how, as a mother, I could have done other- | destined husband should be at least possessed wise." "Why should you," asked the old gentleman; "if the families of the young ladies in question advanced no objection?" "Precisely so, my dear sir: you see the matter in its true light; but still I am more delighted than I can express that you approve of my conduct." "It appears, I confess, to have been most exemplary. What more could you do than warn the young ladies that they were committing an imprudence? Your self-sacrifice seems to me to have been both honourable and commendable." Mrs. Stainton bowed her thanks. She could not speak at the moment, being attacked by a slight fit of coughing; but her gesture of acknowledgment was very graceful. "And may I ask the names of your destined daughters-in law? You will excuse the curiosity of an old recluse; but it will be pleasant for me to ponder over, as I sit here at my solitary fireside." 66 Why really I scarcely know whether I am justified in telling all their secrets even to you, Mr. Lyle." "But I am nobody, madam; I know nobody; and therefore I can betray them to nobody." I "Taking that view of the case, I suppose must not refuse; and therefore I will consent to commit another indiscretion. Ernest is looking forward to an union with a very fine girl, the adopted heiress of her uncle who has just returned from India, and who has no other relative." "No other relative!" echoed the AngloMexican: "lucky fellow, to know at once how to dispose of his rupees! Well, madam?" "Well, sir; Miss Emily Bellingham has done Ernest the honour to bestow upon him the first love of her young pure heart; and I confess to you that I look forward to their union with the most tender and anxious feelings." And you are sure that there is no mistake?" Mistake, my dear sir? What possible mistake can there be in an affair of this importance ?" "True; I ought to have felt that fact; but I also, as I am sure you will believe, experience some anxiety on the subject on my side." "How very kind of you! Well, then, I will admit (for why should I not, when you encourage me to tell you all the details of this romantic attachment?), that although the dear children love each other with a truth and fervour which occasionally recals to my memory my own past happy days, and wrings my otherwise gratified heart, Mr. Bellingham does hesitate to sanction the marriage (although desirous to secure the peace of mind of his niece), on account of my son's total want of fortune; for, talented as he is, I need not tell you that poor Ernest has not yet been able to realize any property." 'I daresay not." And the nabob, while regarding his adopted child as a rich heiress, is of opinion that her of a few thousands." "So that for the present, my dear sir-" "I see, madam, I see; for the present there is an impediment." "Unfortunately! But Ernest has such pro spects." "I am glad to hear it; very glad to hear it. Good prospects keep up a young man's heart, and invigorate his energies. And now, what of your other son ?" "My Frederic, Mr. Lyle; my other, and I fear that I must confess my favourite child. How do I thank you for interesting yourself in him! Well, my dear sir, he also, as I have already hinted to you—” "Hinted, my good lady! By no means; you have favoured me with a very plain and straightforward statement. Let us understand each other without disguise; there is nothing in this world like frankness of purpose and of speech. What of his fair lady?" "Much the same tale, since you compel me to be candid, Mr. Lyle. He has won the heart of the most angelic creature! You would adore her, I am certain, for you could appreciate her." "And she loves your youngest son?" "She idolizes him!" "Well?" "Well, my kind friend; her father, whose very existence is bound up in that of his lovely and almost faultless daughter-who sees only with her eyes, and comprehends only through her understanding-offers no opposition to her wishes; but still he insists upon delay, until Frederic shall have made himself in some degree independent of the world, in order that it may not be said in society-and you know, my dear sir, that society is the Mrs. Grundy whose bitter comments we all dread-that his well-portioned daughter gave herself to a man without a penny." "And he is quite right too," said the old merchant quietly. "Thus, you perceive," continued the lady, "that the poor young people must wait until some kind providence enables my dear boys to fulfil the conditions required of them." Mr. Lyle smiled. There was a world of benignity in that smile. It lit up his faded features like the passage of a sunbeam. "And this sweet girl," he said; "you have not yet told me her name." "You are extortionate, my good sir; absolutely extortionate!" simpered his visitor; “but women are, as you know, tutored in submission and obedience; and I will not do dishonour to my sex. Alice Ravensdale is the only daughter and heiress of a wealthy West Indian merchant." "I know him," said the Anglo-Mexican calmly. "You know him?" echoed Mrs. Stainton, bounding on her chair. Intimately, most intimately; we were schoolfellows half a century ago, before I went to Mexico." "Yes, he and-by-the-bye, it is, as you remarked, my dear madam, a singular coincidence altogether he and Jack Bellingham, another of my schoolmates. They came to visit me, as you have done this morning; but we had been long separated, and we found it difficult to part, so that they only left me an hour before midnight." "Quite extraordinary!" faltered out Mrs. Stainton, and she strove to smile; but the effort was beyond her strength, as her quivering lips only succeeded in executing a painful grimace; for she felt that the eye of Mr. Lyle was fixed upon her; and, practised as she was in worldliness, she shrunk before his calm and steady look, for she felt that she was committed beyond redemption. 