My Lady's Money
Wilkie Collins




AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A YOUNG GIRL



PERSONS OF THE STORY


Women:


Lady Lydiard (Widow of Lord Lydiard)

Isabel Miller (her Adopted Daughter)

Miss Pink (of South Morden)

The Hon. Mrs. Drumblade (Sister to the Hon. A. Hardyman)


Men

The Hon. Alfred Hardyman (of the Stud Farm)

Mr. Felix Sweetsir (Lady Lydiard's Nephew)

Robert Moody (Lady Lydiard's Steward)

Mr. Troy (Lady Lydiard's Lawyer)

Old Sharon (in the Byways of Legal Bohemia)


Animal

Tommie (Lady Lydiard's Dog)




PART THE FIRST.

THE DISAPPEARANCE.



CHAPTER I.

OLD Lady Lydiard sat meditating by the fireside, with three letters
lying open on her lap.

Time had discolored the paper, and had turned the ink to a brownish hue.
The letters were all addressed to the same person--"THE RT. HON. LORD
LYDIARD"--and were all signed in the same way--"Your affectionate
cousin, James Tollmidge." Judged by these specimens of his
correspondence, Mr. Tollmidge must have possessed one great merit as a
letter-writer--the merit of brevity. He will weary nobody's patience,
if he is allowed to have a hearing. Let him, therefore, be permitted, in
his own high-flown way, to speak for himself.

_First Letter._--"My statement, as your Lordship requests, shall be
short and to the point. I was doing very well as a portrait-painter
in the country; and I had a wife and children to consider. Under
the circumstances, if I had been left to decide for myself, I should
certainly have waited until I had saved a little money before I ventured
on the serious expense of taking a house and studio at the west end of
London. Your Lordship, I positively declare, encouraged me to try the
experiment without waiting. And here I am, unknown and unemployed, a
helpless artist lost in London--with a sick wife and hungry children,
and bankruptcy staring me in the face. On whose shoulders does this
dreadful responsibility rest? On your Lordship's!"

_Second Letter._--"After a week's delay, you favor me, my Lord, with a
curt reply. I can be equally curt on my side. I indignantly deny that
I or my wife ever presumed to see your Lordship's name as a means
of recommendation to sitters without your permission. Some enemy has
slandered us. I claim as my right to know the name of that enemy."

_Third (and last) Letter._--"Another week has passed--and not a word
of answer has reached me from your Lordship. It matters little. I have
employed the interval in making inquiries, and I have at last discovered
the hostile influence which has estranged you from me. I have been, it
seems, so unfortunate as to offend Lady Lydiard (how, I cannot imagine);
and the all-powerful influence of this noble lady is now used against
the struggling artist who is united to you by the sacred ties of
kindred. Be it so. I can fight my way upwards, my Lord, as other men
have done before me. A day may yet come when the throng of carriages
waiting at the door of the fashionable portrait-painter will include her
Ladyship's vehicle, and bring me the tardy expression of her Ladyship's
regret. I refer you, my Lord Lydiard, to that day!"

Having read Mr. Tollmidge's formidable assertions relating to herself
for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end.
She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and
threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them,
among other papers that had not been arranged since Lord Lydiard's
death.

"The idiot!" said her Ladyship, thinking of Mr. Tollmidge, "I never even
heard of him, in my husband's lifetime; I never even knew that he was
really related to Lord Lydiard, till I found his letters. What is to be
done next?"

She looked, as she put that question to herself, at an open newspaper
thrown on the table, which announced the death of "that accomplished
artist Mr. Tollmidge, related, it is said, to the late well-known
connoisseur, Lord Lydiard." In the next sentence the writer of the
obituary notice deplored the destitute condition of Mrs. Tollmidge and
her children, "thrown helpless on the mercy of the world." Lady Lydiard
stood by the table with her eyes on those lines, and saw but too plainly
the direction in which they pointed--the direction of her check-book.

Turning towards the fireplace, she rang the bell. "I can do nothing in
this matter," she thought to herself, "until I know whether the report
about Mrs. Tollmidge and her family is to be depended on. Has Moody
come back?" she asked, when the servant appeared at the door. "Moody"
(otherwise her Ladyship's steward) had not come back. Lady Lydiard
dismissed the subject of the artist's widow from further consideration
until the steward returned, and gave her mind to a question of domestic
interest which lay nearer to her heart. Her favorite dog had been ailing
for some time past, and no report of him had reached her that morning.
She opened a door near the fireplace, which led, through a little
corridor hung with rare prints, to her own boudoir. "Isabel!" she called
out, "how is Tommie?"

A fresh young voice answered from behind the curtain which closed the
further end of the corridor, "No better, my Lady."

A low growl followed the fresh young voice, and added (in dog's
language), "Much worse, my Lady--much worse!"

Lady Lydiard closed the door again, with a compassionate sigh for
Tommie, and walked slowly to and fro in her spacious drawing-room,
waiting for the steward's return.

Accurately described, Lord Lydiard's widow was short and fat, and, in
the matter of age, perilously near her sixtieth birthday. But it may be
said, without paying a compliment, that she looked younger than her age
by ten years at least. Her complexion was of that delicate pink tinge
which is sometimes seen in old women with well-preserved constitutions.
Her eyes (equally well preserved) were of that hard light blue color
which wears well, and does not wash out when tried by the test of
tears. Add to this her short nose, her plump cheeks that set wrinkles at
defiance, her white hair dressed in stiff little curls; and, if a doll
could grow old, Lady Lydiard, at sixty, would have been the living
image of that doll, taking life easily on its journey downwards to the
prettiest of tombs, in a burial-ground where the myrtles and roses grew
all the year round.

These being her Ladyship's personal merits, impartial history must
acknowledge, on the list of her defects, a total want of tact and taste
in her attire. The lapse of time since Lord Lydiard's death had left her
at liberty to dress as she pleased. She arrayed her short, clumsy figure
in colors that were far too bright for a woman of her ages. Her dresses,
badly chosen as to their hues, were perhaps not badly made, but were
certainly badly worn. Morally, as well as physically, it must be said of
Lady Lydiard that her outward side was her worst side. The anomalies
of her dress were matched by the anomalies of her character. There were
moments when she felt and spoke as became a lady of rank; and there were
other moments when she felt and spoke as might have become the cook in
the kitchen. Beneath these superficial inconsistencies, the great heart,
the essentially true and generous nature of the woman, only waited the
sufficient occasion to assert themselves. In the trivial intercourse
of society she was open to ridicule on every side of her. But when a
serious emergency tried the metal of which she was really made, the
people who were loudest in laughing at her stood aghast, and wondered
what had become of the familiar companion of their everyday lives.

Her Ladyship's promenade had lasted but a little while, when a man in
black clothing presented himself noiselessly at the great door which
opened on the staircase. Lady Lydiard signed to him impatiently to enter
the room.

"I have been expecting you for some time, Moody," she said. "You look
tired. Take a chair."

The man in black bowed respectfully, and took his seat.




CHAPTER II.

ROBERT MOODY was at this time nearly forty years of age. He was a
shy, quiet, dark person, with a pale, closely-shaven face, agreeably
animated by large black eyes, set deep in their orbits. His mouth was
perhaps his best feature; he had firm, well-shaped lips, which softened
on rare occasions into a particularly winning smile. The whole look of
the man, in spite of his habitual reserve, declared him to be eminently
trustworthy. His position in Lady Lydiard's household was in no sense
of the menial sort. He acted as her almoner and secretary as well as her
steward--distributed her charities, wrote her letters on business, paid
her bills, engaged her servants, stocked her wine-cellar, was authorized
to borrow books from her library, and was served with his meals in his
own room. His parentage gave him claims to these special favors; he was
by birth entitled to rank as a gentleman. His father had failed at a
time of commercial panic as a country banker, had paid a good dividend,
and had died in exile abroad a broken-hearted man. Robert had tried
to hold his place in the world, but adverse fortune kept him down.
Undeserved disaster followed him from one employment to another, until
he abandoned the struggle, bade a last farewell to the pride of other
days, and accepted the position considerately and delicately offered to
him in Lady Lydiard's house. He had now no near relations living, and
he had never made many friends. In the intervals of occupation he led a
lonely life in his little room. It was a matter of secret wonder among
the women in the servants' hall, considering his personal advantages and
the opportunities which must surely have been thrown in his way, that
he had never tempted fortune in the character of a married man. Robert
Moody entered into no explanations on that subject. In his own sad and
quiet way he continued to lead his own sad and quiet life. The women all
failing, from the handsome housekeeper downward, to make the smallest
impression on him, consoled themselves by prophetic visions of his
future relations with the sex, and predicted vindictively that "his time
would come."

"Well," said Lady Lydiard, "and what have you done?"

"Your Ladyship seemed to be anxious about the dog," Moody answered, in
the low tone which was habitual to him. "I went first to the veterinary
surgeon. He had been called away into the country; and--"

Lady Lydiard waved away the conclusion of the sentence with her hand.
"Never mind the surgeon. We must find somebody else. Where did you go
next?"

"To your Ladyship's lawyer. Mr. Troy wished me to say that he will have
the honor of waiting on you--"

"Pass over the lawyer, Moody. I want to know about the painter's widow.
Is it true that Mrs. Tollmidge and her family are left in helpless
poverty?"

"Not quite true, my Lady. I have seen the clergyman of the parish, who
takes an interest in the case--"

Lady Lydiard interrupted her steward for the third time. "Did you
mention my name?" she asked sharply.

"Certainly not, my Lady. I followed my instructions, and described you
as a benevolent person in search of cases of real distress. It is quite
true that Mr. Tollmidge has died, leaving nothing to his family. But the
widow has a little income of seventy pounds in her own right."

"Is that enough to live on, Moody?" her Ladyship asked.

"Enough, in this case, for the widow and her daughter," Moody answered.
"The difficulty is to pay the few debts left standing, and to start the
two sons in life. They are reported to be steady lads; and the family is
much respected in the neighborhood. The clergyman proposes to get a few
influential names to begin with, and to start a subscription."

"No subscription!" protested Lady Lydiard. "Mr. Tollmidge was Lord
Lydiard's cousin; and Mrs. Tollmidge is related to his Lordship by
marriage. It would be degrading to my husband's memory to have the
begging-box sent round for his relations, no matter how distant they may
be. Cousins!" exclaimed her Ladyship, suddenly descending from the lofty
ranges of sentiment to the low. "I hate the very name of them! A person
who is near enough to me to be my relation and far enough off from me
to be my sweetheart, is a double-faced sort of person that I don't like.
Let's get back to the widow and her sons. How much do they want?"

"A subscription of five hundred pounds, my Lady, would provide for
everything--if it could only be collected."

"It _shall_ be collected, Moody! I will pay the subscription out of my
own purse." Having asserted herself in those noble terms, she spoilt the
effect of her own outburst of generosity by dropping to the sordid view
of the subject in her next sentence. "Five hundred pounds is a good bit
of money, though; isn't it, Moody?"

"It is, indeed, my Lady." Rich and generous as he knew his mistress
to be, her proposal to pay the whole subscription took the steward by
surprise. Lady Lydiard's quick perception instantly detected what was
passing in his mind.

"You don't quite understand my position in this matter," she said. "When
I read the newspaper notice of Mr. Tollmidge's death, I searched among
his Lordship's papers to see if they really were related. I discovered
some letters from Mr. Tollmidge, which showed me that he and Lord
Lydiard were cousins. One of those letters contains some very painful
statements, reflecting most untruly and unjustly on my conduct; lies,
in short," her Ladyship burst out, losing her dignity, as usual. "Lies,
Moody, for which Mr. Tollmidge deserved to be horsewhipped. I would have
done it myself if his Lordship had told me at the time. No matter; it's
useless to dwell on the thing now," she continued, ascending again to
the forms of expression which became a lady of rank. "This unhappy man
has done me a gross injustice; my motives may be seriously misjudged, if
I appear personally in communicating with his family. If I relieve them
anonymously in their present trouble, I spare them the exposure of a
public subscription, and I do what I believe his Lordship would have
done himself if he had lived. My desk is on the other table. Bring it
here, Moody; and let me return good for evil, while I'm in the humor for
it!"

Moody obeyed in silence. Lady Lydiard wrote a check.

"Take that to the banker's, and bring back a five-hundred pound note,"
she said. "I'll inclose it to the clergyman as coming from 'an unknown
friend.' And be quick about it. I am only a fallible mortal, Moody.
Don't leave me time enough to take the stingy view of five hundred
pounds."

Moody went out with the check. No delay was to be apprehended in
obtaining the money; the banking-house was hard by, in St. James's
Street. Left alone, Lady Lydiard decided on occupying her mind in the
generous direction by composing her anonymous letter to the clergyman.
She had just taken a sheet of note-paper from her desk, when a servant
appeared at the door announcing a visitor--

"Mr. Felix Sweetsir!"




CHAPTER III.

"MY nephew!" Lady Lydiard exclaimed in a tone which expressed
astonishment, but certainly not pleasure as well. "How many years is it
since you and I last met?" she asked, in her abruptly straightforward
way, as Mr. Felix Sweetsir approached her writing-table.

The visitor was not a person easily discouraged. He took Lady Lydiard's
hand, and kissed it with easy grace. A shade of irony was in his manner,
agreeably relieved by a playful flash of tenderness.

"Years, my dear aunt?" he said. "Look in your glass and you will see
that time has stood still since we met last. How wonderfully well you
wear! When shall we celebrate the appearance of your first wrinkle? I am
too old; I shall never live to see it."

He took an easychair, uninvited; placed himself close at his aunt's
side, and ran his eye over her ill-chosen dress with an air of satirical
admiration. "How perfectly successful!" he said, with his well-bred
insolence. "What a chaste gayety of color!"

