CHAPTER XVI

.

A DRAMA THAT WAS ACTED BEHIND THE SCENES.

Mr. Hillary escorted his daughter and Julia Desmond back to Twickenham upon the day following that night-scene of anguish and terror. They left Brighton rather late in the day, and arrived at the Cedars when the early winter evening had closed in upon the leafless avenues and groves about the old house. Lights were burning cheerily in the long range of lower windows, and in the vestibule and inner hall; and rare groups of stainless marble gleamed white against a background of bright hothouse flowers. Deferential servants came hurrying out as the carriage drove up; and Miss Hillary, seeing her home in all its accustomed brightness and comfort, felt a painful sense of bewilderment. It was so difficult to realize the force of that calamity which had been so lately revealed to her: it was so difficult to believe that all this splendour was so much rottenness, from which there was only one step to poverty and disgrace.

Mr. Hillary had visited his daughter’s room very early upon the morning after the terrible confidence between them, and had impressed upon her the necessity of suppressing every evidence of the knowledge that had come to her.

“I have been compelled to trust you, Maude,” he said; “and you must prove yourself worthy of my confidence. Heaven only knows how difficult it has been for me to keep the secrets of my business during three years of reverses and misfortunes such as rarely fall to the lot of a speculator. My only chance of floating over this crisis lies in the meeting with some friend who will lend me the money I want, without looking too closely into the nature of the security I have to offer. But let the state of my affairs once get wind, and all hope of retrieval would be lost. Remember this, Maude: and, if you love me, show a bright face to the world; and above all, beware of Julia Desmond. That young lady is a dangerous person, my dear; and the day may come when we shall have reason to regret having given a shelter to old Desmond’s destitute child.”

“But Julia is a dear good girl, papa; she would be very sorry for us, I am sure,” Maude pleaded, innocently.

“Julia has contrived to feather her own nest so remarkably well, that she would be very indifferent to any calamity that could come to her friends,” answered the practical man of the world, who had been by no means pleased with Miss Desmond since that young lady’s conquest of Francis Tredethlyn.

Maude kissed her father,--ah, how passionately! She clung to him, as she remembered that long feverish dream of the previous night, and the glittering something lying in the drawer; she kissed him, and promised that his secrets should be guarded more carefully than her own life.

“And the miracle _may_ be accomplished between this and the tenth of January, papa,” she said.

And then, as Lionel Hillary was about to leave his daughter’s room, she placed herself suddenly between him and the door, and turned the key in the lock. He looked at her, surprised and perplexed.

“Maude!”

“Dearest father, you have trusted me, and you have exacted a promise from me,” said Miss Hillary, with a quiet calmness that was more impressive than any vehemence of manner; “and now I want you to give me a promise, a very solemn promise, my own dear father.”

She put her hand upon his shoulder and kissed him once more, clinging to him fondly, looking tenderly upward to his pale careworn face. Then she took a bunch of keys from her pocket and held them out before him.

“You remember those keys, papa; I am going to return them to you; but I want you to kneel down with me here, now, when all that feverish excitement of last night has passed away; I want you to promise me, as you hope for mercy and happiness in a better world when this life is all gone by and done with,--I want you to promise me that you will never again under any circumstances, in any hour of trial or temptation, think of that dreadful alternative of which you thought last night. Oh, papa! remember it is such a terrible sin even to think of it; for we can never do so until we have ceased to trust in God.”

The simple words went straight to Lionel Hillary’s heart--that world-weary heart, in which there was but this one tender quality of paternal love still left. No subtle arguments of theologian or philosopher could have so deeply influenced him as his daughter’s gentle pleading. He knelt by her side, close to a little table, on which an open Testament was lying, and pressing his lips upon the sacred page swore that he would never again contemplate the sin which he had so nearly committed only a few hours before.

“It is a coward’s remedy at the best,” he said presently; and then he took his daughter in his arms and looked down at her tearful face with a mist before his own eyes, which made that bright young beauty seem blotted and dim. “My Maude, my darling, surely Heaven must have created you to be my guardian angel. I have not been a good man; I have been too much of a speculator for the last few years,--a reckless speculator, perhaps; but when the demon of commercial hazard had his grip strongest upon me, your image was always in my mind. I wanted to leave you rich, secure from all the troubles of this world. I was a poor man in my young days, Maude; and perhaps the bitterness of that early time may have taught me to set too high a value upon wealth. Fortune came to me afterwards, almost as wonderfully as it comes to a prince in a fairy tale; and some recklessness of spirit may have been engendered in me by my own successes and by the times in which I have lived.”

