CHAPTER XXIII

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TIDINGS OF SUSAN.

Absorbed in the conflicting tortures and delights of his bondage, Francis Tredethlyn had thought very little of that missing cousin who had once been so near and dear to him. Now and then, when he had been most entirely under the spell of Maude Hillary’s fascinating presence, the vision of a rosy rustic face, framed in a little dimity bonnet, had arisen suddenly before him, mutely reproachful of his forgetfulness and neglect, and he had resolved that on the very next day some new steps should be taken in the search for Susan Tredethlyn. But then, on that next day, there was generally some flower-show or _matinée musicale_, some boat-race at Putney or appointment to play croquet at Twickenham; in short, some excuse or other for devoting himself to Maude Hillary; and poor Susan’s rustic image melted away into chaos. But Mr. Tredethlyn was suddenly startled into recollection of his neglected duty by the receipt of a letter from his solicitors, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon, asking for an early interview, and announcing that they had an important communication to make respecting Miss Susan Tredethlyn, otherwise Miss Susan Turner.

An important communication. The Cornishman felt his face grow hot as he read the letter. Susan was found, perhaps, he thought. He had never mentioned her name to Maude Hillary, and now it might be that she would need all the devotion of a loving protector, perhaps even the strong arm of an avenger, at a time when his every thought was absorbed by his approaching marriage. The young man did not wait for any ceremonious appointment, but hurried off at once to Gray’s Inn, and presented himself before Mr. Kursdale, the senior partner.

In the quiet office Francis Tredethlyn’s hot eagerness tamed down a little before the matter-of-fact manner of the solicitor. There was a sober tranquillity in the aspect of the man and of the place, which seemed to have a singularly soothing effect upon all human emotion. The sober little clock ticking on the grey stone mantel-piece--a skeleton clock, exhibiting its entire anatomy to the public eye, and superior to all meretricious adornment--seemed to be perpetually ticking out in the stillness:

“Let me advise you to take it easily; let me recommend you to take it quietly: whatever the Law can do for you will be done for you here; but it must be done in the Law’s own way, which is very slow, and very complicated, and rather trying to human patience.”

Mr. Kursdale received Francis with calm cordiality, and after a few stately compliments proceeded at once to business.

“You will remember that my opinion, and that of my partner--for I availed myself of his judgment in the matter,--you will, no doubt, recollect, that after considerable study of the manuscript or journal which you confided to me, I came to the conclusion that the writer of that journal had contemplated imposing upon your cousin’s simplicity by a mock marriage, a sham ceremonial, performed before some person falsely representing himself to be a district registrar. This opinion was really forced upon me by the wording of the diary. Look at the diary in what light I would,--and I assure you I weighed the matter most carefully,--I could not see my way to any other conclusion.”

“I understand,” answered Francis. “I knew the man was a scoundrel. I made that out, somehow or other, from his journal. I knew he meant mischief and treachery upon little Susy; but I couldn’t make out _what_ treachery till you opened my eyes to the truth.”

“But suppose that, after all my care, I was too hasty in forming a conclusion. Suppose that we have been mistaken, Mr. Tredethlyn?”

“How do you mean, sir?”

“Some days since, I happened to open a drawer which had been unopened for a long time, and hidden under a lot of other documents I found the diary which you entrusted to me. The sight of the manuscript reminded me of you and your missing cousin; so I suppose it was only natural that I should turn over the pages,--not in the hope of finding any new meaning in them, however, for I had studied them too carefully for that. I turned them over, and while debating the question of a mock marriage, the thought suddenly flashed upon me that it would be at least very easy to ascertain if any genuine ceremonial had taken place in London. Remember, Mr. Tredethlyn, I did not for one moment imagine that there _had_ been a real marriage, and I fully believed that the trouble I was about to take would be wasted trouble. If I had not from the first been firmly convinced that the writer of the diary contemplated a sham marriage, and nothing but a sham marriage, I should, at the outset, have done that which I only did the other day.”

Francis Tredethlyn’s impatience was so very evident, that the lawyer, slow as he generally was, quickened his pace a little as he went on.

