themselves on such matters, can only be acquired by long years of practice superinduced on a natural, or, as they would term it, "heaven-born," aptitude to excel in the godlike art.

So Victor galloped on like Mazeppa, till the dawn "had dappled into day"; and save to light a fresh cigar, gave Caspar no breathing-time till the sun was above the horizon, and the dew-drops on the acacias glittered like diamonds in the morning light. As he quitted the plains at last, and dropped his rein on his horse's neck, while he walked him slowly up the stony road that led to the Waldenberg, he caught sight of a female figure almost in the shadow of the wood, the flutter of whose dress seemed to communicate a corresponding tremor to Victor's heart. The healthy glow paled on his cheek, and his pulses beat fitfully as he urged poor Caspar once more into a gallop against the hill, none the less energetically that for nearly a mile a turn in the road hid the object of interest from his sight. What a crowd of thoughts, hopes, doubts, and fears passed through his mind during that long mile of uncertainty, which, had they resolved themselves into words, would have taken the following form:--"Can she have really come here to meet me, after all? Who else would be on the Waldenberg at this early hour? What can have happened?--is it possible that she has walked all this way on purpose to see me alone, if only for five minutes, before our chasse begins? Then she loves me, after all!--and yet she told me herself she was so volatile, so capricious. No, it is impossible!--she won't risk so much for me. And yet it is--it must be! It is just her figure, her walk,--how well I know them. I have mistrusted, I have misjudged her; she is, after all, true, loving, and devoted. Oh! I will make her such amends." Alas! poor Victor; the lady to whom you are vowing so deep a fidelity--to whom you are so happy to think you owe so much for her presence on the wild Waldenberg--is at this moment drinking chocolate in a comfortable dressing-room by a warm stove at least ten miles off; and though you might, and doubtless would, think her extremely lovely in that snowy robe de chambre, with its cherry-coloured ribbons, I question whether you would approve of the utter indifference which her countenance displays to all sublunary things, yourself included, with the exception of that very dubious French novel on her knee, which she is perusing or rather devouring with more than masculine avidity. Better draw rein at once, and ride back to Edeldorf, for one hundred yards more will undeceive you at the turn round that old oak-tree; and it is no wonder that you pull up in utter discomfiture, and exclaim aloud in your own Hungarian, and in tones of bitter disgust--"Psha! it's only a Zingynie, after all."

"Only a Zingynie, Count de Rohan!" replied a dark majestic old woman, with a frown on her fine countenance and a flash in her dark eye, as she placed herself across the road and confronted the astonished horseman; "only your father's friend and your own; only an interpreter of futurity, who has come to warn you ere it be too late. Turn back, Victor de Rohan, to your own halls at Edeldorf. I have read your horoscope, and it is not good for you to go on."

Victor had by this time recovered his good-humour; he forced a few florins into the woman's unwilling hand. "Promise me a good day's sport, mother!" he said, laughingly, "and let me go. I ought to be there already."

"Turn back, my child, turn back," said the gipsy; "I will save you if I can. Do you know that there is danger for you on the Waldenberg? Do you know that I--I, who have held you in my arms when you were a baby, have walked a-foot all the way from the Banat on purpose to warn you? Do you think I know not why you ride here day after day, that you may shoot God's wild animals with that bad old man? Is it purely for love of sport, Victor de Rohan? Answer me that!"

He waxed impatient, and drew his reins rudely from the woman's grasp.

"Give your advice when it is asked, mother," said he, "and do not delay me any longer. If you want food and shelter, go down to Edeldorf. I can waste no more time with a chattering old woman here."

She was furious; she flung the money he had given her down beneath his horse's feet. Tears rose to her eyes, and her hand shook with passion as she pointed with outstretched arm in the direction of the Waldenberg.

"Ay, go on," said she, "go on, and neglect the gipsy's warning till it is too late. Oh! you are a nobleman and a soldier, and you know best; a man of honour, too, and you will go there. Listen to me once for all, Victor de Rohan, for I loved you as a baby, and I would save you even now, if I could. I slept by the waters of the Danube, and I saw in a vision the child I had fondled in my arms full-grown and handsome, and arrived at man's estate. He was dressed as you are now, with powder-horn and hunting-knife slung over his broad shoulders, and the rifle that he set such store by was in his hand. He spoke kindly and smilingly as was his wont, not angrily as you did now. He was mounted on a good horse, and I was proud to watch him ride gallantly away with St. Hubert's blessing and my own. Again I saw him, but this time not alone. There was a fair and lovely woman by his side, dressed in white, and he hung his head, and walked listlessly and slowly, as though his limbs were fettered and he was sore and sick at heart. I could not bear to think the boy I had loved was no longer free; and when he turned his face towards me it was pale and sorrowful, and there was suffering on his brow. Then my dream changed, and I saw the Waldenberg, with its rugged peaks and its waving woods, and the roar of the waterfall sounded strange and ominous in my ears; and there were clouds gathering in the sky, and the eagle screamed as he swept by on the blast, and the rain plashed down in large heavy drops, and every drop seemed to fall chill upon my heart. Then I sat me down, weary and sorrowful, and I heard the measured tread of men, and four noble-looking foresters passed by me, bearing a body covered with a cloak upon their shoulders, and one said to the other, 'Alas for our master! is it not St. Hubert's day?' But a corner of the cloak fell from the face of him they carried, and I knew the pale features, damp with death, and the rich brown hair falling limp across the brow--it was the corpse of him whom I had loved as a baby and watched over as a man, and I groaned in my misery and awoke. Oh, my boy, my young handsome De Rohan, turn, then, back from the Waldenberg, for the old Zingynie's sake."

"Nonsense, mother," replied Victor, impatiently; "St. Hubert's day is past; I cannot help your bad dreams, or stay here to prate about them all day. Farewell! and let me go." He turned his horse's head from her as he spoke, and went off at a gallop.

The old gipsy woman looked after him long and wistfully, as the clatter of his horse's hoofs died away on the stony causeway; she sat down by the roadside, buried her face in her cloak, and wept bitterly and passionately; then she rose, picked up the money that lay neglected on the ground, and took her way down the hill, walking slow and dejected, like one who is hopelessly and grievously disappointed, and ever and anon muttering to herself, in words that seemed to form something between a curse and a prayer.

CHAPTER XXIV

"ARCADES AMBO"

Prince Vocqsal possessed a delightful shooting-box in the immediate vicinity of the Waldenberg; and, as a portion of those magnificent woodlands was on his property, he and the De Rohans, father and son, had long established a joint guardianship and right of sporting over that far-famed locality. Perhaps what the Prince called a shooting-box, an Englishman's less magnificent notions would have caused him to term a country-house; for the "chalet," as Madame la Princesse delighted to name it, was a roomy, commodious dwelling, with all the appliances of a comfortable mansion, furnished in the most exquisite taste. She herself had never been induced to visit it till within the last few weeks--a circumstance which had not seemed to diminish its attractions in the eyes of the Prince; now, however, a suite of apartments was fitted up expressly for "Madame," and this return to primitive tastes and rural pleasures, on the part of that fastidious lady, was hailed by her domestics with astonishment, and by her husband with a good-humoured and ludicrous expression of dismay. To account for the change in Madame's habits, we must follow Victor on his solitary ride, the pace of which was once more reduced to a walk as soon as he was beyond the gipsy's ken. Who does not know the nervous anxiety with which we have all of us sometimes hurried over the beginning of a journey, only to dawdle out its termination, in absolute dread of the very moment which yet we long for so painfully.

Now, it was strange that so keen a sportsman as Victor, one, moreover, whose ear was as practised as his eye was quick, should have been deceived in the direction from which he heard the reports of at least half-a-dozen shots, that could only have been fired from the gun of his friend the Prince, whom he had promised faithfully to meet that morning at a certain well-known pass on the Waldenberg. It was strange that, instead of riding at once towards the spot where he must have seen the smoke from a gun actually curling up amongst the trees, he should have cantered off in an exactly opposite direction, and never drawn rein till he arrived at the gate of a white house surrounded by acacias, at least five miles from the familiar and appointed trysting-place, and in a part of the Waldenberg by no means the best stocked with game.