“But, dear papa, you need not fear poverty for my sake,” said Maude; “only trust in me, and when the time comes you shall find me ready to face it. My life has been very pleasant--too pleasant, I dare say,--I have always felt that it was so when the thought has come to me of all the people who suffer in this world. But you know how the princess in the fairy tale, who has never known a sorrow, goes out all at once into the great forest, more helpless and lonely than the poorest woodman’s daughter, and yet no harm ever comes to the princess, papa. If it will only please Heaven to spare your good name, poverty will have no sting for me; and if disgrace _should_ come, I will bear it for your sake,--I will bear it without a murmur for your sake, papa.”

She broke down just a little as she said this; she could not speak quite calmly of that most terrible loss of all--the loss of her father’s commercial honour. She remembered, very dimly, long prosy discussions that she had heard at Mr. Hillary’s dinner-table, about men who had failed, and who had failed through some dishonesty or recklessness of their own, and whose downfall had involved the hard-won fortunes of others, making a vast circle of ruin, spreading as the watery circle spreads when you drop a pebble into a tideless lake.

From this time it almost seemed as if a new life began for Maude Hillary. No more careless idling over new music, no more eager commencements of expensive fancy-work that was never to be finished! After Miss Hillary’s return to the Cedars, anyone taking the trouble to watch her closely might have perceived a wonderful alteration in her conduct--a change that was almost a transformation in her very nature. When she opened her piano now, it was for no idle trifling with fashionable difficulties, no coquetting with shakes, and skipping of arpeggios. She practised steadily, and for hours together. Might not the time be very near at hand in which she would be called upon to gird on her armour, and join the ranks of the bread-winners? She thought of herself in a dingy London street, somewhere in the dreary region between Holborn and the New Road--the region which was once a fair expanse of pleasant meadow-land. She thought of herself toiling as so many women toiled, leading the same dull life from day to day; and her courage did not fail her even before that dismal picture. It was not likely that this change in Maude Hillary could escape the notice of so observant a young lady as Miss Desmond. Julia saw and wondered, but she was far from guessing the real cause of Maude’s unusual gravity.

“I suppose she is making herself unhappy about Harcourt Lowther,” thought Miss Desmond. “These fortunate people always contrive to find _one_ crumpled leaf in their beds of roses. She is making herself miserable about that handsome, worthless soldier, and she thinks herself hardly used because she cannot play at love in a cottage, with a rich mercantile father to pay the expenses of the idyllic _ménage_.”

This was how Julia Desmond accounted for Maude’s long intervals of absent brooding, and that melancholy shadow which settled on her face whenever she fancied herself unnoticed, and for a while relaxed the heroic effort with which she tried to keep her promise, and guard her father’s secret. It was a very hard struggle. All the young idlers, the government clerks, the briefless but literary barristers, the rising artists who had narrowly escaped making palpable hits at the Royal Academy, or at a temple of art which they irreverently alluded to as the “British Inst,” all the accustomed Twickenham loungers flocked down to the Cedars to keep their Christmas holidays in the house of a gentleman whom they regarded as a sort of commercial Midas--a Moorgate Street Fortunatus, from whose inexhaustible coffers flowed the golden waters of perpetual prosperity: and Maude received all the old incense, and was fain to smile something like the old smiles upon her worshippers; while her heart ached with an unceasing pain, and a hidden dread that was like a palpable burden weighed for ever on her breast.

“Oh, if they knew--if they only knew!” she thought. “They court me because they think I am rich, perhaps; but if they only knew what an imposture all this splendour is--these lights and flowers, and grapes and pines, and Sèvres china and Venetian glass, and all this long parade of dinner! if they knew that poverty and disgrace may come to us before the new year has well begun!” Sometimes, in her utter weariness of spirit, sometimes when the social comedy seemed almost too hard to act, Miss Hillary felt suddenly tempted to turn round upon her admirers, and cry to them,--

“Why do you torment me with your hackneyed compliments? I am _not_ the daughter of a millionaire; my father is only an imprudent speculator, who is hovering on the verge of a black abyss of bankruptcy and ruin. Go and offer your worship in some solvent temple, and leave me alone with my father and his sorrows.”

This, or something akin to this, Miss Hillary was at times sorely tempted to utter. But she kept her promise. She had promised that no word or action of hers should betray the rottenness of her father’s position, and she kept a close watch upon herself. Her adorers--who were by no means so mercenary as she thought them--perceived that something was amiss with their goddess; but were far from associating anything so vulgar as the state of the money-market with the lessened lustre of her smiles.