“I was determined to institute an investigation of the books of every registrar’s office in the metropolis during the months of January, February, and March, 1849. I entrusted a confidential clerk with this task, and three days afterwards he brought me the result of his investigation. On the 27th February, 1849, Robert Lesley was married to Susan Turner, in the office of the district registrar for Marylebone. The registrar’s name was Joseph Pepper; the names of the witnesses were Mary Banks and Jemima Banks, of No. 7, Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood.”

“Thank God!” ejaculated Francis Tredethlyn, reverently. “Thank God, for my little Susan’s sake, that this man was not the scoundrel we took him for.”

“Whether such a marriage, contracted under a false name on your cousin’s part, and it is very possible, also under a false name on the part of the writer of the diary,--whether such a marriage might not be open to dispute, is another question. However, the ceremonial, so far as it went, was genuine, and in any case there would be some little difficulty in setting it aside.”

“It shall not be set aside!” cried Francis, “if I have the power to enforce it. Thank God for this, Mr. Kursdale, and thank you for the thought, late as it came, that led to the discovery of the truth.”

“You must remember, though, my dear Mr. Tredethlyn,” remonstrated the solicitor, who was almost alarmed by the young man’s eagerness, “you must bear in mind that it is just possible there may have been some other Susan Turner and some other Robert Lesley married in the month of February, 1849, and that this registration may refer to them.”

“I am not afraid of that,” Francis answered, decisively. “No, the man meant to be a scoundrel, I dare say; but my little Susy’s artless confidence touched his heart at the very last, perhaps, and he _could_ not be such a villain as to deceive her. Rely upon it, Mr. Kursdale, the marriage was a genuine marriage, and I shall live to see my cousin righted, and to divide my uncle Oliver’s money with her.”

Mr. Kursdale stared at his client in blank amazement.

“You would--do that?” he asked, after a pause.

“Of course I would. Poor little ill-used darling! The money was hers, every penny of it, by right. I--I meant at first to have restored it all to her; but new claims have arisen for me, and I can only give her half the fortune that should have been her own.”

The solicitor stifled a groan.

“And now how am I to find Susy?” asked Francis. “This registration business gives us a new clue, doesn’t it?”

“Unquestionably. We can, at any rate, hope to find the two witnesses, Mary and Jemima Banks, and from them we may discover your cousin’s present whereabouts. I’ll send a clerk to these Banks people to-morrow.”

“Do you know I think I’d rather go and look for them myself, and at once,” said Francis. “I’ve been very neglectful of Susy’s interests lately, and I feel as if I ought to do something to make up for my neglect. I’ll go myself, Mr. Kursdale, and try to find out these people. If I fail, you must help me to find them. If I succeed, I’ll come here to-morrow morning and tell you the result.”

The young man wrote the address of the people in St. John’s Wood in his pocket-book, shook hands with his legal adviser, and hurried away; he was so eager to atone for the neglect of the past by the activity of the present. He hailed a hansom in Holborn, and was on his way to St. John’s Wood five minutes after he had left the lawyer’s office. He sat with his watch open in his hand, while he made abstruse calculations as to the time it would take him to find the females, Mary and Jemima Banks, extort from them all the information they had to give, drive back to his hotel, reorganize his toilet, and then make his way to Twickenham. Mr. Tredethlyn had grown something of a dandy of late; he employed a West-end tailor, belaboured his honest head with big ivory-backed brushes, and bedewed his cambric handkerchief with the odorous invention of that necromancer of the flower-garden, Monsieur Eugene Rimmel. The big Cornishman smiled at his reflection in the glass sometimes, wondering at his own frivolity. But it was for Maude Hillary’s sake that he brushed his hair laboriously every day, and grew critical in the choice of a waistcoat. He had even hired a man to wait upon him, and had a little regiment of boot-trees in his dressing-room.

St. John’s Wood proper is perhaps one of the most delightful suburban retreats in which the man can make a pleasant temple for his _lares_ and _penates_, who, yearning for the waving of green trees about his abode, is yet obliged to live within an easy cab-drive from the City. Dear little villas, embosomed in foliage; stately mansions, towering proudly out of half an acre of trimly-kept garden, invite the wealthy citizen to retirement and repose. The young lilacs and laburnums of to-day may represent but poorly the bosky verdures of the past, but still the Wood of St. John is a cool and pleasant oasis in the great arid desert of London.