It was strange, too, that he should have thought it necessary to inform the grim hussar who opened the door how he had unaccountably missed the Prince in the forest, and had ridden all this distance out of his way to inquire about him, and should have asked that military-looking individual, in a casual manner, whether it was probable Madame la Princesse could put him in the right way of finding his companion, so as not to lose his day's sport. It might have occurred to the hussar, if not too much taken up with his moustaches, that the simplest method for so intimate a friend would have been to have asked at once if "Madame was at home," and then gone in and prosecuted his inquiries in person. If a shrewd hussar, too, he may have bethought him that the human biped is something akin to the ostrich, and is persuaded, like that foolish bird, that if he can only hide his head, no one can detect his great long legs. Be this how it may, the official never moved a muscle of his countenance, and in about half-a-minute Victor found himself, he did not exactly know how, alone with "Madame" in her boudoir.

She gave him her hand, with one of those sunny smiles that used to go straight to the Hungarian's heart. Madame was never demonstrative; although her companion would joyfully have cast himself at her feet and worshipped her, she wilfully ignored his devotion; and while she knew from his own lips that he was her lover, nor had the slightest objection to the avowal, she persisted in treating him as a commonplace friend. It was part of her system, and it seemed to answer. Princess Vocqsal's lovers were always wilder about her than those of any other dame half her age and possessed of thrice her beauty. She had the knack of managing that strange compound of vanity, recklessness, and warm affections which constitutes a man's heart; and she took a great delight in playing on an instrument of which she had sounded all the chords, and evoked all the tones, till she knew it thoroughly, and undervalued it accordingly.

Victor had very little to say! he who was generally so gay and unabashed and agreeable. His colour went and came, and his hand positively shook as he took hers--so cold, and soft, and steady--and carried it to his lips.

"What, lost again in the Waldenberg?" said she, with a laugh, "and within five leagues of Edeldorf. Count de Rohan, you are really not fit to be trusted by yourself; we must get you some one to take care of you."

Victor looked reproachfully at her.

"Rose," he stammered, "you laugh at me; you despise me. Again I have succeeded in seeing you without creating suspicion and remark; but I have had to do that which is foreign to my nature, and you know not what it costs me. I have had to act, if not to speak, a lie. I was to have met the Prince at the waterfall, and I wilfully missed him that I might come down here to inquire which way he had gone; I felt like a coward before the eye of the very servant who opened your door; and all to look on you for five minutes--to carry back with me the tones of your beloved voice, and live upon them for weeks in my dreary home, till I can see you again. Rose! Rose! you little know how I adore you."

"But I cannot pity you in this instance, Monsieur le Comte," replied the lady; "I cannot, indeed. Here you are, in my comfortable boudoir, with a warm stove, and a polished floor, and your choice of every arm-chair and sofa in the room, instead of stamping about on that bleak and dreary Waldenberg, with your hands cold and your feet wet, and a heavy rifle to carry, and in all probability nothing to shoot. Besides, sir, does my company count for nothing, instead of that of Monsieur le Prince? It may be bad taste, but I confess that, myself, I very much prefer my own society to his." And the Princess laughed her cheerful ringing laugh, that seemed to come straight from the heart.

Victor sighed. "You will never be serious, Rose, for a minute together."

"Serious!" she replied, "no! why should I? Have I not cause to be merry? I own I might have felt triste and cross to-day if I had been disappointed; but you are come, mon cher Comte, and everything is couleur de rose."

This was encouraging; and Victor opened the siege once more. He loved her with all the enthusiasm and ardour of his warm Hungarian heart. Wilfully shutting his eyes to ruin, misery, and crime, he urged her to be his--to fly with him--to leave all for his sake. He vowed to devote himself to her, and her alone. He swore he would obey her lightest word, and move heaven and earth to fulfil her faintest wish for the rest of his life, would she but confide her happiness to him. He was mad--he was miserable without her: life was not worth having unless gilded by her smiles; he would fly his country if she did not consent: he would hate her, he would never see her more, and a great deal to the same purpose, the outpouring of an eager, generous nature, warped by circumstances to evil; but in vain; the lady was immovable; she knew too well the value of her position to sacrifice it for so empty an illusion as love. Prudence, with the Princess, stood instead of principle; and Prudence whispered, "Keep all you have got, there is no need to sacrifice anything. You have all the advantage, take care to retain it. He may break his chains to-day, but he will come back voluntarily and put them on again to-morrow! it is more blessed to receive than to give." Such was the Princess's reasoning, and she remained firm and cold as a rock. At last his temper gave way, and he reproached her bitterly and ungenerously.

"You do not love me," he said; "cold, false, and heartless, you have sacrificed me to your vanity; but you shall not enjoy your triumph long; from henceforth I renounce you and your favour--from this day I will never set eyes on you again. Rose! for the last time I call you by that dear name; Rose! for the last time, Farewell!"

She tried the old conquering glance once more, but it failed. She even pressed his hand, and bade him wait and see the Prince on his return, but in vain. For the time, her power was gone. With lips compressed, and face as white as ashes, Victor strode from the room. In less than five minutes he was mounted, and galloping furiously off in the direction of Edeldorf.

Princess Vocqsal was a sad coquette, but she was a woman after all. She went to the window, and gazed wistfully after the horseman's figure as it disappeared amongst the acacias.

"Alas!" she thought, "poor Victor, it is too late now! So gallant, so loving, and so devoted. Ten years ago I had a heart to give, and you should have had it then, wholly and unreservedly; but now--what am I now? Oh that I could but be as I was then! Too late! too late!"

Her femme-de-chambre attributed Madame's migraine entirely to the weather and the dulness of the country, so different from Paris, or even Vienna; for that domestic at once perceived her mistress's eyes were red with weeping, when she went to dress. But sal volatile and rouge, judiciously applied, can work wonders. The Princess never looked more brilliant than when she descended to dinner, and she sat up and finished her French novel that night before she went to bed.

Victor must have been half-way home when, leaning on his sister's arm, I crept out into the garden to enjoy an hour of fresh air and sunshine in the company of my sedulous nurse and charming companion. Valèrie and I had spent the morning together, and it had passed like a dream. She had made my breakfast, which she insisted on giving me in truly British fashion, and poured out my tea herself, as she laughingly observed, "comme une meess Anglaise." She had played me her wild Hungarian airs on the pianoforte, and sung me her plaintive national songs, with sweetness and good-humour. She had even taught me a new and intricate stitch in her embroidery, and bent my stubborn fingers to the task with her own pretty hands; and now, untiring in her care and kindness, she was ready to walk out with me in the garden, and wait upon all my whims and fancies as a nurse does for a sick child. I could walk at last with no pain, and but little difficulty. Had I not been so well taken care of, I think I should have declared myself quite recovered; but when you have a fair round arm to guide your steps, and a pair of soft eyes to look thrillingly into yours--as day after day a gentle voice entreats you not to hurry your convalescence and "attempt to do too much," it is a great temptation to put off as long as possible the evil hour when you must declare yourself quite sound again, and begin once more to walk alone.

So Valèrie and I paced up and down the garden, and drank in new life at every pore in the glad sunshine and the soft balmy air.

It was one of those days which summer seems to have forgotten, and which we so gladly welcome when we find it at the close of autumn. A warm, mellow sunshine brightened the landscape, melting in the distance into that golden haze which is so peculiarly the charm of this time of year: while the fleecy clouds, that seemed to stand still against the clear sky, enhanced the depth and purity of that wondrous, matchless blue. Not a breath stirred the rich yellow leaves dying in masses on the trees; and the last rose of the garden, though in all the bloom of maturity, had shed her first petal, and paid her first tribute to decay. Valèrie plucked it, and gave it me with a smile, as we sat down upon a low garden seat at one extremity of the walk. I thanked her, and, I know not why, put it to my lips before I transferred it to the buttonhole of my coat. There was a silence of several minutes.

