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CHAPTER IX.

THE COUNT'S BROTHER.

On that same evening Herr Graf von Schönstein dined with his brother, Mr. John Hubbard, at his residence, Rose Villa, Haverstock Hill. The Count, since his grand accession to fortune, was not a frequent visitor at his brother's house; but when he did go there he was treated with much deference and apparent kindness.

There were at dinner only the Count, his brother, his brother's wife, and her sister. When the two ladies rose to go into the drawing-room, Mrs. Hubbard said to the Count, who had sprung to the door:

"Pray don't leave us two poor creatures all to ourselves; you may smoke in the drawing-room whenever you please to come in."

"Jack," said the Count, returning to the table and pulling out his cigar-case, "that wife of yours is an angel."

And so she was an angel—that is, a being without predicates. She was a mild, colourless, pretty woman, never out of temper, never enthusiastic, absolutely ignorant of everything beyond drawing-room accomplishments, scarcely proud even of her smooth, light-brown hair, her blue eyes, and rounded cheeks. She knew, of course, that there were few women of her age looked so well and so young; she did not know to attribute that rotundity and youthfulness of face to her easy temperament, her good disposition, and lack of brain. Mrs. John Hubbard was conscious of thinking seriously only upon one subject; and that was whether the Count, her brother-in-law, could be induced to marry her sister, or whether he would remain unmarried, and leave his large fortune to her eldest boy Alexander, a young gentleman of eight, who now, in Highland dress, was about to sit down to the piano and delight his mother and aunt with a staccato rendering of "La ci darem la mano."

There were reasons why Mrs. Hubbard should be disquieted upon this point.

"Quite an angel," said the Count, oracularly. "But we mustn't go into the drawing-room just yet. I want to talk to you, Jack, about that young lady, you know."

"Miss Brunel?"

"Yes. Will you mind my taking a glass of that pale port of yours with my cigar? I know it's a shame, but——"

"Don't mention it, Fred; I wish you'd come oftener and try it."

John Hubbard straightened himself up in the wide easy chair, and prepared to receive his brother's disclosures or questions on a matter which was deeply interesting to them both. John was very unlike his stout, pompous brother; a thin little man, with grey hair and grey eyes; troubled by a certain twitching of the eyebrows, and affected generally by a weak and extremely nervous constitution. An avaricious man who sees his younger brother become possessed of thirty thousand a year, which he himself expected to get, generally exhibits other than fraternal feelings; but whatever John Hubbard may have felt, the fact remains, that so soon as his brother Frederick became the undoubted owner of this money, he, John, began to observe towards him a severe deference and courtesy. When the Count went to dine at Rose Villa, there were no tricks played upon him in the matter of wine. The claret-cup was not composed of "sudden death," at ten shillings a dozen, with a superabundance of water, and cucumber peel instead of borage. The dry sherry was not removed with the fish, in the hope that the dulled after-dinner palate might accept some Hambro' decoction with equanimity. One wine was pretty much the same as another wine to the Count von Schönstein; but he was pleased to know that his brother thought so much of him as to be regardless of expense.

"Are you quite sure, Jack," said the younger brother, drawing his chair near, "that nobody, beyond those you mentioned to me, knows who Miss Brunel is?"

"As far as I know, Fred; as far as I know," said the other, in an injured querulous tone. "I can't hold myself responsible, and I'm not infallible."

"In a matter of this kind," said the Count, smiling benignly, "most people seem to think that Cayley and Hubbard are infallible. They say you are the repositories of all the scandals of the aristocracy; and that you might turn England upside down by publishing what you know. But I daresay that's exaggerated. Now, don't you think that some one who remembers that story of twenty-five years ago, and happens to see Miss Brunel, might recognise the resemblance between her and her mother, and then begin to inquire into the affair?"