“She’s engaged to some fellow in the army, and her father won’t let her marry him, and the fellow writes her worrying letters; Miss Desmond told me as much,” the loungers said one to another, when confiding in each other about Miss Hillary.

The brilliant Julia had taken care to let Maude’s admirers know that her heart had long been bestowed upon a remote object; but she did not go so far as to reveal the name of Miss Hillary’s chosen lover; and Francis Tredethlyn had no suspicion that Maude Hillary and the beautiful heiress of whom his master had so often spoken were one and the same person. He knew nothing of this; he only knew that Maude seemed as remote from his sphere as the distant stars that shone coldly upon him out of a steel-blue winter sky when he looked from his window at the Cedars. He spent his Christmas at the Cedars; for Mr. Hillary had been specially cordial and hospitable to him of late, and had resumed all his old graciousness of manner to Julia.

And the private theatricals, the elegant drawing-room exhibition of amateur histrionics, which Maude had planned so merrily in the autumn, were to take place on the first night of the new year--now, when the poor girl’s heart was sinking under the dull pain of that perpetual burden, that dreary terror of the disgrace which might be so near.

She had told her father that a miracle might be wrought before the 10th of January. Of what had she thought or dreamed when she held out that hope? What daring fancy had been engendered out of the excitement of the moment? There are times when a woman feels capable of becoming a social Joan of Arc, a bloodless Charlotte Corday; but then the enthusiasm, the exaltation of the moment is so apt to pass _with_ the moment. There had been a vague but desperate intention lurking in Maude Hillary’s mind when she had encouraged her father by those hopeful speeches; but the days were creeping past, the new year was close at hand, and nothing had been done. Nothing had been done; and now Miss Hillary was tormented all day long about these wonderful private theatricals, which were to surpass every drawing-room performance since the days when the unhappy daughter of the Caesars played a _soubrette_ for the delight of that taciturn king and grandfather-in-law who did not like to laugh.

All arrangements for the grand entertainment had been made before Mr. Hillary’s household removed to Brighton. The play had been selected, the characters allotted to the individuals who were supposed, or who supposed themselves, to be most fitted to play them; but not without as much shuffling and changing as the kings and queens undergo in a game of cards. The drama finally chosen was the “Lady of Lyons,” selected, no doubt, on that grand principle in accordance with which all amateurs go to work, _i. e._ because it is a play which specially requires accomplished actors in every one of its characters. Of course Maude was to be the _Pauline_. Was she not sole daughter and heiress of the master of the house, at whose expense all the business was to take place? If she had been red-haired, or hump-backed, or lame, the amateurs could scarcely have done otherwise than choose her as the representative of the lovely _Mademoiselle Deschappelles_. But as she was one of the fairest daughters ever spoiled by a wealthy merchant, she was really created for the part, as it seemed; and she had only to order her dresses and let down her sunny hair in the classic disorder of the period, and she would be the loveliest _Pauline_ that ever won the simple heart of an aspiring young gardener. But how about _Claude_? At first every one of the amateurs had desired to play _Claude_, and nothing but _Claude_. To wear that impossible velvet coat, with its lavish embroidery of gold and spangles; to snub _Beauseant_, and to patronize _Damas_; to flourish diamond snuff-boxes and rings, and filmy ruffles of point d’Alençon, which are _so_ becoming to the unhappy amateur, whose hands are apt to assume the rich purple hues of raw beef under the influence of extreme terror; to hold Miss Hillary in their arms, and cry, “Oh, rapture!” in a ponderous bass voice apparently situated somewhere in those martial jackboots, without which _Claude_ would be less than _Claude_,--to do all this seemed to the young men at the Cedars a glory and delight which would be cheaply won by the cutting of one another’s throats in a _champ clos_.

And then to what base hypocrisies these amateur actors descended! declaring to one another that, after all, _Claude_ was _not_ such a great part! Nay, indeed, was not the heroic gardener something of a spoon, liable to provoke laughter if his velvet coat failed to fit, or his humble blouse looked too much like a little boy’s pinafore? _Claude_ might be a very fine part, the amateurs argued to each other, in a regular theatre, where there were the gallery fellows to applaud the long speeches, and to stamp their hob-nailed boots in the great situations, and all that sort of thing, you know; but your drawing-room audiences are apt to laugh at strong sentiment; and, in short, for a private performance, _Damas_, or _Beauseant_, or _Glavis_ were the great parts.