I broke it at last by remarking "that I should soon be well now, and must ere long bid adieu to Edeldorf."

She started as though I had interrupted a train of pleasant thoughts, and answered, with some commonplace expression of regret and hope, that "I would not hurry myself;" but I thought her voice was more constrained than usual, and she turned her head away as she spoke.

"Valèrie," I said--and this was the first time I had ever called her by her Christian name--"it is no use disguising from oneself an unpleasant truth: my duty, my character, everything bids me leave my happy life here as soon as I am well enough. You may imagine how much I shall regret it, but you cannot imagine how grateful I feel for all your kindness to me. Had you been my sister, you could not have indulged me more. It is not my nature to express half I feel, but believe me, that wherever I go, at any distance of time or place, the brightest jewel in my memory will be the name of the Comtesse de Rohan."

"You called me Valèrie just now," said she, quickly.

"Well, of Valèrie, then," I replied. "Your brother is the oldest friend I have--older even than poor Bold." That sagacious dog had lain down at our feet, and was looking from one to the other with a ludicrous expression of wistful gravity, as if he could not make it all out. Why should he have reminded me at that instant so painfully of the glorious struggle for life and death in Beverley mere? That face! that face! would it never cease to haunt me with its sweet, sad smile? "Yes, Valèrie," I proceeded, "that he should have received me as a brother is only what I expected, but your unwearying kindness overpowers me. Believe me, I feel it very deeply, and I shall leave you, oh! with such regret!"

"And we too shall regret you very much," answered Valèrie, with flushed cheeks and not very steady tones. "But can you not stay a little longer? your health is hardly re-established, though your wound is healed, and--and--it will be very lonely when you are gone."

"Not for you," I replied; "not for the young Comtesse de Rohan (well, Valèrie, then), admired and sought after by all. Beautiful and distinguished, go where you will, you are sure to command homage and affection. No, it is all the other way, I shall be lonely, if you like."

"Oh, but men are so different," said she, with a glance from under those long, dark eyelashes. "Wherever they go they find so much to interest, so much to occupy them, so much to do, so many to love."

"Not in my case," I answered, rather pursuing my own train of thoughts than in reply to my companion. "Look at the difference between us. You have your home, your brother, your friends, your dependants, all who can appreciate and return your affection; whilst I, I have nothing in the world but my horses and my sword."

She looked straight into my face, a cloud seemed to pass over her features, and she burst into tears. In another moment she was sobbing on my breast as if her heart would break.

A horse's hoofs were heard clattering in the stable yard, and as Victor, pale and excited, strode up the garden, Valèrie rushed swiftly into the house.

CHAPTER XXV

"DARK AND DREARY"

The pea-soup thickness of a London fog is melting into drizzling rain. The lamp-posts and area railings in Mayfair are dripping with wet, like the bare copses and leafless hedges miles off in the country. It is a raw, miserable day, and particularly detestable in this odious town, as a tall old gentleman seems to think who has just emerged from his hotel into the chill, moist atmosphere; and whose well-wrapped-up exterior, faultless goloshes, and neat umbrella denote one of that class who are seldom to be met with in the streets during the winter season. As he picks his way along the sloppy pavement, he turns to scan the action of every horse that splashes by, and ventures, moreover, on sundry peeps under passing bonnets with a pertinacity, and, at the same time, an air of unconsciousness that prove how habit can become second nature. The process generally terminates in disappointment, not to say disgust, and Sir Harry Beverley--for it is no less a person than the Somersetshire Baronet--walks on, apparently more and more dissatisfied with the world in general at every step he takes. As he paces through Grosvenor-square he looks wistfully about him, as though for some means of escape. He seems bound on an errand for which he has no great fancy, and once or twice he is evidently on the point of turning back. Judging by his increase of pace in South Audley-street, his courage would appear to be failing him rapidly; but the aspect of Chesterfield House, the glories of which he remembers well in its golden time, reassures him; and with an inward ejaculation of "poor D'Orsay!" and a mental vision of that extraordinary man, who conquered the world with the aid only of his whiskers and his cab-horse, Sir Harry walks on. "They are pleasant to look back upon," thinks the worn old "man of the world"--"those days of Crocky's and Newmarket, and cheerful Melton, with its brilliant gallops, and cozy little dinners, and snug parties of whist. London, too, was very different in my time. Society was not so large, and we" (meaning the soliloquist and his intimate friends) "could do what we liked. Ah! if I had my time to come over again!" and something seems to knock at Sir Harry's heart, as he thinks, if indeed he could live life over once more, how differently he would spend it. So thinks every man who lives for aught but doing good. It is dreadful at last to look along the valley that was once spread before us so glad and sunny, teeming with corn, and wine, and oil, and to see how barren we have left it. Count your good actions on your fingers, as the wayfarer counts the miles he has passed, or the trader his gains, or the sportsman his successes--can you reckon one a day? a week? a month? a year? And yet you will want a large stock to balance those in the other scale. Man is a reasoning being and a free agent: he makes a strange use of both privileges.

At last Sir Harry stops in front of a neat little house with the brightest of knockers and the rosiest of muslin curtains, and flowers in its windows, and an air of cheerful prettiness even in this dull dark day.

A French servant, clean and sunshiny as French servants always are, answers the visitor's knock, and announces that "Monsieur" has been "de Service"; or in other words, that Captain Ropsley has that morning come "off guard." Whilst the Baronet divests himself of his superfluous clothing in an outer room, let us take a peep at the Guardsman in his luxurious little den.

Ropsley understands comfort thoroughly, and his rooms are as tastefully furnished and as nicely arranged as though there were present the genius of feminine order to preside over his retreat. Not that such is by any means the case. Ropsley is well aware that he owes much of his success in life to the hardness of his heart, and he is not a man to throw away a single point in the game for the sake of the sunniest smile that ever wreathed a fair false face. He is no more a man of pleasure than he is a man of business, though with him pleasure is business, and business is pleasure. He has a sound calculating head, a cool resolute spirit, an abundance of nerve, no sentiment, and hardly any feeling whatever. Just the man to succeed, and he does succeed in his own career, such as it is. He has established a reputation for fashion, a position in the world; with a slender income he lives in the highest society, and on the best of everything; and he has no one to thank for all these advantages but himself. As he lies back in the depths of his luxurious armchair, smoking a cigar, and revelling in the coarse witticisms of Rabelais, whose strong pungent satire and utter want of refinement are admirably in accordance with his own turn of mind, a phrenologist would at once read his character in his broad but not prominent forehead, his cold, cat-like, grey eye, and the habitual sneer playing round the corners of an otherwise faultless mouth. Handsome though it be, it is not a face the eye loves to look upon. During the short interval that elapses between his servant's announcement and his visitor's entrance, Ropsley has time to dismiss Rabelais completely from his mind, to run over the salient points of the conversation which he is determined to have with Sir Harry, and to work out "in the rough" two or three intricate calculations, which are likely somewhat to astonish that hitherto unconscious individual. He throws away his cigar, for he defers to the prejudices of the "old school," and shaking his friend cordially by the hand, welcomes him to town, stirs the fire, and looks, as indeed he feels, delighted to see him.

Sir Harry admires his young friend much, there is something akin in their two natures; but the acquired shrewdness of the elder man is no match for the strong intellect and determined will of his junior.

"I have come up as you desired, my dear fellow," said the Baronet, "and brought Constance with me. We are at ----'s Hotel, where, by the way, they've got a deuced bad cook: and having arrived last night, here I am this morning."