66 "Madam," said the old merchant, after a pause evidently distressing to both parties; you are, as I have been assured, the widow of one of my nephews. I am sorry for it. Sorry both for your sake and my own. Had it been otherwise you would not have sought to practise upon my credulity, and I should have been spared the shame of turning over a dark page in human nature, which I would fain, in passing to my grave, have left unread. You are a woman, and I should exhibit little self-command were I to say to you all that in such a case I should feel it my bounden duty, and the privilege of my grey hairs, to say to one of my own sex. I feel for you: from my soul I do! And had I guessed into what a gulph of falsehood my idle questions would have plunged you, I verily believe that I should have beenand perhaps I ought to have been-more merciful.-Nay, hear me out. You have not deceived me, even for an instant. My long commerce with the world has been a keen and a careful one; and I have learnt that the book of nature lies open for all who desire to read it, while the very subtlest man weaves in reality all his most hidden plots behind a mere cobweb screen. Judge, therefore, how singularly you have failed in your attack upon my purse, and your estimate of my credulity. I pity you from my heart; for there must have been a time when you would have loathed yourself could you have foreseen that you should ever have voluntarily undertaken such a task as that which you have accomplished here and now; and I am persuaded that a nature originally worthy can never become degraded, nor even appear to another to have forfeited its claim to respect, without an amount of mental suffering over which fiends themselves might weep." Mr. Lyle," exclaimed the lady excitedly; "I do not understand you." "Not understand me, Madam?" said the old merchant indignantly; "Let us, I beseech you, have done with all false-seeming. You under stand me as thoroughly as I now understand you. The time is over and past in which we could have deceived each other. I will say little of your slanders upon your cousin Percival Lyle; no doubt, should you be incautious enough to allow them to reach his ears, he will be well able to avenge them without my aid; nor will I make any allusion to your ungenerous comments upon his wife and daughters-only be convinced of thus much, that I fully appreciate, and deeply despise your motive.” 66 Again I declare that I do not understand you, Mr. Lyle;" exclaimed the lady, making a desperate effort at dignified composure. "What right have you to imply that, because I had sufficient faith in your good feeling as the relative of my lamented husband, and in your Christian sympathy towards a widow and her orphans, to lay bare before you the most sacred and cherished feelings of my heart, I have any design either upon your money or your judg ment? I am so unaccustomed to insult or suspicion that I was totally unprepared, I confess, for the unmanly advantage which you have taken of my confidence." "Be under no alarm, madam," said the merchant quietly; "you are quite safe in my hands. I have no desire to impugn either your truth or your self-respect in the way which you appear to imply. Let us have done with sentiment-all circumstances considered, it is sadly out of place on this occasion, believe me-and content ourselves with facts. I will, on my part, readily overlook the accusation which you have brought against me; and you must be satisfied to hold your finer feelings in abeyance until I have succeeded in convincing you that we do perfectly understand each other, however reluctant you may be at present to admit the fact." "Your conduct is unwarrantable, Mr. Lyle." "I regret that you should think so; but in order to justify myself, it will perhaps only be necessary for me to inform you that an old school-friendship was renewed yesterday; and that during the visit paid to me by two of the playmates of my boyhood, feelings long forgotten were revived; the world, with its hollow treachery and unblushing falsehood, was for a brief season blotted out, and we once more poured forth our hearts each to the other, as we had been accustomed to do in years long passed by. When you remember that those guests, loved in youth, estranged in middle life, and found again in old age, were Henry Ravensdale and John Bellingham, you will be at no loss to comprehend the effect produced upon my mind by the shallow romance with which you have endeavoured to make me your dupe. Your position, as you justly remarked a short while since, is one of great responsibility; and how have you performed the duties which, in accepting it, you voluntarily and deliberately undertook? I will tell you, madam. By endeavouring to practise upon the weakness and inexperience of two mere girls, to sacrifice them to the necessities of your own sons. But you have been forced upon me. I am an old man, and my grey hairs will ere long descend into the grave. I can have no interest in wounding the feelings, or in wringing the hearts of my fellowmortals; but neither am I compelled to encourage or to countenance the extravagance of folly, or the exigencies of cupidity. Forget me, madam, as I shall endeavour to forget you; I need not ask you to regret, as I shall do to my dying day, that we ever met.” "I am to understand then, sir," said the lady, making an attempt to rally her spirits, and speaking in an accent of haughty indignation which almost wore the character of defiance; that you abandon me and my children?" failed; signally failed. In selecting the most "I understand, sir;" said Mrs. Stainton, as she rose from her seat trembling with mingled dismay and passion; "that all which I have heard of you since your return to England, and which I refused to credit, is perfectly correct. I was weak indeed to anticipate either sympathy or manliness from an individual whose soul is in his money-bags, and whose heart has never throbbed responsive to one generous sentiment." "And was it to such an one as you describe that you so lately affected to lay bare