But there are outskirts and dependencies of St. John that are not quite so pleasant,--ragged wastes and shabby little terraces, that hang like tattered edges disgracing a costly garment. These dismal streets and dreary terraces may not belong of right to St. John, but they hang about him, and cling to him, and shelter themselves under the grandeur of his name, nevertheless.

Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood, were very pretentious little dwelling-places, fronted with damp stucco, and with a tendency to a mossy greenness of aspect that was eminently dispiriting. Woolcote Villas were of the Elizabethan order of architecture, and went off abruptly into peaks and angles wherever a peak or an angle was possible. How such small houses could require the massive stacks of Elizabethan chimneys which made Woolcote Villas appear top-heavy and incongruous to the eye of the stranger, was an enigma only to be solved by the architect who designed those habitations; and why Woolcote Villas should each be finished off with a stuccoed mustard-pot, popularly known as a campanello tower, which was not Elizabethan, and not practicable for habitation, being open to the four winds of heaven, was another problem perpetually awaiting the same individual’s solution.

The hansom cabman, after driving through all the intricacies of St. John’s Wood on different false scents, came at last upon Woolcote Villas, through the friendly offices of a milkman, and pulled up his horse before the door of No. 7.

Francis alighted and rang a bell,--a bell with a slack wire, which required to be pulled a great many times before any effect was produced. At last, however, the bell rang; and then, after a pause and another peal, the door was opened, and a slipshod servant-maid, with a flapping circle of dirty net hanging from the back of her disorderly head, emerged from No. 7, Woolcote Villas, and presented herself at the little gate before which Francis Tredethlyn was waiting.

The young man asked if Mrs. Banks was at home. Yes, she was at home, and Miss Banks also. Did he please to want the apartments?

Mr. Tredethlyn told her that he had particular business with Mrs. Banks, and that it was that lady whom he wished to see. The girl looked disappointed. There were a good many bills in the Elizabethan windows of Woolcote Villas, and the demands of lodgers were not equal to the supply of furnished apartments.

The sound of a tinkling piano, played very badly, greeted Mr. Tredethlyn as he entered the narrow passage. The dirty maidservant opened the door of the apartment whence the sound came, and Francis found himself in a shabby parlour, tenanted by a young lady, who rose from the piano as he entered, and who was very fine and yet very shabby, and a trifle dirty, like the parlour, and like Woolcote Villas generally. The young lady wore a greasy-looking black silk, relieved by a coquettish little apron of Stuart plaid, and adorned by all manner of ribands and narrow velvets, with a good deal of Mosaic jewelry in the way of hearts and crosses, and anchors and lockets; and her hair was turned back from her forehead, and flowed in graceful ringlets of the corkscrew order upon her stately shoulders. She was altogether a very extensively adorned young lady; and she gave a little start expressive of surprise and timidity, with just a slight admixture of pleasure, as Mr. Tredethlyn presented himself before her. Many single gentlemen had inspected the long-vacant lodgings; but there had been no one among them so good-looking, or so splendid of aspect, as this tall, broad-shouldered Cornishman, revised and corrected by his West-end tailor.

“The apartments, I suppose,” the young lady said, curtseying and simpering. “My ma being busy, perhaps you will allow me to show them to you? _This_ is the parlour. If the use of a sitting-room only is required, _with_ partial board, including dinner on Sundays, the terms would be seventeen and sixpence. Private apartments, without board, fifteen shillings, or with full board----”

The young lady would have proceeded further, but Francis Tredethlyn interrupted her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I don’t require apartments; my business is quite of a different nature. Your name is Banks, I believe?”

The lady inclined her head graciously. Life was very dreary in Woolcote Villas, and the advent of a good-looking stranger could scarcely be otherwise than agreeable, even if he was not a prospective tenant.

“Mary--or Jemima--Banks?” asked Francis.

“I am Miss Jemima Banks,” the young lady replied, with considerable dignity. She began to think the good-looking stranger inclined to be presumptuous; but Francis was too preoccupied to be aware of the intended reproof.