Ropsley bowed, as he always did, at the mention of Miss Beverley's name; it was a queer sort of half-malicious little bow. Then looking her father straight in the face with his cold bright eye, he said, abruptly--"We've got into a devil of a mess, and I required to see you immediately."

Sir Harry started, and turned pale. It was not the first "devil of a mess" by a good many that he had been in, but he felt he was getting too old for the process, and was beginning to be tired of it.

"Those bills, I suppose," he observed, nervously; "I expected as much."

Ropsley nodded. "We could have met the two," said he, "and renewed the third, had it not been for Green's rascality and Bolter's failure. However, it is too late to talk of all that now; read that letter, Sir Harry, and then tell me whether you do not think we are what Jonathan calls 'slightly up a tree.'"

He handed the Baronet a lawyer's letter as he spoke. The latter grew paler and paler as he proceeded in its perusal; at its conclusion he crushed it in his hand, and swore a great oath.

"I can do nothing more," he said, in a hoarse voice; "I am dipped now till I cannot get another farthing. The estate is so tied up with those accursed marriage-settlements, that I must not cut a stick of timber at my own door. If Bolter had paid we could have gone on. The villain! what right had he to incur liabilities he could not meet, and put honest men in the hole?"

"What right, indeed?" answered the Guardsman, with a quiet smile, that seemed to say he thought the argument might apply to other cases than that of poor Bolter. "I am a man of no position, Sir Harry, and no property; if I go I shall scarcely be missed. Now with you it is different: your fall would make a noise in the world, and a positive crash down in Somersetshire" (the Baronet winced). "However, we should neither of us like to lose caste and character without an effort. Is there nothing can be done?"

Sir Harry looked more and more perplexed. "Time," he muttered, "time; if we could only get a little time. Can't you see these fellows, my dear Ropsley, and talk to them a little, and show them their own interests? I give you carte blanche to act for me. I must trust all to you. I don't see my way."

Ropsley pushed a wide red volume, something like an enlarged betting-book, across the table. It was his regimental order-book, and on its veracious columns was inscribed the appalling fact that "leave of absence had been granted to Lieutenant and Captain Ropsley for an indefinite period, on urgent private affairs." Sir Harry's hand trembled as he returned it. He had been so accustomed to consult his friend and confederate on all occasions, he had so completely acquired the habit of deferring to his judgment and depending on his energy, that he felt now completely at a loss as he thought of the difficulties he should have to face unassisted and alone. It was with unconcealed anxiety that he gasped out, "D---- it, Ropsley, you don't mean to leave the ship just at the instant she gets aground!"

"I have only secured my retreat, like a good general," answered Ropsley, with a smile; "but never fear, Sir Harry, I have no intention of leaving you in the lurch. Nevertheless, you are a man of more experience than myself, you have been at this sort of thing for a good many years: before we go any further, I should like to ask you once more, is there no plan you can hit upon, have you nothing to propose?"

"Nothing, on my honour," answered Sir Harry. "I am at my wits' end. The money must be got, and paid too, for these fellows won't hear of a compromise. I can't raise another farthing. You must have been cleared out long ago. Ropsley, it strikes me we are both beaten out of the field."

"Not yet, Sir Harry," observed Ropsley, quietly; "I have a plan, if you approve of it, and think it can be done."

"By Jove! I always said you were the cleverest fellow in England," burst out poor Sir Harry, eagerly grasping at the shadow of a chance. "Let us have it, by all means. Approve of it! I'll approve of anything that will only get us clear of this scrape. Come, out with it, Ropsley. What is it?"

"Sit down, Sir Harry," said Ropsley, for the Baronet was pacing nervously up and down the room; "let us talk things over quietly, and in a business-like manner. Ever since the day that I came over to Beverley from Everdon--(by the way, that was the first good bottle of claret I drank in Somersetshire)--ever since that day you and I have been intimate friends. I have profited by your experience and great knowledge of the world; and you, I think, have derived some advantage from my energy and painstaking in the many matters with which we have been concerned. I take all the credit of that affair about the mines in Argyllshire, and it would be affectation on my part to pretend I did not know I had been of great use to you in the business."

"True enough, my dear fellow," answered the Baronet, looking somewhat alarmed; "if I had not sold, as you advised, I should have been 'done' that time, and I confess in all probability--" "ruined," the Baronet was going to say, but he checked himself, and substituted the expression, "much hampered now."

"Well, Sir Harry," resumed his friend, "you and I are men of the world; we all know the humbug fellows talk about friendship and all that. It would be absurd for us to converse in such a strain, but yet a man has his likes and dislikes. You are one of the few people I care for, and I will do for you what I would not do for any other man on earth."

Sir Harry stared. Though by no means a person of much natural penetration, he had yet an acquired shrewdness, the effect of long intercourse with his fellow-creatures, which bade him as a general rule to mistrust a kindness; and he looked now as if he scented a quid pro quo in the generous expressions of his associate.

Ropsley kept his cold grey eye fixed on him, and proceeded--"I have already said, I am a 'man of straw,' and if I go it matters little to any one but myself. They will ask after me for two days in the bow-window at White's, and there will be an end of it. I sell out, which will not break my heart, as I hate soldiering; and I start quietly for the Continent, where I go to the devil my own way, and at my own pace. Festina lente; I am a reasonable man, and easily satisfied. You will allow that this is not your case."

Poor Sir Harry could only shuffle uneasily in his chair, and bow his acquiescence.

"Such being the state of affairs," proceeded Ropsley, and the hard grey eye grew harder than ever, and seemed to screw itself like a gimlet into the Baronet's working physiognomy; "such being the state of affairs, of course any sacrifice I make is offered out of pure friendship, regard, and esteem for yourself. Psha! it's nonsense talking like that! My dear fellow, I like you; I always have liked you; the pleasantest hours of my life have been spent in your house, and I'll see you out of this scrape, if I ruin myself, stock, lock, and barrel, for it!"

Sir Harry flushed crimson with delight and surprise; yet the latter feeling predominated more than was pleasant, as he recollected the old-established principle of himself and his clique, "Nothing for nothing, and very little for a halfpenny."

"Now, Sir Harry, I'll tell you what I will do. Five thousand will clear us for the present. With five thousand we could pay off the necessary debts, take up that bill of Sharon's, and get a fresh start. When they saw we were not completely floored, we could always renew, and the turn of the tide would in all probability set us afloat again. Now the question is, how to get at the five thousand? It will not come out of Somersetshire, I think?"

Sir Harry shook his head, and laughed a hard, bitter laugh. "Not five thousand pence," he said, "if it was to save me from hanging to-morrow!"

"And you really do not know which way to turn?"

"No more than a child," answered Sir Harry. "If you fail me, I must give in. If you can help me, and yourself too, out of this scrape, why, I shall say what I always did--that you are the cleverest of fellows and the best of friends."

"I think it can be done," said the younger man, but he no longer looked his friend in the face; and a faint blush, that faded almost on the instant, passed over his features. He had one card left in his hand; he had kept it to the last; he thought he ought to play it now. "I have never told you, Sir Harry, that I have a few acres in Ireland, strictly tied up in the hands of trustees, but with their consent I have power to sell. It is all the property I have left in the world; it will raise the sum we require, and--it shall follow the rest."

This was true enough. Gambler, libertine, man of pleasure as he was, Ropsley had always kept an eye to the main chance. It was part of his system to know all sorts of people, and to be concerned in a small way with several speculative and money-making schemes. After the passing of the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill, it so happened that a fortunate investment at Newmarket had placed a few loose thousands to the credit side of our Guardsman's account at Cox and Co.'s. He heard casually of a capital investment for the same, within a day's journey of Dublin, as he was dining with a party of stock-jobbing friends in the City. Six hours afterwards Ropsley was in the train, and in less than six weeks had become the proprietor of sundry remunerative Irish acres, the same which he was now prepared unhesitatingly to sacrifice in the cause of gratitude, which with this philosopher, more than most men, might be fairly termed "a lively sense of benefits to come."