There was a strong twitching of John Hubbard's eyebrows. He was far from being a good-tempered man; and to be compelled to sit and play the hypocrite was almost too much for him. He saw clearly whither these questions tended. He knew his brother's ruling passion; he knew there was nothing he would not do to be admitted among those people who had refused to recognise his purchased title. Again and again he had inwardly cursed his folly in telling the Count the story of Annie Napier and her daughter; that breach of professional confidence was likely to lose his family thirty thousand a year. Can one conceive a more tantalising position for a narrow-minded and avaricious man to assume than the involuntary prompting and guidance of a scheme which is likely, in the most gratuitous way, to deceive his own most dearly cherished hopes? If some one else had suggested to the Count a marriage with Miss Brunel as a possible passport to society, John Hubbard would not have been so chagrined. He would have been able to dissuade his brother from the step with such reasons as he could discover. But he had himself told the Count the real history of Annie Brunel; he was compelled to furnish him with all sorts of information; and saw, through his own instrumentality, that money slipping out of his fingers which otherwise might have been his or his son's.

"I have explained it to you before, Fred," he said, patiently. "Old Mr. Cayley, who went out to America to see the Marquis of Knottingley's wife, lives down in Suffolk, where he is not likely to meet people who have much interest in Miss Brunel. Besides, he has a very fine sense of honour in these matters, and would not break a pledge he gave to Miss Brunel's mother, not to seek in any way to induce her daughter to leave the stage. And you know the people who knew of the marriage were very few; and most of them are dead. Mr. Palk is in his dotage, and lives in Westmoreland. Then who is likely to remember Miss Napier's appearance: or to perceive a likeness between her and Miss Brunel beyond the casual likenesses which occur constantly on the stage? I believe I could count on my ten fingers all the people who know who Miss Brunel really is. There's my wife—one; old Mr. Cayley—two; Cayley, my partner—three; you yourself——"

He stopped; for his brother was evidently not listening to him. So pre-occupied was the Count, indeed, that he broke the ash off the end of his cigar upon the edge of his wine-glass, allowing the ash to fall into the port.

"I hope I haven't poisoned you with some of my wines," said John Hubbard, with a thin laugh.

"I beg your pardon!" said his brother, reaching over for another glass; "I really didn't know what I was about. The whole affair seems to me so romantic and impossible—like a play, you know, or something of that sort. I can scarcely believe it; and yet you lawyer fellows must sometimes meet with such cases."

"I have one of my people down in Southend just now, trying if he can trace anything about a woman and her child who, we believe, lived there eighteen years ago. If we find her, a curious story will come out. But I never in the whole course of my life heard of any woman, except Miss Napier, who refused a title and a fortune, which were by right her own. I suppose the common-sense of actresses gets poisoned by the romantic sentiment in which they live and breathe."

"If you mean as regards money," said the Count, with a patronising smile, "I can assure you that most actresses have an uncommonly small proportion of sentiment and a very tolerable share of sense. Miss Brunel's mother must have been an extraordinary woman in many respects—what you and I would consider a fool, though many people would give her folly a fine name. Now, about revealing this secret, to Miss Brunel, don't you think some of the Marquis's relatives might do that?"

"They would cut their fingers off first," said John Hubbard, with nervous decision. "They knew every action of her mother after she left this country—so old Mr. Cayley told me; they now watch her daughter closely, and try to discover everything they can about her; and their intensest hope is that she may never learn what a splendid property lies at her command, so that it may revert to them or their heirs, as the will directs. And what a property it is, Fred!"

"Ah! I suppose so," said the Count, with a sigh.

To do him justice, he did not consider so much as another might have done the money he would get by marrying Miss Brunel: his desire to marry her was wholly selfish, but the selfishness was begotten of no greed of money.

"The trustees are as diligent in looking after the property as though it were to be given up to-morrow. And how those rents accumulate! It was Lord Belsford who proposed to use up some of the money in buying off the mortgages which still hung over the Northamptonshire estate from the time of the Marquis's father; and now that has been done, it is nothing but a huge machine turning out money for nobody's use."

The little nervous lawyer seemed to be quite overwhelmed by the contemplation of such a thing. If he had had the option of becoming the proprietor of this valuable coining machine, he would not have allowed the opportunity to pass. And even now it occurred to him that in the event of his brother marrying Miss Brunel, and acquiring this vast wealth, the Count might, out of gratitude for the service done him in the matter, leave his thirty thousand pounds a year to the young gentleman in the adjoining drawing-room. The alternative was possible, but it was remote; John Hubbard would vastly have preferred his brother remaining unmarried.