your most sacred feelings? Be consistent, madam; there is nothing so illogical as temper. Leave me, I pray you, some slight respect for your memory, should I hereafter recall it." "You presume upon your age and sex, Mr. Lyle, as well as upon your relationship to my late husband, who is no longer able to avenge me." "I presume upon neither, Mrs. Stainton. The supremacy which you involuntarily accord to me at this moment is simply that of honesty and truth over guile and falsehood: neither, be lieve me, have you reason to regret that my deceased nephew is not present at this interview; for, did he retain one drop of the Lyle blood in his veins, he must have despised the mean and mercenary comedy in which you have lately been an actor, too deeply and too bitterly to have sought for a single instant to involve himself in the same disgrace. Trust me, you have rather cause to bless the Hand which guided him to a still-honoured grave.” "This is too much!" murmured the wretched woman, unable longer to strive against her sense of humiliation; "have you more insults to heap upon me, Mr. Lyle?" "I do not deserve that such a question should be addressed to me;" said the merchant in a pained and broken voice; "but I have done, madam. This scene, cruel to both of us, has 66 "In my turn, madam," replied Mr. Lyle; and with infinitely more truth than yourself, have the honour of declaring that I do not understand you." I "You were pleased to observe an instant ago," pursued Mrs. Stainton, "that nothing was more illogical than temper; therefore you will not, I imagine, consider me uncourteous if I retort that few things are more impracticable than a predetermined obtuseness. You can be at no loss to comprehend my meaning." "You pay my penetration a compliment to which it is assuredly not entitled;" was the calm reply; "we are such mere strangers that I cannot for a moment believe myself to possess any influence either over your own destiny or that of your sons." "How, sir?" exclaimed the lady, losing all self-command; "would you seek to blind me to the fact that you have-most ably I am ready to admit-led me into the snare into which I have so weakly fallen, in order to defraud myself and my poor boys of our rightful share in your property?" "Defraud! Your rightful share!" echoed the Anglo-Mexican, drawing himself up to his full height, and fixing a look of scornful wonder upon his companion; "first inform me of the nature of the claim which you are authorised to make upon me. Was it to pay a premium to vice and worldliness that I amassed wealth? Was it to submit to the selfish extortion of others that I toiled and laboured to secure gold? Were my youth, my health, my social enjoyments to be sacrificed, in order that I might pamper idleness and pretension? But I am to blame to waste so many words upon so worthless a subject. It is true that since my return to England I have been made to feel keenly-how keenly only those are competent to say who have undergone the same ordeal-that the one member of a family who is content to toil, to suffer, and to strive, in order to secure an honourable place in the ranks of social life, is regarded by his kindred, not with a sentiment of emulation, but as a prey, as a resource, as a responsible agent in the reparation of their own imprudence, or supineness. I say, madam, that this fact has been forced upon me, but that I by no means subscribe to such conditions. You are, I am willing to believe, exerting yourself according to your own peculiar ideas of expediency, and I would re attainment; but when once the price has been commend your sons to do the same. Labour is man's first social duty. We were all placed on earth, each sex alike, to add our mite to the general stock; but it is nowhere enjoined that the bees who make the honey are to support the drones who add nothing to the common store." "Selfish and unfeeling!" sobbed the lady; "and I, who never for a moment doubted that you would further the fortune of my sons." "You are to understand, madam, that I ap"And so I would have done," said the mer-preciate to their full value the brilliant conchant, "had I found them struggling with nexions which, as you have yourself declared, poverty, and possessed of sufficient moral cou- enabled you to look down with contempt upon rage to avow their necessities; but as it is, your more plebeian and less fortunate relations. I resign that privilege to the Prelate, to the You are to understand that I have too righteous Peer's daughter, and to the heiresses who are con- a conviction of my own responsibility to squander tending for their smiles." my money in pandering to empty pretensions, or in encouraging falsehood and slander. We have each an imperative duty to perform in this world; and be assured that I will fulfil mine to the very letter to both parties." Is this generous, Mr. Lyle?" 'Perhaps not, madam; but it is just; and even you (who had, as you confess, founded such undoubting and presumptuous hopes upon my inability to dispose as I saw fit of the produce of my own exertions) will possibly admit that I owe some justice to myself. Experience brings its fruits; and I have already acquired the most complete conviction that were I to bestow my last penny upon my relatives, and toil on to my last hour, still winning wealth, and still enriching them with the produce of my labour until my strength was spent, I should, in my final impotence, find no hand outstretched to succour me. It is a bitter knowledge, and few guess all that is suffered in its "We part then as strangers, sir?" "I think that such a parting will be the most satisfactory to both parties." "May I, in that case, trouble you to ring for my carriage?" "Certainly." Mr. Lyle laid his hand upon the bell; the carriage was announced; and, with a profound curtsey, the lady, after once more raising her eyes to those of the host-in which she read no symptom of relenting-left the room without the utterance of another sentence. |