"What do you want?" asked her Ladyship, not in the least softened by the
compliment.

"I want to pay my respects to my dear aunt," Felix answered, perfectly
impenetrable to his ungracious reception, and perfectly comfortable in a
spacious arm-chair.

No pen-and-ink portrait need surely be drawn of Felix Sweetsir--he is
too well-known a picture in society. The little lith e man, with his
bright, restless eyes, and his long iron-gray hair falling in curls to
his shoulders, his airy step and his cordial manner; his uncertain age,
his innumerable accomplishments, and his unbounded popularity--is he not
familiar everywhere, and welcome everywhere? How gratefully he receives,
how prodigally he repays, the cordial appreciation of an admiring
world! Every man he knows is "a charming fellow." Every woman he sees
is "sweetly pretty." What picnics he gives on the banks of the Thames in
the summer season! What a well-earned little income he derives from the
whist-table! What an inestimable actor he is at private theatricals
of all sorts (weddings included)! Did you never read Sweetsir's novel,
dashed off in the intervals of curative perspiration at a German bath?
Then you don't know what brilliant fiction really is. He has never
written a second work; he does everything, and only does it once. One
song--the despair of professional composers. One picture--just to show
how easily a gentleman can take up an art and drop it again. A
really multiform man, with all the graces and all the accomplishments
scintillating perpetually at his fingers' ends. If these poor pages
have achieved nothing else, they have done a service to persons not
in society by presenting them to Sweetsir. In his gracious company
the narrative brightens; and writer and reader (catching reflected
brilliancy) understand each other at last, thanks to Sweetsir.

"Well," said Lady Lydiard, "now you are here, what have you got to say
for yourself? You have been abroad, of course! Where?"

"Principally at Paris, my dear aunt. The only place that is fit to live
in--for this excellent reason, that the French are the only people who
know how to make the most of life. One has relations and friends in
England and every now and then one returns to London--"

"When one has spent all one's money in Paris," her Ladyship interposed.
"That's what you were going to say, isn't it?"

Felix submitted to the interruption with his delightful good-humor.

"What a bright creature you are!" he exclaimed. "What would I not give
for your flow of spirits! Yes--one does spend money in Paris, as you
say. The clubs, the stock exchange, the race-course: you try your luck
here, there, and everywhere; and you lose and win, win and lose--and you
haven't a dull day to complain of." He paused, his smile died away, he
looked inquiringly at Lady Lydiard. "What a wonderful existence
yours must be," he resumed. "The everlasting question with your needy
fellow-creatures, 'Where am I to get money?' is a question that has
never passed your lips. Enviable woman!" He paused once more--surprised
and puzzled this time. "What is the matter, my dear aunt? You seem to be
suffering under some uneasiness."

"I am suffering under your conversation," her Ladyship answered sharply.
"Money is a sore subject with me just now," she went on, with her eyes
on her nephew, watching the effect of what she said. "I have spent five
hundred pounds this morning with a scrape of my pen. And, only a
week since, I yielded to temptation and made an addition to my
picture-gallery." She looked, as she said those words, towards an
archway at the further end of the room, closed by curtains of purple
velvet. "I really tremble when I think of what that one picture cost me
before I could call it mine. A landscape by Hobbema; and the National
Gallery bidding against me. Never mind!" she concluded, consoling
herself, as usual, with considerations that were beneath her. "Hobbema
will sell at my death for a bigger price than I gave for him--that's one
comfort!" She looked again at Felix; a smile of mischievous
satisfaction began to show itself in her face. "Anything wrong with your
watch-chain?" she asked.

Felix, absently playing with his watch-chain, started as if his aunt
had suddenly awakened him. While Lady Lydiard had been speaking, his
vivacity had subsided little by little, and had left him looking so
serious and so old that his most intimate friend would hardly have known
him again. Roused by the sudden question that had been put to him, he
seemed to be casting about in his mind in search of the first excuse for
his silence that might turn up.

"I was wondering," he began, "why I miss something when I look round
this beautiful room; something familiar, you know, that I fully expected
to find here."

"Tommie?" suggested Lady Lydiard, still watching her nephew as
maliciously as ever.

"That's it!" cried Felix, seizing his excuse, and rallying his spirits.
"Why don't I hear Tommie snarling behind me; why don't I feel Tommie's
teeth in my trousers?"

The smile vanished from Lady Lydiard's face; the tone taken by her
nephew in speaking of her dog was disrespectful in the extreme.
She showed him plainly that she disapproved of it. Felix went on,
nevertheless, impenetrable to reproof of the silent sort. "Dear little
Tommie! So delightfully fat; and such an infernal temper! I don't know
whether I hate him or love him. Where is he?"

"Ill in bed," answered her ladyship, with a gravity which startled even
Felix himself. "I wish to speak to you about Tommie. You know everybody.
Do you know of a good dog-doctor? The person I have employed so far
doesn't at all satisfy me."

"Professional person?" inquired Felix.

"Yes."

"All humbugs, my dear aunt. The worse the dog gets the bigger the bill
grows, don't you see? I have got the man for you--a gentleman. Knows
more about horses and dogs than all the veterinary surgeons put
together. We met in the boat yesterday crossing the Channel. You
know him by name, of course? Lord Rotherfield's youngest son, Alfred
Hardyman."

"The owner of the stud farm? The man who has bred the famous
racehorses?" cried Lady Lydiard. "My dear Felix, how can I presume to
trouble such a great personage about my dog?"

Felix burst into his genial laugh. "Never was modesty more woefully
out of place," he rejoined. "Hardyman is dying to be presented to your
Ladyship. He has heard, like everybody, of the magnificent decorations
of this house, and he is longing to see them. His chambers are close by,
in Pall Mall. If he is at home we will have him here in five minutes.
Perhaps I had better see the dog first?"

Lady Lydiard shook her head. "Isabel says he had better not be
disturbed," she answered. "Isabel understands him better than anybody."

Felix lifted his lively eyebrows with a mixed expression of curiosity
and surprise. "Who is Isabel?"

Lady Lydiard was vexed with herself for carelessly mentioning Isabel's
name in her nephew's presence. Felix was not the sort of person whom she
was desirous of admitting to her confidence in domestic matters. "Isabel
is an addition to my household since you were here last," she answered
shortly.

"Young and pretty?" inquired Felix. "Ah! you look serious, and you
don't answer me. Young and pretty, evidently. Which may I see first, the
addition to your household or the addition to your picture-gallery? You
look at the picture-gallery--I am answered again." He rose to approach
the archway, and stopped at his first step forward. "A sweet girl is a
dreadful responsibility, aunt," he resumed, with an ironical assumption
of gravity. "Do you know, I shouldn't be surprised if Isabel, in the
long run, cost you more than Hobbema. Who is this at the door?"

The person at the door was Robert Moody, returned from the bank. Mr.
Felix Sweetsir, being near-sighted, was obliged to fit his eye-glass in
position before he could recognize the prime minister of Lady Lydiard's
household.

"Ha! our worthy Moody. How well he wears! Not a gray hair on his
head--and look at mine! What dye do you use, Moody? If he had my open
disposition he would tell. As it is, he looks unutterable things, and
holds his tongue. Ah! if I could only have held _my_ tongue--when I
was in the diplomatic service, you know--what a position I might have
occupied by this time! Don't let me interrupt you, Moody, if you have
anything to say to Lady Lydiard."

Having acknowledged Mr. Sweetsir's lively greeting by a formal bow,
and a grave look of wonder which respectfully repelled that vivacious
gentleman's flow of humor, Moody turned towards his mistress.

"Have you got the bank-note?" asked her Ladyship.

Moody laid the bank-note on the table.

"Am I in the way?" inquired Felix.

"No," said his aunt. "I have a letter to write; it won't occupy me
for more than a few minutes. You can stay here, or go and look at the
Hobbema, which you please."

Felix made a second sauntering attempt to reach the picture-gallery.
Arrived within a few steps of the entrance, he stopped again, attracted
by an open cabinet of Italian workmanship, filled with rare old china.
Being nothing if not a cultivated amateur, Mr. Sweetsir paused to pay
his passing tribute of admiration before the contents of the cabinet.
"Charming! charming!" he said to himself, with his head twisted
appreciatively a little on one side. Lady Lydiard and Moody left him in
undisturbed enjoyment of the china, and went on with the business of the
bank-note.

"Ought we to take the number of the note, in case of accident?" asked
her Ladyship.

Moody produced a slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket. "I took the
number, my Lady, at the bank."

"Very well. You keep it. While I am writing my letter, suppose you
direct the envelope. What is the clergyman's name?"

Moody mentioned the name and directed the envelope. Felix, happening to
look round at Lady Lydiard and the steward while they were both engaged
in writing, returned suddenly to the table as if he had been struck by a
new idea.

"Is there a third pen?" he asked. "Why shouldn't I write a line at once
to Hardyman, aunt? The sooner you have his opinion about Tommie the
better--don't you think so?"

Lady Lydiard pointed to the pen tray, with a smile. To show
consideration for her dog was to seize irresistibly on the high-road
to her favor. Felix set to work on his letter, in a large scrambling
handwriting, with plenty of ink and a noisy pen. "I declare we are like
clerks in an office," he remarked, in his cheery way. "All with our
noses to the paper, writing as if we lived by it! Here, Moody, let one
of the servants take this at once to Mr. Hardyman's."

The messenger was despatched. Robert returned, and waited near his
mistress, with the directed envelope in his hand. Felix sauntered back
slowly towards the picture-gallery, for the third time. In a moment more
Lady Lydiard finished her letter, and folded up the bank-note in it. She
had just taken the directed envelope from Moody, and had just placed the
letter inside it, when a scream from the inner room, in which Isabel was
nursing the sick dog, startled everybody. "My Lady! my Lady!" cried the
girl, distractedly, "Tommie is in a fit? Tommie is dying!"

Lady Lydiard dropped the unclosed envelope on the table, and ran--yes,
short as she was and fat as she was, ran--into the inner room. The two
men, left together, looked at each other.

"Moody," said Felix, in his lazily-cynical way, "do you think if you or
I were in a fit that her Ladyship would run? Bah! these are the things
that shake one's faith in human nature. I feel infernally seedy. That
cursed Channel passage--I tremble in my inmost stomach when I think of
it. Get me something, Moody."

"What shall I send you, sir?" Moody asked coldly.

"Some dry curacoa and a biscuit. And let it be brought to me in the
picture-gallery. Damn the dog! I'll go and look at Hobbema."

This time he succeeded in reaching the archway, and disappeared behind
the curtains of the picture-gallery.




CHAPTER IV.

LEFT alone in the drawing-room, Moody looked at the unfastened envelope
on the table.

Considering the value of the inclosure, might he feel justified in
wetting the gum and securing the envelope for safety's sake? After
thinking it over, Moody decided that he was not justified in meddling
with the letter. On reflection, her Ladyship might have changes to make
in it or might have a postscript to add to what she had already written.
Apart too, from these considerations, was it reasonable to act as if
Lady Lydiard's house was a hotel, perpetually open to the intrusion of
strangers? Objects worth twice five hundred pounds in the aggregate were
scattered about on the tables and in the unlocked cabinets all round
him. Moody withdrew, without further hesitation, to order the light
restorative prescribed for himself by Mr. Sweetsir.

The footman who took the curacoa into the picture gallery found Felix
recumbent on a sofa, admiring the famous Hobbema.

"Don't interrupt me," he said peevishly, catching the servant in the act
of staring at him. "Put down the bottle and go!" Forbidden to look at
Mr. Sweetsir, the man's eyes as he left the gallery turned wonderingly
towards the famous landscape. And what did he see? He saw one towering
big cloud in the sky that threatened rain, two withered mahogany-colored
trees sorely in want of rain, a muddy road greatly the worse for rain,
and a vagabond boy running home who was afraid of the rain. That was the
picture, to the footman's eye. He took a gloomy view of the state of Mr.
Sweetsir's brains on his return to the servants' hall. "A slate loose,
poor devil!" That was the footman's report of the brilliant Felix.

Immediately on the servant's departure, the silence in the
picture-gallery was broken by voices penetrating into it from the
drawing-room. Felix rose to a sitting position on the sofa. He had
recognized the voice of Alfred Hardyman saying, "Don't disturb Lady
Lydiard," and the voice of Moody answering, "I will just knock at the
door of her Ladyship's room, sir; you will find Mr. Sweetsir in the
picture-gallery."

The curtains over the archway parted, and disclosed the figure of a tall
man, with a closely cropped head set a little stiffly on his shoulders.
The immovable gravity of face and manner which every Englishman seems to
acquire who lives constantly in the society of horses, was the gravity
which this gentleman displayed as he entered the picture-gallery. He was
a finely made, sinewy man, with clearly cut, regular features. If he had
not been affected with horses on the brain he would doubtless have been
personally popular with the women. As it was, the serene and hippic
gloom of the handsome horse-breeder daunted the daughters of Eve,
and they failed to make up their minds about the exact value of him,
socially considered. Alfred Hardyman was nevertheless a remarkable man
in his way. He had been offered the customary alternatives submitted
to the younger sons of the nobility--the Church or the diplomatic
service--and had refused the one and the other. "I like horses," he
said, "and I mean to get my living out of them. Don't talk to me about
my position in the world. Talk to my eldest brother, who gets the money
and the title." Starting in life with these sensible views, and with a
small capital of five thousand pounds, Hardyman took his own place in
the sphere that was fitted for him. At the period of this narrative
he was already a rich man, and one of the greatest authorities on
horse-breeding in England. His prosperity made no change in him. He was
always the same grave, quiet, obstinately resolute man--true to the few
friends whom he admitted to his intimacy, and sincere to a fault in the
expression of his feelings among persons whom he distrusted or disliked.
As he entered the picture-gallery and paused for a moment looking at
Felix on the sofa, his large, cold, steady gray eyes rested on the
little man with an indifference that just verged on contempt. Felix, on
the other hand, sprang to his feet with alert politeness and greeted his
friend with exuberant cordiality.