"You know why I am so anxious to know all about this matter, Jack," said the Count, uneasily.

His brother nodded.

"It is a hazardous thing—seems to me almost impossible," continued the Count—and he was never tired of reiterating his doubts on the subject—"that such a fortune and title should belong to anybody without their knowing it."

"It was her mother's wish," said John Hubbard.

"Oh, I know," said the Count, "that she has been brought up to regard with apprehension every one out of her profession; and I know she believes that under no circumstances ought she to leave the stage. And yet I fancy she will not be very grateful either to her mother, or to old Mr. Cayley, or to the trustees, for keeping her in ignorance of her good fortune. And if she should consent to be my wife, she will probably accuse me of having used the secret for my own purpose."

The Count spoke as if such an accusation would do him a great injury. But the possibility of the future he had chalked out for himself drove away this ugly after-thought. He became quite excited. His face was flushed; his hand trembled as he lifted his glass.

"God knows," he said, earnestly, "that it is not her money I want. I'm not a fortune-hunter."

"You have a lot of money," said his brother, gently; while he watched his face with those mild grey eyes. "If you were to marry Miss Brunel, you could afford to part with what you have now."

"What do you take me for?" said the Count, with a touch of virtuous indignation. "If I were to marry Miss Brunel, I should insist on her settling all her money on herself. I have enough to live upon, thank God!"

John Hubbard's mind was made up on the spot.

"You will never marry Miss Brunel, Fred," he said, quietly.

"Why?" said the other, suddenly putting down the glass he had been lifting.

"Simply because her relatives on the father's side won't allow it."

"You said they——"

"They are content to say nothing while they hope to secure the reversion of the property through Miss Brunel's dying intestate," said John Hubbard, calmly, though his eyebrows were twitching nervously. "When, however, they understand that you, a brother of mine, and therefore likely to know how matters stand, are about to marry Miss Brunel, they will inform her of her true position, and implore her not to marry a man beneath her in rank. And you know, Fred, they will be able to point to your previous silence as a witness against you."

The first impulse of Count Schönstein was to dart an angry glance at the pale, quiet little man before him, as though the latter had dealt him an unprovoked blow; then, when he saw in his brother's calm face only corroborative testimony of the appalling truth he had uttered, the Count leant back in his chair, unable to conceal his fright and dismay.

At that moment, Master Alexander entered the room, and said:

"Please, Uncle Frederick, mamma says coffee is in the drawing-room, and will you come and have some?"

"Yes, yes, my boy," said the Count, jumping up from his chair.

He scarcely knew what he was about. John Hubbard rose also, and then they walked into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Hubbard saw something in her brother-in-law's face which she not unnaturally, but quite wrongly, attributed to his having taken too much wine.

Miss Fleet, Mrs. Hubbard's sister, was singing a certain popular ballad, expressing her wish that the laird might marry the lady of high degree, and declaring that, for her part, she would sooner dance upon the green with Donald. Miss Fleet's voice trembled consciously when the Count entered the room. She was a fine, roseate, country-looking woman of twenty-six or twenty-seven, much coarser and stouter than her elder sister; and she sang with those broad alternations of piano and forte which some girls, and nearly all actresses, consider to be effective. Miss Fleet, now that the Count had come in, simply roared in the louder passages, and then subsided into an almost inaudible whisper when she meant to be particularly tender.

"Thank you—thank you," said the Count, absently, when she had finished; but her ear detected no particular emphasis in the words for which she had been waiting.

Rose Villa was not a large place, but it possessed the advantage of being enclosed; and from the drawing-room one could slip out into a small garden which was quite surrounded and guarded by a row of trees. The Count sate at the French window leading out into this garden; and was so forgetful of all common politeness as to stare persistently out into the darkness, where the tall black trees were grouped in masses against the faint twinkling sky.

Like a government suddenly knocked out of its reckoning by an adverse vote, he "wished to consider his position." There had been plenty of difficulties in the way before; but this last stumbling-block so cruelly pointed out by his brother seemed the most irremovable of all. In a moment of temporary spleen, he was almost ready to give the whole thing up; and return to——

Then a vision of that lonely great house near St. Mary-Kirby arose before him, and he shrank from the weariness and dullness of his life there, from the restless hoping against hope which he had pursued there, from the constant disappointments following his best-directed efforts.