So there was a good deal of chopping and changing, with vengeful feelings attendant thereupon; and at last, after almost all the privileged guests at the Cedars had made themselves hoarse in the endeavour to cultivate that bass voice and peculiar melodious gurgle so often heard on the stage, and so rarely heard off it; after innumerable tryings-on of velvet coats and cocked hats before cheval-glasses,--it transpired all at once that nobody wanted to play _Claude Melnotte_. The noblest hearts sank with a sickly terror before the thought of all Twickenham assembled in solemn conclave to listen to those long speeches with which the peasant husband endeavours to appease the natural anger of his bride. One by one the amateurs had made the awful discovery, that after all there is some touch of art, not to be learned in a day, even in the actor’s trade. One by one they had discovered that they lacked _physique_ for the leading character; and that, after three acts or so of blank verse, they were apt to become hoarse and roopy, and to break ignominiously from that melodious bass gurgle into a treble squeak. So it came about that there was no one to play _Claude_, and Miss Hillary clasped her hands in anguish, and demanded what was to become of her. All Twickenham and Hampton Court, Richmond and Ham, and all sorts of people from town invited to witness the “Lady of Lyons,” and no _Claude_ _Melnotte_! One of the government clerks, who fancied himself an embryo Buckstone, timidly suggested “Box and Cox” as a fitting substitute for the drama; but Miss Hillary turned from him with disdain. “Box and Cox!” she exclaimed, contemptuously; “why, my dresses are all ordered, and the white satin for the wedding-dress is to be five-and-twenty shillings a yard. I _must_ have some one for _Claude_.”

And then at last it was discovered that Francis Tredethlyn, who had volunteered to carry a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle, or to announce a carriage, or to perform any ignominious part in the drama for Miss Hillary’s pleasure,--it was discovered all at once that this young man was able to act. He was no untaught Macready, no ready-made Kean; but he was able to do what the best of the government clerks and literary barristers failed in doing; he was able to roll out the melodious blank verse in a big, deep voice, that never failed him to the end of the chapter. The stage is almost as great a leveller as death himself, and on that little platform at Twickenham uneducated Francis Tredethlyn was quite as much at his ease as the well-bred young men about him: more at his ease, for he was not so bent upon distinguishing himself, and was indeed only eager to oblige Miss Hillary. All this had happened before the autumn visit to Brighton; and now when Maude returned to the Cedars she found busy workmen making a perpetual hammering in the apartment which had been chosen for the scene of the entertainment. Mr. Hillary did everything in a superb manner; there was to be no pitiful contrivance of folding-doors festooned by suburban carpenters, but accomplished people from town had come down to the Cedars, and a magnificent archway of white and gold spanned the lofty billiard-room which the merchant had built at one end of his house. All the arrangements were to be perfection; the lighting of the small stage was to be a miracle of art; the grouping of the furniture had been studied by _genre_ painters of no mean pretensions. Poor Maude grew sick at heart as she heard all these details discussed. She looked back, and wondered, as she remembered what a frivolous creature she had been only a few months ago, and how this amateur dramatic performance had seemed a matter of supreme importance to her; and now she repeated the words mechanically during those long rehearsals, in the course of which the amateurs had so many angry disputations, and so cruelly victimized Mr. Hillary’s pale sherry.

At last the new year began, and at ten o’clock upon the first night in January long lines of carriages filled the avenue at the Cedars, and the road outside the lodge-gates, until the neighbourhood was luminous with flaring lamps that glared redly in the winter darkness. People came from far and wide to see Miss Hillary play _Pauline_, and to devour Mr. Gunter’s supper, though Miss Hillary’s heart might be breaking, and the merchant’s head splitting with the weight of care that pressed just now upon his overtaxed brain! But people _do_ get through, these things somehow; and Lionel Hillary walked about his drawing-rooms, looking supremely gentlemanly in a stiff cambric cravat, and uttering mild commonplaces for the edification of new arrivals.