"Dear old boy! This is so good of you," he began. "I feel it--I do
assure you I feel it!"

"You needn't trouble yourself to feel it," was the quietly-ungracious
answer. "Lady Lydiard brings me here. I come to see the house--and the
dog." He looked round the gallery in his gravely attentive way. "I don't
understand pictures," he remarked resignedly. "I shall go back to the
drawing-room."

After a moment's consideration, Felix followed him into the
drawing-room, with the air of a man who was determined not to be
repelled.

"Well?" asked Hardyman. "What is it?"

"About that matter?" Felix said, inquiringly.

"What matter?"

"Oh, you know. Will next week do?"

"Next week _won't_ do."

Mr. Felix Sweetsir cast one look at his friend. His friend was too
intently occupied with the decorations of the drawing-room to notice the
look.

"Will to-morrow do?" Felix resumed, after an interval.

"Yes."

"At what time?"

"Between twelve and one in the afternoon."

"Between twelve and one in the afternoon," Felix repeated. He looked
again at Hardyman and took his hat. "Make my apologies to my aunt," he
said. "You must introduce yourself to her Ladyship. I can't wait here
any longer." He walked out of the room, having deliberately returned the
contemptuous indifference of Hardyman by a similar indifference on his
own side, at parting.

Left by himself, Hardyman took a chair and glanced at the door which led
into the boudoir. The steward had knocked at that door, had disappeared
through it, and had not appeared again. How much longer was Lady
Lydiard's visitor to be left unnoticed in Lady Lydiard's house?

As the question passed through his mind the boudoir door opened. For
once in his life, Alfred Hardyman's composure deserted him. He started
to his feet, like an ordinary mortal taken completely by surprise.

Instead of Mr. Moody, instead of Lady Lydiard, there appeared in the
open doorway a young woman in a state of embarrassment, who actually
quickened the beat of Mr. Hardyman's heart the moment he set eyes on
her. Was the person who produced this amazing impression at first sight
a person of importance? Nothing of the sort. She was only "Isabel"
surnamed "Miller." Even her name had nothing in it. Only "Isabel
Miller!"

Had she any pretensions to distinction in virtue of her personal
appearance?

It is not easy to answer the question. The women (let us put the
worst judges first) had long since discovered that she wanted that
indispensable elegance of figure which is derived from slimness of
waist and length of limb. The men (who were better acquainted with the
subject) looked at her figure from their point of view; and, finding it
essentially embraceable, asked for nothing more. It might have been her
bright complexion or it might have been the bold luster of her eyes (as
the women considered it), that dazzled the lords of creation generally,
and made them all alike incompetent to discover her faults. Still,
she had compensating attractions which no severity of criticism could
dispute. Her smile, beginning at her lips, flowed brightly and instantly
over her whole face. A delicious atmosphere of health, freshness, and
good humor seemed to radiate from her wherever she went and whatever she
did. For the rest her brown hair grew low over her broad white forehead,
and was topped by a neat little lace cap with ribbons of a violet color.
A plain collar and plain cuffs encircled her smooth, round neck, and
her plump dimpled hands. Her merino dress, covering but not hiding the
charming outline of her bosom, matched the color of the cap-ribbons, and
was brightened by a white muslin apron coquettishly trimmed about the
pockets, a gift from Lady Lydiard. Blushing and smiling, she let the
door fall to behind her, and, shyly approaching the stranger, said
to him, in her small, clear voice, "If you please, sir, are you Mr.
Hardyman?"

The gravity of the great horse-breeder deserted him at her first
question. He smiled as he acknowledged that he was "Mr. Hardyman"--he
smiled as he offered her a chair.

"No, thank you, sir," she said, with a quaintly pretty inclination of
her head. "I am only sent here to make her Ladyship's apologies. She has
put the poor dear dog into a warm bath, and she can't leave him. And Mr.
Moody can't come instead of me, because I was too frightened to be of
any use, and so he had to hold the dog. That's all. We are very anxious
sir, to know if the warm bath is the right thing. Please come into the
room and tell us."

She led the way back to the door. Hardyman, naturally enough, was
slow to follow her. When a man is fascinated by the charm of youth and
beauty, he is in no hurry to transfer his attention to a sick animal
in a bath. Hardyman seized on the first excuse that he could devise
for keeping Isabel to himself--that is to say, for keeping her in the
drawing-room.

"I think I shall be better able to help you," he said, "if you will tell
me something about the dog first."

Even his accent in speaking had altered to a certain degree. The quiet,
dreary monotone in which he habitually spoke quickened a little under
his present excitement. As for Isabel, she was too deeply interested
in Tommie's welfare to suspect that she was being made the victim of a
stratagem. She left the door and returned to Hardyman with eager eyes.
"What can I tell you, sir?" she asked innocently.

Hardyman pressed his advantage without mercy.

"You can tell me what sort of dog he is?"

"Yes, sir."

"How old he is?"

"Yes, sir."

"What his name is?--what his temper is?--what his illness is? what
diseases his father and mother had?--what--"

Isabel's head began to turn giddy. "One thing at a time, sir!" she
interposed, with a gesture of entreaty. "The dog sleeps on my bed, and I
had a bad night with him, he disturbed me so, and I am afraid I am very
stupid this morning. His name is Tommie. We are obliged to call him by
it, because he won't answer to any other than the name he had when my
Lady bought him. But we spell it with an _i e_ at the end, which makes
it less vulgar than Tommy with a _y_. I am very sorry, sir--I forget
what else you wanted to know. Please to come in here and my Lady will
tell you everything."

She tried to get back to the door of the boudoir. Hardyman, feasting
his eyes on the pretty, changeful face that looked up at him with such
innocent confidence in his authority, drew her away from the door by the
one means at his disposal. He returned to his questions about Tommie.

"Wait a little, please. What sort of dog is he?"

Isabel turned back again from the door. To describe Tommie was a labor
of love. "He is the most beautiful dog in the world!" the girl began,
with kindling eyes. "He has the most exquisite white curly hair and two
light brown patches on his back--and, oh! _such_ lovely dark eyes!
They call him a Scotch terrier. When he is well his appetite is truly
wonderful--nothing comes amiss to him, sir, from pate de foie gras to
potatoes. He has his enemies, poor dear, though you wouldn't think it.
People who won't put up with being bitten by him (what shocking tempers
one does meet with, to be sure!) call him a mongrel. Isn't it a shame?
Please come in and see him, sir; my Lady will be tired of waiting."

Another journey to the door followed those words, checked instantly by a
serious objection.

"Stop a minute! You must tell me what his temper is, or I can do nothing
for him."

Isabel returned once more, feeling that it was really serious this time.
Her gravity was even more charming than her gayety. As she lifted
her face to him, with large solemn eyes, expressive of her sense of
responsibility, Hardyman would have given every horse in his stables to
have had the privilege of taking her in his arms and kissing her.

"Tommie has the temper of an angel with the people he likes," she said.
"When he bites, it generally means that he objects to strangers. He
loves my Lady, and he loves Mr. Moody, and he loves me, and--and I think
that's all. This way, sir, if you please, I am sure I heard my Lady
call."

"No," said Hardyman, in his immovably obstinate way. "Nobody called.
About this dog's temper? Doesn't he take to any strangers? What sort of
people does he bite in general?"

Isabel's pretty lips began to curl upward at the corners in a quaint
smile. Hardyman's last imbecile question had opened her eyes to the
true state of the case. Still, Tommie's future was in this strange
gentleman's hands; she felt bound to consider that. And, moreover, it
was no everyday event, in Isabel's experience, to fascinate a famous
personage, who was also a magnificent and perfectly dressed man. She ran
the risk of wasting another minute or two, and went on with the memoirs
of Tommie.

"I must own, sir," she resumed, "that he behaves a little
ungratefully--even to strangers who take an interest in him. When he
gets lost in the streets (which is very often), he sits down on the
pavement and howls till he collects a pitying crowd round him; and when
they try to read his name and address on his collar he snaps at them.
The servants generally find him and bring him back; and as soon as he
gets home he turns round on the doorstep and snaps at the servants. I
think it must be his fun. You should see him sitting up in his chair at
dinner-time, waiting to be helped, with his fore paws on the edge of the
table, like the hands of a gentleman at a public dinner making a speech.
But, oh!" cried Isabel, checking herself, with the tears in her eyes,
"how can I talk of him in this way when he is so dreadfully ill! Some of
them say it's bronchitis, and some say it's his liver. Only yesterday I
took him to the front door to give him a little air, and he stood still
on the pavement, quite stupefied. For the first time in his life, he
snapped at nobody who went by; and, oh, dear, he hadn't even the heart
to smell a lamp-post!"

Isabel had barely stated this last afflicting circumstance when
the memoirs of Tommie were suddenly cut short by the voice of Lady
Lydiard--really calling this time--from the inner room.

"Isabel! Isabel!" cried her Ladyship, "what are you about?"

Isabel ran to the door of the boudoir and threw it open. "Go in, sir!
Pray go in!" she said.

"Without you?" Hardyman asked.

"I will follow you, sir. I have something to do for her Ladyship first."

She still held the door open, and pointed entreatingly to the passage
which led to the boudoir "I shall be blamed, sir," she said, "if you
don't go in."

This statement of the case left Hardyman no alternative. He presented
himself to Lady Lydiard without another moment of delay.

Having closed the drawing-room door on him, Isabel waited a little,
absorbed in her own thoughts.

She was now perfectly well aware of the effect which she had produced
on Hardyman. Her vanity, it is not to be denied, was flattered by his
admiration--he was so grand and so tall, and he had such fine large
eyes. The girl looked prettier than ever as she stood with her head
down and her color heightened, smiling to herself. A clock on the
chimney-piece striking the half-hour roused her. She cast one look at
the glass, as she passed it, and went to the table at which Lady Lydiard
had been writing.

Methodical Mr. Moody, in submitting to be employed as bath-attendant
upon Tommie, had not forgotten the interests of his mistress. He
reminded her Ladyship that she had left her letter, with a bank-note
inclosed in it, unsealed. Absorbed in the dog, Lady Lydiard answered,
"Isabel is doing nothing, let Isabel seal it. Show Mr. Hardyman in
here," she continued, turning to Isabel, "and then seal a letter of
mine which you will find on the table." "And when you have sealed it,"
careful Mr. Moody added, "put it back on the table; I will take charge
of it when her Ladyship has done with me."

Such were the special instructions which now detained Isabel in the
drawing-room. She lighted the taper, and closed and sealed the open
envelope, without feeling curiosity enough even to look at the address.
Mr. Hardyman was the uppermost subject in her thoughts. Leaving the
sealed letter on the table, she returned to the fireplace, and studied
her own charming face attentively in the looking-glass. The time
passed--and Isabel's reflection was still the subject of Isabel's
contemplation. "He must see many beautiful ladies," she thought,
veering backward and forward between pride and humility. "I wonder what
he sees in Me?"

The clock struck the hour. Almost at the same moment the boudoir-door
opened, and Robert Moody, released at last from attendance on Tommie,
entered the drawing-room.




CHAPTER V.

"WELL?" asked Isabel eagerly, "what does Mr. Hardyman say? Does he think
he can cure Tommie?"

Moody answered a little coldly and stiffly. His dark, deeply-set eyes
rested on Isabel with an uneasy look.

"Mr. Hardyman seems to understand animals," he said. "He lifted the
dog's eyelid and looked at his eyes, and then he told us the bath was
useless."

"Go on!" said Isabel impatiently. "He did something, I suppose, besides
telling you that the bath was useless?"

"He took a knife out of his pocket, with a lancet in it."

Isabel clasped her hands with a faint cry of horror. "Oh, Mr. Moody! did
he hurt Tommie?"

"Hurt him?" Moody repeated, indignant at the interest which she felt in
the animal, and the indifference which she exhibited towards the man
(as represented by himself). "Hurt him, indeed! Mr. Hardyman bled the
brute--"

"Brute?" Isabel reiterated, with flashing eyes. "I know some people, Mr.
Moody, who really deserve to be called by that horrid word. If you can't
say 'Tommie,' when you speak of him in my presence, be so good as to say
'the dog.'"

Moody yielded with the worst possible grace. "Oh, very well! Mr.
Hardyman bled the dog, and brought him to his senses directly. I am
charged to tell you--" He stopped, as if the message which he was
instructed to deliver was in the last degree distasteful to him.

"Well, what were you charged to tell me?"

"I was to say that Mr. Hardyman will give you instructions how to treat
the dog for the future."

Isabel hastened to the door, eager to receive her instructions. Moody
stopped her before she could open it.

"You are in a great hurry to get to Mr. Hardyman," he remarked.

Isabel looked back at him in surprise. "You said just now that Mr.
Hardyman was waiting to tell me how to nurse Tommie."

"Let him wait," Moody rejoined sternly. "When I left him, he was
sufficiently occupied in expressing his favorable opinion of you to her
Ladyship."

The steward's pale face turned paler still as he said those words.
With the arrival of Isabel in Lady Lydiard's house "his time had
come"--exactly as the women in the servants' hall had predicted. At last
the impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew the
passion of love misplaced, ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman who
was young enough to be his child. He had already spoken to Isabel
more than once in terms which told his secret plainly enough. But the
smouldering fire of jealousy in the man, fanned into flame by Hardyman,
now showed itself for the first time. His looks, even more than his
words, would have warned a woman with any knowledge of the natures of
men to be careful how she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced,
Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thought
of the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr. Hardyman to speak
favorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you are
not jealous of him, Mr. Moody?"