“I am very glad that I have been so fortunate as to find you,” he said, “for I believe you can give me the information I want. You were present at a marriage before the registrar, at an office in Folthorpe Street, Marylebone, on the 27th of February, 1849. Can you tell me where the young lady who was married went after the ceremony? I have some right to ask this question, for Susan Tre--Susan Turner is my first-cousin.”

“Well, I never did!” exclaimed Miss Banks, surprised out of her stateliness. “Poor Susan was your cousin, was she? Why, she came home here a fortnight after her marriage.”

“She came here?”

“Yes, she was lodging here before that; and she and her husband went off to Paris after the ceremony; and there was no breakfast and no nothing; and Mr. Lesley, he was always very high and mighty-like in his ways--he flung down a twenty-pound note upon the desk before the registrar, and when the man said something about change, he threw up his head scornful-like--it was a way he had if anything vexed him,--‘There’s your money,’ he said, ‘and don’t let’s have any humbug;’ and then he dragged his poor little wife’s hand through his arm, just nodded to me and mother, and walked off to the cab without a word, leaving me and mother in the registrar’s office. The registrar was full of praises of the gentleman’s generosity, and said he’d like to tie up a half-a-dozen such couples every week; but mother was regularly cross about that twenty-pound note, and went on about it all the way home, saying that Mr. Lesley had ground her down close enough about the rent for these rooms, and needn’t go showing off his generosity to strange registers.”

“And my cousin Susan went to Paris?”

“Yes, but only for a fortnight, and we was to keep the apartments for her, which we did; and at the end of a fortnight she came back, dressed beautiful, and with all sorts of lovely things in her boxes, and she was looking so well and so happy, and anybody would have thought she was the luckiest woman in the world. But mother, she used to shake her head about it, and say she never knew those secret sort of marriages to come to any good, because when a gentleman begins by not wanting to own his wife, he’s very apt to end by wishing he hadn’t married her. But mother always looks at the black side of things, whether it’s taxes, or whether it’s lodgers, or whatever it is; so I didn’t take much notice. Mrs. Lesley seemed very happy; and Mr. Lesley, for the first week or so, he stopped at home a great deal, and scarcely ever went out, except to take his wife out to dine, or to a theatre, or something of that kind; and they really seemed the happiest couple that ever was; but by-and-by Mr. Lesley went away,--to college, his wife told me; and I shall never forget how she cried, poor thing, the night he left her, and how lonely she looked sitting in this room, where they’d been so happy together, with their little oyster-suppers after the theatre, and everything that heart could wish. She’d got some books that he’d left behind him spread out before her on the table, and she was turning one of them over when I went in to see her.

“‘They’re very hard to understand, Miss Banks,’ she said; ‘but I try to read them, because I want to be clever, and able to talk to Robert when he comes home.’

“After this she was almost always reading, poor little thing, and she’d sit in this room for days and days together; for she didn’t like to go out alone, and mother does drive and worry so, that it wasn’t often I could get out with her. Mr. Lesley was to be away three months, she told me; and I’m sure that poor thing used to count the hours and minutes almost, wishing the time to go: but when the three months was up, there was no Mr. Lesley; he was going fishing, somewhere in Wales, with some grand friends she told me, and wouldn’t be home till the next vacation. I never saw any one so cut up as she was by the disappointment, though she wouldn’t talk about it; only I could see every morning by her face, that she’d been lying awake half the night, crying her poor eyes out.”

“Poor girl, poor girl!” murmured Francis Tredethlyn.

This all-absorbing passion called love was a sorrowful thing, then, he thought, let it come to whom it would--a one-sided frenzy, a perpetual sacrifice, a self-imposed immolation.

“Pray tell me all you can about my cousin,” he said to Miss Banks. “You cannot imagine how anxious I am to hear of her.”

“I’m sure she and me was always the best of friends,” answered the fair Jemima, with a touch of diplomacy; “and if you _did_ think of taking the apartments, me and mother would do all in our power to make you comfortable, if it was only on Mrs. Lesley’s account; for she was one of the sweetest young creatures I ever knew. She stayed with us three weeks before she was married; and I never shall forget her pretty face the day she first came up from the country after the lodgings had been took for her.”