"Yes, it shall follow the rest," he repeated, stirring the fire vigorously, and now looking studiously away from the man he was addressing,--"Sir Harry, you are a man of the world--you know me thoroughly, we cannot humbug each other. Although I would do much for your sake, you cannot think that a fellow sacrifices his last farthing simply because he and his confederate have made a mistake in their calculations. No, Sir Harry, your honour is dear to me as my own--nay, dearer, for I now wish to express a hope that we may become more nearly connected than we have ever been before, and that the ties of relationship may give me a right, as those of friendship have already made it a pleasure, to assist you to the best of my abilities."

Sir Harry opened his mouth and pushed his chair back from the fire. Hampered, distressed, ruined as he was, it did seem a strong measure thus to sell Constance Beverley, so to speak, for "a mess of pottage"; and the bare idea of such a contract for the moment took away the Baronet's breath. Not that the notion was by any means a strange one to his mind; for the last two or three years, during which he had associated so much with the Guardsman, and had so many opportunities of appreciating his talents, shrewdness, and attractive qualities, the latter had been gradually gaining a complete ascendancy over his mind and character. Sir Harry was like a child in leading-strings in the hands of his confederate; and it had often occurred to him that it would be very pleasant, as as well as advantageous, always to have this mainstay on which to rely--this "ready-reckoner," and man of inexhaustible resources, to consult on every emergency. Vague ideas had sometimes crossed the Baronet's brain, that it was just possible his daughter might be brought to like well enough to marry (for loving was not a word in her father's vocabulary) an agreeable man, into whose society she was constantly thrown; and then, as Constance was an heiress, and the Baronet himself would be relieved from divers pecuniary embarrassments on her marriage, by the terms of a certain settlement with which we have nothing to do--why, it would be a delightful arrangement for all parties, and Ropsley could come and live at Beverley, and all be happy together.

Such were the ideas that vaguely floated across the Baronet's mind in those moments of reflection of which he allowed himself so few; but he was a father, and a kind one, with all his faults; and it had never yet entered his head either to force his daughter's inclinations, or even to encourage with his own influence any suitor who was not agreeable to the young lady. He was fond of Constance, in his own way--fonder than of anything in the world, save his own comfort, and a very stirring and closely-contested race at Newmarket. So he looked, as indeed he felt, somewhat taken aback by Ropsley's proposal, which his own instinct as a gentleman told him was peculiarly ill-timed.

He laughed nervously, and thanked his friend for his kindness.

"With regard to--Miss Beverley," he stammered; "why--you know, my dear Ropsley,--business is business, and pleasure is pleasure. I--I--had no wish,--at least I had not made up my mind--or rather, I had no absolute intention that my daughter should settle so early in life. You are aware she is an heiress--a very great heiress" (Ropsley was indeed, or they would not have been at this point of discussion now), "and she might look to making a great match; in fact, Constance Beverley might marry anybody. Still, I never would thwart her inclinations; and if you think, my dear fellow, you can make yourself agreeable to her, why, I should make no objections, as you know there is no man that I should individually like better for a son-in-law than yourself."

Ropsley rose, shook his new papa cordially by the hand, rang for luncheon, and rather to the Baronet's discomfiture, seemed to look upon it at once as a settled thing.

"My business will not take long," said he, helping his guest to a large glassful of sherry. "You do not go abroad for another week; I can make all my arrangements, our arrangements, I should say, by that time. Why should we not travel together? My servant is the best courier in Europe; you will have no trouble whatever, only leave it all to me."

Sir Harry hated trouble. Sir Harry liked the Continent. The scheme was exactly suited to his tastes and habits; so it was settled they should all start at once--a family party.

And where is the young lady all this time? the prime origin of so much scheming, the motive power of all this mechanism? In the front drawing-room of the gloomy hotel she sits over the fire, buried deep in thought--to judge by her saddened countenance--not of the most cheering description. Above the fire-place hangs a large engraving of Landseer's famous Newfoundland dog, that "Member of the Humane Society" whom he has immortalised with his pencil. The lady sighs as she gazes on the broad, honest forehead, the truthful, intelligent face, the majestic attitude denoting strength in repose. Either the light is very bad in this room, or the glass over that engraving is dim and blurred, and the dog seems crouching in a mist, or are Constance Beverley's dark eyes dimmed with tears?

CHAPTER XXVI

"SURVEILLANCE"

I did not question my friend as to his success in the chasse. Victor was evidently ill at ease, and after a few commonplace remarks returned to his apartments, from whence he did not reappear till dinner-time. Valèrie, too, was nowhere to be found, and I spent the afternoon in the salon with a strange visitor, who was announced by the groom of the chambers as Monsieur Stein, and whose business at Edeldorf I confess I was at a loss to discover.

The time passed agreeably enough. I was indisposed for reflection, a process which, under existing circumstances, could only have involved me in a labyrinth of perplexities; and my new acquaintance was possessed of a fund of information and small talk which must have been acquired by much intercourse with the world.

He seemed perfectly familiar with English habits and English politics, professing great admiration for the one and interest in the other. He had served too, he said, although I did not make out exactly in what grade; and altogether he was evidently a man of varied experience and considerable acquirements.

Silent as I naturally am, and especially reserved with strangers, there was something about my new acquaintance that led me to be communicative in spite of myself. His whole address and exterior were so thoroughly confidential, his manner so easy and unaffected; there was so much good-humour and bonhommie in his quiet smile and subdued enunciation, that I found myself almost unconsciously detailing events and imparting information with a facility of which I should have once thought I was incapable. Monsieur Stein listened, and bowed, and smiled, and put in a slight query here, or hazarded an observation there, which proved that he too was well acquainted with the topics on which I was enlarging; nor did he fail to compliment me on the lucid manner in which he was good enough to say I had explained to him the whole system of Turkish politics, and the relations of that tottering country with our own. As we went to make our toilets before dinner, I could not help asking my friend, the groom of the chambers, whose arm assisted me upstairs (ah! it was Valèrie's the night before!), "who he was, this Monsieur Stein, who had arrived so unexpectedly, and had not yet seen the Count?" The man's face assumed a comical expression of mingled terror and disgust as he professed an utter ignorance of the guest; but when I added an inquiry as to whether he was a friend of Count Victor, his disclaimer was far more vigorous than the occasion seemed to demand. "Well," thought I, "I shall know all about it from Valèrie this evening;" and proceeded with my toilet--shall I confess it?--with more pains than I had ever taken in my life before.

But when we met at dinner a chill seemed to have fallen on our party, hitherto so merry and vivacious. Victor, though polite and courteous as ever, was reserved, absent, and out of spirits. Valèrie turned red and white by turns, answered only by monosyllables, and never once allowed her eyes to wander in my direction. I, too, felt sad and preoccupied. My coming departure seemed to cast a damp over my spirits; and yet when I thought of Valèrie's unconcealed regret, and frank avowal of interest in my future, my heart leapt with a strange, startling thrill, half of pleasure, half of pain. Monsieur Stein, however, appeared to suffer from none of these uncomfortable sensations. He ate, he drank, he talked, he made the agreeable, and amidst it all he seemed to note with a lynx-eye the gorgeous furniture, the glittering plate, the host of servants attired in their gaudy hussar uniforms, the choice wine, and excellent cookery, for which the ménage of Edeldorf had always been remarkable. In the brilliant light that shed its glare over the dining-table I was able to examine my new acquaintance more minutely than I had previously done before we went to dress. He seemed to me, without exception, the least remarkable man I had ever met. He was neither young nor old, neither dark nor fair, neither short nor tall, stout nor thin; his dress, that of a civilian, was plain and unstudied in the extreme; his demeanour, quiet and unaffected, was in admirable keeping with his whole exterior. There was nothing military about the man save a closely-clipped and carefully-trained moustache; but this warlike appendage was again contradicted by a slight stoop, and a somewhat hesitating gait, by no means that of a soldier. His eye, too, of a cold, dead grey, with light eyelashes, was soft and sleepy. Once I fancied I caught a lightning glance directed at Valèrie; but the orbs were so quickly veiled by their drooping lids that I could not be satisfied it was more than a trick of my own imagination. Altogether M. Stein was a man that in England would have been described emphatically as "very gentlemanlike," for want of any more characteristic qualifications; in France he would have been passed over as an undemonstrative cipher; my friends the Turks would have conferred a silent approval on his quiet, unassuming demeanour. Why was it that in Hungary his presence should act as what we call at home "a wet blanket"?