Moody was in no humor to make allowances for the unbridled gayety of
youth and good spirits.

"I hate any man who admires you," he burst out passionately, "let him be
who he may!"

Isabel looked at her strange lover with unaffected astonishment. How
unlike Mr. Hardyman, who had treated her as a lady from first to last!
"What an odd man you are!" she said. "You can't take a joke. I'm sure I
didn't mean to offend you."

"You don't offend me--you do worse, you distress me."

Isabel's color began to rise. The merriment died out of her face; she
looked at Moody gravely. "I don't like to be accused of distressing
people when I don't deserve it," she said. "I had better leave you. Let
me by, if you please."

Having committed one error in offending her, Moody committed another in
attempting to make his peace with her. Acting under the fear that she
would really leave him, he took her roughly by the arm.

"You are always trying to get away from me," he said. "I wish I knew how
to make you like me, Isabel."

"I don't allow you to call me Isabel!" she retorted, struggling to free
herself from his hold. "Let go of my arm. You hurt me."

Moody dropped her arm with a bitter sigh. "I don't know how to deal with
you," he said simply. "Have some pity on me!"

If the steward had known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he would
never have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at the
unpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is that
all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!"
She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the
pockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! His face turned paler
and paler--he writhed under it.

"For God's sake, don't turn everything I say to you into ridicule!" he
cried. "You know I love you with all my heart and soul. Again and again
I have asked you to be my wife--and you laugh at me as if it was a joke.
I haven't deserved to be treated in that cruel way. It maddens me--I
can't endure it!"

Isabel looked down on the floor, and followed the lines in the pattern
of the carpet with the end of her smart little shoe. She could hardly
have been further away from really understanding Moody if he had spoken
in Hebrew. She was partly startled, partly puzzled, by the strong
emotions which she had unconsciously called into being. "Oh dear
me!" she said, "why can't you talk of something else? Why can't we be
friends? Excuse me for mentioning it," she went on, looking up at him
with a saucy smile, "you are old enough to be my father."

Moody's head sank on his breast. "I own it," he answered humbly. "But
there is something to be said for me. Men as old as I am have made good
husbands before now. I would devote my whole life to make you happy.
There isn't a wish you could form which I wouldn't be proud to obey. You
must not reckon me by years. My youth has not been wasted in a profligate
life; I can be truer to you and fonder of you than many a younger man.
Surely my heart is not quite unworthy of you, when it is all yours.
I have lived such a lonely, miserable life--and you might so easily
brighten it. You are kind to everybody else, Isabel. Tell me, dear, why
are you so hard on _me?_"

His voice trembled as he appealed to her in those simple words. He had
taken the right way at last to produce an impression on her. She really
felt for him. All that was true and tender in her nature began to rise
in her and take his part. Unhappily, he felt too deeply and too strongly
to be patient, and give her time. He completely misinterpreted her
silence--completely mistook the motive that made her turn aside for a
moment, to gather composure enough to speak to him. "Ah!" he burst out
bitterly, turning away on his side, "you have no heart."

She instantly resented those unjust words. At that moment they wounded
her to the quick.

"You know best," she said. "I have no doubt you are right. Remember one
thing, however, that though I have no heart, I have never encouraged
you, Mr. Moody. I have declared over and over again that I could only
be your friend. Understand that for the future, if you please. There are
plenty of nice women who will be glad to marry you, I have no doubt.
You will always have my best wishes for your welfare. Good-morning.
Her Ladyship will wonder what has become of me. Be so kind as to let me
pass."

Tortured by the passion that consumed him, Moody obstinately kept his
place between Isabel and the door. The unworthy suspicion of her, which
had been in his mind all through the interview, now forced its way
outwards to expression at last.

"No woman ever used a man as you use me without some reason for it," he
said. "You have kept your secret wonderfully well--but sooner or later
all secrets get found out. I know what is in your mind as well as you
know it yourself. You are in love with some other man."

Isabel's face flushed deeply; the defensive pride of her sex was up
in arms in an instant. She cast one disdainful look at Moody, without
troubling herself to express her contempt in words. "Stand out of my
way, sir!"--that was all she said to him.

"You are in love with some other man," he reiterated passionately. "Deny
it if you can!"

"Deny it?" she repeated, with flashing eyes. "What right have you to ask
the question? Am I not free to do as I please?"

He stood looking at her, meditating his next words with a sudden and
sinister change to self-restraint. Suppressed rage was in his rigidly
set eyes, suppressed rage was in his trembling hand as he raised it
emphatically while he spoke his next words.

"I have one thing more to say," he answered, "and then I have done. If
I am not your husband, no other man shall be. Look well to it, Isabel
Miller. If there _is_ another man between us, I can tell him this--he
shall find it no easy matter to rob me of you!"

She started, and turned pale--but it was only for a moment. The high
spirit that was in her rose brightly in her eyes, and faced him without
shrinking.

"Threats?" she said, with quiet contempt. "When you make love, Mr.
Moody, you take strange ways of doing it. My conscience is easy. You may
try to frighten me, but you will not succeed. When you have recovered
your temper I will accept your excuses." She paused, and pointed to the
table. "There is the letter that you told me to leave for you when I
had sealed it," she went on. "I suppose you have her Ladyship's orders.
Isn't it time you began to think of obeying them?"

The contemptuous composure of her tone and manner seemed to act on Moody
with crushing effect. Without a word of answer, the unfortunate steward
took up the letter from the table. Without a word of answer, he walked
mechanically to the great door which opened on the staircase--turned on
the threshold to look at Isabel--waited a moment, pale and still--and
suddenly left the room.

That silent departure, that hopeless submission, impressed Isabel in
spite of herself. The sustaining sense of injury and insult sank, as it
were, from under her the moment she was alone. He had not been gone a
minute before she began to be sorry for him once more. The interview had
taught her nothing. She was neither old enough nor experienced enough
to understand the overwhelming revolution produced in a man's character
when he feels the passion of love for the first time in the maturity of
his life. If Moody had stolen a kiss at the first opportunity, she would
have resented the liberty he had taken with her; but she would have
thoroughly understood him. His terrible earnestness, his overpowering
agitation, his abrupt violence--all these evidences of a passion that
was a mystery to himself--simply puzzled her. "I'm sure I didn't wish to
hurt his feelings" (such was the form that her reflections took, in her
present penitent frame of mind); "but why did he provoke me? It is a
shame to tell me that I love some other man--when there is no other man.
I declare I begin to hate the men, if they are all like Mr. Moody. I
wonder whether he will forgive me when he sees me again? I'm sure I'm
willing to forget and forgive on my side--especially if he won't insist
on my being fond of him because he is fond of me. Oh, dear! I wish he
would come back and shake hands. It's enough to try the patience of a
saint to be treated in this way. I wish I was ugly! The ugly ones have
a quiet time of it--the men let them be. Mr. Moody! Mr. Moody!" She went
out to the landing and called to him softly. There was no answer. He was
no longer in the house. She stood still for a moment in silent vexation.
"I'll go to Tommie!" she decided. "I'm sure he's the more agreeable
company of the two. And--oh, good gracious! there's Mr. Hardyman waiting
to give me my instructions! How do I look, I wonder?"

She consulted the glass once more--gave one or two corrective touches to
her hair and her cap--and hastened into the boudoir.




CHAPTER VI.

FOR a quarter of an hour the drawing-room remained empty. At the end of
that time the council in the boudoir broke up. Lady Lydiard led the way
back into the drawing-room, followed by Hardyman, Isabel being left to
look after the dog. Before the door closed behind him, Hardyman turned
round to reiterate his last medical directions--or, in plainer words, to
take a last look at Isabel.

"Plenty of water, Miss Isabel, for the dog to lap, and a little bread or
biscuit, if he wants something to eat. Nothing more, if you please, till
I see him to-morrow."

"Thank you, sir. I will take the greatest care--"

At that point Lady Lydiard cut short the interchange of instructions
and civilities. "Shut the door, if you please, Mr. Hardyman. I feel the
draught. Many thanks! I am really at a loss to tell you how gratefully I
feel your kindness. But for you my poor little dog might be dead by this
time."

Hardyman answered, in the quiet melancholy monotone which was habitual
with him, "Your Ladyship need feel no further anxiety about the dog.
Only be careful not to overfeed him. He will do very well under Miss
Isabel's care. By the bye, her family name is Miller--is it not? Is she
related to the Warwickshire Millers of Duxborough House?"

Lady Lydiard looked at him with an expression of satirical surprise.
"Mr. Hardyman," she said, "this makes the fourth time you have
questioned me about Isabel. You seem to take a great interest in my
little companion. Don't make any apologies, pray! You pay Isabel a
compliment, and, as I am very fond of her, I am naturally gratified when
I find her admired. At the same time," she added, with one of her abrupt
transitions of language, "I had my eye on you, and I had my eye on her,
when you were talking in the next room; and I don't mean to let you make
a fool of the girl. She is not in your line of life, and the sooner you
know it the better. You make me laugh when you ask if she is related to
gentlefolks. She is the orphan daughter of a chemist in the country. Her
relations haven't a penny to bless themselves with, except an old aunt,
who lives in a village on two or three hundred a year. I heard of the
girl by accident. When she lost her father and mother, her aunt offered
to take her. Isabel said, 'No, thank you; I will not be a burden on
a relation who has only enough for herself. A girl can earn an honest
living if she tries; and I mean to try'--that's what she said. I admired
her independence," her Ladyship proceeded, ascending again to the higher
regions of thought and expression. "My niece's marriage, just at that
time, had left me alone in this great house. I proposed to Isabel to
come to me as companion and reader for a few weeks, and to decide for
herself whether she liked the life or not. We have never been separated
since that time. I could hardly be fonder of her if she were my own
daughter; and she returns my affection with all her heart. She has
excellent qualities--prudent, cheerful, sweet-tempered; with good sense
enough to understand what her place is in the world, as distinguished
from her place in my regard. I have taken care, for her own sake, never
to leave that part of the question in any doubt. It would be cruel
kindness to deceive her as to her future position when she marries. I
shall take good care that the man who pays his addresses to her is a man
in her rank of life. I know but too well, in the case of one of my own
relatives, what miseries unequal marriages bring with them. Excuse me
for troubling you at this length on domestic matters. I am very fond
of Isabel; and a girl's head is so easily turned. Now you know what her
position really is, you will also know what limits there must be to the
expression of your interest in her. I am sure we understand each other;
and I say no more."

Hardyman listened to this long harangue with the immovable gravity which
was part of his character--except when Isabel had taken him by surprise.
When her Ladyship gave him the opportunity of speaking on his side,
he had very little to say, and that little did not suggest that he had
greatly profited by what he had heard. His mind had been full of Isabel
when Lady Lydiard began, and it remained just as full of her, in just
the same way, when Lady Lydiard had done.

"Yes," he remarked quietly, "Miss Isabel is an uncommonly nice girl, as
you say. Very pretty, and such frank, unaffected manners. I don't deny
that I feel an interest in her. The young ladies one meets in society
are not much to my taste. Miss Isabel is my taste."

Lady Lydiard's face assumed a look of blank dismay. "I am afraid I have
failed to convey my exact meaning to you," she said.

Hardyman gravely declared that he understood her perfectly. "Perfectly!"
he repeated, with his impenetrable obstinacy. "Your Ladyship exactly
expresses my opinion of Miss Isabel. Prudent, and cheerful, and
sweet-tempered, as you say--all the qualities in a woman that I admire.
With good looks, too--of course, with good looks. She will be a perfect
treasure (as you remarked just now) to the man who marries her. I may
claim to know something about it. I have twice narrowly escaped being
married myself; and, though I can't exactly explain it, I'm all the
harder to please in consequence. Miss Isabel pleases me. I think I
have said that before? Pardon me for saying it again. I'll call again
to-morrow morning and look at the dog as early as eleven o'clock, if you
will allow me. Later in the day I must be off to France to attend a sale
of horses. Glad to have been of any use to your Ladyship, I am sure.
Good-morning."

Lady Lydiard let him go, wisely resigning any further attempt to
establish an understanding between her visitor and herself.

"He is either a person of very limited intelligence when he is away from
his stables," she thought, "or he deliberately declines to take a plain
hint when it is given to him. I can't drop his acquaintance, on Tommie's
account. The only other alternative is to keep Isabel out of his way. My
good little girl shall not drift into a false position while I am living
to look after her. When Mr. Hardyman calls to-morrow she shall be out
on an errand. When he calls the next time she shall be upstairs with a
headache. And if he tries it again she shall be away at my house in the
country. If he makes any remarks on her absence--well, he will find that
I can be just as dull of understanding as he is when the occasion calls
for it."

Having arrived at this satisfactory solution of the difficulty, Lady
Lydiard became conscious of an irresistible impulse to summon Isabel to
her presence and caress her. In the nature of a warm-hearted woman,
this was only the inevitable reaction which followed the subsidence of
anxiety about the girl, after her own resolution had set that anxiety at
rest. She threw open the door and made one of her sudden appearances at
the boudoir. Even in the fervent outpouring of her affection, there was
still the inherent abruptness of manner which so strongly marked Lady
Lydiard's character in all the relations of life.

"Did I give you a kiss, this morning?" she asked, when Isabel rose to
receive her.

"Yes, my Lady," said the girl, with her charming smile.

"Come, then, and give me a kiss in return. Do you love me? Very well,
then, treat me like your mother. Never mind 'my lady' this time. Give me
a good hug!"