“Mr. Lesley engaged the lodgings, I suppose?”

“No, it was Mr. Lesley’s brother.”

“Oh, he had a brother, then?”

“Yes, his brother was something in the law, I think--a very nice gentleman, and almost the living image of Mr. Lesley himself.”

“Can you give me a description of Mr. Lesley? I never saw him, and I want very much to know what kind of man he is.”

Miss Banks hesitated for some moments.

“It’s so difficult to give an exact description of any one,” she said. “Mr. Lesley was a tall, handsome-looking man, with fair hair and blue eyes. I don’t think I could describe him any nearer than that.”

Francis Tredethlyn sighed. There are so many tall, handsome-looking men with fair hair and blue eyes! and it is chiefly in melodrama that people go about the world conveniently marked with a strawberry or a coronet.

“Answer me one question,” said Francis, eagerly, “before you tell me the rest of my cousin’s history. Do you know where she is now?”

Miss Banks shook her head, and sighed despondently.

“No more than you do, sir,” she exclaimed. “It’s two years and a half ago since I set eyes upon Mrs. Lesley, and I don’t know no more than the dead what’s become of her since.”

“Then she’s as much lost to me to-day as she was yesterday,” said Francis, sadly. “But you can at least tell me all you know of my poor cousin. It may help me to some clue by which to find her.”

Jemima was evidently a good-natured girl. She begged Mr. Tredethlyn to be seated, and placed herself opposite to him.

“I’ll call mother if you like,” she said; “but I think I can tell you more about Mrs. Lesley; mother is such a one to wander, and when one’s anxious to know anything quick, it don’t do to have to deal with a person whose mind’s always harping upon lodgers and their ways. Of course everybody knows lodgers are tiresome, and nobody lets apartments for pleasure, and nobody would pay taxes if they could help it, and poor-rates are not expected to raise people’s spirits; but if facts are disagreeable, that’s no reason you should have them cropping up promiscuous in every style of conversation. Till now it used to be a relief to me to come and sit with Mrs. Lesley of an evening, and hear _her_ troubles, if it was only for the sake of a change.”

“I thank you heartily for having been good to my cousin,” Francis said, earnestly. He was thinking that he would drop into a jeweller’s shop on his way homeward, and choose the handsomest diamond ring in the man’s stock for Miss Jemima Banks.

“I don’t know as I deserve any thanks, sir,” answered the girl. “I couldn’t help taking to Mrs. Lesley, and I couldn’t help feeling for her when I saw her so solitary and so sad. Months and months went by before her husband came back to her; and when he did come her baby was born, and there was the cradle in the corner just by where you’re sitting, and she seemed as if she couldn’t make enough of the child.”

“A child!” murmured Francis. “Mrs. Burfield never told me of the child.”

“But Mr. Lesley, he didn’t seem so wrapped up in the baby as she did,” continued Miss Banks; “and I used to fancy she saw it, and fretted about it. He couldn’t take her out to dinner anywhere this time, nor yet to the theatre, on account of the child. She asked him once to take her for a drive somewhere in the country, and to take the child with them; but he laughed at her, and said, ‘I don’t think there’s a pleasanter sight in creation than an estimable mechanic in his Sunday clothes, with three children in a wicker chaise, and a fourth in arms; but don’t you think we may as well leave that sort of thing to the mechanic, Susy? the poor fellow has so few chances of distinguishing himself.’ That was just the sort of speech Mr. Lesley was always making, half laughing, half scornful; he was always going on in a sneering way about the baby, and her being so fond of it, and devoting herself so much to it; and sometimes one of those nasty speeches of his would set his wife off crying, for her health wasn’t very strong just then, and any little thing would upset her. And then he’d look at her with a hard, cruel look that he’d got sometimes, and throw his book into a corner, and get up and walk out of the house, banging the door to that degree that mother would be unnerved for the rest of the evening. Mr. Lesley took to stopping out very late this time, and used to let himself in with a latch-key, long after me and mother had gone to bed; but I know that Susan used to sit up for him, and I know that he used to be angry with her for doing it; for Woolcote Villas are slight-built, and I’ve heard him talking to her as I lay awake overhead. He was at home for some months this time off and on,--but he’d be away for days together,--and when he was at home he had a tired way like, that made me feel uncomfortable somehow to see him. He was always yawning, and smoking, and sitting over his books, or lying asleep upon the sofa; and I’m sure if I’d been Mrs. Lesley, I should have been very glad when he took himself off. But, Lor’ bless your heart! poor little thing, she fretted about his going away, just as if he’d been the kindest of husbands. He wasn’t going back to college any more; he was going to Germany this time. I know she wanted to go with him, poor, tender-hearted thing; and I heard her say to him, so pitiful like, once, ‘Oh, Robert, what will become of me when you are gone! If you would only take me!’ But he only laughed at her, and cried out, ‘What! abandon the baby?’ So at last the time came for him to go, and his poor wife got paler and paler every day, till I’m sure she looked like a living corpse walking about the house,” said Miss Banks, unconsciously paraphrasing Shelley.