If he were to marry the girl, would not his path be clear? Beautiful in person, graceful in manner, with an intellect a thousand times superior to that of any woman she was likely to meet, he would have every reason to be proud of his wife; and then, as the husband of Lady Annie Ormond, the only daughter of the Marquis of Knottingley, and the owner of those fine estates which had such tempting shooting, would not their friendship be sought after and valued by the very persons who now, taking their cue from the Lord Chamberlain, doubtless, were graceless enough to look upon him as an interloper or adventurer?

Not by means of any chain of philosophic reasoning, but through a bitter experience, Count Schönstein had arrived at the conclusion that a large sum of money, per se, was not happiness. It was doubtless very well that he could have the finest wines and cigars, drive in comfortable vehicles, and be unhampered in spending money ostentatiously; but even when he was only a tea-broker, he had a modest brougham, such wine and cigars as he required, and spent quite as much in fashionable charities as he did now. He had found out that a man cannot, by doubling his income, eat two dinners a day instead of one. With thirty thousand a year he could drink no more wine than was possible to him when his annual income was to be counted in hundreds. Consequently he got tired of material pleasures which could not be increased; and sometimes he even ceased to enjoy boasting of the high prices he paid for such luxuries as he used. Like every other human being, he was forced to fix his desires upon something he did not possess; and he stupidly chose a difficult thing. Unaided, he might as well have sought to get up a crusade among Scotchmen for the restoration of the sacred stone which now rests in Westminster Abbey. He had set his heart upon gaining admission to the aristocracy; and the moon for which he cried was to be reached by no ladder of his making.

Mrs. Hubbard thought he was ill. Having attentively but covertly regarded him for some time, she went to her husband, who was getting himself another cup of coffee.

"John," she whispered, "has your brother been drinking Miss Betham's sherry by mistake?"

"No, my dear: how could he? There was none on the table."

Off goes Master Alexander to his uncle.

"Uncle Frederick, mamma wants to know if you've been drinking Miss Betham's sherry."

"If you will tell mo who Miss Betham is, I shall be able to——"

"Don't you know Miss Betham, our governess? She has some sherry every day for lunch, and nobody else will take the sherry that's kept for her, and——"

"Never mind the boy," said John Hubbard, coming hastily forward, with an awkward laugh. "It was only a joke. I said you looked as dull as though you'd been drinking Miss Betham's sherry; we do keep a light wholesome wine for her, and for the servants, when they get ill, you know."

Master Alexander said nothing; but he resolved to inform Miss Betham of the "crammer" his papa had made use of. Nor did Uncle Frederick care to ask how a light and wholesome wine (which in reality would have blushed at the sight of a grape) was likely to have made him ill.

The Count rose abruptly, opened the glass door, and, without a word of apology to the ladies, beckoned his brother to follow. They passed out into the garden, and the Count began to pace heavily up and down the gravelled pathway under the trees.

"I can't afford to give up this so easily as you seem to think, Jack," he said; and he spoke roughly and angrily.

"I always knew you had a strong will, Frederick," said his brother, gently.

"I've set my heart on it, I tell you. What's the use of my money to me? D—n it, Jack, I might as well be down in Thames Street again!"

"Few people would grumble if they had your good luck," said the elder brother, in his mildest voice.

"I don't care what few people, or what many people, would do. I know that when I make up my mind to a thing, I stick to it; and instead of you sitting quietly by and throwing obstacles in my way, the least you ought to do would be to help me."

"You're very unfair, Fred," said John Hubbard, in an injured tone; "wasn't I the first to tell you about Miss Brunel? And now——"

"And now you try to throw cold water on the whole business. But I am not a child. Miss Brunel's friends may be very aristocratic and very fine; but they have not all the power in their hands. Look here, Jack, what's to prevent my marrying Miss Brunel before they know anything about it? And after the marriage is over they may make what disclosures they please; I shall be beforehand with them."

"Are you sure that Miss Brunel will marry you, Fred?" said his brother, insidiously.