Something in those homely words, or something perhaps in the look that
accompanied them, touched sympathies in Isabel which seldom showed
themselves on the surface. Her smiling lips trembled, the bright tears
rose in her eyes. "You are too good to me," she murmured, with her head
on Lady Lydiard's bosom. "How can I ever love you enough in return?"

Lady Lydiard patted the pretty head that rested on her with such filial
tenderness. "There! there!" she said, "Go back and play with Tommie, my
dear. We may be as fond of each other as we like; but we mustn't cry.
God bless you! Go away--go away!"

She turned aside quickly; her own eyes were moistening, and it was part
of her character to be reluctant to let Isabel see it. "Why have I made
a fool of myself?" she wondered, as she approached the drawing-room
door. "It doesn't matter. I am all the better for it. Odd, that Mr.
Hardyman should have made me feel fonder of Isabel than ever!"

With those reflections she re-entered the drawing-room--and suddenly
checked herself with a start. "Good Heavens!" she exclaimed irritably,
"how you frightened me! Why was I not told you were here?"

Having left the drawing-room in a state of solitude, Lady Lydiard on her
return found herself suddenly confronted with a gentleman, mysteriously
planted on the hearth-rug in her absence. The new visitor may be rightly
described as a gray man. He had gray hair, eyebrows, and whiskers; he
wore a gray coat, waistcoat, and trousers, and gray gloves. For
the rest, his appearance was eminently suggestive of wealth and
respectability and, in this case, appearances were really to be trusted.
The gray man was no other than Lady Lydiard's legal adviser, Mr. Troy.

"I regret, my Lady, that I should have been so unfortunate as to startle
you," he said, with a certain underlying embarrassment in his manner.
"I had the honor of sending word by Mr. Moody that I would call at this
hour, on some matters of business connected with your Ladyship's house
property. I presumed that you expected to find me here, waiting your
pleasure--"

Thus far Lady Lydiard had listened to her legal adviser, fixing her eyes
on his face in her usually frank, straightforward way. She now stopped
him in the middle of a sentence, with a change of expression in her own
face which was undisguisedly a change to alarm.

"Don't apologize, Mr. Troy," she said. "I am to blame for forgetting
your appointment and for not keeping my nerves under proper control."
She paused for a moment and took a seat before she said her next words.
"May I ask," she resumed, "if there is something unpleasant in the
business that brings you here?"

"Nothing whatever, my Lady; mere formalities, which can wait till
to-morrow or next day, if you wish it."

Lady Lydiard's fingers drummed impatiently on the table. "You have known
me long enough, Mr. Troy, to know that I cannot endure suspense. You
_have_ something unpleasant to tell me."

The lawyer respectfully remonstrated. "Really, Lady Lydiard!--" he
began.

"It won't do, Mr. Troy! I know how you look at me on ordinary occasions,
and I see how you look at me now. You are a very clever lawyer; but,
happily for the interests that I commit to your charge, you are also a
thoroughly honest man. After twenty years' experience of you, you can't
deceive _me_. You bring me bad news. Speak at once, sir, and speak
plainly."

Mr. Troy yielded--inch by inch, as it were. "I bring news which, I fear,
may annoy your Ladyship." He paused, and advanced another inch. "It is
news which I only became acquainted with myself on entering this house."

He waited again, and made another advance. "I happened to meet your
Ladyship's steward, Mr. Moody, in the hall--"

"Where is he?" Lady Lydiard interposed angrily. "I can make _him_ speak
out, and I will. Send him here instantly."

The lawyer made a last effort to hold off the coming disclosure a little
longer. "Mr. Moody will be here directly," he said. "Mr. Moody requested
me to prepare your Ladyship--"

"Will you ring the bell, Mr. Troy, or must I?"

Moody had evidently been waiting outside while the lawyer spoke for him.
He saved Mr. Troy the trouble of ringing the bell by presenting himself
in the drawing-room. Lady Lydiard's eyes searched his face as he
approached. Her bright complexion faded suddenly. Not a word more passed
her lips. She looked, and waited.

In silence on his part, Moody laid an open sheet of paper on the table.
The paper quivered in his trembling hand.

Lady Lydiard recovered herself first. "Is that for me?" she asked.

"Yes, my Lady."

She took up the paper without an instant's hesitation. Both the men
watched her anxiously as she read it.

The handwriting was strange to her. The words were these:--

"I hereby certify that the bearer of these lines, Robert Moody by name,
has presented to me the letter with which he was charged, addressed to
myself, with the seal intact. I regret to add that there is, to say the
least of it, some mistake. The inclosure referred to by the anonymous
writer of the letter, who signs 'a friend in need,' has not reached me.
No five-hundred pound bank-note was in the letter when I opened it.
My wife was present when I broke the seal, and can certify to this
statement if necessary. Not knowing who my charitable correspondent is
(Mr. Moody being forbidden to give me any information), I can only take
this means of stating the case exactly as it stands, and hold myself at
the disposal of the writer of the letter. My private address is at the
head of the page.--Samuel Bradstock, Rector, St. Anne's, Deansbury,
London."

Lady Lydiard dropped the paper on the table. For the moment, plainly as
the Rector's statement was expressed, she appeared to be incapable of
understanding it. "What, in God's name, does this mean?" she asked.

The lawyer and the steward looked at each other. Which of the two was
entitled to speak first? Lady Lydiard gave them no time to decide.
"Moody," she said sternly, "you took charge of the letter--I look to you
for an explanation."

Moody's dark eyes flashed. He answered Lady Lydiard without caring to
conceal that he resented the tone in which she had spoken to him.

"I undertook to deliver the letter at its address," he said. "I found
it, sealed, on the table. Your Ladyship has the clergyman's written
testimony that I handed it to him with the seal unbroken. I have done my
duty; and I have no explanation to offer."

Before Lady Lydiard could speak again, Mr. Troy discreetly interfered.
He saw plainly that his experience was required to lead the
investigation in the right direction.

"Pardon me, my Lady," he said, with that happy mixture of the positive
and the polite in his manner, of which lawyers alone possess the secret.
"There is only one way of arriving at the truth in painful matters of
this sort. We must begin at the beginning. May I venture to ask your
Ladyship a question?"

Lady Lydiard felt the composing influence of Mr. Troy. "I am at your
disposal, sir," she said, quietly.

"Are you absolutely certain that you inclosed the bank-note in the
letter?" the lawyer asked.

"I certainly believe I inclosed it," Lady Lydiard answered. "But I was so
alarmed at the time by the sudden illness of my dog, that I do not feel
justified in speaking positively."

"Was anybody in the room with your Ladyship when you put the inclosure
in the letter--as you believe?"

"_I_ was in the room," said Moody. "I can swear that I saw her Ladyship
put the bank-note in the letter, and the letter in the envelope."

"And seal the envelope?" asked Mr. Troy.

"No, sir. Her Ladyship was called away into the next room to the dog,
before she could seal the envelope."

Mr. Troy addressed himself once more to Lady Lydiard. "Did your Ladyship
take the letter into the next room with you?"

"I was too much alarmed to think of it, Mr. Troy. I left it here, on the
table."

"With the envelope open?"

"Yes."

"How long were you absent in the other room?"

"Half an hour or more."

"Ha!" said Mr. Troy to himself. "This complicates it a little." He
reflected for a while, and then turned again to Moody. "Did any of the
servants know of this bank-note being in her Ladyship's possession?"

"Not one of them," Moody answered.

"Do you suspect any of the servants?"

"Certainly not, sir."

"Are there any workmen employed in the house?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know of any persons who had access to the room while Lady
Lydiard was absent from it?"

"Two visitors called, sir."

"Who were they?"

"Her Ladyship's nephew, Mr. Felix Sweetsir, and the Honorable Alfred
Hardyman."

Mr. Troy shook his head irritably. "I am not speaking of gentlemen of
high position and repute," he said. "It's absurd even to mention Mr.
Sweetsir and Mr. Hardyman. My question related to strangers who might
have obtained access to the drawing-room--people calling, with her
Ladyship's sanction, for subscriptions, for instance; or people calling
with articles of dress or ornament to be submitted to her Ladyship's
inspection."

"No such persons came to the house with my knowledge," Moody answered.

Mr. Troy suspended the investigation, and took a turn thoughtfully in
the room. The theory on which his inquiries had proceeded thus far had
failed to produce any results. His experience warned him to waste
no more time on it, and to return to the starting-point of the
investigation--in other words, to the letter. Shifting his point of
view, he turned again to Lady Lydiard, and tried his questions in a new
direction.

"Mr. Moody mentioned just now," he said, "that your Ladyship was called
into the next room before you could seal your letter. On your return to
this room, did you seal the letter?"

"I was busy with the dog," Lady Lydiard answered. "Isabel Miller was of
no use in the boudoir, and I told her to seal it for me."

Mr. Troy started. The new direction in which he was pushing his
inquiries began to look like the right direction already. "Miss Isabel
Miller," he proceeded, "has been a resident under your Ladyship's roof
for some little time, I believe?"

"For nearly two years, Mr. Troy."

"As your Ladyship's companion and reader?"

"As my adopted daughter," her Ladyship answered, with marked emphasis.

Wise Mr. Troy rightly interpreted the emphasis as a warning to him to
suspend the examination of her Ladyship, and to address to Mr. Moody the
far more serious questions which were now to come.

"Did anyone give you the letter before you left the house with it?" he
said to the steward. "Or did you take it yourself?"

"I took it myself, from the table here."

"Was it sealed?"

"Yes."

"Was anybody present when you took the letter from the table?"

"Miss Isabel was present."

"Did you find her alone in the room?"

"Yes, sir."

Lady Lydiard opened her lips to speak, and checked herself. Mr. Troy,
having cleared the ground before him, put the fatal question.

"Mr. Moody," he said, "when Miss Isabel was instructed to seal the
letter, did she know that a bank-note was inclosed in it?"

Instead of replying, Robert drew back from the lawyer with a look of
horror. Lady Lydiard started to her feet--and checked herself again, on
the point of speaking.

"Answer him, Moody," she said, putting a strong constraint on herself.

Robert answered very unwillingly. "I took the liberty of reminding
her ladyship that she had left her letter unsealed," he said. "And
I mentioned as my excuse for speaking,"--he stopped, and corrected
himself--"_I believe_ I mentioned that a valuable inclosure was in the
letter."

"You believe?" Mr. Troy repeated. "Can't you speak more positively than
that?"

"_I_ can speak positively," said Lady Lydiard, with her eyes on the
lawyer. "Moody did mention the inclosure in the letter--in Isabel
Miller's hearing as well as in mine." She paused, steadily controlling
herself. "And what of that, Mr. Troy?" she added, very quietly and
firmly.

Mr. Troy answered quietly and firmly, on his side. "I am surprised that
your Ladyship should ask the question," he said.

"I persist in repeating the question," Lady Lydiard rejoined. "I say
that Isabel Miller knew of the inclosure in my letter--and I ask, What
of that?"

"And I answer," retorted the impenetrable lawyer, "that the suspicion of
theft rests on your Ladyship's adopted daughter, and on nobody else."

"It's false!" cried Robert, with a burst of honest indignation. "I wish
to God I had never said a word to you about the loss of the bank-note!
Oh, my Lady! my Lady! don't let him distress you! What does _he_ know
about it?"

"Hush!" said Lady Lydiard. "Control yourself, and hear what he has to
say." She rested her hand on Moody's shoulder, partly to encourage
him, partly to support herself; and, fixing her eyes again on Mr. Troy,
repeated his last words, "'Suspicion rests on my adopted daughter, and
on nobody else.' Why on nobody else?"

"Is your Ladyship prepared to suspect the Rector of St. Anne's of
embezzlement, or your own relatives and equals of theft?" Mr. Troy
asked. "Does a shadow of doubt rest on the servants? Not if Mr. Moody's
evidence is to be believed. Who, to our own certain knowledge, had
access to the letter while it was unsealed? Who was alone in the room
with it? And who knew of the inclosure in it? I leave the answer to your
Ladyship."

"Isabel Miller is as incapable of an act of theft as I am. There is my
answer, Mr. Troy."

The lawyer bowed resignedly, and advanced to the door.

"Am I to take your Ladyship's generous assertion as finally disposing of
the question of the lost bank-note?" he inquired.

Lady Lydiard met the challenge without shrinking from it.

"No!" she said. "The loss of the bank-note is known out of my house.
Other persons may suspect this innocent girl as you suspect her. It is
due to Isabel's reputation--her unstained reputation, Mr. Troy!--that
she should know what has happened, and should have an opportunity of
defending herself. She is in the next room, Moody. Bring her here."

Robert's courage failed him: he trembled at the bare idea of exposing
Isabel to the terrible ordeal that awaited her. "Oh, my Lady!" he
pleaded, "think again before you tell the poor girl that she is
suspected of theft. Keep it a secret from her--the shame of it will
break her heart!"

"Keep it a secret," said Lady Lydiard, "when the Rector and the Rector's
wife both know of it! Do you think they will let the matter rest where
it is, even if I could consent to hush it up? I must write to them;
and I can't write anonymously after what has happened. Put yourself in
Isabel's place, and tell me if you would thank the person who knew you
to be innocently exposed to a disgraceful suspicion, and who concealed
it from you? Go, Moody! The longer you delay, the harder it will be."

With his head sunk on his breast, with anguish written in every line
of his face, Moody obeyed. Passing slowly down the short passage which
connected the two rooms, and still shrinking from the duty that had
been imposed on him, he paused, looking through the curtains which hung
over the entrance to the boudoir.




CHAPTER VII.

THE sight that met Moody's view wrung him to the heart.