People get through these things. Poor Maude’s head ached with a dull pain as her maid arrayed her in a dress of white silk, showered with rosebuds, and flounced and looped with lace and ribbon. Would any of this finery be paid for, Miss Hillary wondered, as she saw her splendour reflected in the cheval-glass; or was it altogether dishonesty and wickedness? She shuddered as she thought of this: but the entertainment of to-night was only a part of the grand hypocrisy which might help to float Mr. Hillary safely over the terrible crisis, and Maude determined to be true to her promise. So she smiled at Julia Desmond, when that young lady, who was to play _Madame Deschappelles_, came to exhibit herself in powder and patches, and brocade and diamonds, and with half the point-lace in South Audley Street bestowed upon her handsome person. Miss Desmond had consented with amazing graciousness to perform the matronly _rôle_ allotted to her; but she had determined to look like a marquise of the time of Louis Quinze, and she had despatched Francis Tredethlyn on half-a-dozen shopping expeditions, until that gentleman was fain to wonder how a few ribbons, brocaded fabrics, and yellow old lace flounces, could cost the big sums for which he wrote cheques in favour of the West-end tradesmen to whom Julia sent him.

The two girls admired each other’s dresses, and the maid joined in a perfect chorus of laudations with the young lady who _would_ play the _Widow Melnotte_ in a nine-guinea black moire antique, and a point-lace cap and apron, and who kept snatching a manuscript copy of her part from her pocket, and furtively gabbling its contents in dark corners. The girls admired each other, and sailed down the broad staircase together, and then went straight to a little ante-room, where half-a-dozen gentlemen, in attitudes expressive of supreme mental agony, were bending over half-a-dozen copies of the “Lady of Lyons,” and gabbling vehemently.

There is no occasion to describe this amateur performance at the Cedars, inasmuch as it very closely resembled all other amateur performances. Miss Hillary, stepping on to a stage for the first time, was, to say the least, not _quite_ a Helen Faucit, and was on the point of breaking down now and then in some of her grand speeches; but she looked so beautiful in her perplexity and confusion, that the elegant audience encouraged and supported her by the gentlest tappings of spangled fans and pattings of tight kid gloves. There were no tiresome boys in the gallery to urge her to speak up; no critical chimney-sweeps to murmur their disapproval, or hint that she had better go home and learn her part. There was only admiration for her timid loveliness, and the soft music of her tremulous voice.

Of course there were the usual number of dead pauses in the drama, technically known as “stage-waits,” the solemn silences in which the actors stood still and looked imploringly at one another, while the voices of amateur prompters--always inciting their victims to the utterance of long speeches--were painfully audible throughout the assemblage. Mr. Tredethlyn rolled out his blank verse with a sturdy courage that was worthy of all praise; and if his hands were a little red, and his blue-cotton blouse slightly suggestive of Newgate Market, he had acted with his brother soldiers in very rough amateur performances out in Van Diemen’s Land, and now and then some touch of natural fire, some little bit of tender pathos, startled the well-bred audience into applause. It may be that now and then Francis Tredethlyn found himself carried away by the spirit of the scene. Did not that romantic drama bear some likeness to his own story? This beautiful _Pauline_, this unapproachable being whose lovely image filled the peasant’s dreams, who was she but Maude Hillary herself? Perhaps if Miss Desmond had been the _Pauline_, Francis might have seemed as cold and tame as the rest of the Twickenham amateurs: but the eyes that looked at him tenderly or reproachfully to-night, were the only eyes in all the world that had the power to move him deeply. He acted well, therefore, as the dullest man will act sometimes under the influence of some factitious excitement: and when the curtain fell upon the final scene of happy and triumphant love, the audience were loud in their praise of “that handsome-looking Mr. Tredethlyn, who was just the very man for _Claude Melnotte_.”

Then there was a final parting of the curtains and a shower of bouquets, all in the orthodox style, and Maude felt perfumed petals fluttering about her as she curtseyed to her indulgent audience.

All through that last act she had surprised those well-bred spectators out of their natural languor. The _Pauline_ who had been so tame and unimpassioned in the grand cottage scene, was carried away by a strong tide of passionate feeling in that last act, where the half broken-hearted daughter pleads for her insolvent father. Sobs almost choked Miss Hillary’s utterance more than once in this scene; and when at last her head lay for a few moments on Francis Tredethlyn’s breast, the young man’s martial decorations were wet with real tears. The sight of that emotion moved him strangely, though he beheld in it nothing more than the natural excitement of a highly sensitive organization. After the little ovation that came with the close of the drama, he followed Maude Hillary into the ante-room, where the rest of the amateurs were discussing the night’s business, and flirting with the splendid Julia, and thence to an inner room, less brilliantly lighted, and quite unoccupied. Beyond this inner room there was another apartment--the study in which Francis had fallen an easy victim to the wiles of the Hibernian enchantress--and it was to this room that Maude hurried, still followed by Mr. Tredethlyn.