“And this man left her?”

“Lor’, yes, what did he care for her looking white and sorrowful? He was more wrapped up in his new portmanteaus, and travelling-bags, and dressing-cases, and such-like, than in his wife or his child. He went off as gay as could be, though he left Mrs. Lesley almost broken-hearted. And he didn’t leave her too well off either, I know, though she always paid mother to the moment; but all her pretty dresses and bonnets that Mr. Lesley had bought her in Paris had grown shabby, and he hadn’t bought her any new ones. He had so many expenses, she told me; for she was always making excuses for him like, and pretending that he was very good to her. Poor dear thing! after he was gone away the baby was her only comfort; and I’m sure if it hadn’t been for that child she’d have fretted herself away into the grave. Well, sir, the baby was four months old when Mr. Lesley went away to Germany, and he was only to be away three months at the longest, Susan told me: she was very friendly with me, and I always called her Susan. And she used to count the days just as she did before; and she’d say to me often how the time was going, and her husband would soon be back. She used to write him letters,--such long letters, all full of her talk about the baby, and his taking notice, and growing, and such-like; but she didn’t have many letters from him. ‘You see, Jemima, he’s always going from place to place,’ she said; ‘and then my letters lie at the post-offices where I direct them, and half the time he doesn’t receive them at all; so I can’t wonder at not hearing very often from him.’ She used to be so pleased, poor dear, when a letter did come, though I’m sure they were short enough, for I’ve seen her open them; but, ah! when the three months went by, and Mr. Lesley didn’t come back, how dreadfully she did fret!--always secretly, though; for she didn’t seem to like that anybody should know her troubles, for fear they should blame him, the brute! ‘He’s going farther north,’ she told me; ‘Germany’s such a big country, you know, Jemima; and I’m afraid, from what Robert says, he thinks of going beyond Germany, to St. Petersburg, perhaps. You see, it’s necessary for him to travel in order to complete his education.’ I couldn’t help laughing outright at this; for I thought if Mr. Lesley wasn’t educated enough with all his books, and colleges, and crackjaw languages, and such-like, he never would be educated. However, that was no business of mine, and I kept my thoughts to myself. The time went by, and still there was no news of Mr. Lesley coming home. He was always going farther and farther north, Susan told me, when she spoke of him; but she’d got to talk of him very little now, though I know she was thinking of him and fretting about him all day and all night too: for I’ve slept with her sometimes, and heard her moan in her sleep, and speak his name, oh, so pitiful!”

“Poor girl! poor child! she was little more than a child!” murmured Francis Tredethlyn.