Isabel and the dog were at play together. Among the varied
accomplishments possessed by Tommie, the capacity to take his part at a
game of hide-and-seek was one. His playfellow for the time being put a
shawl or a handkerchief over his head, so as to prevent him from seeing,
and then hid among the furniture a pocketbook, or a cigar-case, or a
purse, or anything else that happened to be at hand, leaving the dog to
find it, with his keen sense of smell to guide him. Doubly relieved
by the fit and the bleeding, Tommie's spirits had revived; and he
and Isabel had just begun their game when Moody looked into the room,
charged with his terrible errand. "You're burning, Tommie, you're
burning!" cried the girl, laughing and clapping her hands. The next
moment she happened to look round and saw Moody through the parted
curtains. His face warned her instantly that something serious had
happened. She advanced a few steps, her eyes resting on him in silent
alarm. He was himself too painfully agitated to speak. Not a word was
exchanged between Lady Lydiard and Mr. Troy in the next room. In the
complete stillness that prevailed, the dog was heard sniffing and
fidgeting about the furniture. Robert took Isabel by the hand and led
her into the drawing-room. "For God's sake, spare her, my Lady!" he
whispered. The lawyer heard him. "No," said Mr. Troy. "Be merciful, and
tell her the truth!"

He spoke to a woman who stood in no need of his advice. The inherent
nobility in Lady Lydiard's nature was aroused: her great heart offered
itself patiently to any sorrow, to any sacrifice.

Putting her arm round Isabel--half caressing her, half supporting
her--Lady Lydiard accepted the whole responsibility and told the whole
truth.

Reeling under the first shock, the poor girl recovered herself with
admirable courage. She raised her head, and eyed the lawyer without
uttering a word. In its artless consciousness of innocence the look was
nothing less than sublime. Addressing herself to Mr. Troy, Lady Lydiard
pointed to Isabel. "Do you see guilt there?" she asked.

Mr. Troy made no answer. In the melancholy experience of humanity to
which his profession condemned him, he had seen conscious guilt assume
the face of innocence, and helpless innocence admit the disguise of
guilt: the keenest observation, in either case, failing completely to
detect the truth. Lady Lydiard misinterpreted his silence as expressing
the sullen self-assertion of a heartless man. She turned from him, in
contempt, and held out her hand to Isabel.

"Mr. Troy is not satisfied yet," she said bitterly. "My love, take my
hand, and look me in the face as your equal; I know no difference of
rank at such a time as this. Before God, who hears you, are you innocent
of the theft of the bank-note?"

"Before God, who hears me," Isabel answered, "I am innocent."

Lady Lydiard looked once more at the lawyer, and waited to hear if he
believed _that_.

Mr. Troy took refuge in dumb diplomacy--he made a low bow. It might have
meant that he believed Isabel, or it might have meant that he modestly
withdrew his own opinion into the background. Lady Lydiard did not
condescend to inquire what it meant.

"The sooner we bring this painful scene to an end the better," she said.
"I shall be glad to avail myself of your professional assistance, Mr.
Troy, within certain limits. Outside of my house, I beg that you will
spare no trouble in tracing the lost money to the person who has really
stolen it. Inside of my house, I must positively request that the
disappearance of the note may never be alluded to, in any way whatever,
until your inquiries have been successful in discovering the thief. In
the meanwhile, Mrs. Tollmidge and her family must not be sufferers by
my loss: I shall pay the money again." She paused, and pressed Isabel's
hand with affectionate fervor. "My child," she said, "one last word to
you, and I have done. You remain here, with my trust in you, and my love
for you, absolutely unshaken. When you think of what has been said here
to-day, never forget that."

Isabel bent her head, and kissed the kind hand that still held hers. The
high spirit that was in her, inspired by Lady Lydiard's example, rose
equal to the dreadful situation in which she was placed.

"No, my Lady," she said calmly and sadly; "it cannot be. What this
gentleman has said of me is not to be denied--the appearances are
against me. The letter was open, and I was alone in the room with it,
and Mr. Moody told me that a valuable inclosure was inside it. Dear and
kind mistress! I am not fit to be a member of your household, I am not
worthy to live with the honest people who serve you, while my innocence
is in doubt. It is enough for me now that _you_ don't doubt it. I can
wait patiently, after that, for the day that gives me back my good name.
Oh, my Lady, don't cry about it! Pray, pray don't cry!"

Lady Lydiard's self-control failed her for the first time. Isabel's
courage had made Isabel dearer to her than ever. She sank into a chair,
and covered her face with her handkerchief. Mr. Troy turned aside
abruptly, and examined a Japanese vase, without any idea in his mind
of what he was looking at. Lady Lydiard had gravely misjudged him in
believing him to be a heartless man.

Isabel followed the lawyer, and touched him gently on the arm to rouse
his attention.

"I have one relation living, sir--an aunt--who will receive me if I go
to her," she said simply. "Is there any harm in my going? Lady Lydiard
will give you the address when you want me. Spare her Ladyship, sir, all
the pain and trouble that you can."

At last the heart that was in Mr. Troy asserted itself. "You are a
fine creature!" he said, with a burst of enthusiasm. "I agree with Lady
Lydiard--I believe you are innocent, too; and I will leave no effort
untried to find the proof of it." He turned aside again, and had another
look at the Japanese vase.

As the lawyer withdrew himself from observation, Moody approached
Isabel.

Thus far he had stood apart, watching her and listening to her in
silence. Not a look that had crossed her face, not a word that
had fallen from her, had escaped him. Unconsciously on her side,
unconsciously on his side, she now wrought on his nature with a
purifying and ennobling influence which animated it with a new life.
All that had been selfish and violent in his passion for her left him to
return no more. The immeasurable devotion which he laid at her feet, in
the days that were yet to come--the unyielding courage which cheerfully
accepted the sacrifice of himself when events demanded it at a later
period of his life--struck root in him now. Without attempting to
conceal the tears that were falling fast over his cheeks--striving
vainly to express those new thoughts in him that were beyond the reach
of words--he stood before her the truest friend and servant that ever
woman had.

"Oh, my dear! my heart is heavy for you. Take me to serve you and help
you. Her Ladyship's kindness will permit it, I am sure."

He could say no more. In those simple words the cry of his heart reached
her. "Forgive me, Robert," she answered, gratefully, "if I said anything
to pain you when we spoke together a little while since. I didn't mean
it." She gave him her hand, and looked timidly over her shoulder at Lady
Lydiard. "Let me go!" she said, in low, broken tones, "Let me go!"

Mr. Troy heard her, and stepped forward to interfere before Lady Lydiard
could speak. The man had recovered his self-control; the lawyer took his
place again on the scene.

"You must not leave us, my dear," he said to Isabel, "until I have put a
question to Mr. Moody in which you are interested. Do you happen to have
the number of the lost bank-note?" he asked, turning to the steward.

Moody produced his slip of paper with the number on it. Mr. Troy made
two copies of it before he returned the paper. One copy he put in his
pocket, the other he handed to Isabel.

"Keep it carefully," he said. "Neither you nor I know how soon it may be
of use to you."

Receiving the copy from him, she felt mechanically in her apron for her
pocketbook. She had used it, in playing with the dog, as an object to
hide from him; but she had suffered, and was still suffering, too keenly
to be capable of the effort of remembrance. Moody, eager to help her
even in the most trifling thing, guessed what had happened. "You were
playing with Tommie," he said; "is it in the next room?"

The dog heard his name pronounced through the open door. The next moment
he trotted into the drawing-room with Isabel's pocketbook in his mouth.
He was a strong, well-grown Scotch terrier of the largest size, with
bright, intelligent eyes, and a coat of thick curling white hair,
diversified by two light brown patches on his back. As he reached
the middle of the room, and looked from one to another of the persons
present, the fine sympathy of his race told him that there was trouble
among his human friends. His tail dropped; he whined softly as he
approached Isabel, and laid her pocketbook at her feet.

She knelt as she picked up the pocketbook, and raised her playfellow of
happier days to take her leave of him. As the dog put his paws on her
shoulders, returning her caress, her first tears fell. "Foolish of
me," she said, faintly, "to cry over a dog. I can't help it. Good-by,
Tommie!"

Putting him away from her gently, she walked towards the door. The dog
instantly followed. She put him away from her, for the second time, and
left him. He was not to be denied; he followed her again, and took the
skirt of her dress in his teeth, as if to hold her back. Robert forced
the dog, growling and resisting with all his might, to let go of
the dress. "Don't be rough with him," said Isabel. "Put him on her
ladyship's lap; he will be quieter there." Robert obeyed. He whispered
to Lady Lydiard as she received the dog; she seemed to be still
incapable of speaking--she bowed her head in silent assent. Robert
hurried back to Isabel before she had passed the door. "Not alone!" he
said entreatingly. "Her Ladyship permits it, Isabel. Let me see you safe
to your aunt's house."

Isabel looked at him, felt for him, and yielded.

"Yes," she answered softly; "to make amends for what I said to you when
I was thoughtless and happy!" She waited a little to compose herself
before she spoke her farewell words to Lady Lydiard. "Good-by, my Lady.
Your kindness has not been thrown away on an ungrateful girl. I love
you, and thank you, with all my heart."

Lady Lydiard rose, placing the dog on the chair as she left it. She
seemed to have grown older by years, instead of by minutes, in the short
interval that had passed since she had hidden her face from view. "I
can't bear it!" she cried, in husky, broken tones. "Isabel! Isabel! I
forbid you to leave me!"

But one person could venture to resist her. That person was Mr.
Troy--and Mr. Troy knew it.

"Control yourself," he said to her in a whisper. "The girl is doing
what is best and most becoming in her position--and is doing it with
a patience and courage wonderful to see. Sh e places herself under the
protection of her nearest relative, until her character is vindicated
and her position in your house is once more beyond a doubt. Is this a
time to throw obstacles in her way? Be worthy of yourself, Lady Lydiard
and think of the day when she will return to you without the breath of a
suspicion to rest on her!"

There was no disputing with him--he was too plainly in the right. Lady
Lydiard submitted; she concealed the torture that her own resolution
inflicted on her with an endurance which was, indeed, worthy of herself.
Taking Isabel in her arms she kissed her in a passion of sorrow and
love. "My poor dear! My own sweet girl! don't suppose that this is a
parting kiss! I shall see you again--often and often I shall see you
again at your aunt's!" At a sign from Mr. Troy, Robert took Isabel's arm
in his and led her away. Tommie, watching her from his chair, lifted
his little white muzzle as his playfellow looked back on passing the
doorway. The long, melancholy, farewell howl of the dog was the last
sound Isabel Miller heard as she left the house.





PART THE SECOND.

THE DISCOVERY.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON the day after Isabel's departure, diligent Mr. Troy set forth for the
Head Office in Whitehall to consult the police on the question of the
missing money. He had previously sent information of the robbery to
the Bank of England, and had also advertised the loss in the daily
newspapers.

The air was so pleasant, and the sun was so bright, that he determined
on proceeding to his destination on foot. He was hardly out of sight of
his own offices when he was overtaken by a friend, who was also
walking in the direction of Whitehall. This gentleman was a person
of considerable worldly wisdom and experience; he had been officially
associated with cases of striking and notorious crime, in which
Government had lent its assistance to discover and punish the criminals.
The opinion of a person in this position might be of the greatest value
to Mr. Troy, whose practice as a solicitor had thus far never brought
him into collision with thieves and mysteries. He accordingly decided,
in Isabel's interests, on confiding to his friend the nature of his
errand to the police. Concealing the name, but concealing nothing else,
he described what had happened on the previous day at Lady Lydiard's
house, and then put the question plainly to his companion.

"What would you do in my place?"

"In your place," his friend answered quietly, "I should not waste time
and money in consulting the police."

"Not consult the police!" exclaimed Mr. Troy in amazement. "Surely, I
have not made myself understood? I am going to the Head Office; and
I have got a letter of introduction to the chief inspector in the
detective department. I am afraid I omitted to mention that?"

"It doesn't make any difference," proceeded the other, as coolly as
ever. "You have asked for my advice, and I give you my advice. Tear
up your letter of introduction, and don't stir a step further in the
direction of Whitehall."

Mr. Troy began to understand. "You don't believe in the detective
police?" he said.

"Who _can_ believe in them, who reads his newspaper and remembers
what he reads?" his friend rejoined. "Fortunately for the detective
department, the public in general forgets what it reads. Go to your
club, and look at the criminal history of our own time, recorded in the
newspapers. Every crime is more or less a mystery. You will see that
the mysteries which the police discover are, almost without exception,
mysteries made penetrable by the commonest capacity, through the
extraordinary stupidity exhibited in the means taken to hide the
crime. On the other hand, let the guilty man or woman be a resolute and
intelligent person, capable of setting his (or her) wits fairly against
the wits of the police--in other words, let the mystery really _be_
a mystery--and cite me a case if you can (a really difficult and
perplexing case) in which the criminal has not escaped. Mind! I don't
charge the police with neglecting their work. No doubt they do their
best, and take the greatest pains in following the routine to which they
have been trained. It is their misfortune, not their fault, that there
is no man of superior intelligence among them--I mean no man who is
capable, in great emergencies, of placing himself above conventional
methods, and following a new way of his own. There have been such men in
the police--men naturally endowed with that faculty of mental analysis
which can decompose a mystery, resolve it into its component parts,
and find the clue at the bottom, no matter how remote from ordinary
observation it may be. But those men have died, or have retired. One
of them would have been invaluable to you in the case you have just
mentioned to me. As things are, unless you are wrong in believing in the
young lady's innocence, the person who has stolen that bank-note will
be no easy person to find. In my opinion, there is only one man now in
London who is likely to be of the slightest assistance to you--and he is
not in the police."