He had no business to follow her. He knew that very well. His business was with Julia, who had acted _Madame Deschappelles_ with wonderful spirit, and for whom the evening had been one long triumph, inasmuch as her lace, and diamonds, and brocade, and dark eyes, and white teeth, had been the subjects of universal admiration. Mr. Tredethlyn’s business lay in that brilliantly-lighted ante-chamber where Julia sat amongst the government clerks, and barristers, and grand military dandies, while an accompaniment of perpetually popping champagne-corks mingled pleasantly with the noise of their laughter. He knew this, and yet he followed Maude to the dimly-lighted study, where the red glow of the fire flickered on the bindings of the books and the frames of the pictures. He could not leave off being _Claude Melnotte_ all in a moment. The exaltation of the mimic scene was still upon him. Just now he had been carried quite away by the influence of the poetic situation; and when he flung down the sham money, which was to release the merchant’s daughter from her hated suitor, a warmer thrill of triumph had stirred his breast than had ever been engendered by the possession of Oliver Tredethlyn’s thousands.

And now he could not fall back to his old position all at once. Only a minute or two ago Maude Hillary had been sobbing on his breast,--his bride, his wife; and he half fancied he had some kind of right to sympathize with her emotion. He stopped suddenly on the threshold of the study, quite unmanned by the sight of Mr. Hillary’s daughter, half kneeling, half lying on the ground, with her face buried in the cushions of a sofa, and her hands clasped in a despairing attitude above the fair tangled hair that had so lately lain upon his breast. Her whole frame was shaken by the vehemence of her sobs; and before such a picture as this it was scarcely strange if poor country-bred Francis Tredethlyn quite forgot that he was _not_ Claude Melnotte. He bent over the prostrate girl, and laid his big fingers gently upon one of those little bejewelled hands clasped so convulsively above the fair head.

“Miss Hillary,” he exclaimed, “dear Miss Hillary, for pity’s sake, tell me what distresses you--what has happened--what is wrong--or--I--I beg your pardon--you have over-fatigued yourself, and you are hysterical; let me send for your maid.”

“Oh, no, no, no!” cried the girl, rising to her feet, and standing before him, but with her face still hidden from him, hidden by her outspread hands and her dishevelled hair.

“Shall I call Julia? she is in the room yonder.”

“Oh, no! I--I want to speak to you, Mr. Tredethlyn; stay just a little, please. Ah! it is so hard, so cruel, but the last chance! In all the world there is no one else who can save me--and my father--my poor, miserable, bankrupt father!”

Francis looked at Miss Hillary in complete bewilderment. Her father--her bankrupt father! Why, then she was still thinking of the scene that was just finished, and the commercial troubles of Monsieur Deschappelles; which character, by the way, had been enacted by a very young man of a sickly cast of countenance, and an inclination to hang his head dejectedly throughout the performance of the drama. It is a rule amongst amateurs to assign the elderly and ineligible characters to the youngest and meekest members of the company; whereby Monsieur Deschappelles is usually represented as a young person of some nineteen summers, with flour in his hair, dirty streaks, supposed to represent wrinkles, upon his face, and a tendency to squeakiness in his voice.

“I am sure you are over-fatigued, over-excited by the play,” urged Francis; “do let me call Julia.”

“No!” cried Miss Hillary, dropping her hands from before her face. “Oh, Mr. Tredethlyn,” she exclaimed, almost passionately, “can’t you understand--can’t you see that I am in earnest? Do you think that scene just now would have made me cry as it did, if it had not reminded me of my own sorrow? Mr. Tredethlyn--I--I know you are a good man, that you would not be slow to do a kindness for anyone who needed your help; I know that; and I--I thought I should have courage to speak to you, but now the words won’t come--I----”

Her dry lips moved, but made no sound. She clasped her hands once more before her face. Heaven knows how desperate was the effort that she made. It is not such an easy matter to borrow twenty thousand pounds; even though the borrower may be young and beautiful, and accustomed to perpetual adoration.

“Miss Hillary, you speak of help--needing help--from _me_. For mercy’s sake, tell me how I can help you. Do you think there is anything upon earth that would give me such pride and delight as to be of service to you?”

The enthusiasm of the moment lighted up Francis Tredethlyn’s countenance like a sudden glow of summer sunshine. Maude uncovered her face and looked at him, and saw at once that her cause was gained; her father’s preserver was found. She had not counted in vain upon Francis Tredethlyn.