“No more she was,” answered Miss Banks, with energy; “and him as ill-treated her was a brute. I’m sure _I_ never thought much of him, with his scornful, sneering ways, treating me and mother as if we were so much dirt under his feet. As for that poor young thing, it was a sorrowful day for her when she first set eyes upon him, fine gentleman though he was, and above her in station, which she was always telling me as a kind of excuse for his bad conduct. Well, sir, his letters got fewer and fewer, and still Susan kept her troubles to herself, and only said he was going farther north, and that he would he back before the year was out. But the year passed, and he didn’t come back, and he’d been away nearly ten months, and the baby was fourteen months old, when a letter came for Susan, with St. Petersburg on the post-mark. I never shall forget that day. It was dull, cold, March weather, with the wind howling and moaning enough to give the liveliest person the dismals, and Mrs. Lesley had been sitting by the window all the afternoon watching for the postman. She was beginning to be nervous about her husband’s health, she told me, as it was so long since she had heard from him. The postman came at last, and I was down-stairs with mother when he came. Mrs. Lesley ran into the passage, and took the letter herself. We heard the parlour door shut, and then five minutes afterwards we heard a scream and a heavy fall. Me and mother rushed up-stairs, and there was poor Susan lying on the floor, with a letter clutched in her hand, and the fingers clenched upon it so that neither me nor mother could loosen them. We lifted her up and laid her on the sofa. She didn’t seem to have fainted dead away, for she opened her eyes directly, and said, ‘Oh, why didn’t you let me lie there till I died?’ And it was enough to pierce the hardest heart to hear her. Mother began talking about the troubles of the world, and asked her if there was bad news in the letter. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried; ‘cruel news--dreadful news!’ And then mother asked her, Was Mr. Lesley dead? ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘dead to me! dead to me!’ Mother fancied she meant he was really dead, and said she hoped Mrs. Lesley was left comfortably provided for. You see, having seen a deal of trouble herself, mother will look at things in that light. And then Susan cried out that her trouble was one that we could never understand. I couldn’t bear to leave her; but I got mother out of the way,--for her ways are apt to be wearing to any one that’s in trouble,--and I stopped with Susan all the evening. But she never spoke once; she only lay quite quiet on the sofa, with her face turned to the wall; but I knew that she was crying all the time; and when I took her the baby, thinking the sight of him might comfort her, she only waved him away like with her hand. I didn’t leave her till twelve o’clock that night; but she was still lying on the sofa with her face turned to the wall. But just as I was going away she stretched out her hand and said, ‘God bless you, Jemima! it is very good of you to stop with me, but there is nothing upon this wide earth that can give me any comfort now.’ I didn’t see her the next morning, for she went out very early, and took the baby with her, and she didn’t come back till late at night, and then she came back without the baby. You might have knocked me down with a feather when I opened the door to her and saw her come in without the child. ‘Oh, Susan,’ I said, ‘what have you done with Robert?’--he’d been christened Robert after his ’pa, and I’d stood godmother for him. Susan was as pale as death, but she said very quietly, ‘I’ve put him out to nurse in the country, Jemima. I was obliged to part from him, for I’m going away.’ I thought all in a moment that she was going abroad to her husband, and that her grief had been about parting with her child; but then I remembered what she’d said the night before, about Mr. Lesley being dead to her, and do what I would I couldn’t make it out. I’m sure I was as much cut up at the thought of her going away as if she had been my own sister.”

“I wish to Heaven she had stopped with you!” exclaimed Francis Tredethlyn. “She had few friends, poor girl, and had no need to leave any one who felt kindly towards her.”

“But she did leave us,” replied Miss Banks; “she paid mother every farthing she owed her, and packed up her few little things. She would make me take some of her pretty ribands and collars that had been bought in Paris, and never worn out, for she didn’t care to dress herself smart when Mr. Lesley was not at home; and then she sent for a cab, and went away. I heard her tell the driver Shoreditch railway station, for I ran out to the cab and kissed her the last thing, and begged her to come and see us whenever she came back to London; and she promised that if she lived, and things went well with her, she would. But from that day to this we’ve never set eyes upon her.”

And this was the end of what Miss Banks had to tell. Francis Tredethlyn’s thoughts wandered back to Mrs. Burfield; it was to her that Susan Tredethlyn had gone in the March of 1851. So far the girl’s history was complete; but the grand question still remained, Where was she now to be found? A deserted wife, a friendless and perhaps penniless mother; what had become of this lonely, inexperienced girl between the March of 1851 and this present autumn of 1853?

“But surely you can give me some clue by which I may trace my cousin?” said Francis, after a pause; “you can give me the address of some friend, some intimate acquaintance of Mr. Lesley’s: he must have had visitors while he lived here.”

Jemima shook her head decisively.