"Who is he?" asked Mr. Troy.

"An old rogue, who was once in your branch of the legal profession,"
the friend answered. "You may, perhaps, remember the name: they call him
'Old Sharon.'"

"What! The scoundrel who was struck off the Roll of Attorneys, years
since? Is he still alive?"

"Alive and prospering. He lives in a court or lane running out of Long
Acre, and he offers advice to persons interested in recovering missing
objects of any sort. Whether you have lost your wife, or lost your
cigar-case, Old Sharon is equally useful to you. He has an inbred
capacity for reading the riddle the right way in cases of mystery, great
or small. In short, he possesses exactly that analytical faculty to
which I alluded just now. I have his address at my office, if you think
it worth while to try him."

"Who can trust such a man?" Mr. Troy objected. "He would be sure to
deceive me."

"You are entirely mistaken. Since he was struck off the Rolls Old Sharon
has discovered that the straight way is, on the whole, the best way,
even in a man's own interests. His consultation fee is a guinea; and he
gives a signed estimate beforehand for any supplementary expenses
that may follow. I can tell you (this is, of course, strictly between
ourselves) that the authorities at my office took his advice in a
Government case that puzzled the police. We approached him, of course,
through persons who were to be trusted to represent us, without
betraying the source from which their instructions were derived; and we
found the old rascal's advice well worth paying for. It is quite likely
that he may not succeed so well in your case. Try the police, by all
means; and, if they fail, why, there is Sharon as a last resort."

This arrangement commended itself to Mr. Troy's professional caution. He
went on to Whitehall, and he tried the detective police.

They at once adopted the obvious conclusion to persons of ordinary
capacity--the conclusion that Isabel was the thief.

Acting on this conviction, the authorities sent an experienced woman
from the office to Lady Lydiard's house, to examine the poor girl's
clothes and ornaments before they were packed up and sent after her to
her aunt's. The search led to nothing. The only objects of any value
that were discovered had been presents from Lady Lydiard. No jewelers'
or milliners' bills were among the papers found in her desk. Not a sign
of secret extravagance in dress was to be seen anywhere. Defeated so
far, the police proposed next to have Isabel privately watched. There
might be a prodigal lover somewhere in the background, with ruin staring
him in the face unless he could raise five hundred pounds. Lady Lydiard
(who had only consented to the search under stress of persuasive
argument from Mr. Troy) resented this ingenious idea as an insult. She
declared that if Isabel was watched the girl should know of it instantly
from her own lips. The police listened with perfect resignation and
decorum, and politely shifted their ground. A certain suspicion (they
remarked) always rested in cases of this sort on the servants. Would
her Ladyship object to private inquiries into the characters and
proceedings of the servants? Her Ladyship instantly objected, in the
most positive terms. Thereupon the "Inspector" asked for a minute's
private conversation with Mr. Troy. "The thief is certainly a member
of Lady Lydiard's household," this functionary remarked, in his
politely-positive way. "If her Ladyship persists in refusing to let us
make the necessary inquiries, our hands are tied, and the case comes
to an end through no fault of ours. If her Ladyship changes her mind,
perhaps you will drop me a line, sir, to that effect. Good-morning."

So the experiment of consulting the police came to an untimely end.
The one result obtained was the expression of purblind opinion by the
authorities of the detective department which pointed to Isabel, or to
one of the servants, as the undiscovered thief. Thinking the matter over
in the retirement of his own office--and not forgetting his promise to
Isabel to leave no means untried of establishing her innocence--Mr. Troy
could see but one alternative left to him. He took up his pen, and wrote
to his friend at the Government office. There was nothing for it now but
to run the risk, and try Old Sharon.




CHAPTER IX.

THE next day, Mr. Troy (taking Robert Moody with him as a valuable
witness) rang the bell at the mean and dirty lodging-house in which Old
Sharon received the clients who stood in need of his advice.

They were led up stairs to a back room on the second floor of the house.
Entering the room, they discovered through a thick cloud of tobacco
smoke, a small, fat, bald-headed, dirty, old man, in an arm-chair, robed
in a tattered flannel dressing-gown, with a short pipe in his mouth, a
pug-dog on his lap, and a French novel in his hands.

"Is it business?" asked Old Sharon, speaking in a hoarse, asthmatical
voice, and fixing a pair of bright, shameless, black eyes attentively on
the two visitors.

"It _is_ business," Mr. Troy answered, looking at the old rogue who had
disgraced an honorable profession, as he might have looked at a reptile
which had just risen rampant at his feet. "What is your fee for a
consultation?"

"You give me a guinea, and I'll give you half an hour." With this reply
Old Sharon held out his unwashed hand across the rickety ink-splashed
table at which he was sitting.

Mr. Troy would not have touched him with the tips of his own fingers for
a thousand pounds. He laid the guinea on the table.

Old Sharon burst into a fierce laugh--a laugh strangely accompanied by a
frowning contraction of his eyebrows, and a frightful exhibition of the
whole inside of his mouth. "I'm not clean enough for you--eh?" he said,
with an appearance of being very much amused. "There's a dirty old man
described in this book that is a little like me." He held up his French
novel. "Have you read it? A capital story--well put together. Ah, you
haven't read it? You have got a pleasure to come. I say, do you mind
tobacco-smoke? I think faster while I smoke--that's all."

Mr. Troy's respectable hand waved a silent permission to smoke, given
under dignified protest.

"All right," said Old Sharon. "Now, get on."

He laid himself back in his chair, and puffed out his smoke, with eyes
lazily half closed, like the eyes of the pug-dog on his lap. At that
moment, indeed there was a curious resemblance between the two. They
both seemed to be preparing themselves, in the same idle way, for the
same comfortable nap.

Mr. Troy stated the circumstances under which the five hundred pound
note had disappeared, in clear and consecutive narrative. When he had
done, Old Sharon suddenly opened his eyes. The pug-dog suddenly opened
his eyes. Old Sharon looked hard at Mr. Troy. The pug looked hard at Mr.
Troy. Old Sharon spoke. The pug growled.

"I know who you are--you're a lawyer. Don't be alarmed! I never saw
you before; and I don't know your name. What I do know is a lawyer's
statement of facts when I hear it. Who's this?" Old Sharon looked
inquisitively at Moody as he put the question.

Mr. Troy introduced Moody as a competent witness, thoroughly acquainted
with the circumstances, and ready and willing to answer any questions
relating to them. Old Sharon waited a little, smoking hard and thinking
hard. "Now, then!" he burst out in his fiercely sudden way. "I'm going
to get to the root of the matter."

He leaned forward with his elbows on the table, and began his
examination of Moody. Heartily as Mr. Troy despised and disliked the old
rogue, he listened with astonishment and admiration--literally extorted
from him by the marvelous ability with which the questions were adapted
to the end in view. In a quarter of an hour Old Sharon had extracted
from the witness everything, literally everything down to the smallest
detail, that Moody could tell him. Having now, in his own phrase,
"got to the root of the matter," he relighted his pipe with a grunt of
satisfaction, and laid himself back in his old armchair.

"Well?" said Mr. Troy. "Have you formed your opinion?"

"Yes; I've formed my opinion."

"What is it?"

Instead of replying, Old Sharon winked confidentially at Mr. Troy, and
put a question on his side.

"I say! is a ten-pound note much of an object to you?"

"It depends on what the money is wanted for," answered Mr. Troy.

"Look here," said Old Sharon; "I give you an opinion for your guinea;
but, mind this, it's an opinion founded on hearsay--and you know as a
lawyer what that is worth. Venture your ten pounds--in plain English,
pay me for my time and trouble in a baffling and difficult case--and
I'll give you an opinion founded on my own experience."

"Explain yourself a little more clearly," said Mr. Troy. "What do you
guarantee to tell us if we venture the ten pounds?"

"I guarantee to name the person, or the persons, on whom the suspicion
really rests. And if you employ me after that, I guarantee (before you
pay me a halfpenny more) to prove that I am right by laying my hand on
the thief."

"Let us have the guinea opinion first," said Mr. Troy.

Old Sharon made another frightful exhibition of the whole inside of his
mouth; his laugh was louder and fiercer than ever. "I like you!" he said
to Mr. Troy, "you are so devilish fond of your money. Lord! how rich you
must be! Now listen. Here's the guinea opinion: Suspect, in this case,
the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall."

Moody, listening attentively, started, and changed color at those last
words. Mr. Troy looked thoroughly disappointed and made no attempt to
conceal it.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"All?" retorted the cynical vagabond. "You're a pretty lawyer! What more
can I say, when I don't know for certain whether the witness who has
given me my information has misled me or not? Have I spoken to the girl
and formed my own opinion? No! Have I been introduced among the servants
(as errand-boy, or to clean the boots and shoes, or what not), and
have I formed my own judgement of _them?_ No! I take your opinions for
granted, and I tell you how I should set to work myself if they
were _my_ opinions too--and that's a guinea's-worth, a devilish good
guinea's-worth to a rich man like you!"

Old Sharon's logic produced a certain effect on Mr. Troy, in spite of
himself. It was smartly put from his point of view--there was no denying
that.

"Even if I consented to your proposal," he said, "I should object to
your annoying the young lady with impertinent questions, or to your
being introduced as a spy into a respectable house."

Old Sharon doubled his dirty fists and drummed with them on the rickety
table in a comical frenzy of impatience while Mr. Troy was speaking.

"What the devil do you know about my way of doing my business?" he burst
out when the lawyer had done. "One of us two is talking like a born
idiot--and (mind this) it isn't me. Look here! Your young lady goes out
for a walk, and she meets with a dirty, shabby old beggar--I look like
a shabby old beggar already, don't I? Very good. This dirty old wretch
whines and whimpers and tells a long story, and gets sixpence out of the
girl--and knows her by that time, inside and out, as well as if he had
made her--and, mark! hasn't asked her a single ques tion, and, instead
of annoying her, has made her happy in the performance of a charitable
action. Stop a bit! I haven't done with you yet. Who blacks your boots
and shoes? Look here!" He pushed his pug-dog off his lap, dived under
the table, appeared again with an old boot and a bottle of blackening,
and set to work with tigerish activity. "I'm going out for a walk, you
know, and I may as well make myself smart." With that announcement, he
began to sing over his work--a song of sentiment, popular in England in
the early part of the present century--"She's all my fancy painted her;
she's lovely, she's divine; but her heart it is another's; and it never
can be mine! Too-ral-loo-ral-loo'. I like a love-song. Brush away! brush
away! till I see my own pretty face in the blacking. Hey! Here's a nice,
harmless, jolly old man! sings and jokes over his work, and makes the
kitchen quite cheerful. What's that you say? He's a stranger, and don't
talk to him too freely. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak in
that way of a poor old fellow with one foot in the grave. Mrs. Cook will
give him a nice bit of dinner in the scullery; and John Footman will
look out an old coat for him. And when he's heard everything he wants to
hear, and doesn't come back again the next day to his work--what do they
think of it in the servants' hall? Do they say, 'We've had a spy among
us!' Yah! you know better than that, by this time. The cheerful old
man has been run over in the street, or is down with the fever, or has
turned up his toes in the parish dead-house--that's what they say in
the servants' hall. Try me in your own kitchen, and see if your servants
take me for a spy. Come, come, Mr. Lawyer! out with your ten pounds, and
don't waste any more precious time about it!"

"I will consider and let you know," said Mr. Troy.

Old Sharon laughed more ferociously than ever, and hobbled round the
table in a great hurry to the place at which Moody was sitting. He laid
one hand on the steward's shoulder, and pointed derisively with the
other to Mr. Troy.

"I say, Mr. Silent-man! Bet you five pounds I never hear of that lawyer
again!"

Silently attentive all through the interview (except when he was
answering questions), Moody only replied in the fewest words. "I don't
bet," was all he said. He showed no resentment at Sharon's familiarity,
and he appeared to find no amusement in Sharon's extraordinary talk.
The old vagabond seemed actually to produce a serious impression on him!
When Mr. Troy set the example of rising to go, he still kept his seat,
and looked at the lawyer as if he regretted leaving the atmosphere of
tobacco smoke reeking in the dirty room.

"Have you anything to say before we go?" Mr. Troy asked.

Moody rose slowly and looked at Old Sharon. "Not just now, sir," he
replied, looking away again, after a moment's reflection.

Old Sharon interpreted Moody's look and Moody's reply from his own
peculiar point of view. He suddenly drew the steward away into a corner
of the room.

"I say!" he began, in a whisper. "Upon your solemn word of honor, you
know--are you as rich as the lawyer there?"

"Certainly not."

"Look here! It's half price to a poor man. If you feel like coming back,
on your own account--five pounds will do from _you_. There! there! Think
of it!--think of it!"

"Now, then!" said Mr. Troy, waiting for his companion, with the door
open in his hand. He looked back at Sharon when Moody joined him. The
old vagabond was settled again in his armchair, with his dog in his
lap, his pipe in his mouth, and his French novel in his hand; exhibiting
exactly the picture of frowzy comfort which he had presented when his
visitors first entered the room.

"Good-day," said Mr. Troy, with haughty condescension.

"Don't interrupt me!" rejoined Old Sharon, absorbed in his novel.
"You've had your guinea's worth. Lord! what a lovely book this is! Don't
interrupt me!"

"Impudent scoundrel!" said Mr. Troy, when he and Moody were in the
street again. "What could my friend mean by recommending him? Fancy his
expecting me to trust him with ten pounds! I consider even the guinea
completely thrown away."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said Moody, "I don't quite agree with you
there."

"What! you don't mean to tell me you understand that oracular sentence
of his--'Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly
fall.' Rubbish!"

"I don't say I understand it, sir. I only say it has set me thinking."