The Count laughed out, in his stormy and contemptuous way:

"Your brain has been turned, Jack, by hearing of that one actress who refused a lot of money. Take my word for it, you will never hear of another. If I offer Annie Brunel Balnacluith Place, my house in Bayswater, the place over in Baden, what horses and carriages she pleases, with as much company at home and gadding about abroad as she can wish for, I am not very apprehensive about her answer. When we were younger, Jack, we could have imagined some Joan of Arc declining these things; but now we know better."

"It is a strong temptation," said his brother, absently: he did not like to say how very uncertain he considered Annie Brunel's acceptance of the offer.

"And, besides," added the Count, with virtuous warmth, "I do not think I flatter myself when I look upon the money as not the only inducement. I'll make as good a husband to her as any one I know; and I don't think my disposition is quarrelsome or niggardly. And besides, Jack, she must remember that it is not every one who would marry an actress, and consent never to look into her past life, which in the case of an actress must have been made up of a good many experiences, you know. Of course I don't mean to depreciate her. She is doubtless a very honest, and good, and ladylike girl; but still—she mustn't expect too much."

And the Count was quite sincere in making this ingenuous speech. He rather considered himself a praiseworthy person in stooping to this unequal match. He had not the least perception of the selfishness of the view he took of the whole matter. It was quite natural to him to think only of his own ends and purposes, and he took no shame to himself for it. He never for a moment regarded the scheme from her point of view, nor stayed to inquire what might be the possible results of it where she was concerned. He did not even consider what her regard for him would probably be after she discovered the reasons which had induced him to marry her; nor that she was likely to have little respect for a man who had played upon her ignorance to further his own designs. The Count was conscious of acting quite honestly (to his own nature), and never thought that any one would accuse him of deceit in so doing.

CHAPTER X.

MISS BRUNEL AT HOME.

Will Anerley did not forget his promise to visit Annie Brunel, but he seemed in no hurry to fulfil it. Had he been a young man about town, the temptation of having something special to say at his club or at dancing parties about the new actress, of whom everybody was talking, would have proved too much for him. When a man, however, spends most of his dancing years abroad, and gets a good deal knocked about the world, he ceases to long for the petty celebrity of social gossip, and has no great desire to become a temporary hero among a lot of well-meaning but not very profound people, who are sure to mispronounce his name and take him for somebody else.

It happened one morning, however, that he had been invited to breakfast with a noble lord, then in the government, who was desirous of getting some special information wherewith to confound an opposition member who had given notice of his intention to ask a particularly ugly question in the House. His lordship thanked Will heartily for his kindness, hoped he might be able to return the service in some slight way; hinted something about a day's fishing if Anerley happened to be in the neighbourhood of a place of which he had never heard before; and then proceeded to get in order the catapult with which he hoped that evening to demolish the indiscreet member.

Having nothing particular to do just then, Will thought he would take a stroll in Kensington Gardens, and proceeded to take a short cut in that direction. Passing a little cul-de-sac of a street, which had not above half-a-dozen houses on each side, it struck him that the name on the wall was familiar to him. He then remembered that this was the place in which Annie Brunel lived; and thinking the occasion very opportune, he turned the corner and walked down to the proper house. They were very pretty little houses, with white pillars and porticoes draped with Virginian creepers, and with a good many trees around them. Miss Brunel had been fortunate enough to get the offer of one of these houses, furnished, at a moderate rent, and she and Mrs. Christmas had decided at once to accept it. It was a quiet little place, pleasantly situated, with a tolerably large garden behind.

Will passed inside the gate, and was about to ascend the steps, when the door above was opened, and a young lady came out of the house. Somehow he fancied he had seen her before—where, he knew not. She was rather an attractive-looking little person, with a pert, slightly up-turned nose, big and rather wicked blue eyes, short, loose brown curls, and a decided look of violet-powder about her forehead and neck. The saucy bright eyes looked at Will for a moment with a bold familiar glance, and there was a shadow of a smile on her pretty lips.

Of course he took off his hat, and muttered something like "Good morning."

"Good morning," she said, holding out her hand, and looking at him with those dangerous blue eyes. "Don't you remember me?"