Dinner progressed slowly. Monsieur Stein addressed himself chiefly to Count de Rohan; and I could not help remarking that the latter's answers to his guest were marked by a caution and reserve totally foreign to his usual straightforward manner and off-hand way of saying whatever came uppermost. His air gave me the idea of a man who was determined not to be pumped. He drank less wine also than usual; and altogether was certainly not at his ease. Valèrie, too, whenever she raised her eyes from the tablecloth, glanced uneasily towards Monsieur Stein; and when I made a casual remark to her, answered so absently and stiffly as to cause me for my part to feel uncomfortable and de trop in this small ill-organised party. It was a relief to all of us when coffee made its appearance, and the newly-arrived guest, giving his hand to Valèrie with a courtly bow, led her back to the drawing-room, whilst I followed with Victor, and took the opportunity of whispering to my old friend, in English--

"Who is this gentleman, Victor, that seems to know a little of everything and everybody, and whose thirst for information seems so unquenchable?"

"Hush!" replied Victor, with an uneasy look at the couple in front of us; "he speaks English as well as you do, though I dare say he told you not. My dear Vere, for Heaven's sake, to-night sit still and hold your tongue!"

At this instant Valèrie turned round, and addressed some trifling observation to her brother, but with a warning expression of countenance that seemed to tell him he had been overheard. The next moment we were seated round her work-table, chatting as gaily upon the merits of her embroidery as though we were all the most intimate friends in the world. Certainly ladies' work promotes conversation of the most harmless and least suspicious description; and I think it would indeed have been difficult to affix a definite meaning to the remarks made by any one of us on the intricacies of Countess Valèrie's stitching, or the skill displayed by that lady in her graceful and feminine employment.

The evening dragged on. Monsieur Stein conversed freely on the state of the country, the condition of the peasantry, the plans of the Government, and a projected railroad, for the construction of which he did not seem to think it possible the Austrian exchequer would ever be able to pay. Victor listened, and scarcely spoke; Valèrie seemed interested in the railway, and determined to pursue that subject as long as possible; whilst I sat, out of spirits, and, truth to tell, out of humour, a silent observer of all three. I was deprived of my habitual occupations, and missed the care and interest to which I was accustomed as an invalid. Valèrie did not make my tea for me as usual, nor explain to me, for the hundredth time, the cunning splendour of her embroidery, nor ask for my assistance in the thousand trifling ways with which a woman makes you fancy you are essential to her comfort; and I was childish enough to feel sad, if not a little sulky, in consequence. At last I lost patience, and throwing down abruptly the paper which I had been reading, I asked Countess Valèrie to "give us a little music," adding in perfect innocence, "Do play that beautiful march out of 'The Honijàdy'--it is so inspiriting and so thoroughly national!"

If a shell had fallen into the room, and commenced its whizzing operations under Valèrie's work-table, it could not have created greater consternation than did my very natural request. The Countess turned deadly pale, and her hand trembled so that she could scarcely hold her needle. Victor rose from his chair with a tremendous oath, and walking off to the fire-place (for he was sufficiently an Englishman to prefer a grate to a stove), commenced stirring an already huge fire with much unnecessary energy, talking the whole time as if to drown my unlucky observation. Monsieur Stein flashed one of his lightning glances--there was no mistaking it this time--upon the whole of us, and then relapsed into his previous composure; whilst I felt that I had committed some unpardonable gaucherie, but could not, for the life of me, discover how or why.

It was hopeless that evening to make any more attempts at conversation. Even the guest seemed to think he had exerted himself sufficiently, and at an earlier hour than usual we retired for the night. When I came down next morning he was gone.

Victor did not appear at breakfast, and Valèrie's excuses for her brother were delivered with a degree of restraint and formality which made me feel very uncomfortable.

"Victor was busy," she said, "with the steward and the land-agent. He had a great deal to do; he would not be at leisure for hours, but he would see me before he started on his journey."

"Journey!" said I; "what journey does he mean to take? and what is all this mystery and confusion? Pardon me, Countess Valèrie, I am a straightforward man, Victor is my oldest friend, and I do claim to be in the secret, if I can be of any assistance or comfort to you in anything."

She looked at me once more with the frank, confiding look that reminded me so of another; and putting her hand in mine, she said--

"I know we can trust you; I know I can trust you. Victor is compromised; he must go to Vienna to clear himself. He has yesterday received a hint that amounts indeed to an order. We are not even free to live on our own lands," she added bitterly, and with the old gleam of defiance flashing over her features; "the proudest noble in Hungary is but a serf after all."

"And Monsieur Stein?" I asked, for I was beginning to penetrate the mystery.

"Is an agent of police," she replied, "and one of the cleverest in the Emperor's service. Did you remark how civil we were forced to be to him? Did you not notice Victor's constrained and uncomfortable manner? Whilst he remained, that man was our master--that low-born spy our master! This is what we have come to. His mission was understood plainly enough by both of us. He came with a hint from the Emperor that we were very remiss in our attendance at Court; that his Imperial Majesty valued our loyalty too much to doubt its sincerity; and that it would be better, all things considered, if we were to spend the winter at Vienna. Also, I doubt not, information was required as to what our English friend was about; and when it is reported--as reported it will be--that his musical taste leads him to admire 'the march in the Honijàdy,' why we shall probably be put under 'surveillance' for six months, and be obliged to reside in the capital for a year or two, till we have got thoroughly Austrianised, when we shall return here, feeling our degradation more bitterly than ever."

"And why may I not consult my own taste in music?" I inquired; "or what is there so deadly in that beautiful march which you play with such brilliancy and spirit?"

Valèrie laughed.

"Do you not know," said she, "that the Honijàdys were nearly connected with our ancestors--that the De Rohans, originally Norman, only became Hungarian through their alliance with that princely family--a race who were never found wanting when it was necessary to assert the independence of their country? It was a Honijàdy that rolled the Turks back from the very gates of Vienna. It was a Honijàdy that first resisted the oppression of Austrian despotism. It was a Honijàdy that shed the last drop of noble blood spilt in our late struggle for independence. The finest of our operas is founded on the history of this devoted family, and the Honijàdy march is the very gathering tune of all who hate the iron yoke under which we groan. Only look at the faces of a Hungarian audience as they listen to its forbidden tones--for it must now only be played in secret--and you comprehend why, of all the airs that ever were composed, the last you should have asked for in the presence of Monsieur Stein was the march in 'The Honijàdy.'"

"I do truly regret my indiscretion," was my reply; "but if Victor is compelled to go to Vienna, I shall certainly accompany him. It is not my practice to abandon a friend, and such a friend, in his distress. Though I can be of little use, my presence may be some comfort and amusement to him; besides, the very fact of my proceeding straight into the lion's mouth will show that I have not been staying here with any ulterior views."

"You are, indeed, true as steel," replied Valèrie, with a frank, honest smile, that went straight to my heart. "We will all start together this very afternoon; and I am glad--at least it is far better--that you should not be parted from your nurse till you are quite strong again. Your presence will be a great comfort to my brother, who is----" Valèrie hesitated, blushed up to her forehead, and added, abruptly, "Mr. Egerton, have you not remarked any difference in Victor lately?"