“I want you to lend papa twenty thousand pounds,” she said; “I know that he will repay you honourably. He has some difficulties--terrible difficulties in his business,--but the loan of twenty thousand pounds would smooth them all away. I know that you are very, very rich, Mr. Tredethlyn, and that you can afford to lend such a sum of money, or I should never have dared----”

“You would not have dared, Miss Hillary? Oh, can you doubt that I would give the last sixpence I have in the world, the last drop of my heart’s-blood, to save you from one pang? Twenty thousand pounds! Take forty--fifty thousand--the utmost farthing of my fortune, if you will; squander it--throw it into the river yonder, if the waste of it can give you a moment’s pleasure. Oh, you don’t know, you don’t know how I love you!”

He had been acting _Claude Melnotte_, and the intoxication of the sweet sentimental poetry was strong upon him; beyond which it is just possible that he may have taken a little more sparkling Moselle in the course of his dramatic exertions than can safely be taken by a young man of sanguine temperament. All prudence, all power of reticence, left him in that moment, and he dropped on his knees at Miss Hillary’s feet, like a lover in a stage-play. She was so beautiful--she seemed so far away from him even now, when her distress had brought her a little nearer than of old,--that this attitude of adoration seemed quite natural to him, almost the only attitude in which he dared address her.

“Oh, if you knew how I love you,” he cried, passionately,--“if you could only believe or understand! But I am so ignorant--so unworthy--so far beneath you!”

Miss Hillary drew herself away from him with a gesture of mingled surprise and disgust.

“You dare to talk to me like this, and you are the affianced husband of my friend!” she cried. “O, Mr. Tredethlyn, you take a very mean advantage of my father’s difficulties and my distress.”

“Yes!” answered Julia Desmond from the doorway. She had been standing on the threshold for the last few moments, watching this interview behind the scenes. “Yes! it is altogether mean and shameful, Maude Hillary. You have taken a noble course, I think, when you fling your father’s debts upon the man who was to be my husband, and coolly ask him for the trifling loan of twenty thousand pounds.” She laughed bitterly as she named the sum. “Twenty thousand pounds--and you ask your friend’s lover to turn money-lender; and you bring your tears and hysterical sobs, and a thousand pretty amateur dramatic devices to bear, in order to obtain what you want, and all in the most childish innocence, of course. And then you turn upon the man whom you have lured to your feet by a hundred tricks and artifices, and make a charming show of surprise and indignation. Ah! it is shameful, Maude Hillary--mean and cruel and false; and bitter shame shall come to you for this night’s work.”

The Irishwoman was superb in her indignation. Those flashing eyes and glittering teeth, hereditary in the race of the Desmonds, seemed to light her face with an infernal kind of splendour: such a splendour had many a fated victim seen upon the countenance of the duelling Irish colonel, just before he fell prone on some lonely field beside the Shannon. It was against Maude that the fuller fury of Julia Desmond’s rage was directed,--against Maude, of whom she had always been jealous, in whom she had continually found a triumphant rival. It was only after that outburst of jealous rage that Julia turned upon her recreant lover. Francis had risen from his knees, and stood a little way from the two girls, with a dogged moodiness upon his face: he was sobered by Maude’s indignation and Julia’s passion, and he was dimly aware that he had acted like a scoundrel.

“As for you, Mr. Francis Tredethlyn,” Miss Desmond said presently, “I suppose I have no need to tell you that all is over between us, and that I bitterly repent the humiliation my own folly has brought upon me. I should have known how much I risked when I stooped to regard a person whose code of honour belongs to a different world from that in which I have been reared. I suppose amongst _your_ people it is the fashion for a man to pledge himself to one woman and then make love to another; but such is _not_ the custom in the circles where the Desmonds have been used to be welcome. I should have known what I had to expect when I came into this house. I should have known what I had to anticipate when I trusted in the truth and loyalty of a man who is not a gentleman.”

Throughout this speech Julia’s hands had been moving rapidly, but with unfailing purpose, though they trembled a little all the while. One by one she had unfastened the diamond ornaments that had glittered upon her head and wrists, her throat and bosom; and now the jewels lay in a little heap at the feet of Francis Tredethlyn. One by one she had thrown them there during that passionate speech. She _could_ not act her play out. She had been unable to support the character she had undertaken. The fiery blood of the Ryan O’Brien Desmond had asserted itself in spite of all the promptings of prudence, all the bitter schooling of experience. It was very dreadful to be poor and dependent; it would have been delightful to be mistress of thirty thousand a year: but Julia Desmond, coming to the threshold of the study, had heard Maude’s appeal for the twenty thousand pounds, and Francis Tredethlyn’s impassioned avowal; and patience and policy had alike deserted her. Carried away by the impulse of the moment, she renounced everything. At last Francis Tredethlyn spoke for himself.