The moment he heard the voice, he recognised it. It was the thrilling voice of "Perseus," of "Good-for-nothing" Nan, of "Peggy Green," of "The Little Rebel," of "Mrs. White," of "Fatima," of "Rose Dufard"—of Nelly Featherstone. Had her eyelashes been caked with cosmetique, her lips reddened with salve, and the violet-powder of her face tempered with glycerine and rouge, he would have recognised her at once; but there was a good deal of difference between Miss Featherstone in morning costume, with cold daylight on her face, and Miss Featherstone in the dashing and glittering garments of "Conrad the Corsair," with the glare of the footlights on her forced complexion and brilliant ornaments. For the rest, he had only heard of her as a good and well-meaning little girl, to whom Nature had given a deadly pair of eyes and a warm temperament. He was at first rather taken aback by her proffered friendship; but a few commonplaces relieved him from the predicament. She gave him a parting smile full of sweetness; and he went up to the door, and entered the house, leaving his card with the servant.

Presently Mrs. Christmas entered the drawing-room, and said that Miss Brunel would be glad to see him out in the garden, where she was then engaged.

"You seem to have been ill, Mrs. Christmas," said Will. "I hope that wild adventure upon Hounslow Heath had nothing to do with it."

"Indeed, I'm afraid it had, Mr. Anerley," said the little woman, whose bright eyes were unnaturally bright, her face also being unusually pale. "I have never been well since; but old folks like me mustn't complain, you know, Mr. Anerley. We mustn't complain if we get ill at times."

"I'm sorry you've been ill. You ought to go and live in the warm fresh air of the country, when the summer's fully in."

"I've never left Miss Annie for a day since her mother died, Mr. Anerley; and I'm not going to forsake her now. It would be hard on both of us."

"But she might go with you?"

"That's easy saying."

They went out and crossed a little bit of lawn, which had a few vases upon it, and here and there a plot of spring annuals. A short distance down the side-path they came to a small summer-house, which was arched over with a piece of light framework; and in front of this framework stood Annie Brunel, on a chair, tying up with loops of string the bright-leaved creepers, which were yet in their erratic youth. Her hands were busy over her head, and her face was upturned, showing the fine outline of her neck and figure—a shapeliness of bust which was not lessened by a tight-fitting and pretty morning dress, which Will thought the most graceful thing he had ever seen, particularly as it caught streaks of sunlight now and again through the diamond spaces above.

When he went up to her and shook hands with her, he fancied he observed a slight tinge of embarrassment in her face; but that quickly wore off, and she returned to her usual bright happiness of manner, continuing her work by fits and snatches. And every position into which her beautiful figure fell seemed more admirable than its predecessor.

"I wonder," thought Will, "if any man ever lifted her down from the saddle; and did he immediately die of joy?"

Perhaps he was sorry at the moment that one's descent from a chair is so obviously an easy feat.

"I'm doing this out of pure mischief," she said, "and earning for myself such heaps of muttered scolding and ill will. The gardener comes to us twice a week; and he is quite savage if I have meddled with anything in the meantime. I can't pacify him. I have tried every means; but he is too obdurate. Miss Featherstone says I ought to hire a young gardener, and I might have the garden done any way I wished."

"Sulky servants are always the best servants," said Will, rather absently; for the clear, dark Italian face, and the bright smile, and the white teeth, oppressed him with a vague, delicious melancholy. "But a gardener, whether he is good or bad, is always sulky. My mother is afraid to touch one of the plants in the greenhouse until it is half withered; and when some people come, and she carries off a lot of the plants for the hall and dinner-table, she trembles to meet the old man next morning. I suppose gardeners get so fond of their flowers as to be jealous, and jealousy is always cross. By-the-bye, wasn't that Miss Featherstone who left as I came in?"

"Yes."

"I scarcely knew her. In fact, I only saw her once before off the stage—at that supper; and yet she was kind enough to bid me good morning."

"Then she must have thought you were a newspaper gentleman," said Mrs. Christmas, with a good-natured little laugh. "She is very partial to them. And that one she knows just now teaches her such dreadful things, and the heedless girl repeats them wherever she goes, to make people laugh. What was it she said this morning, Miss Annie?—that on St. Patrick's Day there were so many wicked things done in Ireland, that the recording angel had to take to shorthand."

"Well, Lady Jane," said Miss Brunel, "you need not have repeated what she said; and it's very wrong of you to say anything against poor Nelly, who is a warm-hearted, mad little creature."