I replied, that "I thought his spirits were less mercurial than formerly, but that probably he had the anticipation of yesterday's domiciliary visit hanging over him, which would at once account for any amount of discontent and depression."

"No, it is not that," answered Valèrie, with increasing embarrassment. "It is worse even than that. My poor Victor! I know him so well--I love him so much! and he is breaking his noble heart for one who is totally unworthy of him. If there is one being on earth that I hate and despise more than another, it is a coquette," added the girl, with flashing eyes; "a woman who is so wanting in womanly pride as to lay herself out for admiration--so false to her own nature as to despise it when it is won."

"All women like admiration," I ventured to interpose very humbly, for it struck me that the young Countess herself was in this respect no abnormal variety of her species; "and I conclude that in this, as in everything else, difficulty enhances the pleasure of success."

She darted a reproachful look at me from under her dark eyelashes, but she had her say out notwithstanding.

"No woman," she exclaimed, "has a right any more than a man, to trifle with the affections of another. Why should any one human being, for the sake of an hour's amusement, or the gratification of a mere passing vanity, inflict on another the greatest pain which mortal heart can suffer? You would be thought a monster so to torture the body; and are not the pangs of the soul infinitely worse to bear? No! I repeat it, she has deceived my brother with her silver accents and her false, false smiles; she is torturing the noblest, truest, kindest heart that ever brave man bore, and I hate her for it with a deadly, quenchless hatred!"

I never found Valèrie so charming as when she thus played the termagant. There was something so piquante in her wild, reckless manner on these occasions--in the flash of her bright eyes, the play of her chiselled features, and the attitude of her lithe, graceful figure, when she said she hated, that I could have found it in my heart to make her say she hated me rather than not hear the well-known word. I replied accordingly, rather mischievously I own--

"Do you not think, Valèrie, you are throwing away a great deal of indignation unnecessarily? Men are not so sensitive as you seem to think. We do not break our hearts very readily, I assure you; and even when we do, we mend them again nearly as good as new. Besides, the rest of you take compassion on us when we are ill-treated by one. They console us, and we accept their consolation. If the rose is not in bloom, what shall prevent us from gathering the violet? Decidedly, Countess Valèrie, we are more philosophers than you."

"You do not know Victor, if you say so," she burst forth. "You do not think as you speak. You are a dishonest reasoner, and you try to impose upon me! I tell you, you are the last man in the world to hold such opinions. You are wrong, and you know you are wrong, and you only speak thus to provoke me. I judge of others by myself. I believe that all of us are more or less alike, and I know that I could never forgive such an injury. What! to be led on day by day, to feel if not to confess a preference, to find it bit by bit eating into one's being, till at length one belongs no longer to oneself, but knows one's whole existence to be wrapped up in another, and then at the last moment to discover that one has been deceived! that one has been giving gold for silver! that the world is empty, and the heart dead for ever! I know what I should do."

"What would you do?" I asked, half amused and half alarmed at her excited gestures.

"Take a De Rohan's revenge, if I broke my heart for it the next instant," she replied: and then, as if ashamed of her enthusiasm, and the passion into which she had very unnecessarily put herself, rushed from the room.

"What a dangerous lady to have anything to do with," I remarked to Bold, as he rose from the hearthrug, with a stretch and a yawn. "Well, old dog, so you and I are bound for Vienna this afternoon; I wonder what will come of it all?"

Yet there was a certain pleasant excitement about my position, too. It was evident that Valèrie took more than a common interest in her brother's friend. Her temper had become very variable of late; and I had remarked that although, until the scene in the garden, she had never shunned my society, she had often appeared provoked at any expression of opinion which I chanced to hazard contrary to her own. She had also of late been constantly absent, distraite, and preoccupied, sometimes causelessly satirical, bitter, and even rude, in her remarks. What could it all mean? was I playing with edged tools? It might be so. Never mind, never mind, Bold; anything, anything for excitement and forgetfulness of the days gone by.

CHAPTER XXVII

GHOSTS OF THE PAST

Every one has heard of the gentleman who went to spend a fortnight at Vienna in the prime of his youth, and died there at a ripe old age, having never afterwards been beyond the walls of the town. Though the climate is allowed to be detestable, the heat of summer being aggravated by a paucity of shade and a superabundance of dust, whilst the rigorous cold of winter is enhanced by the absence of fire-places and the scarcity of fuel; though the streets are narrow and the carriages numerous, the hotels always full, and the shops very dear; though the police is strict and officious to a degree, and its regulations tyrannical in the extreme; though every house, private as well as public, must be closed at ten o'clock, and a ball-giver or lady who "receives" must have a special permission from the Government,--yet, with all these drawbacks, no city in the world, not even lively Paris itself, seems so popular with pleasure-seekers as Vienna. There is a gaiety in the very air of the town: a smiling, prosperous good-humour visible on the countenances of its inhabitants, a picturesque beauty in the houses, a splendid comfort in the shops, and a taste and magnificence in the public buildings, which form a most attractive tout ensemble.

Then you lead a pleasant, cheerful, do-nothing sort of life. You have your coffee in bed, where you can also read a novel in perfect comfort, for German beds have no curtains to intercept the morning light, or make a bonfire of the nocturnal student. You perform an elaborate toilet (are not Vienna gloves the only good fits in the world?), and you breakfast about noon in the salon of some luxurious hotel, where you may sit peradventure between an Austrian Field-Marshal, decorated with a dozen or so of orders, and a Polish beauty, who counts captives by the hundred, and breaks hearts by the score. Neither will think it necessary to avoid your neighbourhood as if you had confluent small-pox, and your eye as if you were a basilisk, simply because you have not had the advantage of their previous acquaintance. On the contrary, should the courtesies of the table or any chance occurrence lead you to hazard a remark, you will find the warrior mild and benevolent, the beauty frank and unaffected. Even should you wrap yourself up in your truly British reserve, they will salute you when they depart; and people may say what they will about the humbug and insincerity of mere politeness, but there can be no doubt that such graceful amenities help to oil the wheels of life. Then if you like to walk, have you not the Prater, with its fine old trees and magnificent red deer, and its endless range of woodland scenery, reminding you of your own Windsor forest at home; if you wish to drive, there is much beautiful country in the immediate vicinity of the town; or would you prefer a quiet chat in the friendly intimacy of a morning visit, the Viennese ladies are the most conversational and the most hospitable in the world. Then you dine at half-past five, because the opera begins at seven, and with such a band who would miss the overture? Again, you enter a brilliant, well-lighted apartment, gay with well-dressed women and Austrian officers in their handsome uniforms, all full of politeness, bonhommie, and real kindness towards a stranger. Perhaps you occupy the next table to Meyerbeer, and you are more resolved than ever not to be too late. At seven you enjoy the harmony of the blessed, at a moderate outlay that would hardly pay for your entrance half-price to a farce in a London theatre, and at ten o'clock your day is over, and you may seek your couch.

I confess I liked Vienna very much. My intimacy with Victor gave me at once an introduction into society, and my old acquaintance with the German language made me feel thoroughly at home amongst these frank and warm-hearted people. It has always appeared to me that there is more homely kindliness, more heart, and less straining after effect in German society than in any other with which I am acquainted. People are less artificial in Vienna than in Paris or in London, better satisfied to be taken for what they really are, and not what they wish to be, more tolerant of strangers, and less occupied about themselves.