“I know that I have acted very badly,” he said. “I had no right to speak; I never should have spoken but for that play. I think I must have almost fancied myself that poor gardener’s son, who dared to worship the brightest creature that ever crossed his pathway, and in an evil hour told her of his madness. Ah, forgive me, Miss Hillary; do not hate or despise me for what I said just now; let it pass like the play in which we acted to-night. And you, Julia--Miss Desmond, I am not too proud to ask your forgiveness for the wrong I have done you. I have been very guilty, and I accept your reproaches in all their bitterness. But when I promised to be your true and faithful husband, I only made a promise that I am still prepared to fulfil. You will at least do me the justice to remember that I did not profess any warmer feeling than admiration and esteem.”

“Your justification is only a new insult, Mr. Tredethlyn,” Julia answered, coldly. “I wish you good night.”

Her passion had been something terrible in its suppressed vehemence some moments before; but she was quite calm now. She swept towards the door leading out into the corridor; but as she passed the merchant’s daughter, she stopped, just long enough to utter one brief sentence close in the young lady’s ear.

“You shall suffer for this, Miss Hillary,” she said,--

She left the room; but Maude followed her, crying “Julia! Julia!”

She hurried along the corridor and up the staircase, following closely upon Miss Desmond; but when she reached that young lady’s room, the door was shut in her face, and only one answer came to her almost piteous pleadings for admission,--

“I have nothing to say to you, Miss Hillary. I only regret that I must pass one more night in this house.”

So Maude was obliged to go away in despair, and, meeting her maid at the door of her own room, was informed that Mr. Hillary had been inquiring for her, “ever so many times,” the maid said; “and I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Miss, to know when you’d have your dress changed.”

Yes, there was to be more changing of dresses before Maude’s work was done. She resigned herself with a sigh to the hands of the young person who waited upon her; and then went down-stairs, gorgeous in pink silk and crape puffings, and with a crown of dewy rosebuds on her head, to receive the compliments and congratulations of her father’s friends, and to act her part in that social drama which was quite as difficult a performance as the “Lady of Lyons.”

Francis Tredethlyn sat quite alone in the little dimly-lighted study at the end of the long, rambling mansion, while Mr. Hillary’s guests finished the evening with a little dancing, a great deal of flirting, and a perpetual sipping of sparkling wines, in out-of-the-way corridors and lobbies, where there were hothouse flowers and low chintz-covered ottomans, and an air of loneliness conducive to flirtation. Francis Tredethlyn sat alone, with Julia’s diamonds still lying at his feet, and brooded over his position. He had outraged Maude, whom he adored. He had injured Julia, to whom he was bound by every sentiment of honour and good faith. No words can express the bitterness of his remorse as he sat pondering upon what he had done. “False to my cousin Susan, false to Julia Desmond,” he thought; “nothing but mischief has come to me since I inherited that miserable money. I have no right to be amongst these people. I never should have come to this house, where _her_ presence has always seemed to turn my brain.”

He looked down at the diamonds lying on the carpet, and smiled bitterly as he remembered how much money they represented,--more than had been spent on Susan Tredethlyn in all the girl’s joyless life--ten times more than would have restored the young man’s father to solvency and comfort, that time when his uncle refused him the loan of two hundred pounds.

He stopped and gathered together the fallen jewels. There was a writing-table near him, with pens, and paper, and sealing-wax, and all necessary implements. He selected a large sheet of paper, and packed the diamonds into a parcel. But before sealing the packet he wrote a few lines on the margin of the paper,--

“DEAR MISS DESMOND,

“I beg you to retain the enclosed. They were given to you as an evidence of my esteem and admiration, as well as of my gratitude for your indulgent kindness to one so much beneath you as myself. I implore you to forget and pardon what has happened to-night. I am too ignorant of the world in which you live to know what I ought to do; and I can only assure you that I am ready to submit myself entirely to your discretion, and still hold myself bound by every word I said in this room on the day when you promised to be my wife.

“Yours sincerely,

“FRANCIS TREDETHLYN.”

No one but the servants knew when or how Mr. Tredethlyn left the Cedars on that first night of the New Year; but a little before one o’clock the next day a letter was delivered to Mr. Hillary--a letter from the assistant-manager of a certain bank in the City, informing the merchant that a sum of twenty thousand pounds had that morning been placed to his credit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

##