"She's not so simple as she looks," said Mrs. Christmas, nodding her head sagaciously. "I am an old woman, and I know. And the way she uses that poor young gentleman—him in the government office, who was at the supper, you know, Mr. Anerley—is downright shameful. She told me this morning that he made her swear on an open prayer-book never to put bismuth on her arms or neck again; I suppose because he expects to marry her, and doesn't want to have her all shrivelled up, and bismuth is very bad, you know, for that; and that newspaper gentleman whom she knows said, whenever she wanted to quarrel with the poor young man, and make him believe that she had perjured herself all for the love of shiny white arms, she ought to——!"

"Mr. Anerley," said the young girl, looking down from her work, "will you silence that talkative child by giving it a piece of sugar? What must you think of us actresses if she goes on like that?"

"She—bah!" said the old woman, in a melodramatic whisper, with a nod towards Miss Brunel. "She knows no more of Nelly Featherstone and the rest of 'em than an infant does. They don't talk to her like they do to an old woman like me."

"Now I have finished," said the young lady, jumping lightly down from the chair (Will did not even get the chance of taking her hand), "and we'll go inside, if you please."

"Shall I bring in the chair?" asked Will.

"Oh, no! We leave the old thing out here: it is for no other use."

Somehow it seemed to be quite a valuable chair in his eyes: he would have given a good deal to be its owner just then.

As they got indoors, Mrs. Christmas went upstairs, and Will followed Annie Brunel into the drawing-room, which was rather prettily furnished, and had a good deal of loose music scattered about the tables and piano. He had been in finer drawing-rooms, with grander ladies; and yet he had never before felt so rough and uncultivated. He wished he had looked particularly at his hair and moustache before corning out, and hoped they were not very matted, and loose, and reckless—which they certainly were. Indeed, he looked like some stalwart and bronzed seaman who had just come off a long voyage, and who seemed to regard with a sort of wonder the little daintinesses of land-life.

"I thought you had quite run away with my sis——, with that young lady, the other evening when she went to see you," he said.

"You would have been sorry for that," she replied, with a quiet smile.

Will was not at all so pleased with the gentle motherly tone in which she uttered these words as he ought to have been. She seemed to take it for granted that his love-secret was known to her; he would have preferred—without any particular reason—its not being known.

"What a gentle, loveable girl she is!" continued the young actress. "I never knew any one who so thoroughly won me over in a few minutes. She was so sweet, and quiet, and frank; one could tell by her face everything she thought. She must be very sensitive and affectionate; I hope so tender a creature will never have to suffer much. And you—you must be very proud of her."

"We all are."

Miss Brunel widened her eyes slightly, but said nothing.

"By the way," said Will, with an evident effort, "I gathered together a number of Suabian peasant-songs when I was out there, which I should like to hear you sing. I know you will like them, they are so tender and simple. Dove has tried one or two of them, but her voice is scarcely low and full enough for them——"

"Dove is your sister's name, is it not?"

"Yes."

"And how do you know I can sing at all?" she asked, with a smile.

"As well ask a star if it has light," said he, warmly.

"You have lived too long in the East," she retorted, gently.

When Mrs. Christmas came into the room at that moment, there was a slight constraint visible upon both the young people. Will felt that he had gone a little too far; while Annie Brunel seemed to think that she had rather rudely warned him off such dangerous ground. The danger was not in the words, but in his tone.

Mrs. Christmas had just received an East London local paper, in which some youthful poet had poured forth his rhapsodies over Annie Brunel and her 'Juliet.' There was nothing remarkable in the verses, except that the author hoped to meet Miss Brunel in heaven. This was natural enough. The almost inevitable climax of a commonplace poem is heaven, simply because heaven is the only idealism of commonplace minds. It is almost a matter of necessity, therefore, that hymns should end with "above," or "Eden," or "Paradise;" and that magazine poets should lay down their pen with a sigh of relief when they have left their readers somewhere among the fixed stars.

"It is kind of him to suppose that an actress may get to heaven at all," said Annie Brunel, when Mrs. Christmas had read the verses.