"Thinking of what? Do your suspicions point to the thief?"

"If you will please to excuse me, Mr. Troy, I should like to wait a
while before I answer that."

Mr. Troy suddenly stood still, and eyed his companion a little
distrustfully.

"Are you going to turn detective-policeman on your own account?" he
asked.

"There's nothing I won't turn to, and try, to help Miss Isabel in this
matter," Moody answered, firmly. "I have saved a few hundred pounds in
Lady Lydiard's service, and I am ready to spend every farthing of it, if
I can only discover the thief."

Mr. Troy walked on again. "Miss Isabel seems to have a good friend in
you," he said. He was (perhaps unconsciously) a little offended by
the independent tone in which the steward spoke, after he had himself
engaged to take the vindication of the girl's innocence into his own
hands.

"Miss Isabel has a devoted servant and slave in me!" Moody answered,
with passionate enthusiasm.

"Very creditable; I haven't a word to say against it," Mr. Troy
rejoined. "But don't forget that the young lady has other devoted
friends besides you. I am her devoted friend, for instance--I have
promised to serve her, and I mean to keep my word. You will excuse me
for adding that my experience and discretion are quite as likely to be
useful to her as your enthusiasm. I know the world well enough to be
careful in trusting strangers. It will do you no harm, Mr. Moody, to
follow my example."

Moody accepted his reproof with becoming patience and resignation.
"If you have anything to propose, sir, that will be of service to Miss
Isabel," he said, "I shall be happy if I can assist you in the humblest
capacity."

"And if not?" Mr. Troy inquired, conscious of having nothing to propose
as he asked the question.

"In that case, sir, I must take my own course, and blame nobody but
myself if it leads me astray."

Mr. Troy said no more: he parted from Moody at the next turning.

Pursuing the subject privately in his own mind, he decided on taking
the earliest opportunity of visiting Isabel at her aunt's house, and on
warning her, in her future intercourse with Moody, not to trust too much
to the steward's discretion. "I haven't a doubt," thought the lawyer,
"of what he means to do next. The infatuated fool is going back to Old
Sharon!"




CHAPTER X.

RETURNING to his office, Mr. Troy discovered, among the correspondence
that was waiting for him, a letter from the very person whose welfare
was still the uppermost subject in his mind. Isabel Miller wrote in
these terms:

"Dear Sir--My aunt, Miss Pink, is very desirous of consulting you
professionally at the earliest opportunity. Although South Morden is
within little more than half an hour's railway ride from London, Miss
Pink does not presume to ask you to visit her, being well aware of the
value of your time. Will you, therefore, be so kind as to let me know
when it will be convenient to you to receive my aunt at your office in
London? Believe me, dear sir, respectfully yours, ISABEL MILLER.
P.S.--I am further instructed to say that the regrettable event at Lady
Lydiard's house is the proposed subject of the consultation. The Lawn,
South Morden. Thursday."

Mr. Troy smiled as he read the letter. "Too formal for a young girl!" he
said to himself. "Every word of it has been dictated by Miss Pink."
He was not long in deciding what course he should take. There was a
pressing necessity for cautioning Isabel, and here was his opportunity.
He sent for his head clerk, and looked at his list of engagements for
the day. There was nothing set down in the book which the clerk was
not quite as well able to do as the master. Mr. Troy consulted his
railway-guide, ordered his cab, and caught the next train to South Mord
en.

South Morden was then (and remains to this day) one of those primitive
agricultural villages, passed over by the march of modern progress,
which are still to be found in the near neighborhood of London. Only the
slow trains stopped at the station and there was so little to do that
the station-master and his porter grew flowers on the embankment, and
trained creepers over the waiting-room window. Turning your back on the
railway, and walking along the one street of South Morden, you found
yourself in the old England of two centuries since. Gabled cottages,
with fast-closed windows; pigs and poultry in quiet possession of the
road; the venerable church surrounded by its shady burial-ground; the
grocer's shop which sold everything, and the butcher's shop which sold
nothing; the scarce inhabitants who liked a good look at a stranger, and
the unwashed children who were pictures of dirty health; the clash of
the iron-chained bucket in the public well, and the thump of the falling
nine-pins in the skittle-ground behind the public-house; the horse-pond
on the one bit of open ground, and the old elm-tree with the wooden seat
round it on the other--these were some of the objects that you saw, and
some of the noises that you heard in South Morden, as you passed from
one end of the village to the other.

About half a mile beyond the last of the old cottages, modern England
met you again under the form of a row of little villas, set up by an
adventurous London builder who had bought the land a bargain. Each villa
stood in its own little garden, and looked across a stony road at the
meadow lands and softly-rising wooded hills beyond. Each villa faced you
in the sunshine with the horrid glare of new red brick, and forced its
nonsensical name on your attention, traced in bright paint on the posts
of its entrance gate. Consulting the posts as he advanced, Mr. Troy
arrived in due course of time at the villa called The Lawn, which
derived its name apparently from a circular patch of grass in front of
the house. The gate resisting his efforts to open it, he rang the bell.

Admitted by a trim, clean, shy little maid-servant, Mr. Troy looked
about him in amazement. Turn which way he might, he found himself
silently confronted by posted and painted instructions to visitors,
which forbade him to do this, and commanded him to do that, at every
step of his progress from the gate to the house. On the side of the lawn
a label informed him that he was not to walk on the grass. On the other
side a painted hand pointed along a boundary-wall to an inscription
which warned him to go that way if he had business in the kitchen. On
the gravel walk at the foot of the housesteps words, neatly traced in
little white shells, reminded him not to "forget the scraper". On the
doorstep he was informed, in letters of lead, that he was "Welcome!"
On the mat in the passage bristly black words burst on his attention,
commanding him to "wipe his shoes." Even the hat-stand in the hall was
not allowed to speak for itself; it had "Hats and Cloaks" inscribed on
it, and it issued its directions imperatively in the matter of your wet
umbrella--"Put it here!"

Giving the trim little servant his card, Mr. Troy was introduced to a
reception-room on the lower floor. Before he had time to look round him
the door was opened again from without, and Isabel stole into the room
on tiptoe. She looked worn and anxious. When she shook hands with the
old lawyer the charming smile that he remembered so well was gone.

"Don't say you have seen me," she whispered. "I am not to come into the
room till my aunt sends for me. Tell me two things before I run away
again. How is Lady Lydiard? And have you discovered the thief?"

"Lady Lydiard was well when I last saw her; and we have not yet
succeeded in discovering the thief." Having answered the questions in
those terms, Mr. Troy decided on cautioning Isabel on the subject of
the steward while he had the chance. "One question on my side," he said,
holding her back from the door by the arm. "Do you expect Moody to visit
you here?"

"I am _sure_ he will visit me," Isabel answered warmly. "He has promised
to come here at my request. I never knew what a kind heart Robert Moody
had till this misfortune fell on me. My aunt, who is not easily taken
with strangers, respects and admires him. I can't tell you how good he
was to me on the journey here--and how kindly, how nobly, he spoke to
me when we parted." She paused, and turned her head away. The tears were
rising in her eyes. "In my situation," she said faintly, "kindness is
very keenly felt. Don't notice me, Mr. Troy."

The lawyer waited a moment to let her recover herself.

"I agree entirely, my dear, in your opinion of Moody," he said. "At the
same time, I think it right to warn you that his zeal in your service
may possibly outrun his discretion. He may feel too confidently about
penetrating the mystery of the missing money; and, unless you are on
your guard, he may raise false hopes in you when you next see him.
Listen to any advice that he may give you, by all means. But, before you
decide on being guided by his opinion, consult my older experience,
and hear what I have to say on the subject. Don't suppose that I am
attempting to make you distrust this good friend," he added, noticing
the look of uneasy surprise which Isabel fixed on him. "No such idea is
in my mind. I only warn you that Moody's eagerness to be of service to
you may mislead him. You understand me."

"Yes, sir," replied Isabel coldly; "I understand you. Please let me go
now. My aunt will be down directly; and she must not find me here." She
curtseyed with distant respect, and left the room.

"So much for trying to put two ideas together into a girl's mind!"
thought Mr. Troy, when he was alone again. "The little fool evidently
thinks I am jealous of Moody's place in her estimation. Well! I have
done my duty--and I can do no more."

He looked round the room. Not a chair was out of its place, not a speck
of dust was to be seen. The brightly-perfect polish of the table made
your eyes ache; the ornaments on it looked as if they had never been
touched by mortal hand; the piano was an object for distant admiration,
not an instrument to be played on; the carpet made Mr. Troy look
nervously at the soles of his shoes; and the sofa (protected by layers
of white crochet-work) said as plainly as if in words, "Sit on me if you
dare!" Mr. Troy retreated to a bookcase at the further end of the room.
The books fitted the shelves to such absolute perfection that he had
some difficulty in taking one of them out. When he had succeeded, he
found himself in possession of a volume of the History of England. On
the fly-leaf he encountered another written warning:--"This book belongs
to Miss Pink's Academy for Young Ladies, and is not to be removed from
the library." The date, which was added, referred to a period of ten
years since. Miss Pink now stood revealed as a retired schoolmistress,
and Mr. Troy began to understand some of the characteristic
peculiarities of that lady's establishment which had puzzled him up to
the present time.

He had just succeeded in putting the book back again when the door
opened once more, and Isabel's aunt entered the room.

If Miss Pink could, by any possible conjuncture of circumstances, have
disappeared mysteriously from her house and her friends, the police
would have found the greatest difficulty in composing the necessary
description of the missing lady. The acutest observer could have
discovered nothing that was noticeable or characteristic in her personal
appearance. The pen of the present writer portrays her in despair by a
series of negatives. She was not young, she was not old; she was neither
tall nor short, nor stout nor thin; nobody could call her features
attractive, and nobody could call them ugly; there was nothing in her
voice, her expression, her manner, or her dress that differed in any
appreciable degree from the voice, expression, manner, and dress of
five hundred thousand other single ladies of her age and position in
the world. If you had asked her to describe herself, she would have
answered, "I am a gentlewoman"; and if you had further inquired which
of her numerous accomplishments took highest rank in her own esteem, she
would have replied, "My powers of conversation." For the rest, she was
Miss Pink, of South Morden; and, when that has been said, all has been
said.

"Pray be seated, sir. We have had a beautiful day, after the
long-continued wet weather. I am told that the season is very
unfavorable for wall-fruit. May I offer you some refreshment after
your journey?" In these terms and in the smoothest of voices, Miss Pink
opened the interview.

Mr. Troy made a polite reply, and added a few strictly conventional
remarks on the beauty of the neighborhood. Not even a lawyer could sit
in Miss Pink's presence, and hear Miss Pink's conversation, without
feeling himself called upon (in the nursery phrase) to "be on his best
behavior".

"It is extremely kind of you, Mr. Troy, to favor me with this visit,"
Miss Pink resumed. "I am well aware that the time of professional
gentlemen is of especial value to them; and I will therefore ask you
to excuse me if I proceed abruptly to the subject on which I desire to
consult your experience."

Here the lady modestly smoothed out her dress over her knees, and the
lawyer made a bow. Miss Pink's highly-trained conversation had perhaps
one fault--it was not, strictly speaking, conversation at all. In its
effect on her hearers it rather resembled the contents of a fluently
conventional letter, read aloud.

"The circumstances under which my niece Isabel has left Lady Lydiard's
house," Miss Pink proceeded, "are so indescribably painful--I will go
further, I will say so deeply humiliating--that I have forbidden her to
refer to them again in my presence, or to mention them in the future
to any living creature besides myself. You are acquainted with those
circumstances, Mr. Troy; and you will understand my indignation when I
first learnt that my sister's child had been suspected of theft. I
have not the honor of being acquainted with Lady Lydiard. She is not
a Countess, I believe? Just so! Her husband was only a Baron. I am not
acquainted with Lady Lydiard; and I will not trust myself to say what I
think of her conduct to my niece."

"Pardon me, madam," Mr. Troy interposed. "Before you say any more about
Lady Lydiard, I really must beg leave to observe--"

"Pardon _me_," Miss Pink rejoined. "I never form a hasty judgment. Lady
Lydiard's conduct is beyond the reach of any defense, no matter how
ingenious it may be. You may not be aware, sir, that in receiving my
niece under her roof her Ladyship was receiving a gentlewoman by birth
as well as by education. My late lamented sister was the daughter of a
clergyman of the Church of England. I need hardly remind you that,
as such, she was a born lady. Under favoring circumstances, Isabel's
maternal grandfather might have been Archbishop of Canterbury, and have
taken precedence of the whole House of Peers, the Princes of the blood
Royal alone excepted. I am not prepared to say that my niece is equally
well connected on her father's side. My sister surprised--I will not add
shocked--us when she married a chemist. At the same time, a chemist
is not a tradesman. He is a gentleman at one end of the profession of
Medicine, and a titled physician is a gentleman at the other end. That
is all. In inviting Isabel to reside with her, Lady Lydiard, I repeat,
was bound to remember that she was associating herself with a young
gentlewoman. She has _not_ remembered this, which is one insult; and she
has suspected my niece of theft, which is another."

Miss Pink paused to take breath. Mr. Troy made a second attempt to get a
hearing.

"Will you kindly permit me, madam, to say a few words?"

"No!" said Miss Pink, asserting the most immovable obstinacy under
the blandest politeness of manner. "Your time, Mr. Troy, is really too
valuable! Not even your trained intellect can excuse conduct which is
manifestly _in_excusable on the face of it. Now you know my opinion of
Lady Lydiard, you will not be surprised to hear that I decline to trust
her Ladyship. She may, or she may not, cause the necessary inquiries
to be made for the vindication of my niece's character. In a matter so
serious as this--I may say, in