“Not one,” she answered: “except for bringing his brother home to dinner once or twice, when he was first married, no mortal belonging to Mr. Lesley ever darkened mother’s doors. Mother and me used to think it odd; and of course there always are advantages in lodgers keeping much company, which makes up for extra trouble; and the most audacious lockers-up that ever were can’t go and lock-up under visitors’ very noses. But we supposed, as Mr. Lesley’s marriage was a secret one, he didn’t care to bring his friends home.”

“But his brother came?”

“Yes, only when they were first married; he never came after.”

“Did you hear the brother’s address?”

“Well, I have heard that it was in some of those law-places, the Temple, or Gray’s Inn; but I never heard any nearer than that.”

Mr. Tredethlyn gave a despairing sigh; he thought of Mrs. Burfield’s description of his cousin, pale and wan, waving her little hand out of the carriage-window as she left Coltonslough, friendless and poor. Was it not more than likely that she had only gone away to die, and that his search for her would end at last in the discovery of a grave?

But might not the man, the husband who had deserted his innocent and confiding wife, might not he be found and made to pay a heavy penalty for his sins? Vengeance seems but a poor thing at the best, but it is at least something; and Francis Tredethlyn felt a fierce desire for revenge against the coldblooded destroyer of his cousin Susan’s happiness.

He asked Miss Banks many more questions; but she could tell him no more than she had already told him. She had never heard anything of Mr. Lesley’s family or antecedents, directly or indirectly. She knew he went to college, but she never remembered hearing what college. She had fancied sometimes that Mr. Lesley’s name was an assumed one; indeed, she was sure it was; for when his brother had come to dine at Woolcote Villas the first time, he had inquired for Mr. Robert by some other name. Unfortunately, that other name had entirely escaped Miss Jemima’s recollection.

“He caught himself up short,” she said, “as if he was vexed with himself for having let slip that other name, and I never heard it again the whole time Mr. and Mrs. Lesley were with us. I don’t think Susan knew much more about her husband’s affairs than I did, for he always treated her like a child; and even when he was kindest to her, he seemed to have a high and mighty way with her, that would have kept any timid person from asking questions.”

Francis thanked Miss Banks very heartily for the trouble she had taken to enlighten him to the extent of her power, and then bade her good afternoon.

“If you should meet with any one wanting apartments and board, either

## partial or entire, you’ll perhaps be kind enough to bear mother in

mind,” the young lady said, as she escorted him to the door. He murmured some polite assurance that he would neglect no opportunity of promoting Mrs. Banks’s interest, and returned to the hansom, which had been waiting for him during his prolonged interview with the good-natured Jemima.

From Woolcote Villas he drove to the office of the Marylebone registrar, and from that official he obtained an assurance that the marriage between Robert Lesley and Susan Turner, on the 27th of February, 1849, was, so far as his part of the business went, as legally binding as if the ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury within the solemn precincts of Westminster Abbey.

“If they chose to be married in false names, that was their business,” said the registrar, “and they might find themselves bothered about it by-and-by. But, except where there’s property, it isn’t often that a person’s called upon to prove his marriage. I suppose, by your making the inquiry, there _is_ property in this case?”

Francis Tredethlyn shook his head.

“I know no more about that than you do,” he said.

“Well, I shan’t forget that business in a hurry,” said the registrar, who was inclined to be communicative. “In the first place, the man was one of your regular tip-top swells, and that’s a kind of party we don’t often see here; and in the next place, he gave me a twenty-pound note, which was the first windfall of that kind that ever dropped into my pocket, and is more than likely to be the last.”

“Can you tell me what the man was like?”

“Tall and fair, with blue eyes and light hair; your regular swell: not the heavy military swell,--more of a delicate womanish way with him; but such as you may see by the dozen any afternoon in St. James’s Street or Pall Mall.”

This description was no clearer than that given by Jemima Banks. Francis could scarcely walk through a London street without meeting with some man who might be described in the same words. He left the registrar’s office, and went back to his hotel; and, absorbed in the arduous duties of his toilet, thought alternately of lost Susan Tredethlyn, _alias_ Susan Lesley, and of beautiful Maude Hillary, who was so soon to be his wife.

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