Once or twice before Will had remarked this tendency towards bitterness of feeling in the young girl's contemplation of the non-professional world. He could not divine its cause. He was vexed to see it; and now he said, boldly:

"You ought not to speak like that, Miss Brunel. You wrong both yourself and those of whom you speak. You really have imbibed—I don't know how—a singular prejudice against people out of your own profession."

"Don't they refuse in France to bury actors in consecrated ground?"

"If they did, the freaks of a clergy should never be blamed upon the people of any country. I suppose the priests, through the use of the confessional, were so dismayed about the prospects of their charge in the next world, that they thought this distinction the only piece of worldly consolation they could give them. But indeed, Miss Brunel, you must abandon that touch of Bohemianism which you unconsciously allow to escape you sometimes, and which is unfair to——"

"I won't have you argue for these people," she said, with a smile. "I was glad you came here this morning, for I want to win you over to us. Didn't I say, Lady Jane, when I first met him, that he was so unlike the other—what shall I call them?—outsiders? Well, perhaps it is foolish of me to talk about these people, for I know nothing whatever of them; but I have been educated to consider them as so much raw material to be deluded and impressed by stage effect, and I shall never be able to regard them as anything else than strangers. Haven't you seen the little girl in pink cotton and spangles who stands by while her father is performing tricks before a lot of village people? Haven't you seen her watch all the faces round, calculating the effect of the performance, and wondering how much it will produce in halfpence? No, you needn't laugh: that is precisely my attitude and feeling towards the public."

"You may tell that to one who has never seen you on the stage," said Will. "I know that you have no more thought of calculating the effect of what you are doing than the music of a violin has."

"That is because I am then a performer myself, and have to attend to my business. When I stand in one of the entrances, and hear the buzz of the theatre, I say to myself, 'My big children up there in the boxes, you have paid so much to be amused, and you don't care much for me; but in a few minutes I'll have you all as quiet as mice, and in a few minutes more I'll have the prettiest and best among you crying.'"

"My poor Dove's eyes were tremulous all the evening after seeing you," he said.

"I like to hear you speak kindly of her," she replied, looking him straight in the face with her clear and frank eyes. "She will need all the tenderness that friends can give her to make her life a happy one."

Will felt a dull sense of pain at his heart (why, he knew not) on hearing these true and touching words: somehow he fancied there was a sympathy almost prophetic in them.

"Come," she said, briskly, as she rose and went to the piano, "I am going to put you to the test. I make all my new friends submit to it; and according as they pass through it I regard them afterwards. I am going to play three funeral marches—Handel's, Beethoven's, and Mendelssohn's. When the person experimented on prefers a certain one of them, I consider her—I have not tried the experiment on a gentleman as yet—merely emotional and commonplace; therefore I don't care much for her. If she likes a certain other one, I think she is rather more intellectual, with some dramatic sensitiveness; and then I like her a good deal better. When she likes the third, then I think she must have the divinest sympathies, and I am ready to fall in love with her."

She had sat down to the piano.

"But the peril of failure is too great; I dare not risk it," said Will. "It is as hard a trial as the three caskets in the 'Merchant of Venice;' only, if the prize were to be the same, the chance——"

He had spoken quite thoughtlessly; but he saw in a moment, by the pain and confusion of the young actress, what a blunder he had made.

"Pray don't mind what I said, Miss Brunel," he urged. "I was talking to you without thinking, as I should have talked to Dove. I will submit to the three funeral marches, if you like——"

"I will spare you," she said, good-naturedly. "If you had some of your Suabian songs here just now, I should sing them to you. But really it seems a pity to use up such fine weather indoors; are you particularly engaged to-day?"

"I have no engagement if I can be of service to you."

"Mr. Anerley, I am neither a bulbul nor a gazelle. Shall I be trespassing on your time if I ask you to take a walk with me?"

"No."

"Lady Jane—Mrs. Christmas, I mean—and I take a stroll under the trees in Kensington Gardens every forenoon when I have no rehearsal."

"And I," said Will, "was on my way to the same place, for the same purpose, when I happened to see the name of the street, and thought I might venture to trespass on your patience."

So she went and dressed; and then together they passed out into the open air and the sunlight.

Will Anerley left that house a very different man from him who had entered it an hour and a half before. Nor was he conscious of the change.