I spent my days very happily. Victor had recovered his spirits, those constitutional good spirits that in the young it requires so much suffering to damp, that once lost never return again. Valèrie was charming as ever, it may be a little more reserved than formerly, but all the more kind and considerate on that account; then when I wearied of society and longed for solitude and the indulgence of my own reflections, could I not pace those glorious galleries of ancient art, and feast my eyes upon the masterpieces of Rubens or Franceschini, in the Hotel Liechtenstein and the Belvedere? My father's blood ran in my veins, and although I had always lacked execution to become a painter, keenly and dearly could I appreciate the excellencies of the divine art. Ah! those Rubenses, I can see them now! the glorious athletic proportions of the men, heroes and champions every one; the soft, sensuous beauty of the women,--none of your angels, or goddesses, or idealities, but, better still, warm, breathing, loving, palpable women, the energy of action, the majesty of repose, the drawing, the colouring, but above all the honest manly sentiment that pervades every picture. The direct intention so truthfully carried out to bid the human form and the human face express the passions and the feelings of the human heart. I could look at them for hours.

Valèrie used to laugh at me for what she called my new passion--my devotion to art; the goddess whom I had so neglected in my childhood, when with my father's assistance I might have wooed and won from her some scraps of favour and encouragement. One morning I prevailed on Victor and his sister to accompany me to the Hotel Liechtenstein, there to inspect for the hundredth time what the Countess termed my "last and fatal attachment," a Venus and Adonis of Franceschini, before which I could have spent many a long day, quenching the thirst of the eye. It was in my opinion the chef-d'oeuvre of the master; and yet, taking it as a whole, there was no doubt it was far from a faultlessly-painted picture. The Adonis appeared to me stiffly and unskilfully drawn, as he lay stretched in slumber, with his leash of hounds, undisturbed by the nymphs peering at him from behind a tree, or the fat golden-haired Cupids playing on the turf at his feet. All this part of the picture I fancied cold and hard; but it was the Venus herself that seemed to me the impersonation of womanly beauty and womanly love. Emerging from a cloud, with her blue draperies defining the rounded symmetry of her form, and leaving one exquisite foot bare, she is gazing on the prostrate hunter with an expression of unspeakable tenderness and self-abandonment, such as comes but once in a lifetime over woman's face. One drooping hand carelessly lets an arrow slip through its fingers, the other fondling a rosy Cupid on her knee, presses his cheek against her own, as though the love overflowing at her heart must needs find relief in the caresses of her child.

"It is my favourite picture of all I ever saw, except one," I remarked to my two companions as we stopped to examine its merits; I to point out its beauties, they maliciously to enumerate its defects.

"And that other?" asked Valèrie, with her quick, sharp glance.

"Is one you never saw," was my reply, as I thought of the "Dido" in the old dining-room at Beverley. "It is an Italian painting with many faults, and probably you would not admire it as much as I do."

Valèrie was not listening; her attention was fixed on a party of strangers at the other end of the room. "Tenez, ce sont des Anglais," said she, with that intuitive perception of an islander which seems born in all continental nations. I knew it before she spoke. The party stopped and turned round--two gentlemen and a lady. I only saw her; of all the faces, animate and inanimate, that looked downward with smiles, or upward with admiration, in that crowded gallery, there was but one to me, and that one, was Constance Beverley's.

I have a confused recollection of much hand-shaking and "How-do-you-do's?" and many expressions of wonder at our meeting there, of all places in the world, which did not strike me as so very extraordinary after all. And Valèrie was so enchanted to make Miss Beverley's acquaintance; she had heard so much of her from Victor, and it was so delightful they should all be together in Vienna just at this gay time; and was as affectionate and demonstrative as woman always is with her sister; and at the same time scanned her with a comprehensive glance, which seemed to take in at once the charms of mind and body, the graces of nature and art, that constituted the weapons of her competitor. For women are always more or less rivals; and with all her keenness of affections and natural softness of disposition, there is an unerring instinct implanted in the breast of every one of the gentler sex, which teaches her that her normal state is one of warfare with her kind--that "her hand is against every woman, and every woman's hand against her."

I dared not look in Miss Beverley's face as I shook her hand; I fancied her voice was harder than it used to be. I was sure her manner to me was as cold as the merest forms of politeness would admit. She took Victor's arm, however, with an air of empressement very foreign to the reserve which I remembered was so distinguishing a characteristic in her demeanour. I heard her laughing at his remarks, and recalling to him scenes in London and elsewhere, which seemed to afford great amusement to themselves alone. Even Ropsley looked graver than usual, but masked his astonishment, or whatever it was, under a great show of civility to Valèrie, who received his attentions, as she did those of every stranger, with a degree of pleasure which it was not in her nature to conceal. Sir Harry fell to my share, and I have a vague recollection of his being more than ever patronising and paternal, and full of good advice and good wishes; but the treasures of his wisdom and his little worldly sarcasms were wasted on a sadly heedless ear.

I put him into his carriage, where she was already seated. I ventured on one stolen look at the face that had been in my dreams, sleeping and waking, for many a long day. It was pale and sad; but there was a hard, fixed expression that I did not recognise, and she never allowed her eyes to meet mine.

How cold the snowy streets looked; and the dull grey sky, as we walked home to our hotel--Victor and Ropsley on either side of Valèrie, whilst I followed, soberly and silently, in the rear.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LA DAME AUX CAMELLIAS

"My dear, you must go to this ball," said Sir Harry to his daughter, as they sat over their morning chocolate in a spacious room with a small glazed stove, very handsome, very luxurious, and very cold. "You have seen everything else here; you have been a good deal in society. I have taken you everywhere, although you know how 'going out' bores me; and now you refuse to go to the best thing of the year. My dear, you must!"

"But a masked ball, papa," urged Constance. "I never went to one in my life; indeed, if you please, I had rather not."

"Nonsense, child, everybody goes; there's your friend Countess Valèrie wild about it, and Victor, and even sober Vere Egerton, but of course he goes in attendance on the young Countess--besides, Ropsley wishes it."

Constance flushed crimson, then grew white, and bit her lip. "Captain Ropsley's wishes have nothing to do with me, papa," said she, with more than her usual stateliness; "I do not see what right he has to express a wish at all."

Sir Harry rose from his chair; he was getting very feeble in his limbs, though he stoutly repudiated the notion that he grew a day older in strength and spirits. He walked twice across the room, went to his daughter's chair, and took her hand in his. She knew what was coming, and trembled all over.

"My dear child," said he, with a shaky attempt at calmness, and a nervous quivering of his under lip--for loving, obedient, devoted as she was; Sir Harry stood in awe of his daughter--"you remind me I wish to speak to you on the subject of Captain Ropsley, and his intimacy with ourselves. Constance, has it never occurred to you what all this must eventually lead to?"

She looked up at him with her clear, shining eyes, and replied--

"It has, papa, and I quite dread the end of it."

"You know, dear, how I have encouraged him," continued her father, without noticing the unpropitious remark; "you can guess my wishes without my speaking more plainly. He is an excellent fellow--clever, popular, agreeable, and good-looking. There can be no objection, of course, on your side. I think your old father has not done so badly for you after all--eh, Constance?" and Sir Harry made a feeble attempt at a laugh, which stopped, and, as it were, "went out" all of a sudden.

She looked him full in the face. Truth shone brightly in the depths of those clear eyes.

"Papa," said she, slowly and steadily, "do you really mean you wish me to--to marry Captain Ropsley?"

"You ladies jump at conclusions very fast," answered the Baronet, still striving, shakingly, to be jocose. "Rem acu tetigisti. Ha, ha! I have not forgotten my Latin, or that I was young once, my dear. You have run your needle into the very heart of the matter, you little witch! That is indeed my earnest wish and intention."

He changed at once into a tone of majestic and uncompromising decision, but he only looked at her askance, and once more left his place to amble up and down the room. She never took her eye off his face.

"And suppose I should tell you, papa, that I cannot comply with your wish; that I hate and loathe the very sight of the man whom you would make my husband; that I fear and distrust his intimacy with you more than anything in the world; that I implore you, papa, dear papa, to give up this dreadful idea; that for this once, and once only, you would listen to me, be guided by me, and, at any sacrifice, that you would break immediately and for ever with that bad, reckless, unprincipled man--what should you say then?"